wiley

Please stay on topic. The issue being addressed is the Turkish army chief says U.S. ties at risk. If you want to address another issue then create a different topic and post it in the right category. Thanks in advance. Moderator

I am quite sure that the European Union is paying close attention to this.

I understand Richard Armitage is also to blame. And I don't like the Democrats making political points on this issue. But, Scooter Libby should never have leaked information about a covert agent to Judith Miller. Many people in our intelligence community have spoken out about this through proper channels.

Very Cool. I will be there.

I listened to Al Gore promoting his book "The Assault on Reason" on NPR last week. He stated he will definitely NOT run for president. On a lighter note you might enjoy this article Human

Hi Human from West Virginia Do you think there is any ethical problem with his involvement with the Odyssey venture?

That is horrible. How will your family member afford care?

Hey Cameron, I will check it out. It seems like our Springs are getting shorter and shorter.

How would you propose to coordinate this effort of bringing teachers, students, and volunteers together?

Nachiappan, You should post your thoughts on global warming for our Washington DC Community members to view. I work with Luke running DCpages.com http://www.dcmessageboards.com/index.php?showtopic=11682 Some of our readers are leaders of organizations here in Washington. This is a good way to market your name. Where are you located? Are you looking for employment or outsource work?

This is a discussion forum. That means you need to discuss the issues that you have. I noticed that you never answer anyone's questions. All you do is post a link to your web site. Therefore, you are considered a spammer.

Why do you always have to spam the boards? You never actually write your opinion on anything. You just put a catchy title and a link to your web site. If you are an activist you should know how to express your opinions.

Looks cool, but what is the cost?

Karl, What is the reason why the DC City Council is planning to break away business ties with Sudan? I would really be interested in this issue.

What does it look like and what's the history of it?

Why don't you consider titling the topic Relationship Building and Outreach Project : BRIDGE WORK That way people can understand what you are posting. Does that makes sense. Your organization is quite impressive.

Factchecker aka. Truthseeker we have no beef with you. But, you are quite wrong. DCpages gets tens of thousands of visitors a day. I don't understand why you attack what we are doing. How have we offended you?

Mercury pollution is making its way into nearly every habitat in the U.S., exposing countless species of wildlife to potentially harmful levels of mercury, a new report from the National Wildlife Federation shows. “From songbirds to alligators, turtles to bats, eagles to otters, mercury is accumulating in nearly every corner of the food chain,” says Catherine Bowes, Northeast Program Manager for the National Wildlife Federation and principal author of the report. “This report paints a compelling picture of mercury contamination in the U.S., and many more species are at risk than we previously thought. Fish, long thought to be the key species affected by mercury, are just the tip of the iceberg.” The National Wildlife Federation report, Poisoning Wildlife: The Reality of Mercury Pollution, is a compilation of over 65 published studies finding elevated levels of mercury in a wide range of wildlife species. The report highlights mercury levels in fish, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians living in freshwater, marine, and forest habitats from across the country. The accumulation of mercury in fish has been well-understood for years, leading 46 states in the U.S. to issue consumption advisories warning people to limit or avoid eating certain species of fish. However, scientists have recently discovered that mercury accumulates in forest soils, indicating that wildlife that live and feed outside aquatic habitats are also at risk of exposure to mercury. “Scientific understanding of the extent of mercury contamination in wildlife has expanded significantly in recent years,” says Dr. David Evers of the Biodiversity Research Institute, wildlife toxicologist and leading researcher in this field. “We are finding mercury accumulation in far more species, and at much higher levels, than we previously thought was occurring. This poses a very real threat to the health of many wildlife populations, some of which are highly endangered.” Mercury accumulation in fish is not only a concern for the health of people who eat them, it also poses a threat to the fish themselves. Poisoning Wildlife pulls together the major findings from over 20 of the 65 published studies that attribute adverse health impacts on fish, birds, and mammals with elevated mercury levels in those species. Fish with high mercury levels have difficulty schooling and spawning, birds lay fewer eggs and have trouble caring for their chicks, and mammals have impaired motor skills that affect their ability to hunt and find food. Several states have already taken action to reduce mercury pollution from major sources like waste incinerators, chlorine manufacturers, power plants, and consumer products, and the results are very promising. In places where mercury emissions have been cut, such as Florida, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, mercury levels in fish and wildlife have been reduced in a matter of years, not decades, as scientists have previously thought. “Now that we have hard evidence that mercury is affecting more species than originally thought, anything short of phasing out this toxic metal is inadequate,” says Bowes. “The discovery of mercury in so many different species is a wake-up call. We need to ensure that all is being done to help wildlife cope with the stresses of a changing climate. Eliminating known threats like mercury is a critical place to start.” The scientific studies compiled in the report show mercury in a wide variety of species: Freshwater Fish: Brook Trout, Walleye, Yellow Perch, Rainbow Trout, Northern Perch, Largemouth Bass Birds in Aquatic Habitats: Bald Eagle, Great Egret, Wood Stork, Northern Shoveler, Common Loon, Red-winged Blackbird, White Ibis, Common Tern, Belted Kingfisher Birds in Forest Habitats: Wood Thrush, Red-eyed Vireo, Louisiana Waterthrush, Bicknell’s Thrush, Carolina Wren, Prothonotary Warbler Mammals: Florida Panther, Indiana Bat, Mink, River Otter, Raccoon Reptiles, Amphibians, Invertebrates: Two-lined Salamander, Snapping Turtle, Crayfish, American Alligator, Bullfrog Marine Life: Tiger Shark, Sperm Whale, Striped Bass, Loggerhead Sea Turtle, Narwhal, Polar Bear, Beluga Whale, Ringed Seal

