China & West in Midst of ‘Cyber War’

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cyber_war130.html

Chinese computer hackers can cripple America as sure as any ‘terrorist attacks’



By Richard Walker

Since 2003, Chinese military hackers have been causing havoc in the computer networks of some of America’s most secure military and nuclear centers. It is now believed terrorists can also see the value in launching cyber attacks against U.S. computer systems.

The Chinese threat from cyberspace has developed at an alarming rate and for the Chinese military and intelligence services it has proved the most cost-effective way of stealing our nuclear, industrial and defense secrets.

In the past five years Chinese hackers, under the guidance of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) cyber-warfare branch, have penetrated systems at the Pentagon and, more importantly, at Sandia Laboratories, the heart of America’s nuclear research and design facilities. They have also been detected inside computers at jet propulsion centers and within our space program.

When it was first discovered (about 2003) they were traveling through secure U.S. networks, carefully selecting classified data, the FBI gave them the title “Titan Rain.” More recently that name has been scrapped and they have been accorded another name that remains classified. Unlike regular hackers, they work with speed and precision that indicates they are highly trained to search for specific types of information, while leaving little trace of their presence. It has taken considerable time and effort by computer experts within the U.S. military, Navy and intelligence community to track their movements.

It appears they use service providers in places like Hong Kong, South Korea and Eastern Europe in order to hide their identity and their true place of origin.

Nevertheless, U.S. trackers all agree that the information they have been stealing finds its way to computer centers run by the PLA in mainland China. The sheer scale of their activities indicates that the Chinese military has not only developed an advanced cyber capability but is shaping it into a weaponized form. Someday, it may be used to mount attacks against the banking systems of this country or other major parts of our infrastructure, which are increasingly driven by technology and ultimately rely on the Internet.

In the past two years, our allies have been targeted too. The British Foreign Office email system came under attack, as did parts of the defense structure. Germany and France have also been the subject of periodic probing attempts by the Chinese to test the security of their networks. All of this has forced the United States and its NATO partners to seriously rethink the nature of modern warfare and to accept that future attacks from cyberspace could create as much economic damage as a major terrorist event.

For example, if cyber attacks were to shut down the U.S. banking system or airline computers the damage to the U.S. economy would be enormous. There is also a real threat that Chinese military hackers could disable America’s defense networks in a time of war.

There was a stark reminder of the threat from hackers when Estonia, a small East European country that was once part of the Soviet empire, was crippled by Internet attacks in April 2007. The attacks began after ethnic Russians, and their supporters within Russia, were angered by the removal of a Soviet-era military monument in the center of the Estonian capital, Tallin.

For Estonians the statue was a constant reminder of a once brutal Soviet rule, but for ethnic Russians and hard-liners in Moscow it was “blasphemy” to remove it.

The episode sparked rioting followed by cyber attacks that shut down major Estonian government websites, as well as banks and broadcast outlets. Estonia appealed to NATO for assistance and got it— but not before it had become evident the attacks were well coordinated. There were claims the masterminds were Russian military hackers, but that was never proven. What did emerge was that most of the attacks were carried out by groups of young ethnic Russians in Estonia and hackers in Russia.

For the U.S. and NATO, it was a wake-up call and a sober reminder that if highly motivated groups could carry out successful attacks against Estonia, which had highly developed computer systems, what could a determined enemy like China or al Qaeda do? Following the Estonia attacks, NATO’s Computer Incident Response Capability Coordination Center was put on high alert and told to be ready to fend off the next attack against a friend or ally on the European continent.

On March 6, 2008, NATO cyber-boss, Suleyman Anil, told hi-tech experts in London that cyber tools have become dangerous weapons we can no longer ignore. He admitted he was especially worried that rogue states and terrorists would see a high value in developing cyber skills because they were cheap to acquire and just as devastating as conventional weapons.

“Cyber war can become a very effective global problem because it is low risk, low cost, highly effective and easily globally deployable. It is an ideal weapon that nobody can ignore,” he warned.

He further stressed the need for the west to strengthen its cyber defenses because they were highly vulnerable. His comments were not lost on the UN, which is due to introduce a doctrine citing that a cyber attack against a member state will be judged an attack against all UN states. Such a move is not expected to change the dynamics of the emerging cyber threat to the U.S. and NATO or to prevent the Chinese continuing to penetrate U.S. defense networks.

Last year, there were attacks from Chinese military hackers on the Pentagon’s computers and also on defense computers in Germany, India and Australia.

The threat of cyber attacks of a more crippling nature on the U.S. economy has forced defense analysts to think of cyber war in the same ways they think of other forms of warfare. As a consequence, there is an emerging doctrine in Washington, which will soon be applied by America’s allies, that a major cyber assault should be accorded the same response as a major conventional attack. In other words, a devastating cyber attack launched from China in the future could see America’s cyber warriors swing into action. Alternatively, America’s military could launch a conventional strike against China’s military or economic infrastructure, exchanging a cyber bomb for a conventional bomb.

On the horizon there is a new cyber threat that concerns the U.S. and its European allies. Intelligence experts in Washington and London have been aware for some time that al-Qaeda has been developing a cyber capability to go hand in hand with major terrorist attacks. The real fear is that an al-Qaeda suicide attack on the subway systems in New York or London could be launched in tandem with a cyber attack on computer networks dealing with emergency response, thus causing untold chaos in the midst of carnage.

For al-Qaeda, cyber weapons are cheap to acquire and difficult to detect. An advantage for the terrorists is that some of the most advanced computer hackers in the world are from India and Pakistan, countries with large Muslim populations.

Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream news producer and best selling co-author now writing for AFP.

(Issue # 13, March 31, 2008)

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Global cluster munitions ban agreed

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2852509320080529

UK


U.S. OPPOSES
Thu May 29, 2008 11:51am BST

By Andras Gergely

DUBLIN (Reuters) - A draft treaty for a worldwide ban on cluster munitions was adopted on Wednesday although major powers including the United States did not attend the meeting.

The Dublin gathering attended by more than 100 nations made the final step towards agreement after a promise from Britain to stop using the devices. Cluster bombs can cause indiscriminate injury long after a conflict has ended.

Diplomats and activists said the text built on the lessons from the 1997 treaty to ban landmines and it did not allow exceptions.

"It's a strong and robust prohibition on all known cluster munitions," Christian Ruge, a member of the Norwegian delegation, told Reuters after a meeting that Russia and China also did not attend.

The draft will be submitted to a plenary session on Friday but approval is now regarded as a formality. Unless any unexpected objections derail the process, the treaty is due to be signed in Oslo in December.

Cluster munitions open in mid-air and scatter as many as several hundred "bomblets" over a wide area. They often fail to explode, creating virtual minefields that can kill or injure anyone who finds them later, often curious children.

Despite the draft treaty, the United States said it still opposed a ban on cluster munitions.

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the elimination of cluster bombs from U.S. stockpiles would put the lives of U.S. soldiers and those of their allies at risk.

"While the United States shares the humanitarian concerns of those in Dublin, cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility," said Casey.

WEAKEN TREATY

Activists have accused the United States of pressing allies such as Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Australia to try to weaken the treaty.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been pushing his reluctant military to ban the use of the munitions and ordered a Ministry of Defence review earlier this month.

"In order to secure as strong a convention as possible, in the last hours of negotiation we have issued instructions that we should support a ban on all cluster bombs, including those currently in service by the UK," Brown said on Wednesday.

