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Children just aren't going to know what sun is

2012-02-01T03:48:00.000-08:00

James Delingpole

James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books including 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy, Welcome To Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work, How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His website is www.jamesdelingpole.com.

Children just aren't going to know what sun is

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 29th, 2012
2584 Comments Comment on this article

Enjoy it while it lasts

There's a great piece by David Rose in the Mail On Sunday nicely summing up what a lot of us here knew already: that the thing we really need to fear right now is not global warming but global cooling. And that, on current evidence, it's global cooling we're going to get.

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Rose's piece comes hot on the heels of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal signed by 16 distinguished scientists (proper ones: not "climate" "scientists") noting the continuing absence of ManBearPig:

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

All true, of course. All very, very true. Which does rather invite the question: when's the scam going to end? When are all those "climate" "scientists" at institutions like the University of Easy Access finally going to eat crow?
Actually this question is entirely rhetorical since I already know the answer: when hell freezes over.
Consider, for example, the fate of Dr David Viner – the University of Easy Access climatologist responsible for the most-read-ever story in the Independent when, in 2000, he famously deployed his meteorological expertise to tell us:

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is."

And where did "Nostradamus" Viner go?
Well, for a time he was in charge of disseminating climate change propaganda at taxpayers' expense for the British Council.

More than £3.5 million has gone on recruiting a worldwide network of young "climate activists" in over 70 countries to engage in climate change propaganda – what Marxists used to call agitprop – and to pressure their politicians to join the worldwide struggle. Under a programme called Challenge Europe, £1.1 million has been paid out to fund young "climate advocates" in 17 countries across Europe, including Britain itself. But £2.5 million has been spent on a more ambitious project to recruit a global network of 100,000 activists in 60 countries across the world, led by 1,300 young "International Climate Champions", to participate in "international peer networks, both in person and online, to share ideas, projects and experiences".

Of this sum, £303,093.24 went to China; £71,262.91 to Brazil; £53,006.25 to Japan; £70,132.88 to India (including £11,000 to Dr Pachauri's Teri institute); £77,507.89 to oil-rich Qatar; and £50,000 to the US. There was £120,000 for a dozen different countries in Africa, including £14,000 to fund climate champions in starving Zimbabwe.

So, to recap: a scientist from arguably Britain's most discredited university department – the Climatic Research Unit at the UEA – made a fool of himself and his employer by feeding to a newspaper wrongheaded disaster scenarios based on woefully inaccurate computer projections, thus lending spurious credibility to a massive media scaremongering campaign which has led to the squandering of billions of pounds on an entirely unnecessary scheme to "decarbonise" the UK economy. His reward for this was to be granted a taxpayer-funded salary to go round the world spreading more abject nonsense about a mostly non-existent threat called "climate change."
Viner is not the exception: he is the rule. We have a right, I think, to start getting very angry indeed.

Tags: British Council, Dr David Viner, Met Office, snow, University of Easy Access, Wall Street Journal

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20 Signs That Europe Is Plunging Into A Full-Blown Economic Depression`

2012-02-01T03:35:00.000-08:00

Print Version

By Michael Snyder
BlacklistedNews.com

An economic nightmare is descending on Europe. With each passing month, the economic numbers across Europe get even worse. At this point it is becoming extremely difficult for anyone to deny that Europe is plunging into a full-blown economic depression. In fact, some parts of Europe are already there. In Spain the overall unemployment rate is over 22 percent, and in Greece one out of every five retail establishments has already been closed down. All over Europe, economic activity is rapidly slowing down, unemployment is skyrocketing and bad debts are unraveling. It isn’t even going to take a default by a nation such as Greece or a collapse of the euro to push Europe into an economic depression. All Europe has to do is to stay on the exact path that it is on right now and it will get there.

Normally, European governments would respond to an economic slowdown by increasing government spending. But this time most of them are already drowning in debt. Instead of increasing government spending, most governments in Europe are actually cutting back. All over Europe, national governments are being encouraged to implement even more tax increases and even more budget cuts. The hope is that all of this austerity will help solve the nightmarish sovereign debt crisis that Europe is facing. But unfortunately, all of these tax increases and budget cuts are also going to involve a tremendous amount of economic pain.

The frightening thing is that we are just at the beginning of the process for most European nations. If you want to see where nations such as Portugal, Italy and Spain are headed, just take a look at Greece. Greece has been going down this road for several years, and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel for them.

The tax increases and budget cuts that are being implemented right now in Europe will be felt for years to come. The tremendous economic prosperity that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt will now give way to tremendous economic suffering.

The following are 20 signs that Europe is plunging into a full-blown economic depression….

#1 The unemployment rate for those between the ages of 16 and 24 is 28 percent in Italy, 43 percent in Greece and 51 percent in Spain.
#2 Overall, the unemployment rate for those under the age of 25 in the EU is 22.7 percent.
#3 Citigroup is projecting that the economy of Portugal will shrink by 5.7 percent this year.
#4 The total of all forms of debt in Portugal (government, business and consumer) is equivalent to 360 percent of GDP.
#5 The Greek “recession” is now entering a fifth year.
#6 The Greek economy shrank by 6 percent during 2011.
#7 It is being projected that the Greek economy will shrink by another 5 percent during 2012.
#8 The overall unemployment rate in Greece is now 18.5 percent.
#9 In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have been permanently shut down.
#10 The number of suicides in Greece rose by 40 percent in just one recent 12 month time period.
#11 According to the IMF, the amount of debt accumulated by the Greek government is equal to approximately 160 percent of GDP.
#12 In total, there are now more than 5 million unemployed workers in Spain.
#13 Bad loans in Spain recently reached a 17-year high.
#14 The overall unemployment rate in Spain is now a whopping 22.8 percent.
#15 The number of property repossessions in Spain has risen by 32 percentover the past year.
#16 When the maturing debt that the Italian government must roll over in 2012 is added to their projected budget deficit, the total comes to approximately 23.1 percent of Italy’s GDP.
#17 Manufacturing activity in the euro zone has fallen for five months in a row.
#18 The UK economy actually contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.
#19 The German economy actually contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.
#20 The Baltic Dry Index, often used as a gauge for the health of the world economy, has fallen a staggering 61 percent since October.

Economic gloom is slowly spreading throughout Europe like a dark cloud. Some of the strongest economies in Europe are only just starting to slow down. Others are already gripped by tremendous economic pain. Trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently explained to ABC Australia that much of the EU is already experiencing an economic depression….

“If you live in Greece, you’re in a depression; if you live in Spain, you’re in a depression; if you live in Portugal or Ireland, you’re in a depression,” Celente said. “If you live in Lithuania, you’re running to the bank to get your money out of the bank as the bank runs go on. It’s a depression. Hungary, there’s a depression, and much of Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria. And there are a lot of depressions going on [already].”

As things fall apart in Europe, the political wrangling is going to become even more intense.
For example, over the past few days a shocking new German proposal has come to light. Germany apparently would like Greece to give a “EU budget commissioner” the power to veto all Greek decisions on taxes and spending.

That would represent an unprecedented loss of sovereignty for Greece, and obviously Greek politicians are not excited about the idea at all.

In fact, Greek education minister Anna Diamantopoulou said that the proposal was “the product of a sick imagination“.

But the sentiment in Germany is that since Greece must be bailed out by them, Greece should be willing to submit to some oversight for a certain amount of time.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Meanwhile, the Greek people continue to become angrier. According to one recent poll, about 90 percent all of Greek citizens are unhappy with the interim government led by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.

Things are also unraveling very quickly in Portugal. Now there is talk that private investors will be required to take a “haircut” on Portuguese debt as well.
The following is from a recent article in the Telegraph….

A report for the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said Portugal would have to run a primary budget surplus of over 11pc of GDP a year to prevent debt dynamics spiralling out of control, even in a benign scenario of 2pc annual growth.

“Portugal’s debt is unsustainable. That is the only possible conclusion,” said David Bencek, the co-author, warning that no country can achieve a primary budget surplus above 5pc for long.

“We won’t know what the trigger will be but once there is a decision on Greece people are going to start looking closely and realise that Portugal is the same position as Greece was a year ago.”

Sadly, that article is exactly right.

Portugal is marching down the exact same road that Greece went down.
The yield on 5 year Portuguese bonds is now up to an all-time record 19.8 percent.
A year ago, the yield on those bonds was only about 6 percent.
This is the same thing that happened to Greece.

A year ago, the yield on 5 year Greek bonds was about 12 percent.
Now the yield on those bonds is more than 50 percent.

The world is facing a debt crisis unlike anything ever seen before, and Europe is right at the center of it.

Right now, the major industrialized nations of the world are 55 trillion dollars in debt.
Everyone knew that at some point that debt bomb was going to explode.
So what is going to happen next?

Well, Europe appears to be heading for a full-blown economic depression.
Will the rest of the globe be able to escape a similar fate?

19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America

2012-02-01T03:28:00.000-08:00

endoftheamericandream.com

With each passing year, the difference between America's prisons and America's public schools becomes smaller and smaller. As you read the rest of this article, you will be absolutely amazed at some of the crazy things that school children in America are being arrested for. When I was growing up, I don't remember a single police officer ever coming to my school. Discipline was always handled by the teachers and by the principals. But today, there are schools all over the country that have police officers permanently stationed in the halls. Many other schools will call out police officers at the drop of a hat.

In the classrooms of America today, if you burp in class, if you spray yourself with perfume or if you doodle on your desk, there is a chance that you will be arrested by the police and hauled out of your school in handcuffs. Unfortunately, we live in a country where paranoia has become standard operating procedure. The American people have become convinced that the only way that we can all be "safe" is for this country to be run like a militarized totalitarian police state. So our public schools are run like prisons and our public school students are treated like prisoners. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far, and our schools are preparing the next generation to either "do time" in the prison system or to live as good little slaves in the Big Brother prison grid that is being constructed all around us. But what our schools are not doing is giving these children the critical thinking skills that they need to live as free citizens in a nation that used to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

Of course very few people would deny that the character of American schoolchildren has changed dramatically over the decades. Back in the 1950s, some of the biggest school discipline problems were gum chewing and hair pulling. Today, kids bring knives, guns and drugs with them to school. Gang activity is rampant in many of our schools and in some schools kids are even having sex in the school bathrooms.

So there is definitely a discipline problem in our schools.

But what is going on in many areas of the country is absolutely ridiculous. For example, in 2010 alone police down in Texas issued an astounding 300,000 tickets to school children.

Yes, if a kid pulls a knife on someone the police should get involved, but teachers and administrators should be able to use some common sense and handle the vast majority of discipline problems that happen themselves.

What you are about to read is absolutely going to amaze you. The following are 19 really crazy things that school children are being arrested for in America....

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.
#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.
#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.
#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.
#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.
#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. "I love my friends Abby and Faith" was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.
#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.
#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father's lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.
#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.
#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.
#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back....

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.
#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.
#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some "inappropriate touching" during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.
#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.
Unfortunately, what is going on in our schools is a reflection of the broader society as a whole. Our schools are being turned into prisons because our entire society is being turned into a giant prison.
Our nation is rapidly heading down the toilet, and the children of this nation do not have a bright future to look forward to.
If the police really want to find some criminals, they should start investigating some of the sickos that are in charge of some of these classrooms.
It seems like almost every day now there is a news story about some public school teacher that is involved in some kind of really perverted stuff.
For example, just check out what police down in Los Angeles recently found that one teacher was hiding....

A former Los Angeles elementary school teacher has been arrested for felony molestation of nearly two dozen students, accused of gagging children and putting live cockroaches on some of their faces. Deputies say the crimes were committed on campus.

Sickos who do that kind of stuff to kids should be punished very severely.
America's schools are changing, and not for the better.
Personally, I went to public schools all my life, but I would not recommend that anyone send their kids to public schools today. There is just way too much crazy stuff that goes on.
And our kids are learning less than ever in these public schools. As I have written about previously, many of them are coming out of the system as dumb as a rock. Instead of teaching our kids how to think critically and examine all sides of an issue, these schools are indoctrinating our kids and pushing particular social and political agendas on them.
There are a few public schools out there that are still good, but the vast majority of them are horrible. They are not producing the leaders of tomorrow and they are not preparing the next generation with the tools that they need to survive in a complex world.
So is there much hope that our schools can be turned around? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

RON PAUL AND THE CULT OF DEATH

2012-02-01T00:41:00.000-08:00

Mike Rivero.. whatrealllyhappened.com

I really shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard when I am recovering from a cold and juiced up on Nyquil.

It's Sunday afternoon. Claire is upstairs working on music and I am laying on the futon, having watched the original 1933 version of King Kong which has just been released on Blu-Ray, and I am dozing. Down at the bottom of the hill is the Aloha Stadium and as today's Pro-Bowl gets underway the sounds of the cheering crowds drift up the hillside. In my dreams, I mingle the sounds of the game with the images of the native cult on Skull Island, screaming and chanting as they prepare to offer up a village child as a living sacrifice to their deity. In my dream I see a modern stadium filled with my neighbors and friends, cheering as an innocent human sacrifice contemplates the final moments of his or her life. Above the hapless victim stands the Witch Doctor whose power and influence grows with each drop of spilled blood. The crowd roars its approval as the final act brings an end to innocent life.

It is at this point that a burst of fireworks and the over flight of a formation of military jets just over our roof brings me back to the present. As I listen to the sounds of the crowds, I imagine that they sound exactly the same way as those crowds in Rome who roared while slaves fought to the death in the Colosseum or Aztec Shamens tore the hearts from still-living victims.

In a moment of clarity, it occurs to me that we have a death cult taking center stage in America. However, because it comes dressed in the latest fashions, we fail to recognize it as such. Movies like King Kong teach us to see grass skirts and a bone through the nose and skulls on poles as the signs of primitive barbaric rituals. But that is silly. Barbarism knows no fashion sense. Atrocity always arrives dressed in the latest styles.

As I listen to that crowd caught up in the symbolized and abstracted warfare of a football game, I could easily equate that sound to the cheers that greeted Adolph Hitler's call for war. From there it is a short leap to imagine the same crowds cheering as Newt Gingrich, or Mitt Romney, or Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachman all call for endless war across the face of the globe, reveling in the blood lust and hoping, like the Skull Island witch doctor, to hold away over the people with images of blood and horror just as the Roman Emperors did.

Can you not see it? Can you not see the almost universal love and worship of death inherent in the present US political system? Obama says all options are on the table with regard to Iran. All options, that is, except for peace.

As our roads crumble, and our schools close, and our quality of life collapses, still the attention of the nation's leaders remains focused on war and killing. They love it, They are entranced by it. They glory in it. Death excites them, and the more horrible it is, the more orgasmic they are to contemplate it! No amount of other people's money is too great to spend, nor any number of other people's children too many to sacrifice. There is nothing but greed in our leaders' domestic policy; their hearts are in their weapons! Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia; on and on and on, without pause, without satiation. In their minds they are gods incarnate, able to bring death to whole cities with the flick of a finger.

Throughout history, no death cult has ever survived. Some flame out very quickly, like Jonestown. Others, like the Nazis, or Pol Pot, take a bit longer to commit sociological suicide. Rome lasted longest of all. But eventually they all fell and as they neared their end, the devotion to the cult of death become ever more fanatical; the thirst for other peoples' blood unquenchable. There is the warning we must heed if we are to turn aside from the current cult of death and the priests and priestesses who rule it.

The United States is not a nation comfortable in the 21st Century. Our rulers yearn for the easy days of the 1950s and the height of the cold war when America were conditioned to wet themselves upon hearing the word "Commie", then hurl their money at the Cult of Death, and their babies onto the enemies' bayonets. Worse, our leaders long for the world of the middle ages, before the Magna Carta made torture illegal. Our leaders long for Skull Island, where they can offer up your children as a living blood sacrifice to their Cult of Death with your obedient approval and worship.

We are on the wrong path.

There is, of course, one candidate who is not caught up in the cult of death. A certain doctor who spent 30 years of his life bringing new babies into the world, and by those very actions, demonstrably a man who reveres and worships life. The American Cult of Death hate that man, of course, because the first rule of any death cult is that like all cults it must appear to be the only possible way of life. There can be no alternative view of the world, no safe refuge where one can escape the blood rages.

When people ask me why I still want Ron Paul as President it comes down to a very simple explanation. Ron Paul is the only candidate out there who embraces and celebrates life, while all the others are priests and priestesses of the American Cult of Death, ready to extend their thumbs over the sand of the Colosseum, and whose stated intentions are to end life, everywhere they can.

Sicily Pitchfork Movement in Revolt – Western Media Blackout

2012-01-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

Sicily Was Under Complete Blockade by Pitchfork Movement... Triggered by 40% Gas Tax Hike

Could Sicily Provide the World with a Mass Revolt Template?

On January 16th, middle class Sicilians began a popular uprising appropriately called the ‘Pitchfork Movement’…’Movimento Dei Forconi’.

There are shades of the Occupy movement within it, but the core is not dissatisfied unemployed youth with no property or businesses to lose.

They are middle aged and older. They know that what they have left has been targeted by their own elites to bear the economic pain.

The other difference is size. Sicily’s five million people, their grass roots people, have occupied themselves.
So of course the story caught my eye and I then checked the mainstream media sites to look at what I was sure to be some great video. Wrong! So far, there is almost nothing.

I went back to check my date…and yes it started on the 16th and took two days to shut the island down, nothing going in or out. That was almost two weeks ago and I just learned today, and I can assure you I am not a hermit.

Can you image the Occupy Wall street people having shut Manhattan down of two weeks with no European coverage? Sure, it’s Sicily and not Manhattan…but it’s big, 25,000 sq km. That is what I used the space station feature photo.

What could corporate media possibly be afraid of? Well grab your seats, and here it is:

Sicily is Rising
The arrest of all corrupt politicians
Reduction in the number of Parliamentarians
Removal of the provincial bureaucracy (local crooks), as most of these politicians have been there for over forty years
Drastic cuts in the salaries and privileges of Parliamentarians and Senators
Restricting politicians to only two terms in office

Now there are some radical ideas. They must have come from some Anarchist Aliens that landed in Sicily during the night. Or…it sounds like we all have a common problem, that requires a common solution, which requires that we might want to start working together. That sounds like another radical idea, but Veterans Today would be happy to over a platform for such an exchange.

Here is one YouTube video that I found with only a whopping 47 views. Now that’s what I call getting the word out. I mean, really…is Sicily on everybody’s hate list or something? Did they do something REALLY bad? Maybe I am a hermit and just don’t know it. You might need to turn me in to Gordon!!

YouTube - Veterans Today -

From Neil’s blog last week:

Grass Roots Revolt
Today is the third day of protest in Sicily. The island is almost paralyzed.In the island are protesting truckers, farmers, fishermen, craftsmen associations and merchants.

Students are organizing demonstrations in solidarity, occupying roads and harbours. In Gela they close the entrance to the refinery, threatening the port operations.

Hundreds of trucks are at Villa San Giovanni harbour trying to ship to the big island with tons of goods (fruit vegetables and dairy supplies) will soon putrefy because the trucks cannot reach the shores of Sicily island. This stop is having a price on Sicily in terms of loss in their economy.

The stocks of fuel are scarce and in many areas of the island are over, same for food, with empty shelves in supermarkets and some smaller business are already closed. People are starting to fear the food that comes from the black market. Truck inventory is escorted by the police.

Sicilian Middle Class Takes to the Streets
The protest against increases in fuel (40% taxes on top of the basic price) and road toll, but this is just the top of the iceberg. The leaders of the movement speak of “a cry of despair and revolt of the workers on the island.”
This is not an usual mobilization that gathers social sectors and political groups that have little in common: waving separatist flags next to the Forza Nuova (extreme right wing movement).
The risk of exploitation is as always very high. Even more in a region like Sicily, perhaps the one that most supported the center-right government led by Berlusconi, who has led the country to bankrupt.
Many people believe that fascists and mafia are behind and within the movement. There are those who ask the promoters of the protest to distance themselves from people linked to the crime who are seizing the moment to join the protest as victims to have a sort of control.
Prosecutors in Palermo confirmed the possibility of such suspicious, but it is unknown whether there are already ongoing investigations.

Hamadi Jebali - Tunisia's First Elected Prime Minister

As Veterans Today has been stating over and over, if the good folks want to take on the deeply entrenched elite mafias, they have to set aside their petty differences that historically absorb 95% of their political activism energies.
They have to save the home front or they are going to have nothing to fight over other than working for the mobsters to hunt down those who still have something to steal.
Yesterday I listened to a wonderful Al Jazeera interview with Tunisia’s new Prime Minister, Hamadi Jebali.
The big question asked was how had the moderate Islamists, his party, and the secular Tunisian new leaders been able to work together so well, so far, despite their ‘issues’.

Jebali answered instantly, ‘We just set all that aside…we knew we had to concentrate on the economic problems because the voters are going to hold us responsible if they are not fixed as soon as possible’….which was a very good answer.

Both sides knew that if things were still in the big mess they are now, that with the elections one year out their butts would be out on the street. They expect to be held accountable.

Ronald Reagan

Maybe these new emerging democracies can teach us older ones some things we may have forgotten, or hidden away. We need to wise up and get these economic issues dealt with or none of the others are going to matter in the end anyway. They had to get rid of the blood suckers first to even begin the job.
We have some mega blood suckers sitting on the $4.5 trillion that Ronald Reagan and Lee Wanta wanted to rebuild America.
We have 15,000 reads on our Saturday night column but the media trucks are not parked outside my house yet. I suspect they may be waiting to see if the people even care.

Militarized Drills Continue: Stadiums Prepped to Be Used as Martial Law Staging Centers

2012-01-31T14:18:00.000-08:00

Shepard Ambellas & Avalon | Stadiums have and will be used as FEMA camps and staging centers for future martial The Intel Hub

Shepard Ambellas ; Avalon

Los Angeles — By now you may have heard of the many FEMA camps located throughout the United States which will serve as holding centers for US citizens during times of civil unrest.
The camps are no conspiracy theory and they happen to be popping up at a rapid rate in the Continental United States (CONUS). In fact, Infowars recently reported on a new detention hub located at the Los Angeles Airport (LAX).

