11.06.2009

Narrative 1: The Shooting at Fort Hood

WHAT IS THE NARRATIVE?

Developing by the minute -- the shooter will have all the qualities that you are supposed to hate and direct all your anger at, so pay attention to what they say about him. Note that he is unmarried and lives alone. MIND CONTROL?

1. more than one person involved, this will have to be IGNORED unless it can be twisted into implicating Muslim terrorists, in which case you will never hear the end of it

'Three people are involved. That, by definition, means it is a conspiracy.'

The alleged shooter received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001 and is a graduate of Virginia Tech. Early on Thursday, he showed no signs of worry or stress when he stopped at 7-Eleven for his daily breakfast of hash browns, said Jeannie Strickland, the store's manager. "He came in (Thursday) morning just like normal," she said, "nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary." [This is looking more and more psyops-ish by the second. --LRP]

  • White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said earlier that officials were monitoring the incident in the Situation Room. The Department of Homeland Security said it was in the process of obtaining information.
  • Alleged shooter is alive, in stable condition --General Bob Cone:
  • Terror attack 'not ruled out'
  • The alleged shooter graduated from Virginia Tech --His cousin, Nader Hasan, actually laughed in an interview when asked if alleged shooter, Nadal Hasan, was 'violent.' He never went to Iraq.
  • Attack appears to have been carried out by multiple shooters. Two suspects are no longer in custody, but a third person has been picked up for questioned.
  • Sources say Army shooting suspect was due to be deployed to Iraq
  • 42 people shot by Army psychiatrist, promoted to Army Major in May. 12 killed; 30 wounded --US Official: Shooter was Major Malik Nadal Hasan
  • 'The individuals arrested are all US soldiers.'
read more @ citizens for legitimate government




2. death toll hits 13

KILLEEN, Texas (Reuters) - The death toll from an Army psychiatrist who opened fire at the Fort Hood Army post rose to 13 on Friday, and Army officials said the suspected shooter was hospitalized and on a ventilator.

Suspected gunman Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post on Thursday, in one of the worst killing sprees ever reported on a U.S. military base, army officials said.

A woman died overnight from gunshot wounds, raising the toll to 13 dead and 30 wounded, said Colonel John Rossi, a deputy commanding general at Fort Hood, speaking with reporters. Of those killed, one was a civilian and 12 were soldiers, Rossi said.

read more @ reuters


3. is the date significant?

Today’s tragic shooting and killing at Fort Hood army base in Texas, which has claimed the lives of at least 12 people, occurred on November 5. According to ABC the suspected gunman in Fort Hood is a convert to Islam by the name Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

Today’s date is the same as the date of the Guy Fawkes plot of 1605, when a Catholic dissident who had been previously served as a soldier tried to blow up the English Parliament in order to kill the Protestants inside. Guy Fawkes is a favorite among anarchists. (He was celebrated in the comic and film V for Vendetta). {source True/Slant}


The gun battle was apparently swift. Cone said the shooter used two handguns. It was unclear, the general said, whether he had a chance to reload before he was hit by return fire.
12 killed, 30 wounded.....42 hits by one shooter?


read more @ kenny's sideshow



4. suspect still alive, amazing, kind of like that guy that survived the tear gas on his car?

HOUSTON, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- A military psychiatrist, who opened fire at the U.S. Fort Hood Army base Thursday, killing 12 people and wounding another 31, was still alive, Army officials said.

Authorities said after the shooting spree that they had killed the suspected shooter, identified as 39-year-old military mental health doctor Nidal Malikl Hasan, but said later in the evening that he was alive and in stable condition in a hospital.

"His death is not imminent," said Lt. Gen. Bob Cone at Fort Hood, who offered little explanation for the mistake but said there was confusion at the hospital.


read more @ chinaview


5. OK HERE WE GO: rampage search leads to Extremist Websites. ENTER the PERTINENT IDEAS: MUSLIM, INTERNET, TERRORIST, ANTI-WAR...

A US officer who killed 13 soldiers in a gun rampage at a Texas army base was being investigated for links to extremist websites, security sources said today.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout American-born Muslim, was on life support after being shot several times by guards at the Fort Hood base.

...

Retired Colonel Terry Lee, who worked with Hasan, claimed the major was anti-war and argued with comrades who supported operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hasan, a 39-year-old from Virginia, was also due to be sent to Afghanistan, something family members said would have been his "worst nightmare".

Defence sources said at least six months ago Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats.

They included posts which compared suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

Investigators were not certain whether Hasan had written the posts and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said the sources.


OH I'm sure they will figure it all out now hmm? read more @ independent


6. FULL BLOWN NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT -- OPEN WIDE FOR CHUNKY!

Fort Hood shootings: Muslim major Nidal Malik Hasan who shot dead 13 at Texas army base faced FBI probe into his support for suicide bombers

The army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people in a murderous rampage at America's biggest military base was facing an FBI investigation for expressing sympathy with suicide bombers.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, had allegedly posted a series of comments on a website which drew parallels between terrorists and a US soldier who sacrificed himself to save his comrades.

Investigators were tipped off six months ago by the devout Muslim's worried colleagues.

His behaviour was particularly alarming as he was responsible for the psychological well-being of many vulnerable soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

...

  • Single with no children. He was born in America but gave his nationality as Palestinian [naturally, a PALESTINIAN!! what could be better? - ed.]
  • A devout Muslim who had frequent arguments with military colleagues who supported the war on terror [combative, argumentative, unreasonable, maybe a little off balance hmm?!! - ed.]
  • Desperate to avoid deployment to Iraq at the end of the year. He claimed to have been harassed by colleagues for his religious beliefs [paranoid too! - ed.]
  • Had been educated at Virginia Tech, where 32 people were killed by student Seung-Hui Cho in 2007 [ooh, yeah, remember that? that guy was fucking crazy too! but other than that, who gives a fuck? aren't thousands and thousands of people educated there? hey the whole point is for you to remember the other guy. - ed.]