France said last Friday it would withdraw a type of munition that accounted for 90 percent of its cluster bomb stocks.

The last major issues to be resolved centre on military cooperation with countries still using cluster bombs and whether non-signatories such as the United States could keep stockpiles of such weapons in states that have signed up to the ban.

Steve Goose, arms director at New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said Wednesday's agreement was a success for activists but a section in the text about military cooperation with non-signatories was a partial American victory.

"The US won some concessions on the issue of interoperability," the HRW statement said. "The draft treaty text contains a loophole."

Cluster bombs can be dropped from aircraft or fired in missiles or artillery shells and have been used in conflicts including Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Balkans and by Israel in southern Lebanon as recently as 2006.

(Additional reporting by David Clarke in London; Editing by Robert Woodward)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Cluster+bombs&search_type=

THERE IS NO ENERGY CRISIS

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
Former Senior Policy Advisor
U.S. Department of Education

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
http://www.americandeception.com/




>
> I find it interesting how God seems to plop all this material in our laps at just the right time. This weekend I discovered an article in the Wisconsin Report dated 7/3/1997. Please note the date. Virginia Meves wrote about an interview some radio host had with a guy called John Whitley, author of "New world Order Intelligence." He talks about the NWO and how they are coming out of the closet and allowing NBC, UP, UPI, etc to report on their secret meetings...apparently one station said "at the annual meeting of the Illuminati..."
>
> He tells how the communists (Russians and China) have long worked on "encirclement" of the U.S. - which the Schwartz Report has long written about - and how Pres. Bill Clinton arranged to turn the Long Beach Naval Base on the west coast over to China and how the Chinese are anchored on both ends of the Panama Canal (thanks to Jimmy Carter). He says "Mr. Clinton thinks that this country is going to be part of a wonderful global alliance and that China will be part of it but I've been saying all along that China has NO intention of being part of this (NWO that the elites are planning). They are building a blue water navy. They're going to keep us OUT of the Pacific Rim. We're going to be cut off from trade, and they're going to squeeze us until we are nothing," says John.
>
> Then he mentions how our country is destined to be partitioned into three regional governments: Asia, Europe and the U.S. and later "merged"... He tells how Newt Gingrich worked hand in glove with Pres. Clinton to give us NAFTA (we know this). They hoped to have the structure in place by the year 2003.
>
> Then he says an increased role for the UN is in the making and they are pushing for a big environmental scare...national sovereignty will get in the way...
>
> And he tells about the water... and then I'll move quickly to the point about the oil. The environmental movement is funded by these huge corporations that are governed or financed or owned by these elitists... and resources like additional oil, like coal, like whatever it might be that's in the ground - keep it off the market and keep the prices high. John calls it "global Marxism."
>
> All this information is in Part I. I've yet to read Part II. Now, I could send this information to O'Reilly at FOX, etc. but it would hit File 13 unread!!
>
> I guess I should write an article. So much to say - so little time.
>
> Please share this with the NL.
>
> Betty
>
>

>
>
> Oil Profits going to IMF/World Bank to Forgive 3rd World country Loans
>
> In the late sixties crude oil was chosen as the method of controlling the world.
>
> The USA as we know it is on borrowed time due to contrived energy crisis.
>
> I took the time to watch, spellbound I might say, all eight of these youtube videos. Please do the same and spread the word, but especially contact your elected officials and demand that situation be reversed. If you care one whit about the preservation of our nation, other than as a third world country, take action immediately. Listen to what Lindsey Williams, whose documentation is impeccable, has to say. (Williams sat in on all the top meetings of oil company management and had access to their secret documents).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Here is a collection of videos about the "The Energy Non Crisis" by Lindsey Williams, a baptist minister. He also has a book out by the same name that he is no longer able to offer to you because of threats against his life. http://www.lwoil.com/
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbakN7SLdbk
>> 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGGjbDjnNzw&mode=related&search=
>> 3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q39ic04vhNo&mode=related&search=
>> 4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCyCYz_aHY&mode=related&search=
>> 5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TYmSGwAumk&mode=related&search=
>> 6) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbwMOvV6ctg&mode=related&search=
>> 7) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5HGHsy3H_0&mode=related&search=
>> 8) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC61X78-OI0&mode=related&search=
>>

Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10649.html

By: Mike Allen
May 27, 2008 09:34 PM EST

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

In a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider’s role, he refers at times to his former boss as “Bush,” when he is universally referred to by insiders as “the president.”

McClellan lost some of his former friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation.

The book begins with McClellan’s statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they “were not involved in … the leaking of classified information.”

At Libby’s trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically.

“I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.

“Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”

McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.

“There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.

“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. …

“The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.”

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Decrying the Bush administration’s “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance,” McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a “deputy chief of staff for governing” who “would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.

“I frequently stumbled along the way,” McClellan acknowledges in the book’s preface. “My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.”

Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: “The Permanent Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.”

“I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media,” McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt “happily enough” with liberal reporters. “Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well.”

The book’s center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North.

In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name.

Among other notable passages:

• Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: “Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. … And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign.” The offer “was rejected almost out of hand by others present,” McClellan writes.

• Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”

• “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.”

• “History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”

• McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: “I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, … to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room.”

• “‘Matrix’ was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary."

McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.

A War in the Planning for Four Years

Centre for Research on Globalisation
by Michael Ruppert

From The Wilderness Publications, November 2001

Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at globalresearch.ca 11 November 2001

Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CFR Put War Plans in a 1997 Book – It is “A Blueprint for World Dictatorship,” Says a Former German Defense and NATO Official Who Warned of Global Domination in 1984, in an Exclusive Interview With FTW

Summary

“THE GRAND CHESSBOARD – American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997.

These are the very first words in the book, “Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.” - p. xiii. Eurasia is all of the territory east of Germany and Poland, stretching all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean. It includes the Middle East and most of the Indian subcontinent. The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress just days after the attacks of September 11 as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

As FTW has documented in previous stories, major deployments of U.S. and British forces had taken place before the attacks. And the U.S. Army and the CIA had been active in Uzbekistan for several years. There is now evidence that what the world is witnessing is a cold and calculated war plan - at least four years in the making – and that, from reading Brzezinski’s own words about Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center attacks were just the trigger needed to set the final conquest in motion.

FTW, November 7, 2001, 1200 PST – There’s a quote often attributed to Allen Dulles after it was noted that the final 1964 report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK contained dramatic inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies, in effect, disproved the Commission’s own final conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 22, 1963. Dulles, a career spy, Wall Street lawyer, the CIA director whom JFK had fired after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco - and the Warren Commission member who took charge of the investigation and final report - is reported to have said, “The American people don’t read.”

Some Americans do read. So do Europeans and Asians and Africans and Latin Americans.

World events since the attacks of September 11, 2001 have not only been predicted, but also planned, orchestrated and – as their architects would like to believe – controlled. The current Central Asian war is not a response to terrorism, nor is it a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. It is in fact, in the words of one of the most powerful men on the planet, the beginning of a final conflict before total world domination by the United States leads to the dissolution of all national governments. This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and former Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation and war) of their power. As a means of intimidation for the unenlightened reader who happens upon this frightening plan – the plan of the CFR - Brzezinski offers the alternative of a world in chaos unless the U.S. controls the planet by whatever means are necessary and likely to succeed.

This position is corroborated by Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D. a former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner. On November 6, he told FTW, “The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission – founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller – and the Bliderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens.”

