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Powerful Documentary Trounces Man-Made Warming Hoax
Climate change is natural and has been happening since the Earth began

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, March 9, 2007


1 hr 15 min 56 sec - Mar 9, 2007
WATCH VIDEO: http://tinyurl.com/28l5sk
WATCH VIDEO IN SEVERAL PARTS: http://tinyurl.com/34b72t

(Take a look at some text about the movie: http://tinyurl.com/38djp4
Some picture taken from the movie: http://tinyurl.com/25n4ly
at least the movie-don't-believer: http://tinyurl.com/2pj5x5 )

An astounding documentary that was broadcast in the UK last night completely trounced the man-made explanation for global warming, not with emotionally-laden propaganda or by attacking the messenger as its adherants resort to, but by presenting carefully considered and rational science.

The Great Global Warming Swindle brought together a plethora of scientists, professors, climatologists and weather experts to expose the myths about climate change that have been promulgated in order to hoodwink the world into accepting the man-made theory of global warming.

- Earth's 4.5 billion year history is one long story of climate change. There were several periods in history, notably the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Maximum, which were much warmer than today. In the 17th century, Europe experienced the Little Ice Age, where temperatures were so consistently chilly that ice skaters revelled on the completely frozen London Thames.

- From the 1940's until the 1980's, the Earth experienced a significant cooling period, despite the fact that industrial production and release of CO2 vastly accelerated during this time. This led to political and media scaremongering about global cooling, the threat that the earth was in the midst of a new ice age. The documentary featured telling clips from alarmist documentaries at the time that implored us to try and reverse the trend of worldwide temparature decrease or face meterological apocalypse.

- Antarctic ice core samples show that the rise in carbon dioxide levels lags behind temperature rise by 800 years, therefore cannot be the cause of it. The documentary exposes how Al Gore, in his film Inconvenient Truth, deliberately reverses these figures to claim CO2 causes temperature change, when in fact the opposite is the case.

- If the Earth was laboring under an accelerated greenhouse effect caused by human produced CO2, the troposphere (the layer of the earth's atmosphere roughly 10-15km above us) should heat up faster than the surface of the planet, but data collected from satellites and weather balloons doesn't support this fundamental presumption.

- The human contribution to carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is minimal in comparison to other natural means, including volcanic emmission and CO2 produced by animals, bacteria, decaying vegetation and the ocean. The human "carbon footprint" is vastly outweighed by all of these factors.

- Sun spot and solar radiation activity almost exactly parralel temperature change on the Earth. "Solar activity very precisely matches the plot of temperature change over the last 100 years. It correlates well with the anomalous post-war temperature dip, when global carbon dioxide levels were rising." The increase of cosmic rays produced by the Sun prevents the formation of clouds, which have a cooling effect on the planet, therefore the temperature rises.

- The UN's much vaunted IPCC report was heralded as closing the case on the argument of man-made global warming. But as the show explains, the IPCC's conclusion was politically driven and they deliberately censored any dissenting scientists while still listing them as participants, leading many to threaten legal action against the IPCC to have their names removed from the report. Scientists who were invited to participate in the IPCC report expose the fundamental flaws contained throughout the document.

- In the 1980's a strange alliance between Margaret Thatcher's right wing government and the environmental left was formed to promote the idea of man-made global warming. Thatcher's agenda was to force the country to adopt nuclear power because she trusted neither the oil-rich Middle Eastern powers nor her own country's rebellious coal mining unions, therefore a propaganda war against fossil fuels was initiated.

- The documentary also highlights how elements of the scientific community exploit global warming hysteria in order to receive fast-track funding by simply tagging on a global warming aspect to their area of study. Scientists who attempt to obtain grants for research that could contradict the man-made explanation are shunned by the political establishment and further villified as akin to Holocaust deniers by the radical environmental left and elements of the media.

The hypocrisy of the environmental left in framing the global warming issue as big business against the people and their romanticisation of poverty was supremely exposed in making the case that the man-made global warming bandwagon has devastated Africa's development and is directly contributing to third world famine, illness and disease.

"There is somebody keen to kill the African dream, and the African dream is to develop. We are being told don't touch your resources, don't touch your oil, don't touch your coal; that is suicide," says a Kenyan development expert who is featured in the program.