But what about the fact that every stadium is a FEMA camp hiding in plain sight, stagnantly awaiting its grim use one day in the near future? (Think New Orleans Super Dome)

The roots of this diabolic agenda trace back to the Reagan/Oliver north era and the REX84 Program.
However, modern-day Congress is still approving these camps under the guise of terror provisions set forth by the staged attacks of 9/11 and USA PATRIOT Act which was signed into law by Bush in 2001 but created years before to be implemented after the Oklahoma City Bombing, which, to this day, has been covered up by corrupt FBI and Southern Poverty Law Center operatives.

Photo: Wikicommons — Dodgers Stadium

Yesterday, an urban warfare drill conducted over downtown Los Angeles had area residents shaken up as 4 black OH-6 “Little Birds” and one “Blackhawk” helicopter with military personal aboard, invaded the city of angels, with more drills set for today.
Sadly these military maneuvers by special operations forces of the US military are now nearly commonplace in the CONUS.
Helicopters hovered for a while over the US Bank building, made a drop at a park, and flew over the Lakers Stadium while a game was in progress.
The operational forces used the Dodgers Stadium as a staging point (mock FEMA Camp) to base the training session out of.
Stadiums have and will be used as FEMA camps during martial law type situations during future civil unrest and or economic collapse.
Hurricane Katrina was a prime example of how law enforcement and military work together during times of martial law to set up FEMA camps in sports stadiums as well as take part in large scale, illegal gun confiscation.

One curious aspect of the ‘Exercise’ is the involvement of the AON Tower. As recently mentioned in the New York Times in the January 11th Edition, AON is leaving the United States.

Aon’s main corporate offices are located in Australia which begs the question, “Could Larry Silverstein have been involved with Aon in the WTC purchase and subsequent Destruction and Insurance Payoff of $7,000,000,000.00?“.
An April 2004 CNN article reads;

Larry Silverstein signed the lease just six weeks before the WTC’s twin towers were brought to the ground by terrorists in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Silverstein contended that the two jetliners crashing into the twin towers about 15 minutes apart should be considered two separate events, which would allow him to collect the maximum from the insurers for each tower, as much as $7 billion.

After all, this line of possible affiliation is logical given that Aon is an Insurance Company who would have benefited from such a covert secret government operation.
In fact, Chicago is Aon’s corporate headquarters in the United States and was designated the WTC of Chicago. Is there a possibility that a False-Flag Operation and subsequent rescue operation is being practiced ‘right-in-plain-sight’?
Is there the possibility that a Nuclear Event might be planned for Chicago – Obamas Hometown and now the preplanning stages for Martial Law Implementations by Rham Emanuel and the G8 Summit?
Is this conspiracy theory or are we witnessing the planning stages of a False-Flag Event that could bring about Martial Law – the result of Domestic Terrorism?

If you think about it, most major cities are equipped with enough stadiums to hold a good chunk of dissident citizens.

Footnote: Aon has connections to Larry Silverstein
As reported by Bloomberg;

Aon Corp. has been hired to find coverage for developer Larry Silverstein’s construction of a new skyscraper on the site of New York’s World Trade Center. Chicago-based Aon will arrange construction, liability and worker’s compensation insurance for the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, the company and Silverstein said in a statement Tuesday. Silverstein, who fought a three-year legal battle with 24 insurers who covered the twin towers that were destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is returning to the insurance market to cover the first of five high-rises he plans for Ground Zero.

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War for Total Control by Adrian Salbuchi

2012-01-31T13:41:00.000-08:00

New Dawn Magazine - via globalresearch.ca

I am a layman so I won't delve into the technicalities of today's information technologies because others are far more qualified to do that, but I can tell you this: all these technologies are not as innocent as they would have us believe: i.e., so "innocent" that 5, 6 or 7 year olds can be set loose to play with video games and the Internet as if they were mere toys. Not so! These technologies must be approached with at least as much caution, prevention and awe as we do when we drive our car, knowing that just as it can safely take as wherever we want to go, if we thoughtlessly rev the engine up to 250 kmph, it can also get us and others killed.

Similarly, this two-edged sword can serve to vanquish the Global Power Elite by making us aware of their intentions and their terrible medium and long-term consequences, or it can serve them to cut our throats. In fact, this Janus-headed monster lies equidistant between them and us. Objectively, either they win and we lose, which means the world will be run by machines that they control or, we use these technologies to rally the overwhelming power of We the People, to annihilate the Global Power Elite. Where does the difference lie? In our awareness.

The Global Power Elite know full well what they are doing whilst most people don't, and they will do everything in their power to keep it that way. Here, then, are two global armies pitted against each other. "In this corner..." a tiny but extremely powerful elite controlling a huge machine to their benefit and our enslavement. "In that corner...", gigantic masses of mostly unaware people using that same machine but without understanding it, nor realising what it's really being used for.

It is today so embedded into society that, increasingly, every aspect of our lives are controlled by it: whether it be work done on the Internet, Intranets, E-Trade, managing your bank account, reserving your next flight and printing your boarding pass, doing research and fact-finding, or just plain entertainment and whiling the time away. It's a coin of which we are systematically shown only the "heads" side, i.e., all the benefits, magic, comfort and advantages of being hooked-in and on-line. "Life is so much easier now..." However, we're not shown the "tail" side that poses a dark and lurking danger: Total Control. The Info Cybersphere represents a super-structure for total control against which individuals can do little to escape from, unless awareness dawns on them.

The key weapon wielded against all peoples in every country is PsyWar – Psychological Warfare – that has successfully: (a) incorporated two, maybe three billion people into the IT Cybersphere allowing growing partial/total control over them, and (b) persuaded billions of people to willingly accept this. The rest of Mankind – the other 3 or 4 billion are "useless eaters" as David Rockefeller once called them – just don't count because they're too abjectly poor and are not part of any "market"; there's literally nothing the Corporate Overworld can sell to them. Thus, they are implicitly earmarked for controlled extermination over the next generation through war, disease, starvation, urban violence, environmental contamination, artificially induced "natural" disasters, or by just plain letting them waste away.

A quick look at some of the technological wonders they have in store for us might better illustrate this:

WATCH WHAT YOU SAY... AND DO... (AND THINK..!)

"Romas/COIN" is a super hi-tech military civilian mass surveillance and data gathering project supported by US private defense contractors (Northrop Gruman, notably), think tanks, and the US military and civilian intelligence community, with electronic capabilities to monitor and analyse millions and millions of conversations, sort key data and then re-build it to reflect specific behaviour patterns amongst individuals and groups of people, which enables projecting their future plans, whereabouts, goals and actions. This will make "preventive war" and "preventive arrests" that much easier. For now, much of this mass surveillance and data mining targets Arab speaking peoples, not just in the Middle East/North Africa but the world over, which ties in nicely with the endless "global war on terrorism."

This represents a quantum leap by the Global Power Elite in that until recently such global hi-tech spying was only done by the National Security Agency, CIA, FBI, MI6 or Mossad (which can always be demonised as modern Gestapo-like entities); now however, we have "friendly" household names like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Pixar/Disney, PointAbout, doing all the spying for the Elite. This private corporate network is part of the invisible noose we are putting around our necks.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU...

Countries one normally believes are bastions of liberty and freedom – the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand – are prime examples of mass surveillance. Take a stroll through London and a vast and ubiquitous network of several million CCTV cameras will be watching your every move 24/7 in airports, underground and railway stations, street crossings, stores, bus stops, shopping malls, motorways, parks, bridges, condos, public buildings, private offices, utilities, public toilets, toll booths... Wherever you are in London, someone is watching you... very closely.

Naturally, all this is done in the name of "national security" which has become a smokescreen for the political and corporate elites' perception that growing public awareness does pose a real threat to their interests.

In Australia Big Brother is hard at work, not surprising since Australia responded to September 11 with extraordinary law-making. In the ensuing decade, Australia's Federal Parliament enacted 54 pieces of anti-terrorism legislation; 48 of which were passed under the Howard government, an average of one new anti-terrorism law every seven weeks.

The numbers are striking: Canadian Professor Kent Roach found that "Australia has exceeded the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada in the sheer number of new anti-terrorism laws it has enacted since September 11, 2001. Australia's hyper-legislation strained the ability of the parliamentary opposition and civil society to keep up, let alone provide effective opposition to, the relentless legislative output." All brought to you by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Australia's legislation includes the Telecommunications Interception and Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Act, and the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 that strengthens and increases ASIO's powers to conduct offshore surveillance and reach such organisations as WikiLeaks, targeting anyone campaigning on political and social issues.

"WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE..."

New technologies may also soon make fingerprints a thing of the past. Vein recognition represents a far more precise method to identify you than traditional fingerprint scanners because of its low .001% false acceptance rate. Using light to penetrate a users' finger to read vein patterns which are unique and thought to be impossible to replicate, this method is fully fool proof as vein structures change after death, which means severed fingers cannot be used to fool the readers.

Then there's face recognition where Toshiba recently unveiled a new range of LED-backlit televisions for 2011 including the model WL800A that uses facial recognition. Next time you're surfing the Internet or speaking on Skype, hmmm... "we know who you are, where you are and what you're doing..."

LOST & FOUND: "M'AM: WE FOUND YOUR MISSING HUSBAND'S BLACK BOX..."

Microchip Implants for personal tracking and ID are getting smaller and smaller, and ever more injectable without you ever even realising it. Next time an Avian or Swine Flu "crisis" breaks, don't let yourself be coaxed into mass vaccinating your family. Michael G Michael (University of Wollongong's School of Information Systems and Technology, Australia), has coined the term "uberveillance" to describe the emerging trend of all-encompassing surveillance, explaining that "Uberveillance is not on the outside looking down, but on the inside looking out through a microchip that is embedded in our bodies."

The US's private hi-tech company VeriChip widely markets implantable nano-chips which store a 16-digit unique ID number on humans "for medical and security purposes, focusing on high-risk patients and the need to identify them and their medical records in an emergency." To allay any fears they also explain they do not know when or if someone will develop an implantable microchip with GPS technology, but that "it is not an application we are pursuing." Michael explains that such implantable chips will become like a "black box that will then be a witness to our actual movements, words – perhaps even our thoughts – and play a similar role to the black box placed in an aircraft." He also predicts microchip implants and their infrastructure could eliminate the need for e-passports, e-tags, and secure ID cards, adding that "microchipping... will eventually become compulsory in the context of identification within the frame of national security." For now, your mobile phone acts as a passive transponder for radio frequency identification (RFID) readers.

WATCH THE BIRDIE...

Not surprisingly, military applications are where trillions of ultra-hi-tech dollars are going. We now have drones as tiny as bugs. In a recent piece published in The New York Times2 we learn that the US military's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio runs a flight lab dubbed a "microaviary" where drones designed to replicate flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other creatures are being developed. "'We're looking at how you can hide in plain sight' said Greg Parker, an Aerospace engineer, as he held up a mechanical hawk that in the future might carry out espionage." Today, the Pentagon has some 7,000 aerial drones explained Ashton B Carter, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer and a member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

drone

"In February 2011, researchers unveiled a hummingbird drone built by the firm AeroVironment for the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which can fly at 11 mph and perch on a windowsill... one of the smallest drones in use on the battlefield is the three foot long Raven which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill."

Then we have new "Gorgon Stare" technology that can capture live videos of an entire city, but requires 2,000 analysts to process the data feeds from a single drone compared with 19 analysts per drone today. We can also expect massive growth of armies of military surveillance analysts representing "wonderful new job careers in national defense."

A NATION OF COWARDS

That same New York Times piece goes on to say, "within the military, no one disputes that drones save American lives. Many see them as advanced versions of 'stand-off weapons systems', like tanks or bombs dropped from aircraft, that the US has used for decades. 'There's a kind of nostalgia for the way wars used to be,' said Deane-Peter Baker, an ethics professor at the US Naval Academy, referring to noble notions of knight-on-knight conflict. Drones are part of a post-heroic age, he said, and in his view, it is not always a problem if they lower the threshold for war... Military ethicists concede that drones can turn war into a video game, inflict civilian casualties and with no Americans directly at risk, and thus more easily draw the US into conflicts."

This ties in with the Powell Doctrine, drafted by Gen. Colin Powell (CFR) after the First Gulf War which states, amongst other concepts, that the US should only engage in military conflict where it's overwhelming military clout guarantees complete victory over carefully chosen weaker enemies. That explains why the US (and its staunch ally Britain) will unilaterally attack Afghanistan and Iraq, but not China or Russia; or why the US (and NATO) imposed "regime change" on Libya but not on North Korea (so intimate with China) or Iran (so close to Russia). This explains why America's "heroic exploits" included invading tiny Grenada under the Reagan Administration in 1984, and unarmed Panama under Bush Senior in 1991, as well as its unflinching support of nuclear-armed-to-the-teeth Israel against rock-throwing Palestinians.

Clearly, a more overt "doctrine" of abject and shameless cowardice has yet to be advanced by any nation. There, no doubt, lie the seeds of America's coming demise and that of its key allies: they have become greedy and corrupt nations governed by cowardly rulers.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

Whatever happens from now on, Planet Earth depends on how large a portion of the two or three billion "lucky ones" who have voluntarily integrated themselves into the Cybersphere through PC's, laptops, blackberries, websites, cell phones, etc., become aware of the grave dangers facing us all. How fast they begin taking defensive measures from inside the Cybersphere, especially by identifying and taking advantage of its myriad weak points.

As a friend once said, "if globalisation can be compared to a balloon, then you only need the microscopic point of a sharp pin to blow it up..." Each of us must become such a "microscopic pin."

As I write, the surveillance and control infrastructure can read this article, plot my location from their satellites using the cell phone in my pocket as a GPS transponder, spy on what I read, write and navigate on my laptop, and God knows what more.

Since 20 years or so, the National Security Agency's Echelon Project can spy on our phones and emails, targeting specific words used in billions upon billions of messages and texts – "bomb," "attack," "Islam," "Muslim," "nuclear," "chemical," and "biological" are just some of the words and sequences Echelon can snoop into (they're probably doing this right now as I write and as you read!). Whatever it is they can do today surely exceeds our wildest imagination.

This is no longer just the "national intelligence infrastructure" spanning the CIA, FBI, FEMA, Homeland Security, DARPA, Army, Navy and Air Force Intelligence, and their counterparts in other countries. This now spans private corporations that gather data, organise it, seek and find specific patterns (behaviours, contacts, interests, intents, geographies and infinite others) through which they hope to eventually exert their long-sought dream of total control over populations forming part of their Global System (the rest are as good as dead).

Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and a vast array of intelligence, security, IT, data gathering companies are all linking into increasingly large networks that pool data, findings and capabilities into complex arrays of self-sustaining and evolving structures, that lie outside the visual scope even of governments, for the simple reason that governments cannot even begin to fathom those capabilities, powers and future projections.

Does anybody really believe that Barack Obama, David Cameron, the senators, representatives and MP's of the US or UK governments have a real clue as to what the NSA, together with Google, together with Boeing, together with Northrop, together with Halliburton, together with Apple, together with Mossad, MI6 and CIA front companies, together with key universities and think tanks, together with.... are really developing?

Can Congress or Parliament enact more laws to "control" something they themselves cannot understand and, even if they were to enact limiting legislation, by then technology will have evolved even further, easily wiggling its way out of any such laws.

WHO'S IN CHARGE?

That brings us to the key question: who's in charge? Who really runs Australia, Britain, France and Germany? Japan, India and Brazil? The US and Canada? Argentina and South Africa? Even Israel??

We see "elected leaders" accessing top government posts using 19th century "democratic" voting mechanisms, that are all controlled by a highly complex 21st century technocratic Over-world, embedded inside the US, UK, EU and most every other country. It operates from inside these countries – even using the military might of the US and NATO countries – but in no way does it heed, support or respond to the interests of these peoples. Was it really the US, Britain and France that invaded and destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya? Or is it something far more elusive and powerful embedded inside them but controlled from way above today's completely outdated, eroded, fatally weakened and – at this rate – soon to disappear "sovereign Nation-State"?

It's high time we make the necessary quantum leaps that will allow us to start joining the dots. We need to move away from silo mentality paradigms, and towards a much more holistic Weltanschauung. We have become too "specialised," which leads to narrow-mindedness. We talk about finance but never join the dots on its geopolitical overtones. We talk about politics but are blind to underlying social forces. We think Hollywood is only about "entertainment," not realising how they implant ideas and behaviour patterns into our collective psyche.

Information and data overdrive generate confusion, as we become overwhelmed by trillions of bits of data that swamp our brains every day, hour, minute and second. A healthy tip: take your proper distance and perspective so that we all start to see the big picture. Only then can we move down to the finer detail, because the forest is far, far more important than the tree... at least in this stage where we all need to come to grips with a question that should be growing louder and louder in your mind no matter where you live or who you are: what on Earth is going on!?

We had better find the answers quickly because we are fast coming to a fork of world historic proportions on the road of human destiny. We either climb up the high road leading to human evolution which will necessarily entail the painful but necessary destruction of the Global Power Elite and all who support, consolidate, empower and fuel its growth, or... we slip down the low road into a dark abyss of death, destruction, mass hypnosis and the end of the human spirit; a vision pretty close to what men throughout the ages have described as Hell...

What road will you take? We can still make the right decision. There is not, however, much time left.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28956

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30 Blocks Of Squalor – Chicken Or The Egg?

2012-01-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

SQUALOR or GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS?

theburningplatform.com

Well it’s been many months since my last 30 Blocks of Squalor article. The last article detailing my commute through the beautiful streets of West Philly was Mantua Square – Your Own Block of Squalor. The Schuykill Expressway has been good to me, until last Wednesday. A three car accident forced me to deviate my trek to my old friend, the 30 Blocks of Squalor. My normal route still takes me through the bleakest parts of West Philly, but I go through at such an early time the thugs and murderers are still asleep after a hard night of killing, raping and pillaging. I had been observing a number of things in my daily trip through West Philly over the last few months that I want to get off my chest. For any new readers, I’ve included a library of links to previous 30 Blocks posts. I didn’t realize how many Squalor posts I had made. Some may find them offensive. I admit that they push the envelope and may possibly step over the line of good taste, but if you can’t take a joke then you shouldn’t be on TBP. I think they are funny and questioning of those who caused the squalor. I always have more questions than answers when discussing the 30 Blocks of Squalor.
Observations have been piling up in my brain over the last six months of trekking around lovely West Philly. Philadelphia is descending into chaos. Decades of Democratic rule have created a mini welfare/warfare state. There have been 32 murders committed in 27 days. When you enter the city limits you are greeted by this sign.

Just kidding. Every day I drive through the Mantua section of West Philly. Before the 1940’s, Mantua was mainly a white Lutheran neighborhood. But over time African Americans families moved into the area. The early to mid 1960’s, the residents began to see the start of gang warfare. Between 1960 and 1969, Mantua recorded about 10 percent of total city gang killings. The Philadelphia Police Department often assigned patrols in Mantua simply as punishments to officers. Over a decade, six major gangs called the 10.5 block their territory. During the 1980’s there was a ride of drug-related crimes. It’s seen in many industrialized cities during that time period. Many residents started to flee after crack-cocaine and the existing heroin hit the area. The number of residents went from 19,000 in the 1960’s to around 6,000 by the 90’s. There were several hundred vacant lots all along the streets. The stores that were in Mantua during the 1950’s like galleries and movie theaters were replaced by grab-and-go beer stores and delis.
A couple pizza joints, a couple corner bars and a couple delis constitute all the commerce in Mantua. The Census data shows that blacks make up in excess of 90% of the population, but all of the businesses are run by whites or asians. They are murdered on a regular basis by black criminals. The areas closest to Drexel University and the University of Penn have been rejuvenated by people willing to invest capital, renovate old houses, and rent them out to students. This is free market capitalism at its finest. These areas are patrolled by the private police forces from Drexel and Penn. It’s a thriving community.

But, just three blocks above these areas looks like a war zone. Dilapidated falling down hovels dominate every block. There appear to be more vacant house than occupied houses. The word squalor doesn’t properly capture the bleak nature of this neighborhood. When I drive down 37th street on my way home every night I get an eerie feeling. There are dozens of row homes on this block. There are cars parked in front of them. But, it is dark outside and it looks like only one out of ten houses has a light on inside. There are very few people walking around. I’m left wondering whether 90% of the houses are vacant or whether people are living in these houses without electricity. It is truly a depressing sight.

In the midst of this squalor is an oasis of apparent luxury. Encompassing an entire block between 35th and 36th at Wallace St. is a beautiful complex of 110 townhomes built in the last year. Below is a picture of the grand opening of this development.

How and why this was built in a neigborhood where the average home value is $25,000, more than a quarter of the existing hovels are vacant, the average household income is less than $16,000, the true unemployment rate is above 50%, and crime is rampant, would be logical questions by someone with an ounce of critical thinking skills. When you find out the project cost $27 million ($245,000 per house) to build, you ask yourself what businessman in his right mind would do such a thing. Well don’t worry. A businessman didn’t build this oasis amidst squalor. Your government did, with your tax dollars (or your unborn children’s dollars or Chinese borrowed dollars). That’s right – the Obama stimulus plan, along with HUD money, built this monument to government waste, stupidity and entitlement. It’s a low income housing development. The rest of the surrounding neighborhood looks like this:

I’m still trying to figure out the stimulus aspect of this $27 million taxpayer funded boondoggle. The project was built by union construction workers at a cost per square foot of approximately $200. The houses in the neighborhood are worth approximately $25 per square foot. The government included 8 stores within the project. They all face towards the Morton McMichael Middle School, that looks like a prison, with bars and cages over every window in the building. A full 20% of the students are proficient in math at this fine public school. And the dropout rate is only 50%.