Brzezinski’s own words – laid against the current official line that the United States is waging a war to end terrorism - are self-incriminating. In an ongoing series of articles, FTW has consistently established that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the World Trade Center attacks and chose not to stop them because it needed to secure public approval for a war that is now in progress. It is a war, as described by Vice President Dick Cheney, “that may not end in our lifetimes.” What that means is that it will not end until all armed groups, anywhere in the world, which possess the political, economic or military ability to resist the imposition of this dictatorship, have been destroyed.

These are the “terrorists” the U.S. now fights in Afghanistan and plans to soon fight all over the globe.

Before exposing Brzezinski (and those he represents) with his own words, or hearing more from Dr. Koeppl, it is worthwhile to take a look at Brzezinski’s background.

According to his resume Brzezinski, holding a 1953 Ph.D. from Harvard, lists the following achievements:

Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies Professor of American Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) Trustee and founder of the Trilateral Commission International advisor of several major US/Global corporations Associate of Henry Kissinger Under Ronald Reagan – member of NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy Under Ronald Reagan – member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Past member, Board of Directors, The Council on Foreign Relations 1988 – Co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force.

Brzezinski is also a past attendee and presenter at several conferences of the Bliderberger group – a non-partisan affiliation of the wealthiest and most powerful families and corporations on the planet.

The Grand Chessboard

Brzezinski sets the tone for his strategy by describing Russia and China as the two most important countries – almost but not quite superpowers - whose interests that might threaten the U.S. in Central Asia. Of the two, Brzezinski considers Russia to be the more serious threat. Both nations border Central Asia. In a lesser context he describes the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan as essential “lesser” nations that must be managed by the U.S. as buffers or counterweights to Russian and Chinese moves to control the oil, gas and minerals of the Central Asian Republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan).

He also notes, quite clearly (p. 53) that any nation that might become predominant in Central Asia would directly threaten the current U.S. control of oil resources in the Persian Gulf. In reading the book it becomes clear why the U.S. had a direct motive for the looting of some $300 billion in Russian assets during the 1990s, destabilizing Russia’s currency (1998) and ensuring that a weakened Russia would have to look westward to Europe for economic and political survival, rather than southward to Central Asia. A dependent Russia would lack the military, economic and political clout to exert influence in the region and this weakening of Russia would explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been such a willing ally of U.S. efforts to date. (See FTW Vol. IV, No. 1 – March 31, 2001)

An examination of selected quotes from “The Grand Chessboard,” in the context of current events reveals the darker agenda behind military operations that were planned long before September 11th, 2001.

“…The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power… (p. xiii)

“… But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)

“The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. (p.30)

“America’s withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival – would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy.” (p. 30)

“In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31)

Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;… second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above… (p. 40)

“…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)

“Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55)

“Uzbekistan – with its much more ethnically homogeneous population of approximately 25 million and its leaders emphasizing the country’s historic glories – has become increasingly assertive in affirming the region’s new postcolonial status.” (p.95)

“Thus, even the ethnically vulnerable Kazakhstan joined the other Central Asian states in abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet and replacing it with Latin script as adapted earlier by Turkey. In effect, by the mid-1990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and sometimes also Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration.” (p.114)

“…Hence, support for the new post-Soviet states – for geopolitical pluralism in the space of the former Soviet empire – has to be an integral part of a policy designed to induce Russia to exercise unambiguously its European option. Among these states. Three are geopolitically especially important: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.” (p. 121) “Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures.” (p. 121)

Referring to an area he calls the “Eurasian Balkans” and a 1997 map in which he has circled the exact location of the current conflict – describing it as the central region of pending conflict for world dominance - Brzezinski writes: “Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.” (p.124) [Emphasis added]

The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.” (p.125)

“Kazakhstan is the shield and Uzbekistan is the soul for the region’s diverse national awakenings.” (p.130)

“Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia.” (p.130) “Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan’s truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country’s people. (p.132)

“In fact, an Islamic revival – already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia – is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian – and hence infidel – control.” (p. 133).

“For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan – and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan – and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea.” (p.139)

“Moreover, sensible Russian leaders realize that the demographic explosion underway in the new states means that their failure to sustain economic growth will eventually create an explosive situation along Russia’s entire southern frontier.” (p.141) [This would explain why Putin would welcome U.S. military presence to stabilize the region.]

“Turkmenistan… has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea…” (p.145)

“It follows that America’s primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.” (p148)

“China’s growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area’s independence are also congruent with America’s interests.” (p.149)

“America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and to America’s historical legacy.” (p.194)

”…the Eurasian Balkans – threatens to become a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry.” (p.195)

“Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today’s Eurasia but of the world more generally.” (p.194)

“With warning signs on the horizon across Europe and Asia, any successful American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a Geostrategic design.” (p.197)

“That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy…” (p. 198)

“The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” (p. 198)

“In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.” (p.209)

“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211) [Emphasis added]

The Horror – And Comments From Someone Who Worked With Brzezinski

Brzezinski’s book is sublimely arrogant. While singing the praises of the IMF and the World Bank, which have economically terrorized nations on every continent, and while totally ignoring the worldwide terrorist actions of the U.S. government that have led to genocide; cluster bombings of civilian populations from Kosovo, to Laos, to Iraq, to Afghanistan; the development and battlefield use of both biological and chemical agents such as Sarin gas; and the financial rape of entire cultures it would leave the reader believing that such actions are for the good of mankind.

While seconded from the German defense ministry to NATO in the late 1970s, Dr. Johannes Koeppl - mentioned at the top of this article - traveled to Washington on more than one occasion. He also met with Brzezinski in the White House on more than one occasion. His other Washington contacts included Steve Larabee from the CFR, John J. McCloy, former CIA Director, economist Milton Friedman, and officials from Carter’s Office of Management and Budget. He is the first person I have ever interviewed who has made a direct presentation at a Bliderberger conference and he has also made numerous presentations to sub-groups of the Trilateral Commission. That was before he spoke out against them.

His fall from grace was rapid after he realized that Brzezinski was part of a group intending to impose a world dictatorship. “In 1983/4 I warned of a take-over of world governments being orchestrated by these people. There was an obvious plan to subvert true democracies and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power.

“All we have now are pseudo-democracies.”

Koeppl recalls meeting U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald in Nuremburg in the early 80s. McDonald, who was then contemplating a run for the Presidency, was a severe critic of these elites. He was killed in the Russian shootdown of Korean Air flight 007 in 1985. Koeppl believes that it might have been an assassination. Over the years many writers have made these allegations about 007 and the fact that someone with Koeppl’s credentials believes that an entire plane full of passengers would be destroyed to eliminate one man offers a chilling opinion of the value placed on human life by the powers that be.

In 1983, Koeppl warned, through Op-Ed pieces published in NEWSWEEK and elsewhere, that Brzezinski and the CFR were part of an effort to impose a global dictatorship. His fall from grace was swift. “It was a criminal society that I was dealing with. It was not possible to publish anymore in the so-called respected publications. My 30 year career in politics ended.

“The people of the western world have been trained to be good consumers; to focus on money, sports cars, beauty, consumer goods. They have not been trained to look for character in people. Therefore what we need is education for politicians, a form of training that instills in them a higher sense of ethics than service to money. There is no training now for world leaders. This is a shame because of the responsibility that leaders hold to benefit all mankind rather than to blindly pursue destructive paths.