Another segment shows an African hospital struggling to cope with such stringent restrictions, being forced to choose between running one refrigerator or turning the lights on because their only power source comes from solar panels that are unable to provide anywhere near the required energy.

The establishment left has already attempted to savage the documentary, but the Guardian's Zoe Williams cannot address the evidence, instead attacking the messenger by discrediting one participant from Winnipeg University, and selectively ignroing the roster of other experts which included MIT and Princeton professors.

We expect the full documentary to be posted to Google Video in the next day or so and will make it widely available to our readers so that they can enjoy the opportunity to view this powerful presentation which provides a breath of fresh air in a world driven mad by belliose and flawed global warming hysteria.
http://tinyurl.com/23rr3q

The Great Global Warming Swindle
Channel 4: http://tinyurl.com/3a4aev


The Great Climate Swindle Part 1
Added March 08, 2007
From onebush333
An answer to Al Gores "An inconvenient Truth"
We are being told lies damn lies and screwball statistics to support a new age swindle.
This short series of 4 videos will tell the actual story of temperature variations and "crest fallen" it has nothing at all to do with MAN
02:12 Min.



WATCH VIDEO: http://tinyurl.com/28ec5f


The Great Climate Swindle Part 2
Added March 08, 2007
From onebush333
Al Gore told the truth when he said there is a link between temperature and CO2. The deception was when he didn`t say it is the "other way round".Perhaps he too had been duped.
In part 3 and 4 the videos will show what is actually driving temperatures and its absolutely nothing to do with MAN.
Its is the CO2 level that follows rising temperatures not CO2 that drives rising temperatures.
03:14 Min.



WATCH VIDEO: http://tinyurl.com/3yttce


The Great Climate Swindle Part 3
Added March 09, 2007
From onebush333
Here the scientists begin to introduce the science behind Climate change and it aint CO2.
The final video will attempt to show how we all got caught up in this great CO2 Swindle.

I remember in the mid-70`s Scientists were appearing on TV and in journals saying the next ice age was just round the corner. We now know that this assumption was based upon the falling temperatures from 1940 to 1975 when if temperature was driven by CO2 it should hve been steadily climbing.
03:13 Min.



WATCH VIDEO: http://tinyurl.com/3bdzbx



A Global Warming Swindle play-by-play
12 Mar 07

The UK Channel 4 documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle " has been touted by deniers and slammed by a lot of others, including one scientist who appeared in the film. Having taken a quick glance over the movie, the first thing that jumps out is that it's the same guys we write about on DSBlog all the time. There's nothing new here that we have not heard ad naseum from the same handful of global warming deniers.

Here's a few obvious points:

Putting lipstick on a Llama: Tim Ball, retired professor at the University of Winnipeg's department of geography, has magically turned into "Professor Tim Ball, University of Winnipeg, Department of Climatology." Here's some more on Tim Ball. $100 in iTunes to the first person to find the elusive department of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. I'll even give you the list of departments at U of W to make it easier.

Climate scientists are lying to us: Off the top, the narrator states we are all being lied to. In one broad brush stroke, the Swindle film brushes off the following groups who have stated that global warming is a serious problem and we humans are to blame: the National Academies of Science (or their respective equivalent) of China, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, United States, Japan, Italy and and Germany (pdf); the UK's Royal Society (pdf ); the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; NASA; and NOAA, to name just a few.

Of course, the Channel 4 film also forgot to mention that there has been no science in the peer-reviewed scientific literature refuting the consensus view that global warming is real and humans are the cause.

The two Paul's: Paul Reiter and Paul Copper make an appearance.

The "Great Science Funding Conspiracy" is put forth by Roy Spencer . Spencer claims that "climate scientists need there to be a problem in order to get funding."

Virginia's "Climatologist" (can I still say that?), Pat Michaels claims global warming is a big business. Darn rights it is Pat: How much did you make last year from the coal-fired electrical industry?

Nigel Calder might want to refresh his CV for "Swindle Part 2." Calder is touted in the film as the former editor of "New Scientist" magazine. Which is true, he was the editor between 1956 and 1966.

And this is all in the introductory scene.

To continue:

The Little Ice Age as evidence. Is this earth-shattering news uncovered by the crack team of researchers at Channel 4, destined to rip apart the scientific conclusions of climate scientists around the world? Have they never heard of this "little ice age?" Should someone phone NASA? Nope, here's a little background on the Little Ice Age written by an atmospheric scientist in language that is easy to understand.