Aha the VTech could be a more important clue -- allegedly a top DoD psyops training center. - ed.


etc. read more of what you are supposed to believe at Daily Mail


7. The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking For Yourself

Those who assume (often unconsciously) that it is impossible to achieve their life's desires-and, thus, that it is futile to fight for themselves--usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead. They may appear to engage in self-directed activity, but in reality they have accepted alienation from their desires as a way of life. All subjugations of personal desires to the dictates of a cause or ideology are reactionary no matter how "revolutionary" the actions arising from such subjugations may appear.

Yet, one of the great secrets of our miserable, yet potentially marvelous time, is that thinking can be a pleasure. Despite the suffocating effect of the dominant religious and political ideologies, many individuals do learn to think for themselves; and by doing so--by actively, critically thinking for themselves, rather than by passively accepting pre-digested opinions--they reclaim their minds as their own.

This is a manual for those who wish to think for themselves, a manual for creation of a personally (rather than ideologically) constructed body of critical thought for your own use, a body of thought which will help you to understand why your life is the way it is and why the world is the way it is. More importantly, as you construct your own theory, you will also develop a practice: a method to get what you want for your own life. Theory, then, must be either practical--a guide to action--or it will be nothing, nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of ideas divorced from actions is the eternal waiting room of unrealized desires. Forming your own practical theory, what could be called "self-theory," is intimately connected to achieving the realization of your desires.

Therefore, constructing your self-theory is a revolutionary pleasure. It is both a destructive and constructive pleasure, because you are creating a practical theory--one tied to action--for the destruction and reconstruction of this society. It is a theory of adventure, because it is based on what you want from life and on devising the means necessary to achieve it. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.


read more here

Narrative 2: Middle East War

WHAT IS THE NARRATIVE?

Pay no attention to the Goldstone report!! LOOK what the IOF has found!!! PLEASE DO NOT LOOK FOR EVIDENCE!! These things just "appear" to be "likely" to be whatever Israel wants you to think, and you can trust the IOF to give you the scoop because the Israelis are "experts" ON MIND-FUCKING AND FALSE FLAGS.


1. IOF commandos boarding another false flag?

Peter Chamberlin commentary:

[Like "manna from heaven," the IDF "finds" hundreds of tons of weapons, some of them Iranian, bound for Syria and possibly then on to Lebanon, flying under an ANTIGUAN flag. It is probably no coincidence that Antigua has been a Mossad base of operations for notorious arms and cocaine smuggling, implicating Israeli arms dealer Yar Klein there in the past, for shipping weapons to the Columbian Medellin cocaine cartel. Coincidence? Not Likely.]


Shipped from Iran, but arms came from all over the world, IMPLICATING EVERYBODY ??

The weaponry that was discovered aboard the Francop cargo vessel on its way from Iran to Syria and then to Hizbullah was of a wide variety and mix, including fragmentation grenades, artillery and tank shells, Kalashnikov bullets, and mortars.

The crates with the weapons came with writing in different languages, including Chinese, Russian, Spanish and of course English. An initial review of the cache appeared to indicate, senior IDF officers said, that the weaponry originated possibly in different countries before it was purchased by Iran.

By Wednesday afternoon, representatives from Military Intelligence’s Technological Division had assembled at the Ashdod Port to begin sifting through the weaponry together with soldiers from the Engineering Corps elite unit Yahalom – who are experts in handling explosives – to try and determine the exact origin and make.

The officers also raised the possibility that the weaponry was mostly manufactured in Iran but came in boxes with different languages since Iran also sells armaments to other countries.

The 122 mm. Katyusha rockets appeared to have been manufactured in Russia since they were covered in Russian writing. Some of the Kalashnikov bullets likely came from China. Others were in boxes from the “Ministry of Sepah,” which is the main body in charge of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.


read more @ there are no sunglasses


2. Israel up in arms over weapons seizure ---- HIGH DRAMA, FULL UMBRAGE, EVERYBODY PLEASE LOOK AT US LOOK LOOK LOOK !!!!

DAMASCUS - Ambassadors and diplomats from 44 countries, along with military attaches from 27 nations, were taken to a base in central Israel on Thursday evening to see for themselves the weapons and ammunition seized from the ship Francop in international waters off Cyprus on Wednesday.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, complained to the UN on Thursday after Israeli commandos seized the Francop, carrying tonnes of what are said to be Iranian-supplied arms, including rockets and anti-tank weapons, destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Clearly, Israel is not going to let this matter lie, and if history is any guide, it could be used as a pretext for waging another war onHezbollah, or even a strike against Iran.

Israeli Commodore Ran Ben-Yehuda said the weapons on the Antigua-flagged Francop were found behind civilian cargo in at least 40 containers and were enough to keep Hezbollah supplied for a month of fighting. They were said to be bound from Iran to Syria, via Egypt.

The Israeli press has trumpeted the event, saying it signaled a victory against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. Speaking from Tehran, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem said that the ship "was not carrying Iranian weapons to Syria, only cargo, nothing more". His words were firmly echoed by Hezbollah and his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki.

read more @ asia times


3. video quickly prepared for release, rather professionally done hmm? LOOK LOOK LOOK





4. We. Are. Not. Going. To. Discuss. The. GOLDSTONE. Report. Period. DO NOT LOOK HERE!

The United States on Wednesday evening decided not to speak at the United Nations General Assembly discussion on the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza.

While dozens of countries sent their delegates to speak at the GA, the Americans openly shunned it. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice did not even attend the discussion. Her deputy, Alejandro Wolff, entered the auditorium to listen to the addresses of the European Union representative and Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, and was later seen leaving the place.

In recent weeks, the Obama administration has been expressing its objection to the Human Rights Council's decision to have the General Assembly in New York discuss the report. The Americans expressed their anger at the Arab states' move, along with the non-aligned countries, to separate the discussion on the Goldstone Report from the annual meeting on the situation of human rights.

On Tuesday night, the US House of Representatives rejected the Goldstone Report's conclusions with an overwhelming majority, calling the report "biased".


read more @ al manar tv


5. from the other flank: do Saudi air strikes on Yemen equal war on Iran? NO WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS DOESN'T SOUND TOO IMPORTANT...Yemen...where's that?.....whatever.

SAN’A, Yemen – Saudi Arabia sent fighter jets and artillery bombardments across the border into northern Yemen Thursday in a military incursion apparently aimed at helping its troubled southern neighbor control an escalating Shiite rebellion, Arab diplomats and the rebels said.