“We also need education for citizens to be more efficient in their democracies, in addition to education for politicians that will create a new network of elites based upon character and social intelligence.”

Koeppl, who wrote his 1989 doctoral thesis on NATO management, also authored a 1989 book – largely ignored because of its controversial revelations – entitled “The Most Important Secrets in the World.” He maintains a German language web site at www.antaris.com and he can be reached by email at jbk@antaris.com.

As to the present conflict Koeppl expressed the gravest concerns, “This is more than a war against terrorism. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don’t know how to respond. But they must remember. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next five years. There may not be another chance.”

Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be copied or distributed for non-profit purposes only. Posting on any “.com” web site is prohibited without express written consent from the author. Michael Ruppert is a frequent CRG contributor.

The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP111B.html

The Geopolitics of $130 Oil

May 27, 2008
Graphic for Geopolitical Intelligence Report

By George Friedman

Oil prices have risen dramatically over the past year. When they passed $100 a barrel, they hit new heights, expressed in dollars adjusted for inflation. As they passed $120 a barrel, they clearly began to have global impact. Recently, we have seen startling rises in the price of food, particularly grains. Apart from higher prices, there have been disruptions in the availability of food as governments limit food exports and as hoarding increases in anticipation of even higher prices.

Oil and food differ from other commodities in that they are indispensable for the functioning of society. Food obviously is the more immediately essential. Food shortages can trigger social and political instability with startling swiftness. It does not take long to starve to death. Oil has a less-immediate — but perhaps broader — impact. Everything, including growing and marketing food, depends on energy; and oil is the world’s primary source of energy, particularly in transportation. Oil and grains — where the shortages hit hardest — are not merely strategic commodities. They are geopolitical commodities. All nations require them, and a shift in the price or availability of either triggers shifts in relationships within and among nations.

It is not altogether clear to us why oil and grains have behaved as they have. The question for us is what impact this generalized rise in commodity prices — particularly energy and food — will have on the international system. We understand that it is possible that the price of both will plunge. There is certainly a speculative element in both. Nevertheless, based on the realities of supply conditions, we do not expect the price of either to fall to levels that existed in 2003. We will proceed in this analysis on the assumption that these prices will fluctuate, but that they will remain dramatically higher than prices were from the 1980s to the mid-2000s.

If that assumption is true and we continue to see elevated commodity prices, perhaps rising substantially higher than they are now, then it seems to us that we have entered a new geopolitical era. Since the end of World War II, we have lived in three geopolitical regimes, broadly understood:

* The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the focus was on the military balance between those two countries, particularly on the nuclear balance. During this period, all countries, in some way or another, defined their behavior in terms of the U.S.-Soviet competition.
* The period from the fall of the Berlin Wall until 9/11, when the primary focus of the world was on economic development. This was the period in which former communist countries redefined themselves, East and Southeast Asian economies surged and collapsed, and China grew dramatically. It was a period in which politico-military power was secondary and economic power primary.
* The period from 9/11 until today that has been defined in terms of the increasing complexity of the U.S.-jihadist war — a reality that supplanted the second phase and redefined the international system dramatically.

With the U.S.-jihadist war in either a stalemate or a long-term evolution, its impact on the international system is diminishing. First, it has lost its dynamism. The conflict is no longer drawing other countries into it. Second, it is becoming an endemic reality rather than an urgent crisis. The international system has accommodated itself to the conflict, and its claims on that system are lessening.

The surge in commodity prices — particularly oil — has superseded the U.S.-jihadist war, much as the war superseded the period in which economic issues dominated the global system. This does not mean that the U.S.-jihadist war will not continue to rage, any more than 9/11 abolished economic issues. Rather, it means that a new dynamic has inserted itself into the international system and is in the process of transforming it.

It is a cliche that money and power are linked. It is nevertheless true. Economic power creates political and military power, just as political and military power can create economic power. The rise in the price of oil is triggering shifts in economic power that are in turn creating changes in the international order. This was not apparent until now because of three reasons. First, oil prices had not risen to the level where they had geopolitical impact. The system was ignoring higher prices. Second, they had not been joined in crisis condition by grain prices. Third, the permanence of higher prices had not been clear. When $70-a-barrel oil seemed impermanent, and likely to fall below $50, oil was viewed very differently than it was at $130, where a decline to $100 would be dramatic and a fall to $70 beyond the calculation of most. As oil passed $120 a barrel, the international system, in our view, started to reshape itself in what will be a long-term process.

Obviously, the winners in this game are those who export oil, and the losers are those who import it. The victory is not only economic but political as well. The ability to control where exports go and where they don’t go transforms into political power. The ability to export in a seller’s market not only increases wealth but also increases the ability to coerce, if that is desired.

The game is somewhat more complex than this. The real winners are countries that can export and generate cash in excess of what they need domestically. So countries such as Venezuela, Indonesia and Nigeria might benefit from higher prices, but they absorb all the wealth that is transferred to them. Countries such as Saudi Arabia do not need to use so much of their wealth for domestic needs. They control huge and increasing pools of cash that they can use for everything from achieving domestic political stability to influencing regional governments and the global economic system. Indeed, the entire Arabian Peninsula is in this position.

The big losers are countries that not only have to import oil but also are heavily industrialized relative to their economy. Countries in which service makes up a larger sector than manufacturing obviously use less oil for critical economic functions than do countries that are heavily manufacturing-oriented. Certainly, consumers in countries such as the United States are hurt by rising prices. And these countries’ economies might slow. But higher oil prices simply do not have the same impact that they do on countries that both are primarily manufacturing-oriented and have a consumer base driving cars.

East Asia has been most affected by the combination of sustained high oil prices and disruptions in the food supply. Japan, which imports all of its oil and remains heavily industrialized (along with South Korea), is obviously affected. But the most immediately affected is China, where shortages of diesel fuel have been reported. China’s miracle — rapid industrialization — has now met its Achilles’ heel: high energy prices.

China is facing higher energy prices at a time when the U.S. economy is weak and the ability to raise prices is limited. As oil prices increase costs, the Chinese continue to export and, with some exceptions, are holding prices. The reason is simple. The Chinese are aware that slowing exports could cause some businesses to fail. That would lead to unemployment, which in turn will lead to instability. The Chinese have their hands full between natural disasters, Tibet, terrorism and the Olympics. They do not need a wave of business failures.

Therefore, they are continuing to cap the domestic price of gasoline. This has caused tension between the government and Chinese oil companies, which have refused to distribute at capped prices. Behind this power struggle is this reality: The Chinese government can afford to subsidize oil prices to maintain social stability, but given the need to export, they are effectively squeezing profits out of exports. Between subsidies and no-profit exports, China’s reserves could shrink with remarkable speed, leaving their financial system — already overloaded with nonperforming loans — vulnerable. If they take the cap off, they face potential domestic unrest.

