FallOfTheRepublic

Direct From Globalist Enviro-nazis.

2010-05-02T10:52:00.001-07:00

Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of one of the most oppressive governments in history, somehow became head of the International Green Cross, which is supposedly dedicated to environmental issues. Gorbachev has never denounced collectivism, only the label of a particular brand of collectivism called Communism. His real interest is not ecology but world government with himself assured a major position in the collectivist power structure.

In a public appearance in Fulton, Missouri, he praised the Club of Rome, of which he is a member, for its position on population control. Then he said:

One of the worst of the new dangers is ecological. … Today, global climatic shifts; the greenhouse effect; the “ozone hole”; acid rain; contamination of the atmosphere, soil and water by industrial and household waste; the destruction of the forests; etc. all threaten the stability of the planet

Gorbachev proclaimed that global government was the answer to these threats and that the use of government force was essential. He said: “I believe that the new world order will not be fully realized unless the United Nations and its Security Council create structures … authorized to impose sanctions and make use of other measures of compulsion.”

Here is an arch criminal who fought his way up through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party, became the protégé of Yuri Andropov, head of the dreaded KGB, was a member of the USSR's ruling Politburo throughout the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and who was selected by the Politburo in 1985 as the supreme leader of world Communism. All of this was during one of the Soviet's most dismal periods of human-rights violations and subversive activities against the free world.

Furthermore, he ruled over a nation with one of the worst possible records of environmental destruction. At no time while he was in power did he ever say or do anything to show concern over planet Earth.

All that is now forgotten. Gorbachev has been transformed by the CFR-dominated media into an ecology warrior. He is calling for world government and telling us that such a government will use environmental issues as justification for sanctions and other “measures of compulsion.”

The use of compulsion is an important point in these plans. People in the industrialized nations are not expected to cooperate in their own demise. They will have to be forced. They will not like it when their food is taken for global distribution. They will not approve when they are taxed by a world authority to finance foreign political projects. They will not voluntarily give up their cars or resettle into smaller houses or communal barracks to satisfy the resource-allocation quotas of a UN agency.

Club-of-Rome member Maurice Strong states the problem:

In effect, the United States is committing environmental aggression against the rest of the world. … At the military level, the United States is the custodian. At environmental level, the United States is clearly the greatest risk. … One of the worst problems in the United States is energy prices – they're too low. …

It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class … involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and `convenience' foods, ownership of motor-vehicles, numerous electric household appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning … expansive suburban housing … are not sustainable.

Mr. Strong's remarks were enthusiastically received by world environmental leaders, but they prompted this angry editorial response in the Arizona Republic:

Translated from eco-speak, this means two things: (1) a reduction in the standard of living in Western nations through massive new taxes and regulations, and (2) a wholesale transfer of wealth from industrialized to under-developed countries. The dubious premise here is that if the U.S. economy could be reduced to, say, the size of Malaysia's, the world would be a better place. Most Americans probably would balk at the idea of the U.N. banning automobiles in the U.S.

Waxman Sneaks Anti-vitamin Amendment into Wall Street Reform Bill

2010-05-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.naturalnews.com/028687_Henry_Waxman_health_freedom.html

(NaturalNews) Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.

This is a little-known secret about the FTC and the nutritional supplements business: The FTC routinely targets nutritional supplement companies that are merely telling the truth about their products. Some companies are threatened by merely linking to published scientific studies about their products.

For example, here's an important article that describes how to FDA criminally extorts money out of supplement companies: http://www.naturalnews.com/024567_h...

The FTC does much the same thing. They target a particular company that's having success in the natural products marketplace, then they accuse that company of "inferring" that their products have some health benefit. From there, the FTC demands that the company engage in paying a massive fine to the FTC, which the FTC calls "consumer redress" even though none of the money actually goes to the consumers.

If you try to fight the FTC, they haul you into their own special "FTC courts" which are not public courts where you have the benefit of a jury, but rather they are courts where the judges are actually FTC employees and you have no rights. You are essentially guilty until proven innocent, and virtually no one has been found innocent by the FTC.

The Great American Bank Heist

2010-04-15T17:20:00.001-07:00

On the Day we Reach a Monthly Foreclosure Filing Record Banks Announce Record Profits and the Stock Market is up 80 Percent.

It is rather fitting that on the day we hear about banks reaching record profits once again, because after all it is so difficult to borrow at zero percent and gamble in the stock market and make a gain, that we also find out that March was the highest month of foreclosure filings ever (and we’ve had some bad months). If there was ever a more clear indication between the split from Main Street and Wall Street this is probably the strongest indicator so far.

I’ll include the charts below but being blunt about the situation, the bailouts worked. If we define “worked” as boosting banking profits once again while 40,000,000 Americans are on food stamps and 17 percent remain underemployed then all is well again in the economy. Yet this isn’t what the American people bargained for in the bailouts. In fact, they didn’t want the bailouts if you remember the massive anger from both aisles calling their representatives.

But the cronies didn’t listen since they receive millions in lobbying dollars and $13 trillion went to Wall Street in the biggest wealth transfer witnessed by the disgruntled American public.

Obama to Propose Limits on Risks Taken by Banks

2010-01-21T12:39:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21volcker.html?hp

President Obama will publicly propose today “giving bank regulators the power to limit the size of the nation’s largest banks and the scope of their risk-taking activities,” an idea “championed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and an adviser to the Obama administration. The proposal would prohibit commercial banks from proprietary trading for their own accounts.

More bullshit.

Earlier this year, Obama tried to give the private central bank, the Federal Reserve, these powers.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5476T220090508
Admin wants Fed to oversee "systemic risk": sources
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is expected to propose legislation by June calling for the U.S. Federal Reserve to play a central role in regulating systemic risk in the economy, trade association sources said on Friday.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/16/plan-gives-fed-swee...
Federal Reserve to gain power under plan
The Federal Reserve, already arguably the most powerful agency in the U.S. government, will get sweeping new authority to regulate any company whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy and markets under the Obama administration's regulatory overhaul plan.

This is just more banker puppetry to funnel more power and control into fewer and fewer hands. Just as there is a revolving door relationship with bankers, politicians and regulators...any new regulation agency will be mere lip service, a fake security blanket to pacify the American public while keeping actions I have detailed in previous posts from coming to mainstream attention.

Top banks spent big money on lobbying efforts during financial crisis.

2010-01-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/finance-economy/77223-banks-spending-big-on-lobbying-efforts-during-financial-crisis

Eight of the nation's largest banks spent nearly $26 million lobbying federal lawmakers in 2009, during one of the most tumultuous periods in financial history.

The banks spent nearly 6 percent more on federal lobbying last year compared with 2008, according to a review of congressional lobbying records. The banks spent $25.8 million on lobbying in 2009 and $24.4 million in 2008, the two years at the heart of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The eight banks include:

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street.

Those eight banks were the first recipients of taxpayer bailouts at the end of 2008.

They have since repaid the aid (read: WE have repaid the aid we were FORCED to give them) and have seen their stock values increase. They are now preparing to pay out massive compensation packages. While the financial industry shows signs of improvement, the broader economy remains bleak with 10 percent unemployment.

The banks are locked in a tough lobbying battle over new financial regulations with other parts of the financial industry, consumer groups, labor unions, congressional Democrats and the White House.

Yes, it costs a lot of money to fight Ron Paul and Alan Grayson when they've got millions of voters clued in to your scam and have them wanting to audit the Fed.

I'd be scared too, if I was a greedy, scumbag, thieving bankster gangster.

The Secret Bank Bailout

2010-01-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

Hope you're happy with those record profits, because they come out of your wallet!

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/01/secret-bank-bailout.html

There's one method that the Federal Reserve has been employing to shovel money to the bank elite that is rarely mentioned, though I hear the sums that have been shoveled are in the billions and they are showing up on the books of firms like Goldman Sachs as pure profit. It's really pure scam.

Here's what went on for months, according to traders familiar with the situation.

When the Federal Reserve buys and sells Treasury securities it does so through primary dealers. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are among the select elite firms that, naturally, got into this club.

So when the Fed wants to trade it goes to one of these primary dealers. In the past, to earn a profit, the banks would execute the trade and mark up the price a bit on a buy to the Fed (or mark down a bit to the Fed when they were selling for the Fed ). Since Fed traders have screens showing them where market prices are, in the past primary dealers were allowed small mark ups and mark downs in line with what banks were marking up and down for their other clients. It would be difficult for a primary dealer to get away with an outrageous mark up or down because the Fed trader would have a pretty good idea of where a trade should have been made.

Once the Fed and Treasury started shoveling money in every possible way they could think of to the elite banks, the word came down to Fed traders to "ease up" on the mark ups and down. Let the banks take a "healthy" mark up and mark down, they were told. I'm advised that the "healthy" mark ups and mark downs have resulted in the Fed overpaying on their trades with primary dealers to the tune of billions. These billions are looking like profitable skilled trades, when they are nothing of the kind. They are hidden gifts from the Federal Reserve that are generally unseen, unknown and will never be paid back.

Israel's 10 Worst Errors of the Decade

2010-01-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bradley-burston/israels-10-worst-errors-o_b_409596.html

1. The Siege of Gaza -
The stated goal of the siege was to undermine Hamas and to goad Gazans into rejecting Hamas rule. The effect of the siege has been to focus and intensify Palestinian anger against Israel, increase Gazans' dependency on Hamas social welfare arms, enrich Hamas coffers through tunnel taxation and foreign donations, and sap Palestinian support for Fatah, which, through its back-channel encouragement for the siege, is seen as a betrayer and a boot-licker in the eyes of many Palestinians.

2. The Siege of Gaza -
The blockade was ostensibly a means to stem the influx of weaponry into Gaza. In practice, with shipments the size of automobiles flowing through the tunnels, the Hamas arsenal has grown ever more sophisticated, now believed to include Iranian-manufactured rockets capable of striking Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport from the Strip.

3. The Siege of Gaza -
In the eyes of the world community, the overwhelming collective punishment - and the relative silence of Israelis in response - has gutted Israeli claims to the moral high ground. It has undercut sympathy for Israelis living within Qassam range. It has kept open the moral wounds of the Gaza War, cramping rebuilding efforts, enshrining universal unemployment, and ensuring agonizing homelessness as the coastal winter gathers full force. Israeli officials have quietly take steps of astounding insensitivity, arbitrarily barring such goods as school supplies.

4. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege has been presented in the past as a means of pressing Hamas to release Gilad Shalit. Not only does he remain captive, the terms of a prospective deal appear not to include lifting the siege. The siege has been presented in the past as a means of pressuring Gazans to end rocket fire. But rocket fire only increased after the siege was put in place. Finally, Cast Lead, the Gaza war a year ago, might have been prevented altogether, had Israel adhered more closely to the Egyptian-brokered Hamas-Israel truce agreement of June, 2008, and lifted the siege more completely in response to a drop in rocket fire.

5. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege works to the detriment of U.S. support for Israel. In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled anger at Israel over obstacles to humanitarian aid entering the strip. The message came soon after Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, visiting Gaza, learned that Israel had blocked shipments of pasta, ruling it off the list of permitted humanitarian aid items.

6. The Siege of Gaza -
The fact that the siege has failed so completely in achieving its stated aims, reinforces the impression that its real purpose is punitive.

7. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege places Israeli officials in jeopardy of being charged with violating the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international codes, as outlined in detail in the Goldstone Report. Referring to the siege, paragraph 1335 of the report states that: "From the facts available to it, the Mission is of the view that some of the actions of the Government of Israel might justify a competent court finding that crimes against humanity have been committed."

8. The Siege of Gaza -
With the siege under the direct aegis of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his deputy, Matan Vilnai, the moral failings of the siege could prove the coup de grace to an already foundering Labor Party.

9. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege threatens to destabilize the rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, posing a potential threat to Israeli-Egyptian peace and Israeli security.

10. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege corrupts the moral values of all Israelis, who, whether or not they are aware of what is being done to the people of Gaza, bear ultimate responsibility for all acts being carried out in their name.

Money Well Spent...If You Value Oppression.

2010-01-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

U.S. Military Aid to Israel Averages $3 Billion a Year for Last 25 Years

Washington’s generosity towards Israel has amounted to $3 billion a year in military aid since 1985, and extends even further back to the mid-20th century. According to a Congressional Research Service report, no other country has received more foreign assistance from the United States than Israel from World War II until now, and it was the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance for each year from 1976 to 2004, when Iraq became a high priority.

Israel also benefits from special treatment from Washington, such as the fact that all of its yearly aid is delivered within the first 30 days of the new fiscal year. Most other allies of the U.S. get their assistance through installments that are spread out over the year. Additionally, Israel gets to use some of its U.S. military assistance for research and development in the United States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers. But the Jewish state must spend 75% of its help from Washington on military hardware made in the USA, which aids American manufacturers, especially during recessionary times.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel (by Jeremy M. Sharp, Congressional Research Service) (pdf)

US Aid Tied to Purchase of Arms (by Ann Davies, Sydney Morning Herald)

Warming Cult Supported By Big Oil

2009-11-06T19:31:00.001-08:00

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/10/02/exxons-tillerson-forget-cap-and-trade-carbon-tax-is-the-answer/

A common charge leveled against global warming skeptics is that they are on the payroll of transnational oil companies, when in fact the opposite is true, oil companies are amongst the biggest promoters of climate change propaganda, emphasized recently by Exxon Mobil’s call for a global carbon tax.

Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson renewed his attack in a speech last night on a cap-and-trade plan, like that included in the latest Senate climate bill, and again explained his preference for a straight tax on carbon emissions. He’s been down that road before, though now he’s gotten into Washington’s spirit of euphemisms:

“I know that’s hard for a politician to say, so we have given it a new name. We call it a ‘refundable greenhouse gas emissions fee.’”

Tillerson brazenly called out the cap and trade agenda for what it was, an effort to impose a carbon tax camouflaged only by a slick sales pitch and deceptive rhetoric.

“It is easier and more politically expedient to support a cap-and-trade approach, because the public will never figure out where it is hitting them,” said Tillerson.

“They will just know they hurt somewhere in their pocketbook,” he added, pointing out that he disagreed with this convoluted method of introducing a carbon tax, arguing instead that it would be more successful to openly propose a straight carbon tax.

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

2009-11-06T19:29:00.000-08:00

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/ambassador-cia-people-tortured/

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Italian Judge Convicts 23 in CIA Rendition/Kidnap Case

2009-11-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFK6jJ12W23VZD-Hsw_RZIo67JnwD9BOUKQO0

MILAN — An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted.

The Obama administration ended the CIA's interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue the practice of extraordinary renditions.

The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest as long as the verdicts remains in place.

Despite the convictions capping the nearly three-year Italian trial, several Italian and American defendants — including the two alleged masterminds of the abduction — were acquitted due to either diplomatic immunity or because classified information was stricken by Italy's highest court.

Fox News gets okay to misinform public, court ruling

2009-11-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html

On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

On August 18, 2000, a six-person jury was unanimous in its conclusion that Akre was indeed fired for threatening to report the station's pressure to broadcast what jurors decided was "a false, distorted, or slanted" story about the widespread use of growth hormone in dairy cows.

The court did not dispute the heart of Akre's claim, that Fox pressured her to broadcast a false story to protect the broadcaster from having to defend the truth in court, as well as suffer the ire of irate advertisers. Fox argued from the first, and failed on three separate occasions, in front of three different judges, to have the case tossed out on the grounds there is no hard, fast, and written rule against deliberate distortion of the news.