Back in July when I first wrote about Mantua Square, I wondered about the government building 8 store fronts when there was no demand for new stores in this neighborhood. Business owners start businesses if they think they can make profits. With average household income below $16,000 and rampant criminality in the neighborhood, I wondered who would open a business here. Well, it is now seven months later and the 8 stores remain vacant. It appears that government’s plan of “Build it and they will come” has failed. I’m shocked I tell you.
I’ve been observing the goings on around this development as I drive by every morning. What we have are poor black people living in heavily government subsidized homes and paying little to no rent. Pennsylvania also provides grants to poor people for utilities, so they are paying little to nothing for heat and light. These people are surely part of the 46 million on food stamps. Many are receiving Social Security disability payments and are being supported by various other welfare programs. As I drive by at 7:30 am every morning there is no hustle and bustle from these townhomes. No one is rushing out the door to get to work. It almost appears to be a ghost town, but I know there are people living there because on trash day there are bags and bags of trash piled by the curb. They evidently can’t afford trash cans. Why leave the comfort of a government provided townhome and look for a job? There is absolutely no incentive to work when you can do nothing and have the state take care of you.
Of course, an inquiring mind wonders why there are Cadillacs, Minivans, and a multitude of other newer model cars surrounding this low income housing estate. The inner courtyard is only accessible through an electronic fence. In the last week I’ve witnessed a Mercedes covertible and a Cadillac Escalade SUV exiting this ”low income” estate through the gated driveway. As I cruise by in my Honda Insight to my job, after a 30 mile commute, I know where the 4% taken from my paycheck by the City of Philadelphia has gone.
In my mind this is an example of government gone wild. It is clear why Philadelphia has 26% less population today than it did in 1950. After 60 years of Democratic Party rule, the city is a shambles. The productive hard working people left as the liberal do-gooders took their hard earned money and redistributed to the unproductive people. This created a culture of entitlement and lack of individual responsibility among those remaining in West Philly and many other sections of Philadelphia. In a society where you succeeded or failed based upon your own efforts and actions, people are motivated to succeed. Failure would mean a hard life of not being able to afford the basics of life like a house, food, TVs, cell phones, etc. Studying hard in school, getting married, working at a job, and raising a family is how you slowly but surely get ahead in life. By providing the poor with housing, food, education, cable TV, and not making them accountable for having children out of wedlock, the government has created an intolerable fiscal and social situation. West Philly is now inhabited by a class of people incapable of functioning like normal human beings. Most of the children are born out of wedlock. 50% of the kids drop out of school. The unemployment rate is 50%. Only 20% of the households are occupied by married people. Philadelphia is broke. Pennsylvania is broke. The United States is broke. When the money stops flowing to the ignorant entitled masses of West Philly all hell will break loose. It is not a question of whether this will happen, but when.
Philadelphia had 2.1 million people in 1950. Today, they have 1.5 million people. The government solution to problems caused by government solutions is to raise taxes. Eventually you reach a tipping point. There are very few productive people left in Phila to shake down. The Mantua Square low income housing development is less than one year old. The little plots of grass in front of their homes are already littered with trash and beer bottles. As the neighborhood around this taxpayer paid for oasis continues to spiral downward, they will need to put bars on the windows and electrify the fence. The hoards will be looking to ransack and pillage the only thing they haven’t destroyed yet. I think a new government program paid for with your taxes is needed to rectify this situation. Don’t you?

30 BLOCKS OF SQUALOR LIBRARY

'US DU weapons: high kill, low cost'

2012-01-31T12:54:00.000-08:00

An interview with Lawrence Davidson, professor at West Chester University

video at source... (Article Title)

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Depleted uranium is radioactive and extremely destructive to humans - with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In other words, it takes 4.5 billion years for one kilogram of depleted uranium to reduce to a half a kilogram - the US has forever contaminated the Middle East."

A prominent professor says that despite the deadly effects of depleted uranium on humans, the US has chosen to use this weapon because of its low manufacturing costs.

Numerous UN human rights commissions have prohibited the use of depleted uranium on humans - including during military conflicts - because it causes congenital deformities and cancers.

However, the US government has notoriously used weaponized depleted uranium on humans, including: 340 tons during the first [Persian] Gulf war in 1991; every missile used during the 1998 Yugoslavian invasion; at least 1,000 tons in Afghanistan in 2001; and 2,400 tons in Iraq in 2003.

Depleted uranium is radioactive and extremely destructive to humans - with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In other words, it takes 4.5 billion years for one kilogram of depleted uranium to reduce to a half a kilogram - the US has forever contaminated the Middle East.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Lawrence Davidson, professor at West Chester University, to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why such a move by the US in using depleted uranium?

Davidson: It's cheap. It's cheap and plentiful. Depleted uranium is a by-product of uranium enrichment after a certain percent.

So, it's stockpiled not only here in the United States but in other places where this process goes on like in Russia and China, and what have you. So you've got it there.

It has certain qualities that lends it to military use, for instance the projectiles that you can make out of this depleted uranium have a very high density. And when you fire it from a canon or a machine gun or an airplane, its penetrating capacity is very great.

And then you can design the projectile so that upon penetration it disintegrates and bursts into flames. So, let's say it penetrates an armored vehicle, it sets the inside of the vehicle on fire.

And this then creates a powdery residue. And the powdery residue can be airborne and it can sit around for a very long time. And when it's disturbed it goes airborne again and you can inhale it. The typical result is if you get enough of it is fatal kidney damage.

Press TV: Mr. Davidson, you've mentioned a couple of points, you said [these are] stockpiled by Russia and China. What about some reports of these weapons used by US led forced also affected neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran?

Davidson: Well, I think that if you certainly use it in a border area it might very well go over the border. And I don't know if they're using it in the drones.

But again, it has certain qualities that make it a favored kind of dense metal for military purposes and, therefore, it's very possible that they might be used in the drones.

Press TV: In your opinion, if used in the drones, it does affect neighboring countries?

Davidson: Well, we know the drones are used in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

But I want to say that this is used all over the place; in other words, in the two [Persian] Gulf wars, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Kosovo. It's probably being used in Chechnya and other places like that. So, you know, it's all over the place.

GMA/JR

Hundreds of slaughtered civilians isn't a "huge number" for Obama

2012-01-31T11:20:00.000-08:00

United States, Washington: US President Barack Obama participates in an interview with YouTube and Google from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, January 30, 2012. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

On Monday afternoon, Barack Obama became the first president to host a virtual town hall live on the Internet.

While that might be a feat worthy of the record books, President Obama did something else during his address that America has become accustomed to: he lied to the world.

Speaking Monday during a live web-chat hosted by Google, the president took on a series of issues submitted by the American people. Over the span of 45 minutes, President Obama addressed the Stop Online Piracy Act while refusing to side with either end of the argument, admitted to the world that he isn’t all that swell of a dancer and took a query from a professional puppeteer. In between ignoring the real issues or offering any sort of solid solution to the nation’s biggest problems, the president did put something rather important out for the world to ponder: America’s ongoing drone missions aren’t really all that bad.

If you ask anyone outside of the Oval Office — or especially America — they might tell you otherwise.

Tackling a question posed on drone strikes, President Obama defended the ongoing missions on Monday, saying they were necessary to target terrorists in a most effective manner. "For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military action than the ones we're already engaging in,” the president said on the topic of drones. While an argument could easily be made that operating drone missions in lieu of putting boots on the ground is best for the US Armed Forces, the president put a lot on the line Monday when he downplayed the result of the strikes.

Those drone attacks, carried out by unmanned aircraft controlled thousands of miles away, don’t do a lot of harm, said the president. According to Obama, drones had "not caused a huge number of civilian casualties” and he added that it’s "important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash.”

How small is that not-so huge number? If you ask anyone outside of the American intelligence community, they’ll tell you it is in the hundreds.

But what’s a few hundred civilian deaths, right?

Obama suggested that continuing the drone program would not be detrimental to the safety of foreign citizens, but studies conducted outside of the US say otherwise. Last summer, the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism argued that since America began drone strikes, at least 385 civilians had been executed in US-led attacks. Of those statistics, the Bureau added that around half of the dead were children under the age of 18.

If you don’t take the word of foreign reporter’s, even American intelligence can confirm that the “not a huge number” statistic might be a bit of an exaggeration. One senior US official speaking on condition of anonymity added to CNN last year that CIA drone strikes had taken the lives of 50 civilians in all. As drone strikes go unreported and deaths unaccounted for, the actual number, unfortunately, is probably much higher than what either the CIA or the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can come up with. In a single strike last March, 26 Pakistanis were killed during a US strike over Islamabad. Once all deaths were accounted for, it was revealed that over a dozen of the deaths in that single raid were suffered by innocent civilians.

When the Bureau of Investigative Journalism released their findings last year, they said that the number of civilians killed in US drone strikes were probably 40 percent higher than what the US was actually reporting. Between 2004 and 2011, they put the estimate of civilian deaths at a figure of 385, but added in the research that the toll could actually come close to tallying 775 casualties.

Which, if you ask President Obama, is not a huge number.

If 775 isn’t a huge number, than 56 is practically a fraction. That’s the number of children executed by US drones in the first 20 months of the Obama administration.

“Even one child death from drone missiles or suicide bombings is one child death too many,” responded Unicef to the news at the time.

In 2009 alone, almost 600 civilians were killed on the ground in Afghanistan, and the United Nations put 60 percent of that figure as a direct result of airstrikes, drone or otherwise. In Pakistan, civilians say they are terrified of the robotic planes and the damage that they have already done. “There was not a single Taliban militant in Pakistan before 9/11 but since we joined this war, we are facing acts of terrorism, bombing and drone strikes,” Movement for Justice leader Imran Khan told the press in 2011.

In Libya, where the United States never even engaged in an official war, according to Obama, American troops launched 145 drone strikes in an attempt to oust the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in a matter of months. As with most drone missions, the Department of Defense has not released any official statistics on what casualties were caused by the strikes.

Regardless of what damage a drone strike can have on enemy insurgents, experts say that the toll visited on civilians is several times that of militants. In a 2009 report from the Brookings Institute, Senior Fellow Daniel L Byman wrote that “for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.”

In Pakistan where drone strikes have become practically commonplace, civilians are terrified that they will become the next accidental target of American aircraft. Saadullah, a teenage boy who spoke with a BBC reporter last year, lost both of his legs in drone strikes. Three of his relatives, all civilians, have also been killed by American strikes. Asghar Khan, an elder in Islamabad that also spoke to BBC, said three of his relatives were also shot down in airstrikes.

"My brother, my nephew and another relative were killed by a drone in 2008," said Khan. "They were sitting with this sick man when the attack took place. There were no Taliban."

A decade after the US began so-called cooperation with Pakistani intelligence, anti-American sentiments continue to grow as do the number of casualties. "When we intervene in people's countries to chase small cells of bad guys, we end up alienating the whole country and turning them against us,” counterterrorism expert David Kilcullen tells the Brookings Institute.

Now as the US puts surveillance drones over the skies of Iraq even after that war has officially ended, yet another country is becoming concerned that drones will drop bombs on their own civilians. “We hear from time to time that drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists,” 37-year-old café owner Hisham Mohammed Salah told the New York Times just this week. “Our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext.”

Under the Pentagon’s new revised budget, the US will phase out around 100,000 military staffers while adding droves of drones to its already established arsenal of robotic planes. Will drones soon become the United States’ not-so-secret weapon and phase out its Armed Forces personnel entirely? It’s not out of the question. After all, a drone strike authorized by Obama last year led to the death of two American citizens with alleged terrorist ties.

Don’t worry, though. Obama says these things are kept on a tight leash. Who actually pulls on that is as good of a guess as anyone’s, though. In November, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the “signature” strikes that account for most of the CIA’s drone missions only end up on the desk of the president after they are carried out. The US must only inform Pakistan of those strikes, by the way, if they believe the death toll will exceed 20.

Which really isn’t that big of a number either.

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Conservatives Say Breaking the Law is Normal for Rich People at Tax Time

2012-01-31T10:52:00.000-08:00

By Sam Pizzigati via alternet.org

The rich don’t much like paying taxes when tax rates run high. They don’t much like paying taxes when tax rates run low either.

January 31, 2012 |

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Any tax system that subjects rich people to high taxes is asking for trouble. Or so the politicians who cater to people of means incessantly argue. The higher the tax rate on high incomes, the argument goes, the greater the incentive the rich have to waste time and energy figuring out ways to evade paying taxes.

“Conservatives tend to talk about noncompliance as if it were solely a function of tax rates,” as former Reagan administration policy aide Bruce Bartlett noted last week, a perspective that makes tax evasion “yet another excuse to cut taxes.”

In 2001 and then again in 2003, that convenient excuse helped the Bush White House chop away at the taxes the IRS expects rich people to pay. The tax rate on top tax-bracket income slipped from 39.6 to 35 percent, and the rates on capital gains and dividends both dropped to 15 percent, from 20 and 39.6 percent.

According to rich people-friendly right-wing ideology, these cuts should have boosted tax compliance, since, as Bartlett points out, “the return to evasion fell.”

What did happen? Tax evasion between 2001 and 2006, a new IRS study documents, actually increased. In 2001, $290 billion in individual and business taxes due went uncollected. In 2006, $385 billion.

Need some context for all these billions? The 2006 federal budget deficit red ink totaled $248 billion. If the IRS had been able to collect every dime cheating taxpayers cost Uncle Sam in 2006, the federal treasury would have ended the year $137 billion in the black.

Who’s doing all this tax cheating? Not average Americans.

Average Americans get most of their income from wages and salaries. Almost all this income faces paycheck withholding. The result: Only 1 percent of the taxes due on wages and salary, the new IRS study reports, goes uncollected.

Rich Americans, by contrast, collect huge chunks of their annual income from capital gains, business ownership, and other sources of income that face neither rigorous reporting mandates or withholding.

Tax evasion for the income category that includes capital gains and private equity partnerships, the IRS calculates, ran at an 11 percent rate in 2006, ten times the evasion rate for wages and salaries.

The new IRS report doesn’t break down the new tax evasion data by taxpayer income class. But five years ago, the last time the IRS released a major tax evasion analysis, two analysts — IRS economist Andrew Johns and the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod — went through the raw IRS data and did just that.

Americans who make between $500,000 and $1 million a year, the pair found, underreport their incomes by a whopping 21 percent, triple the 7 percent “misreport” rate of taxpayers making between $30,000 and $50,000 and well over double the 8 percent cheating by taxpayers making $50,000 to $100,000.

The new IRS tax evasion numbers cover the 2006 federal fiscal year. Has the tax evasion story improved since then? Some signs certainly do seem positive.

Earlier this month, the IRS announced that audit rates on tax returns reporting over $1 million a year in income have doubled over recent years. In 2011, 12 percent of millionaires faced audits, up from only 6 percent in 2009.

The higher audit rates, says IRS enforcement chief Steven Miller, should assure “those at the lower end of the spectrum” that “those at the higher end of the spectrum are subject to the same rules and enforcement as everyone else.”

And the IRS is toughening up elsewhere as well. The agency has created a “Global High Wealth” unit, an initiative designed “to better cope with the growing complexity of income and assets of the high-income, high-wealth population.”

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DU destroying Afghans’ gene pool’

2012-01-31T10:41:00.000-08:00

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I have seen people die without any physical signs of injuries on their bodies in Afghanistan. There were bizarre scenes of birds melting on trees.”

The United States’ use of radioactive munitions in Afghanistan has destroyed the people’s health and mutilated the genetic future of the country, Press TV reports.

Dr. Mohammad Daud Miraki, the author of Afghanistan After Democracy: The Untold Story Through Photographic Images, told Press TV’s Kabul correspondent on Monday that the US has committed horrific crimes against the people of Afghanistan.

He said the US used depleted uranium in the country and Afghan babies were being born with severe deformities.

Exposure to depleted uranium causes genetic damage, birth defects, cancer, diabetes, immune system damage, and other serious health problems.

Miraki has described this as genocide in his book, which provides an insight into the grimness of life under the US occupation.

He says that he has seen people die without any physical signs of injuries to their bodies in Afghanistan. “And then there were bizarre scenes of birds melting on trees,” he adds.

In his book, birth defects are depicted with graphic images. He said he was overwhelmed by the number of these cases.

Miraki noted that the US used a massive amount of depleted uranium weapons in late 2001.

He went on to say that US forces are still using these weapons in the country.

Miraki’s book also says that it was a lie that the war was launched to introduce democracy in Afghanistan and accuses the US of betraying the Afghan people under the pretext of democracy and reconstruction.

Corporations Have No Use for Borders

2012-01-31T10:32:00.000-08:00

AP / Carolyn Kaster

A police officer holds a tear gas launcher at the ready during a standoff with protesters at the G-20 Summit in Toronto in June 201

By Chris Hedges

via truthdig.com

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”

“My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,” she went on. “During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.”

The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration.

Our solidarity should be with activists who march on Tahrir Square in Cairo or set up encampamentos in Madrid. These are our true compatriots. The more we shed ourselves of national identity in this fight, the more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language or embrace our religious and cultural traditions, the more powerful we will become.

Those who seek to discredit this movement employ the language of nationalism and attempt to make us fearful of the other. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem. Swell with national hubris. Be vigilant of the hidden terrorist. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver, responding to the growing opposition to the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines, wrote in an open letter that “environmental and other radical groups” were trying to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” He accused pipeline opponents of receiving funding from foreign special interest groups and said that “if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.”

No matter that in both Canada and the United States suing the government to seek redress is the right of every citizen. No matter that the opposition to the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines has its roots in Canada. No matter that the effort by citizens in the U.S. and in Canada to fight climate change is about self-preservation. The minister, in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry like the energy czars in most of the other industrialized nations, seeks to pit “loyal” Canadians against “disloyal” Canadians. Those with whom we will build this movement of resistance will not in some cases be our own. They may speak Arabic, pray five times a day toward Mecca and be holding off the police thugs in the center of Cairo. Or they may be generously pierced and tattooed and speak Danish or they may be Mandarin-speaking workers battling China’s totalitarian capitalism. These are differences that make no difference.

“My country right or wrong,” G.K. Chesterton once wrote, is on the same level as “My mother, drunk or sober.”

Our most dangerous opponents, in fact, look and speak like us. They hijack familiar and comforting iconography and slogans to paint themselves as true patriots. They claim to love Jesus. But they cynically serve the function a native bureaucracy serves for any foreign colonizer. The British and the French, and earlier the Romans, were masters of this game. They recruited local quislings to carry out policies and repression that were determined in London or Paris or Rome. Popular anger was vented against these personages, and native group vied with native group in battles for scraps of influence. And when one native ruler was overthrown or, more rarely, voted out of power, these imperial machines recruited a new face. The actual centers of power did not change. The pillage continued. Global financiers are the new colonizers. They make the rules. They pull the strings. They offer the illusion of choice in our carnivals of political theater. But corporate power remains constant and unimpeded. Barack Obama serves the same role Herod did in imperial Rome.

This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement is important. It targets the center of power—global financial institutions. It deflects attention from the empty posturing in the legislative and executive offices in Washington or London or Paris. The Occupy movement reminds us that until the corporate superstructure is dismantled it does not matter which member of the native elite is elected or anointed to rule. The Canadian prime minister is as much a servant of corporate power as the American president. And replacing either will not alter corporate domination. As the corporate mechanisms of control become apparent to wider segments of the population, discontent will grow further. So will the force employed by our corporate overlords. It will be a long road for us. But we are not alone. There are struggles and brush fires everywhere. Leah Henderson is not only right. She is my compatriot.

The World As It Is:

Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress

A collection of Truthdig Columns
by Chris Hedges

Keep up with Chris Hedges’ latest columns, interviews, tour dates and more at www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges.

TAGS: barack obama bush canada chris hedges environment government health care israel keystone xl keystone xl pipeline military montreal obama occupy wall street toronto wall street

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Turkey defies US, EU ban on Iran oil

2012-01-31T10:27:00.000-08:00

Oil derricks in Iran (file photo)

Turkey has defied Western calls to ban Iranian crude imports, saying Ankara will not go along with the EU and US sanctions on Iranian oil.

A Turkish Energy Ministry spokesman said on Monday, “We are not bound by EU or US decisions.”

On Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ruled out the possibility of Ankara complying with the unilateral sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, saying Turkey is currently trying to facilitate talks between Tehran and Western nations on Iran's nuclear program.

Turkey imports a significant amount of Iranian oil for its biggest petrochemical company, Tupras, which operates four refineries with a total of 28.1 million tons of annual crude oil processing capacity.

Russia, India, and China have also criticized the West's sanctions on Iranian crude.

On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions on Iran and announced that the United States would begin penalizing other countries for importing Iranian oil or conducting transactions with the country's central bank.

European Union ministers reached an agreement on January 23 to ban oil imports from Iran, freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran within the bloc, and ban the sale of diamonds, gold, and other precious metals to Iran.

AS/MA/HGL

Have You Ever....

2012-01-31T10:20:00.000-08:00

endoftheamericandream.com

Have you ever wondered what our world is going to look like five or ten years down the road? Well, today our world is changing at a pace that is faster than ever before, and the decisions that we all make right now are going to have a dramatic affect on the years ahead. In many ways, 2012 represents a huge turning point for America. There will be a presidential election, 33 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested and every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for grabs. But the changes that are happening in America go much deeper than politics. Anger and frustration are growing to frightening levels, and we have become a deeply divided nation. Our affluence is rapidly crumbling and our national values are being transformed at a staggering pace. America is drowning in debt, addicted to entertainment and full of people that think they know it all. America is arrogant, cocky, smug, brash and full of pride. But if we continue down the road that we are currently on, we will be greatly humbled someday. It is just a matter of time.