The Chinese dilemma is present throughout Asia. But just as Asia is the big loser because of long-term high oil prices coupled with food disruptions, Russia is the big winner. Russia is an exporter of natural gas and oil. It also could be a massive exporter of grains if prices were attractive enough and if it had the infrastructure (crop failures in Russia are a thing of the past). Russia has been very careful, under Vladimir Putin, not to assume that energy prices will remain high and has taken advantage of high prices to accumulate substantial foreign currency reserves. That puts them in a doubly-strong position. Economically, they are becoming major players in global acquisitions. Politically, countries that have become dependent on Russian energy exports — and this includes a good part of Europe — are vulnerable, precisely because the Russians are in a surplus-cash position. They could tweak energy availability, hurting the Europeans badly, if they chose. T hey will not need to. The Europeans, aware of what could happen, will tread lightly in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

As we have already said, the biggest winners are the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Although somewhat strained, these countries never really suffered during the period of low oil prices. They have now more than rebalanced their financial system and are making the most of it. This is a time when they absolutely do not want anything disrupting the flow of oil from their region. Closing the Strait of Hormuz, for example, would be disastrous to them. We therefore see the Saudis, in particular, taking steps to stabilize the region. This includes supporting Israeli-Syrian peace talks, using influence with Sunnis in Iraq to confront al Qaeda, making certain that Shiites in Saudi Arabia profit from the boom. (Other Gulf countries are doing the same with their Shiites. This is designed to remove one of Iran’s levers in the region: a rising of Shiites in the Arabian Peninsula.) In addition, the Saudis are using their economic power to re-establish the relationship they ha d with the United States before 9/11. With the financial institutions in the United States in disarray, the Arabian Peninsula can be very helpful.

China is in an increasingly insular and defensive position. The tension is palpable, particularly in Central Asia, which Russia has traditionally dominated and where China is becoming increasingly active in making energy investments. The Russians are becoming more assertive, using their economic position to improve their geopolitical position in the region. The Saudis are using their money to try to stabilize the region. With oil above $120 a barrel, the last thing they need is a war disrupting their ability to sell. They do not want to see the Iranians mining the Strait of Hormuz or the Americans trying to blockade Iran.

The Iranians themselves are facing problems. Despite being the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, Iran also is the world’s second-largest gasoline importer, taking in roughly 40 percent of its annual demand. Because of the type of oil they have, and because they have neglected their oil industry over the last 30 years, their ability to participate in the bonanza is severely limited. It is obvious that there is now internal political tension between the president and the religious leadership over the status of the economy. Put differently, Iranians are asking how they got into this situation.

Suddenly, the regional dynamics have changed. The Saudi royal family is secure against any threats. They can buy peace on the Peninsula. The high price of oil makes even Iraqis think that it might be time to pump more oil rather than fight. Certainly the Iranians, Saudis and Kuwaitis are thinking of ways of getting into the action, and all have the means and geography to benefit from an Iraqi oil renaissance. The war in Iraq did not begin over oil — a point we have made many times — but it might well be brought under control because of oil.

For the United States, the situation is largely a push. The United States is an oil importer, but its relative vulnerability to high energy prices is nothing like it was in 1973, during the Arab oil embargo. De-industrialization has clearly had its upside. At the same time, the United States is a food exporter, along with Canada, Australia, Argentina and others. Higher grain prices help the United States. The shifts will not change the status of the United States, but they might create a new dynamic in the Gulf region that could change the framework of the Iraqi war.

This is far from an exhaustive examination of the global shifts caused by rising oil and grain prices. Our point is this: High oil prices can increase as well as decrease stability. In Iraq — but not in Afghanistan — the war has already been regionally overshadowed by high oil prices. Oil-exporting countries are in a moneymaking mode, and even the Iranians are trying to figure out how to get into the action; it’s hard to see how they can without the participation of the Western oil majors — and this requires burying the hatchet with the United States. Groups such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah are decidedly secondary to these considerations.

We are very early in this process, and these are just our opening thoughts. But in our view, a wire has been tripped, and the world is refocusing on high commodity prices. As always in geopolitics, issues from the last generation linger, but they are no longer the focus. Last week there was talk of Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) talks between the United States and Russia — a fossil from the Cold War. These things never go away. But history moves on. It seems to us that history is moving.

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Overthrowing the Corporate Government

http://www.mecfilms.com/universe/articles/overthrow.htm



How The People Can Regain Control
Over Corporate Interests That Have Hijacked Congress

by James Jaeger


Unless voters take back control of Congress from the corporate interests that have, in essence, purchased it through campaign contributions, the United States may collapse under its debt load or worse. This doesn't have to happen as there is a direct and specific thing Citizens can do. It boils down to one sentence: DON'T VOTE FOR ANY INCUMBENTS.

Here's what you should do:

When you go to vote in congressional elections, carefully look over the candidates and any NEW names you see on the ballot, vote ONLY for them. If you're not particular about parties, don't worry about whether they're Democrats or Republicans -- just vote for anyone that's NOT an incumbent. If you must vote your party, vote ONLY for the new guy. Don't vote for ANYONE that's already in office and trying to run again in your party.

Here's why this will work:

By not voting for any incumbents it's true -- you may be flushing out some good people -- but you have to look at the bigger picture. The majority of the Congress is entrenched. The Founders had no idea people would stay in office so long otherwise they would have placed term-limits on congressmen and the executive from the start. Back in the 18th Century transportation was a problem and the country had a very small population. Thus the Framers wanted to place as few disincentives on people as possible because they wanted people to travel great distances and take part in the government. If there were term limits of say 2 or 4 years, many people would have never run for office because it wouldn't have been worth it. To travel so far, and with such difficulty in a harsh environment where one was needed on the farm simply made no sense. But if a citizen had the opportunity to travel to Washington and make a long-term career of government service, then it made more sense. So this is why we have no term-limits written into the Constitution for congressmen and why the term limit for the president was only written in later.

Obviously times have changed. We now have a population of almost 300 million people (plenty of candidates), travel to Washington is no hardship (interstate highway system everywhere) and one farmer can provide for food for thousands of families (mechanized farming). BUT, we now have the opposite problem: an entrenched government that STAYS in Washington too long! Ironically, entrenchment is EXACTLY the thing the Founders did NOT want to happen. They wanted a fluid government where power could easily, and peacefully, be transferred from group to group as the needs of the nation changed. They did NOT want anymore kings or emperors with long lines of succession and the entrenched power that goes with these systems of government.

But, again, this is exactly what we have today: entrenched power. And that power is frozen into ostensibly two political parties that, although superficially different, basically bat the ball back and forth to each other and maintain the status quo and keep others out. The problem is, the status quo isn't working because it's destroying the Republic. The Republic, set up by the Framers, is supposed to be a much smaller, more citizen-responsive government. Today, the citizens hardly have any say in their government (due to massive corporate lobbying) and the government has become a debt-ridden empire that stretches across the globe (fueled by unConstitutional fiat money generated by the Federal Reserve System).(2) As oil becomes more expensive, this empire will become an increasing burden on its citizens and its debt load and trade imbalances will eventually cause the dollar, the Imperial currency, to crumble. End of Pax Dollarium.(3)

But as I said above, this doesn't have to happen if the People that live in the United States purge the government of the entrenched politicians.

My view is that all of them need to go.(4) I know that's drastic, but here's my thinking. If everyone tries to figure out who is "good" and who is "bad," there will be virtually no agreement. People will just fall back on their party lines and the same old, same old debates will continue ad nassium. Thus the only remedy is to flush them all out based on the fact that all of them are in on this together and none of them are causing real change.