The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves.

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities

2009-11-06T19:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/another-view-goldmans-trading-perfection-and-statistical-improbabilities

When a firm's trading performance challenges not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions, one can merely stand back and watch in awe. Attached is a graphic of what a rigged, backstopped and manipulated market is all about. The chart demonstrates Goldman's YTD trading track record: out of 194 trading days in 2009, the firm has made over $100 million on 116 occasions! This alone accounts for $11.6 billion in revenue (and is likely much more as Goldman could have easily had a $1 billion trading day in the rightmost bracket as it is open ended). Assuming midline averages for any given bucket and multiplying by the amount of days that the firm traded within these, Goldman Sachs has made $15 billion courtesy of the skewed and very highly improbable (but not impossible, thank you taxpayers and Ben Bernanke) chart.

And a more granular read, demonstrates that as the year has progressed, Goldman has become much better at extracting larger wins and minimizing losses. The firm lost money on just 3 days in the last two quarters. Is this a ponzi scheme? We surely don't know absent additional information (which will never be forthcoming, despite that GS is a public company). Is this comparable to the returns generated by a ponzi scheme? Absofuckinlutely.

Can the SEC please dissolve itself already and save taxpayers at least a little money?

Obama creates 640,329 jobs at a cost of $323,739.83 per job

2009-11-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Inquiring minds are asking the question "How many jobs were created out of the various stimulus programs so far and at what cost per job?"

That is a good question. Not that we can believe the reported number of jobs created, but let's assume for the sake of argument that the figures provided by the administration are correct.

Inquiring minds want the official numbers on which to base the cost per job created. So please consider the administration's own numbers as reported on Track The Money Recovery.Gov as of October 30, 2009

Math To Date

Funds paid out so far =

$83.8 billion + $52.1 billion + $71.4 billion = $207.3 billion

$207,300,000,000 / 640,329 = $323,739.83 per job created

Plan Goals Math

Now let's assume this stimulus package will eventually create (or save) 3.5 million jobs and all the money (but no more) will be spent.

Here's the math again.

$787,000,000,000 /
3,500,000 =
$224,857.14 per job created

New Doubt Cast on US Claim Qom Plant is Illicit

2009-10-09T06:13:00.001-07:00

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2009/10/02/new-doubt-cast-on-us-claim-qom-plant-is-illicit/

by Gareth Porter

An Iranian assertion that construction on its second enrichment facility began only last year and further analysis of satellite photos of the site have cast fresh doubts on the Barack Obama administration’s charge that the construction of the plant near Qom involved a covert decision to violate Iran’s obligations to report immediately to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on any decision to build a new facility.

At a Sep. 25 briefing on the site, senior administration officials refused to provide any specific information to back up the claim that construction had begun before the March 2007 Iranian withdrawal from an agreement requiring that it inform the IAEA immediately of any decision to build a nuclear facility.

The U.S. charges on the Qom facility, coming a week before the first opportunity for negotiations with Iran on a full range of issues since 1981, appear to have been a deliberate ploy to make the Obama administration appear tough and on the offensive when the talks started.

Iran’s Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told a news conference Tuesday that his agency took over a military ammunition dump. in 2008 to begin work on the enrichment facility near Qom

Meanwhile, a new photo analysis by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) of the Qom site in 2004 and 2005 suggests it was not dedicated to building a uranium enrichment facility at that time.

In a brief analysis posted on the ISIS webpage Tuesday, Paul Brannan, a specialist in interpreting satellite photography at ISIS, said he believed that the site on which the Qom enrichment facility was later constructed was "originally a tunnel facility associated with Iran’s military" rather than a "construction site for a uranium plant."

The Lying Game

2009-10-09T06:10:00.001-07:00

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23597.htm

September 30, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- In 2001, the Observer in London published a series of reports that claimed an “Iraqi connection” to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction. It was all false. Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped George Bush and Tony Blair to launch an illegal invasion which caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.

Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media “revelations”, the same manufacture of a sense of crisis. “Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant”, declared the Guardian on 26 September. “Showdown” is the theme. High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil. Add a smooth new US president who has “put paid to the Bush years”. An immediate echo is the notorious Guardian front page of 22 May 2007: “Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq”. Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian “plan” to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in Iraq by September of that year – a demonstrable falsehood for which there has been no retraction.

The official jargon for this kind of propaganda is “psy-ops”, the military term for psychological operations. In the Pentagon and Whitehall, it has become a critical component of a diplomatic and military campaign to blockade, isolate and weaken Iran by hyping its “nuclear threat”: a phrase now used incessantly by Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, and parroted by the BBC and other broadcasters as objective news. And it is fake.

Value of the Dollar Since Obama Took Office

2009-10-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Not that Obama is personally responsible for the devaluation of the dollar, but...

Versus Gold:

Jan. 20, 2009: 0.0011930
Oct. 7, 2009: 0.0009602

The dollar has lost nearly 20% of it's value since Obama took office.

High: 0.00121
Low: 0.00095

A 21.5% reduction in value.

Troops Question U.S. Presence in Afghanistan

2009-10-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6865359.ece

American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.

34 banks don't pay their quarterly TARP dividends

2009-10-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2009-10-07-banks-tarp-dividends_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

In a sign that more banks are under great pressure from the recession, 34 financial institutions did not pay their quarterly dividends in August to the Treasury on funds obtained under the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). The number almost doubled from 19 in May when payments were last made, and also raised questions about Treasury's judgment in approving these banks as "healthy," a necessary step for them to get TARP funding.

"The banks are not paying their dividends because they are worried about preserving capital," says Eric Fitzwater, associate director of research at SNL Financial.

The Treasury Department says it cannot force an institution to pay dividends. "For some banks, it may be prudent to exercise their right not to pay dividends in a particular month, and we respect their right to do so," says Meg Reilly, a Treasury spokeswoman. "To draw any broader conclusions about the state of the banking sector from one month is highly premature and speculative."

However, a lot of smaller banks are already under stress. Weighed down by foreclosures and delinquencies, 98 banks have failed so far this year, vs. 25 for all of last year. Besides insurer American International Group and lender CIT Group, most of the other non-payers are smaller institutions that received $400 million or less in TARP funds.

America Continues Whoredom For Israel

2009-10-08T20:09:00.001-07:00

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m58692&hd=&size=1&l=e

Official: US will not support action on Goldstone report at United Nations Security Council

Washington will not support any potential action by the UN Security Council on the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza, Former US Permanent Representative to the United Nations Alejandro Wolff has declared.

Wolff said the US believes that the appropriate platform to discuss the report is the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The announcement came after a closed-door meeting Wednesday, where the UN Security Council decided to push up their next meeting from 20 to 14 October so a discussion on the Goldstone report can be held, UN officials said.

Interesting Question.

2009-10-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

Why does IRS Form 1040 not require a Notary Public to notarize a taxpayer’s signature?

This question is one of the fastest ways to unravel the fraudulent nature of federal income taxes. At 28 U.S.C. section 1746, Congress authorized written verifications to be executed under penalty of perjury without the need for a Notary Public, i.e. to witness one’s signature.

This statute identifies two different formats for such written verifications: (1) those executed outside the “United States” and (2) those executed inside the “United States”. These two formats correspond to sections 1746(1) and 1746(2), respectively.

What is extremely revealing in this statute is the format for verifications executed “outside the United States”. In this latter format, the statute adds the qualifying phrase “under the laws of the United States of America”.

Clearly, the terms “United States” and “United States of America” are both used in this same statute. They are not one and the same. The former refers to the federal government -- in the U.S. Constitution and throughout most federal statutes. The latter refers to the 50 States that are united by, and under, the U.S. Constitution. 28 U.S.C. 1746 is the only federal statute in all of Title 28 of the United States Code that utilizes the term “United States of America”, as such.

It is painfully if not immediately obvious, then, that verifications made under penalty of perjury are outside the “United States” (read “the federal zone”) if and when they are executed inside the 50 States of the Union (read “the State zone”).

Likewise, verifications made under penalty of perjury are outside the 50 States of the Union, if and when they are executed inside the “United States”.

The format for signatures on Form 1040 is the one for verifications made inside the United States (federal zone) and outside the United States of America (State zone).

Americans Manufacture Another Nuclear Crisis

2009-10-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2009/10/04/11284441-sun.html

NEW YORK -- The U.S., Britain and France staged a bravura performance of political theatre last week by claiming to have just "discovered" a secret Iran uranium enrichment plant near Qum. On cue, a carefully orchestrated media blitz trumpeted warnings of the alleged Iranian nuclear threat and "long-ranged missiles."

In reality, the Qum plant was detected by U.S. spy satellites over two years ago, and was known to the intelligence community. Iran claimed the plant will not begin enriching uranium for peaceful power for another 540 days. UN nuclear rules, to which Iran adheres, calls for 180 days notice.

UN nuclear watchdogs say Iran should have revealed the plant earlier. Iran alerted the UN last week and said it would invite inspectors.

The reluctance of Iran to reveal its nuclear sites is magnified by constant threats of attack against them by Israel and the U.S. Iran also recalls Iraq, where many of the UN "nuclear inspectors" were likely spies for CIA or Israel's Mossad. This may explain some of Iran's secretive behaviour. The U.S., Britain, France and Israel have been even less forthcoming about their nuclear secrets.

Welcome to Iraq deja vu, and another phony crisis. U.S. intelligence and UN inspectors say Iran has no nuclear weapons and certainly no nuclear warheads and is only enriching uranium to 5%. Nuclear weapons require 95%. Iran's nuclear facilities are under constant UN inspection and U.S. surveillance.

The U.S., its allies, and Israel insist Iran is secretly developing nuclear warheads. They demand Tehran prove a negative: That is has no nuclear weapons. Iraq was also put to the same impossible test.

Israel is deeply alarmed by Iran's challenge to its Mideast nuclear monopoly. Chances of an Israeli attack on Iran are growing weekly, though the U.S. is still restraining Israel.

The contrived uproar about the Qum plant was a ploy to intensify pressure on Iran to cease nuclear enrichment -- though it has every right to do so under international agreements. More pressure will be applied at this week's meeting near Geneva between the Western powers and Iran.

Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel

2009-10-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2009/06/03/report-ties-dubious-iran-nuclear-docs-to-israel/

by Gareth Porter, June 04, 2009

A report on Iran’s nuclear program issued by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month generated news stories publicizing an incendiary charge that U.S. intelligence is underestimating Iran’s progress in designing a "nuclear warhead" before the halt in nuclear weapons-related research in 2003.

That false and misleading charge from an intelligence official of a foreign country, who was not identified but was clearly Israeli, reinforces two of Israel’s key propaganda themes on Iran – that the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is wrong, and that Tehran is poised to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible.

But it also provides new evidence that Israeli intelligence was the source of the collection of intelligence documents which have been used to accuse Iran of hiding nuclear weapons research.

The Committee report, dated May 4, cited unnamed "foreign analysts" as claiming intelligence that Iran ended its nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because it had mastered the design and tested components of a nuclear weapon and thus didn’t need to work on it further until it had produced enough sufficient material.

That conclusion, which implies that Iran has already decided to build nuclear weapons, contradicts both the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and current intelligence analysis. The NIE concluded that Iran had ended nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because of increased international scrutiny, and that it was "less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005."

The report included what appears to be a spectacular revelation from "a senior allied intelligence official" that a collection of intelligence documents supposedly obtained by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from an Iranian laptop computer includes "blueprints for a nuclear warhead."

It quotes the unnamed official as saying that the blueprints "precisely matched" similar blueprints the official’s own agency "had obtained from other sources inside Iran."

No U.S. or IAEA official has ever claimed that the so-called laptop documents included designs for a "nuclear warhead." The detailed list in a May 26, 2008 IAEA report of the contents of what have been called the "alleged studies" – intelligence documents on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work — made no mention of any such blueprints.

In using the phrase "blueprints for a nuclear warhead," the unnamed official was evidently seeking to conflate blueprints for the reentry vehicle of the Iranian Shehab missile, which were among the alleged Iranian documents, with blueprints for nuclear weapons.

When New York Times reporters William J. Broad and David E. Sanger used the term "nuclear warhead" to refer to a reentry vehicle in a Nov. 13, 2005 story on the intelligence documents on the Iranian nuclear program, it brought sharp criticism from David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

"This distinction is not minor," Albright observed, "and Broad should understand the differences between the two objects, particularly when the information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead."

The Senate report does not identify the country for which the analyst in question works, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff refused to respond to questions about the report from IPS, including the reason why the report concealed the identity of the country for which the unidentified "senior allied intelligence official" works.

Reached later in May, the author of the report, Douglas Frantz, told IPS he is under strict instructions not to speak with the news media.

After a briefing on the report for selected news media immediately after its release, however, the Associated Press reported May 6 that interviews were conducted in Israel. Frantz was apparently forbidden by Israeli officials from revealing their national affiliation as a condition for the interviews.

Frantz, a former journalist for the Los Angeles Times, had extensive contacts with high-ranking Israeli military, intelligence and foreign ministry officials before joining the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. He and co-author Catherine Collins conducted interviews with those Israeli officials for The Nuclear Jihadist, published in 2007. The interviews were all conducted under rules prohibiting disclosure of their identities, according to the book.

The unnamed Israeli intelligence officer’s statement that the "blueprints for a nuclear warhead" — meaning specifications for a missile reentry vehicle – were identical to "designs his agency had obtained from other sources in Iran" suggests that the documents collection which the IAEA has called "alleged studies" actually originated in Israel.

A U.S.-based nuclear weapons analyst who has followed the "alleged studies" intelligence documents closely says he understands that the documents obtained by U.S. intelligence in 2004 were not originally stored on the laptop on which they were located when they were brought in by an unidentified Iranian source, as U.S. officials have claimed to U.S. journalists.

The analyst, who insists on not being identified, says the documents were collected by an intelligence network and then assembled on a single laptop.

The anonymous Israeli intelligence official’s claim, cited in the Committee report, that the "blueprints" in the "alleged studies" collection matched documents his agency had gotten from its own source seems to confirm the analyst’s finding that Israeli intelligence assembled the documents.

German officials have said that the Mujahedin-e-Khalq or MEK, the Iranian resistance organization, brought the laptop documents collection to the attention of U.S. intelligence, as reported by IPS in February 2008. Israeli ties with the political arm of the MEK, the National Committee of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), go back to the early 1990s and include assistance to the organization in broadcasting into Iran from Paris.

The NCRI publicly revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in August 2002. However, that and other intelligence apparently came from Israeli intelligence. The Israeli co-authors of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran, Yossi Melman and Meir Javeanfar, revealed that "Western" intelligence was "laundered" to hide its actual provenance by providing it to Iranian opposition groups, especially NCRI, in order to get it to the IAEA.

They cite U.S., British and Israeli officials as sources for the revelation.

New Yorker writer Connie Bruck wrote in a March 2006 article that an Israeli diplomat confirmed to her that Israel had found the MEK "useful" but declined to elaborate.

Israeli intelligence is also known to have been actively seeking to use alleged Iranian documents to prove that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program just at the time the intelligence documents which eventually surfaced in 2004 would have been put together.