The Medieval Warming period. For those DeSmog readers well-versed in the "science of global warming denial," it comes as no surprise that a mention of the Little Ice Age would be quickly followed by the next favorite bit of distracting blather: the Medieval Warming Period. Like the LIA, the MWV, has been factored into the science of climate change and factored out as a sign that somehow the global warming today is part of natural variation. Here's an explanation of the medieval warming period .

Blind betting now. I have paused the video and I am going to guess that the next little piece of earth-shattering news in the film will be the "Global Cooling of the 70's." Wish I had wagered money on that one. Here's some more information on the "Global Cooling of the 1970's."

And back to Tim Ball, who at this point in the film, is still parading as a Professor at the University of Winnipeg's department of climatology.

Water vapour makes up 95% of the atmosphere, C02 is unimportant. Again, I will first ask: Do you think the world's climate scientists are unaware of this? Do you think that they have all (in their mass money-making conspiracy) just ignored this in their scientific conclusions? The answer is no, scientists are well-aware of water vapour. Unfortunately the best debunking of the water vapour myth is quite technical, but it is the best one around and is written by a scientist here.

And surpise, surpise here comes Dr. Fredrick Singer. This is the same guy who challenged the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke. Not to mention the fact that he is affiliated with 11 think tanks and associations that have recieved funding from oil-giant ExxonMobil.

Then comes Carl Wunsch who is kicking himself for even appearing in the film.

Philip Stott and solar variability: "Isn't it bizarre to think that is humans, you know, when we are filling up our car, turning on our lights, we're the ones controlling climate? Just look up in the sky at that massive thing the sun." And here's where we start into the really good material. "Even humans are our $6.5 billion are minute compared to that [the sun]."

So here's some more on the skeptic's solar variability argument.

And I leave off with a seriously ticked MIT professor, Carl Wunsch, who states that: "The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two.'"
http://tinyurl.com/25wrqs

THE NEXT WAR, AND THE NEXT...
The futuristic battlefield
Mar 9, 2007
By Jack A Smith

"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation." - President George W Bush in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack

While most Americans are concentrating on extricating the US government from the debacle in Iraq, and most peace activists are simultaneously concerned that the Bush administration will launch a war against Iran, the leaders of the Pentagon are planning how to win wars 10, 20, and 50 years from now.

Washington is preparing for every contingency, from rooting out a handful of suspected terrorists halfway around the world to possible wars with Russia and China.

The Defense Department's drawing boards are groaning under the weight of blueprints for sustaining total military dominance of land, sea, air and outer space throughout this century. The costs of supporting the US government's martial propensities will be astronomical in terms of the social programs and benefits denied American working people, not to mention the consequences of living in a state of permanent warfare.

The recent decision to escalate the Iraq war with a "surge" of 21,000 more troops, the plan to increase the armed forces by another 92,000 troops, and President George W Bush's request for US$716 billion to meet the Pentagon's warmaking needs in fiscal year 2008 are a harbinger of what's coming next - new technologies for fighting future wars on the ground, improvements in the nuclear stockpile and delivery systems, and the militarization of outer space, among other military goals.

The Pentagon's futuristic war plans and the 2008 war budget leave no doubt that the US has discarded president George Washington's warning in 1796 to avoid "overgrown military establishments", or president Dwight D Eisenhower's advice in 1961 to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex".

The 2008 war budget not only exceeds the combined military budgets of the rest of the world's nations, but means the cost of Bush's "war on terrorism" (including Iraq and Afghanistan) amounts to more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the cost of the Korean or Vietnam wars.

Washington's ever-expanding forces of war, combined with more than 750 major military bases around the world to secure America's economic and political empire, mean that the United States, despite the absence of helmeted brutes in hobnailed boots parading on cobblestone streets, is a militaristic society that is a danger to world peace.

"Today, as never before in their history," writes Andrew J Bacevich in his stunning book The New American Militarism, [1] "Americans are enthralled with military power. The global supremacy that the US presently enjoys - and is bent on perpetuating - has become central to our national identify. Americans in our own time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, [and] have come to define the nation's strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness [and] military action."

Unless militarism is curtailed, Chalmers Johnson predicts in The Sorrows of Empire, four things will happen: "First, there will be a perpetual state of war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be. Second, there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power and the military legions. Lastly, there will be [national] bankruptcy."