The Saudis — owners of a sophisticated air force they rarely use — have been increasingly worried that extremism and instability in Yemen could spill over to their country, the world’s largest oil exporter. The offensive came two days after the killing of a Saudi soldier, blamed on the rebels.

Yemen denied any military action by Saudi Arabia inside its borders. But Yemen’s president is a key ally of the Saudis, making it highly unlikely the kingdom would have launched the offensive without tacit Yemeni agreement.


read more @ there are no sunglasses

Narrative 3: Ukraine

WHAT IS THE NARRATIVE?

Confusion. Somewhat of a news blackout. This event is happening far away and being over-shadowed by the military shooting in the US and the weapons seizure by Israel.

I would conclude they do not want people paying too much attention here -- just enough to scare people into getting their shots.

This bears very close scrutiny.



1. many affected in Ukraine






2. two illnesses running in parallel??

Ukrainian News Agency "Fraza" reported that, according to informed sources, "it has been confirmed 100 % Pneumonic Plague in Ukraine". The Agency asserts that "the head physician of the medical institutions has sent out an informal disposal - not to sow panic, to refute the information about the plague, and to speak only of swine influenza".

It is also required to distribute masks at health facilities with 8 levels of protection and anti-plague protection costumes. There is also an informal order not to allow any visitors to see the patients.

According to the "Fraza" agency, "today in Ukraine pneumonic plague is going in parallel with swine flu. The plague has killed over 60 people, and about 14 from the flu.

Meanwhile, the press service of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine reported that there is only one death from "California" virus A/N1N1 in Ukraine.


read more @ kavkazcenter.com

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2009/11/02/11155.shtml



3. Russia's health minister warns media about spreading flu panic

MOSCOW, November 6 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's health minister warned the media against spreading panic over a swine and seasonal flu outbreak and said the situation was under control.

Tatyana Golikova said in an interview published by the Rossiiskaya Gazeta government daily on Friday that the amount of people suffering from flu and respiratory illness in the country was not so far exceeding figures for the past two years.

"The data we have been receiving shows that the A/H1N1 virus mortality has not exceeded seasonal flu mortality rates. Medics have been taking extensive preventive measures," Golikova told the paper.

Despite this, shop assistants and pedestrians wearing medical face-masks have become a common sight in Moscow and other Russian cities.


read more @ ria novosti



4. many additional links at Lord Stirling's site: Europe



11.05.2009

if asia ruled the world...oh wait they do!

1. how eurocentric is your day?

At the outset of the classes I teach, I always address the question of bias in the social sciences. In one course - on the history of the global economy - this is the central theme. It critiques Eurocentric biases in several leading Western accounts of the rise of the global economy.

This autumn, I began my first lecture on Eurocentrism by asking my students, “How Eurocentric is your day?” I explained what I wanted to hear from them. Can they get through a typical day without running into ideas, institutions, values, technologies and products that originated outside the West - in China, India, the Islamicate or Africa?

The question befuddled my students. I proceeded to pepper them with questions about the things they do during a typical day, from the time they wake up.

read more @ asia times


2. China's sleepy Hengqin wakes up

HONG KONG - As central planners dream of further integrating the former Western-run territories of Hong Kong and Macau into China's rich Pearl River Delta region, relatively sleepy Hengqin island has been given a big wake-up call.

The largely undeveloped island, until now a piece of Guangdong province under the jurisdiction of the city of Zhuhai, bordering Macau, is slated for a major makeover as a resort paradise, featuring golf courses, theme parks, water sports, hiking trails and other tourist attractions.

...Official projections show Hengqin's current population of 4,000 growing to 200,000 by 2020 and per capita gross domestic product, now the equivalent of about US$1,200, increasing to more than $29,000 by that time.

Those are the kinds of figures that make potential investors interested, and 200 of them gathered last week at Hong Kong's Island Shangri-La Hotel to listen to Chinese officials wax strong about their vision of another kind of Shangri-la that they hope to build on Hengqin.

The ambitious plan for the island, outlined in official communiques last summer, was laid out in greater detail for the well-heeled audience in Hong Kong. The fact that a high-ranking official for the National Development and Reform Commission, Fan Hengshan, was on hand to make his own personal pitch for the project lent it additional weight.

read more @ asia times


3. Chinese president hails China-Africa ties in message to re-launched magazine

BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao has hailed China-Africa ties in a recent message to congratulate the re-launch of the ChinAfrica, a Beijing-based monthly magazine. "The Chinese people cherish the traditional friendship with the African people and always see them as all-weather friends who can be fully trusted and counted on," he said.

"The Chinese people will forever be good brothers and good partners of the African people," he said.

Hu said he hopes that the ChinAfrica will contribute to the enhancement of the traditional friendship, exchanges, unity, coordination and common development between China and Africa and to the promotion of the new type of strategic partnership between the two sides.

The ChinAfrica was first publication in 1988 with both English and French editions. Its paper version was suspended in 2001. The new English monthly magazine was re-launched last month.

The very issue of the magazine was also made as a special one marking the fourth ministerial meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) to be held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh from Nov. 8 to 9.

source: chinaview


4. Bangkok voted #1 most attractive city in Asia

BANGKOK, Nov 4 (TNA) - Foreign tourists voted Bangkok the most attractive city to visit among 10 of 11 member cities of the Asian Network of Major Cities 21 (ANMC 21).

Following a Bangkok University ‘Bangkok Poll’ ranking 10 cities, minus Myanmar’s Yangon, whose representatives joined the eighth meeting of ANMC 21 recently in Bangkok, the Thai capital was voted the most attractive city to visit by foreign travellers by receiving a score of 7.19 out of 10.

read more here

& analysis here


5. opinion - stop the Bol's hurtful plans right now


As if our commons have not been destroyed enough by the local money barons, the government is planning to invite foreign investors to bleed dry our seas, forests and biodiversity resources.

This is sheer madness.

At a time when Thailand cannot escape erratic weather patterns and natural disaster threats from global warming, our nation's priorities are pretty clear. We must preserve what little is left of our healthy environment. At the same time, we must nurture the degraded natural environment back to health to ensure that the majority have enough to eat.