Sudden decreases in temperature over Greenland and tropical rainfall patterns during the last Ice Age have been linked for the first time to rapid changes in the salinity of the north Atlantic Ocean, according to research published Oct. 5, 2006, in the journal Nature. The results provide further evidence that ocean circulation and chemistry respond to changes in climate. Using chemical traces in fossil shells of microscopic planktonic life forms, called formanifera, in deep-sea sediment cores, scientists reconstructed a 45,000- to 60,000-year-old record of ocean temperature and salinity. They compared their results to the record of abrupt climate change recorded in ice cores from Greenland. They found the Atlantic got saltier during cold periods, and fresher during warm intervals. "The freshening likely reflects shifts in rainfall patterns, mostly in the tropics," Howard Spero of the University of California at Davis said. "Suddenly, we're looking at a record that links moisture balance in the tropics to climate change. And the most striking thing is that a measurable transition is happening over decades." Spero, who is currently on leave at the National Science Foundation's Marine Geology and Geophysics Program, worked with lead author Matthew Schmidt of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Maryline Vautravers of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to conduct the research. During the Ice Age, much of North America and Europe was covered by a sheet of ice. But the ice records the scientists reconstructed show repeated patterns of sudden warming, called Dansgaard-Oeschger Cycles, when temperatures in Greenland rose by 5 to 10 degrees Celsius over a few decades. Close to the tropics, warm, moist air forms a zone of heavy tropical rainfall, called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which dilutes the salty ocean with fresh water. Today, the tropical rainfall zone reaches into the northern Caribbean, but during the colder periods of the Ice Age it was pushed much further south, towards Brazil. That kept fresh water out of the northern Atlantic, so it became more salty, Spero said. The circulation, or gyre, in the North Atlantic moves warm, salty water north, keeping Europe relatively temperate. The deep ocean circulation is very sensitive to the saltiness of north Atlantic surface waters, Spero said. Warming climate, higher rainfall and fresher conditions can alter the circulation. During glacial times, reduced circulation caused climate to cool. The new results show that as the climate cooled in Greenland, salinity rapidly increased in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. The build-up of salt during these cold intervals when the conveyor circulation was reduced would have primed the system to quickly restart on transitions into warm intervals, Schmidt said. However, the actual trigger that caused Atlantic circulation to restart during the Ice Age is still unknown, he said. Once warming began, melting ice sheets would have contributed fresh water to the Atlantic, but this would have been partly buffered by the elevated saltiness of the Atlantic. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