The most revealing glimpse of Israeli use of such documents to influence international opinion on Iran’s nuclear program comes from the book by Frantz and Collins. They report that Israel’s international intelligence agency Mossad created a special unit in the summer of 2003 to carry out a campaign to provide secret briefings on the Iranian nuclear program, which sometimes included "documents from inside Iran and elsewhere."

The "alleged studies" collection of documents has never been verified as genuine by either the IAEA or by intelligence analysts. The Senate report said senior United Nations officials and foreign intelligence officials who had seen "many of the documents" in the collection of alleged Iranian military documents had told committee staff "it is impossible to rule out an elaborate intelligence ruse."

U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up

2009-10-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48649

Analysis by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) - The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility.

But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility.

Iran's notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the second enrichment facility in a letter on Sep. 21 was buried deep in most of the news stories and explained as a response to being detected by U.S. intelligence. In reporting the story in that way, journalists were relying entirely on the testimony of "senior administration officials" who briefed them at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh Friday.

U.S. intelligence had "learned that the Iranians learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised", one of the officials said, according to the White House transcript. The Iranians had informed the IAEA, he asserted, because "they came to believe that the value of the facility as a secret facility was no longer valid..."

Later in the briefing, however, the official said "we believe", rather than "we learned", in referring to that claim, indicating that it is only an inference rather than being based on hard intelligence.

The official refused to explain how U.S. analysts had arrived at that conclusion, but an analysis by the defense intelligence consulting firm IHS Jane's of a satellite photo of the site taken Saturday said there is a surface-to-air missile system located at the site.

The official said the administration had organized an intelligence briefing on the facility for the IAEA during the summer on the assumption that the Iranians might "choose to disclose the facility themselves". But he offered no explanation for the fact that there had been no briefing given to the IAEA or anyone else until Sep. 24 - three days after the Iranians disclosed the existence of the facility.

A major question surrounding the official story is why the Barack Obama administration had not done anything – and apparently had no plans to do anything - with its intelligence on the Iranian facility at Qom prior to the Iranian letter to the IAEA. When asked whether the administration had intended to keep the information in its intelligence briefing secret even after the meeting with the Iranians on Oct. 1, the senior official answered obliquely but revealingly, "I think it's impossible to turn back the clock and say what might have been otherwise."

In effect, the answer was no, there had been no plan for briefing the IAEA or anyone.

News media played up the statement by the senior administration official that U.S. intelligence had been "aware of this facility for years".

But what was not reported was that he meant only that the U.S. was aware of a possible nuclear site, not one whose function was known.

The official in question acknowledged the analysts had not been able to identify it as an enrichment facility for a long time. In the "very early stage of construction," said the official, "a facility like this could have multiple uses." Intelligence analysts had to "wait until the facility had reached the stage of construction where it was undeniably intended for use as a centrifuge facility," he explained.

The fact that the administration had made no move to brief the IAEA or other governments on the site before Iran revealed its existence suggests that site had not yet reached that stage where the evidence was unambiguous.

A former U.S. official who has seen the summary of the administration's intelligence used to brief foreign governments told IPS he doubts the intelligence community had hard evidence that the Qom site was an enrichment plant. "I think they didn't have the goods on them," he said.

Also misleading was the official briefing's characterization of the intelligence assessment on the purpose of the enrichment plant. The briefing concluded that the Qom facility must be for production of weapons-grade enriched uranium, because it will accommodate only 3,000 centrifuges, which would be too few to provide fuel for a nuclear power plant.

According to the former U.S. official who has read the briefing paper on the intelligence assessment, however, the paper says explicitly that the Qom facility is "a possible military facility". That language indicates that intelligence analysts have suggested that the facility may be for making low-enriched rather than for high-enriched, bomb-grade uranium.

It also implies that the senior administration official briefing the press was deliberately portraying the new enrichment facility in more menacing terms than the actual intelligence assessment.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's offer the day after the denunciation of the site by U.S., British and French leaders to allow IAEA monitoring of the plant will make it far more difficult to argue that it was meant to serve military purposes.

The circumstantial evidence suggests that Iran never intended to keep the Qom facility secret from the IAEA but was waiting to make it public at a moment that served its political-diplomatic objectives.

The Iranian government is well aware of U.S. capabilities for monitoring from satellite photographs any site in Iran that exhibits certain characteristics.

Iran obviously wanted to make the existence of the Qom site public before construction on the site would clearly indicate an enrichment purpose. But it gave the IAEA no details in its initial announcement, evidently hoping to find out whether and how much the United States already knew about it.

The specific timing of the Iranian letter, however, appears to be related to the upcoming talks between Iran and the P5+1 - China, France, Britain, Russia, the United States and Germany - and an emerging Iranian strategy of smaller back-up nuclear facilities that would assure continuity if Natanz were attacked.

The Iranian announcement of that decision on Sep. 14 coincided with a statement by the head of Iran's atomic energy organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, warning against preemptive strikes against the country's nuclear facilities.

The day after the United States, Britain and France denounced the Qom facility as part of a deception, Salehi said, "Considering the threats, our organization decided to do what is necessary to preserve and continue our nuclear activities. So we decided to build new installations which will guarantee the continuation of our nuclear activities which will never stop at any cost."

As satellite photos of the site show, the enrichment facility at Qom is being built into the side of a mountain, making it less vulnerable to destruction, even with the latest bunker-busting U.S. bombs.

The pro-administration newspaper Kayhan quoted an "informed official" as saying that Iran had told the IAEA in 2004 that it had to do something about the threat of attack on its nuclear facilities "repeatedly posed by the western countries".

The government newspaper called the existence of the second uranium enrichment plan "a winning card" that would increase Iran's bargaining power in the talks. That presumably referred to neutralizing the ultimate coercive threat against Iran by the United States.

Neocon Logic.

2009-10-05T14:44:00.001-07:00

Israel has a right to defend itself.

Gaza does not.

Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.

Israel can have hundreds in secret.

Iran must allow inspections, now!

Israel must never be subjected to inspections, in fact...if you think Israel should sign the NPT and allow inspections, that makes you an anti-semite.

America cannot abide by Article IV of the NPT and help Iran build peaceful civilian nuclear power stations.

America must give billions every year, in violation of the Symington Amendment of the Foreign Assistance Act, to Israel while they lay collective punishment on Gaza.

IAEA Responds To Allegations That Iran Is Pursuing Nuclear Weapons

2009-10-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/MediaAdvisory/2009/MA200919.html

Recent Media Report on Iran17 September 2009 |With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran.

At the Board of Governors´ meeting on 9 September 2009, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei warned that continuing allegations that the IAEA was withholding information on Iran are politically motivated and totally baseless.
The Agency receives information from a variety of sources that may have relevance to the implementation of safeguards. All such information is critically assessed by a team of experts working collectively in accordance with the Agency´s practices.

The IAEA reiterates that all relevant information and assessments that have gone through the above process have already been provided to the IAEA Board of Governors in reports of the Director General.

The Cost Of Israel To US Taxpayers

2009-10-04T12:11:00.001-07:00

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23627.htm

For many years the American media said that “Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid” or that “Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid.” Both statements were true, but since they were never combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies—true lies.

Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that “Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid.” That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.

One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever have. They were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a country smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House. Yet it's been going on for more than a generation.

Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional committee members are paid to act, not talk. So they do and they don't.

No one in the executive branch mentions that of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients worldwide, all of the others are developing nations which either make their military bases available to the U.S., are key members of international alliances in which the U.S. participates, or have suffered some crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed their people such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.

What The CorpWhore Media Wants You To Forget

2009-10-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/IranvIsrael.php

The corporate media have been given their orders to throw the focus back on to Iran.

Here is a recap of what they are trying to make you forget.

1. Last Spring, Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refused.

2. The United Nations passed a resolution calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

3. The IAEA asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

4. Iran's formal notification to the IAEA of the planned construction of the backup fuel-rod facility underscores that Iran is playing by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran has signed.

5. Iran allows IAEA inspections of all its facilities.

6. Contrary to face-saving claims, it appears that the US and Israel were both caught off guard by Iran's announcement. The reasoning is simple. Had the US or Israel announced the existence of he new facility before Iran's notified the IAEA, it would have put Iran on the defensive. As it is now, the US and Israel seem to be playing catch up, casting doubt on the veracity of Israel's claims to "know" that Iran is a nuclear threat.

7. The IAEA and all 16 United States Intelligence Agencies are unanimous in agreement that Iran is not building and does not possess nuclear weapons.

8. In 1986, Mordachai Vanunu blew the whistle and provided photographs showing Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons factory underneath the reactor at Dimona.

9. Israel made the same accusations against Iraq that it is making against Iran, leading up to Israel's bombing of the power station at Osirik. Following the invasion of 2003, international experts examined the ruins of the power station at Osirik and found no evidence of a clandestine weapons factory in the rubble.

10. The United Nations has just released the Goldstone Report, a scathing report which accuses Israel of 37 specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza earlier this year. Israel has denounced the report as "Anti-Semitic (even though Judge Goldstone is himself Jewish), and the United States will block the report from being referred to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, thereby making the US Government an accessory after-the-fact.

We all need to be Joe Wilson right now. We need to stand up and scream, "LIAR!" at every politician and every talking media moron that is pushing this war in Iran. And we need to keep dong it until they get the message that we will not be deceived any more.

Israel wants to send your kids off to die in Iran, and YOU are the only one that can stop them.

Please forward this comment to your social networks.

The CorpWhore MSM Is Really Reaching Now...

2009-10-04T12:06:00.001-07:00

Wow. The CorpWhore MSM is really grasping now!

Why is it always "senior officials"...why isn't anyone ever willing to put their reputation on the line to make these kind of claims about Iran?

Strange...

Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb
Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

What If The Russians Did This To Us?

2009-10-04T12:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/02-2

So what if the Russians invaded?

What if they came and stole all of our money?

What if the Russians invaded and enslaved our children as cheap worker bee drones locked in dismal dead-end jobs?

What if the Russians invaded and excavated all of our natural resources, leaving only mountains of toxic debris in their wake?

What if the Russians invaded and they ruined our infrastructure, thrashed our educational institutions, and stuck us with a grossly inadequate healthcare system?

What if the Russians invaded and incarcerated a huge percentage of our people in for-profit jails? What if they ruined our military by sending it off on big-money colonial expeditions? What if they cut the legs out from under the middle class?

What if the Russians invaded and turned us against each other, tricking this tribe of Americans into hating that tribe, in order to keep any of us from realizing that they were looting our country?

If the Russians did any of these things, we’d kill ‘em. Dead.

If the Russians invaded, we'd send our army to crush them in defense of our country (or, at least, we hire somebody to do it).

If the Russians invaded, we'd be furious and raging and hateful and destructive – for good reason, too – and we would bring to them the full measure of American organized violence in order to take back our country from their plundering rampages.

Of course, the Russians haven’t invaded. But what's astonishing about the moment we live in is that America has in fact been subjected to all these travails. We have essentially been invaded by those who wish us ill, and our national and private resources are being stripped bare. This country is being looted, and everything in it that isn't nailed down is being carted away and sold off.

What is absolutely astonishing about the moment that we live in is that we have been essentially invaded, we have been absolutely looted, and yet we don't seem to be the slightest bit angry about that.

If the Russians had done it, we would be absolutely furious. But in fact, it was our own overclass that did it, and not only are we not furious at them, we don't even notice the crime. Or, if we do notice, we’re furious at some ridiculously inappropriate target, like a ‘liberal’ president who isn't even remotely liberal.

TARP : Largest Taxpayer Swindle In History

2009-10-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks Bush, Paulson, Obama Geithner and Bernanke!
Now please report DIRECTLY to jail!

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tarp_195.html

TARP was initiated in late September 2008 following the collapse of the stock market. Since that time, a handful of firms have reimbursed taxpayers for money they received under the program to the tune of about $70 billion, or 10 percent of what has been given out. The debate in Congress comes as the chief bureaucrat tasked with watching over TARP recently conceded during Senate testimony that taxpayers will most likely not be paid back for all of the money they gave Wall Street.

Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee on Sept. 25, Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP, said that it is “extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment.”

By now, many policymakers inside the Beltway presume that Americans have forgotten how Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke originally sold the massive payout by claiming that taxpayers would eventually reap “returns” on their “investment” in Wall Street.

Today, we’re being told that we should be happy that we will get back even some of that money. So now we know the truth about the TARP: It wasn’t enacted to protect the economy. It was created for the purpose of covering up the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in the history of the United States.

A Few Interesting Executive Orders

2009-10-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990
allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995
allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997
allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998
allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000
allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001
allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002
designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003
allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004
allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005
allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051
specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

Why Is Obama So Deceitful?

2009-10-02T20:32:00.001-07:00

Helen Thomas' very first question to the new President:

Do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?

I don't want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger. And one of my goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally. I think that it's important for the United States, in concert with Russia, to lead the way on this.

EXCLUSIVE: Obama agrees to keep Israel's nukes secret President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.

The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.

Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.

If Obama Is Change, Why Is He Still Breaking The Law?

2009-10-02T20:27:00.000-07:00

The way I see it, Obama has two options.

Either stop giving billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, or step down from office for violations of the Symington Amendment of the Foreign Assistance Act which states:

(a) PROHIBITIONS; SAFEGUARDS AND MANAGEMENT. —Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, no funds made available to carry out the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 or this Act may be used for the purpose of providing economic assistance (including assistance under chapter 4 of part II of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961), providing military assistance or grant military education and training, providing assistance under chapter 6 of part II of that Act, or extending military credits or making guarantees, to any country which the President determines delivers nuclear enrichment equipment, materials, or technology to any other country on or after August 4, 1977, or receives such equipment, materials, or technology from any other country on or after August 4, 1977, unless before such delivery—

(1) the supplying country and receiving country have reached agreement to place all such equipment, materials, or technology, upon delivery, under multilateral auspices and management when available; and

(2) the recipient country has entered into an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to place all such equipment, materials, technology, and all nuclear fuel and facilities in such country under the safeguards system of such Agency.

Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Isreal has repeatedly rejected calls to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Helen Thomas' very first question to the new President:

Do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?

I don't want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger. And one of my goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally. I think that it's important for the United States, in concert with Russia, to lead the way on this.

Mahmood Ahmadinejad's Blog

2009-09-29T14:16:00.001-07:00

http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/

Look at some of the comments.

Like this one, I can't believe they allowed...

Jack Meyhoffer
kin...@yahoo.com
I hope someone puts a bullet in your head very soon.

And if Mahmood wasn't scary enough of a boogyman, check out his post
Message to the American People

While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together.

Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection.

Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.

We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need.

We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples' rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings.

We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty.

The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.

Noble Americans,

Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.

QUICK! SOMEONE BOMB THAT EVIL MAN!

BUSTED! Undercover Cops At G20.

2009-09-29T14:14:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8

The clip would be hilarious if it was not so disturbing. Protesters walking behind what are obviously badly disguised cops claim they broke cameras and acted aggressively towards genuine protesters, as well as carrying gas canisters.

Even if Iran has a weapon of mass destruction...

2009-09-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

(which we know they do not), and even if Iran has long range ICBMs to reach across the Atlantic with (which we know they do not), Iran would still not be a threat to the US because any attack with a weapon of mass destruction would be national suicide.

Is it a coincidence that Iran is dropping the dollar and the imperial American government is threatening Iran?