...If the Board of Investment of Thailand (BoI) and the Department of Trade Negotiations have their way, Thailand will lift investment restrictions in forestry, aqua culture and plant breeding for Asean investors, offering them also special BoI privileges and protection.

In short, the scarce resources that are the basis of the country's food security in a time of climate change crisis will be up for grabs - thanks to our policy obsession with foreign investment.

read more @ bangkok post


6. life is cheap in Bangladesh

excerpt:

It is a “national tradition” in Bangladesh that the laws favor those in power, not the ordinary people. This has often caused frustration among the people, who then demonstrate to express their demands, regardless of their legitimacy or logic.

The outraged workers of the closed garment factory demonstrated on the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway. When factory authorities failed to meet the workers or respond to their demands, they got impatient and began vandalizing vehicles.

The government sent riot police to control the situation. The police suddenly started firing indiscriminately at the demonstrators, killing at least three people – a rickshaw-puller who had gone to rescue his garment-worker wife, a pedestrian and a mason. Many others were wounded by police bullets.

The media claimed there were even more deaths, and accused the police of a cover-up to suppress the truth. But Home Minister Sahara Khatun denied that anyone was killed by police gunfire. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina seems to have ended the issue simply by declaring that none would be spared if found guilty.

read more @ upi asia

deals being cut all over the place

1. US puts its faith in Pakistan's military - a recipe for failure as surely intended

ISLAMABAD - Abdullah Abdullah, who this week withdrew from the presidential election runoff in Afghanistan, thereby handing victory to the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, did so under pressure from the United States, Asia Times Online has learned.

In exchange for the pullout of the non-Pashtun Abdullah, Pakistan's military has agreed to actively mediate between Washington and the Taliban over a reconciliation plan that will allow the US to exit from Afghanistan, as it is doing in Iraq, with a semblance of success.

A senior Pakistani diplomat involved in backchannel negotiations on Pakistan, Afghanistan and US relations told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity that the deal over Abdullah, whom Islamabad considers to be pro-India, was made during the three-day visit to Pakistan last week of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

read more @ asia times


2. Europe, Japan and US to trigger major debt crisis

The world may face another crisis of confidence, this time in the governments of continental Europe, Great Britain, Japan, and the USA. According to Christophe Bernard, managing director of one of the largest Swiss banks, Union Bancaire Privée (UBP), these countries risk suffering a defeat in restructuring their external debt. This could happen because their debt burden could grow to up to 20-30% of their budgets. Market participants interviewed by RBK Daily believe that this scenario is likely, but hope that regulators in these countries will not make it happen.

Christophe Bernard thinks that there are a number of global risks that seem unlikely now, but could come true in the next two to three years. Giving his speech at the Russian CFO Summit organized by Adam Smith Institute on 27-30 October 2009 in Moscow, he mentioned that last summer bankruptcy of Leman Brothers seemed unbelievable.

Christophe Bernard is worried that external debt of the leading developed countries can grow from 10 percent (on average) to 20-30 percent of their budget. This will cause inability of the governments to service their foreign currency debts at the current interest rates. As a result, leading countries of the European Union, Japan, Great Britain and then the USA will not be able to restructure their debt burden and will lose trust of both creditors and investors. Bernard told in an interview to RBK Daily that the new crisis of confidence will be channeled not towards certain banks and companies, but entire governments. This scenario is scary, and the governments of these countries are trying to avoid excessive growth of their debt burden.

read more @ pravda


3. Sweden gives all clear to Baltic Sea gas pipeline

The Swedish government on Thursday gave its permission for German firm Nord Stream AG to lay down pipelines for transporting natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Swedish economic zone of the Baltic Sea....Nord Stream is a Russian-led consortium planning to build the pipeline to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. For the project to begin construction it requires the approval of Russia, Finland, Denmark and Germany.

read more @ the local


4. Thailand upset over Cambodian appointment of exiled Thai tycoon

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Former Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was officially appointed as adviser of his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen and the Royal Government of Cambodia King Norodom Sihamoni, a statement of the Royal Government announced on Wednesday. ... The Cambodian leader repeated an earlier invitation to Thaksin to stay in Cambodia and rejected Thai claims that Phnom Penh would have to extradite the tycoon.

...Thaksin was toppled from power in 2006 and he has been living in self-exile in foreign countries since then to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption.

...Ties between Cambodia and Thailand have been soured since June 2008 amid a border conflict over land surrounding an 11th century temple. But relations have cooled further since Hun Sen made his first invitation to Thaksin last month.

read more @ chinaview


5. Morocco orders departure of Swedish diplomat

RABAT - Morocco ordered on Wednesday the immediate departure of a Swedish diplomat accused of handing official Moroccan documents to Western Sahara-linked "separatists", the foreign ministry said.

Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri summoned Swedish ambassador Michael Odevald to tell him of "a serious breach in diplomatic practice and an unacceptable professional error committed by an advisor at Sweden's embassy in Rabat, Mrs Anna Block-Mazoyer," a statement said.

Block-Mazoyer "gave an official document that was given by the foreign and cooperation ministry to the Swedish embassy in Rabat as part of a diplomatic process to separatist elements linked to Algeria and the Polisario Front."

"This document then turned up in the hands of enemies of the kingdom's territorial integrity," it said...."These are bilateral issues, it has nothing to do with the EU presidency as far as I know," spokeswoman Cecilia Julin said in Stockholm.

...UN-backed talks on the territory's future are currently stalled. Four rounds of negotiations on the territory held in Manhasset, a suburb of New York, could not bridge the gap between Morocco and the Polisario Front. An informal bid to unblock negotiations took place on August 10 in Vienna.

read more @ middle east online


6. CIA spy 'left out to dry'


WASHINGTON - A CIA spy sentenced to five years in an Italian prison for her role in a US government-backed kidnapping plot admitted Wednesday she "broke the law" but felt abandoned by her superiors.

Sabrina DeSousa told ABC television that she and 22 other Americans sentenced in absentia for the CIA's kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003 "broke the law," but that everything she did was "approved back in Washington." "And we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this," she said, adding that she felt "abandoned and betrayed."

