it's just a ride

[click image]

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And a choice...

Six of the Environmental Protection Agency's 12 California sensors — including the three closest to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo — are sending data with "anomalies" to the agency's laboratory in Montgomery, Ala., said Mike Bandrowski, manager of the EPA's radiation program.

The problem delays from 30 minutes to several hours the updating of a database that would be critical for warning the public in case of a sudden radiation danger from air wafting to the United States from a foreign country, for example, or from a radiation leak at a domestic nuclear facility.

The lag has not been a concern during the Japanese nuclear crisis because the minuscule amounts of radiation that have reached California have posed no threat to human health, and the plume of irradiated air from Japan is so widespread that other equipment from Washington to Los Angeles has been able to monitor it in real time, Bandrowski said.

...

Without immediate information from RadNet, state and local emergency managers would be dependent on the private owners of nuclear power facilities to alert them in the first hours of a dangerous radiation leak from a domestic source.

"I believe the utilities monitor the sensors; they're good about reporting things," said David McIntyre, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees nuclear reactors in the U.S. He added that federal regulations require nuclear plant operators to report small problems that could lead to a release of radiation, so it's unlikely such an event would come as a surprise.

Right now.

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love, 99
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turns out he couldn't find his ass in a hall of mirrors

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Ahem.

For example, a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Germany and perhaps from Belgium and the Netherlands could make it very difficult politically for Turkey to maintain its own stockpile, even though it was still convinced of the need to do so.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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i want to kiss them all

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I so totally do.

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love, 99
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have i mentioned lately how much i hate these people?

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Don't gimme none o' yore lip about such strong language not being Zen. Zen master spies will put your head inside a jumbo air horn and blow it. Do NOT kid yourself about that. I heavily advise you listen to this interview.

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love, 99
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i guess you just didn't want to alarm me, right?

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Or did they slip it under your radar?

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love, 99
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neatly avoids the B-52 nuke thing

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And this is a big problem when groupthink tries to address such serious issues, but it is a serious issue and they did try to address it. Another positive sign is that the most popular image on Google for nukes is THIS one.

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love, 99
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fidel will attend the cuban parliament today

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I think this is going to be very important.

Saturday's appearance will be particularly interesting because the last time Fidel Castro attended parliament was a month before his health emergency. Since then lawmakers have convened with an empty chair set aside for Fidel.

The special session will deal with a topic followed closely by the elder Castro brother: the threat of global nuclear war.

A brief statement read on state television's Friday night newscast did not say if Castro would address the assembly, which will be broadcast nationwide. But it's hard to imagine that he won't since he requested the special session.

I hate to say it, but I feel things beginning to shift into place. I think Fidel does too.

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UPDATE: BB2 points out in comments [*HE DID NOT! I MISREAD IT!] that so far today people are saying Fidel is urging Obama to attack Iran. I think that [*MY MISREADING] is [*WOULD HAVE BEEN] a misreading of the end of Fidel's most recent regular column:

"’You are backing a country that has hundreds of nuclear weapons [Isreal] but you are saying that you want to stop Iran, which could possibly have them some day…’"

The Iranians have stated that they will fire 100 rockets against every one of the U.S. and Israeli ships that are blockading Iran, as soon as they inspect any Iranian merchant ship.

In that way, when Obama gives the order to comply with the Security Council resolution, he will be decreeing the sinking of all the U.S. warships in that area.

Never before has such a dramatic decision fallen upon a president of the United States. He should have foreseen that.

On this occasion, for the first time in my life, I am addressing United States President Barack Obama:

You must know that it is in your hands to offer humanity the only real possibility of peace. Only on one occasion can you make use of your prerogatives by giving the order to fire.

It is possible that later, on the basis of this traumatic experience, solutions might be found that will not lead us once again to this apocalyptical situation. Everybody in your country, including your worst adversaries of the left or the right, will doubtless be grateful to you, and also the people of the United States, who are not in any way guilty of the situation created.

I ask you to deign to hear this appeal that I am conveying to you in the name of the Cuban people.

I understand that a rapid response cannot be expected, nor would you ever give one. Think it through well, consult your specialists, ask your most powerful allies and international adversaries for their opinion on the matter.

I am not interested in honors or glories. Do it!

The world really can be liberated from nuclear weapons and also conventional ones.