Let's look at some of those Pentagon blueprints for the next war, and the next, and the next, focusing first on America's high-tech plans for ground wars (Future Combat Systems), then nuclear wars (Complex 2030), and, following directly, space wars (the new National Space Policy).

A whole new battlefield
Future Combat Systems (FCS) is the Pentagon's name for an effort to "build an entirely new army, reconfigured to perform the global policing mission", according to the Office of Management and Budget. This is a system of modern warfighting based on dominating any possible adversary through the use of nearly 50 new technologies. The objective is to improve strategic agility, increase battlefield lethality, and kill more of the "enemy" while reducing American casualties even further.

The New York Times has described FCS as "a seamless web of 18 different sets of networked weapons and military robots. The program is at the heart of [a Defense Department] plan to transform the army into a faster, lighter force in which stripped-down tanks could be put on a transport plane and flown into battle, and information systems could protect soldiers of the future as heavy armor has protected them in the past. Combat soldiers, weapons and robots are to be linked by a $25 billion web [known as] Joint Tactical Radio Systems. The network would transmit the battlefield information intended to protect soldiers."

The February 2007 issue of Harper's magazine contains a revealing article on FCS titled "The coming robot army" by Steve Featherstone, who writes:

The practice of warfare has changed dramatically in the past 60 years. Since Vietnam, the American military machine has been governed by two parallel and complementary trends: an aversion to casualties and a heavy reliance on technology. The Gulf War reinforced the belief that technology can replace human soldiers on the battlefield and the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia made this belief an article of faith. Today, any new weapon worth its procurement contract is customarily referred to as a "force multiplier", which can be translated as doing more damage with fewer people. Weaponized robots are the ultimate force multiplier, and every branch of the military has increased spending on new unmanned systems.

At $145 billion [not including the cost of the radio network mentioned above], the army's Future Combat Systems is the costliest weapons program in history, and in some ways the most visionary as well. The individual soldier is still central to the FCS concept, but he has been reconfigured as a sort of plug-and-play warrior, a node in what is envisioned as a sprawling network of robots, manned [and unmanned] vehicles, ground sensors, satellites, and command centers. In theory, each node will exchange real-time information with the network, allowing the entire system to accommodate sudden changes in the "battle space". The fog of war would become a relic of the past, like the musket, swept away by crystalline streams of encrypted data. The enemy would not be killed so much as deleted.

According to a report last June by the congressional Committee on Appropriations, the cost of FCS could reach an extraordinary $200 billion to become fully operational by the projected date of 2025. Even then, all this money will be able to equip only 15 out of 70 combat brigade teams with the full array of FCS technology. The original cost was supposed to be $100 billion, and some sources are predicting the price may go up to $300 billion before its finished.

The US Navy is modernizing, as well. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), "The navy in 2006 introduced a new ship force structure plan that calls for achieving and maintaining a 313-ship fleet," including another three aircraft carriers to join the existing dozen already in service.

US Air Force modernization includes obtaining 60 F-22A Raptors (out of 183 on order, each costing more than $100 million (but $300 million each when research and development expenses are added to production costs) and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which the CRS describes as the largest aviation program in terms of estimated cost ($276 billion) and numbers (2,458 aircraft). In addition, contracts are out for building 180 C-17 Globemaster strategic airlifters, a sure sign the Pentagon anticipates quickly flying a great deal of military tonnage to distant countries.

Upgrading the nuclear force
According to Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the existing nuclear powers - primarily the US and Russia - are obligated to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control".

Washington and Moscow did in fact reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the 15 years since the end of the Cold War, but there have been absolutely no steps toward general and complete nuclear disarmament - the only way to end nuclear proliferation and to prevent nuclear war. Russia (including when it was the USSR) affirms a willingness to rid the world of nuclear weapons but insists that all states, including the US, must be willing to do so as well before Moscow destroys its stockpiles. Washington will not agree.

At this stage, the US has about 6,000 strategic warheads compared with Russia's 5,000, down from the 1990 total of about 14,000 and 11,000 respectively. (A "strategic" nuclear weapon can produce thousands of kilotons of explosive force. One kiloton equals 1,000 tons of TNT. The largest ever tested was 50,000 kilotons in 1961. A "tactical" nuclear weapon possesses the explosive power of a fraction of a kiloton. The small 12-kiloton atomic bomb with which the United States decimated Hiroshima in 1945 killed more than 150,000 people immediately or in its aftermath.)

