Oil + Greed= You Know What

Picture Oklahoma City with Plutonium Added
It was reported in the London Times of October 26, in an article written by Philip Webster and Roland Watson, that Western intelligence sources have said that Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network "have acquired nuclear materials for possible use in their terrorism war against the West..... The Western sources say that the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks on America does not have the capability to mount a nuclear attack but fear he would do so if he could. They believe that he obtained the materials illegally from Pakistan, which has a nuclear capability."
The London Times article mentioned a 1998 bin Laden communication called "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam", which with a ghastly call, "It is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God."
The US power structure, still somehow living in the Vietnam era, rather than the Internet era, treats US citizens like children who are not allowed to know the true facts of what is going on in a disturbed family. And so the ticker tape of compressed factoidal news that now runs incessantly beneath the slick and occasionally angry talking heads of CNN, MSNBC and growly Fox on the tube quickly poohpoohed the London Times story.
Nuke-bearing maniacs represent, to me, the greatest threat to civilization since the near-war of October '62.
And the Desert Storm/Kosovo-type bombings are doing little so far but allowing bin Laden to prepare his nukes, and does nothing about the ghastly women-hating Saudi regime that, as more and more evidence indicates, has financed bin Laden nuclear-acquiring madness. Who is the traitor to great America? Someone with a peace sign to stop the Afghan bombing, or a partner in the Carlyle group who has helped hide Saudi evil?
That's why I'm very very uncomfortable with the powers that be in DC, with their oil-biz-biased right wing control-freak agendas that are so very visible even as they tell us they are doing everything possible to protect the great nation called the USA.
If you want to get a multi-dimensional, rather than a "keep quiet, stupid sheep!" censored view of what's going on, you have to go to the center or center-left European newspapers, which are available on the Net.

Operation Sky-Fry
American bombs might not be smart enough to avoid Red Cross storage centers, but the military has tested in New Mexico, within recent weeks, a device utilizing microwaves which is designed to disperse crowds by heating up the skin of the weapon's targets.
An article from New Scientist forwarded to us by councilman Brian Shapiro outlines the recent test, conducted on volunteers getting beamed from an airplane utilizing a 2-meter dish. The microwave beam is set at 3-millimeter wavelength, and provides a painful inducement to halt an attack or to encourage someone to flee.
If this works, why not take a bunch of these Sky-Fry devices over to Afghanistan? Any reader with access to the powers that be are encouraged to bring this up. I know, I know– big logistical problem, and maybe there's not too many ready to use– just pretend it's the era when Franklin Roosevelt forced the aluminum industry to switch to aircraft production immediately.
It might be a more humane method of helping rid civilization of the nuclear suiciders than inaccurate bombs.

Rubber Gloves in Woodstock; Anthrax Masks in Athens
I like the individuality and general tone of the Postal Service workers in Woodstock. They're a good group, and they have a kind of feisty pizzazz that makes visiting the Woodstock PO more than just a visit.
Nevertheless, it was a shock to see some rubber gloves being worn at the counter. I suppose that given Woodstock's world-wide reputation as a place of rock and roll, festivals and creative freedom, that it could somehow reside on Osama's list, but probably, like Phoenicia say, WAY DOWN on the list.
Meanwhile I wrote an acquaintance in Athens, Greece about the rubber gloves at the Woodstock PO, and he replied, "Don' t worry also about anthrax because even here all over Greece we have the same problem. Most of the times it's washing powder or any kind of powder and yesterday in our post (next door to us) there was a big operation with all the accessories like uniforms, doctors e.t.c. Anyway as Greeks we try (hard) to be always optimists."
And so there's a pan-world anthrax-fear.

Meanwhile Back to November 2000
I know we're not supposed to criticize anything being promulgated by Mr. Bush during the current international/national emergency, but now and then I ponder whether the World Trade/Pentagon/Anthrax disaster would have occurred if Al Gore would have not had the election stolen from him.
Percolating on the internet (see: http://makethemaccountable.com/topic_DavidPodvin.htm) is an article by David Podvin entitled "The Media Cover-up of the Gore Victory" in which Mr. Podvin alleges: "According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is now concealing the news of Gore1s victory from the American people.
"The source is a former media executive who previously revealed information that the Bush administration was lying about Clinton staffers having vandalized the White House. That information led me to accuse Karl Rove of manufacturing the 3crime2. My accusation appeared in an article that was posted by Buzzflash.com on January 28, 2001, and it was confirmed by a General Accounting Office investigative report several months later."
Podvin further alleges "a New York Times journalist who was involved in the project told one of his former companions that Gore won by a sufficient margin to create Œmajor trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out.'
The allegation is that The New York Times killed the story BEFORE September 11 due to the intervention "on the side of quashing the recount results...by the influential money center banks that exercise actual voting control of a majority of stock (of the Times). These banks are extremely pro-Bush. In addition to their control of the Times, they have substantial financial clout with the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones and Company, and the Tribune Company. As a result, the banks exert tremendous influence on a majority of the Consortium."
You won't see this story on the ticker tape running under the Talking Heads.