I think not.

If you want America to go to war with Iran, take this quiz first.

1. When was the last time Iran initiated a war with its neighbors

2. When was the last time Israel initiated a war with its neighbors?

3. Which nation is a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel or Iran

4. Which nation allows IAEA inspections, Israel or Iran?

5. Which nation actually has nuclear weapons, Israel or Iran?

6. Which nation just refused a request by the United Nations to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel or Iran?

7. Which nation just refused a request by the IAEA to allow inspections, Israel or Iran?

8. Name the one nation that has actually used nuclear weapons of mass destruction on another country.

Report: US-Initiated WTO Rules Could Undermine Regulatory Overhaul of Global Finance

2009-09-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

www.democracynow.org

JUAN GONZALEZ: Lori, I’d like to ask you about the role of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Here in the United States, he’s supposed—he’s leading the efforts now to increase regulation over the financial sector. But he played a previous role under the Clinton administration in what was happening at the WTO in terms of financial deregulation. Could you talk about that?

LORI WALLACH: Yeah. This is actually a serious problem. So, most people don’t even realize that the World Trade Organization has an agreement called the Financial Services Agreement that explicitly applies to over a hundred countries and mandates major deregulation.

Just for instance, it has a rule that you cannot have a domestic law, even if it applies equally to foreign and domestic companies, that limits the size of a financial service firm—insurance, banking, securities. So when everyone talks about putting into place rules about “too big to fail,” there’s a WTO dictate that says you can’t do that. A lot of other really extreme deregulation rules. That agreement was never brought to a vote in Congress, so a lot of members of Congress have no idea it’s there.

One interesting fact we found was, although Daddy Bush started negotiation, Clinton is the one who locked it up. And it was actually Geithner, when he was in the Treasury Department working for Robert Rubin during the Clinton administration, who was the lead Clinton administration Treasury Department negotiator. So he is, in a way, the guy who closed the deal. And so, he knows about it. He has to know about the existing agreements. And so, theoretically, he should be the guy who’s most aware of the perils, in the sense that he was part of the whole Clinton-era deregulation, including domestically.

Israel's Dimona Reactor In 3D

2009-09-27T10:23:00.001-07:00

Israel's heavy water nuclear reactor.

This reactor produces 40kg of plutonium a year, enough to build 10 atomic bombs.

"Only in space can you take pictures of Israel's top secret site"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbjgDERSuiI

Israel is screaming about Iran's backup fuel rod processing plant, denouncing it as a secret facility even though Iran openly declared it to the IAEA.

But if you want to see an ACTUAL secret nuclear weapons facility, one that the IAEA has never been formally informed of, nor inspected, one need look no further than Israel itself.

The Lie About Ahmadinejad's 'Israel' Quote

2009-09-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

Look it up for yourself, there are many links.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&num=50&q=israel+wiped+off+earth+lie&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=7960896364bf1ed8

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=5866

Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications.

According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map".

Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made.

The full quote translated directly to English:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini)
ghoft (said)
een (this)
rezhim-e (regime)
ishghalgar-e (occupying)
qods (Jerusalem)
bayad (must)
az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time)
mahv shavad (vanish from).

Constitution-free Zones In America

2009-09-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/areyoulivinginaconstitutionfreezone.html

Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.

The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This " Constitution-Free Zone" includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.

Nuclear Watchdog Voices 'Concern' On Israel

2009-09-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

Keep in mind, Iran is a signatory to the NPT.
Israel is not.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jDwMakaoF_bMvmjRoPqGBODh4sUg

VIENNA — The UN atomic watchdog's 150 member countries expressed concern Friday about Israel's nuclear capabilities and called on the Jewish state to foreswear atomic weapons.

Israel is widely considered to be the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power.

At the International Atomic Energy Agency's general conference here, Arab states tabled a symbolic, non-binding resolution expressing "concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities and (calling upon) Israel to accede to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards."

Initially, Western states tried to stop the resolution from going to a vote, arguing it would be counterproductive to single out Israel, particularly after a resolution had been passed the day before calling on all states in the Middle East to foreswear nuclear weapons.

But the adjournment motion was defeated and voting went ahead, with a total 49 countries in favour, 45 against and 16 abstentions.

It is the first time since 1991 that such a resolution has been adopted.

The Israeli delegation said it "deplored" the resolution and would "not cooperate" with it.

Its sole aim was to "reinforce political hostilities and division lines in the Middle East region," said the deputy chief of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, David Danieli.

Israel's arch-enemy Iran had spoken in favour of the resolution, describing Israel's nuclear capabilities as "a potential threat to the peace and security of the world."

It also undermined the integrity and credibility of the non-proliferation regime and the NPT, argued Tehran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.

What Is Murdoch's Motive Behind The 9/12 Movement?

2009-09-27T10:10:00.002-07:00

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8671

The most corrupt and debased groups involved in the 9/11 coverup are being actively recruited by the press as a patriotic resistance.

The tone for the coverup is being set by Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, who controls much of the press in the US and United Kingdom. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see Murdoch's role in covering up 9/11. His networks created the "9/12ers" who are continuing the coverup and Murdoch employees like Fox funnyman, Glenn Beck, are still a major part of the effort to protect those in government who lied to the commission and may have aided the conspirators.

One thing can't be explained. Why are lies, known lies, still being broadcast daily, lies orchestrated from one source, meant to suppress an honest accounting of what may have been a series of mistakes?

Why go so far to cover up mistakes if they were only mistakes? With no 9/11 Commission standing behind the report that was meant to clear the Bush administration of responsibility, why is the Murdoch propaganda machine, the Wall Street Journal, Fox, Hannity, Beck and gang so busy burying something that doesn't exist?

Murdoch's media has held to "party line" on 9/11 and the Iraq/Afghanistan war since day one, suppressing facts any time they threatened an agenda of broad regional war. Murdoch acted, every step of the way, in concert with groups hiding facts on 9/11 while promoting continual phony terrorism alerts whenever political allies became subject to scrutiny.

Conspiracy theorists, largely proven correct thus far, refer to Murdoch's position as leader of the Israeli ultra-right wing Zionist movement as a rationale for his continued involvement in the cover up. No proof of Isreali involvement in the planning and execution of 9/11 has been offered except for Murdoch's relentless disinformation campaign.

Glenn Beck Is A Tool, Not A Libertarian

2009-09-27T10:10:00.001-07:00

It’s not enough that Fox News’ resident COINTELPRO operative Glen Beck led the charge and sabotaged the election campaign of Ron Paul — calling him a kook and his supporters dangerous terrorists — now he is determined to sabotage and take down libertarians.

On Beck’s radio show last week, the great actor and PSYOP chameleon apologized to the libertarians for dissing them in the past.

He now claims that he is one of them and says he’d like to re-examine the issues he used to criticize and sabotage Ron Paul’s election campaign.

Beck says the imperialism of the U.S. government and the Democrat and Republican parties “has caused a lot of problems.”

He wants to bring the troops home from Korea, Japan, Europe, etc. He initially includes Afghanistan in that list but then seems to recant in standard Beck wishy-washy fashion (because the illegal occupation of Afghanistan is central in the phony war on manufactured terrorism).

Glenn Beck is not a libertarian. He is an operative working for the Pentagon and probably takes his orders from the Army’s Psychological Operations Command.

His assignment is to destroy the libertarian, constitutional, and patriot movements.

Beck’s so-called 912 Project was designed to discredit the Tea Party demonstration in D.C. earlier this month — a movement already substantially co-opted by establishment Republicans — and give so-called “progressives” a chance to malign and denounce the movement and characterize it as a Republican attempt to undermine Obama and the Democrats.

In other words, steer it back into the safe zone of the false right-left paradigm and prevent it from actually accomplishing anything.

9/11 Commission Rejects Own Report As Based Lies

2009-09-27T10:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.salem-news.com

(CINCINNATI, Ohio) - In John Farmer’s book: “The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11″, the author builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version... is almost entirely untrue...

The 9/11 Commission now tells us that the official version of 9/11 was based on false testimony and documents and is almost entirely untrue. The details of this massive cover-up are carefully outlined in a book by John Farmer, who was the Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission.

Farmer, Dean of Rutger Universities' School of Law and former Attorney General of New Jersey, was responsible for drafting the original flawed 9/11 report.

Does Farmer have cooperation and agreement from other members of the Commission? Yes.

Did they say Bush ordered 9/11? No.

Do they say that the 9/11 Commission was lied to by the FBI, CIA, Whitehouse and NORAD? Yes.

Is there full documentary proof of this? Yes.

Farmer states...“at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened... I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The [Norad air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. This is not spin.”

The 9/11 Commission head, Thomas Kean, was the Republican governor of New Jersey. He had the following to say... “We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth. . . "

When Bush's own handpicked commission failed to go along with the cover up and requested a criminal investigation, why was nothing done?

9/11 Commission member and former US Senator, Bob Kerrey, says, "No one is more qualified to write the definitive book about the tragedy of 9/11 than John Farmer. Fortunately, he has done so. Even more fortunately the language is clear, alive and instructive for anyone who wants to make certain this never happens again."

The Fall Of The Republic

2009-09-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

The US dollar is on the same trajectory as Obama's approval rating.

The evil genius campaigned on a platform of changing the status quo, but after taking office only proved that he is the special interest defender of the status quo that many of us knew he was.

I'm sorry, my lefty friends...Bush was bad, Obama is worse.
Under Obama, the dollar remains in free fall thanks to the fucked up Keynesian philosophy of astronomical spending.

Any of the actual black people who ran for President last year would be better than this piece of shit.

Clinton picked out the plot, Bush picked out the coffin and Obama started digging the grave.

I fear that the next President, regardless of political affiliation, will be the one to throw the lifeless corpse of our beloved country into the pit.

National Intelligence Estimate: Iran Has No Nukes.

2009-09-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

Intelligence Agencies Say No New Nukes in Iran
Secret updates to White House challenge European and Israeli assessments.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/215529

The U.S. intelligence community is reporting to the White House that Iran has not restarted its nuclear-weapons development program, two counterproliferation officials tell NEWSWEEK. U.S. agencies had previously said that Tehran halted the program in 2003.

The officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that U.S. intelligence agencies have informed policymakers at the White House and other agencies that the status of Iranian work on development and production of a nuclear bomb has not changed since the formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's "Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities" in November 2007. Public portions of that report stated that U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that, as of early 2003, Iranian military units were pursuing development of a nuclear bomb, but that in the fall of that year Iran "halted its nuclear weapons program." The document said that while U.S. agencies believed the Iranian government "at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons," U.S. intelligence as of mid-2007 still had "moderate confidence" that it had not restarted weapons-development efforts.

One of the two officials said that the Obama administration has now worked out a system in which intelligence agencies provide top policymakers, including the president, with regular updates on intelligence judgments like the conclusions in the 2007 Iran NIE. According to the two officials, the latest update to policymakers has been that as of now—two years after the period covered by the 2007 NIE—U.S. intelligence agencies still believe Iran has not resumed nuclear-weapons development work.

Are You Concerned About Iran's Nukes? You Shouldn't Be...

2009-09-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

Under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, America should be helping Iran build power stations.

What better way to make sure that Iran is not trying to create nuclear weapons, than to help them develop their civilian nuclear energy programs?

And it's funny...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88353,00.html

Monday, June 02, 2003

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran invited the United States on Monday to take part in building its nuclear program, aiming to allay Washington's fears that Tehran is developing a nuclear bomb.

Russia's atomic minister said last week that Washington should join Moscow in building Iran's first plant, due to come on line at Bushehr by the end of this year. Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, proposed Friday that Western countries help build the country's next plants.

Asefi took that offer a step further Monday, specifically inviting the United States.

"If the United States is really concerned, it can participate in the construction of nuclear power plants in our country," Asefi told a news conference.

So stop the demonizing and fearmongering regarding Iran, because if our government walked the walk instead of talking the talk then Iran would probably be an ally instead at the top of the list of sovereign nations that the American empire wants to control.

Obama Is Dead Wrong About Iran's Nukes

2009-09-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk

It wasn't until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence "scoop" provided by the US, but rather Iran's own voluntary declaration. Iran's actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama's hurried press conference Friday morning.

Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama's dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA.

This agreement was signed by Iran in December 2004. However, since the "additional protocol" has not been ratified by the Iranian parliament, and as such is not legally binding, Iran had viewed its implementation as being voluntary, and as such agreed to comply with these new measures as a confidence building measure more so than a mandated obligation.

In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material.

While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong.

FLASHBACK: US Is Funding Destabilizing Groups In Iran

2009-09-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful use of taxpayer money!

Sy Hersh: Congress Is Funding Major Escalation in Secret Operations Against Iran

http://www.alternet.org/world/89963

Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran's leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.

The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran's nuclear program.

According to Hersh, US Special Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included seizing members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of so-called "high-value targets" who may be captured or killed.

While covert operations against Iran are not new, Hersh writes that the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, have now been significantly expanded.

Dennis Blair: "Iran Has Not Re-Started Nuclear Weapons Program"

2009-09-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

Dennis Blair: Iran Has Not Re-Started Its Nuclear Weapons Program

Earlier this month, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen made headlines when he was asked by CNN whether Iran had enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. “We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said. This morning, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) asked Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to address the “confusion” about what the intelligence says about Iran’s weapons capacity. Blair said the intelligence community has assessed that Iran does not possess any highly-enriched uranium, and clarified that Mullen had been referring only to low-enriched uranium.

Moreover, Blair said that the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which judged that “in the fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” still stands:

LEVIN: In 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran said that “the intelligence community judges with high confidence that in the fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Is the position of the intelligence community the same as it was back in October of ‘07? Has that changed?
BLAIR: Mr. Chairman, the nuclear weapons program is one of the three components required for deliverable system, including the delivery system and the uranium. But as for the nuclear weapons program, the current position is the same, that Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons design and weaponization activities in 2003 and did not — has not started them again, at least as of mid-2007.

DO NOT FALL FOR THE WAR HYPE PROPAGANDA!!

Don't allow the imperialist criminals start more wars!!

Obamacare Is "A Gift" To Big Insurance

2009-09-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

Those who are pushing for this have obscured the real issues of the 'universal health care' debate. So when you Obamadrones see people opposing Obamacare, it's because of shit like this...not because they don't care about poor people.

This BS doesn't solve the problem, it just exacerbates it and directs MORE profit into the pockets of special interests.

And if you don't know who Wendell Potter is, you really need to watch this:
DemocracyNow!.org - “They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Insurance Exec Turned Whistleblower Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry

RawStory.com

Pharma group that made deal with Obama now backing Baucus health bill

The health care reform plan proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is an “absolute gift” to health care insurance companies, says an industry whistleblower.

Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna, said the Baucus plan “would not provide affordable coverage … gives the industry too much latitude to charge higher premiums based on age and geographic location, fails to mandate employer coverage, and pushes consumers into plans with limited benefits,” Politico reports.

Potter’s claims come at a time when it looks increasingly likely that the White House will back health care reforms that will be very similar to Baucus’ proposal.

On Friday, the New York Times reported that the pharmaceutical trade group that struck a deal with President Barack Obama to support health care reform is backing Baucus’ bill — an indication that Baucus’ plan may be the one that the president will eventually support.