According to the terms of the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), the US and Russia must reduce the number of their deployed strategic warheads to 2,200 by 2012 when the treaty expires - a size that can still destroy the entire population of our planet many, many times over. The key word here is "deployed", meaning mounted and ready to be fired in minutes. SORT does not call for the remaining strategic warheads to be destroyed, which means the weapons will be put in storage, along with thousands of tactical weapons. The treaty does not cover tactical weapons.

The latest plan for increasing US nuclear power was made public on October 20 under the title Complex 2030, the number standing for the year of its supposed completion. The cost at minimum will be $150 billion, but it will end up with a much higher price tag. This program, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, will "entail upgrading the entire US nuclear-weapons complex while designing and producing a series of new nuclear warheads".

These new weapons, produced through the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program, would ultimately replace the entire US nuclear arsenal. Under Complex 2030, "the US nuclear weapons laboratories would return to the Cold War cycle of nuclear weapon design, development, and production. This initiative would risk a return to underground nuclear testing and would undercut US efforts to limit the development of new nuclear weapons by other countries."

The Bush administration's proposed new budget calls for spending $89 million in 2008 on research and development of the new warheads, double the amount for fiscal 2007. Incidentally, the Pentagon's existing stockpile of nuclear weapons is expected to remain viable for another 50 years, but the new warheads evidently will be more technically proficient.

The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Agency, which is in charge of the warheads, claims Complex 2030 will not entail nuclear-weapons testing, but this could change. The US signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, but it has not been ratified by the Senate. Under the terms of the NPT, the US was supposed to have ratified the treaty years ago.

War hawks in and around the Bush administration are worried about reducing the strategic arsenal to 2,200 warheads at the ready, even when enhanced by Complex 2030. A subcommittee of the Defense Science Board, an important advisory group to the Defense Department, reported in December that the new program does "not provide for a nuclear-weapons enterprise capable of meeting the nation's future needs".

Wade Boese, writing in Arms Control Today (January-February 2007), says the task force wants the reduction to be "reversible in case relations sour with China or Russia". The Defense Science Board is evidently contemplating World War III, and it is clearly not alone.

According to the authoritative magazine Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006), "Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.

"This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China - and the rest of the world - will live in the shadow of US nuclear primacy for many years to come."

To ensure its ability to deliver a knockout blow with a first strike, the Bush administration is moving ahead with a so-called "defensive" anti-missile system intended to destroy any possible retaliatory blow from the few possible nuclear weapons that were not destroyed in the initial US attack.

During the Cold War the US and USSR avoided a nuclear war through the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The nuclear equivalency of the time meant that a first strike would not be able to destroy all the other side's retaliatory strike force, assuring that any attack would be met with a counterattack, killing hundreds of millions on both sides - so there was no nuclear war. Now, with the US moving swiftly toward first-strike supremacy and an anti-ballistic-missile system under construction, a catastrophic nuclear exchange in the decades ahead cannot be ruled out.

As an indication of the present world danger, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock two minutes ahead to 11:55pm - five minutes to annihilation midnight.

Much to Russia's and the world's disappointment, the Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 to develop an ABM system to eliminate the chance that a nuclear-wounded "enemy" might be able to launch its few remaining nuclear warheads toward the United States. In addition, despite pleas to do so from Moscow, Washington has no intention of renewing - or even discussing renewing - the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) when it expires in 2009.

According to an article about the end of START in the January Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (online) by Pavel Podvig of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the US "plans to keep the capability to maintain an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads for decades to come".

There is not much hope that the current political climate will produce proposals that could change the substance of nuclear-policy discussions. Instead, we see the growing acceptance of the idea that nuclear forces should be preserved (more or less) in their current form, even if no one can clearly formulate missions for these forces.

At the very least, the START process has kept some pressure on the United States and Russia (and indirectly on other countries) to think about nuclear-arms reductions and has provided the framework for implementing these reductions. Now that this process is ending, there is nothing to replace it.

