To Listen to broadcast version (22 min) with clips from many speakers & sound effects:
Just click the TITLE above ("4 Plots to Nuke Iran")
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According to Seymour Hersh, in April's New Yorker magazine, a faction in the Bush administration has plans to use nuclear bombs against "targets" in Iran. The pretext is to stop the Iranians from developing a nuclear bomb. The precedent breaks sixty years of nuclear peace, to drop the first atomic weapon in anger since the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sixty years of marches, lobbying, and struggle by people all over the world, opposed to nuclear weapons, might come undone. The President who brought you secret detention camps, torture, spying, and unprovoked invasion of other countries, has plans for a new atomic age of terror.

In a world of conspiracy and violence, we'll cover four major theories of why America will nuke Iran.

First: the Jewish people are worried that Iran will wipe out Israel with nuclear missiles, a horrible second Holocaust.

Then there are stories that Vice President Cheney has plans to nuke Iran following ANY 911-type incident in America, whether Iran did it or not.

Third, we'll look at the hidden plotline of oil - how Iran is threatening America's passion to control Middle East oil, and the American dollar itself.

Finally, the neo-cons from the Council on Foreign Relations think America shouldn't stop with a nuclear attack on Iranian atomic plants and labs. These intellectuals, and their banking friends, see a great opportunity. Thinking they now have nuclear supremacy, America should just nuke every atomic weapons site in the world, including the Russians and the Chinese. Total victory, total domination, all published in the March/April issue of the magazine "Foreign Affairs." We'll get to that.

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Let's begin with Seymour Hersh, speaking with ABC Radio in Australia:

[Clip Seymour Hersh from ABCau:

"If you really want to guarantee that you're going to get rid of the major underground facility in Iran that's believed to be tied to nuclear activity, a place called Natanz, which is seventy five feet underground, if you want to be sure, the only way to be sure is with a tactical nuke. This is one of the options given in a paper by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Whitehouse. Nobody was advocating it, they were just saying 100 percent guarantee.

Where it becomes interesting, the Joint Chiefs, in one of its subsequent papers, wanted to withdraw that option, because of course it's madness. A nuclear weapon in the Middle East to an Arab Muslim country, my God, - and the White House wouldn't withdraw [it].
And that's the issue, that the White House, some people there, still wanted to have this option."

[interview ABC National first week of April, 2006]

Mr. Hersh also revealed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - not to mention his Pulitzer Prize revelations of the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

Hersh quotes his insider sources saying high level military men are so opposed to any plan to nuke Iran, they will fight it, and possibly resign if unsuccessful.

You can find more in Slate Magazine, an article by Fred Kaplan, April 10th, titled "Are We Really Going to Nuke Iran?"

This is not labeled a "pre-emptive war," but a "preventative war."

Fred Kaplan wonders it this is another version of Richard Nixon's "let them think I'm a madman" strategy in Vietnam. We saw how successful that was.

Iran isn't buying it, and they have a president who also qualifies as a madman. Madmen are threatening the Earth. This nuclear bravado, perhaps purposely leaked, is meant to hammer on Europe, to make them consider sanctions seriously. We saw how well sanctions worked in Iraq.

Meanwhile, alleged high-level sources within the U.S. military say there is active resistance to the idea, and that some Generals will resign if the government moves toward the nuclear option. In the event an order is given to drop a nuclear weapon for the first time since Hiroshima, we may all hope a military coup will displace Bush and his neo-con gang. Are times already so desperate, that the world prays the military men will revolt, as they did against Hitler in 1944?

Of course, the nuclear story may be a cover to makes us all feel better when the Bush Boys attack Iran with conventional weapons. We'll be relieved they didn't start a nuclear war, yet.

Others, including Kaplan, worry this may be a juggernaut of planning, long in the works, just like the attack on Iraq, that cannot be stopped.

The theory "it's just another bomb" tosses nuclear weapons into the military tool-kit, as just another weapon. The future result would be incinerated cities, or perhaps an inhabitable radioactive planet.

[music clip]
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According to Hersh, the Navy is already been flying simulated nuclear bombing missions for more than a year, launching from aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea. They are practicing delivery of weapons of mass destruction. Top British politicians and military men have already met to plan their part, although they publicly call for a diplomatic solution.

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[clip: ABC Drop the Bomb to Stop the Bomb]

[PLOT NUMBER ONE]

[1] Let's start with Israel.

In 2002, Bush declared Iran to be part of the "axis of evil" - a phrase coined by Canadian speechwriter David Frum.

News about a nuclear attack on Iran has been brewing since the start of 2005.

In March 30, 2005, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector in Iraq, wrote "Sleepwalking to Disaster in Iran." It was published in the Arab news agency, Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net)

Contacted by "someone close to the Bush administration" Ritter claims he was warned of a plan to attack Iran in June 2005 - because the Israelis were worried about Iran's nuclear enrichment program.
Now, that enrichment program has produced it's first batch of weapons-grade uranium.