Earlier in the day, an Italian judge convicted 23 Americans and two Italian secret agents in the high-profile "extraordinary rendition" case, prompting statements of "disappointment" from the US capital.

laDUH!! read more @ middle east online


7. South Sudan cries foul over dishonest census

The list of countries released by the National Elections Commission (NEC) of Sudan where Sudanese in Diaspora can register as voters and also participate in the forthcoming presidential election includes Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, Bahrain, the UK, Belgium (for all Western Europe) and USA.

Nonetheless, the South has questioned what it deems deliberate exclusion of the nine states that border Sudan especially Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo where many South Sudanese refugees live. The leaders of South Sudan have threatened to boycott next year’s presidential elections if the North is not fair in its census.

The decision of Northern Sudan to exclude countries where southern Sudanese are populated has been questioned by foreign mediators. Observers say that the action by NEC was a ploy by Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) northern partner National Congress Party of President Omar Al Bashir to rig the elections by isolating the South.

that is rather outrageous. read more @ afrik.com

strategy developments and false flags

1. Palestinian negotiator mulls 1-state solution -- IT'S ABOUT TIME.

RAMALLAH: The Palestinian chief negotiator in Mideast peace talks says his people should give up seeking an independent Palestinian state and pursue a single country for Palestinians and Israelis. Saeb Erekat says growing Jewish settlements are eating away at lands Palestinians want for their hoped-for state.

Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements and the United States does not stop it Erekat," said yesterday. It may be time for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to "tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option", Erekat told a news conference.

read more @ kuwait times


2. commandos capture Hezbollah arms ship

JERUSALEM: Israeli commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons bound for Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement — the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered.

The Israeli military said an Iranian document was found on board, showing that the arms shipment originated from Iran, although the paper was not shown to reporters.

...

Rear Adm. Roni Ben-Yehuda, the deputy Israeli navy commander, told a briefing that “hundreds of tons” of weapons were found on the ship, giving a much higher estimate than an earlier one of more than 60 tons.

Ben-Yehuda added the weapons were “a drop in the ocean” of arms being shipped to Hezbollah. But hours after the seizure, Israel had not provided proof that the arms were meant for the Lebanese militants.

...

Based on intelligence reports, a naval unit patrolling the area intercepted and boarded the vessel without incident, defense officials said.

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said the crew was not aware of the cargo’s contents. The ship, the Francop, is operated by United Feeder Services, a Cyprus-based shipping company that said it picked up the cargo in Damietta, Egypt. An employee of the company’s chartering department said the ship had been bound from Egypt to Cyprus and from there to Lebanon and Turkey. He said the company did not know what was inside the containers or where the cargo originated.


read more @ arab news

reported this yesterday: http://samsonblinded.org/news/israel-raids-german-ship-14463

The Israeli Navy captured the German ship Francop in the Mediterranean. Among the ship’s hundreds of containers, a few contained weapons, which allegedly were being transported from Iran to Syria. The US spotted the ship, but allowed Israel to intercept it to avoid disrupting Obama’s dialogue with Tehran. Technically, Israel’s actions constitute a blatant act of piracy, which once again testifies to the inapplicability of idealism and international law in time of war. Hijacking a foreign ship for routine deliveries of small arms and Katjyusha rockets would be too much. The explanation lies in a terse official announcement that the cargo included anti-aircraft batteries “not seen in the region before."


3. Hezbollah denies any link to Israeli claims of arms shipment

Hezbollah on Thursday vehemently denied Israeli accusations that a huge shipment of arms seized by the Zionist entity was destined for the Islamic resistance group. "Hezbollah staunchly denies any link to the weapons that the Zionist enemy has seized from the Francop ship," the group said in a brief statement.

"At the same time Hezbollah denounces Israel's piracy in international waters," it added.

The Israeli military claimed it had seized the 137-metre (450-foot) Antigua-flagged vessel Francop before dawn on Wednesday around 100 nautical miles from the Israeli coast.

Iran and Syria, staunch allies of Hezbollah, have both rejected Israel's accusations about the ship's destination and direction of passage.

In a joint press conference Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Mouallem, dismissed Israeli claims that a ship loaded with arms from Iran and headed for Syria had been intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea.

Walid al-Mouallem confirmed that the Israeli navy had seized a ship with Syrian cargo, but denied it was carrying arms; he also denied that the ship had been intercepted on its route from Iran to a Syrian port, saying the ship was headed in the opposite direction, on route to Iran to deliver Syrian-made goods for civilian consumption.

Israel, in fact, did not provide any proof of the alleged “hundreds of tons of arms bound for Hezbollah from Iran," as Israel's deputy naval commander, Rani Ben Yehuda, told the press.
At the joint press conference in Tehran, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Mouallem commented the seizure of the ship by Israel stating that “unfortunately, some official pirates in the seas, sometimes in the name of the navy, sometimes in the name of inspection, obstruct trade movement between Syria and Iran”.

The ship itself, the “Francop”, was operated by the United Feeder Services, a Cyprus-based company that had taken the load in the Egyptian port of Damietta. An employee of the United Feeder Services said the ship had been bound from Damietta to Cyprus and from there to Lebanon and Turkey.

source: al manar tv


4. Russia to use military force abroad only as a last resort - Medvedev

MOSCOW, November 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will use its Armed Forces outside the country only in extreme circumstances to protect Russian nationals, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

"Such decisions will be made only when absolutely necessary," Medvedev said at a meeting with members of the upper house of Russia's parliament. "Our citizens must be protected in any part of the world, and they must feel protected by the state." He stressed that such decisions "must be set in law."

...Russia's current 2006 legislation only allows the president to send troops to fight terrorism on foreign soil. Experts have said the law lacks clearly defined terms of "wartime" and a "combat situation," which complicates the deployment of troops outside the country.

read more @ ria novosti


5. policeman who killed British troops is back with Taliban

The gunman who killed five British soldiers in an attack in Afghanistan's Helmand province was today back with Taliban fighters who greeted him with flowers, sources close to the Afghan security forces said.

The killer – identified only as a policeman called Gulbadin – was back under Taliban protection, the source said.