As RAW STORY reported last week, the version of health care reform supported by Sen. Baucus (D-MT) would cost $850 billion to $900 billion over 10 years, but would not include a public health option.

Support For Obama's War Evaporating; Delegate Regrets Obama Vote

2009-09-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

DemocracyNow!.org

As Obama Escalates War in Afghanistan, US Peace Activists Call for Near-Term Withdrawal of Foreign Troops

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Norman Solomon, you were an Obama delegate. Are you disappointed now?

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, you know, I haven’t met a progressive yet who would just as soon have John McCain as president. That said, we always choose from the choices that we’re facing at a particular time.

And while, as I said a year ago, the best way not to become disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place, my somewhat low expectations from President Obama have not been met.

This guy has rushed into the arms of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.

Obama Sends 3,000 "Combat Enabler" To Afghanistan

2009-09-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

AntiWar.com

Top US defense officials say that roughly 3,000 additional troops, which are classified not as combat troops but rather “combat enablers,” will be deployed to Afghanistan in the coming days.

Officials say the decision was made roughly two weeks ago, which puts it at about the same time that the Pentagon was publicly announcing that it was pulling 14,000 support troops from the nation to add 14,000 more “trigger pullers” to the conflict.<

Rather, it now seems that the non-combat troops are being replaced by the combat troops, and then new non-combat troops are being added as well, effectively an escalation of the number of troops involved in the conflict under the guise of adding “non-combat” troops. This escalation comes in addition to the expected request of another 20,000 troops from Gen. McChrystal.

The US escalation on the ground comes amid growing evidence that the war is being lost, both in real terms and popular terms. But though the Obama Administration has made much of a promised “civilian surge” to bring stability to the war zone, it is now being conceded that little is going to result from it. The focus seems pretty much entirely on combat at this point, whether enabling it or engaging in it.

The Ghost Of Osama Bin Laden Is A Propaganda Tool

2009-09-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

The latest Osama bin Laden tape arrives following the deadliest month for US forces since the invasion.

Support for the military effort in Afghanistan was evaporating and Obama was sinking in the polls at a record pace.

Bin Laden’s talking points once again stoke strong suspicions that this is merely another propaganda stunt manufactured by the U.S. military-industrial complex, because they mirror some of the valid criticisms that many of us have of his administration.

Bin Laden’s audio tape will do nothing to harm Obama’s agenda in Afghanistan and indeed it will be cited by the White House as a reason for keeping and expanding America’s occupation of Afghanistan – which is what makes the alleged tape all the more suspicious.

I believe bin Laden has been dead for a long time.

In a tape released in 2007, bin Laden supposedly claims responsibility for the attacks of 9/11.

"I am the one responsible... The Afghan people and government knew nothing whatsoever about these events,"

The FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list claims that Osama bin Laden is wanted:

in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.

No mention of 9/11.
Why?

The Pentagon released a video tape they claimed was found in a house in Jalalabad. (Supposedly created on Nov. 9)

In the video, Osama bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks on September 11.

"I am the one responsible... The Afghan people and government knew nothing whatsoever about these events,"

The video was very effective in diverting media attention away from the deportation of five Israelis who danced as the twin towers burned.

Responding to critics of the video, Bush said:

"It is preposterous for anybody to think that this tape is doctored. That's just a feeble excuse to provide weak support for an incredibly evil man."

Videos 1, 2 and 4 show the real bin Laden, video 3 shows the "lucky find" bin Laden.

Lawsuit To Add Seats To The House

2009-09-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

New York Times.com

WASHINGTON — In America, democracy follows the simple principle of one person, one vote, right?

Unless, that is, you live in Montana, where your vote carries a little more than half as much weight in the House of Representatives as that of someone living in Rhode Island. Or if you live in Utah, where your vote counts about two-thirds as much as it would in Iowa.

With the 2010 Census around the corner, Washington and the various state capitals will soon turn their attention to carving out congressional districts across the nation. And once again, political leaders are preparing to cobble together a patchwork quilt of districts that will leave some Americans underrepresented.

Redrawing the lines will address some of the population shifts over the last decade, but much of the disparity will remain, because it is built into the system. In theory, every member of the House represents roughly the same number of people. But because each state gets at least one seat, no matter how small its population, and because the overall size of the House has not changed in a century, the number of people represented by a single congressman can vary widely.

The most populous district in America right now, according to the latest Census data, is Nevada’s 3rd District, where 960,000 people are represented in the House by just one member. All of Montana’s 958,000 people likewise have just one vote in the House. By contrast, 523,000 in Wyoming get the same voting power, as do the 527,000 in one of Rhode Island’s two districts and the 531,000 in the other.

That 400,000-person disparity between top and bottom has generated a federal court challenge that is set to be filed Thursday in Mississippi, charging that the system effectively disenfranchises people in certain states. The lawsuit asks the courts to order the House to fix the problem by increasing its size from 435 seats to at least 932, or perhaps as many as 1,761. That way, the plaintiffs argue, every state can have districts that are close to parity.

This is a step in the right direction, I like the idea of 30,000 Representatives better.
http://www.thirty-thousand.org

Which Flation Will We Get? by Gary North

2009-09-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

LewRockwell.com

DEFLATION

Most of those who forecast deflation have in mind price deflation. A few think monetary deflation will take place because of bankrupt banks, but the position is difficult to defend. The FDIC can keep bank doors open. There are no runs on banks involving currency withdrawal. There are only runs involving the transfer of digital money to other banks. This does not affect the money supply.

Price deflation can come through the free market. It results from steady increases in economic output in an economy with stable money. Here is my slogan: "More goods chasing the same amount of money." A gold coin standard economy provides such a world, as long as central banks do not protect insolvent banks. So does 100% reserve banking, which we have never had. This is not the scenario offered by deflationists.

Here is their scenario. Banks create credit. Fiat money lowers interest rates. People borrow. This is consistent with Austrian economics. This credit structure cannot be sustained indefinitely. Austrianism also teaches this.

Here is where the schools of opinion depart. The deflationist says that people in general cannot pay their debts. They default. So, prices fall. Not just prices of market sectors that were bubbles, but all prices.

There is a problem with this argument. If you find that half of the things you regularly buy cost less, you buy the same amount, or maybe a little more, and then buy more of something else. This includes the purchase of capital goods.

You don't put currency in a mattress. You buy something with the money that falling prices allows you to keep. You buy more of B when the price of A falls . . . or more of A.

Simple, isn't it? But those who call themselves deflationists do not understand it or believe it.

The same money supply is out there. Someone owns each portion of it. You own some. I own some. We both would like to own more . . . at some price. But the credit contraction of a popped market bubble does not affect the money supply if the central bank or the Treasury or the FDIC intervenes and prevents a fractional reserve bank from going bust and taking all of the digital money with it.

This is economic logic. If the logic is incorrect, then there should be detailed theoretical criticisms of it. Or, given the weaknesses of human thought, maybe logic does not correspond to reality. Economists are famous for constructing detailed theories that do not conform to reality. But the free market theory of price changes as the result of the supply and demand for money in relation to the supply and demand for products and services is straightforward. It undergirds all of economic theory. Throw it out, and what remains of economic theory?

If a central bank creates a boom with fiat money, and then ceases to inflate, it can create deflation. How? By refusing to bail out busted banks. It allows the money supply to contract as bankrupt commercial bank deposits disappear. Fractional reserve banking implodes. That will create a deflationary depression. We have not seen anything like this since 1934: the creation of the FDIC.

Don't bank on this just yet.

INFLATION

Monetary inflation produces price inflation. On this, Chicago School monetarists and Austrian school economists agree.

If the central bank expands the money supply, prices will rise. This takes time. Economists debate about the lag time: 6 months, a year, 18 months. But monetary expansion will raise prices. The new money has to go somewhere. It has to wind up in someone's bank account.

If the central bank expands the monetary base by buying assets of any kind, it creates money to buy them. The recipients of those assets spend the money. If the Treasury gets it, Congress spends it. (In both theory and practice, if Congress gets its collective hands on money, it spends it. All economists are agreed on this point.)

The expansion of money by the central bank is the source of economic booms and specific asset bubbles. The expansion of money temporarily lowers the interest rate. Someone borrows this newly created money.

America suffered from monetary inflation from 1914 to 1930. Then, with a 3-year hiatus of collapsing banks, we have suffered from 1934 until today. The dollar has fallen by 95% since 1914. No, I don't believe the CPI tells us this exactly. But I can follow the trend. The trend is up for prices and down for purchasing power.

For as long as the Federal Reserve creates money, we will have price inflation. The only thing that can retard this is if the FED raises reserve requirements or commercial banks send excess reserves to the FED. The monetary effects are the same: increased reserves are the result. This reduces the multiplier of fractional reserve banking.

Price inflation of under 10% per annum is what I call inflation. But before we get to this, we will suffer from stagflation.

STAGFLATION

This was the burden of the 1970's. There was monetary expansion and massive Federal deficits. Why, the Federal deficit was a staggering $25 billion in 1970, and as bad the next year. Unthinkable!

The dominant Keynesian theory was that Federal deficits would overcome recessions. The central bank need only inflate enough to cover part of the Federal deficit. But there were two major recessions in the 1970's. Unemployment rose, and prices rose. That combination of events was dubbed stagflation.

That we can have economic stagnation in today's world is obvious. Just about every mainstream economist and forecaster is predicting slow economic growth next year. The familiar V-shaped recovery is not a popular forecast these days. More typical is the forecast of Muhammed El-Erian, the CEO of PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world. He calls this "the new normal."

Global growth will be subdued for a while and unemployment high; a heavy hand of government will be evident in several sectors; the core of the global system will be less cohesive and, with the magnet of the Anglo-Saxon model in retreat, finance will no longer be accorded a preeminent role in post-industrial economies. Moreover, the balance of risk will tilt over time toward higher sovereign risk, growing inflationary expectations and stagflation.

This scenario is a combination of slow growth and rising prices. Today, we have no growth and flat prices. So, slow growth and rising prices is not much of a stretch conceptually.

I think stagflation is likely, once the recovery comes. But we are seeing a gigantic Federal deficit. Ross Perot in 1992 spoke of a giant sucking sound. He said that was the sound of jobs lost to Mexico. I think it is the sound of the Federal government sucking up all excess capital in the United States and much of the world. This money will not be going into the private sector.

What is the basis of a sustained economic recovery? Increased capital formation. We are seeing capital destruction.

For a time, we will suffer from stagflation. It will not be stagdeflation. It will be staginflation.

What do I envision? Economic growth under 2% per annum, coupled with price increases of 5% per annum or more.

MASS INFLATION

This phenomenon will appear when the Federal deficit cannot be covered by private investment and purchases by foreign central banks. This seems certain within a decade. I think it is likely before the end of the next President's term. I think the Social Security trust fund will cease to provide a surplus that is used to purchase nonmarketable Treasury debt, as it is today. The trustees will have to sell some of these nonmarketable Treasury debt certificates back to the Treasury. The Treasury in turn will have to sell conventional Treasury debt to cover the redemptions by the trust fund.

This stage will be the indicator that the present borrow-and-spend model has failed. The FED will be called upon to supply the difference between purchases of T-debt by the public and borrowing by the government. When the FED complies, the rate of monetary inflation will rise. Prices will also rise.

I define mass inflation as double-digit price inflation above 20% but below 40%. Americans have not seen this. No industrial nation has seen this except after a major military defeat.

The disruption of the capital markets will be extreme. The government will absorb virtually all capital formation. There will be no net capital formation. There will be capital consumption.

The international value of the dollar will fall. But other Western nations will be pursuing comparable policies. It is not clear how far the dollar will fall. It depends on the competitive race to national self-destruction. Every Western nation faces the day of reckoning: the bankruptcy of Social Security/Medicare.

At this point, the FED will have to make a choice: put on the brakes or destroy the dollar.

HYPERINFLATION

The worst-case scenario is hyperinflation. Ludwig von Mises called this the crack-up boom. It leads to the destruction of the currency. The economy will move to barter or to alternative currencies. The division of labor will collapse.

No modern industrial economy has suffered this since the recovery after World War II. The West is not Zimbabwe. The West is not a backward agricultural nation that still has functional tribal organizations to help their members.

Think about the implications of your money not buying anything of value. How would you live? You are urban. You are dependent on a complex system of computerized production and distribution. It is all governed by profit and loss. The profit-and-loss system will cease to function at some point. That is when the economy shifts to a new monetary system.

This would be the destruction of wealth on the scale of a war. It would create a new social order.

I do not think the Federal Reserve will allow this. This would destroy the banking system. The FED's unofficial but primary job is to preserve the biggest banks in the banking system. If it's a question of providing fiat money for the government's debt vs. destroying the dollar, the FED will cease buying Treasury debt.

That will be the turning point.

DEFLATION

Then we will get the crash. The FED will protect the biggest banks, which will swallow the assets of smaller banks. A lot of smaller banks will go under. They will take deposits with them.

We will get bank runs. People will demand currency. The FDIC will be busted. These banks will go under. So will depositors' money. It will be "It's a Wonderful Life" without the 6 o'clock escape hatch in the script.

You had better have your money in Potter's Bank, not the Bedford Falls Building & Loan.

The contraction of digital money will be matched by a truly serious recession. Bankruptcies will be widespread. Unemployment may not rise, but only because the final phase of mass inflation had created so much unemployment.

This will be a period of restoration. The cost of the restoration will depend on how bad the dislocations of the mass inflation had been. If they are very serious, which I would expect, the time of recession will be tolerable if you have currency and a job. But the investment strategies of hedging against mass inflation will produce losses. An opposite set of strategies will appear. Be a debtor in mass inflation. Be a creditor in the post-inflation recovery.

If the Federal Reserve intervenes again, repeat the cycle from the top. But the numbers will be much larger.

How The Federal Reserve Scam Works

2009-09-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

From the book "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin.

Although national monetary events may appear mysterious and chaotic, they are governed by well-established rules which bankers and politicians rigidly follow. The central fact to understanding these events is that all the money in the banking system has been created out of nothing through the process of making loans.

A defaulted loan, therefore, costs the bank little of tangible value, but it shows up on the ledger as a reduction in assets without a corresponding reduction in liabilities. If the bad loans exceed the assets, the bank becomes technically insolvent and must close its doors.

The first rule of survival is therefore to avoid writing off large, bad loans and if possible to at least continue receiving interest payments on them.

To accomplish that, the endangered loans are rolled over and increased in size. This provides the borrower with money to continue paying interest plus fresh funds for new spending. The basic problem is not solved, it is postponed for a while and made worse.

The final solution on behalf of the banking cartel is to have the federal government guarantee payment of the loan should the borrower default in the future.

This is accomplished by convincing Congress that not to do so would result in great damage to the economy and hardship for the people. From that point forward, the burden of the loan is removed from the banks ledger and transferred to the taxpayer.

Should this effort fail and the bank be forced into insolvency, the last resort is to use the FDIC to pay off the depositors. The FDIC is not insurance because the presence of "moral hazard" makes the thing it supposedly protects against more likely to happen.

When FDIC funds run out it is provided by the Federal Reserve system in the form of freshly created new money. This floods the economy causing the appearance of rising prices but which, in reality, is the lowering of the value of the dollar.

The final cost of the bailout is passed on to the public in the form of a hidden tax called inflation.

The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

It should be called the Austrian Explanation of the Business Cycle, because it's spot on.