Since the Iranian President said Israel should be wiped off the map, while questioning the Holocaust, and pushing Jew-hatred, the Israelis, and Jewish people everywhere, have plenty of cause for sleepless nights. The Iranians have already demonstrated a missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload to Israel, or even to Southern Europe.

Israel's Defense Minister of the day, Shaul Mofaz, said that "under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession."

Israel is thought to have at least 200 nuclear weapons. Contemplating the possibility that a few nuclear missiles could render the Holy Land into atomic dust, being such a small country - Israel loudly announced they had refitted conventional submarines with underwater nuclear missile launch capabilities. Obviously, if Israel was struck by Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Jewish state would respond by wiping out the largest Muslim cities, and Holy Places, in the Middle East.

We have a precedent for an Israeli first strike against Muslim atomic power. In the mid-1980s, the Israeli air force used modified American planes to bomb a nuclear power facility in Iraq, built by France, just days before the reactor was due to start up. The Bush administration may be in a forced race with Israel, to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities - before the Israelis do. According to Scott Ritter, Israel had a plan to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities since 2003.
These relationships are so complex, they may be moving beyond anyone's control. When nuclear fear sets policy, policy goes mad.

Ritter said "The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran." He has no doubt that "the Bush Administration intends to bomb Iran."


[clip from No Known Unknowns by CrashMagnet]
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["PLOT NUMBER TWO" with music]

[2] Our second nuke'em plot is not based on Israel, but arises from American internal needs. The Project for a New America Century (www.pnac.com) already described the need for a new Pearl Harbor to instigate a stronger state. Now the President, and his gun-toting buddy, are so low in the polls, they may think only another 911-type attack can bring back public support.

We know that the Bush insider gang plotted an attack on Iraq even before they came into office. 911 allowed them to do it, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 911. If there is another attack, says intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi, Vice President Cheney has nuclear battle plans ready to attack Iran, whether they were guilty or not. They are waiting for an excuse to seize total control of Middle East oil, and to repay the Iranians for seizing the American Embassy in 1979.

We hear more about the Cheney nuke mousetrap from right wing sources, people you would expect to be Bush supporters. For example, Justin Logan of the Cato Institute, at www.justinlogan.com, reprints key paragraphs from Philip Giraldi's article in American Conservative magazine (which is not available online.)

In print, Giraldi says, quote:

"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in
response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites.

Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually
being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

end quote.

Some of these "hardened targets" are right in the capital of the country, Tehran. Shall we nuke the capital of Iran?

This would please the Osama Bin Laden crowd - as Sunnis, they loathe the Iranian Shiites almost as much as the Americans. If Sunni radicals can stage another 9-11 incident, the American goliath will nuke their enemies for them.

[clip: You just leave a lot of dead people behind...]

Let's hear from Giraldi himself, speaking with Scott Horton, an anti-war activist on anti-war.com, speaking on the quite conservative Republican Broadcasting Network, on July 26, 2005.

"[Scott Horton] I'm talking with Phil Giraldi. He's a former CIA counter-terrorism official who now writes "Deep Background" for the American Conservative magazine. And Sir, you were saying before the break...

[Phil Giraldi] Well basically, some officers in the Air Force are talking about a contingency plan that is being drawn up at the instructions of the White House, more specifically the Office of the Vice President, and the plan essentially is for a nuclear response against Iran, if there is another terrorist incident within the United States, something along the lines of 911. [Edit]

[Garaldo continues] The thinking, the scary thing about this, the Doctor Strangelove aspect of it, is the thinking that is going down here, is basically that you would use the opportunity of a terrorist attack to take out Iran as basically a threat in that region. [Edit]

[Giraldo continues] I don't have to explain to you that the policy in that region has been insane, right from four years ago."

[clip from "Cheney has a gun"]

This "Cheney has a plan" chatter became intense LAST summer, in 2005. Now it's back. Why?

[continues with PLOT 3 and PLOT 4 in the next post]

[To listen to the full 19 min broadcast, complete with rare quotes by super-biologist E.O.Wilson, and other sound effects, click on the title “The Great Extinction” above.]


At least one in eight plants are threatened. Half of land animals, and most of large ocean species. may disappear during our childrens' lives. We are coming to the greatest mass extinction ever known, including historic meteor strikes. The very fabric of living creation that populates our planet, and our life experiences, is going to gone.

[Clip: E.O. Wilson - Biodiversity Half Gone]

Have your pen or keyboard ready. In a minute, I'm going to give the Net address for the Web's largest collection of information on mass extinction. There you can find hundreds of stark warnings about The Great Extinction.

Then, near the end of the broadcast, you'll get an important Web address to find really recent reports on the state of the world, by top scientists, in lectures to the Harvard Medical School.