The worst of all the variants will be nuclear war, which is already virtually inevitable. PREVENT IT!

I am pretty sure Fidel meant for Obama to use his prerogative NOT to inspect Iranian ships, to NOT go so far as to force Iran to protect herself. I admit that is not so clear from this wording, but the rest of it, here, and in everything he's written over the years, doesn't make sense if he is urging Obama to provoke the Iranians.

I'm still looking.

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UPDATE: From the end of a piece at the Miami Herald about his speech in the parliament today:

Castro noted that after months of warning of the risks of nuclear war over the enforcement of sanctions against Iran — he even gave a deadline in June — he's now less pessimistic.

"At first I thought that the imminent danger of war had no solution possible," he said. "I am sure, however, that it will not happen that way and that, on the contrary, the conditions for a solution (...) are being created at this time."

"One man alone will have to make the decision: The president of the United States," Castro said, because Iran will not bow to U.S. and Israeli demands to halt its nuclear program.

If Obama approves an attack on Iran, he added, he will trigger a war that will spread through the Middle East and Asia and cause "the instantaneous death of hundreds of millions people, among them an incalculable number of people in his own country."

The "established order of the planet ... will inevitably collapse, the reigning social order will disappear abruptly" and all currencies will be worthless, he added.

Castro noted that "as luck would have it,'' Obama's father was Muslim and his mother was Christian and added he hoped the U.S. president will become conscious of the threat to world peace.

In comparison, he called Richard Nixon a "cynic," branded Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman as "ignorant" and called Jimmy Carter "a decent person."

So I guess we settled that one anyway.

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UPDATE: I really hate wading through MSM propaganda for any good bits, but this one was worth the work:

"Fidel attracts more people. There's nobody better than him," said Pedro Gonzalez, a 90-year-old retiree who watched the session of parliament on a nationwide broadcast. "Look how well he's recuperated. It's incredible. Fidel makes us feel better."

Me too, Pedro, me too.

I don't think there will be a reliable translation of his eleven-minute speech until after the weekend, but I'll keep looking.

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OKAY. PRIME EXAMPLE WHY YOU NEVER TRUST THE AP.

While it was the first time the brothers have appeared together publicly since Fidel fell ill, neither made any effort to approach the other, and they never even seemed to make eye contact.

There is no rift between the Castro brothers. Jesus. Give it a rest.

And, man, being something of an expert on the topic of old men, I can't tell you how great it is to be poring through pages and pages of images of Fidel looking so well. There was almost no hope for his survival, and he damn well has DONE it. I hope he never dies.

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UPDATE: * Sheesh. I have GOT to train myself not to start blogging before I've had at LEAST a few gulps of coffee. Bad enough I try to comment without enough in me, or while waiting for it to be ready. That's embarrassing enough! I'm leaving this all up here because it's still cogent stuff you need to know, even if I started in on it assuming the preposterous was what was coming of it all... which... in my own defense... is lately a fairly safe assumption....

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busy, busy boy

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I can't help it. I admire him. And not only is he sticking up for Iran's dignity on the nukes score, but he's getting real on our psychedelic propensity for black ops to terrorize everybody.

Ahmadinejad urges Ban to probe 9/11 attacks
(AFP) – 9 hours ago

TEHRAN — Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, asking him to launch an investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, news reports said on Monday.

"The minimum expectation from your excellency is to set up an independent and trusted fact-finding group to comprehensively investigate the real factors behind September 11," Ahmadinejad said in the text of the letter carried by official news agencies.

They did not say when the letter was sent.

The hardliner, who in March dismissed 9/11 as a "big lie," said in the letter that the attacks "were the main pretext for attacks" by NATO on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Several times Ahmadinejad has questioned the accepted version of the Al-Qaeda strikes on New York and Washington which killed nearly 3,000 people.

In January, he branded September 11 "a suspicious affair" similar to the Holocaust, which he dismissed as a "myth" in 2005, drawing widespread condemnation.

Ahmadinejad's latest remarks come with Iran locked in a standoff with world powers led by the United States over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme, and risking tougher sanctions over its defiance.

In his letter, he also asked Ban to condemn Sunni militant Abdolmalek Rigi and those who backed him.

Rigi, head of the rebel Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group, was captured by Iranian intelligence agents in February. According to officials in Iran, he had lived in Pakistan from where he launched attacks inside the Islamic republic.