British and Afghan commanders were undertaking an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the attack.


amazing how they know this but somehow can't get to him - read more @ guardian


that's awfully curious

1. Brazilian man turns up alive at own funeral - a curious story getting circulated rather widely

A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral. Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a car crash on Sunday night in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said.

As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honour the dead.

..."The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing," said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorised to discuss the case. "People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case."

The body was correctly identified later on Monday, the police spokesman said, and had been buried in another state. He declined to release the actual victim's name.

read more @ guardian


2. "Jews always have someone to help"

Israeli Foreign Ministry will send humanitarian aid to Ukraine which suffers the swine flu pandemics. Israel experiences severe shortage of swine flu vaccine, but will forward significant amount of it to Ukraine.

It takes Jewish masochism to help the nation which slaughtered Jews almost to extinction three times in the modern history: under Khmelnitsky, Petlyura, and Nazi collaborators. To this day, wildly anti-Semitic political parties are legal in Ukraine and anti-Semitic literature is sold on every corner.

source: http://samsonblinded.org/news/jews-always-have-someone-to-help-14509


3. murderer confesses in 'veil murder' trial

Dresden -- A Russian-born German man admitted in court Wednesday to killing a pregnant Egyptian woman in a frenzied knife attack but denied he was driven by racism. A spokesman for the regional court in the eastern German city of Dresden said Alex Wiens, 28, had one of his lawyers read out a statement before the judges in which he confessed to the murder of Marwa al-Sherbini on July 1.

"It is true that I am hostile to foreigners but that was not the motive" for fatally stabbing the headscarved Sherbini with an 18-centimetre (seven-inch) kitchen knife in another room of the same courthouse, the statement said. ...Wiens said in the statement read out Wednesday that the stress of the defamation trial and fear of a stiff sentence that had led him to lash out.

Until now, Wiens had been uncooperative with the judges. He refused to remove his sunglasses in court, banged his head on a table and stamped his feet during the proceedings, and resisted attempts by guards to restrain him. A verdict is expected November 11.

read more @ expatica

advanced decay of civil rights in UK

1. couple identify thug who vandalized their shop, cops come to his defense

A couple shamed a yob by writing his name in the shop window he smashed during a vandalism spree, only to be told to remove it by police in case it harmed his civil liberties. Dennis and Christine Lusby wrote 'Damage Done by Ben Hill' on the boarded up windows of their village store after he went on a drunken rampage.

Hill, 20, caused £3,000 worth of damage during the wrecking spree which also saw him attack cars, homes, farm buildings and a football club.

...'The lad was caught straight away but people kept coming in to ask us what had happened and who was responsible. Eventually Christine wrote his name up there on the window boards. We thought we'd let everyone know who had done all the damage. But then we were warned by the police for writing it because they say it's taking away his civil liberties What about our civil liberties? We chose to quietly ignore the police advice.'

read more @ daily mail


2. mother challenges council over spying powers

A mother-of-three has branded Poole Borough Council "ludicrous and completely outrageous" as she took the authority to court for using controversial powers to spy on her family. The council was accused of playing "fast and loose" in its attempts to establish whether Jenny Paton's children lived in the correct school catchment area.

It is alleged a council official made notes documenting the comings and goings of the mother-of-three and her partner, Tim Joyce, for nearly three weeks to find out if the family lived at an address in the catchment area for Lilliput First School. Ms Paton questioned why officials did not simply knock on the door and speak to her if they doubted her story.

Ripa, dubbed a "snooper's charter", is used to monitor relatively trivial offences by some local councils. The hearing comes as it was learned that Ripa - introduced in 2000 to give the police, security services and Revenue and Customs the powers to spy on people in the fight against crime and terrorism - will be used to track down parents who refuse to pay child support.

read more @ independent


3. construction of underground mansion approved

Proving just how much the housing market has gone through the floor, the go-ahead has been given for Britain's first underground mansion. Developers have announced plans for a £2m subterranean property, which will be entered via an unassuming door at ground level and descend up to 50ft below. Several footballers are believed to be engaged in a desperate battle to buy the underground property, in a bid for maximum privacy.

...The plans were unveiled after wealthy residents in an upmarket Cheshire neighbourhood complained about the tacky Footballers Wives-style mansions being built above ground in the area,many of which are home to Premiership stars.

read more @ daily mail


4. hospital staff 'fail patients in dying days'

Four out of 10 patients admitted to hospital close to the end of their lives received poor care from the NHS, a report says today.
...

The report says: "Change in the hospital team structure over recent years has seen individual clinicians become transient acquaintances during a patient's illness rather than having responsibility for continuity of care. Staffing arrangements and shift working have also been shown to be disruptive and with the implementation of the European Working Time Directive, this disruption is likely to continue and to impact on the training of tomorrow's doctors."

In one in four cases there was a "clinically important delay" before the patient was seen by a consultant, access to CT and MRI scanning is a "substantial problem" at many hospitals and in one in five hospitals "do not attempt resuscitation" orders were signed by "very junior trainee doctors". The report says district hospitals "may have particular problems delivering a high standard of care when dealing with very sick children", because of the need for a well co-ordinated team.


read more @ independent


11.04.2009

murder as a matter of strategy

1. Afghan murders 'strike heart of UK strategy'

The fatal shooting of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman has dealt a blow to the heart of the UK's exit strategy from the country, a former foreign office minister warned today.

Kim Howells, who now chairs the Intelligence and Security Committee, said the incident in the Nad-e'Ali district of Helmand province yesterday undermined the British and US strategy of building up the Afghan security forces.

"There are many people who have argued that there is only one way out of this for Britain and America and that is to train up the Afghan army and police force so that they can become responsible for their own security," he told the BBC.

"This is a real blow because it strikes right at the heart of that policy."

which is surely not a coincidence read more @ independent


2. "rogue" "Taliban" "cop" (OXYMORONS???) killed the soldiers as they innocently drank tea


The SAS was today part of a huge manhunt for the Taliban assassin who killed five British soldiers as they drank tea inside a military compound.

Soldiers from the elite unit are part of a military operation to track down the killer, a rogue Afghan policeman who gunned down his targets with an AK47.