So if you are a Republican and hate Democrats, fine. Just flush out YOUR Republican incumbents and replace them with new Republican blood. If you are a Democrat and hate Republicans, fine. Just flush out YOUR Democratic incumbents and replace them with new Democratic blood. Both parties will maintain the status quo quantitatively, but BUT, qualitatively, everyone will be new and different. There will thus be no pre-existing social network whereby VOTE SWAPPING (a form of collusion) can take place nor will the social network needed for CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS (a form of bribery) be available nor will the social network needed for allocating PORK (a form of fraud) be available. The NEW congress of NEW congressmen will be left to do NEW things, new things like doing what they are SUPPOSED to do: honestly represent the wishes of their constituents (without vote swapping) while making choices that will be good for the nation. The gridlock in government will thus be attenuated because this gridlock is caused by collusion, bribery and fraud, elements not wanted or envisioned by the Framers.

I will thus bet if the congress is purged -- and it goes without saying that this means the complete staffs of each congressman must go as well -- fresh new legislation will more easily be passed. Insane systems of accounting -- such as COST PLUS -- will be ushered out; the unconstitutional money we currently have will be replaced by Constitutional money; the budget will be balanced; the trade deficit will be remedied; the U.S. will stop engaging in wars all over the planet; we will pull back our military from other peoples' lands or require them to pay for security if they really want it; we will re-allocate the budget to proper and prudent uses (such as alternative non-fossil fuel energy), and we will rehabilitate the nation's once-proud space program and go on to develop vast new technologies that only a courageous nation can do while exploring new real estate on new worlds.

In this kind of an environment, science and technology will grow and everyone will benefit.(5) Problems facing humanity will be solved with such an abundance, war will seem like a silly remedy an immature civilization once flirted with. The U.S. will again gain respect around the world -- lead by demonstration, not by the exercise of force or by propagandizing the world through our mass media and biased, violence-oriented pop culture.

So we're fortunate the Framers of the United States gave us a peaceful method of overthrowing our government whenever it's not working properly. Don't look now, but it's time for a peaceful revolt. Vote out all the incumbents!(6)


--------------
(1) See the book, EMPIRE OF DEBT, by Bill Bonner.

(2) To find out how the Federal Reserve System finances an entrenched Congress, as well as ever expanding government, see the documentary, FIAT EMPIRE - Why the Federal Reserve Violates the U.S. Constitution at http://www.FiatEmpire.com

(3) See the book, THE LONG EMERGENCY, by James Kunstler

(4) With the possible exception of Ron Paul, who is the only voice in Congress pointing out the fiat money scam which powers the Empire. Ron Paul, M.D., should run for president because this country needs a physician as soon as possible.

(5) See http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html

(6) For more information on this subject, see Why Removing ALL Incumbents Will Work at http://www.mecfilms.com/universe/articles/overthrow2.htm


Originated: 14 September 2001
Revised: 08 November 2006
Revised: 03 October 2007
Revised: 05 March 2008

PLASMA FUSION

The Ultimate Energy Source
by James Jaeger


The ultimate source of energy is nuclear FUSION, also known as PLASMA FUSION. This is NOT to be confused with nuclear FISSION, the only type of nuclear energy so far deployed. FUSION, which could be fully developed and deployed within ten years were sufficient funds allocated -- would totally remedy the Earth's energy problem for at least the next 2,000 years. This is the one solution that the Oil AND entire Energy Establishment for that matter almost never talk about. Why? Because FUSION is the power of the sun. It is clean and there are virtually no waste products or CO2. The fusion process can extract from one (1) gallon of ordinary sea WATER, the equivalent amount of energy as two hundred and fifty (250) gallons of GASOLINE. Thus it is, by far, the cheapest and most powerful energy source known. After a long exponential curve of development, it looks like fusion technology is on the verge of obtaining IGNITION. Ignition means we get more energy out of the fusion process than was put in and the reaction sustains itself indefinitely. As soon as this happens, and it will happen soon (if it has not already happened unannounced), the source of fusion's fuel -- sea water -- will never run out. This is the ignition of a miniature star here on Earth!

Not only can FUSION provide HEAT to generate electricity in the classical (way with turbines), but ELECTRICITY can be derived directly from certain fusion processes. This would make the production of electricity from COAL, NATURAL GAS, NUCLEAR FISSION and HYDRO completely obsolete. As if all this isn't enough of a dream, there's more: METHANOL can be manufactured directly from certain FUSION reactions as well. Thus, FUSION can not only supply all of Earth's ELECTRICAL needs, but all of Earth's LIQUID-fuel needs. Thus a FUSION economy is universal: it is infinitely powerful, unbelievably cheap, clean, renewable and flexible in energy output, i.e., heat, electricity and liquid-fuel.

Not only that, fusion will open the door to rocket engines orders of magnitude more powerful than the simple chemical engines NASA uses today, thus detailed exploration of the Solar System, and eventually the stars, will become a reality sooner.

The only "problem" with fusion technology is, once deployed, it will probably render all other energy technologies -- with the sole exception of nanotech-based SOLAR -- obsolete. This is good for the U.S. and the Peoples of Earth -- as it will make the production of all products and services much cheaper and better -- but it may be initially difficult for the Energy Establishment that wants to over-amortize their infrastructure and exploit the markets for profit as much as possible. They may be doing this now, especially if Saudi Arabia's largest field has hit peak oil. See Earth's Energy Problem at http://www.mecfilms.com/universe/articles/energy.htm.(1) This may be why one doesn't hear much about the progress of FUSION technology in the mainstream media -- the oil companies, and other energy companies, spend considerable sums on TV spots. If one does hear about FUSION they often quip: "Oh Fusion, it's still fifty years away." Well I am here to tell you this may not be true. Fusion is so revolutionary, Al Gore and others, have twice cut the funding for it in order to suppress its advancement and placate the corporate energy lobby. For more information on this, and other points, read ENERGY VICTORY by Robert Zubrin as well as one of his earlier books, ENTERING SPACE. A working knowledge of these two books can give one a positive idea on how this dire situation can be turned around.

Today with oil prices hitting $134 per barrel, it should be obvious to all Americans what the OPEC/Saudi Arabia game is: raise the price of oil for as long as possible, then dramatically lower it as soon as investment in alternatives become a threat to the cartel's dominance. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia may have hit peak oil, as investment banker Matt Simmons suggests in his book, TWILIGHT IN THE DESERT. No one knows for sure what the world's oil supply is or whether abiotic oil is a reality. Probably no one will ever know the answer to this question, but the answer is not necessary.

Contact your congressmen and urge them to research FUSION technology. Send them this short primer. Urge them to pass the flex-fuel bill Robert Zubrin suggests in his book, ENERGY STRATEGY, as an emergency measure until FUSION can be fully deployed. It is important to note that a flex-fuel solution must allow cars to burn ANY combination of ethanol, methanol or gasoline. I repeat: ANY combination of ethanol, methanol or gasoline, NOT just gasoline and ethanol, as the media is disseminating. They don't understand the situation and if the flex-fuel solution doesn't allow methanol to be used in cars, we will not be able to take advantage of the considerable methanol that can be obtained from COAL, and later FUSION. Methanol produced from coal is a viable alternative to an over reliance on ethanol (from crops) and gasoline (from OPEC and Canada, etc).

We could be energy independent from Saudi Arabia, hence OPEC, in three years if flex-fuel cars, as above described (and more fully described in Zubrin's book) were mandated by Congress. If Congress is not willing to do these two simple things: A) Mandate flex-fuel cars, B) Drastically accelerate funding for FUSION -- it is further evidence they are serving the interests of the Oil Establishment and not the People(2).



