James Madison wrote, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps both."  The increased suppression of scientific dissent in America in recent years proves the accuracy of Madison's observation.

In a recent diary, I described the lack of adequate and accurate public information on radiation hazards. Unfortunately, the nuclear-proliferation-for-profit crowd has a long history of trying to suppress public dialogue about nuclear safety rather than support their own positions with facts presented openly. Scientists who offer contrary facts and opinions soon find that they have themselves become "radioactive," as one whistleblower described it to me.

In 1972 the United States Congress ratified the http://www.cdi.org/... 1972 Biological Weapons Treaty. To make the world a safer place, here we are three decades later, and we are spending money as a nation hand over fist to break this treaty, in the words of our President "trust me".  

I might trust him that it is for our nations own good, except the history of the two men next to him, scares the hell out of me, given their involvement in "human experiments" with chemical weapons and drugs and Rumsfled's prior concurrence in Nixon's cabinet prior to 1972 in the biological human tests at Fort Detrick, Maryland. They have shown they have no regard for the "volunteers' lives. They refuse to do complete health studies of the Cold War veterans  today and still ignore the dead and disabled veterans and widows from Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick.  http://www.dailykos.com/...

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

So now we know: Next time the fire will come in Iran. The blow will be delivered by proxy, but that will not spare the true perpetrator from the firestorm of blowback and unintended consequences that will follow. Even now, the gruesome deaths of many innocent people in many lands are growing in futurity's womb.

The Rubicon of the new war was crossed on Oct. 27. Oddly enough for this renewal of the ancient enmity between the heirs of Athens and Persia, the decisive event occurred on the edge of the Arctic Circle, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, where a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit. This launch, scarcely noticed at the time, has accelerated the inevitable strike on Iran's nuclear facilities: Israel is now readying an attack for no later than the end of March, The Sunday Times reports.

The order, from embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, puts Israel's special forces at the "highest stage of readiness" for the strike. While Iran's plan to begin enriching uranium -- which will give it the capability of building a nuclear bomb -- is the precipitating factor, the budding Iranian space program is a "point of no return" for Sharon, and that is what is driving the actual timing of the strike. The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.