In life, sometimes the questions are almost more important than the answers.
A good question can get you to focus on something you may not have considered before.
A good question can often get you to look at things at an entirely new angle.
Our nation is in big trouble and we desperately need to start making better decisions while there is still time.
Hopefully the questions below will cause you to do some thinking. I know that they caused me to do some thinking....

Have you ever noticed that a lot of countries are now quietly talking about paying for oil in something other than U.S. dollars?

Have you ever wondered why top officials in the government get away with so much? Right now, 36 top officials in the Obama administration owe a combined $833,000 in back taxes. How in the world can they get away with that? And why don't they pay their "fair share" before trying to convince the rest of us that we need to pay more taxes?

Have you ever wondered how it is possible that the federal government has been operating without an approved budget for over 1000 days?

Have you ever taken the time to read some of the foreclosure horror stories that are out there on the Internet? Some of them are absolutely nightmarish. It kind of makes you wonder why anyone would ever want to buy a house.

Have you ever wondered why so many Tea Party Republicans are voting for Newt Gingrich? Considering the fact that he endorsed Obamacare a few years ago and considering the fact that he has been promoting individual health care mandates for years, it is amazing that any Republican is willing to vote for the guy.
Have you ever wondered why so many Tea Party Republicans are voting for Mitt Romney? When he was governor of Massachusetts, he created Romneycare (which is what the plan for Obamacare was based upon) and he appointed large numbers of radical leftists to the judiciary in Massachusetts.

Have you ever wondered why Wall Street is pouring such a massive amount of money into Mitt Romney's campaign?

Have you ever noticed that the EU seems to hold a lot of "summits" but that nothing actually ever seems to get accomplished?

Have you ever noticed how almost everyone in America is scared to death of getting sued? No wonder people dislike lawyers so much.

Have you ever wondered why the Department of Homeland Security is so obsessed with monitoring Twitter?
Have you ever noticed that many major U.S. cities have become very unpleasant places in which to live?
Have you ever wondered why we didn't build wider roads? Most of our cities are terribly congested. Each year, a total of approximately 4.8 billion hours are wasted on the roads of America due to traffic congestion.
Have you ever why so many Americans are constantly doped up on prescription drugs? The percentage of Americans that say that they have taken two or more prescription drugs within the last month has risen to 31 percent, and the percentage of Americans that say that they have taken five or more prescription drugs within the last month has risen to 11 percent.

Have you ever noticed that the term "perfect storm" is being used a lot more frequently these days?
Have you ever noticed that virtually nobody in Washington D.C. is much concerned about China's rapidly rising military strength?

Have you ever noticed that even European newspapers admit that Barack Obama is trying to turn the United States into a European-style socialist welfare state?

Have you ever noticed that the mainstream media avoids certain stories almost completely? For example, a judge in Massachusetts recently ordered a 32-year-old pregnant woman to undergo a forced abortion and also ordered her to be sterilized. The mainstream media ignored the story almost entirely. Fortunately that decision was later reversed, but it is kind of frightening that a story like that did not make more national headlines.
Have you ever noticed that the FDA spends a massive amount of time and resources persecuting those that promote natural cures? For example, the FDA recently sent in U.S. marshals to raid one company that was selling elderberry juice concentrate.

Have you ever wondered why information about natural substances that have been shown to fight cancer is suppressed in the United States?

Have you ever wondered who makes all that cheap plastic crap from China that fills our store shelves? It turns out that working conditions are so nightmarish in many of those factories that many of the workers end up committing suicide.

Have you ever wondered why prominent news anchors such as Erin Burnett would call China "our greatest friend"?

Have you ever wondered why all of the big websites that protested SOPA so vigorously are not saying much about ACTA at all?
Have you ever wonder
ed why U.S. state governments spend millions of dollars to train workers for big corporations?
Have you ever wondered how the area along the U.S. border with Mexico got to be one of the most dangerous places on earth?
Have you ever noticed how many of the latest Bible versions go to extreme lengths to avoid offending anyone? It is almost as if those translating these Bibles are actually embarrassed of Christianity.

Have you ever wondered why America imprisons far more people than anyone else in the world?

Have you ever wondered why Greece is in such a financial mess? Maybe it is because government officials in Greece do not seem to have any common sense. According to the New York Times, the following categories of people are now considered to be "disabled" in Greece and can receive financial benefits from the government: pedophiles, exhibitionists, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists.

Have you ever wondered why gang activity is increasing so dramatically in America? It is estimated that there are 68,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago alone.

Have you ever wondered why more than 10,000,000 guns were sold in the United States during 2011?
Have you ever wondered how America would be different if we had not killed more than 50 million babies since Roe vs. Wade was decided back in 1973?

Have you ever wondered why so many young children drop dead or become severely disabled shortly after getting injected with vaccines?

Have you ever wondered why we don't hear more about all the scientists that believe that man-made global warming is a hoax in the mainstream media?

Have you ever wondered why we can't find a home for all Americans since there are far more vacant homes in America than there are homeless people?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Barack Obama actually got thrown off the ballot in Georgia?

Have you ever wondered what life would be like without the Internet? Every single minute, 168 million emails are sent. What would we do without all that email?

Have you ever wondered why so many Americans are busy preparing for the collapse of civilization?
Have you ever wondered if this is the year when we will see a war with Iran erupt in the Middle East?
So do you think that you have answers to the questions above?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below....

Strange Sounds in Sky Explained by Scientists

2012-01-30T14:33:00.000-08:00

GeoChange Journal
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00 CST

Mr. Khalilov, what is the nature of the unusual very low-pitched sounds reported by a great number of people in different parts of the planet since the summer of 2011? Many call them "The Sound of the Apocalypse". Information about that comes from all over the world: US, UK, Costa Rica, Russia, Czech Republic, Australia, etc.

We have analyzed records of these sounds and found that most of their spectrum lies within the infrasound range, i.e. is not audible to humans. What people hear is only a small fraction of the actual power of these sounds. They are low-frequency acoustic emissions in the range between 20 and 100 Hz modulated by ultra-low infrasonic waves from 0.1 to 15 Hz. In geophysics, they are called acoustic-gravity waves; they are formed in the upper atmosphere, at the atmosphere-ionosphere boundary in particular. There can be quite a lot of causes why those waves are generated: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, storms, tsunamis, etc. However, the scale of the observed humming sound in terms of both the area covered and its power far exceeds those that can be generated by the above-mentioned phenomena.

In that case, what could be causing this humming in the sky?

In our opinion, the source of such powerful and immense manifestation of acoustic-gravity waves must be very large-scale energy processes. These processes include powerful solar flares and huge energy flows generated by them, rushing towards Earth's surface and destabilizing the magnetosphere, ionosphere and upper atmosphere. Thus, the effects of powerful solar flares: the impact of shock waves in the solar wind, streams of corpuscles and bursts of electromagnetic radiation are the main causes of generation of acoustic-gravitation waves following increased solar activity.

Given the surge in solar activity as manifested itself in the higher number and energy of solar flares since mid-2011, we can assume that there is a high probability of impact of the substantial increase in solar activity on the generation of the unusual humming coming from the sky. It should be pointed out that solar activity began to rise sharply since early 2011, with its amplitude significantly higher than all forecasts given by a number of influential scientific institutions in 2010 and 2011. Meanwhile, the observed increase in solar activity is fully consistent with the forecast of the International Committee GEOCHANGE published in the Committee's Report in June 2010. If this growth rate of solar activity continues, its amplitude by the end of 2012 will be higher than the amplitude of 23rd solar cycle, and in 2013-2014 the solar activity will reach its peak the amplitude of which was predicted by us to be 1.5 - 1.7 times higher than the amplitude of the 23rd cycle.

But you said that the cause of the "sky hum" can lie within Earth's core as well, what does it mean?

There is one more possible cause of these sounds and it may lie at the Earth's core. The fact is that the acceleration of the drift of the Earth's north magnetic pole which increased more than fivefold between 1998 and 2003 and is at the same level today points to intensification of energy processes in the Earth's core, since it is processes in the inner and outer core that form the Earth's geomagnetic field. Meanwhile, as we have already reported, on November 15, 2011 all ATROPATENA geophysical stations which record three-dimensional variations of the Earth's gravitational field almost simultaneously registered a powerful gravitational impulse. The stations are deployed in Istanbul, Kiev, Baku, Islamabad and Yogyakarta, with the first and last one being separated by a distance of about 10,000 km. Such a phenomenon is only possible if the source of this emanation is at the Earth's core level. That huge energy release from the Earth's core at the end of the last year was some kind of a start signal indicating the transition of the Earth's internal energy into a new active phase.

Intensification of the energy processes in the Earth's core can modulate the geomagnetic field which, through a chain of physical processes at the ionosphere - atmosphere boundary level, generates acoustic-gravity waves the audible range of which has been heard by people in the form of a frightening low-frequency sound in different parts of our planet.

In both cases, even though the causes of acoustic-gravity waves are of a quite understandable geophysical nature, they are indicative of the expected significant increase in solar activity and the geodynamic activity of our planet. There is no doubt that processes in the core rule the internal energy of our planet, therefore, we should expect by the end of 2012 a sharp rise in strong earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and extreme weather events with peak levels in 2013 - 2014.

Comment: For further information on "strange sounds from the sky" watch the latest Sott report: Strange Noises in the Sky: Trumpets of the Apocalypse?

Will Israel Assassinate Obama?

2012-01-30T14:13:00.000-08:00

Edward Adler, the publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times in candor and chutzpah suggested that Israel assassinate the President of the United States to serve its war agenda against Iran. He states matter-of-factly in the article that Israels highest inner circles have certainly considered the operation. In 2009 I wrote an article for DavidDuke.com that stated that the biggest Zionist danger would be an assassination of Obama, which would propel their agenda and put the final nails in the coffin of American freedom. Now this Jewish extremist editor proves that my concerns were completely justified. This video is the ultimate expose' of Zionist treachery and treason against America.

United Nations Preparing to Manage Global Mental Health

2012-01-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

Brandon Turbeville

Activist Post

In a world where national sovereignty is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, announcements that the United Nations will be taking the lead on any variety of topics is no longer shocking. Indeed, there is a real push across the world to view the United Nations as the ultimate authority on virtually every issue, from human rights to nutritional content in food.

Through decades of propagandizing, the United Nations has developed an undeserved reputation for humanitarianism and democracy. As a result, the vast majority see the United Nations as a benevolent organization which they can call on to defend human rights in their home countries. Unfortunately, national sovereignty rarely enters into the equation anymore, as the average citizen tends to look straight to the United Nations to address their concerns, bypassing their own governments.

As case in point, a recent report by AFP, entitled, “Experts urge U.N. to address mental health,” discusses how a recent article in PLoS Medicine, a reputable medical journal, has called for the United Nations General Assembly to develop a plan to tackle mental, neurological, and substance-abuse disorders (MNS).

The article was authored by Vikram Patel of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Judith Bass from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the United States, among other contributors. They write, “The time has come for recognition at the highest levels of global development, namely the U.N. General Assembly, of the urgent need for a global strategy to address the global burden of MNS disorders.”

They also state that investment is needed in three different, but key, areas – “expanding knowledge about mental health disorders, better access to evidence-based programs of care and treatment, and protection of human rights.”

Although the further understanding of mental health disorders and their treatment is a laudable goal, it is also one in which both the Psychiatric/Psychological complex and the United Nations have a horrible track record.

Indeed, even within individual national boundaries, the Psychiatric/Psychological complex has vastly more authority that it needs or deserves. When one multiplies that oppressive authority with the global jurisdiction of the United Nations, as well as the U.N’s tendency to introduce tyrannical guidelines in its own right, we can see a clear recipe for disaster.

In an excellent breakdown of the situation, the Daily Bell writes,

The ultimate element of this charade (and probably the reason for it) will be a People’s Charter for Mental Health that will provide the opportunity for the elites to create yet more command-and-control bureaucracies.

To begin with these bureaucracies may seem innocent and even innovative. But over time it will become apparent that the UN is setting up some sort of worldwide mental health apparatus to evaluate people’s emotional and intellectual stability.

Worst case – if it gets that far – the UN will try to provide itself not only with the authority to evaluate people’s mental competence but also the authority to send people to mental institutions and re-education camps if they are not sufficiently docile and open to the appropriate level of mind control.

Although this analysis may appear extreme to some, the fact is that it is not nearly as extreme as it may sound at first. Considering the level of control that the Psychiatric/Psychological complex currently wields over our lives, the transition of this undeserved authority from a national level to that of an international body is not at all far-fetched.

Indeed, an authoritarian standard-setting UN-based organization in the areas of mental health would no doubt be an issue for all to be concerned with. The UN has, on virtually every occasion, shown its aptitude toward oppressive legislation, lack of concern for human dignity and individual rights, as well as forcing its guidelines upon the rest of the world by stealth and economic sanctions.

For instance, the standard-setting organization for food, Codex Alimentarius, has consistently forced its guidelines on national governments by virtue of the WTO trade dispute settlement mechanisms. Codex Alimentarius guidelines involve reducing the level of nutrition available in vitamin and mineral supplements, allowing for the increased proliferation of genetically modified food, and unlimited irradiation of food products. (See my book Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom)

U.N.-related organizations like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) are also highly successful at implementing austerity programs on debt-ridden countries like Greece as a pre-condition for more loans, which are themselves nothing more than an increase of irrational debt by virtue of the sacrifice of living standards and tangible physical wealth.

Even the WTO (World Trade Organization), another U.N.-related agency is famous for dismantling any protectionist tariffs or subsidies imposed by nation states upon cheap products being dumped into their economies. It is also well-known for punishing any nation that even slightly steps away from the agenda of globalism.

A U.N.-controlled bureaucracy overseeing the treatment and diagnosis of mental health disorders, addiction, or anything else that would so greatly involve the individual, is without a doubt a recipe for disaster.

The Psychiatric/Psychological complex already wields entirely too much authority over the lives of supposedly free human beings. This authority, as it currently exists, must be taken away.

We cannot afford to give this industry any more control over our lives, much less give international authority to the detriment of national sovereignty.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius - The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies and Five Sense Solutions. Brandon Turbeville is available for podcast, radio, and TV interviews. Please contact us at activistpost@gmail.com.

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Children's medicines coated with brain-damaging aluminum

2012-01-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

by: S. D. Wells

(NaturalNews) Aluminum Lake food coloring, used to heavily coat liquid medicines for children, contains dangerous amounts of aluminum and harmful synthetic petrochemicals. These "petrochemicals" are carcinogens containing petroleum, antifreeze and ammonia, which cause a long list of adverse reactions. Aluminum poisoning can lead to short and long term central nervous system (CNS) damage, such as memory impairments, autism, epilepsy, mental retardation, and dementia.

Research shows that just 4ppm of aluminum can cause the blood to coagulate. This is what causes Alzheimer's Disease and has been documented to inhibit learning. Aluminum consumption can also be associated with the development of bone disorders, including stress fractures.

Also known as tartrazine, FD&C Yellow Aluminum Lake is a chemical concoction derived from coal tar. It is known to be a reproductive toxin. All artificial colors contain Aluminum Lake, so when your child gets to pick between red, blue or green medicine, they're really choosing which poison they get to consume. Several chemically enhanced food colorings contain ammonia and therefore produce compounds proven to cause various cancers in animal studies, according to CSPI, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. (http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm)

Most widely used food colors and their damaging actions:

• Blue #1: Research shows it causes kidney tumors in mice.

• Blue #2: Research shows even higher incidence of tumors, specifically gliomas in male rates (a type of tumor that starts in the brain or spine).

• Red #2: Toxic to rodents, even at modest levels, and causes tumors of the bladder.

• Red #3: FDA recognized it in 1990 as a cause of thyroid cancer in animals. It was banned in cosmetics, but still allowed in food and medicine.

• Red #40: Most popular dye of all. Debilitates the immune-system in mice. Allergic reactions common.

• Green #3: Causes bladder and testes tumors.

• Yellow #5: Affects behavior and induces severe hypersensitivity reactions.

• Yellow #6: Causes adrenal tumors in animals.

The following is taken directly from FDA's Regulatory Process and Historical Perspectives: "Color additives are important components of many products, making them attractive, appealing, appetizing, and informative. Added color serves as a kind of code that allows us to identify products on sight, like candy flavors and medicine dosages." Really?! Decoding medicine dosages on sight?

There has been a 55% increase in U.S. toxic food dyes just since the year 2000. There are over 15 million pounds of dyes put in foods, drinks, candy and medicine every year, and the FDA does nothing to protect consumers from the colorful barrage of poison. (http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/food/artificial-food-colors.htm)

Studies reveal that children have consumed as much as three pounds of dye by the age of twelve
Here are some popular product and "brand" names you may mistake as exempt products: RD&C dyes and colors in baked goods, beverages, candy, cereal, drugs, pet food, personal care products, cosmetics, cough syrups, NyQuil,Tylenol, Robitussin,Jello, gelatins, Cheetos, Skittles, Fruity Pebbles, Marachino cherries, sausage, Mountain Dew, Doritos, chewing gum, and powdered drink mixes.

American companies doing business in Europe currently have to change their products to natural colorings to meet European Union strict regulations. The FDA's rationale is that because artificial food colorings are used mainly in foods and medicines of low or no nutritional value, that the American public should "already be aware" of health implications, so it doesn't matter if other toxins are added.

What are your options as opposed to poisonous medicines? Consult a naturopath (ND) for advice on ingredients in food and medicine.

Sources for this article include

http://chemicaloftheday.squarespace.com/todays-chemical/2009/7/7/fdc-yellow-5-aluminum-lake.html

http://www.amoils.com/health-blog/the-8-most-common-artificial-food-dyes-and-what-they-can-do-to-your-health-3/

http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/ColorAdditives/RegulatoryProcessHistoricalPerspectives/default.htm

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/165315-overview

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/food/artificial-food-colors.htm

http://www.feingold.org/Research/dyesinfood.html

http://www.intlfoodcraft.com/color_guide.html

(http://www.amoils.com/health-blog/the-8-most-common-artificial-food-dyes-and-what-they-can-do-to-your-health-3/)

http://healingautismandadhd.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/artificial-food-coloring-is-evil/

http://jennifercopley.suite101.com/health-concerns-regarding-artificial-colours-a197580

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Cell Phones, EMF Negatively Altering Important Regions of the Brain

2012-01-30T03:36:00.000-08:00

Mike Barrett
NaturalSociety
January 27, 2012
A new Greek scientific study has demonstrated how frequency electromagnetic fields, namely cell phones, portable phones, WiFi, and wireless computer equipment, alter important protein changes in the brains of animals. Exposure to electromagnetic frequencies is the result of our advancing technologies, but it is important to study these effects so people know exactly what they’re dealing with in order to take the necessary precautionary measures.

Cell Phones, EMF Negatively Altering Important Regions of the Brain

The study, entitled “Brain proteome response following whole body exposure of mice to mobile phone or wireless DECT base radiation,” was published in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine. Important areas of the brain such as the hippocampus, cerebellum, and frontal lobe are regions responsible for learning, memory, and other functions. These areas are negatively impacted by microwave radiation, even at levels below the safety guidelines put in place by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation protection.

Researchers found that 143 proteins in the brain were negatively impacted by radio frequency radiation over a period of 8 months. A total of 3 hours of cell phone exposure were simulated over the 8 month time period, and the results showed that many neural function related proteins’ functional relationship changed the for worse.

It is known that short term exposure of microwaves exuded from a cell phone, depending on how far the antenna is from the head, can penetrate as much as 1 1/2 inches into the brain, but this study focuses more on the long term effects and how EMF impacts specific brain proteins. This provides new evidence of the potential relationship between EMF and health complications stemming from EMF such as headaches, dizziness, sleep disorders, and even tumors and Alzheimer’s disease.

Another study conducted by a Russian team of researchers also showed that EMF and cell phones cause significant long-term cognitive decline in children. It may be time for parents to re-determine if young children should really be using these devices with growing bodies and developing brains.
A number of foreign countries are attempting to adopt precautionary protocols to limit cell phone use in an attempt to mitigate the number of adverse effects they have on human health. In 2011, the WHO/IARC released a report stating that cell phone radiation may have a carcinogenic effect on humans. In fact, the World Health Organization actually said that cell phones are in the same cancer-causing category as lead, engine exhaust, and chloroform.
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Fault Lines: Robot wars

2012-01-30T02:45:00.000-08:00

Nature of the Beast

2012-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

2012 Mark Glenn

http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com

‘Since the Mossad had all the security arrangements in hand, it would not be a problem bringing the killers as close as they wanted to President Bush and then staging his assassination. In the ensuing confusion, the Mossad people would kill the ‘perpetrators,’ scoring yet another victory for the Mossad. With the assassins dead, it would be difficult to discover where the ‘security breach’ had been, except that several countries involved in the conference, such as Syria, were regarded as countries that assisted terrorists.’

—Ex-Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky, describing in his book ‘The Other Side of Deception’ how Israel’s Mossad planned to assassinate President George Bush at the Madrid peace conference in October of 1991 for the purpose of blaming it on ‘Arab’ terrorists.

‘What are we accomplishing?’ they asked. ‘Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we allow him to go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation.’ Then one of them named Caiphas who was High Priest that year spoke and said “You fools know nothing at all. Do you not realize it is better that one man die than that the whole nation perish?’

—Book of John

Well, well, whadda ya know, YET ANOTHER Zionist goombah from within the Jewish community has ONCE AGAIN called upon Yahweh–the God of war and racial favoritism–to rain death and destruction down upon someone deemed ‘not friendly enough’ to Israel…

Pardon the seemingly inappropriate yawning and slight shrug of the shoulders here, but the truth is–

This is news?