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(1) Also, very important: watch a documentary entitled, FIAT EMPIRE, to see how the Fed's expansion of the money supply effects the price of oil. Congressman Ron Paul is in this film. http://www.FiatEmpire.com

(2) See http://www.mecfilms.com/universe/articles/overthrow.htm



Originated: 05 March 2008
Updated: 21 May 2008



If you agree with at least 51% of this article, please forward it to your mailing list. The mainstream media may or may not address this subject, thus it's up to responsible citizens to disseminate important issues so that a healthy public discourse can be pursued.

Permission is hereby granted to forward, quote, excerpt or publish all or part of this article provided nothing is taken out of context and the source URL is cited. For articles written by James Jaeger, you are welcome to credit yourself as author, provided you at least get this information out. If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please go to http://www.mecfilms.com/universe/mission.htm

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More on the real reason behind high oil prices

More on the real reason behind high oil prices. Read the full article at http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9042


Part II

by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, May 21, 2008


As detailed in an earlier article, (05/02/08 ) a conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today’s $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today's price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme “leverage” of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8878

The hoax of Peak Oil—namely the argument that the oil production has hit the point where more than half all reserves have been used and the world is on the downslope of oil at cheap price and abundant quantity—has enabled this costly fraud to continue since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the help of key banks, oil traders and big oil majors. Washington is trying to shift blame, as always, to Arab OPEC producers. The problem is not a lack of crude oil supply. In fact the world is in over-supply now. Yet the price climbs relentlessly higher. Why? The answer lies in what are clearly deliberate US government policies that permit the unbridled oil price manipulations.

World Oil Demand Flat, Prices Boom…

The chief market strategist for one of the world’s leading oil industry banks, David Kelly, of J.P. Morgan Funds, recently admitted something telling to the Washington Post, “One of the things I think is very important to realize is that the growth in the world oil consumption is not that strong."

One of the stories used to support the oil futures speculators is the allegation that China’s oil import thirst is exploding out of control, driving shortages in the supply-demand equilibrium. The facts do not support the China demand thesis however.

The US Government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its most recent monthly Short Term Energy Outlook report, concluded that US oil demand is expected to decline by 190,000 b/d in 2008. That is mainly owing to the deepening economic recession. Chinese consumption, the EIA says, far from exploding, is expected to rise this year by only 400,000 barrels a day. That is hardly the "surging oil demand" blamed on China in the media. Last year China imported 3.2 million barrels per day, and its estimated usage was around 7 million b/d total. The US, by contrast, consumes around 20.7 million b/d.

That means the key oil consuming nation, the USA, is experiencing a significant drop in demand. China, which consumes only a third of the oil the US does, will see a minor rise in import demand compared with the total daily world oil output of some 84 million barrels, less than half of a percent of the total demand.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has its 2008 global oil demand growth forecast unchanged at 1.2 mm bpd, as slowing economic growth in the industrialised world is offset by slightly growing consumption in developing nations. OPEC predicts global oil demand in 2008 will average 87 million bpd -- largely unchanged from its previous estimate. Demand from China, the Middle East, India, and Latin America -- is forecast to be stronger but the EU and North American demand will be lower.

So the world’s largest oil consumer faces a sharp decline in consumption, a decline that will worsen as the housing and related economic effects of the US securitization crisis in finance de-leverages. The price in normal open or transparent markets would presumably be falling not rising. No supply crisis justifies the way the world's oil is being priced today.

Big new oil fields coming online

Not only is there no supply crisis to justify such a price bubble. There are several giant new oil fields due to begin production over the course of 2008 to further add to supply.

The world’s single largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia is finalizing plans to boost drilling activity by a third and increase investments by 40 %. Saudi Aramco's plan, which runs from 2009 to 2013, is expected to be approved by the company's board and the Oil Ministry this month. The Kingdom is in the midst of a $ 50 billion oil production expansion plan to meet growing demand in Asia and other emerging markets. The Kingdom is expected to boost its pumping capacity to a total of 12.5 mm bpd by next year, up about 11 % from current capacity of 11.3 mm bpd.

In April this year Saudi Arabia's Khursaniyah oilfield began pumping and will soon add another 500,000 bpd to world oil supply of high grade Arabian Light crude. As well, another Saudi expansion project, the Khurais oilfield development, is the largest of Saudi Aramco projects that will boost the production capacity of Saudi oilfields from 11.3 million bpd to 12.5 million bpd by 2009. Khurais is planned to add another 1.2 million bpd of high-quality Arabian light crude to Saudi Arabia's export capacity.

Brazil’s Petrobras is in the early phase of exploiting what it estimates are newly confirmed oil reserves offshore in its Tupi field that could be as great or greater than the North Sea. Petrobras, says the new ultra-deep Tupi field could hold as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable light crude. When online in a few years it is expected to put Brazil among the world's "top 10" oil producers, between those of Nigeria and those of Venezuela.

In the United States, aside from rumors that the big oil companies have been deliberately sitting on vast new reserves in Alaska for fear that the prices of recent years would plunge on over-supply, the US Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued a report that confirmed major new oil reserves in an area called the Bakken, which stretches across North Dakota, Montana and south-eastern Saskatchewan. The USGS estimates up to 3.65 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken.

These are just several confirmations of large new oil reserves to be exploited. Iraq, where the Anglo-American Big Four oil majors are salivating to get their hands on the unexplored fields, is believed to hold oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia. Much of the world has yet to be explored for oil. At prices above $60 a barrel huge new potentials become economic. The major problem faced by Big Oil is not finding replacement oil but keeping the lid on world oil finds in order to maintain present exorbitant prices. Here they have some help from Wall Street banks and the two major oil trade exchanges—NYMEX and London-Atlanta’s ICE and ICE Futures.

Then why do prices still rise?

There is growing evidence that the recent speculative bubble in oil which has gone asymptotic since January is about to pop.

Late last month in Dallas Texas, according to one participant, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held its annual conference where all the major oil executives and geologists were present. According to one participant, knowledgeable oil industry CEOs reached the consensus that "oil prices will likely soon drop dramatically and the long-term price increases will be in natural gas."

Just a few days earlier, Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street investment bank had said that the current oil price bubble was coming to an end. Michael Waldron, the bank's chief oil strategist, was quoted in Britain's Daily Telegraph on Apr. 24 saying, "Oil supply is outpacing demand growth. Inventories have been building since the beginning of the year.”

In the US, stockpiles of oil climbed by almost 12 million barrels in April according to the May 7 EIA monthly report on inventory, up by nearly 33 million barrels since January. At the same time, MasterCard's May 7 US gasoline report showed that gas demand has fallen by 5.8%. And refiners are reducing their refining rates dramatically to adjust to the falling gasoline demand. They are now running at 85% of capacity, down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%. The refiners today are clearly trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up. ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s infamous 1992 election quip to daddy Bush. It’s called economic recession.

The May 8 report from Oil Movements, a British company that tracks oil shipments worldwide, shows that oil in transit on the high seas is also quite strong. Almost every category of shipment is running higher than it was a year ago. The report notes that, "In the West, a big share of any oil stock building done this year has happened offshore, out of sight." Some industry insiders say the global oil industry from the activities and stocks of the Big Four to the true state of tanker and storage and liftings, is the most secretive industry in the world with the possible exception of the narcotics trade.

Goldman Sachs again in the middle

The oil price today, unlike twenty years ago, is determined behind closed doors in the trading rooms of giant financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank or UBS. The key exchange in the game is the London ICE Futures Exchange (formerly the International Petroleum Exchange). ICE Futures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Atlanta Georgia International Commodities Exchange. ICE in Atlanta was founded in part by Goldman Sachs which also happens to run the world’s most widely used commodity price index, the GSCI, which is over-weighted to oil prices.