Not only Russia but other countries will strengthen or create their own atomic strike force as a result of America's quest for nuclear domination. For instance, the fear of a US nuclear attack was certainly a motive for North Korea to develop a rudimentary nuclear weapon. In this connection, Russia long ago agreed to a no-first-strike pledge, but the US still refuses to follow suit, maintaining that such a pledge would reduce its options. Washington even maintains it has the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively against non-nuclear states.

Both Russia and China are acutely aware that they are potential targets of a US attack, not least because of their strenuous objections to the concept of a unipolar world with Washington at its epicenter. This was one of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an exceptionally strong critique of US foreign-military policy on February 10 during the Munich Conference on Security Policy. Obviously exercising Russia's new sense of having restored itself to great-power status in recent years, the Russian leader declared:

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force - military force - in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result, we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this - no one feels safe!

Note
1. Jim Lobe reviews The New American Militarism along with Anatol Lieven's America Right or Wrong in The specter of two 'isms', Asia Times Online, July 9, 2005.
http://tinyurl.com/3yu2xk

US, North Korea meet to unravel half century of enmity
Monday March 5, 4:08 AM

The United States and North Korea begin landmark negotiations Monday on normalizing relations, a long-standing condition set by the reclusive communist regime for abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

But US officials cautioned that the talks in New York are only a small first step towards establishing diplomatic ties and that North Korea needs to meet a series of denuclearization benchmarks in order to end a half century of enmity between the two states.

Washington's chief negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, will kick off the meetings with a dinner Monday night at a New York hotel and then hold a full day of talks on Tuesday, US officials said.

The United States agreed to the negotiations with a state previously branded part of an "axis of evil" by President George W. Bush as part of a six-nation deal reached last month to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Under the multi-phase February 13 agreement, North Korea said it would shut down its main nuclear facility and begin steps towards giving up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for some 300 million dollars in aid and moves towards "full diplomatic relations" with the US.

While the rapid start to those normalization talks took many by surprise and indicated a new US flexibility in dealing with Pyongyang, US officials stressed that this week's talks would yield no breakthroughs, but simply begin a diplomatic process expected to last years.

"Don't look at it as a meeting that's going to produce immediate results," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

"Nobody's going to come out the front door and wave a piece of paper with some results on it," he said, adding that the talks were more likely to focus on "organizational" issues like setting a framework and agenda for what are hoped will be ongoing discussions.

But observers of Bush administration foreign policy said this week's meetings turned an important page for Washington.

"In and of itself the meeting Monday is historic," said Joseph Ciricione, a North Korea and non-proliferation expert at the American Progress Institute.

"It's extremely important for the content and symbolism of the meeting, but even more important as a mechanism for keeping the momentum going towards implementation of the (February 13) agreement," he said.

North Korea, one of the world's most isolated states, has for years demanded direct talks with the United States on security guarantees and improved relations as a condition for negotiating on its nuclear program.

Bush long rejected the demand, choosing instead to deal with Pyongyang only in the framework of six-nation negotiations involving North Korea's closest ally, China, as well as its neighbors Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Those negotiations yielded an agreement in principle to end Pyongyang's nuclear program in 2005, but the deal foundered within weeks after Washington imposed financial sanctions that froze North Korean funds in a Chinese bank accused of money-laundering for the regime.

The North Koreans agreed to resume those talks after being hit with UN sanctions for carrying out a their first test explosion of a nuclear device in October.

At the same time, Washington signaled its willingness to ease the financial sanctions and Bush loosened the reins on his negotiators, allowing Hill to meet with Kim in Berlin in January for talks that led to the February breakthrough.

The sudden series of developments appeared to vindicate those in the Bush administration who have been arguing that engagement can be more effective that confrontation in dealing with adversaries.

"In the end, the relationship with the US matters more to the North Koreans than their nuclear weapons," was how Cirincione put it.

Members of Congress, meanwhile, generally have been pleased with the thaw in US relations with Pyongyang.

"I don't think we are well served by isolating countries," Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told Fox News television Sunday, who said she was "very optimistic" about the upcoming dialogue.

But Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra was less than convinced about the reliability of North Korea as a negotiation partner and said Washington should exercise caution.

"We need to make sure that there's verification in this agreement. We need to make sure that North Korea comes clean on whatever nuclear weapons that they have in place," he told Fox News.
http://tinyurl.com/2h3mdv

Big-city murders jumped by 10 percent
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 9, 12:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The murder rate jumped by more than 10 percent among dozens of large U.S. cities since 2004, a study shows in the latest sign of the end of a national lull in violent crime.