While we’re having one of our ‘well, shut my mouth’ moments here, how about–

“Smoking believed to cause lung cancer”…

or

“New Year’s Day to fall on January 1st this year…”

As much as it may appear so, nevertheless the fact is this–we’re not being cute here, folks. We’re as serious as a heart attack despite what appears to be something of a cavalier demeanor.

‘Jewish terrorism’…We should be waaaay past getting excited over something like this, given recent events.

Remember (as if we could possibly forget) a good portion of last century’s major events has been just that—Biblically-inspired Jewish terrorism and its byproducts… A non-stop, revolving newsreel of horror and human suffering, a veritable ‘Jews gone wild’ docudrama featuring such blockbusters and bonecrushers as Gaza, Lebanon, Deir Yassin, the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the unrest in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Cast Lead, USS LIBERTY, 911, JFK, RFK, the bombing of the King David Hotel, etc, etc, etc…

The truth is, we could go on and on with examples such as these, and we can be rest assured it WILL go on and on with examples such as these, because, quite simply, it is in the nature of the beast to do so.

The 20th century has been epochal in the sense that the apocalyptic marriage between synagogue and state has resulted in Jewish interests (or their lackeys) rubbing the magic lamp, loosing the terrible Old Testament Genie and then sending him forth on a seek-and-destroy mission against Israel’s enemies, real or perceived…

So, using the past century as precedent, getting all hot-n-bothered about someone from within the Jewish community ‘Talking Torah’ as it were concerning ‘Mr. or Mrs. Anti-Semite’ biting the bullet because of some less-than-acceptable position viz-a-viz the Jewish state is (or should be) passé…

…and even when it involves something as ‘unique’ in its flavor as an American Jewish publisher threatening the life of the US President.

Oh, did we forget to mention that? Yes, that’s right, a Jewish individual writing for a Jewish newspaper dealing exclusively with Jewish issues is calling for the leader of the “free world” to be JFK’d…

Not Islamic…Not KKK…not NRA, IRA, or KLA…not Militia of Montana, Aryan Nations or any of those OTHER ‘terrorist’ groups the JMSM is constantly causing the rest of civilized society to piss its collective pants over with its non-stop screeching…

But rather, ‘Jewish,’ as in AIPAC, ADL, JDL, World Jewish Congress, Richard Perle, American Jewish Committee, Emergency Committee for Israel, Paul Wolfowitz, the Republican Jewish Coalition, Christians United for Israel, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Eric Cantor, Sarah Silverman, and on and on and on and

on

and

on

and

on…

In this case, we have before us one Andrew Adler, publisher/owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times, publically calling upon Israel’s assassination agency Mossad to send President Obama off on a one-way trip to eternity. Specifically, his (under NORMAL circumstances) criminally-actionable words being to the effect that Bibi “9/11-was-good-for-Israel” Netanyahu should—

“Give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place and forcefully dictate that United States’ policy includes helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies”.

‘Take out’—Now, forgive the obvious naiveté here, but does our kind, gentle, harmless, moral, humanitarian, pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow, God-fearing Jewish man mean ‘take out’ in the friendly, cordial sense, as in a dinner engagement?

Or does he mean it in The Godfather sense, as in going on a deep-sea fishing expedition in a manner up close and personal?

A question that MUST be asked, because according to the narrative forced upon all thinking people today, the fact is that Jews don’t kill people, and they CERTAINLY don’t make threats against the life of the US President for something as seemingly-trivial as there being insufficient funds in his ‘Affection-for-all-things-Jewish’ bank account.

Either way, Gosh, there is something SOOOOOO familiar about that scenario Adler & co laid out…Lemme see, hmmmm…Wait. No, no, no, don’t tell me, I can figure it out…Right on the tip of my brain…

Why, of course…This is PRECISELY what happened in the aftermath of someone deciding to ‘take out’ JFK (after which time a pliant, pliable, and properly pro-Israel protagonist named LBJ took over) and before the dead president’s body had even begun to assume room temp, the floodgates for the Jewish state were opened in terms of money, no-questions-asked political support and an end to Kennedy’s insistence that Israel open up her nuclear weapons program for international inspection…

…all of that no more than an interesting coincidence, we can be rest assured…

And now, at a time when Jewish interests barely conceal the power they wield over the American political process–from who gets elected to which wars America fights–we have a wiseguy from La Famiglia talking about how the Prez needs to be smacked around for his insolence.

And just what–according to Adler & co–was the capital offence El Presidente committed warranting such a hefty fine?

–Did he threaten to withhold a penny of the $30 million per day that Israel gets from the US?

No.

–Did he threaten to open a new investigation into Israel’s deliberate attack on the USS LIBERTY that resulted in 34 American sailors being killed?

No.

–Did he call for the Mossad agents arrested on 9/11 who were seen by witnesses cheering as the towers were coming down to be extradited back to the US so that they could be further questioned by US law enforcement about the particulars surrounding their being ‘sent to document the event’, as they revealed on an Israeli television program shortly after they returned?

Nope.

–Did he instruct Attorney General Eric Holder to force AIPAC to register as a foreign agent under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, thus legally prohibiting the biggest lobby in Washington from bribing our lawmakers into rubber stamping Israel’s foreign policy demands upon the American people?

No.

Apparently, from what Adler wrote in his piece, Obama’s cardinal sin, the unpardonable crime on his ledger sheet exists solely in having not (yet) attacked Iran and killed tens of millions of innocent people per Israel’s order.

Yes, that’s right, because AMERICA, a sovereign country (the legal definition of which is that she doesn’t have to do Jack-Squat other than what’s in her own best interests) because this sovereign country refused to expend EVEN MORE of her money, blood, and resources in escalating the ‘clash of civilizations’ that Israel’s strategists have been planning now these last 20 centuries, Obama should be handed walking papers to his own grave. Forget the incalculably-high price America has paid—the TRILLIONS of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed on both sides of the equation in Israeli-orchestrated war theatres such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, etc, etc, etc…The mere fact that Obama has not (yet) performed his designated role as angel of death in killing Iran’s first born, second-born, 3rd, 4th, and on and on and on is the reason his existence needs to be wiped off the map of the living.

Kinda says something about the mentality of these folks, does it not?

Which brings us back to our main point here, which is, simply—

The nature of the beast…

As crazy as it all sounds, what has to be remembered throughout all of this is that Adler’s ‘final solution’ to Israel’s ‘Obama Problem’ was/is not an aberration by any means. As much as the rest of his cousins and confreres within the Jewish community did an impressive job rending their robes, gnashing their teeth and in general uber-theatricizing their ‘outrage’ over his statements (as if Adler’s ‘going biblical’ on Obama was something as out of the ordinary as a snow storm in the Sahara) the fact of the matter is—as one theatricist famously put it many moons ago–they protesteth too much.

No, Adler was not ‘meshuggenah’, as Jewish interests have (with obvious panic) maintained in the immediate aftermath of his dangerous slip of the forked tongue. His statements were not ‘outrageous’ or ‘heretical’ in the ‘Jewish’ sense. Despite the recent well-funded, well-orchestrated and well-choreographed campaign of screeching on the part of organized pro-Israel interests (desperate to put the Mossad Genie back in the bottle and change the discussion towards something less, well, REVEALING) the fact is–religiously speaking—Adler was/is on terra firma in making the statements he did.

That’s right. In letting his religiously-fueled imagination get the better of his mouth in pushing for the assassination of a world leader deemed an enemy of Israel, Adler was the dictionary picture of a ‘good’ Jew. The course of action he was/is advocating is PRECISELY what former Old Testament luminaries such as Moses, Joshua, Solomon, David, Mordechai, Esther and the rest of the Kosher KKK would be advocating as well, were they here (as if they weren’t here already in personages such as Netanayhu, Barak, Omert, Livni, etc, etc, etc).

No point kvetching about it folks, it is what it is. Go back and read your bibles for yourselves and you’ll see how ‘God’ instructed ‘his’ people to deal with ‘existential’ threats like Obama.

Remember, these are people of ‘the book’, meaning their Torah, a book that describes in Kristol-clear imagery what happens to those who act less-then-reverentially when handling that most precious apple of Yahweh’s eye.

Using just ONE INSTANCE–the fact that Egypt’s destruction is celebrated yearly in the Jewish religious feast known as Passover and that Obama has been referred to TIME AND AGAIN in the Jewish press as ‘the new Pharaoh’ and that now we have an important member from within the American Jewish community talking about him meeting with an untimely end is not by any stretch of the imagination one of the aforementioned ‘well, shut my mouth’ events.

What’s just as relevant to all this is the fact that Obama is black…

Now to those who have fallen hook, line and sinker for the agit-prop stinker that Jewish interests are and always have been the front line forces working against anti-black racism, here is a small spoonful of bitter reality you need to swallow before going any further—INSTITUTIONALIZED ANTI-BLACK RACISM BEGAN WITH JUDAISM.

The American president, being at least partly of African descent means—Judaically-speaking–he carries with him the biblical ‘Curse of Canaan’, meaning he can do nothing more/be nothing more in the ‘Jewish’ sense than a slave to Shem, from whom the Jews claim their descent.

So, in the bigger scheme of things, the same Jewish interests who spent a helluva lotta cheddar prior to 2008 in the semi-regular slave auction known as the Presidential campaign expect him to respond with YESSUH when given an order and to then carry out his tasks on the plantation known as the US…

…and organizing a slave rebellion isn’t one of those tasks.

A little harsh on the ears, you say? Well, then take it up with Israel’s former chief Sephardic Rabbi Ovadiah Yusef, who—in a small news item that barely received the kind of attention it should have–bemoaned the fact that “We live in a time when slaves are governing us and are trying to control us” and then threatened that the time of ‘Moshiac’—the Jewish messiah—was near, and when he gets here, boy oh boy, are the rest of us gonna be real sorry.

And here is the REAL kicker in all of this—the Jewish interests making all this noise in trying to change the subject concerning Adler’s frank discussion of Israel’s ‘should be’ kiss of death KNOW ALL OF THIS TO BE THE CASE.

Adler’s language and demeanor are no different in essence than that of Genovese wiseguy Joseph Valachi’s 1963 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations. At the time, panicked-to-the-point-of-pissing-their-pants organized crime interests assailed the Senate hearings as a ‘witchhunt’ born out of bigotry and sought to distance themselves and their activities from Valachi’s damning testimony by claiming he was insane and a congenital liar.

So too with Adler’s recent belching out loud and filling the air with the alarming and unpleasant odor indicating the kinds of mental processes taking place deep within the Jewish gut viz-z-viz Barack Hussein Obama and his Middle East policy, and the manner by which Jewish interests have made such a scene by holding their noses and going ‘EEEEEEYYYYUUUUUU!!!’ In essence, Adler’s piece is the dorsal fin sticking out of the water indicating something dangerous lurking below the surface, and we can just forget about the possibility—as put forth by his Jewish detractors—that the fin we are seeing is a figment of our anti-Semitic imagination.

The fact is, given that the very basis of Israel’s existence is all this Old Testamentism and the political intrigue it encompassed at an earlier time, the only thing that should be shocking is that Obama has not already been assassinated.

And let’s not kid ourselves about whether Israel possesses both the means and the motive to have such an event materialize with the wave of her magical Mosaic staff. If she could get away with it in 1963 she could certainly pull it off today, and particularly in a political environment such as now when various candidates for various high offices—including that of the presidency—are out-slutting each other in demonstrating who is willing to show more skin in what has become the political version of the Dance of the 7 Veils.

Furthermore, we can be rest assured of this as well—in the event (likely or not) that something ‘biblical’ were to happen to ‘the new Pharaoh’, there would be celebrating within the greater part of the pro-Israel Jewish community the world over, who have been wishing the worst and screaming like banshees ever since Obama began making unpleasant noises concerning Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.

Still too much of a stretch? Consider then that as President, Obama is YET to visit Israel. Now, are we to assume that this is due to his busy schedule, or rather to the fact that the various national security apparati of the United States responsible for protecting him explained in the clearest of terms that his security cannot be guaranteed in the Jewish state? George Bush, for all the trips that he made to the Middle East—IN WAR-TORN COUNTRIES HE WAS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DESROYING MIND YOU–nevertheless reserved his first visit as Prez to the Jewish state until towards the end of his 2nd term.

And interestingly, as soon as he landed in Ben Gurion airport he was met on the tarmac by a group of rabbis who passed along to him an Old Testament-looking scroll outlining what was expected of him as President before leaving office. Entitled ‘Megillat Bush’, it read as follows–

To George W. Bush…who comes to Jerusalem, eternal capital of our land, joy of the entire earth…

…If you truly desire peace and wish to be counted in the company of the truly righteous, we call upon you to declare to all the world the following-

‘I George Bush declare that the Land of Israel was bequeathed to the nation of Israel by the Creator of the world which He gave to His people Israel, the eternal people. Therefore I call upon all the nations to save themselves from certain doom and recognize that this land is the exclusive rightful inheritance of the people of Israel. He who denies this truth endangers all life on earth.’

‘Or, Heaven forbid, you can choose the second option…to willfully aid in destruction…You certainly know what the God of Israel did to Egypt and to all Israel’s enemies from time immemorial. Do you imagine you can escape from the struggles in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon? We cannot forget the deeds of our patriarchs, whose example guides us through every generation…

…Understand this well–God ordained that the role of the nations of the world is to strengthen the nation of Israel. Therefore it behooves you to declare: “I, George Bush, Commander in Chief of the armies of the United States of America, will instruct all of my troops to protect the Divine rights of the nation of Israel, and remove from her any threat.” Before you is a choice: You can merit eternal life, or be inscribed for eternal disgrace. Your fate and that of all those with you hangs in the balance of the destiny of our land…’

Now, for those who will say that the aforedescribed were just the rantings of a few old men with no pull or influence, remember that they could not have gotten this close to Bush without clearance from the highest levels within the Israeli government, meaning that Jewish interests wanted to convey the idea that this was a diplomatic communique from the Jewish state to America.

‘New’ and ‘novel’, the image of pro-Israel thugs blowing poisoned kisses, sticking pins in dolls resembling their enemies and demanding as interest on their ‘loan’ of the Presidency to Obama a pound of his flesh like Shylock?

Nothing new under the sun, and especially with regards to the nature of the beast.

No, the truth is when it comes to Jewish terrorism–it’s always there, tugging at the sleeve, poking us on the shoulder, clearing its throat, tapping its watch, huffing-and-a-puffing and reminding us of our ‘obligations’ to the continued existence of the Jewish state. The only people to whom it’s news are those who long ago checked out of Hotel Reality and are now known as Mr. or Mrs. Comfortably Numb on Fantasy Island.

For the rest of us however–currently-registered guests at the Hotel Reality–witnessing what’s transpired has been like watching that old movie based on the Stephen King novel Cujo, with our larger-than-life (literally) St. Bernard slowly but surely succumbing to the inevitable effects of rabies—madness, violence, terror and death…

…Because at the end of the day, week, month, year or millenium, the truth is that once Mother Nature has spoken, she’s spoken and there is no negotiating, and in the case involving Israel, the mad dog of the Middle East (as former Israeli Defense Minister described her) and her behavior—whether it is murdering millions in the Middle East or ruminating about murdering an American president who will not bend the knee before her, she is doing no more than what her nature dictates.

Therefore, let what is left of humanity do the same and recognize that there is nothing but disaster to be had by befriending this mad, rabid creature. Let a sane world decide that one century of unrestrained Jewish terrorism was more than enough and therefore make the executive decision to cancel the upcoming season of ‘Jews Gone Wild’ and replace it with a modernized version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. Let immediate policies–designed to put as much distance as possible between a civilized, healthy world and this frothing-at-the-mouth canine—be immediately adopted until such time as this wild animal can be dealt with in a manner that is rational, humane and geared towards the common good of all men.

But above all else, let there be no more surprise when mutts and mongrels from the pack such as Adler & co wander into town, snarling and growling in the menacing fashion he did, because when all is considered, in light of what has been known now for some time, such snarling and growling is simply in the nature of the beast.

New Theory of Life Claims to Unite Fields of Science

2012-01-29T12:52:00.000-08:00

Case Western Reserve University via sott.net
Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:56 CST

© Case Western Reserve University
Erik D. Andrulis, Assistant Professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Case Western Reserve University.

The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects - for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA - are animate, that is, alive.

Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript "Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life," published in the peer-reviewed journal, Life. His theory explains not only the evolutionary emergence of life on Earth and in the Universe but also the structure and function of existing cells and biospheres.

In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Andrulis' theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. His unorthodox solution to this quintessential problem in physics differs from mainstream approaches, like string theory, as it is simple, non-mathematical, and experimentally and experientially verifiable.

The basic idea of Andrulis' framework is that all physical reality can be modeled by a single geometric entity with life-like characteristics: the gyre. The so-called "gyromodel" depicts objects - particles, atoms, chemicals, molecules, and cells - as quantized packets of energy and matter that cycle between excited and ground states around a singularity, the gyromodel's center. A singularity is itself modeled as a gyre, wholly compatible with the thermodynamic and fractal nature of life. An example of this nested, self-similar organization is the Russian Matryoshka doll.

By fitting the gyromodel to facts accumulated over scientific history, Andrulis confirms the proposed existence of eight laws of nature. One of these, the natural law of unity, decrees that the living cell and any part of the visible universe are irreducible. This law formally establishes that there is one physical reality.

Another natural law dictates that the atomic and cosmic realms abide by identical organizational constraints. Simply put, atoms in the human body and solar systems in the universe move and behave in the exact same manner.

"Modern science lacks a unifying, interdisciplinary theory of life. In other words, current theories are unable to explain why life is the way it is and not any other way," Andrulis says. "This general paradigm furnishes a fresh perspective on the character and meaning of life, offers solutions to protracted problems, and strives to end divisive debates."

One debate swirls around the scientific merit of James Lovelock's popular Gaia hypothesis. By showing that the Earth is theoretically synonymous with life, Andrulis' paradigm substantiates the Gaian premise that all organisms and their surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single self-regulating complex system.

Another legendary quarrel is that between biblical creationists and neo-Darwinian evolutionists. In demonstrating that the origin and evolution of life is a consequence of natural laws and physical forces, this theory synthesizes arguments and dispels assumptions from both sides of the creation-evolution debate.

To test his paradigm, Andrulis designed bidirectional flow diagrams that both depict and predict the dynamics of energy and matter. While such diagrams may be foreign to some scientists, they are standard reaction notation to chemists, biochemists, and biologists.

Andrulis has used his theory to successfully predict and identify a hidden signature of RNA biogenesis in his laboratory at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is now applying the gyromodel to unify and explain the evolution and development of human beings.

Reference:

Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, Life, Vol. 2:1-105 (2012).

'Capitalism on verge of collapse'

2012-01-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

Click on the Title for the video.

The European Union needs a 'whole system change' to recover from the debt crisis it is facing as its economic troubles are an outcome of 'corrupt capitalism,' an economic expert tells Press TV.

“It [The EU and Greece in particular] needs a whole change of the system,” said British economic commentator Shabbir Razvi in a recent interview, adding that, it requires 'bold steps.'

"Bold steps meaning that the whole capitalism; the crisis of capitalism has to be seen from the perspective that capitalism stinks because it is corrupt. It has corrupted the politicians; it has corrupted the whole society by way of bankers having the final say as to what happens in each of the countries and Greece is a very good example whereby the bankers are trying to have their way,” the London-based economist said.

He went on to say the whole problem with capitalism is that “capitalism awards greed and the greedier the bankers become, the more bonuses they get, the more higher salaries they get, which in turn corrupts the whole system because the politicians are having Jolly knees-ups at the banker's parties.”

On Sunday, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced Western capitalism in his opening speech at the Islamic Awakening and Youth conference in Tehran, saying that the Western capitalism is on the verge of collapse, and that the world should find an alternative system that guarantees amity and justice.

VG/JR

More US scrap metal headed for Persian Gulf

2012-01-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

USS Ponce joins USS Enterprise in Persian Gulf

By YaYaCanada

How much clearer could it be that a false flag event is planned?
Further to our earlier discussion about the US having found a way to dispose of its scrap metal and at the same time create a pretext (with the help of Israel?) for WWIII, here is the latest news report (bolding mine):

Pentagon deploys ‘mothership’ to Persian Gulf as tensions with Iran escalate

The Pentagon is rushing a “mothership” to the Middle East to be used by commando teams as unrest in the region heightens, reports The Washington Post.

The U.S. Navy is planning to refit the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport docking ship, which was about to be retired and decommissioned.

The Ponce was commissioned in 1971 - it's now over 40 years old. Wikipedia reports:

On 2 December, 2011, Ponce came home to await decommissioning on 30 March, 2012, when she would be towed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and be placed with the mothball fleet

And now "she" is headed to the Gulf. How much clearer could it be that a false flag event is planned?

Stop The False Flag Attack On The U.S.S. Enterprise

Posted by CanSpeccy at 5:53 PM

Bill Gates, Monsanto hijack 'humanitarian aid' efforts to push GMO agenda

2012-01-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Those still in denial about the connection between the so-called "humanitarian" efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the bigger agenda to thrust genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) on the populations of the world (among other things), need look no further than the Golden Rice Project (GRP) for proof that things are not as they seem. Hailed as the solution to "micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries," GRP is actually nothing more than an attempted Trojan horse to usher GMOs into countries that have thus far rejected them.

According to a recent story published by Food Consumer, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $20 million to develop "golden rice," a type of GM rice that allegedly contains higher than normal levels of vitamin A. Monsanto, creator of this "Frankenrice," claims the crop will help end the epidemic of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) that afflicts many living in poor Asian countries. Sounds great, right? Except for the fact that introducing the rice threatens to actually worsen the VAD crisis, and promote economic and ecological debacles of epic proportions.

"Golden rice is a Trojan horse for pushing through GE-friendly biosafety regulations under the guise of humanitarian aid," reports Food Freedom. "Once in place, these regulations open the door for the biotech industry to bring in commercial, patented GE crops; USAID and Monsanto accomplished exactly this in Kenya with their sweet potato project."