As I noted in my earlier article, (‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’), ICE was focus of a recent congressional investigation. It was named both in the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' June 27, 2006, Staff Report and in the House Committee on Energy & Commerce's hearing in December 2007 which looked into unregulated trading in energy futures. Both studies concluded that energy prices' climb to $128 and perhaps beyond is driven by billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE. Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the Bush Administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the USA. And at Enron’s request, the CFTC exempted the Over-the-Counter oil futures trades in 2000.

So it is no surprise to see in a May 6 report from Reuters that Goldman Sachs announces oil could in fact be on the verge of another "super spike," possibly taking oil as high as $200 a barrel within the next six to 24 months. That headline, "$200 a barrel!" became the major news story on oil for the next two days. How many gullible lemmings followed behind with their money bets?

Arjun Murti, Goldman Sachs' energy strategist, blamed what he called "blistering" (sic) demand from China and the Middle East, combined with his assertion that the Middle East is nearing its maximum ability to produce more oil. Peak Oil mythology again helps Wall Street. The degree of unfounded hype reminds of the kind of self-serving Wall Street hype in 1999-2000 around dot.com stocks or Enron.

In 2001 just before the dot.com crash in the NASDAQ, some Wall Street firms were pushing sale to the gullible public of stocks that their companies were quietly dumping. Or they were pushing dubious stocks for companies where their affiliated banks had a financial interest. In short as later came out in Congressional investigations, companies with a vested interest in a certain financial outcome used the media to line their pockets and that of their companies, leaving the public investor holding the bag. It would be interesting for Congress to subpoena the records of the futures positions of Goldman Sachs and a handful of other major energy futures players to see if they are invested to gain from a further rise in oil to $200 or not.

Margin rules feed the frenzy

Another added turbo-charger to present speculation in oil prices is the margin rule governing what percent of cash a buyer of a futures contract in oil has to put up to bet on a rising oil price (or falling for that matter). The current NYMEX regulation allows a speculator to put up only 6% of the total value of his oil futures contract. That means a risk-taking hedge fund or bank can buy oil futures with a leverage of 16 to 1.

We are hit with an endless series of plausible arguments for the high price of oil: A "terrorism risk premium;" “blistering” rise in demand of China and India; unrest in the Nigerian oil region; oil pipelines' blown up in Iraq; possible war with Iran…And above all the hype about Peak Oil. Oil speculator T. Boone Pickens has reportedly raked in a huge profit on oil futures and argues, conveniently that the world is on the cusp of Peak Oil. So does the Houston investment banker and friend of Dick Cheney, Matt Simmons.

As the June 2006 US Senate report, The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, noted, "There's a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak oil theories and hot buttons of supply and demand, and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy."

Will a Democratic Congress act to change the carefully crafted opaque oil futures markets in an election year and risk bursting the bubble? On May 12 House Energy & Commerce Committee stated it will look at this issue into June. The world will be watching.

Global Research Associate F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (PlutoPress), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. (Global Research, available at www.globalresearch.ca). He may be reached at info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Use of dengue virus in terrorist attacks, biowarfare feared

News Release

First District Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza

Member, Commission on Appointments

615 South Wing, House of Representatives, Constitution Hills, Quezon City Tel: 951-3011

May 24, 2008



As US biotech firm advances dengue antiviral program

Dengue, the pestilent mosquito-borne virus that infected a record 45,350 Filipinos in 2007 and thousands more this year, could possibly be used in future terrorist attacks, according to an American biotechnology company that is now trying to find a cure for the disease.

Alarmed, Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza has stressed the need for Congress to extend adequate funding to programs that would "hopefully lead to the discovery of new ways to prevent and treat dengue through pharmaceutical agents."

"It has become absolutely imperative for the Philippines to do its share, and help push the development of a suitable vaccine against dengue, considering we are among the countries most exposed to and threatened by the virus," Taliño-Mendoza said.

"We should promptly set aside funds to actively support both local and foreign dengue antiviral programs," Taliño-Mendoza said.

She lamented that dengue "has been causing great suffering to a growing number of Filipino families in Mindanao and other parts of the country."

At present, there is no approved antiviral or vaccine for the treatment or prevention of dengue fever.

Citing statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), Taliño-Mendoza said the Philippines has the fourth highest number of dengue cases every year, after Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

However, she said the Philippines ranks second only to Indonesia in terms of deaths due to dengue.

A record total of 45,350 dengue cases were reported nationwide in 2007, with 416 deaths, according to the Department of Health (DOH).

Worse, DOH records show that from Jan. 1 to Apr. 19 this year, 111 deaths were reported, with the total number of dengue cases hitting 9,555, up nearly 30 percent compared to the 7,384 listed in the same period in 2007.

Taliño-Mendoza's plea for funding came immediately after an American biotechnology firm announced that it is stepping up the search for a potential drug to fight dengue.

In a May 21 regulatory filing, New York-based SIGA Technologies Inc. said it is advancing its "dengue fever antiviral program."

The chief executive officer of SIGA, Dr. Eric Rose, said: "Our work in dengue could ultimately benefit people living in regions where dengue is endemic, travelers to those regions and (US) military personnel deployed in those areas, as well as people who may be exposed to the virus through a terrorist attack. The recent outbreak of dengue fever in South America underscores the need for an effective antiviral to treat this debilitating disease, which puts tens of millions of people at risk each year.''

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page 2/News Release/Rep. Taliño-Mendoza

"Now that several series of active compounds have been identified, we are moving forward with target identification and mechanism of action studies, which we expect to complete in the near future. Once we have completed these studies, we can take the next step and move these compounds into animal models of the disease,'' added Dr. Dennis Hruby, chief scientific officer of SIGA.

SIGA, whose shares are traded on the NASDAQ electronic stock market in New York, said it has "completed a screen of a proprietary small-molecule chemical library in support of a dengue fever antiviral program. The screen of approximately 200,000 compounds led to the identification of a number of pharmacologically active compounds."

The company added: "Several series of compounds were shown to have high potency and low toxicity in tissue cultures derived from multiple cell lines. Importantly, these compounds appear to be active against all four serotypes of the dengue virus."

SIGA is trying to develop pharmaceutical agents to fight not just dengue, but also other potential biowarfare viruses such as smallpox, Ebola and Lassa.

The daytime Aedes egypti mosquito, found in tropical and sub-tropical regions, transmits the dengue virus to humans. The mosquito prefers to feed on human and usually bites after dawn and before sunset.

Dengue epidemics cause significant morbidity and mortality, social disruption and considerable economic burden in affected areas, both in terms of hospitalization and mosquito control, according to the WHO.

Dengue causes high fever and could lead to internal bleeding. The WHO estimates that the case-fatality rate of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) in most countries is about five percent, mostly among children and young adults.

Up to 40 percent of the world's population (or about 2.5 billion people) are threatened by dengue fever, DHF and dengue shock syndrome, the WHO said.

Dengue and DHF are caused by one of four related but different virus serotypes of the genus Flavivirus. Infection with one of these serotypes does not provide immunity, so people living in dengue-prone areas can have four infections in their lifetimes.

Dengue has also become an emerging threat to North America, with major epidemics in Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela, and outbreaks in Texas and Hawaii.