America's secret plan to nuke Vietnam & Laos

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Air Force wanted to use "nuclear weapons" against Vietnam in 1959 and 1968, and Laos in 1961, to obliterate communist guerrillas, according to newly declassified secret U.S. Air Force documents.

In 1959, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Thomas D. White chose several targets in northern Vietnam, but other military officials blocked his demand to nuke the Southeast Asian nation.

"White wanted to cripple the insurgents and their supply lines by attacking selected targets in North Vietnam, either with conventional or nuclear weapons," one declassified Air Force document said.

"Although White's paper called for giving the North Vietnamese a pre-attack warning, the other chiefs tabled it, possibly due to the inclusion of nuclear weapons. Seven months later, the proposal was withdrawn," it said.

The 400-page document, titled, "The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: The War in Northern Laos 1954-1973," was written in 1993 by the Center for Air Force History in Washington and "classified by multiple sources."

The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict

The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.
W.W. Norton & Company, N.Y. 2008.

Following on their previous pronouncement that war costs could amount to as much as 1 trillion to 2 trillion dollars, ten times more than even then previously thought [1], Stiglitz and Bilmes have furthered their research into the cost of the war with their new title The Three Trillion Dollar War.  But it isn’t – three trillion dollars that is.  More than likely it will be much higher, as this "realistic-moderate" appraisal is continually described as conservative, with comments about always using the conservative numbers and even discounting certain costs as they could not be properly quantified.   The "full tally" indicates "the numbers that we believe (conservatively) best captures the costs of the Iraq venture, even without counting interest – the total for Iraq alone is more then $4 trillion; including Afghanistan, it increases to $5 trillion."

Oppose the Bush administration's assault on free speech -- Save the National Mall as a place of protest!

The struggle to preserve Free Speech in Washington D.C. has entered a new phase. We are writing to you so that you can help in the next step of this critical struggle. If he gets his way, Bush will leave office having shredded fundamental rights to redress grievances and engage in dissent on the National Mall in the nation’s capital. But we can stop this plan.

Because of the participation of you and so many other people around the country, the Bush Administration has been pushed on the defensive. Due to immense public pressure that has been mobilized in the last months the government is now resorting to a smoke and mirror campaign to derail those who are fighting to preserve cherished rights. The people can stop them.

We need you to take action right now:

We are planning on sending the Statement in Defense of Free Speech Rights on the National Mall -- with a list of its thousands of signers -- to the National Park Service and want to further publish the statement. Showing just how many people have already taken action will be an important part of the campaign to defend the National Mall and the First Amendment.

Jesus knows a camel when he sees one: We are NOT passing through the eye of that needle, America...

Dedicated to Bobbie L.

In the sermon just minutes before his death, Archbishop Oscar Romero (a man who truly practiced the teachings of Christ) reminded his congregation of the parable of the wheat. "Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us. I am bound, as a pastor, by divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadoreans, even those who are going to kill me."

--These words appeared in a newspaper just two weeks before Archbishop Romero was shot (by a filthy Right Wing Death Squad supported by the US) while celebrating Holy Communion in the hospital which had been his home since his enthronement in 1977.

"You could piss off Jesus Christ himself!"

--Russ Miller

HB487 Introduced by Representative Jim McGregor - A New Piece of the State Energy Legislation

Action Alert

Background In October 2007 Representative Jim McGregor (R - HD 20 - Gahanna) introduced HB 357. The bill had some good provisions, which would have helped Ohio move to increased research, development and investments in renewable energy sources. We were very concerned about provisions that would open “developed” portions of state owned land for oil and gas drilling.

In February 2008, House Speaker John Husted announced plans to move the renewable and advanced energy provisions of SB221 (which contains Governor Strickland’s energy proposals) into a new measure to be offered by Representative McGregor. That new measure, HB487 does not allow for oil and natural gas drilling in state parks or preserves.

So while we have an apparent success, we are still very concerned that: A) The oil and gas-drilling lobby will not stop their efforts to find a legislator willing to help them open public lands for their private sector enterprises, and

The Spanish 'adios'

When trying to understand the geopolitical reality of Spain, one must never forget the two military bases the United States actively maintains in the country. One of which currently serves as the main transit point between the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, following a large-scale terrorist attack in the country’s capital, attributed to Islamic terrorists, Spanish voters swept the ballot boxes and demanded a new foreign policy. For a brief moment during the after shock of destruction at home, the Spanish population rose to a leading role in the resistance against illegal wars and occupations. Soon after, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero became Prime Minister and Spain’s troops were removed from Iraq, silencing angry Spaniards.

Four years later, this transitioned and fully-fledged western democracy, which is yet to declare Franco’s regime as illegal, presented itself in front of the ballot box. Mr. Zapatero fell seven seats short in the 350-member lower house of parliament from winning the absolute majority. He now has to build a governing coalition either with the Catalan nationalist

Granny D says Bush guilty of treason, urges people to scare Congress into ending occupation

Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 98, delivered the following remarks in Gettysburg:

Thank you.

It is a great honor to be here again. One should never bring a long speech to Gettysburg, so I shall be only two or three times as long as Mr. Lincoln.

I first met some of you eight years ago. We were all so worried about losing our democracy that we were wiling to walk across the country and go to jail. You meet the nicest people in the Washington jail, by the way –that’s where I met Lou and Patricia Hammann.

Eight years ago we could not have imagined what our country was headed into.

A tale of three men: Pete, Norman, and Bill - More from the take back America conference

A Tale of Three Men: Pete, Norman, and Bill
More from the Take Back America Conference

I've already written about the energy and passion of the presenters and honorees at the Take Back America (TBA) conference. Some even made their appearance on celluloid, rather than in person. Although Pete Seeger was not actually at the conference, we were well aware of his influence and his example. "Pete Seeger - the Power of Song" is a movie I had been eager to see ever since I first heard about it. I didn't realize that the conference's honoree, Norman Lear, was the co-producer. Because I was late to the session, I also missed Lear's opening remarks and the very beginning of the film. So I got to see it without any editorial commentary. It didn't take long to realize that Pete Seeger was and is the embodiment of that very same energy, passion and love of country that characterized the conference. In fact, it was quite easy to see what drove Norman Lear to make this documentary. The two men have a lot in common.

We're sitting in at the House Judiciary Committee Office right now

A dozen of us have begun a sit-in at the House Judiciary Committee office. Come join us at Rayburn 2138. Leslie Angeline and Ellen Taylor of Code Pink are the leaders here. Laurel Jensen is here, and Michael Heaney, Thalia Doukas, Darryl Love, Ed Dickau, Michael Beer, Jes Richardson, Mike Marceau, Dan... People are joining us every few minutes. We're sitting around in the main room of the office. We have two video cameras going, and we're discussing...

10:40 Actually, a staffer just came out and said that everyone could go back to another room to meet with Chairman John Conyers "except for David Swanson."

rBGH

Dear Editor:

Despite the fierce opposition that was raised by consumers and the dairy industry at a March 12 public hearing, I was disappointed to learn that the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) and Governor Strickland still plan to limit the use of ‘rBGH- free’ milk labels. 

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