The unanimous vote by the US Senate on Friday to approve the Bush administration’s request for an additional $70 billion to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates a basic truth of American politics: the Democratic Party, no less than the Republicans, is a party of imperialist militarism and war. Not a single senator of either party missed the opportunity to demonstrate his or her support for the bloody interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia. This vote rips asunder the miserable attempts of a section of the Democratic Party to posture as “critics” of the Iraq war. It demonstrates that behind the quibbling over tactics and complaints about the incompetence of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, the Democrats remain committed to violently suppressing the resistance of the Iraqi people to the US occupation and Washington’s drive to seize the country’s oil resources. The vote shows that a Democratic victory in the November mid-term elections will in no way alter the basic course of US foreign policy—whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, or other countries targeted for future aggression such as Iran and Syria. In its report on the Senate vote, the Associated Press noted that the war funding measure was passed “after minimal debate.” Such is the contempt of the two corporate-controlled parties for the sentiments of the American people, who oppose the war by a wide margin. Nothing could more clearly express the unbridgeable chasm that separates the entire political establishment from the broad mass of working people. These two parties are accountable not to the American people, but rather to a financial oligarchy. What has emerged in America, behind the increasingly threadbare trappings of democracy, is a plutocracy. As for the Iraqi people, the Associated Press reported one day before the Senate vote the results of two polls that show overwhelming opposition to the US military occupation. A poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes reported that 60 percent of Iraqis approve the attacks on US-led forces and almost 80 percent say the US military provokes more violence in Iraq than it prevents. The US State Department’s own poll, according to the AP, found that two thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of US forces. There can be little wonder on either score. More than 2,700 American soldiers have been killed, and tens of thousands wounded, in an unprovoked war of aggression that has taken the lives of well over 100,000 Iraqis, destroyed the country’s infrastructure, and turned daily life for millions into a nightmare of violence, death, torture and repression. This exercise in imperialist plunder has already consumed an estimated $379 billion and continues to cost $8 billion every month. Congress has now approved $507 billion since 9/11 to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other overseas military operations. By the spring of 2007 Congress will be gearing up to approve another multibillion-dollar infusion of cash to keep these wars going. The burden for the squandering of these vast resources is being borne squarely by the working class, in the form of cuts in vital social programs and the ongoing decay of the nation’s infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of workers are being laid off, their pensions and health benefits shredded, and their wages and living standards slashed while defense contractors and the corporate cronies of the Bush White House rake in record war profits and huge windfalls from the so-called “reconstruction” of Iraq. The $70 billion in war spending was part of a Pentagon budget totaling $448 billion approved by the Senate—a record allocation for the US military. This compares to $74 billion in discretionary spending proposed for the Department of Health and Human Services in Bush’s fiscal year 2007 budget—a cut of $1.5 billion. Thus the military budget is more than six times that proposed for basic social needs. The eruption of American militarism inevitably requires the reintroduction of the military draft. There is simply no way for the ruling elite to amass sufficient cannon fodder for its global military designs on the basis of an all-volunteer army. Plans for a revival of the draft are well advanced, and are supported by both parties. The Senate vote on military appropriations came just one day after the Senate passed the Bush administration’s bill to legalize torture and indefinite detention. Democrats guaranteed passage by agreeing in advance not to block a vote, which they could have done by staging a filibuster, which requires only 40 votes to sustain. The conjuncture of the torture bill and the war spending measure underscores that the bipartisan policy of militarism and war goes hand-in-hand with the destruction of democratic rights. Democratic liberals, if asked, will doubtless justify their vote for war funds as a vote to “support the troops.” This is a contemptible