The theory proposes that a sustained period of low interest rates and excessive credit creation results in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment.

According to the theory, the business cycle unfolds in the following way.

Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system.

This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the supply of money, through the money creation process in a fractional reserve banking system.

This in turn leads to an unsustainable credit-sourced boom during which the artificially stimulated borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities.

This credit-sourced boom results in widespread malinvestments, causing capital resources to be misallocated into areas that would not attract investment if the money supply remained stable.

A correction or "credit crunch" – commonly called a "recession" or "bust" – occurs when exponential credit creation cannot be sustained.

Then the money supply suddenly and sharply contracts when markets finally "clear", causing resources to be reallocated back towards more efficient uses.

The bankers know that this is what happens, and they do it on purpose.
That is why they've bought off politicians to create the Federal Reserve, to abolish a gold standard, and more recently...to "deregulate" banks to allow them to do what they did to our economy.

Bernanke Created An Economy Recovery Illusion

2009-09-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

Fed chair Ben Bernanke's low interest rates and monetization programs have flooded the markets and created the illusion of economic recovery.

But investors and consumers remain skeptical. In fact, (according to zero hedge) less than $400 billion has moved from Money Markets into stocks in the last 6 months even though the index value has increased by more than $2.7 trillion.

So, where did the money come from? The Fed has taken trillions in toxic securities onto its balance sheet, thus, providing financial institutions with the liquidity they need to goose the stock market. With securitization in a shambles, the banks have fewer opportunities to meet earnings expectations.

Lending is down, but speculation is up.

Way up.

Bernanke knows that neither stimulus nor liquidity will fix the economy. That's because many of the financial institutions that took out loans from the Fed are technically insolvent. (Borrowing more money won't help if you're already drowning in red ink.)

Even so, he is committed to keeping the big banks afloat and patching together the flawed wholesale credit system any way he can. This is why Bernanke should never have been reappointed.

True, he demonstrated impressive imagination and skill in pumping liquidity into the financial system, but he's done nothing to role up insolvent institutions or to purge toxic assets and non-performing loans from the system. The Fed has merely provided enough taxpayer-funded scaffolding to keep a rotten system propped up a little longer.

What good does that do?

The IMF Destroys Iceland and Latvia

2009-09-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post

The International Monetary Fund operates primarily as a banker bailout machine. They cajole and tempt and confuse and threaten the leaders of governments worldwide to pay off the failed bets of the big bankers using the taxpayer funds of their countries. This has been going on a long time, at least since the early 1980s.

Thus, I am not in the teeniest bit surprised that the same thing is happening today in Iceland and Latvia.

This article by Michael Hudson has some of the details:

The European Union and International Monetary Fund have told them to replace private debts with public obligations, and to pay by raising taxes, slashing public spending and obliging citizens to deplete their savings.
Resentment is growing not only toward those who ran up these debts -- Iceland's bankrupt Kaupthing and Landsbanki with its Icesave accounts, and heavily debt-leveraged property owners and privatizers in the Baltics and Central Europe -- but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders.

The government of Iceland may not actually have the money to pay this off. They would have to borrow it. When the IMF makes a "rescue loan" to a government, the money spends no time in Iceland or Latvia. It goes directly to the foreign creditors, in places like New York and London.

However, the debts remain, to be paid off by the taxpayers of Iceland. Taxes rise, which just makes a bad economic situation worse. Valuable and important services are cut -- precisely when they are most needed. Then, the IMF "advisors" come in and start to make a lot of demands.

For example, they may demand that the government sell off "public infrastructure" and the assets of failed banks (which still have considerable value) to pay off the loans which were used to bail out the bankers in New York and London. Who buys this "public infrastructure"?

Typically, it's the bankers in New York and London!
Normally, at very, very good prices.

Hudson calls this "neoliberal free-market ideology." Of course, it has nothing to do with the principles of capitalism. You could call it a form of fascist imperialism. I think John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The History of the American Empire, would agree with this terminology.

It is hard to tempt and cajole and confuse world leaders when you use unpleasant terms like "fascist imperialism." That's why these proposals are camouflaged with labels like "neoliberal free-market principles," when they have nothing to do with free-market principles.

It's not about "conservative" and "liberal." It's about us against the banker imperialists.

You know that recession Obama ended?

2009-09-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE5815X020090902

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bankruptcy filings by U.S. consumers rose 24 percent in August compared with a year earlier and could reach 1.4 million this year, according to an American Bankruptcy Institute and National Bankruptcy Research Center report released on Wednesday.

Despite the spike, consumer bankruptcy filings last month were down 5 percent from July.

The August bankruptcies brought the 2009 number to 922,000.

In 2008, a total of 1.1 million consumers filed for bankruptcy, according to ABI.

They saved the ultra-rich elite bankers and CEOs from a recession, but not America.

They tell you that things would be worse if we didn't save them...that is obviously a crock of shit.

Most people are "truthers"

2009-09-06T11:08:00.001-07:00

http://www.zogby.com/news/readnews.cfm?ID=855

Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and "Consciously Failed" To Act;

66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York's Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/13469

- Many adults in the United States believe the current federal government has not been completely forthcoming on the issue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News.

53 per cent of respondents think the Bush administration is hiding something, and 28 per cent believe it is lying.

Only 16 per cent of respondents say the government headed by U.S. president George W. Bush is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks, down five points since May 2002.

Do you want to know who runs our government?

2009-09-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder

Sociopath/Psychopath

Antisocial Personality disorder is diagnosed in approximately three percent of all males and one percent of all females. (Some of this 1-3% make their way into positions of power)

Critera and Symptoms

Tendency to violate the boundaries and rights of others.

Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying.Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.

Reckless disregard for safety of others.

Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations.

Superficial charm.

Narcissism, elevated self-appraisal or a sense of extreme entitlement.

Lack of realistic, long-term goals.

Recurring difficulties with the law.

Substance abuse.

Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

What would America look like without a Fed?

2009-09-06T11:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2009/09/02/what-would-the-united-states-look-like-without-the-federal-reserve/

Apologists for the Fed would note that the United States was in recession half of the time between the Civil War and 1914 and only 21% of the time since the Fed came into force.

However, the frequent down-turns before 1914 weren’t the result of a lack of a central bank, but more-so because of poorly thought government regulations, such as bans on branch banking making it so that banks could not survive localized economic trouble. The Federal Government also forced banks to trade notes at a discount whenever the bank offering the note was from another area.

After the adoption of a system similar to Canada’s failed, only then did reformers consider the establishment of a central reserve bank.

As a result, the Federal Reserve Act allowed for the creation of 12 new banks to do what other banks were prevented from doing themselves, establishing branch networks and issuing currency backed by commercial assets.

You and everyone you know is stupid.

2009-09-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

Why doesn't anyone care about bringing to justice the people responsible for the credit crisis?

Look what the derivatives market has done.

People were lured into subprime mortgages, criminals gambled with peoples lives, and many have been ruined.

And maybe 5% of people are paying attention to this stuff.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/2/american_casino_doc_investigates_roots_of

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Dr. Greenspan, you had an ideology, you had a belief, that free, competitive—and this is your statement: “I do have an ideology. My judgment is that free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies. We’ve tried regulation. None meaningfully worked.” That was your quote.

You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others. And now our whole economy is paying its price. Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?

ALAN GREENSPAN: Well, remember that what an ideology is is a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality. Everyone has one. You have to. To exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not. And what I’m saying to you is, yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is, but I’ve been very distressed by that fact.

But if I may, may I just finish an answer to the question previously posed?

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: You found a flaw in the reality—

ALAN GREENSPAN: Flaw in the model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right. It was not working.

ALAN GREENSPAN: That it had a—precisely. No, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I’ve been going for forty years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.

The Federal Reserve was a poor substitute for deregulation. Since the Fed had monopoly privileges in issuing currency, it allowed them to cause unchecked inflation.

By 1919, the US Inflation rate jumped to nearly 20%. Since the Federal Reserve had a monopoly on currency, it also had to make sure that there was enough currency in the market to avert a crisis. Soon after, two of the worst monetary contractions in history, the first in 1921, and the second between 1929 and 1933 took place.

The IMF Destroys Iceland and Latvia

2009-09-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post

Thus, I am not in the teeniest bit surprised that the same thing is happening today in Iceland and Latvia.

This article by Michael Hudson has some of the details:

The European Union and International Monetary Fund have told them to replace private debts with public obligations, and to pay by raising taxes, slashing public spending and obliging citizens to deplete their savings.
Resentment is growing not only toward those who ran up these debts -- Iceland's bankrupt Kaupthing and Landsbanki with its Icesave accounts, and heavily debt-leveraged property owners and privatizers in the Baltics and Central Europe -- but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders.

Typically, it's the bankers in New York and London! Normally, at very, very good prices.

Hudson calls this "neoliberal free-market ideology." Of course, it has nothing to do with the principles of capitalism. You could call it a form of fascist imperialism. I think John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The History of the American Empire, would agree with this terminology.It is hard to tempt and cajole and confuse world leaders when you use unpleasant terms like "fascist imperialism." That's why these proposals are camouflaged with labels like "neoliberal free-market principles," when they have nothing to do with free-market principles.

It's not about "conservative" and "liberal." It's about us against the banker imperialists.

The IMF should be abolished.

Scientist Tells Swedish TV: WHO Pandemic Criteria Lowered to Benefit Big Pharma

2009-08-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

Sveriges Television AB

August 30, 2009

Note: The introduction to the following news report is in Swedish. The interview with the scientist is conducted in English.

FAIR Exposes CNN As Gov't Propaganda Outlet

2009-08-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

You'd be a fool to think this stuff isn't happening today, or if you think that it's confined to Fox News.

http://www.fair.org/activism/osi-propaganda.html

In February 2000, reports in Dutch and French newspapers revealed that several officers from the 4th PSYOPS Group had worked in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship” program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War. a

Coverage of this disturbing story was scarce (see FAIR’s “Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working on News at CNN?” 3/27/00), but after FAIR issued an Action Alert on the story, CNN stated that it had already terminated the program and acknowledged that it was “inappropriate.”

Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not directly influence news reporting, the question remains of whether CNN may have allowed the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against the network itself.

The idea isn’t far-fetched-- according to Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00), a rear admiral from the Special Operations Command told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place. One of CNN’s PSYOPS “interns” worked in the network’s satellite division. (During the Afghanistan war the Pentagon found a very direct way to “gain control”-- it simply bought up all commercial satellite images of Afghanistan, in order to prevent media from accessing them.)

It’s worth noting that the 4th PSYOPS group is the same group that staffed the National Security Council's now notorious Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), which planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies during the 1980s.

Described by a senior U.S. official as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory" (Miami Herald, 7/19/87), the OPD was shut down after the Iran-Contra investigations, but not before influencing coverage in major outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post (Extra!, 9-10/01)

You Should Be Concerned About The H1N1 Vaccine

2009-08-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

I've seen a lot of articles popping up lately that should cast some doubt on the viability of the "Swine Flu" vaccine. I've collected a few and posted them here

Half Of Hong Kong Health Workers Refuse To Take H1N1 Shot

A study published in the world's foremost peer-reviewed medical journal has found that around 50% of Hong Kong's health workers will refuse to be vaccinated against swine flu for fears over the safety of the shot.

Research conducted by the University of Hong Kong and made public by the British Medical Journal consistently found that less than half of 8,500 doctors and nurses in public hospitals would accept vaccination against H1N1 influenza.

The study also found that the figures did not change significantly with an increase in the WHO pandemic alert level from phase 3 to phase 5.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/339/aug25_2/b3391

Results

The overall willingness to accept pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine was only 28.4% in the first survey, conducted at WHO influenza pandemic alert phase 3. No significant changes in the level of willingness to accept pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine were observed despite the escalation to alert phase 5. The willingness to accept pre-pandemic H1N1 vaccine was 47.9% among healthcare workers when the WHO alert level was at phase 5. The most common reasons for an intention to accept were "wish to be protected" and "following health authority’s advice." The major barriers identified were fear of side effects and doubts about efficacy. More than half of the respondents thought nurses should be the first priority group to receive the vaccines. The strongest positive associating factors were history of seasonal influenza vaccination and perceived risk of contracting the infection.

Conclusions

The willingness to accept pre-pandemic influenza vaccination was low, and no significant effect was observed with the change in WHO alert level. Further studies are required to elucidate the root cause of the low intention to accept pre-pandemic vaccination.

Half Of OK Doctors Will Refuse H1N1 Shot

Two separate polls of general practitioners in Britain have revealed that one in two doctors have severe reservations over the safety of the H1N1 flu vaccine, raising serious questions over the government's planned mass vaccination program.

A poll of doctors for Pulse magazine found that 49% would reject the vaccine with 9% still undecided.

56 of 115 GPs surveyed said they did not intend to receive the shot, according to the UK's leading medical weekly publication for health professionals.[1]

A second poll conducted by Göteborgs-Posten magazine reveals that up to 60% of GPs have severe doubts over the proposed vaccine. Of 216 GPs surveyed, 29% say they will outright refuse to be vaccinated, while a further 29% remain unsure. Only 41% of doctors said they would definitely take the shot. [2]

[1] http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=35&storycode=4123491&c=2

[2] http://www.healthcarerepublic.com//news/index.cfm?fuseaction=HCR.News.GP.LatestNews.Article&nNewsID=928737&sHashCode=#AddComment

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Vaccine May Be More Dangerous Than Swine Flu

Naturally, vaccine manufacturers have been in a competitive battle to produce the first vaccine. The main contenders have been Baxter Pharmaceuticals and Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the latter of which recently acquired the scandal-ridden Chiron vaccine company. Both of these companies have had agreements with the World Health Organization to produce a pandemic vaccine.

The Baxter vaccine, called Celvapan, has had fast track approval. It uses a new vero cell technology, which utilizes cultured cells from the African green monkey. This same animal tissue transmits a number of vaccine-contaminating viruses, including the HIV virus.

The Baxter company has been associated with two deadly scandals. The first event occurred in 2006 when hemophiliac components were contaminated with HIV virus and injected in tens of thousands of people, including thousands of children. Baxter continued to release the HIV contaminated vaccine even after the contamination was known.

The second event occurred recently when it was discovered that Baxter had released a seasonal flu vaccine containing the bird flu virus, which would have produced a real world pandemic, to 18 countries. Fortunately, astute lab workers in the Czech Republic discovered the deadly combination and blew the whistle before a worldwide disaster was unleashed.

Despite these two deadly events, WHO maintains an agreement with Baxter Pharmaceuticals to produce the world’s pandemic vaccine. Novartis, the second contender, also has an agreement with WHO for a pandemic vaccine. Novartis appears to have won the contract, since their vaccine is near completion. What is terrifying is that these pandemic vaccines contain ingredients, called immune adjuvants that a number of studies have shown cause devastating autoimmune disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and lupus.

Animal studies using this adjuvant have found them to be deadly. A study using 14 guinea pigs found that when they were injected with the special adjuvant, only one animal survived. A repeat of the study found the same deadly outcome.

So, what is this deadly ingredient? It is called squalene, a type of oil. The Chiron company, maker of the deadly anthrax vaccine, makes an adjuvant called MF-59 which contains two main ingredients of concern—squalene and gp120. A number of studies have shown that squalene can trigger all of the above-mentioned autoimmune diseases when injected.