"Based on the legal and humane duties of the secretary general, we want outright condemnation of Rigi's crimes and defence of the Iranian nation's rights as a victim of terrorism," Ahmadinejad's letter said.

He demanded "condemnation of NATO backing for this regional terrorist and impeachment of the criminals who backed him."

Iran touted Rigi's arrest as a major success and a blow to the United States and Britain, and state television showed what it said was Rigi confessing that he had received US backing.

Rigi reportedly spearheaded several bloody insurgent attacks in southeast Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

That was no coerced lie confession: The criminals who backed Rigi are the U.S. government.

I think theocracy is a big mistake, but it really seems to me sometimes that these particular theocrats are about the only ones left on the planet who are trying to deal with the real... sort of digging their heels in and insisting on it, no matter how menacing we get to back them down from it. That is beautiful. That is bodhisattva stuff. And the stakes have not been low. And they have suffered badly, and quietly, to keep us out of WWIII. So. Well. I do so wish people could find some gratitude for it... some gratitude for their staying strong even in the face of the silver-tongued Barack W. Cheney, staying strong despite his charming eyelash-batting offers for them to just lighten up and let us dominate Iran again, and despite all this lethal skullduggery too....
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president cheney's comments on the eve of nuclear summit

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Just telling it like it is....
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On a related note, looks like those further Iran sanctions will be watered down some more... which is GREAT, since Iran has done NOTHING to warrant ANY sanctions... but I'm still holding out hope that China will shut this shit down altogether.
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murderating fucks and media surprises

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Everyone is amazed the AP put out this piece. I have to say it really is pretty amazing. I'm sure there are any number of other versions for papers and other news outlets to choose from... or ignore... but even finding this piece extant from them is, for once, pretty cool. Yes, yes, lies are perpetuated herein, but they're talking about the big no-no, Israel's nukes, given to them by us, and this has to be seen as a welcome slip-up because of that.

Canceled Netanyahu trip spotlights Israel nukes
By STEVEN GUTKIN (AP)

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to abruptly cancel a trip to a nuclear conference in Washington spotlighted a key sore point Friday in international nonproliferation efforts: Israel's own atomic weapons.

The Jewish state wants to help lead the charge against allowing nuclear weapons to end up in undesirable hands, even when nobody doubts that Israel itself possesses them.

An Israeli official said Friday that Netanyahu called off his trip after his government received word that participants at next week's conference would "push an Israel-bashing agenda." He and other officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the government's reluctance to allow its members to speak publicly about nuclear-related issues.

Israel's official policy of "nuclear ambiguity" — neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons — has long been a cornerstone of its military deterrence. But officials and experts from various countries, in addition to one well-known Israeli whistle-blower, have all said the truth is not ambiguous at all: That Israel has dozens, perhaps hundreds, of nuclear bombs.

Muslim countries have long complained of a double standard when the West asks them to stay nuclear-free while turning a blind eye to Israel's program. Many Israelis see atomic weapons as their ultimate defense against annihilation in a hostile Middle East.

Netanyahu's announcement earlier in the week that he would be at the summit, which is supposed to focus on how to prevent terrorists from getting nuclear materials, would have made him the first Israeli prime minister to attend an international nuclear forum.

The announcement raised some eyebrows at home, with some wondering why Netanyahu would attend a meeting where the words "Israel" and "nuclear" would inevitably be uttered in the same breath.

Two ministers who asked not to be named said they had warned Netanyahu against going because of the potential for unwanted attention on Israel's nuclear program. But they said the Israeli leader insisted on going anyway because of his desire to share his expertise on nuclear terrorism — a topic about which he has spoken and written extensively.

Other Israeli officials, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration had assured Netanyahu that the assembly — attended by more than 40 world leaders — would not divert its attention to Israel. Then, a few days later, the officials said, Washington warned Israel that eight or nine Muslim nations attending the conference would in fact seek to shine a spotlight on Israel.

U.S. officials and diplomatic sources in Washington familiar with Netanyahu's decision said he opted to bow out after learning that several Muslim nations — notably Egypt and Turkey — wanted to use the summit to criticize Israel for not having signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and renew calls for a nuclear-free Middle East.