He had climbed on to a roof before peppering the courtyard of the compound below with bullets.

The British soldiers had laid down weapons and removed their helmets and body armour as proof of their trust in their hosts, local officials in the Nad-e'Ali district.

Gordon Brown confirmed this afternoon that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack, and may have infiltrated the Afghan police.

...The gunman fled the scene on a motorbike. Some sources claimed he could have been high on heroin at the time.
...
'He first fired on the commander of the police and his deputy then on the British soldiers. He escaped on a motorbike,' he said.
...
The gunman had worked in the Nad-e-Ali district for three years after attending a police academy in Kandahar.

There was speculation he was a deliberate plant sent to infiltrate the force or that he had acted under pressure from insurgents.
...
A military spokesman added: 'It's our understanding that one individual Afghan National Policeman, possibly in conjunction with another, went rogue.'
...

sidebar:
Afghanistan's police are poorly trained, plagued by drug addiction and infiltrated by the Taliban 'at every level', a former British soldier said today.

The Afghan National Police (ANP) is actually a militia made up of local men whose allegiances are to their tribes rather than the national or local governments, according to Captain Doug Beattie.

etc. read more @ daily mail


THOUGHT: MAYBE SOMEBODY JUST PAID THE GUY? SOMEBODY WHO WANTED TO DERAIL THE EXIT STRATEGY? - ED.


3. Russian-Israeli ex-KGB gunned down in Moscow

MOSCOW, November 2 (RIA Novosti) - Russian-Israeli businessman Shabtai von Kalmanovich was shot dead in central Moscow on Monday, bringing an end to a colorful life that had seen a flirtation with showbiz and a conviction for spying.

Unidentified assailants armed with a 9mm automatic and a pump-action shotgun opened fire at fifty-nine-year-old Kalmanovich as he sat in his black Mercedes S500 on Moscow's Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment at about 4:50 p.m. Moscow time (1:50 GMT). The shooting took place a short distance away from the spot where Ruslan Yamadayev, a former member of the Russian lower house of parliament, was assassinated in September 2008.

Kalmanovich died instantly and his driver, who initially tried to give chase, was forced to pull over outside the capital's 16th century Novodevichy Convent due to serious injuries.

Investigators have said the attack bears all the hallmarks of a contract killing. They have also not ruled out that the murder was linked to Kalmanovich's business activities.

...He then left Israel and returned to Moscow, via a short stint in Sierra Leone, quickly finding his way in the chaotic dawn of post-Soviet capitalism.

...He was also involved in organizing Moscow concerts by Michael Jackson, Liza Minnelli and Jose Carreras. Media reports even alleged a romantic involvement with Minnelli.

Reports also suggested he was friends with the late notorious crime boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, nicknamed Yaponchik. Ivankov was gunned down in late July after leaving a restaurant in northern Moscow. He died of his injuries in early October.

read more @ ria novosti



4. September 2009: Russian prosecutors confirm death of crime boss Yaponchik

MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Prosecutor's Office confirmed on Friday the death of Vyacheslav Ivankov, a notorious crime boss known as Yaponchik (Little Japanese).

It said Vyacheslav Ivankov had died in a Moscow hospital.

...

Ivankov served almost 10 years in the Allenwood high-security prison in Pennsylvania for extorting $3.5 million from two Russian immigrants.

read more @ ria novosti


5. April 2009: FBI agents in Moscow on trail of Russian mafia bosses


MOSCOW, April 23 (RIA Novosti) - A group of FBI agents is in Moscow to hold talks on possible cooperation with their Russian colleagues in cases involving two suspected mafia leaders, a government daily said on Thursday.

The Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper reported that the talks would take place at the same time as a meeting of a Russia-U.S. working group on cross-border organized crime.

The paper cited a source in the Interior Ministry as saying that the first man the FSB agents want to locate is one Yevgeny Dvoskin, also known as Yevgeny Slusker, who emigrated to the United States in 1990. During slightly more than 10 years in the country, Dvoskin was arrested 15 times by police and served a number of short prison sentences.

In 1995, Dvoskin found himself in the same cell as Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, also known as Yaponchik (Little Japanese), according to the paper.

While there is no information on what influence Ivankov had on his cellmate, the FBI says that after his release, Dvoskin was responsible for illegally bringing about the depreciation of the shares of four large companies, which he then bought up at bargain prices. He was not charged and was eventually deported for breaking immigration regulations in 2001.

Two years later, he was put on a U.S. wanted list for fraud and money-laundering. However, by this time, he was already living in Russia and, according to the paper's Interior Ministry source, operating a "shady banking business." Investigations are currently ongoing into charges of money-laundering and the illegal transfer of several million dollars from Russia.

The paper said that the FBI was also interested in another suspected Russian crime boss, one Konstantin Ginzburg, who also goes by the nickname of Gizya.

U.S. agents believe that 37-year-old Gizya is the current "big boss" of U.S.-based criminal gangs made up of immigrants from former Soviet republics. The FSB suspect that it was Ivankov who handed over control of the gangs to Ginzburg. Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported that the FBI hoped to find out more about Ginzburg and how much of a threat he poses to the United States.

In 2002, Ginzburg was detained in the Moscow Region during a meeting of crime bosses but was released shortly afterwards, along with some 30 other detainees.

The paper said the FBI is also seeking two Russian businessmen. The first, Viktor Vulf, is wanted on charges of creating tens of fictitious construction firms in the United States, and collecting at least $50 million in deposits from immigrants from former Soviet republics. He and his wife then fled with the money and are suspected to be living in Russia.

Alexander Gribov is accused by the FBI of setting up a chain of medical centers that existed only on paper in order to fraudulently claim money from insurance companies. Along with an accomplice, who has since been arrested, Gribov is believed to have stolen some $2.5 million. The FBI has grounds to believe he is also living in Russia.


source: ria novosti

are we going to witness what is happening to children in our world, or not?

1. Slowly, the awful truth emerges

UK News Paper, the News of the World:

Exclusive Report on Jersey Child Abuse disaster.


Today’s edition of the News of the World, a UK newspaper, leads with an exclusive report on the States of Jersey Police investigation into child abuse in Jersey.