Monsanto repeatedly uses the same strategy to sneak its Frankencrops into poor countries. It grabs hold of a food or agriculture crisis, and claims it has the solution. Its solution, of course, is always the same -- persuade farmers to adopt its patented crops, and lock them into a system where they must rely on Monsanto for expensive pesticides and the yearly purchase of new, self-destructing GM seeds.

The real solution for poor countries -- including those in Asia that are stricken by high rates of VAD -- is to increase their agricultural biodiversity, and cultivate an enhanced system of small-scale, family-owned farms that produce a variety of nutrient-rich, natural foods.

"In a biodiverse farm, a family would have easy access to all these [beta carotene and vitamin A-rich foods]. But the mono-cropping agricultural technology (promoted by Monsanto) ... has to a large extent, destroyed dietary biodiversity in rural Asia, which is the main cause of malnutrition," wrote the Pesticides Action Network Asia & the Pacific (PANAP) in a press release, emphasizing that Monsanto and the Gates Foundation's "solution" of golden rice will only exacerbate the problem of nutrient deficiency.

"[Monoculture] has seriously aggravated VAD. In fact, the Green Revolution has caused the loss of thousands of diverse local rice varieties ... [m]any of these local varieties had special nutritional value. Golden rice perpetuates the industrial model of agriculture and so instead of reducing VAD, it will actually contribute to worsening its rate of occurrence."

Sources for this story include:

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Safety/gmo/genetically_engineered_ric...

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032834_humanitarian_aid_GMOs.html#ixzz1ksQLW33g

Elitist Rioters Run The Global Financial System, And They Are Using America To Create Hell on Earth

2012-01-29T09:08:00.000-08:00

by Saman Mohammadi via disquietreservations.blogspot.com

"An Age of Hell is now upon us:
The earthly body pierced with spears." - Arthur Rimbaud, 'On The Subject of Flowers: Remarks, Addressed To The Poet,' July 14, 1871. (1).

"A culture like ours -- a culture so uniformly dedicated to inflicting pain, to cruelty, to violence, to destruction, to creating hell on earth -- does not deserve to survive for another moment. Many signs lead one to believe that it may not survive much longer." - Arthur Silber, "A Culture Dedicated to Creating Hell on Earth," November 21, 2011.

"The destruction of our basic liberties, the overthrow of our Republic, and basic protections, and checks and balances, is in overdrive right now. And the good news is finally people are starting to wake up, but they have no idea on average just how serious our straits are. Now, there is a good side to that and there is a bad side to that. Because the ruling class are so openly criminal and sloppy and out of control, it should be easy to wake people up fully and to bring these crooks to justice. People should realize we've got a completely illegitimate global government structure and the United States is one of the main hearts to it all. And only by fully awakening can we turn things around." - Alex Jones, 'The SHTF A Long Time Ago!!!' January 28, 2012.

"Well, gentlemen, when the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay." - From the film 'Scent of a Woman,' (1992).

"The fears we know
Are of not knowing. Will nightfall bring us
Some awful order. . . ?" - W. H. Auden, 'The Age of Anxiety,' (1947). (2).

When riots come to America, don't blame the rioters at the bottom. Blame the rioters at the top of the political and economic pyramid who have ransacked the public purse and stolen trillions of dollars from tax-paying American citizens.

As a civilization, we have more to fear from reckless elites who pillage the earth and obstruct justice in the name of stability and order than from dirty and stupid rioters.

We can't pretend that stability and order exists within the West when the truth about 9/11, the crime of the ages, has remained buried in the mainstream world for a decade and counting.

A world order that is based on terror, lies, mass murder of innocent citizens, and the most sophisticated propaganda campaign in human history, is no order at all.

The West and the world is in a state of chaos and lawlessness. Whoever possesses the most guns has the last say. Anarchy and madness reigns around the world.

Absolute hell is the local and global environment that has been created since 9/11 by the Maoists in Washington, who agree with Mao that, "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

By comparison, the Founding Fathers of America believed that government power is based on the consent of the governed. If they defended that belief today on American streets they would be labeled domestic terrorists by the hijacked government and media, detained in secret prisons, and killed.

The leaders of America and the West are far from the best men that America and the West have to offer to the world. Individuals who have no sense of shame or guilt lead the highest institutions of Western civilization, whether political, academic, scientific, medical, or media.

The scum and the insane rise to the top in modern society, as William S. Burroughs, John Lennon, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Anton Wilson, Terence McKenna, and many others have all said.

Ginsberg told TVO host Allan Gregg in an interview in the 1990s:

"Since the whole caste of government and media is not transparent but opaque, built on secrecy and manipulativeness, the area of poetry then becomes a free area where people can actually not be paranoid, where understanding what's been said is being said for real.
.
.
In 1945, Kerouac came over to my room at Columbia. . .And I had a new poem and I read it to him. And it was too late for him to go home. So he stayed in my room, we had our underwear on, and I was a virgin. Nothing happened. And we slept together. And then somehow somebody came to visit, the dean of student faculty bursted into the room and found us in bed together and assumed what would for them would be the worst, for me would've been the best, for them would've been the worst cause they were so homophobic in those days.

So I was called down to the dean's office and he said to me, 'Mr Ginsberg, I hope you realize the enormity of what you've done.' And I looked at him and I realized he was completely mad. And he was running Columbia College. So I said this is going to be a funny scene. So I said 'Yes sir, I'm completely ashamed of myself, what can I do,' but I realized he was nuts. And, to a great extent, the entire society was nuts. And I felt kind of liberated like a man who was in the land of the sleepwalkers who could see, or the land of the blind who can see. But not only on that, but on many, many subjects like I'd smoke the grass, a little bit of grass, and I realized the government party line was stupid. Like some kid in Russia who knew that the Stalinist party line was fraud.

Much of the American party line, the official, New York Times even, to the CIA and the state department, the narcotics bureau, and the whole police agency, is actually racist, prejudiced and corrupt.

So then it becomes fun. . .I'm trying to wake these people up, they're sleepwalking." (3).

In the last four decades, America's crazy political leaders have given America and the world two of the most horrific and criminal wars in human history: the illegitimate Global War on Drugs and the illegitimate Global War on Terror. Trillions of dollars have been wasted by governments, and hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings have perished as a result of these two insane global wars.

The elite strategists who manufactured both wars from scratch have created an age of perpetual darkness and horror.

Allan Gregg gave a very important lecture in November 2011 called, "On Authenticity – How the Truth Can Restore Faith in Politics and Government," in which he said:

"Even someone with only a passing interest in current affairs would know our political leaders are in big trouble. A few years ago, Seth Meyers of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live developed a routine where he lampooned politicians by simply asking “Really!” …. no narrative; not even a snappy punch-line; simply a run a clip of a politician followed by an incredulous “Really!” Jon Stewart has taken this vein of comedy one step further where the joke doesn’t even require speech … just show the politician speaking; pause for a moment; and arch an eye brow. Both routines are invariably followed by gales of laughter. Not only is the joke on our elected leaders, it seems they are the only ones left on the planet who don’t get it.
.
.
Most often short of outright lies, our elected leaders seem to have become congenitally unable to speak the unvarnished truth – and everyone knows it. Like the travel agent, or restaurant critic, our leaders run the risk of becoming moribund because they have not been able to modulate their behaviour or find their voice in this new reality." (4).

The death of political authority in the West has been a long and continuous process, and mostly a quiet affair.
In her book, 'Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey,' Sallie Nichols said that many Western poets foresaw the crisis of authority and the madness of modern civilization. She wrote:

"Since the turn of the century, our poets have seen the darkness coming. Over fifty years ago, William Butler Yeats warned:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
What better description of our present dilemma? The infamous "Watergate horrors" of our outer history were but tiny ripples in a sea of confusion and corruption in which the inner spirit of men everywhere has become engulfed. The ceremony of innocence is indeed drowned, and anarchy is loosed upon the world. As Yeats foresaw, the debacle is no longer merely a matter of greed and lust for power -- these are peripheral concerns. It is "the centre" that will not hold. Something is dead wrong at the core of life. We are empty of meaning." (5).

The elitist manipulators of human destiny and human history know that they have lost the trust of the people of the planet, but they're confident that an authoritarian global government will solve all their problems. They speak of a "new age" and a "new world order" and they plan to start World War III by attacking Iran which would mark the end of this dead age.

Since war is the father of change, the mad men in the Western power elite need their big war with Iran to advance their plot for a new world order.

Unleashing mass death, mass destruction, and mass misery upon the world is the only way these freaks can retain their absolute power over mankind in the new age that is already here.

Notes:

1. Rimbaud, Arthur. (2002). Rimbaud Complete: Volume One, Poetry and Prose. Edited and translated by Wyatt Mason. Random House: New York. Pg. 83.

2. Auden, W. H. (2011). The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue. Edited by Alan Jacobs. Originally published in 1947 by Random House: New York. Pg. 34.

3. Allan Gregg's interview with Allen Ginsberg sometime in the 1990s. Quote is from the 23:40 - 26:39 mark.

4. Gregg, Allan. "On Authenticity – How the Truth Can Restore Faith in Politics and Government." The 2011 Gordon Osbaldeston Lecture. November 19, 2011.

5. Nichols, Sallie. (1980). Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. Red Wheel/Weiser: York Beach, ME. Pg. 167.

Alex Jones: The SHTF A Long Time Ago!!!

The Sound of Shit Hitting the Fan

Posted by Saman Mohammadi at 12:33 AM

This New Commando 'Mothership' Is Being Rushed To The Middle East

2012-01-29T08:25:00.000-08:00

Robert Johnson

The Pentagon is wasting no time in modifying its forces to meet the needs of a more specialized and commando-based military.

The Washington Post reports the Pentagon is fast-tracking the conversion of the 1960s warship USS Ponce to use as a "commando mothership" base for special forces teams in the Middle East.

The re-christened Ponce will hold small Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (Zodiac style boats), and helicopters routinely employed by the SEAL teams that are now becoming famous for their successful clandestine operations.

The news broke through Pentagon procurement documents, and though the Navy has refused to announce where the Ponce will be stationed, military paperwork suggest it will sail the Persian Gulf.
The fact that further documentation says the ship will "support mine countermeasure missions" fuels speculation that the Ponce will be used in the Strait of Hormuz should Iran follow through on its threats to try and shutter the waterway.

The commissioning of this new Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) could signal a return for the SEALs to maritime-focused missions after spending the last decade immersing themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Ponce will serve along with another AFSB previously stationed in the Gulf, the USS Cleveland.

While the Pentagon is wasting no time in getting the SEALs, and the Ponce, to wherever they're going, Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby told FOX News that he denied the Post's claim that they were "moving with unusual haste" in refitting the Ponce.

"While this work is being done in an expeditious fashion," Kirby said, it is not accurate to surmise that this signals a rush to meet some urgent combat requirement."

The Navy SEALs were used this week to recover two hostages being held in Somalia.

Resist Biometrics - Your Liberty Depends on It

2012-01-29T07:18:00.001-08:00

The vision of the goyim as cattle is coming true. Biometrics is the
human equivalent of a dairy cow's ear tag.

by Chris Goodmenbetter
(henrymakow.com)
It's official. The biometric cataloging of the human race has begun. India's intent to record it's entire nations' 1.2 billion people by iris and fingerprint scans signals a devious high tech human monitoring and control agenda.

Although no one ever asks for such systems, biometrics will be sold to the populace as cool, sexy, convenient, safe and secure but will eventually prove to be a living hell for everyone on planet earth. Most just don't know it yet.

--- To surveil and identify, sold as to serve and protect

In order to recognize biometrics as the human equivalent of a dairy cow's ear tag, a brief explanation is in order. One of many current biometrics systems is referred to as "facial recognition" technology.

When someone volunteers to get their drivers' license or passport, photos are required to have an unobstructed, relaxed, static, straight-on portrait face. The subjects' photo is then digitized and entered into a computer.

Via biometric software algorithms, the constant inter-relational dimensions are measured, such as height, width, relation of the nose to the eyes, mouth to chin's end etc.

Facial expressions, such as smiling for instance, alter these ratio calculations and are no longer allowed during photography. Based upon these unique facial landmarks, an identifying number is arrived at, assigned and data based. Biometrics standards are also internationalized.

Similar biometrical examples in sporadic use include fingerprint, palm, retinal & iris scans, gait and speech recognition and cranial thermal ( measuring unique thermal heat signatures of a persons' scalp) recognition.

In order to operate, these biometrics systems require some kind of input device to connect the real world with database, such as a person placing their hands on a scanner or peering into one.

Facial, cranial and gait recognition rely on vast networks of un-invited CCTV video cameras which, not surprisingly, account for their dramatic weed-like proliferation into society.

The physically dangerous full body x-ray scanners used at U.S. airports (now thankfully banned in several countries which initially had them) can peer right through clothing and record and store a 360 degree biometric profile for future use (travelers' personal ticket and/or passport info is stored in conjunction with their scan.)

Similar existing street level systems can scan anyone's body as they walk down the sidewalk without their even knowing it. These real time scans can then be compared to existing databases (which a subject previously provided at the airport, as example.)

Ultimately, biometrics offers a means to identify, surveil and monitor an entire populace's actions and whereabouts in real time. (see DARPA's Total Information Awareness Network)

BUILDING THE DATABASE AND GROOMING THE POPULACE

In February 2008, at a cost of one billion dollars per year, the FBI awarded a ten year contract to Lockheed Martin to develop a giant database of biometric data including fingerprints, iris scans, and DNA, which the FBI refers to as the "Next Generation Identification" (NGI). The goal is to have such personal data from every human being on file.

How perfect it is then that Lockheed Martin also be responsible for both the Canadian and British Census.

Like with any indoctrination form, it's important to get children friendly with biometrics as early as possible. SONY and Microsoft use facial recognition in their latest Playstation and XBOX. Why not - it's fun! Many schoolchildren are thumbscanning to get school lunches or take out library books. Childrens' cartoons abound with biometric references.

Familiarizing society with biometrics is critical to it's adoption. Through "patient gradualism" (or in similar military terms, "mission creep"), the slow change takes place while minimizing resistance and reaction. Humans are the most adaptable beings on the planet and if perceptions appear natural, we tend to accept them.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

I refuse to submit to a biometrics photo, iris or thumb scan. As a result, I am no longer able to legally drive a car, or get on a commercial airplane (international or domestic), despite 23 years on the road without a single accident or ticket (an insurance company's actuarial dream), as driver's licenses and passports now employ this loathsome technology.

You have to ask yourself: 'what's your own personal line in the sand'?

Michael Collins was instrumental in gaining Ireland's' independence from the British Crown.

He proved an indefatigable adversary who overcame Britain's' best not only because of his highly unorthodox (read: CREATIVITY) tactics but also undoubtedly due to the fact that the British authorities had no knowledge of him!

They had no known pictures, profiles or whereabouts of the man. Such un-predictable wildcards terrify monolithic oligopolies. Collins managed to free the Irish, from the back of a bicycle. If alive today, I doubt Collins would have submitted to biometrics either.

I recommend the movie "Michael Collins" with Liam Neeson as an introduction to the man.

We still have the power of choice, for the most part, as to who gets what information about ourselves but the only sure way to secure this information is to never divulge it in the first place. In an information war, databases are the weapon of your foe.

Observe wild animals in nature. They carry no I.D., roam as they please, occupy no database and yet somehow they are able to thrive. They are free.

As it stands, your average crow stands freer than most humans.

-------------------------
http://www.cruelhoax.ca/jamaffiliates/image.php?bid=1&mid=1

--- References and suggested reading:

Citibank to roll out voice biometrics   http://www.zdnet.com.au/citibank-to-roll-out-voice-biometrics-339306609.htm?feed=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnetaustralia+%28ZDNet+Australia%29

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/New-Iscon-Whole-Body-Scanner-Now-Offers-Integrated-Biometric-Capabilities-Detect-All-1343909.htm

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/01/dutch_police_develop_mobile_bo.php

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/01/17/nypd-testing-gun-scanning-technology/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6309917.stm    ( make sure to take in readers' comments at that link )

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/malls-go-big-brother-with-black-friday-cell-phone-tracking-20111124

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6309917.stm

http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=837   "One generation is all we need"

http://www.wethepeoplewillnotbechipped.com/main/news_cats.php?cat_id=39 ( excellent biometrics & implantable microchip news archive )

The Truth Behind the Coming “Regime Change” in Syria By Shamus Cooke

2012-01-29T06:50:00.000-08:00

Global Research
via http://williambowles.info

After meeting again to decide Syria’s fate, the Arab League again decided to extend its “monitoring mission” in Syria. However, some Arab League nations under U.S. diplomatic control are clamoring for blood. These countries — virtual sock puppets of U.S. foreign policy — want to declare the Arab League monitoring mission “a failure,” so that military intervention — in the form of a no fly zone — can be used for regime change.

The United States appears to be using a strategy in Syria that it has perfected over the years, having succeeded most recently in Libya: arming small paramilitary groups loyal to U.S. interests that claim to speak for the local population; these militants then attack the targeted government the U.S. would like to see overthrown — including terrorist bombings — and when the attacked government defends itself, the U.S. cries “genocide” or “mass murder,” while calling for foreign military intervention.
This is the strategy that the U.S. is using to channel the Arab Spring into the bloody dead end of foreign military intervention.

For example, the U.S. media and government are fanatically giving the impression that, in Syria, the local population would like foreign militarily intervention to overthrow their authoritarian president, Bashar Assad. But facts are stubborn things.

After spinning these lies, The New York Times was forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the Syrian government. These rallies are larger than any pro-government demonstration that the U.S. government could hope to organize for itself. The New York Times reports:

“The turnout [at least tens of thousands — see picture in link] in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus, the [Syrian] capital, once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest.” (January 13, 2012).

The New York Times is forced to admit that the two largest cities — in a small country — support the government (or at least oppose foreign military intervention).
This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Syrian Qatar Foundation, preformed by the Doha Debates:

“According to the latest opinion poll commissioned by The Doha Debates, Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign.” (January 2, 2012).

If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention — a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations — what about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which the United States has given immense credibility to and which claims to speak for the Syrian people?

The Free Syrian Army — like its Libyan counterpart — appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by route of its ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs:

“Why does the Syrian [government] military not rocket their [Free Syrian Army] position or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire.”

The article also quotes a Free Syrian Army member who states: “Every [Free Syrian Army] group in Turkey has its own job,” Sayeed said. “[The Turks] gave us our freedom to move.” (December 8, 2011).

The article also mentions that the Free Syrian Army is calling for a “no fly zone” over certain regions of Syria, which would destroy the Syrian government military; the possible starting locations of this no fly zone are on the Syrian borders of either Turkey, Jordan, or Iraq — all three are either strong U.S. allies or client states.

A “no fly zone” is the new euphemism that means the U.S. and its European military junior partners in NATO will intervene to use their advanced fighter jets to destroy the Syrian military, as happened in Libya. In Libya the no fly zone evolved into a “no drive zone” and eventually a “no survival” zone for anything resembling the Syrian military — or anybody who armed himself in defense of the Libyan government.

As in Syria, Libya’s largest city, Tripoli, never had large anti-government demonstrations. The anti-Libyan government/pro-U.S. paramilitary group that attacked Libyan forces was so tiny that it took months to take power after 10,000 NATO bombing sorties (bombing missions) that destroyed large portions of Libya’s infrastructure, as documented by the independent Human Rights Investigations.

It’s totally unimaginable that any large section of Syrian society would invite a NATO-backed no fly zone, i.e. war, into Syria. The examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are too glaring for any Middle Eastern nation not to notice. For the Free Syrian Army to demand a NATO invasion of Syria is enough to label the FSA a U.S. puppet group striving for political power, deserving to be condemned.
This strategy of using a proxy army to undermine an anti-U.S. government has a grisly past. This strategy is celebrated in the book Charlie Wilson’s War, which tells the true story of the U.S. government sending weapons and cash to Islamic extremists to wage a terrorist campaign against the Afghan government, which was an ally of the Soviet Union at the time. The attacks eventually led to the Afghan government asking for Soviet military re-enforcements, whose presence in Afghanistan created a degree of popular support for the extremists who eventually became known as the Taliban.
The same scenario also played itself out in Kosovo, where the tiny, U.S.-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began a terrorist campaign against the government of Yugoslavia, intending to separate Kosovo into an independent nation. When the Yugoslav government attempted to defend itself from the KLA — while imitating its violent tactics — the U.S. and other western governments labeled it genocide, and invaded Yugoslavia, calling it a “humanitarian invasion.” To this day the U.S. is one of few nations that recognizes Kosovo as an independent nation while Kosovo faithfully serves the interests of the United States

The same proxy war strategy — by the U.S. and other European powers — played a crucial role in numerous wars throughout Africa, which culminated in the massive Congo War that killed over five million people, as French journalist Gerard Prunier describes in his book, Africa’s World War.
In Syria history is repeating itself, and some non-U.S. allies are very aware of it. The New York Times reports:

“[Russia's Foreign Minister] said that foreign governments [the U.S., Turkey, etc.] were arming ‘militants and extremists’ in Syria.”

The Foreign minister also gave an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran:

“Mr. Lavrov offered a similarly grave message about the possibility of a military strike against Iran, which he said would be a “catastrophe.” He said sanctions now being proposed against Tehran were “intended to have a smothering effect on the Iranian economy and the Iranian population, probably in the hopes of provoking discontent.” (January 19, 2012).

Most ominously, the Russian Foreign Minister said that U.S. foreign policy in Syria and Iran could lead to a “very big war,” i.e., a war that becomes regional or even international in scope, as other powers intervene to uphold their interests in the region.