The MF-59 adjuvant has been used in several vaccines. These vaccines, including tetanus and diphtheria, are the same vaccines frequently associated with adverse reactions.

I reviewed a number of studies on this adjuvant and found something quite interesting. Several studies done on human test subjects found MF-59 to be a very safe immune adjuvant. But when I checked to see who did these studies, I found—to no surprise—that they were done by the Novartis Pharmaceutical Company and Chiron Pharmaceutical Company, which have merged. They were all published in “prestigious” medical journals. Also, to no surprise, a great number of studies done by independent laboratories and research institutions all found a strong link between MF-59 and autoimmune diseases.

Squalene in vaccines has been strongly linked to the Gulf War Syndrome. On August 1991, Anthony Principi, Secretary of Veterans Affairs admitted that soldiers vaccinated with the anthrax vaccine from 1990 to 1991 had an increased risk of 200 percent in developing the deadly disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig’s disease. The soldiers also suffered from a number of debilitating and life-shortening diseases, such as polyarteritis nodosa, multiple sclerosis (MS), lupus, transverse myelitis (a neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord), endocarditis (inflammation of the heart’s inner lining), optic neuritis with blindness and glomerulonephritis (a type of kidney disease).

Because squalene, the main ingredient in MF-59, can induce hyperimmune responses and induce autoimmunity, a real danger exists for prolonged activation of the brain’s immune cells, the microglia. This type of prolonged activation has been strongly associated with such diseases as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS and possibly vaccine-related encephalitis. It has been shown that activation of the systemic immune system, as occurs with vaccination, rapidly activates the brain’s microglia at the same time, and this brain inflammation can persist for long periods.

So, how would the gp120 get into the brain? Studies of other immune adjuvants using careful tracer techniques have shown that they routinely enter the brain following vaccination. What most people do not know, even the doctors who recommend the vaccines, is that most such studies by pharmaceutical companies observe the patients for only one to two weeks following vaccination—these types of reactions may take months or even years to manifest.

It is obvious that the vaccine manufacturers stand to make billions of dollars in profits from this WHO/government-promoted pandemic. Novartis, the maker of the new pandemic vaccine, recently announced that they would not give free vaccines to impoverished nations—everybody pays.

One must keep in mind that once the vaccine is injected, there is little you can do to protect yourself—at least by conventional medicine. It will mean a lifetime of crippling illness and early death.

Sibel Edmonds Testimony Released To Public

2009-08-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a Turkish-American former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC).

Edmonds was fired from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March, 2002, after she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleging serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence which, she contended, presented a danger to the United States' security.

Since that time, court proceedings on her whistleblower claims have been blocked by the assertion of State Secrets Privilege. On March 29, 2006, she was awarded the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in recognition of her defense of free speech as it applies to the written word.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/08/25/sibel-edmonds-testimony/

Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI-contract translator under a gag order for her whistleblowing, has testified under oath numerous times – in secret. She has told much of her story in bits and pieces appearing in articles, interviews and .jpg files over the years, but, for whatever technical reasons, she was finally allowed, on August 8, to talk openly about what she knows despite the “state’s secrets” doctrine – all under oath, at one time and place, and for the public record.

Let’s take a look at what was so important that the previous administration turned their own employee into the “most gagged person in U.S. history.”

A brief summary, the full video and transcript [.pdf] are now available at BradBlog.com.

Russian General: "US is repeating our mistake"

2009-08-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-08-20/afghanistan-us-drug-trafficking.html

Russia Today:
What’s the difference, what is their mistake?

Gen. Mahmut Gareev:
They’re repeating our mistake. NATO forces are very difficult to manage. Six months ago they made a decision to move one squadron from the north of Afghanistan to the south where the British troops are stationed. Half a year later – the decision has been made, but the squadron still remains where they were before. Actually, they themselves admit that if drugs were smuggled past them, they wouldn’t interfere.

When I was there in 1989 and 1990, the production of drugs almost ceased, apart from in certain areas. Since then, it has increased by 44 per cent. And all of the drug traffic goes through the city of Osh where we want to establish our base, Termes or other places.

90 per cent of drugs from Afghanistan go to former Soviet republics. 80 per cent of the world’s drugs are produced in Afghanistan. They’ve outdone the South American countries, such as Columbia. Thirty thousand young people in Russia die from drug use every year. And, sadly, some of the leaders of the CIS countries don’t really want to interfere. In other words, there are too many people who make money on this.

I don’t make anything up. Americans themselves admit that drugs are often transported out of Afghanistan on American planes. Drug trafficking in Afghanistan brings them about 50 billion dollars a year – which fully covers the expenses tied to keeping their troops there. Essentially, they are not going to interfere and stop the production of drugs.

They engage in military action only when they are attacked. They don’t have any planned military action to eliminate the Mujahideen. Rather, they want to make the situation more unstable and help the Taliban to be more active. They even started negotiations with them, trying to direct them to the Central-Asian republics, to destabilize the whole region and set up their bases there.

It's Really Time That We Investigate Bankers At Goldman Sachs

2009-08-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

Higher-ups from Goldman Sachs have jumped between their positions at the "too big to fail" bank and our government for awhile now, and the general public has always been encouraged to pay no attention...I think it's time for a change.

It's now widely accepted that Hank Paulson let Lehman Brothers fail while giving AIG billions to pay off Goldman, to which AIG owed $13 Billion. In a new article in Rolling Stone Magazine, journalist Matt Tabbi takes an in-depth look at the story behind AIG.

“The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.”

Matt published this article today:

Goldman Busted Again

More good news for Goldman Sachs, which now has the WSJ taking a bite out of its posterior. Here it is reported that Goldman was handing out tips to favored clients that one of its analysts was about to publish favorable ratings of a mutual fund, giving those clients the opportunity to buy in six days before the analyst’s rating was published.

This comes on the same day that the New York Times ran a big story on Sergey Aleynikov, the guy who stole Goldman’s high-frequency trading program. The story is about the use of technology that banks use to make trades in fractions of milliseconds, taking advantage of tiny price discrepancies in the market.

This is a practice that’s apparently been going on forever. You give an investment bank enough business, they will throw bon mots like this your way. Here’s Jim Cramer, formerly of Goldman and then of course a hedge fund manager in his own right, describing how his wife and partner Karen Backfisch taught him to butter up investment banks with commissions:

How she did it was by gaming Wall Street, trying to anticipate moves of analysts before they were made, and placing big bets on the direction that analysts were going to go. That way, she said, you always had an edge, you never owned anything idly, and you always had an exit strategy...
Karen explained to me that the analyst game was a game of sponsorship. Analysts like to get behind stocks and bull them. You have to get in on the ground floor when they start their sponsorship campaign. If Merrill is the sponsor of a stock, it could be good for 5 points. If Goldman sponsored something, it could be good for 10. You want to buy something and flip it—sell it immediately—into the sponsorship. That’s the only sure thing on Wall Street.

When I asked her how we could find out about all of these wonderful things when I was jut a little hedge fund manager, she said one word: ‘commish.’… Commissions, she explained, determined what you are told, what you will know, and how much you can find out. If you do a massive amount of commission business, analysts will return your calls, brokers will work for you, and you will get plenty of ideas to make money, on both a short- and long-term basis… Commissions greased everything.

Political Expression Double Standard (Obama Joker)

2009-08-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

So, apparently the "left" loves free speech so much, that it's justifiable to charge a 17 year-old with a felony for putting images critical of Obama on stop signs...

A Florida teenager could face felony vandalism charges for allegedly gluing posters depicting President Obama as the Joker onto public property.

Clermont, Fla., Police Capt. Eric Jensen said the state attorney will review evidence to determine whether to charge the unidentified teenager with gluing "dozens" of the posters last week to the city's light poles, public and private buildings, bridge overpasses, road signs and a mailbox.

Jensen said damage to city property exceeded $800, and it cost roughly $200 to remove the adhesive that was used to affix the poster to the mailbox.

"If he hadn't glued them, we wouldn't be having this discussion," Jensen said. "[The adhesive] didn't come off the road signs."

If convicted of felony vandalism, the teenager could face a maximum of five years in jail.

But Shepard Fairey can put his pro-Obama posters on stop signs, and Obama is appreciative..

"I would like to thank you for using your talent in support of my campaign. The political messages involved in your work have encouraged Americans to believe they can help change the status quo. Your images have a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign."

Messages. Images. Effect. Someone understands phenomenology. And the thing about stop signs? "He's kind of endorsing graffiti," Fairey says, "isn't he?"

Oh, and Shepard Fairey has already been arrested 14 times for outstanding warrants...

Obama's Kooky Conspiracy Theorist Czar

2009-08-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

It just keeps coming and coming about this guy.
John Holdren is advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST.

He is also an admitted neo-Malthusian.

If you are an oblivious Obamadrone, you might not remember that this guy wrote a book in the 70's that dealt with population control via forced abortion/forced birth control and others, as well as advocating blanketing the planet with chemtrails. Crazy stuff, right?

During a keynote address before a gathering of Goldman Sachs luminaries on ‘Energy, Environment and the Financial Markets’ in 2007, Holdren proposed several options to “combat climate change”.

The most remarkable of which include (page 43) “ “Scrub” greenhouse gases from the atmosphere technologically” and “ “Geo-engineering” to create cooling effects offsetting greenhouse heating.”

As we know, it is not the first time Holdren proposed spraying the atmosphere. The interesting thing regarding his PowerPoint presentation before the international bankers, is that it preceded his statements in favor of geo-engineering in 2009 and the subsequent outrage, which ultimately caused him to back-pedal on his proposals.

Despite the controversy, Holdren maintained at a MIT-seminar that the geo-engineering option should not be discarded. The elitist Counsel on Foreign Relations wholeheartedly agrees with him. In the course of 2008, the CFR held several workshops dedicated to ‘Planetary Scale Geoenigineering’ efforts after painting the environmental situation as being direr than the facts suggest.

Who Is Funding The Taliban? US, of course...

2009-08-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

The article by Jean MacKenzie originally appeared in GlobalPost. This is part of a special series by GlobalPost called Life, Death and The Taliban. Click here for a related article Funding the Pakistani Taliban.

KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.

Virtually every major project includes a cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, or as the Taliban call it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.

Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, former Taliban minister to Pakistan said “The Taliban does not have many expenses, they are barefoot and hungry, with no roof over their heads and a stone for their pillow.” “Afghanistan is full of guns,” he said. “We have enough guns for years.”

Up until quite recently, most experts thought that drug money accounted for the bulk of Taliban funding. But even here opinion was divided on actual amounts. Some reports gauged the total annual income at between $100 million and $300 million — still a small fraction of the $4 billion poppy industry.

Now administration officials have launched a search for Taliban sponsors. U.S. special envoy Holbrooke told a press conference in Islamabad last month that drugs accounted for less of a share of Taliban coffers than was previously thought.

“In the past there was a kind of feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” said Holbrooke, “That is simply not true.”

The new feeling is that less than half of the Taliban’s war chest comes from poppy.

The Sad Reality Of The Occupation Of Afghanistan

2009-08-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

Obama propped himself up in the beginning as the anti-war Democrat candidate and misled the American people that believed they were voting against everything that the Bush years were about.

Unable to keep the full deception going forever, Obama began campaigning that "there is no military solution in Iraq" and played down his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan once once he found his base.

Now...top government officials from the United States and other coalition members, such as Britain as well as other top NATO officers are admitting that the commitment Obama made in Afghanistan will be a long one.

The man who campaigned on being the anti-Bush will now carry out a longer and more expensive war than Bush himself.

Analysts Expect Long-Term, Costly U.S. Campaign in Afghanistan

Gates: Afghan Occupation to Take “A Few Years"

General Sir David Richards: Afghanistan will take 40 years

Gates: It's A "Mystery" How Long US Forces Will Be In Afghanistan

General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, has said British forces could remain committed to operations in Afghanistan for another five years.

NATO general sees long fight in Afghanistan.

Big Giveaways In White House Deal With PhRMA

2009-08-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html

A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government's leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada -- and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: "Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion."

New Afghan Law Allows Men to Starve Wives If They Refuse Sex

2009-08-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/17/headlines#6

In other news from Afghanistan, a new law has gone into effect that allows a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex.

The law also prohibits women from working without their husband’s permission.

Critics of the bill have accused President Karzai of selling out Afghan women for the sake of support from conservative Shiites in this week’s election.

The bill also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and it effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying “blood money” to a girl who was injured when he raped her.

I'm so glad Obama is spending so much money and making such a huge, long-term commitment in Afghanistan and protecting all of our freedoms back here at home.

These heathens need to be dominated and taught civility, no matter what the cost!

Go Obama!

Obama Pathetically Defends The Indefensible.

2009-08-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/18/headlines#4

Obama Defends Escalation of War in Afghanistan

On Monday, President Barack Obama defended his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, saying it was "a war worth fighting.” Obama spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Phoenix.

President Obama: “As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight, and we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick nor easy. But we must never forget, this is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again.

If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

The Taliban are plotting another attack?
Obama got the memo "Taliban Determined To Strike In US From Their Caves And Villages 8,000 Miles Away" ?

And then, if you follow the link, the story right below it is priceless!

Seriously, Obamadrones...how much more proof do you need before you realize that this guy is nothing more than a scam artist?

It might not be HIS scam, but he's the titular figurehead right now.

Poll: Health Care Town Hall Protests Are Acceptable

2009-08-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

Not only is it good that the protesters are being vindicated, but that the vindication only serves as an example to the discredit of the mainstream media which tows the government line.

http://people-press.org/reports/questionnaires/535.pdf
(Page 13, the last page)

ASK IF Q.5c=1,2 [N=846]:
Q.6 From what you’ve seen and heard, do you think the way people are protesting at town hall meetings over health care reform is appropriate or inappropriate?

61 Appropriate
34 Inappropriate
5 Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)

Netanyahu Major Force Behind 'Birthers'

2009-08-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

Netanyahu behind Obama birth rumors: Report

The Israeli government has allegedly used its influence in American politics to strengthen the rumors about US President Barack Obama's birthplace.

On Monday, well-known investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's entrenched alliance with the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), various neoconservative groups and fundamentalist Christian organizations had made it "very easy for him to bring this whole canard back" about allegations that Obama has been born in Kenya rather than the United States.

"And it looks like he has done that as a way to put political pressure and try to tip Obama off his high favorability ratings at the present time," he added.

The Constitution bars people born outside the US from running for president. Obama's birthplace has been verified as Hawaii by the island state's Health Department and the president has presented his birth certificate online.

The claimants to the contrary, called 'birthers', are lead by California attorney Orly Taitz who has filed in the federal court Kenyan papers, which certify that Obama is Kenyan-born.

The Washington-based journalist said that "just after this fake birth certificate came out, she [Taitz] pops up in Tel Aviv two days later."

"She is originally from Moldova, very closely tied to Likud, Netanyahu and also Foreign Minister (Avigdor Lieberman) who is also a native of Moldova," he told Russia Today.

Asked about the Israeli motive for the move, the Washington-based journalist said "The Netanyahu government is very upset with Obama over the Obama administration's insistence that there be a freeze on settlements including in East Jerusalem [al-Quds]. So that couples with the reticence of the Obama administration to take any military action against Iran, which Netanyahu's government favors, has brought this old story back to life."

Robert Rubin at the center of a Ponzi scheme three times the size of Madoff's.