[Clip: E.O. Wilson - HIPPO, the agents of mass extinction]

In 2004, Nature magazine reported from a scientific study that one quarter of animals and plants living on land could disappear forever. Millions of species may be extinct by 2050.

One report reads: "At a 2005 conference, renowned scientist Prof. Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, told delegates that without a change in current directions, as many as two-thirds of world species could be on route to extinction by the end of this century. He said nature will reach sustainability on its own terms unless humans change course."

Another:

"Scientists estimate that human activity has accelerated natural extinction rates by as many as 1,000 times the normal rate. Over the past 500 years, in fact, scientists have recorded about 250 species extinctions among mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and conifers. Today, the world stands to lose three times that amount in perhaps the next 10 to 50 years.

According to a new scientific report by the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE), however, there is new hope for some of these most threatened populations – and still time to protect them. Conservation International (CI) and 52 other like-minded organizations that comprise the AZE conducted a global analysis to identify those Endangered (EN) and Critically Endangered (CR) species that exist in a single remaining population and are largely confined to a single location. The AZE has identified 595 sites as the last remaining refuges of 794 species. In its December 2005 report, the AZE sets forth a blueprint to immediately safeguard key habitats and possibly prevent an imminent wave of species extinctions."
- That report from Jennifer Shatwell of Conservation International.

OK, here is the Web address you need to track the loss of living creations:

www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html

Let's turn to a fantastic resource to educate yourself and others, about our developing crisis. In February, 2006, the Harvard Medical School organized a series of lectures on the environment, gathering pre-eminent speakers. It was all recorded on video. At the time of this report, most of the lecture series is still available to the public, as a streaming video. Here is the address for today's focus lecture, by the legendary biologist E.O. Wilson.
The address is a long one, but well worth the trouble. It is:

http://chge.med.harvard.edu/education/course_2006/topics/02_16/index.html

I'll repeat that again later.

Edward O. Wilson is renowned for his research into living systems, in many places of the world. He has journeyed to deep jungles and the distant edges of the earth, to record the wealth of species. Wilson's particular specialty is ants.

[CLIP: E.O. Wilson discovers Fire Ants...followed by CLIP: finding many species of ants in one tree.]

In addition to his research, Wilson is a long-time teacher at Harvard University, and - a much published author of books with a contagious sense of wonder and love for nature. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and many other awards.

One of my listeners, hearing a sense of despair, knowing human life is causing mass extinctions, sent me a book that brought her hope. It was called "The Future of Life," by one Edward O. Wilson, published in 2002. Essentially, he argues that humans, all of us, are born with an instinctual love for other life forms. We are not mental islands, but part of a vast network of living things that support, comfort, and inspire us. He calls that love for nature "Biophilia."

If our instinctive love for nature, our biophilia, can take a leading role, Wilson believes we can get through this difficult century, coming out with a livable planet. Here is one example of his optimism, this time about population.

[Clip: E.O. Wilson - Hope for Population.]

Wilson is one of the major proponents of a scheme to purchase the last great areas of biodiversity, to preserve an estimated 70 percent of the land species of Earth. For around 28 billion dollars, some protective institution could buy the biologically richest rainforests in the Amazon, the Congo, and Indonesia, and perhaps rare islands of species in places like Madagascar. To put the cost in perspective, the profits of American oil companies were 100 billion dollars in 2005. Just one quarter of that money could save creations that evolved over a billion years. Once they're gone, they're gone.

[Clip: Tom Paxton - Once They're Gone, They're Gone, from Tribute to Rachel Carson, by MUSE records, at musemusic.org]

But, like most of us, Wilson's optimism is darkened by doubts about the future of such rapacious reproducers, humans. He trusts that life will survive, with or without us. He finds life everywhere, always.

[Clip: Wilson - Life Everywhere, Always.]

And don't trust in some magic cure by genetic science, to make a new world. At their best and brightest, humans are not Gods, and can not make a new creation in the lab.

[Clip: Wilson - Man-Made Nature an Abomination]


Here is the address for watching E.O. Wilson's important lecture:

http://chge.med.harvard.edu/education/course_2006/topics/02_16/index.html

Or, you can download the full audio version from Radio Ecoshock, at

www.ecoshock.org/greatextinction/index.shtml

For more news and science, tune in to Radio Ecoshock, the world's only full-time, all environment radio station, at www.ecoshock.org.

Tom Paxton's song came from the Rachel Carson Tribute album, at www.musemusic.org. Our closing music is by Earth Momma, the Grass Roots album, at earthmomma.org.

Maybe, just maybe, we don't have to say "goodbye" to the frogs, the colored birds, the rich medley of plant life, the loved animals of our childhood. It's up to you.

[Clip: Earth Momma singing "We Don't Have to Say Goodbye."]