Russia has offered a way to avoid war in Syria and is pursuing it through the UN Security Council; it is the same path being pursued by the pro-U.S. government in Yemen: maintaining the current government in power until elections are called. Unfortunately, Yemen is an ally of the U.S. and Syria is not — the U.S. and its allies are blocking the same approach in Syria in order to pursue war.
The Syrian government opposition bloc inside of Syria, the National Coordination Committee, opposes foreign military intervention. A leader of the NCC is Hassan Abdul Azim, who wisely states;

“We refuse on principle any type of military foreign intervention because it threatens the freedom of our country,” (January 19, 2012).

This is very likely the prevailing opinion inside of Syria, since the threat of no fly zones will result in the same mass bombings experienced by the citizens of Tripoli in Libya. The fake Syrian opposition outside of the country, The Syrian National Council, is yet another U.S. puppet — now allied with the Free Syrian Army — begging for a military invasion of Syria in order to “liberate” it. Of course the western media tells only the perspective of the pro-U.S. Syrian National Council.

The U.S. has proven on multiple occasions that military solutions solve nothing, having torn asunder the social fabric of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The working people of Syria and Iran do not desire “help” from the U.S. government and its allies to prevent bloodshed. The working people of these countries could liberate themselves from their authoritarian governments, as did the Tunisians and Egyptians, which is precisely the point: the U.S. is intervening militarily to re-gain control over a region that slipped out of its hands during the Arab Spring. This military approach serves to push the working people of the targeted country into the hands of their government while creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the invaded nation. The working people of the United States have no interest in aggressive war and have a responsibility to learn about U.S. government propaganda so that they can demand its end in the streets.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( http://www.workerscompass.org )

Sources
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/world/middleeast/syrians-rally-in-support-of-assad.html
http://www.thedohadebates.com/news/item/index.asp?n=14312
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/08/syria_free_army_rebels?page=0,3
http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/tag/nato-bombing/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/russia-warns-west-it-risks-war-over-syria-iran-20120119-1q8ei.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/europe/russia-warns-against-support-for-arab-uprisings.html?_r=3&ref=world
http://rt.com/news/syria-protests-russia-dialogue-149/

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Sometimes, but not always related posts:

'West installed Israel to control Mideast'

2012-01-29T06:25:00.000-08:00

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the hegemonic powers of the world installed the Israeli regime in the Middle East in a “historical scheme” to gain control over the region.

“Why did they install the Zionist regime (Israel)? To gain control over oil, as well as the popular and revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East,” said President Ahmadinejad in his opening speech at the Islamic Awakening and Youth conference in Iran's capital city, Tehran, on Sunday.

“It is clear that this was a historical scheme,” the Iranian president added.

Ahmadinejad warned the regional countries against the West's plots to sow discord in the Middle East in order to save Israel.

The Iranian president added that the West intends to cause religious and ethnic rifts in a certain country by using other regional states.

Ahmadinejad denounced the West's claim of advocating democracy and justice and added that the Western capitalism is on the verge of collapse, and that the world should find an alternative system that guarantees amity and justice.

Nearly 1,200 young participants from 73 countries are in Iran to attend the two-day international conference in Tehran.

The role of the youth in the wave of the Islamic Awakening which has swept through the Middle East and North Africa since early 2011 will be discussed at the conference.

ASH/MYA/HJL

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Roadmap to Redressing Economic Terrorism in America

2012-01-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

We Weren’t Going to Stay Stupid Forever

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Of those who work in Special Operations and such things, I am one of the very few with a background in international finance. This is not written for public consumption but I will publish it anyway, do with it as you will. I am writing to our “community.” You know who you are.
Over the past few years, amounts of money and practices none of us had imagined have been hitting the news. We hear one day that the Federal Reserve secretly lends out trillions of dollars. It doesn’t say whose dollars or where they went or what America got in return.

America got screwed.

Years ago, I had been asked to look after a former Reagan official named Lee Wanta. Some of you will understand this sentence, who does the asking and what “look after”means. I knew he had been kidnapped in Switzerland and, though a diplomat, sent to the US and imprisoned on criminal charges we knew to be a total invention.

His personal attorney was Chief Legal Council for the Central Intelligence Agency.

My retiree job is as an intelligence contractor working with pro-US clients. I “brief,” not interview. I am not a journalist by trade. I am one of the thousands of Americans that middle age has turned from a “knock in the back of the head” guy to someone who can talk his way out of a dozen foreign jails. I am simply one of many Americans that few know exist, a Marine, a Vietnam veteran and someone who spent much of his life with his head upside down.

The deal.

Wanta has court documentation that he is owed $7.2 trillion dollars. Initially, $4.5 trillion was transferred to the Federal Reserve Bank while issues of law and taxes were negotiated. This is the remainder of a larger fund, transferred into the US while litigation was to determine tax liability and little else.

Secretly, a group of individuals has been using and diverting these funds.

Why does the fund exist? Wanta worked for Reagan, National Intelligence Coordinator and then was nominated by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa at Reagan’s request to take over as Inspector General of the Department of Defense. Instead, Reagan assigned Wanta to a project to raise huge amounts of money trading currency. Much of this is on the internet and much of it is correct. The total amount raised, based on collateral supplied by the US Department of Treasury in a secret intelligence operation was 27 trillion USD.

Over the years, all but $4.5 trillion was stolen, much of it by a previous US president, some by the CIA, much by banks. Years ago, I was sent account numbers on some of the money and tried to locate it in concert with foreign intelligence agencies. I would have returned the funds to the US government. Included is 2000 tons of gold, and dozens of bank accounts around the world. I have the account numbers, talked to the bankers and even, in one case, went directly to a chief of state.

Stolen cash is impossible to recover when half of it is paid out in bribes.

As most of what I am writing is probably classified, let’s pretend I am making this all up.

Anyway, back to Wanta. During this time, Wanta had gone to court to recover his funds, which had grown to over $7 trillion. The rest of the money, much of which came from currency trading at the largest scale in world history, we will never find.

Now a court has ordered Wanta to receive his money.

The company to receive the money is Ameritrust. The board members of Ameritrust are well known public people, a former Vice President, senators, generals and admirals and, of course, me.

The money is, officially, in the Federal Bank of Richmond and the order to return the funds was signed by the President of the United States based on an agreement with the Federal Courts.   Involved, over a period of years, is a group of people every American will know, from presidents and vice presidents to the heads of the Federal Reserve, Secretaries of Treasury, names like Bush and Cheney, Paulson, Bernake, Gore, some names working for America and too many trying to steal part of the money for themselves.

Some tried to steal all of it.

When you heard news stories about the Federal Reserve making secret loans to the crooked ”bail out banks” that weren’t authorized by congress, they were lending out the $7.2 trillion “Wanta dollars” ordered paid by President Obama and the Federal Courts.

If you wondered how the Federal Reserve, that couldn’t print a few billion dollars without authorization from congress, lent out trillions that technically didn’t exist with no permission at all and there was no investigation, no questions asked and the story forgotten a day later, you will begin to understand by the end of this. You will be extremely upset and angry also.

Thus far, here is part of that settlement I can tell you of but first, I had Wanta check out. To do that, I went to a top army intelligence officer from the Pentagon, one who had been Defense Attache to Israel and who had worked in Special Operations, war plans, clandestine operations and such since he was an A Team leader in Vietnam.

I put him on with Wanta for hours and had Wanta interrogated. Wanta knew dozens of the highest classified operations in US history, knew every Pentagon official including much highly detailed personal information and to what was our top Army intelligence officer, that he was, unquestioningly, working for years at the highest levels of US intelligence.

The man who grilled him still hangs up the phone whenever I mention 9/11, a close personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

This is the deal:

Ameritrust agrees to buy $1 trillion in 10 year treasury bonds, which will finance America’s national debt for the next year.

Ameritrust, as outlined by the court, agrees to pay $1.7 trillion in income tax, reducing the national debt significantly overnight.

Ameritrust has set aside $6 billion for disbursement, under my advisement, monies for two purposes:

   1. Development of a program to end veteran homelessness and save a generation of young veterans. This is entirely privately donated money. A non-profit entity exists and programs can start today. Not one cent will be stolen or diverted.
   2. Fund efforts to aid in closing the US border and put a 100% end to illegal immigration and drug trafficking. This involves billions of dollars, carefully administered, with the full cooperation of state and local officials who have already been consulted and are onboard.

Ameritrust has set aside, minimally, $1 trillion USD to build a high speed rail system for the United States with almost all components domestically constructed. This system includes stations, hotels and much more. The minimal impact will include:

   1. Initial employment will begin at 80,000 with full employment in the manufacture, installation and security of this system 400,000 new jobs, all privately financed without one cent of taxpayer money.
   2. Veterans will receive preference on all jobs but, as is obvious, employment goes well beyond our available veteran community.
   3. Required technologies and the entities that control such will be purchased and manufacturing facilities will be located within the United States.

The economic impact on other transportation systems, particularly airlines, has been predicted and funding is available to minimize disruption.

America, of course, will become the world’s tourist destination, travel costs for top domestic destinations will lower by a minimum of $65% and no debt will be involved. 400,000 paychecks will end the recession, produce tax revenue to allow additional paydown of national debt and, for the first time in decades, actually raise the standard of living in America.

This is all documented.

Studies showing lowered emissions and freedom from oil imports are almost frightening.

All this does, of course, is give Americans things that other nations around the world have had for years but at lower cost, financed through the foresight, frankly, of President Ronald Reagan.

This entire project was his plan. I had no idea. That we are dealing with it now is because criminal elements within our government and financial industry including the Federal Reserve System have subverted this plan, ignored court orders and violated so many laws we can’t even count.

This money is here today, it is 20 years old, it requires no new currency issue, it pays down debt and adds nothing but jobs, revenue and hope. To stop this from moving forward, Wanta was kidnapped and jailed, court cases involving the top lawyer in the United States have gone on for 6 years and millions have been spent to either keep this out of the press or misrepresent facts that exist on enough legal documents to fill a Fed Ex van.

At one point, Wanta was put in a mental institution. He gave the psychiatrist a telephone number to call. Vice President Al Gore answered and confirmed Wanta’s identity. Vice President Gore also confirmed that he had been informed that Lee Wanta was dead. When Gore learned Wanta was alive in the room, we suspect this is why Wanta is here and the Reagan/Ameritrust program is coming back to life.

The psychiatrist ordered Wanta’s release. Instead of release, he was jailed and the psychiatrist “warned” and then fired.

We can prove this.

You have heard these stories a dozen times, Sibel Edmonds, John Wheeler III, Susan Lindauer and a hundred names you will never hear. Ask why Senator Paul Wellstone of Wisconsin and his family are dead.

This is the real world we live in, why we pay so much for gas when the world money markets have crashed, when demand is nothing but prices rise daily and nobody ever asks anything.

What we want to know and “we” is not a harmless bunch of cranks. “We” means many of the people who formerly and currently represent key “capabilities” that protect and defend the United States.

We want to know why, for years, the Federal Reserve illegally “loaned” trillions of dollars to banks that claimed they were insolvent, money in escrow and not under their authority for distribution.

We want to know why, for years, the Secretaries of Treasury authorized these illegal acts which have been reported in the news but never investigated.

We want to know where the trillions of dollars are in profits that were generated by using this currency to collateralize offshore transactions never listed by the banks who received the illegal loans.

Read that one again until you understand the extent of what I am saying and how obvious all of this is.

The money has been there to put America on her feet. Nobody ever explained how the Federal Reserve could lend trillions of dollars “illegally,” money never under their official control but rather under the supervision of the Federal District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia.

In addition to funding existing legal authorities to end illegal immigration overnight and begin a real war on drug trafficking, at some point there will be unpaid state income taxes totaling over $200 billion dollars.

We have the full backing of state governors, select members of congress and those financial leaders who choose to profit from honest business instead of insider trading and financial scams.

This means “change.”

What we demand?

We want monies owed and ordered to be paid as law requires to be paid. All we are demanding is restoration of rule of law in accordance with existing court orders and legal judgements, nothing more.

We also have law enforcement and intelligence officials who tell us that they will never sleep another night until they have hunted all these people involved down and have seen justice done. They say they are willing to spend their lives hunting assets, even to the ends of the earth, beginning with vacation homes, yachts, family trusts, safe deposit boxes, anywhere on the planet and that existing laws covering money laundering and terrorism give them the needed tools.

The term I keep hearing is “continuing criminal enterprise.” I am more a builder than one to seek retribution but others are not so forgiving. We believe this is why funds are being held up, out of fear.

As there is enough money here for Ameritrust to be the most powerful congressional lobby, being a “corporate person,” the richest ever imagined, think of the irony. The laws meant to deprive Americans of their rights being used to restore democracy and rule of law. The idea is frightening.

As billions are assigned for veterans relief at a time of extreme national emergency, failure to do so is unthinkable.

America was never intended to be what it has become. We have the funds, the plans and the people to begin a rapid and well conceived turn-around of America. This is a plan of investment in America, of hard work, of the most extreme form of financial conservatism thinkable.

This is about work and paying taxes and building in America for America by Americans.

Ask yourself who has been blocking this, who is above the law? Court documents on all of this, as required by law, are in the public domain.

Welcome to any who think this is less than we say.

How Iran could beat up on America's superior military

2012-01-28T12:45:00.000-08:00

America's defense budget is roughly 90 times bigger than Iran's. But Iran has a well-honed strategy of asymmetric warfare.

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer / January 26, 2012

In this 2008 file photo, Iranian Revolutionary Guard members march during a parade ceremony marking the 28th anniversary of the onset of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), in front of the mausoleum of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran.

Vahid Salemi/AP/File

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Istanbul, Turkey

Tehran has stepped up its bellicose warnings of conflict in the Persian Gulf as potentially crippling new European Union and American sanctions have been approved on Iran's oil exports and central bank.

Many options short of full-blown war

Iran's conventional military forces are often aging and of limited capability. Iran spent just $7 billion on defense compared to America's $619 billion defense budget in 2008, the latest year for which Iran's data was available, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's database.
Iran's strategy of asymmetric warfare recognizes that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has little chance of winning any face-to-face military contest with powerful enemies like the United States.
Instead, Iran aims to "exploit enemy vulnerabilities through the used of 'swarming' tactics by well-armed small boats and fast-attack craft, to mount surprise attacks at unexpected times and places" which will "ultimately destroy technologically superior enemy forces," writes Iranian military expert Fariborz Haghshenass in a 2008 study based on published doctrines of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

OPINION: 5 reasons US must avoid war with Iran

In any future fight, Iran would likely "avoid escalating the conflict in a way that would play to US strengths in waging mid- to high-intensity warfare – by employing discreet tactics such as covert mine-laying, limited submarine options, and occasional mobile shore-based attacks," writes Mr. Haghshenass, in the study for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In fact, Iran has many options short of a direct challenge in the Persian Gulf.
"Iran could seek to create perpetual, low-grade instability in the strait, mostly through asymmetric means, with the objective of making it an aquatic 'no-man's land,' " says Reza Sanati, in an analysis published by the Tehran Bureau/PBS Frontline website. "For Iran, the choice is not 'to close' or 'not to close,' but rather to clog. A major global choke point, once considered safe, would no longer be so."
The US "would be drawn into providing the manpower and bearing the exorbitant cost for removing the impediments," adds Mr. Sanati, while the risk of inadvertently sparking a war would "vastly multiply."

Devastating result for US in war game

Iran's asymmetric focus is no secret. It has sought to enhance deterrence by claiming repeated triumphs during large military exercises, and by fielding new hardware, from super-fast torpedoes and to kamikaze drones.
During the "Great Prophet V" exercise in April 2010, for example, the IRGC Navy trumpeted the launch of a new "ultra-fast" watercraft that it claimed was less detectable by radar. Across the shimmering Gulf waters, Iran fielded 300 boats in a swarming attack, with commandos landing on one of the target warships.

IN PICTURES: Iran's military might

"The Strait of Hormuz belongs to the region and foreigners must not intervene in it," military spokesman Ali Reza Tangsiri said at the time.
That warning echoed the words of a ranking Iranian cleric in 2008 that the "first shot" fired against Iran would turn the Israeli capital Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf into "the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response."
More than a decade earlier, in 1997, then-IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei said "Iran will never start any war," but if the US attacked first "we will turn the region into a slaughterhouse for them. There is no greater place than the Persian Gulf to destroy America's might."
Could Iran do it?

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Stop the Pro-Israel Lobby

2012-01-28T12:30:00.000-08:00

The ‘consultation’ on a statutory lobby register may be a window of opportunity

by Stuart Littlewood - Intifada-Palestine.com

The Queen needs a new royal yacht. But the British government says it can’t afford to buy her one. The £80 million for the project must come from private sources.

“Leading British companies will… be asked to donate funds in exchange for naming rights to various decks and facilities on board,” says The Guardian. Does this mean Her Majesty will be seen entertaining in the Goldman Sachs stateroom and sipping daiquiris on the Starbucks sun-deck? Will she shelter from squalls in the Murdoch salon and arrive and depart via the Revlon helipad?

The last royal yacht, Britannia, was a highly successful tool for promoting Great Britain Limited. That being the case, such an important national asset ought to be government funded, not sponsored by tacky brand names.

£80 million is chickenfeed in the great scheme of things. Why are we so hard up that there’s not enough in the public purse to pay for a new boat for our beloved sovereign? One reason, of course, is because for years we’ve been suckered into joining the United States in fighting Israel’s wars of aggression. Given our huge debts it beggars belief that we’re gearing up for another one… this time against Iran… and pushing the oil markets to the edge of panic.

Haven’t we had our fill of warmongering idiocy?

War fever was magnified at the weekend with an announcement that the Ministry of Defence had splashed out another £14 million on building a replica Middle East village in Thetford Forest for training our troops. It’s complete with shops, fully furnished homes, the stench of rotting meat and a bomb survivor with limbs blown off. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/5256219/MoD-builds-Afghan-village-in-Norfolk.html

The site was originally a replica Nazi village built in 1942, but that was training for a war of a very different kind… a war in defence of our realm and for our very survival.

Why do we get dragged into these illegal and inhuman expeditions to devastate countries that are no threat to us? Because a team of Israel-firsters in our midst think it’s smart to promote the ambitions of a foreign power at the expense of our own national interest and everyone else’s. They have taken command and control of our country by infiltrating the highest levels of government. For example they hold the key jobs in the Foreign Office.

Our watchdogs ought to have booted them out for violating the sacred principles of conduct in public life, but these leeches are now permanently attached while the dogs are de-fanged and petted.

Channel 4's film alleges that William Hague faced threats of a withdrawal of funding from CFI after he described a retaliatory attack by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 as 'disproportionate'. Photograph: Martin Godwin

I can imagine just how robustly the criminal regime in Israel is reprimanded by prime minister David Cameron, a self-declared Zionist, by foreign secretary William Hague, an avid fan of Israel since his teenage years, by Alistair Burt a former officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel and now minister for Middle East affairs, and by Ambassador Gould in Tel Aviv who I’m told is the first Jew appointed to that post.

The proposed lobby register
Our coalition government has just provided a glimmer of hope for a solution – an unintended consequence no doubt – by releasing a woolly discussion document on proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists. This is part of a promise to clean up politics and provide greater transparency in the wake of scandals that destroyed the last shred of public confidence in our political system.

The government defines lobbyists as ‘those who seek to influence or change government policy on behalf of a third party’. The document itself http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Introducing%20a%20Statutory%20Register%20of%20Lobbyists.pdf says that a register should include information about the names of individual lobbyists and lobbying firms and the names of their clients. “In addition, we propose that the register should include whether a lobbyist was previously a Government Minister or a Senior Civil Servant. The Government does not propose that any information on meetings should be included in a register.”

However, only third-party lobbying firms will have to declare their clients and record former ministers and government officials they have on their books. Firms employing in-house lobbyists needn’t register at all.
The register should also offer the same transparency as provided for Ministers, special advisers and senior officials. The recent Fox-Werrity outrage showed how unreliable that is. It took determined digging by a retired former ambassador to shine light into the dark and sinister corners of that affair.

Tamasin Cave from the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, an organisation representing a number of charities, unions and campaign groups, said the proposals “are fundamentally flawed and have the lobbyists’ fingerprints all over them. We need a statutory register to require lobbyists to reveal who is lobbying whom, what they are seeking to influence and how much money they are spending.”

The Independent has already blasted the government for attempting a ‘”whitewash” while campaigners say the move does nothing to clean up the lobby industry’s reputation for forging unhealthy relationships between senior politicians and leading lobbying firms.

Will ministers be required to declare why they are meeting lobbyists or which firms or groups they are representing? Apparently not, says The Independent.

Now’s your chance!
What about those who lobby on behalf of a lawless foreign power? It is vitally important to halt lobby groups like Friends of Israel in their tracks. Consultation closes on 13 April, so now’s your chance. Members of the public can make their views known to: Statutory Register of Lobbyists, Cabinet Office, Fourth Floor, 1 Horseguards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. Alternatively, email registerlobbyists@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk marking your response with ‘Statutory Register of Lobbyists’ in the subject field of your email.

Make sure you let the government know that you know what a rotten, treacherous game they are playing. The three main political parties in the UK each have a ‘Friends of Israel’ group to ensure pro-Israel members are embedded at all levels in the British political establishment and at the very heart of government, no matter who is in power.

Campaigners argue that these placemen inhibit the government when it comes to taking a principled stand on foreign affairs issues and especially on matters relating to Israel’s criminal acts.
Or the unjustified ganging up against Iran.

The aim of Friends of Israel is to promote the interests of Israel within the British Parliament. The Israeli regime is racist in its treatment of the Arab population and criminal in its territorial ambitions. The manifestos of Israel’s political parties are horrific. MPs who align themselves with Israel and endorse its practices are contradicting our own anti-racist laws and international and human rights laws.

Should MPs and ministers be acting on behalf of a foreign military power at the expense of our own interests and security? Of course not. They are expressly forbidden to let outside influence cloud their judgment. To do so would breach the second of the Seven Principles of Public Life, namely Integrity – “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.”