2009-07-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

Rubin's son Jamie was Obama's main Wall Street fundraiser and is now one of his principal advisers. Obama's economic team consists of Rubin's proteges including Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, Senior Economic Adviser and Peter Orszag, Budget Director.

The media doesn't want people to realize that the candidate of "Change" chose the people responsible for this calamity to be his "economic team." While in the Clinton White House, Rubin and Summers helped tear down the regulatory walls between banks, brokerages and insurance companies and freed them to trade in unregulated and little-understood derivatives worth trillions of dollars.

A new Citigroup scandal is engulfing Robert Rubin and his former disciple Chuck Prince for their roles in an alleged Ponzi-style scheme that's now choking world banking.

Director Rubin and ousted CEO Prince - and their lieutenants over the past five years - are named in a federal lawsuit for an alleged complex cover-up of toxic securities that spread across the globe, wiping out trillions of dollars in their destructive paths.

Investor-plaintiffs in the suit accuse Citi management of overseeing the repackaging of unmarketable collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that no one wanted - and then reselling them to Citi and hiding the poisonous exposure off the books in shell entities.

The lawsuit said that when the bottom fell out of the shaky assets in the past year, Citi's stock collapsed, wiping out more than $122 billion of shareholder value.

However, Rubin and other top insiders were able to keep Citi shares afloat until they could cash out more than $150 million for themselves in "suspicious" stock sales "calculated to maximize the personal benefits from undisclosed inside information," the lawsuit said.

The suit called the actions of Citi leaders "a quasi-Ponzi scheme" to hide troubles - and keep Citi stock afloat while insiders unloaded about 3 million shares between Jan. 1, 2004 and Feb. 22, 2008 for huge profits.

Rubin cleared $30.6 million on his stock sales, while Prince got $26.5 million, former COO Robert Druskin got nearly $32 million and former Global Wealth Management unit chief Todd Thomson got $25.7 million, the suit said

The Banker Takeover (A Bloodless Coup)

2009-07-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

Federal Reserve guarantees for the financial crisis.

$7.7 Trillion in November of 08

$8.5 Trillion in December of 08

$12.8 Trillion in March of 09

$23.7 Trillion in July of 09 ( "potentially" )

Obama Shuts Down 9/11 Families Lawsuit

2009-07-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration has effectively ended the efforts of families of victims of the September 11th attacks to bring lawsuits against members of the Saudi Royal family for financial links to the conspiracy.

The Supreme Court today ruled that it will not allow any lawsuits to go ahead, just a few weeks after the government filed a court brief asking that the case be quashed.

The court, in an order Monday, is leaving in place the ruling of a federal appeals court that the country and the princes are protected by sovereign immunity, which generally means that foreign countries can't be sued in American courts, reports the Associated Press.

In late May, the Justice Department had sided in court with the Saudi monarchy in seeking to halt further legal action to hold it liable for the attacks.

The move came less than a week before Obama was scheduled to meet Saudi King Abdullah as part of his "rebuilding" trip to the Middle East.

More than 6000 family members denounced the move as an "apparent effort to appease a sometime ally" in a public statement.

The lawsuits claimed that Saudi Arabia and four of its princes actively aided in financing the plot through front groups posing as charities.

Last week, the New York Times ran a report highlighting how documents uncovered by lawyers for the 9/11 families “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.”

The documents consist of “several hundred thousand pages of investigative material” assembled by the 9/11 families, according to the report. The families also point to a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint congressional inquiry into 9/11 that deals with the Saudi role in the attacks.

Senator Bob Graham, who sat on the 9/11 Commission, has also charged that Saudi involvement in the attacks has been covered up.

Court Won't Hear Sept. 11 Claims vs. Saudi Arabia

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062901630.html

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has refused to allow victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue lawsuits against Saudi Arabia and four of its princes over charitable donations that were allegedly funneled to al-Qaida.

The court, in an order Monday, is leaving in place the ruling of a federal appeals court that the country and the princes are protected by sovereign immunity, which generally means that foreign countries can't be sued in American courts.

The Obama administration had angered some victims and families by urging the justices to pass up the case.

In their appeal, the more than 6,000 plaintiffs said the government's court brief filed in early June was an "apparent effort to appease a sometime ally" just before President Barack Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia.

At issue were obstacles in American law to suing foreign governments and their officials as well as the extent to which people can be held financially responsible for acts of terrorism committed by others.

The appeal was filed by relatives of victims killed in the attacks and thousands of people who were injured, as well as businesses and governments that sustained property damage and other losses.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York previously upheld a federal judge's ruling throwing out the lawsuits. The appeals court said the defendants were protected by sovereign immunity and the plaintiffs would need to prove that the princes engaged in intentional actions aimed at U.S. residents.

In their appeal to the high court, both sides cited the report of the Sept. 11 Commission. The victims noted that the report said Saudi Arabia had long been considered the primary source of al-Qaida funding. The Saudis' court filing, however, pointed out that the commission "found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization."

The victims' lawsuits claim that the defendants gave money to charities in order to funnel it to terrorist organizations that were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The appeal also stressed that federal appeals courts have reached conflicting decisions about when foreign governments and their officials can be sued.

The case is Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 08-640.

Justice Dept. Backs Saudi Royal Family on 9/11 Lawsuit

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30families.html?_r=1

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Justice Department, in a brief filed Friday before the Supreme Court, said it did not believe the Saudis could be sued in American court over accusations brought by families of the Sept. 11 victims that the royal family had helped finance Al Qaeda.

The department said it saw no need for the court to review lower court rulings that found in the Saudis’ favor in throwing out the lawsuit.

Lawyers for the Saudi family said that they were heartened by the department’s brief and that it served to strengthen their hand before the court, which has not decided whether to hear the case.

But family members of several Sept. 11 victims said they were deeply disappointed and questioned whether the decision was made to appease an important ally in the Middle East. The Saudis have aggressively lobbied both the Bush and Obama administrations to have the lawsuit dismissed, government officials say.

“I find this reprehensible,” said Kristen Breitweiser, a leader of the Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration, and you wonder what message this sends to victims of terrorism around the world.”

Bill Doyle, another leader of the Sept. 11 families whose son was killed in the attacks, said, “All we want is our day in court.”

The lawsuit, brought by a number of insurance companies for the victims and their families, accuses members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia of providing financial backing to Al Qaeda — either directly to Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, or indirectly through donations to charitable organizations that they knew were in turn diverting money to Al Qaeda.

A district court threw out the lawsuit, finding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act provided legal protection from liability for Saudi Arabia and the members of the royal family for their official acts.

Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.html?_r=1

WASHINGTON — Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.

But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.

Only a fraction of the documents have been entered into the court record, and much of the new material is unknown even to the Saudi lawyers in the case.

Sen. Graham: Bush covered up Saudi involvement in 9/11

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/08/graham/index.html

As the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the run-up to the Iraq war, Sen. Bob Graham tried to expose what he came to believe were national security coverups and manipulations by the Bush administration. But he discovered that it was hard to reveal a coverup playing by the rules. Much of the evidence the Florida Democrat needed to buttress his arguments was being locked away, he found, under the veil of politically motivated classification.

Now, as he prepares to retire after 18 years in the Senate, the normally cautious former governor of Florida is unleashing himself in a new book, "Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia and the Failure of America's War on Terror."

In his book, Graham asserts that the White House blocked investigations into Saudi Arabian government support for the 9/11 plot, in part because of the Bush family's close ties to the Saudi royal family and wealthy Saudis like the bin Ladens. Behind the White House's insistence on classifying 27 pages detailing the Saudi links in a report issued by a joint House-Senate intelligence panel co-chaired by Graham in 2002 lay the desire to hide the administration's deficiencies and protect its Saudi allies, according to Graham.

Graham's allegations -- supported by the Republican vice chairman of the House-Senate 9/11 investigation, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, but not his co-chairman, Rep. Porter Goss, Bush's nominee to become director of the CIA -- are not new. But his book states them more forcefully than before, even as Graham adds new insight into Bush's decision to invade Iraq, made apparently well before the president asserted he had exhausted all options.

In February 2002, Graham writes, Gen. Tommy Franks, then conducting the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan (and later to speak in prime time on behalf of Bush's candidacy at the Republican National Convention in New York), pulled the senator aside to explain that important resources in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, such as Predator drones, were being quietly redeployed to Iraq. "He told me that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been made at least 14 months before we actually went into Iraq, long before there was authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a resolution of support," Graham tells Salon.

Graham voted against the congressional war resolution authorizing force to topple Saddam Hussein. In 2003 he briefly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, arguing that Bush had diverted resources from the hunt for America's real enemies with his joy ride in Iraq.

The Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax

2009-07-15T16:47:00.001-07:00

Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernemntal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This 231-page U.S. Senate Minority Report report -- updated from 2007’s groundbreaking report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” -- features the skeptical voices of over 650 prominent international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC.

Below is just a small selection of quotes and highlights from the updated 2008 Senate Minority Report featuring over 650 international scientists dissenting from man-made climate fears.

The 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

Note how many of these scientists have peer reviewed and published studies, are former IPCC members, are long term government scientists, there are even a couple of astronauts with scientific backgrounds.

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.”
- Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical. “The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system”
- Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.”
- UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,”
- Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet

“So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.”
- Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member.

“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.”
- Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.”
- U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.”
– Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.”
- Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round…A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact,”
- Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.

“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.”
– Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?"
- Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.”
- Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil... I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.”
- South Afican Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications.

“All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead”
- Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, served as staff physicist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.”
- Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“Whatever the weather, it's not being caused by global warming. If anything, the climate may be starting into a cooling period.”
- Atmospheric scientist Dr. Art V. Douglas, former Chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and is the author of numerous papers for peer-reviewed publications.

“But there is no falsifiable scientific basis whatever to assert this warming is caused by human-produced greenhouse gasses because current physical theory is too grossly inadequate to establish any cause at all.”
- Chemist Dr. Patrick Frank, who has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles.

“The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities.”
- Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt who flew on the Apollo 17 mission and formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey and for the U.S. Geological Survey.

“Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the UN-IPCC….The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium…which is why ‘global warming’ is now called ‘climate change.’”
- Climatologist Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado.

“I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, yet alone man-made CO2 driving it. The atmospheric hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?”
- Dr. G LeBlanc Smith, a retired Principal Research Scientist with Australia’s Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

An Independents Look at the Global Warming Issue

Dr. Leonard Weinstein worked 45 years at the NASA Langley Research Center, finishing his career there as a Senior Research Scientist. Dr. Weinstein is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace.

He is now a critic of the anthropogenic theory of global warming. His analysis shows that man has contributed less than 0.30C of warming and by the year 2100 may contribute less than 0.40C additional warming. This is much less than what the United Nations IPCC has predicted and of course a small fraction of what alarmists such as Al Gore and James Hansen have predicted.

Below is a summary of Dr. Weinstein's work, we highly recommend you follow the links to read the complete papers. His work is compelling and is yet one more example of a prominent scientist that disagrees with the anthropogenic theory of global warming.
“Preparing for the possibility of an impending ice age along with the possible consequences of a reduction in Earth’s magnetic field are real concerns. Concern with relatively small effects of possible anthropogenic caused global warming is a misplaced distraction, and will probably lead to the public losing confidence in scientists, and could weaken the support needed when real problems occur.”

“Decreasing availability of oil and anthropogenic pollution (not greenhouse gasses) are real issues. Acid rain, smog, and dirty water sources do need to be fixed. The problems associated with high fuel prices, and dependence on sources of energy from possibly less than friendly foreign countries are critical. While we can’t solve the problems with a single magic bullet, more nuclear power plants, along with wind and Solar power, could fill much of the gap. There are solutions, but first we have to identify the correct problems.”

Disproving Anthropogenic Global Warming

It is not obvious what the ideal temperature and CO2 level should be for mankind. We assume that the average of whatever has occurred in the recent past is the ideal level, since we have adjusted to that level, and changes from that level can cause disruptions in living conditions and activities. There is no argument that there have been significant temperature and CO2 (and Methane) increases in recent years. The issue is whether these were possibly related and were due to human activity, and whether this is a potentially significant problem.

It is clear that we get excited at anything different that happens in a time period that spans a large fraction of a lifetime, even if it is not unusual compared to time periods more distant in the past. In order to examine the AGW claims, temperature data covering the last several thousand years was examined for widely separated ice core and ocean sediment core sources.

Conclusions from these curves are that the temperature goes up and down 1.50C to 20C about every thousand years. The present increase is not higher than several other times in the period examined, and the speed of change is typical. Curves can be seen here.

While we clearly have recently experienced a period of warming, the last several years have actually been dropping! There is no indication that the period of warming was unusual based on comparison over a reasonable time scale!

If the present were unusual, then all previous times of rapid change and high levels would also have to be unusual, and where is the anthropogenic causes for those times?

In order to prove a theory, specific predictions need to be made that are based on the claims of the theory, and the predictions then need to happen. While the occurrence of the predicted events is not proof positive of a theory, they increase the believability of the claims.

However, if the predictions are not observed, this tends to indicate the theory is flawed or even wrong. Some predictions and conclusions are shown. .

It has become quite clear to the author that the AGW theory is flawed. Human produced greenhouse gases almost certainly have affected the global temperature somewhat, but the evidence clearly shows that contribution is small compared to natural causes, and not a problem.

Sources

* Limitations on AGW - by Dr. Weinstein

* Disproving AGW - by Dr. Weinstein

* Comments from AGW skeptics

* Fire in Australia

* No significant sea level rise

* Antarctic temperature over 200 years

* Greenland temperature

* Drop in Canadian winter temp

Final Points

Disproving AGW

AGW limitations

Decreasing availability of oil and anthropogenic pollution (not greenhouse gasses) are real issues. Acid rain, smog, and dirty water sources do need to be fixed. While we can’t solve the problems with a single magic bullet, more nuclear power plants, along with wind and Solar power, could fill much of the gap. There are solutions, but first we have to identify the correct problems.We know from many records that significant changes in temperature and climate have frequently occurred through historical as well as Geological time periods, and often result in significant consequences.

Previous interglacial periods tended to last 10,000 to 20,000 years, and in fact most did not have temperatures as slow changing as the present one. Since the present interglacial started about 18,000 years age, and reached the plateau about 11,000 years ago, we probably should be more concerned with a possible impending major ice age than a fraction of a degree or so of warming. In fact, the best possible outcome would be that the (relatively modest) contribution from AGW might help delay the onset of a new ice age.

The magnetic field of the Earth has changed a lot over geological times. There were periods of weakening and then reversal occurring about every 200,000 years until about 780,000 years ago. At the present time, the field is again weakening. If the field weakens too much, the Earth’s magnetosphere would not block cosmic rays and Solar ions as well, and this could greatly affect cloud structure and thus weather. The Solar radiation and magnetic storms could also profoundly affect power transmission and electronics.

Preparing for the possibility of an impending ice age along with the possible consequences of a reduction in Earth’s magnetic field are real concerns. Concern with relatively small effects of possible anthropogenic caused global warming is a misplaced distraction, and will probably lead to the public losing confidence in scientists, and could weaken the support needed when real problems occur.

ECOSCIENCE: Population, Resources, Environment

2009-07-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

John P. Holdren is Assistant to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology,
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Holdren co-authored a eugenics text book in 1977.

Excerpt pages have been scanned and are here