Robberies also spiked, as did felony assaults and attacks with guns, according to the report to be released Friday by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement think tank.

FBI data similarly has shown a rise in violent crime — if not as dramatic — since 2004. The Justice Department says crime was historically low that year.

"Two years worth of double-digit increases in violent crime demonstrates an unmistakable change in the extent and the nature of crime in America," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the nonprofit think tank that is funded in part by the Justice Department, as well as corporations and private foundations.

"There are those that say this is a statistical blip, an aberration," Wexler said. "After two years, this is no aberration."

The report surveyed crime rates in 56 large U.S. metropolitan areas including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Washington. It did not include violent crime rates in New York, the nation's largest city, which did not participate in the voluntary survey. An advance copy of the report, titled "Violent Crime in America: 24 Months of Alarming Trends," was obtained by The Associated Press.

The report compared crime statistics from 2004, 2005 and 2006 and tracked how much they had changed over the 24 months beginning Jan. 1, 2005.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd called the department "concerned about the increase in violent crime in some cities and towns" as was reported in FBI data released last fall. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has asked Congress to spend $200 million next year to help cities and regions combat gangs, illicit drugs and gun offenses.

"The
Department of Justice is committed to ensuring the safety of every American city and town," Boyd said.

The forum's study found:

_Forty of the 56 surveyed police departments, or 71 percent, saw homicide rates increase since 2004. That translated into an overall 10.2 percent jump in murders. Between 2005 and 2006, the increase in murders was much lower: 2.8 percent.

_Robberies rose among the cities by 6 percent since 2005 and 12 percent since 2004. Between 75 and 80 percent of the departments surveyed saw a spike in robberies.

_Felony assaults dipped slightly, by 2 percent, between 2005 and 2006, but rose slightly, by 3 percent, since 2004.

_Gun assaults saw a 1 percent boost from 2005 but spiked by nearly 10 percent during the 24-month period.

The Justice Department has been keeping a close eye on crime rates after seeing a 2.2 percent rise nationwide in rapes, murder, robbery, aggravated assault and other violence in 2005 — the first increase since 2001.

Last fall, mayors and police chiefs reported seeing recent spikes in violent crime, calling for greater support from federal law enforcement agencies that have been distracted by counterterror missions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
http://tinyurl.com/2fz2wj

Property rights in China
China's next revolution
Mar 8th 2007

A new property law is a breakthrough, even though it raises hopes that one-party rule may dash

SOME 2,500 years ago, one of Confucius's big ideas was the “rectification of names”. If only, he argued, sons would behave filially, fathers paternally, kings royally and subjects loyally, all would be well with the world. A faint echo of this thesis has been resounding this week in the cavernous auditorium of Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where nearly 3,000 delegates to China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), have been enjoying their annual fortnight of wining, dining, snoozing and pressing the “yes” button. Living up to one's name poses something of a problem for the Chinese Communist Party, which dictates the laws the NPC will pass, and whose name in Chinese literally means “the public-property party”.

To such a party it must be an ideological embarrassment that China has such a large and flourishing private sector, accounting for some two-thirds of GDP. So one law due to receive the NPC's rubber stamp this month, giving individuals the same legal protection for their property as the state, has proved unusually contentious. It was to be passed a year ago, but was delayed after howls of protest from leftists, who see it as among the final of many sell-outs of the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, to which the party pretends fealty.



The party's decision to enact the law in spite of that resistance is a great symbolic victory for economic reform and the rule of law. Clearer, enforceable property rights are essential if China's fantastic 30-year boom is to continue and if the tensions it has generated are to be managed without widespread violence. Every month sees thousands of protests across China by poor farmers outraged at the expropriation of their land for piffling or no compensation. As in previous years, placating those left behind in China's rush for growth has been a main theme of the NPC (see article).

In the cities, and of greater importance to the decision-makers pushing the law through, a growing middle class with its wealth tied up in houses wants to pass these assets on to their only children. These people are anxious about the security of their property and, like their fellows in the countryside, are becoming more assertive. In other countries the emergence of this group as an important political constituency has been followed by an unstoppable drift towards greater pluralism.
A journey of a thousand steps

In the short term, however, do not expect too much. The latest law is only one step in the slow trudge China is making out of the blind alley of Maoism. One big change in 2002 allowed businessmen to join the Communist Party, thus turning the revolutionary vanguard into a networking opportunity for bosses. In 2004 China changed the country's constitution to enshrine private-property rights. But the constitution is less a prescriptive document than a constantly changing description of what has just happened. So nothing changed.