Maurice Hinchey and Colleagues
Request Meeting with Whitman on PCB
Clean-up Christie Whitman was still Governor of New Jersey when she whisked down to Florida just over a year ago to lead her shrill voice against an honest counting of ballots in Florida. She was rewarded with being chosen to head the EPA.
Since the 9-11 horror, I think she has grossly lied to New Yorkers about the actual cancer-creating components of the drifting smoke and airborne dust from the World Trade Center.
Now she is apparently fudging the EPA decision to clean up the PCBs in the Hudson.
A letter has been sent to Ms. Whitman, dated October 29, and signed Representative by Maurice Hinchey, Rep. Nita Lowey (NY-18), Rep. Michael McNulty (NY-21), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), and Rep. Frank Pallone (NJ-06). The letter asks for a meeting with Whitman to discuss whether General Electric might be successfully weakening the methods and rules which will govern the actual cleaning-up of the PCB-contaminated Hudson.
GE basically wants to do nothing, spend nothing, and escape its karma.
"Adding to our concern" the letter states, "is the fact that (EPA's) Region 2 (office), which developed EPA's cleanup plan and has years of experience and technical expertise working with the scientific complexities of this site, has apparently not been involved in these discussions," the letter reads. "While we support legitimate performance standards designed to ensure that the clean-up succeeds, we reject the need for their inclusion in the Record of Decision. Performance standards are most appropriately developed as part of the project design phase, with the full consultation of regional project managers."
The final design of the Hudson River clean-up is being conducted, it seems, actually in a smoke-filled room.

A Call for the Internationalization of Oil
and Natural Gas Resouces
The oil companies lurk in history with bloody and greedy hands, but are always quick to shout, "We're satisfying a legitimate public craving for energy!"
Take Saudi Arabia, where the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), a consortium of major American oil companies, controls the export of the huge Saudi oil production. "The United States has enjoyed preferred access to Saudi petroleum reserves, obtaining about one-sixth of its crude-oil imports" from Saudi Arabia, wrote Michael Klare in an interesting article, "Oil Politics and Saudi Arabia" in the November 5, The Nation.
"ARAMCO and its US partners," continued Klare, "have reaped immense profits from their operations in Saudi Arabia and from the distribution of Saudi oil worldwide." Even after the Saudi nationalization of '76, ARAMCO continued to market Saudi petroleum products around the world, and to manage the oil production.
In addition, the Saudis purchase around $6-10 billion of stuff per year from the US. The government of Saudi Arabia, however –to put it mildly– is repressive, woman-hating, and Creepy.
Creepy? Well, during the 1990s it tossed many millions of dollars, according to a recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, into the bin Laden terror networks. And furthermore, the US knew about it.
After 9-11, in order to keep the Saudi push-overs in power, the US has not sought to punish (much less invade) the Saudi power structure for its refusal to break apart the money-trail from the Saudi royal family that supplies the terror network.
What can be done?
Well, I think that there should be an "Internationalization" of oil companies and oil resources so that energy (oil and natural gas) should be distributed fairly and low-cost to the people of the world.
How would this be done? The United Nations (including the US, Australia, Canada & England, i.e., those fighting the Taliban) should take over both ARAMCO and the nationalized Saudi royal oil agency.
It should go into the Sudan, where fanatic Muslim fundamentalists pay for terror from the revenues of the national oil company (which is operated by a Canadian company called Talisman) Osama bin Laden in 1991 set up a mooching headquarters in Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan, in order to suck out some of the oil profits there to fund his terror-war. I say, Internationalize the oil resources of the Sudan.
And what about the burgeoning and huge natural gas pipeline network underway to link the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand across the South China sea? Who's going to wind up controlling that huge muniferous project? Bin Laden-esque suicide nukers?
I say not. Let the United Nations internationalize that pipeline system and supply low-profit gas to the suffering masses and the hungry small businesses.
And let it Internationalize ALL oil systems.
Meanwhile the newly oozed-together Chevron and Texaco, now called ChevronTexaco reported about a $2 billion profit for the third quarter. ChevTex will be among the first to wave flags and shout "Go get them! (But, please not in Saudi Arabia)"
So, in my opinion it's in the greatest of long term interests of peace and stability in the world to take oil away from the terrorists, but also take it away from the greed-heads who tolerate terrorists for the sake of Mammon.
But, who's going to listen to me, a mere poet and bard trying to stay above room temperature in the pale gloom of a new century that's looking more and more like an old century.


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