The Turkish and Egyptian governments had no comment on Friday. Both countries will be represented at Monday's conference, along with other Muslim-majority nations Algeria, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Egypt has repeatedly called for Israel to sign the NPT since 1995.

Syrian political analyst Imad Shueibi, who is close to the Syrian government, said he believed Netanyahu withdrew from the conference because "Israel does not want to be exposed in front of the international community."

"Such conferences are scandalous for them and Netanyahu's participation might force him to provide answers — which is not in Israel's interest," Shueibi said. Syria is not among the countries attending the assembly, which begins Monday.

Instead of Netanyahu, Israel's deputy prime minister, Dan Meridor, will attend the conference — raising the possibility that Israel and Meridor could still be the target of intense criticism even in Netanyahu's absence. It was not immediately clear if President Barack Obama, the conference's host, would try to prevent that from happening.

On Friday, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones told reporters traveling with Obama aboard Air Force One that Israel will still have a "robust" delegation at the meeting and that the "Israelis did not want to be a catalyst for changing the theme of the summit."

Netanyahu's decision to call off the trip comes at a particularly tense moment in U.S.-Israel relations. The Israeli leader's trip to the U.S. capital last month failed to iron out differences between the allies on Israeli construction in east Jerusalem, a major diplomatic row disrupting U.S. efforts to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

One of the main reasons Israel is keen to calm those tensions is its desire to maintain strong U.S. support for its efforts to encourage decisive international action against what it sees as its biggest existential threat: a nuclear armed Iran.

Ephraim Asculai, a former senior official with the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, said there is no comparison between Israel having nuclear weapons and Iran having them.

"There is no double standard here," he said. "Iran constantly says it wants to wipe Israel off the map while at the same time it is developing nuclear weapons. Israel has never made threats like that."

For years, Netanyahu has been leading a campaign to publicize Iran's nuclear program, charging — along with the U.S. and other Western countries — that it is meant to produce nuclear weapons. Israel has called for stiff sanctions against Iran, but at the same time has not taken the option of a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities off the table. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful.

Netanyahu had hoped to press his case against Iran at the Washington conference.

The most detailed evidence of Israel's nuclear weapons emerged in 1986, when a former technician at Israel's main nuclear facility leaked pictures and information to the London Sunday Times. The technician, Mordechai Vanunu, was captured and served an 18-year prison sentence in Israel.

Associated Press Writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed this report.

No?
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piling up linkage — today's avalanche from the fourth reich

[click image, Peter B Collins Show, Dahr Jamail in second half, mp3, 85 minutes]

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Doing a lot of running around today... this gorgeous, sunny day. I'm going to try to just pile up some links under my favorite realistic-looking plutocrat... cranking out all these images just so being fairly time-consuming and there being so much to squeeze into this day. So you guys might want to check this post more than once....

Very sensible people....

More very sensible people....

Well, maybe, but we probably did....

No, really, we want our way there....

Murderating fucks....

And get off it about this being a freak accident....

Read it and weep....

Do NOT listen to yer bank about this stuff! They are NOT on your side.

Don't act so surprised....

Or beat them over their heads with your monitors....

Nobody believes them anyway....

Hope they're listening to Norman and not Code Pink....

Oh, and that bullcrap yesterday about not nuking people?

Not so much....

I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you....

Fascist Maddow ignoring Democratic perfidy and that ACORN is not defunct to sensationalize you to sleep....

I'm NOT whistling Dixie....

Obama is an ASSASSIN....

Don't forget to check the pole ice levels....

STOP BEING A PARTISAN PUTZ AND STAND UP TO SAVE THE WORLD!

You really want to at least grab the second half of that Peter B podcast, because not only do they dissect the video Wikileaks released of our troops slaughtering obviously innocent people, but Dahr puts the crap we keep getting from Juan Cole about things Middle East in PERSPECTIVE. Ever since Cole came out with that complete fabrication position on the reëlection of Ahmadinejad, I have noticed a distinctly fascist-in-denial cast to his stuff in general. I don't trust him anymore, and the very end of this podcast nails it on one of the good reasons why none of us should.
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except iran IS following the npt

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To the letter... and Israel, Pakistan and India are NOT... so this can't possibly be good. I mean, BIG of them to swear off nukes against those who can't use them against us. We don't even need them against those who can. Fuck! The audacity of this fucker just knows no bounds. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit!
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And, it's lots safer to listen to the Russians about the new START treaty....
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AND....