This latest law, likewise, will not bring the full property-rights revolution China's development demands. Indeed, it will not meet the most crying need: to give peasants marketable ownership rights to the land they farm. If they could sell their land, tens of millions of underemployed farmers might find productive work. Those who stay on the farm could acquire bigger land holdings and use them more efficiently. Nor will the new law let peasants use their land as security on which they could borrow and invest to boost productivity. Nor, even now, will they be free from the threat of expropriation, another disincentive to investment. Much good land has already been grabbed, and the new law will merely protect the grabbers' gains.

This law cannot in itself resolve the murkiest question: who owns what? This is especially true in the countryside, where the mass collectivisation during Mao's Great Leap Forward of half a century ago left farmland “collectively” owned. Peasants have since been granted short (30-year) leases. But even outside agriculture it is often unclear whether a “private” enterprise is really owned by individuals or by a local government or party unit. Conversely, some “collective” or “state” enterprises operate in ways indistinguishable from the private interests of their bosses. Moreover, should an underdog try to use the new law to enforce his rights, the corrupt and pliant judiciary would usually ensure he was wasting his time. Since the Cultural Revolution, when the NPC passed just one law between 1967 and 1976, the legislature has been legislating quite prolifically. But the passage of laws is not the rule of law.

Which leads to a final obstacle: without an accountable executive branch, the necessary reform of the legal system is not going to happen. As the passage of the property law itself demonstrates, the party is showing itself somewhat more responsive to public opinion than it was in the past. But it still runs a government that does its best to silence most dissenting voices, strictly controls the press, and lavishes resources on the best cyber-censorship money can buy. Property rights are a start; but only contested politics and relatively open media can ensure that they are enforceable.
Petty-bourgeois fanaticism can be good for you

No revolution today then. Yet in the long term the leftist opponents of China's property law are surely right to be worried about what has been begun this month. They understand the law will entrench the rights of the carpet-baggers who have looted the state as it has privatised assets. They also understand that the law, for all its technicalities, does not chime with an avowedly communist government.

The leftists derive their theory not from Confucius, but from Marx. Were the latter writing today, he would surely see in China a revolution waiting to happen—or perhaps two. One is the bourgeois revolution led by the emerging property-owning middle class that the new law will help. The other is the potential for the simmering resentment in the countryside to boil over, perhaps in frustration at the law's shortcomings. Property rights are at the root of both—which is why the dozing NPC delegates may have started a process this month that will one day change their country completely.
http://tinyurl.com/22gvar

News: Policeman Attacked by Flying Humanoid
Sunday January 25, 2004

In an article to Rense.com, Santiago Yturria reports that a Mexican policeman was attacked by a flying humanoid one night last week - a woman dressed all in black. "I could see two big black eyes on her, completely black without eyelids, and her skin was dark brown. She was all dressed in black with cloak and cape like a witch and she seemed very upset by the lights," he said.
http://tinyurl.com/2xxebt

Read original Article: http://tinyurl.com/2ajm3


Mexican flying humanoid
Added October 17, 2006
From latafairam
Footage of a flying humanoid who many claim to be a real life witch flying over monterrey mexico
04:29 Min.



WATCH VIDEO: http://tinyurl.com/ywhxoe


Comment:
From hundreds of flying 'spheres' to this jetpacked individual.. the U.S. is playing GAMES with Mexican people using our advanced 'toys.' These are NOT 'ALIENs' folks! It's U.S. terrorizing un-informed people with the knowledge of the Mexican officials there. The 'spheres' can only be seen with F.L.I.R. cameras but have been seen by the HUNDREDS grouped together in the sky. If you watch this video, you'll RECOGNIZE the jetpack technology. NOTE however that the video states the UFOlogists are PROPAGANDIZING this as 'Flying Humanoids' What utter BALDERDASH! I've been to a MUFON meeting and it was run by a bunch of QUEERS and obvious government DISINFO and PSYOPS!
(yahoo.group)


Just an old one ...