evasion. The American soldiers are themselves victims of an imperialist policy pursued not to protect the American people from terrorist attack, but rather to advance the global designs of the US corporate elite. From the outset, the war was a criminal conspiracy prepared and executed on the basis of lies. It is now almost routine for soldiers to find that their tours of duty have been extended, compounding the danger for themselves and the hardship and anguish of their families. Only last week another 8,000 soldiers who were due to leave Iraq were told they had to stay at least until February. The only way to “support the troops” is to bring them home and put an end to the war. The two-faced cynicism of the Democrats was summed up by the dean of liberal senators, Edward Kennedy. In the debate preceding the vote on war spending, he declared, “America is in deep trouble in Iraq. The continuing violence and death is ominous.... Militias are growing in strength and continue to operate outside the law. Death squads are rampant.” He then proceeded to cast his vote to continue the bloodletting. The Senate vote should serve as a wake-up call to those who continue to delude themselves into thinking that the Democratic Party somehow represents an alternative to the Bush administration and the Republicans. It is necessary to speak bluntly: A vote for either of the two parties of big business is a vote for war. The only party running in the November elections that unequivocally opposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and advances a principled and viable strategy to put an end to militarism, the attacks on democratic rights and the assault on working class living standards is the Socialist Equality Party. The program upon which the SEP candidates are running (see “For a socialist alternative in the 2006 US elections”) calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. It demands that all those responsible for the invasion of Iraq be compelled to stand trial before a war crimes tribunal, and that the US government compensate the Iraqi people for the destruction and suffering it has caused, as well as the families of American soldiers killed in the war and the men and women who have been wounded. The SEP campaign opposes all attempts to revive the draft. It advances a socialist foreign policy, based on international working class solidarity. This includes the closure of US military bases around the world, the abolition of the CIA and other agencies that sponsor coups and meddle in the affairs of other countries, and a massive expansion of aid to countries that have been devastated by American military intervention and corporate exploitation. The SEP calls for the abolition of the so-called “Department of Defense,” and with it the standing army, which poses a constant threat to democratic rights. In its place, we advocate the formation of popular militias, organized under the democratic control of the working class. We call for a break with the Democratic Party and the building of a mass socialist movement of the working class in opposition to the two-party monopoly and the capitalist system that it defends. This is the only viable basis for a struggle against militarism and war. We call on all those who oppose the war in Iraq and the assault on democratic rights, and who support the fight for social equality, to vote for the SEP candidates where they are standing. Study our election program and organize discussions on the program with your friends and work mates. Contact the SEP and the World Socialist Web Site, volunteer to participate in the SEP campaigns, and donate to our election fund. Join the SEP and help fight for a socialist alternative! http://www.wsws.org

DCpages is giving out a Peter Frampton "Fingerprints" CD to the person who takes the time to write the best post on why the Washington Redskins are going to the Superbowl. Peter Frampton is best known today for his solo work in the mid-1970s as an "arena rocker". You can listen to his instrumental version of 'Black Hole Sun' at: http://www.umecard.com/frampton/ The contest begins TODAY, so if your not a member CLICK HERE and start posting today.

DCpages is giving away a Peter Frampton "Fingerprints" CD to the person who takes the time to write the best post on your choice for DC Mayor. Peter Frampton is best known today for his solo work in the mid-1970s as an "arena rocker". You can listen to his instrumental version of 'Black Hole Sun' at: http://www.umecard.com/frampton/ The contest begins TODAY, so if your not a member CLICK HERE and start posting today.

Bob, If that is true, I would contact Google and get that page taken down. It has your name on it.

Jim, Is this statement true? or Not? Rees, These photos are quite explicit. How did you communicate your evidence? How did you come to find this evidence? Do you think this photo may have been altered with his face added on? Who is Ramon José Rivera? Who is Lucifer? Does blogspot allow these types of photos?