Fuck you.
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Oh, oh, oh! UPDATE. UPDATE. Silly me. Hours later I realize I neglected to mention that:

THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT ABIDE BY THE NPT!

We goddam gave nukes to Israel. We have sold materials to countries not signatory.

We are up past our eyeballs culpable for egregious breaches... and... I'm almost positive neither Russia nor China has ever breached the NPT.

SHEESH. BRAINO THE SIZE OF MONTANA THERE....

Sorry.

Whut I get fer braggin'....

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
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and while i'm on the subject of more wonderful than ours

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I gotta mention Iran's. If you can find yer objectivity for a moment, Ahmadinejad makes Obama look like a preening dope.
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really good reason not to relapse into your fairy godmother complex

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Final destination Iran?
Harold Scotland
Exclusive: Rob Edwards
Published on 14 Mar 2010

Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs.

Although the story was not confirmed at the time, the new evidence suggests that it was accurate.

Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders’ website by the US navy.

A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia.

Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs.

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. “US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he added.

The preparations were being made by the US military, but it would be up to President Obama to make the final decision. He may decide that it would be better for the US to act instead of Israel, Plesch argued.

“The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely,” he added. “The US ... is using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.”

According to Ian Davis, director of the new independent thinktank, Nato Watch, the shipment to Diego Garcia is a major concern. “We would urge the US to clarify its intentions for these weapons, and the Foreign Office to clarify its attitude to the use of Diego Garcia for an attack on Iran,” he said.

For Alan Mackinnon, chair of Scottish CND, the revelation was “extremely worrying”. He stated: “It is clear that the US government continues to beat the drums of war over Iran, most recently in the statements of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

“It is depressingly similar to the rhetoric we heard prior to the war in Iraq in 2003.”

The British Ministry of Defence has said in the past that the US government would need permission to use Diego Garcia for offensive action. It has already been used for strikes against Iraq during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars.

About 50 British military staff are stationed on the island, with more than 3,200 US personnel. Part of the Chagos Archipelago, it lies about 1,000 miles from the southern coasts of India and Sri Lanka, well placed for missions to Iran.

The US Department of Defence did not respond to a request for a comment.
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Depressingly....
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I suppose it'd be too much to hope that we'd aim them at Israel....
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now that i've caught up on my bumping-into-walls thing

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Trish and I watched "Home" last night and I could feel the hysteria rising from my inner cosmos when they were getting to the permafrost part. Even though I'd already seen it twice, I was wanting them to show bubbling methane, show people lighting the burning methane bubbles in arctic lakes, instead of being so "no one knows" about it. I was wanting them to somehow have edited in the part where fashion models burst through the screen and their faces dissolve into methane bubble flames so we'd get the picture about what supposedly no one knows. We know methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂. So how unknowing can we be?

Anyway, the visit messed with my already outrageous sleep disorder thing and I had to have me some REM sleep after Trish started for home. I dreamed her daughter and her friend were arguing with her in the other room about throwing a party, that I was working on my computer at her house and they were in the other room and raising their voices about this and also almost arguing over who I was there to visit. Somehow, mystically, I'd been upgraded to cool old bat from my twenty-year firm position next to her mother and father as just plain unbearably old and embarrassingly—HUMILIATINGLY— strange.

I could hardly believe my ears and popped my head out to look at the scene. Trish was nowhere to be seen, but her daughter was holding a baby and her friend was there next to her, vying for baby cuddling time. Outrageous as this scenario is to even contemplate from the innocence of one's sleep, both girls beamed at me as though I were a hero and I recoiled, going back to my pressingly busy whatever on the computer. Some young men, but not young enough men, were there to take the girls to this party in contention and one of them stopped me to speak admiringly to me, but I just went back to my machine. These young people thought I rocked because I believed in the same revolution they did. I got it about the plutocratic perfidy and the methane bubbles. I guess I validated their righteous anger. There was all kinds of turmoil out there, and there started to be lots of turmoil on my computer, where every page was switching to some pink—I hate pink— spam page and all my efforts to reboot were only bringing up this pink page in windows all over the place.