Yet Friends of Israel lobby groups go to great lengths to influence those in power. Some say that FoI membership is a necessary passport to high office.

But the man in the street is entitled to look at the Seven Principles of Public Life and say that the activities of lobbies like Friends of Israel are against the intentions, both in word and spirit, of those Principles. Disgraced defence secretary Dr Liam Fox was quoted on the Conservative Friends of Israel website as saying: “…We must remember that in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression – Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together or we will all fall divided.” This was when his party was in opposition. Fox presumably spoke for all Friends of Israel in his party (that’s 80 percent of Conservative MPs according to some claims) who were hoping to form the next government. He would have Parliament and the country believe that Israel’s enemy, Iran, must become Britain’s enemy – the sort of dangerous nonsense that could lead our nation to disaster and once again cause hundreds of thousands of innocent people to be shredded and incinerated… Don’t his sort ever learn?

And seldom do FoI members declare an interest when speaking or writing about the Middle East. That is unacceptable in the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.

In the United States there are growing calls for the Israel lobby AIPAC, which is so super-powerful that it calls the shots in Congress and has presidential candidates grovelling to Israel’s agenda, to be classified as an agent of a foreign power and treated accordingly.

Double standards prevail
The British government ordered a warship to join the US flotilla steaming through the Strait of Hormuz “to underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law”. It’s a response to Iran’s threat to close that seaway if the West imposes an oil embargo.

Royal Navy ships have been patrolling there continuously since the 1980s, but brave Britain hasn’t lifted a finger to keep the sea lanes to Gaza open in response to Israel’s endless illegal blockade and brutal assaults on Gaza’s fishermen and peaceful humanitarian vessels trying to reach the besieged population with aid.
And yesterday the EU announced an embargo on Iranian oil exports, which Britain had been pressing for. It is horribly reminiscent of the bully-boy tactics of the early 1950s, when Britain and America engineered a similar embargo and brought Iran to its knees in order to overthrow the democratic government of Dr Mossadeq and reinstate the hated Shah and his secret police. Why? Because Iran wanted to control its own oil and Britain and the US didn’t like that.

This latest move amounts to another direct attack on Iran’s economic lifeline and smacks of collective punishment and economic terrorism. It will cause hardship to ordinary citizens and further hostility throughout the Islamic world. Nothing pleases Israel more, but why are we so eager to dance to Israel’s tune and damage ourselves in the eyes of world opinion?

Hague said: “Today’s sanctions show how serious EU member states are about preventing nuclear proliferation…” But he and the EU are not in the least serious about nuke-bristling Israel’s refusal to sign up to, or even discuss, non-proliferation. No sanctions there.

Meanwhile hard-pressed British and European motorists are likely to pay a heavy price for this tomfoolery when oil prices rocket. And we are still waiting for proof that Iran has actually done something wrong, are we not? Where does Hague think he’s leading us?

Notice too how the British government’s broadcast regulator has chosen this moment to silence PressTV, Iran’s English-language broadcaster in the UK, by revoking its licence and thus suppressing the other side of the story. PressTV was an inconvenient voice that ruffled too many fine feathers among Britain’s bloodthirsty elite. Truth and free speech, as usual, are the first casualties in softening up the public for war.

Stuart Littlewood
24 January 2012

*********

Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.

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Profile of a Rogue State

2012-01-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 27th, 2012 | Posted by Stephen Lendman

America’s unmatched globally. However, pound for pound, based on size, its policies, and regional threat, Israel stands out.
Daily, its crimes against humanity continue. On January 23, Jerusalem police arrested two Palestinian officials, Khaled Abu Arafeh and Mohammed Totah.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said both men were wanted for unspecified “Hamas activities” with no further comment.

Hamas, of course, is Palestine’s legitimate government. Israel and America spuriously call it a terrorist organization. Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said arresting both men was a “Zionist crime.” Palestine’s parliament hasn’t functioned since Hamas and Fatah split in 2007.

Both men were arrested at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Sheikh Jarrah offices. For the past 18 months, they sought refuge there protesting Israel’s illegal deportation orders after their ID cards were revoked.

Abu Arafah served as Hamas minister for Jerusalem affairs. Totah’s a Hamas PLC representative. Months earlier, Hamas legislator Mahmoud Atoun was arrested. He also sought ICRC refuge.

Hamas parliamentarians are repeatedly targeted. Around two dozen remain imprisoned. Twenty are uncharged under administrative detention. At one time, 40 Hamas PLC members were lawlessly incarcerated for belonging to the wrong party, not any crimes they committed.

On January 19, Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Aziz Dweik was arrested for alleged terrorist connections. Despite a thinly veiled lie, a military court on January 24 ordered him detained uncharged for six months.

On January 20, lawmaker Khaled Tafesh was arrested and detained at Ofer Prison.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned Israel’s actions. It called them “a plan to undermine the results of the (January 2006) Palestinian legislative elections (and) to abort the Palestinian reconciliations efforts.”

PCHR also called them Fourth Geneva-prohibited collective punishment. It demanded immediate release of those held, strongly condemned storming ICRC’s office, and said doing so violated international humanitarian law.

Israel falsely claimed ICRC’s office has no diplomatic status, making it fair game for Israeli lawlessness.

Israel’s War on Hamas

On January 25, Jerusalem Post writer Khaled Abu Toameh headlined, “Israel has declared war on Hamas in West Bank,” saying:

In the past few days alone, five Hamas PLC members were arrested. “Early Tuesday, IDF soldiers arrested Abdel Jabbar Fukaha, a Hamas legislator, in Ramallah and confiscated documents, a laptop and mobile phones from his home.”

His wife said their son Mujahed was summoned to appear Sunday for interrogation. After serving a four-month sentence, Fukaha was released from Israeli prison in February 2011.

“In a related development, Hamas legislators in Tulkarm said on Tuesday that an Israeli security official phoned them and ordered them to close their office immediately. Fathi Qarawi and Riad Raddad said it was the second threat received in the past month.”

It’s part of an Israeli campaign to destroy Hamas, they believe, adding:

“Israel has declared war on Hamas. But we won’t be deterred and we will continue to fulfill our duties.”

Hamas leaders believe Israel’s trying to sabotage reconciliation with Fatah and foil planned May parliamentary and presidential elections. It wouldn’t be the first time strong-arm Israeli tactics subverted Palestinian elections and other legitimate activities.

Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri denounced Israeli’s scheme, saying:

“Israel thinks that the arrests will destroy Hamas’ chances of winning the elections. On the contrary, these measures will only increase (our) popularity.”

He also called on human rights organizations to intervene and pressure Israel to release lawlessly detained “legislators who were elected by the people in a democratic vote.”

Lawless Home Demolitions, Land Theft and Dispossessions

Among other rogue policies, home demolitions and land theft define Israeli repression. On January 23, East Anata’s bedouin compound was bulldozed and destroyed for the fifth time.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) calls it “a living symbol of resistance to Occupation and the desire for justice and peace.”

ICAHD’s Itay Ephshtain said:

“People are somber, traumatized and grief stricken. Nearly 100 people are out in the elements now on a cold night. Children, babies, mothers, fathers. Some of us from ICAHD did try to block the bulldozer, but were beaten back by soldiers.”

In fact, Epshtain was personally beaten and sustained minor injuries.

Called Beit Arabiya, the site was home to Arabiya Shawemreh, her husband Salim and seven children. Their home was previously destroyed four times.

Each time, ICAHD, Palestinians, and international peace activists rebuilt it. Now it’s again gone. On January 23 around 11PM, a bulldozer accompanied by soldiers arrived. Beit Arabiya as well as other residential and agricultural structures in Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin compound were destroyed.

Beit Arabiya initially got a demolition order in 1994. At issue was failing to get a building permit on their own land. ICAHD Director Jeff Halper vowed to help Salim and Arabiya rebuild, saying:

“We shall rebuild. We must rebuild forthwith as an act of political defiance of the occupation and protracted oppression of Palestinians.”

“ICAHD is as determined as always to rebuild the home, and endure in its struggle to bring about justice and peace.”

Salim and Arabiya dedicated their home to Rachael Corrie and Nuha Sweidan. Both women, an American and Palestinian, were murdered resisting Gaza home demolitions.

Weeks earlier on December 6, The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights called on Israel to cease house demolitions, forced evictions, and residency revocations.

ICAHD’s publication “No Home, No Homeland” highlights the issue. It estimates about 26,000 Palestinian homes destroyed since June 1967 for “punitive, land clearing/military, and administrative” reasons.

On Occupied Palestinian land, doing so violates international law. Israel spurns it. As a result, Palestinian suffering continues. Women and children are especially affected. Forced displacement further harms them. ICAHD called 2011 a record year.

World leaders turn a blind eye. Israeli officials are green-lighted to commit crimes with impunity. They take full advantage.

Obama’s “Ironclad” Commitment

In his January 24 State of the Union address, Obama highlighted his unwavering support, saying:

“Our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.”

Among other ways, it’s reflected in billions in military aid and regular increased amounts. In August 2007, Bush increased it by $6 billion over the next decade. Despite budget constraints, Obama added more.

In FY 2012 alone, an additional $236 million will help develop three Israeli missile programs: Arrow-2, David’s Sling, and Arrow 3. Israel already gets over $3 billion annually, plus unknown add-ons if requested.

“If Americans knew” reports that while Israel gets “at least $8.2 million each day in military aid,” Palestinians get zero.

A Final Comment

On January 22, London Guardian writer Harriet Sherwood headlined, “The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel’s Al Jalame” Prison, saying:

Young children are physically and verbally abused. It’s nightmarish. Cell 36 and others like it are “where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old” said he’d been isolated for 65 days.

Cells are “barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep.”

Low-quality food arrives through door flaps, depriving children of human contact. Brutal interrogations break the monotony. Shackled hands and feet to a chair for hours, they’re questioned.

Most often, their alleged “crime” is stone-throwing. Most deny doing it. Physical and verbal abuse follow. Many face sleep deprivation exhaustion. “Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions” in desperation. Later they say they were coerced.

As many as 700 Palestinian children are arrested annually. Some are 10 or younger. Mistreatment is extreme. Emotional trauma results.

According to Nader Abu Amsha, director of Beit Sahour’s YMCA juvenile rehab program:

“(F)amilies think that when (their) child is released, it’s the end of the problem. We tell them (it’s only) the beginning. You see children who are totally broken. It’s painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system.”

It’s more evidence of rogue Israeli lawlessness. Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti told Maan News that conflict and abuses will continue until Israel ends occupation and withdraws to pre-1967 borders.

He believes Palestinian national unity and nonviolent resistance stand the best chance of achieving it.

Barghouti’s a prisoner of conscience serving five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for wanting to live free. Free or imprisoned, he symbolizes hope. Supporters hope he’ll be freed one day to lead them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US
Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. He is also the author of “How Wall Street Fleeces America“

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She also heads the International Relations for Facilitate Global, an NGO promoting peace, human rights, and economic change.
Currently, she’s pursuing a research project in Saudi Arabia for a forthcoming book on Saudi-Western Relations.
Major regional issues will be discussed.

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Who Commissioned Us to Remake the World?

2012-01-28T10:41:00.000-08:00

by Patrick J. Buchanan
via theburningplatform.com

U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so.

In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad.

The NDI has been tied to color-coded or Orange revolutions such as those that dethroned regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Lebanon. The project miscarried in Belarus.

The NDI is one of several agencies, dating to the 1980s, that were set up to subvert communist regimes. With the end of the Cold War, however, these agencies were not decommissioned, but recommissioned to serve as something of an American Comintern.

Where the old Comintern of Lenin sought to instigate communist revolutions across the West and its empires, post-Cold War America decided to promote democratic revolutions to remake the world in the image of late 20th century America.
In 2002, McFaul wrote a book: Russia’s Unfinished Revolution.

Vladimir Putin’s men are not unreasonably asking if he was sent to Moscow to finish that revolution. Putin has already accused Hillary Clinton of flashing the signal for street demonstrations to begin – to protest Russia’s December’s elections.

Nor is it surprising the Putin’s people are suspicious of McFaul, who added to his problems by meeting with anti-Putin dissidents the day after he presented his credentials.

McFaul says this is part of his “dual-track engagement” with Russian society. Before leaving for Moscow, he told NPR’s “Morning Edition”: “We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ – not American values, not Western values, universal values.”

But what, exactly, are these “universal values”?

And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

After all, we do not even agree ourselves on what is moral and immoral, good and evil. Indeed, our own deep disagreements on what is moral and what is not are at the root of the culture wars tearing this country apart.

In America, women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Scores of millions have availed themselves of that right since Roe v. Wade. Yet traditionalists of many faiths – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Orthodox and Jewish – reject any such woman’s right and regard it as a moral abomination.

Do homosexuals have a right to cohabit, form civil unions and marry?

In a few American states, yes; in others, no. But try to impose those values on nations of the Muslim and Third Worlds, where homosexuality is a moral outrage and even a capital offense, and our ambassadors will find themselves in physical peril.

Does McFaul believe democracy is a universally superior system of government? Yet our own founding fathers detested one-man, one-vote democracy. Democracy does not even get a mention in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers.

The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, believed society should be ruled by a “natural aristocracy” of “virtue and talent.”

If the promotion of democracy is a mission of our diplomats, are we to subvert the monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia?

When we see how democracy empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, does it even make sense to insist that it be embraced by nations where the populations are pervasively anti-American?

What is the universally right stand on capital punishment – the Rick Perry position in Texas or the Andrew Cuomo position in New York?

In the United States, all religions – Santeria, Wicca, Islam, Christianity – are to be treated equally and all kept out of the public square and the pubic schools. In a Muslim world that contains a fifth of mankind, Islam is the one true faith. Rival faiths have few or no rights.

Are we going to push the Islamic world to treat all religions equally?

We celebrate religious, racial and ethnic diversity. The Chinese, who persecute Uighurs, Tibetans, Christians and Falun Gong, detest that diversity and fear it will tear their country apart.

We believe in freedom of speech and the press.

Yet, in France, if you deny the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915, you are guilty of a crime, while in Turkey if you affirm that the Turks committed genocide, you have committed a crime. Should U.S. diplomats battle for repeal of both laws? Or mind our own business?

If America wishes to lead the world, let us do it by example, as we once did, not by hectoring every nation on earth to adopt the American way, which as of now, does not seem to be working all that well for Americans.

McFaul should stick to his diplomatic duties.

Jefferson had it right, “We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country.”

January 28, 2012

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his website.

US: Why All the Robo-signing?

2012-01-28T10:08:00.001-08:00

opinion-maker.org

Shedding Light on the Shadow Banking System

By Ellen Brown

The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19^th that the Obama Administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the “robo-signing” scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation reveals that it did not just happen occasionally but was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail – fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion.
To the President’s credit, however, he seems to have shifted his position on the settlement in response to protests before his State of the Union address. In his speech on January 24^th, President Obama did not mention the settlement but announced instead that he would be creating a mortgage crisis unit to investigate wrongdoing related to real estate lending. “This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” he said.

The Deeper Question Is Why

Whether massive robo-signing occurred is no longer in issue. The question that needs to be investigated is why it was being done. The alleged justification—that the bankers were so busy that they cut corners—hardly seems credible given the extent of the practice.
The robo-signing largely involved assignments of mortgage notes to mortgage servicers or trusts representing the investors who put up the loan money. Assignment was necessary to give the trusts legal title to the loans. But assignment was delayed until it was necessary to foreclose on the homes, when it had to be done through the forgery and fraud of robo-signing. Why had it been delayed? Why did the banks not assign the mortgages to the trusts when and as required by law?
Here is a working hypothesis, suggested by Martin Andelman: securitized mortgages are the “pawns” used in the pawn shop known as the “repo market.” “Repos” are overnight sales and repurchases of collateral. Yale economist Gary Gorton explains that repos are the “deposit insurance” for the shadow banking system, which is now larger than the conventional banking system and is necessary for the conventional system to operate. The problem is that repos require “sales,” which means the mortgage notes have to remain free to be bought and sold. The mortgages are left unendorsed so they can be used in this repo market.

The Evolution of the Shadow Banking System

Gorton observes that there is a massive and growing demand for banking by large institutional investors – pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds – which have millions of dollars to park somewhere between investments. But FDIC insurance covers only up to $250,000. FDIC insurance was resisted in the 1930s by bankers and government officials and was pushed through as a populist movement: the people demanded it. What they got was enough insurance to cover the deposits of individuals and no more. Today, the large institutional investors want similar coverage. They want an investment that is secure, that provides them with a little interest, and that is liquid like a traditional deposit account, allowing quick withdrawal.
The shadow banking system evolved in response to this need, operating largely through the repo market. “Repos” are sales and repurchases of highly liquid collateral, typically Treasury debt or mortgage-backed securities—the securitized units into which American real estate has been ground up and packaged, sausage-fashion. The collateral is bought by a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV), which acts as the shadow bank. The investors put their money in the SPV and keep the securities, which substitute for FDIC insurance in a traditional bank. (If the SPV fails to pay up, the investors can foreclose on the securities.) To satisfy the demand for liquidity, the repos are one-day or short-term deals, continually rolled over until the money is withdrawn. This money is used by the banks for other lending, investing or speculating. Gorton writes:
This banking system (the “shadow” or “parallel” banking system)—repo based on securitization—is a genuine banking system, as large as the traditional, regulated banking system. It is of critical importance to the economy because it is the funding basis for the traditional banking system. Without it, traditional banks will not lend and credit, which is essential for job creation, will not be created.

All Behind the Curtain of MERS

The housing shell game was made possible because it was all concealed behind an electronic smokescreen called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.). MERS allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws. Title would be recorded in the name of MERS as a place holder for the investors, and MERS would foreclose on behalf of the investors. Payments would be received by the mortgage servicer, which was typically the bank that signed the mortgage with the homeowner. The homeowner usually thinks the servicer is the lender, but in fact it is an amorphous group of investors.

This all worked until courts started questioning whether MERS, which admitted that it was a mere conduit without title, had standing to foreclose. Courts have increasingly held that it does not.
Making matters worse for the servicing banks, Fannie Mae sent out a memo telling servicers that in order to be reimbursed under HAMP—a government loan modification program designed to help at-risk homeowners meet their mortgage payments—the servicers would have to produce the paperwork showing the loan had been assigned to the trust.
The hasty solution was a rash of assignments signed by an army of “robosigners,” to be filed in the public records. But the documents are patent forgeries, making a shambles of county title records.
Complicating all this are tax issues. Since 1986, mortgage-backed securities have been issued to investors through SPVs called REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits). REMICs are designed as tax shelters; but to qualify for that status, they must be “static.” Mortgages can’t be transferred in and out once the closing date has occurred. The REMIC Pooling and Servicing Agreement typically states that any transfer significantly after the closing date is invalid. Yet the newly robo-signed documents, which are required to begin foreclosure proceedings, are almost always executed long after the trust’s closing date. The whole business is quite complicated, but the bottom line is that title has been clouded not only by MERS but because the trusts purporting to foreclose do not own the properties by the terms of their own documents.
John O’Brien, Register of Deeds for the Southern Essex District of Massachusetts, calls it a “criminal enterprise.” On January 18^th, he called for a full scale criminal investigation, including a grand jury to look into the evidence. He sent to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz over 30,000 documents recorded in the Salem Registry that he says are fraudulent.

From Lending Machines to Borrowing Machines

The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent, but because they have been required to in order to come up with the collateral (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: the banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates.
“Instead of lending into the economy,” says British money reformer Ann Pettifor, “bankers are borrowing from the real economy.” She wrote in the Huffington Post in October 2010:

[T]he crazy facts are these: bankers now borrow from their customers and from taxpayers. They are effectively draining funds from household bank accounts, small businesses, corporations, government Treasuries and from e.g. the Federal Reserve. They do so by charging high rates of interest and fees; by demanding early repayment of loans; by illegally foreclosing on homeowners, and by appropriating, and then speculating with trillions of dollars of taxpayer-backed resources.

Not only has the system destroyed county title records, but it is highly vulnerable to bank runs and systemic collapse. In the shadow banking system, as in the old fractional reserve banking system, the collateral is being double-counted: it is owed to the borrowers and the depositors at the same time. This allows for expansion of the money supply, but bank runs can occur when the borrowers and the depositors demand their money at the same time. And unlike the conventional banking system, the shadow banking system is largely unregulated. It doesn’t have the backup of FDIC insurance to prevent bank runs.
That is what happened in September 2008 following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank. Gary Gorton explains that it was a run on the shadow banking system that caused the credit collapse that followed. Investors rushed to pull their money out overnight. LIBOR—the London interbank lending rate for short-term loans—shot up to around 5%. Since the cost of borrowing the money to cover loans was too high for banks to turn a profit, lending abruptly came to a halt.

Fixing the System

The question is how to eliminate this systemic risk. As noted by The Business Insider:
Regulate shadow banking more tightly, and you probably have to also provide government backstops. Shudder. Try to shut the thing down or restrict it and you suck credit out of the system, credit which much of the non-financial “'real” economy uses and needs.
Interestingly, countries with strong public sector banking systems largely escaped the 2008 credit crisis. These include the BRIC countries—Brazil Russia, India, and China—which contain 40% of the global population and are today’s fastest growing economies. They escaped because their public sector banks do not need to rely on repos and securitizations to back their loans. The banks are owned and operated by the ultimate guarantor—the government itself. The public sector banking model deserves further study.
Whatever the solution, a system that requires the slicing and dicing of mortgages behind an electronic smokescreen so they can be bought and sold as collateral for the pawn shop of the repo market is obviously fraught with perils and is unsustainable. Please contact your state attorney general and urge him or her not to go through with the robo-signing settlement, which will be granting immunity for crimes that are not yet fully known. Phone numbers are here. The surface of this great shadowy second banking system has barely been scratched. It needs a very thorough investigation.

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