I was both lethally alarmed and transcendentally serene about this, and the strange psychic pitch of the tussle between mother and daughter was still going on in the other room. Briefly we cut to me being using some nonexistent neighbor's internet connection and him coming home and finding me at it but ignoring me. Then we slide to some little used stairwell space where there was a mound of very wildly colored, glitzy material pillows, semi-stuffed and semi-heaped behind the banister and I'm griping to some invisible girl about what in the world does her mother need to buy all this crap all the time for as I'm settling back to my computer work, to make the unspeakable Mac virus or malware or whatever go away, but it was involving some physical moves probably not actually involved in this work in real life. My body was trying to make these moves and very, very alarmingly could not because, well, because it was actually tangled up in my comforter in bed and all attempts to push back from my machine in my desk chair were failing abysmally.

So this ended up ending my nap in a fairly heart-thumping manner just after I saw the not young enough men going off to the party with the girls....
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And, having done a lot of tromping in the forest and on the beach and by the lily fields and through the timber barons' graveyard in the last couple days, my sinuses are so swollen that it's effortful to suck in enough air and my legs are a little on the wibbly side from more mileage than they usually do, so bed just keeps being my main interest today. And I keep replaying "Home" in the background to help drown out my wrath over stuff like this... and this....

I think I'm going to pack it all the way in spectacularly early-for-me, and see how it goes tomorrow.
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dazzling theory

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I have resumed my attention to the paranoid schizophrenia end of the UFO/conspiracy purveyors on the tubes. I watched a video last night about a whistleblower who purports to have mistakenly attended some Illuminati meeting or other... like you could get into something like that accidentally... but does not give his name or their names. Just passes the word up to us that the plan is to get Israel to nuke Iran, and then have a limited nuclear exchange in the ME. He says the Iranians already have nuclear weapons. The Chinese have given them to them. That when Israel nukes Iran, Iran will nuke Israel. And, of course, we will get in on the action. Then there's a long and contorted scheme for killing off most Chinese with a specially-designed-for-their-DNA virus, too. The joke being, "The Chinese will catch a cold." And, supposedly, it's not until after all that that WWIII will start. The urgency is great. These Illuminati are behind schedule. The intention is to first reduce the world population by 50%... before pressing on to get the global population well under a billion people.

Fascinating how all this inscrutable evil excites the mind, innit?

Anyway, I was struck by the notion of the Chinese already haven given nuclear warheads to Iran... or going to have given them before this comes to a head. That is, I think, a distinct possibility I never took into consideration before. I have thought their open defiance was based on spiritual superiority to the murderating fucks in charge here, but it could well also be that they are feeling secure for other, less enlightened, reasons. Still they would be spiritually superior because they have not used them, nor threatened anything but self-defense, despite some darn dire provocations....

So, anyway, you will understand why I don't link some of this stuff I come across on my field trips out the tubes, but I wanted to mention this notion to help keep our brains from hardening around what we can make of the crap we're being fed. I know that even when I know there is something filthy or fishy behind something, waaaaay too often I turn out to have fallen short in my estimation of what that might be. You can't omit the quiet ones. China and Iran are allies. China feels very, very little allegiance to us, and no reason on earth we should assume it would properly be otherwise. So this point is well worth contemplating.

Plus, I feel compelled to add, if we don't get busy reversing all this shit we already know is going on, this Illuminati plan is a FINE solution to the manmade climate change problem. Personally, I still don't understand what is wrong with just sterilizing masses of people and letting natural attrition take it from there... except that there's not much profit in that route... and it's not very exciting... but, for a time, there'd at least be the manpower to deal with the specific infrastructure needs of the surviving population....
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and this one MEANS it

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Another uncomfortable contrast to contemplate.
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CONGRATULATIONS IRAN!

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I'm much relieved and happy to report that the Iranian Revolution has celebrated its 31st anniversary, with no big ugly stink from the reform movement, and the happy news that they have enriched some uranium to 20%... which means they will be able to produce their own medical isotopes now, that Iranian cancer patients can be saved. This is great news.

I know many will not wish to view it this way.

I'm checking out of my postage stamp this morning and will be plugging in at my mother's house tonight. Stay out of trouble while I'm away, please. xoxoxox
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fit to be tied

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I'm sick of griping about Obama, way past sick of it, and am still gobsmacked to find so many people still bending so far over backwards they could bite their own asses in some despicable Us vs. Them effort to call Obama's criminality anything else but the same shit we were screaming bloody murder about during the Bush Administration. The problem with the regular use of colorful speech is that it ceases being colorful, ceases making the intended, the needed, impression. There is no way to speak people into glimpsing and adopting the correct mental posture to see things as they are—extremely haphazard successes there and only fleeting at that—and still less is there a way to keep them all from heading directly to their most secure mental retreat in response to finally, ever, catching that glimpse.

My miniscule bodily retreat, here, called a "cabin" at a lakeside resort, while spending as much time as I can with my swiftly declining father, just about blew to powder when I saw this piece a few minutes ago, mental retreats being even less acceptable to me than buildings bursting into their constituent atoms.

Romania 'to host US missile shield'
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2010

Romania has backed a US plan that would see interceptor missiles deployed in the country as part of a missile shield to protect Europe, its president has said.

Traian Basescu said on Thursday that the country's top defence body had agreed to be part of a system against "potential attacks with ballistic missiles or medium-range rockets".

The US military facilities, which would become operational by 2015, still require parliamentary approval before they can go ahead.

Basescu sought to assure Russia, which had previously condemned plans for a missile shield, that the proposed move was not a threat.

"The new system is not against Russia. I want to categorically stress this, Romania [will] not host a system against Russia, but against other threats," he said.

Russian reaction

Russia is adamant that nuclear arms should be deployed only in the territory of the states possessing such weapons.

US tactical nuclear arms should be withdrawn from Europe, Andrei Nesterenko, the Russian foreign ministry spokesman, said on Thursday.

"Issues of further nuclear disarmament, including tactical nuclear arms, should not be addressed as such, but only in close relation with other types of weapons, including conventional armed forces in Europe and the ballistic missile defence systems.

"In this context, withdrawal of American tactical weapons from Europe back to the United States would be welcome. It should be accompanied by complete and irreversible demolition of the entire infrastructures supporting the deployment of such weapons in Europe," he said.

The announcement of a planned missile defence in Romania comes months after Washington shelved a plan to place missile defence facilities in the Czech Republic and Poland - a move welcomed by Moscow.

Romania 'well-suited'

Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst, said Russia had feared that missiles placed in Poland could be used to attack Moscow with nuclear warheads.

"That was a bit far-fetched but that was believed in Moscow, he told Al Jazeera from the Russian capital.

"The missiles that apparently will, maybe, some day, be put into Romania will be smaller missiles and Romania is further from Moscow than Poland is.

"Russia's official position is that only that missile defence is good which is missile defence together with Russia, a joint control.

"But at least this will be seen as not as dangerous, most likely, as one with Poland, so I don't think that right now there will be that much fuss about it."

The US embassy in Bucharest said that Washington had "determined that Romania is well-suited for the location of this system to provide protection for European Nato allies".

'Iranian threat'

A plan unveiled last September by Barack Obama, the US president, includes land-and sea-based missile systems in and around the Gulf to defend against what it says is a growing Iranian missile threat.

The US offer was brought to Bucharest by Ellen Taucher, under-secretary of state for arms control who leads a team of American experts in Romania, Basescu said.

Teodor Baconschi, Romania's foreign minister, said the plan was first presented to Basescu during a visit by Joe Biden, the US vice-president, to Bucharest in October but was not made public.

"This became official today," Baconschi said.

In past years, Romania's parliament has solidly backed participation in US and Nato-led military ventures, including Romanian troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Add that to the dithering on the START treaty and his outrageous budget for developing new nukes and it has now become perfectly crystal clear that, here, in the one area where there was still a shred of hope Obama wouldn't opt to just get engraved in titanium what Bush left dangling, Obama means to continue threatening Russia. Obama has absolutely no intention of making this a safer, better world. He means to prevail in making it utterly unsafe and bad for living things.

There isn't ANY doubt about this.

What would happen if the American public could get this straight? See it, as in see it and not retreat from the horror, to finally get and keep it straight in their heads... what would that look like? What would happen?
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cheeky bastids, ain't we?

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Slappin' my knee here, so many outright laughable phrases in this reportage, not the least of which being about souring our business community on China... but don't skip taking in the bit about the loss to the purported big push for nuclear arms reduction....

Dazzling, the way we bluff our way through this ticklish little prob with China holding all the cards....
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