...
Innocent children WERE raped, murdered and their bodies then BURNT in a FURNACE at the Jersey House of Horrors, says a top-secret police report into the scandal.

News of the World investigation reveals cops have shocking new evidence of how the killings were COVERED UP at the Haut de la Garenne care home.


Our chilling revelations come as officers prepare to hand over their damning dossier from Britain's biggest ever child abuse probe to the island's States of Jersey authorities.

read more @ stuart syvret blog


2. NOBODY CAME - the story of brothers abused in a Jersey care home

At Haut de la Garenne, "Robbie finds himself in a nightmarish world of casual brutality, where physical and sexual bullying is commonplace and where the depraved lusts of certain members of staff are given free rein in ritualistic orgies of abuse...

"There are unexplained disappearances, and one of Robbie's friends is driven to suicide." - Nobody Came by Robbie Garner and Toni Maguire, a review

"The two boys were eventually transferred to Haut de la Garenne, a place where sick twisted minds had devised even more tortuous methods of sexually abusing the helpless.

read more @ aangirfan


3. poor staff vetting at children's homes

Almost a third of children's residential centres inspected by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) last year had not vetted all their staff properly, according to a new report.

The report, published today by Hiqa, said residential centres must obtain three references for all staff prior to them commencing work in the childcare sector and all employees must also get Garda clearance.

During inspections of 38 centres during 2008, Hiqa found 12 of them did not have three references on file for all employees and three centres did not have Garda clearance for a number of employees before they started work.


read more @ irish times


4. child prostitution rampant on Brazilian highways

At least 1,819 places on Brazilian highways have been identified by the police where minor girls and teens offer sex to truck drivers, says a new report.

The report based on a police study added Tuesday that every 26.7 km stretch along these highways have spots where minors offer sex for as little as 2 reais ($1.10).

A map prepared with the help of the International Labour Organisation shows the likely places for child prostitution. It includes all the petrol pumps, bars, restaurants and night spots along the highways. Many minors have been caught offering sex at these spots, the report said.

read more @ brazil news


do you get that? MINORS have been caught OFFERING sex. Bad minors, bad bad bad. Why would they do that hmmn??? WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO PAY FOR THE SEX???? HAVE THEY BEEN CAUGHT TOO????? - ed.

5. campaign to combat sexism, improve men's health care launched in Brazil

A campaign aimed to combat sexism and improve men's health care was launched on Tuesday in Brazil's northeastern city of Recife.

The campaign, entitled "Machismo and Health don't Match", encourages men to seek health care when symptoms appear in a bid to facilitate early diagnosis of diseases, said campaign coordinator Mariana Azevedo.

"Some men do not seek the service when disease appears. They allow the disease to become more severe and do not go to the doctor because they don't want to admit they feel pain or weakness", she said, adding that health services need to treat men differently.

The campaign, which will last until Wednesday, has drawn some 6,000 participants, including students, health professionals and researchers.

source


6. pedophile beheaded in Saudi Arabia

A man in Saudi Arabia is to be beheaded and crucified after he raped five children and left one of them, a three-year-old boy, to die in the desert.

An appeal court in the capital Riyadh approved the death sentence handed down in June by judges in the northwestern oasis city of Hail where the convicted 22-year-old man carried out his crimes.

The rapist - who was not named - was arrested several weeks ago as he tried to seize another boy after offering him a ride home from school. The seven-year-old - who escaped unharmed - helped identify the culprit.

The man’s victims were aged between three and seven. He was said to have lured them into his car as they left school at midday and then drove them to remote desert locations to rape them.

read more @ daily mail

EU: the unstoppable train to someplace not good

1. Czech president Klaus signs Lisbon treaty

PRAGUE, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Tuesday signed the Lisbon Treaty shortly after the country's top court approved the pact, removing the last obstacle to full ratification of the treaty.
...
Klaus, who likened the treaty and the EU reform to "an unstoppable train," said he would sign it after an EU summit allowed an opt-out for the Czech Republic from the treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

read more @ chinaview



2. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EU is a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union

By Hans Vogel

Now that the Czech Republic has announced it will ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the EU will be even closer yet to becoming a unified monster state, with more than half a billion inhabitants. Inhabitants is the correct term, since “citizens” would indicate a set of political rights. The people living in the EU should rather be called “subjects,” since they have no influence whatsoever on the constitution of the centralized European government, the “European Commission.” The Europeans are allowed to vote for members of the European Parliament, but this body has about as much political power as the ineffectual German parliament meeting at Frankfurt in 1848. Political power in the EU is firmly in the hands of the European Commission, which is set to obtain even more power under the Lisbon Treaty. This infamous treaty does not hold the peoples of Europe in high regard. As a matter of fact, it is only halfway through the treaty (originally presented as a “Constitution”) that one finds the first references to the people.


read more @ pravda


3. Swedish relief, let's get started dishing out the perks

The Swedish EU presidency can begin its hunt for a new EU Council president after Czech President Vaclav Klaus put pen to paper on Tuesday to make his country the last in the union to sign the Lisbon Treaty.

...

The Swedish PM, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, added that he would call an EU summit shortly and would "now begin name consultations" among the 27 member states on who to choose as the first EU Council president and the foreign policy high representative which the treaty creates.

read more @ the local


4. Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder, by R.J. Rummel


This is my fourth book in a series on genocide and government mass murder, what I call democide. The previous works concentrated on the four regimes that have committed the most democide, specifically the Soviet Union, Nationalist China under Chiang Kai-shek, communist China, and Nazi Germany.1 This study includes the core results of those works in addition to all other cases of democide in this century up to 1987.2

Given the extent and detail of these books, the reader may be surprised that the primary purpose was not to describe democide itself, but to determine its nature and amount in order to test the theory that democracies are inherently nonviolent. They should have no wars between them, the least foreign violence and government related or directed domestic violence (revolutions, coups, guerrilla war, and the like), and relatively little domestic democide. I have substantiated the war, foreign, and domestic violence parts of this theory in previous works3 and took up the research associated with this book and its three predecessors in order to test the democide component. As will be seen, the results here clearly and decisively show that democracies commit less democide than other regimes. These results also well illustrate the principle underlying all my findings on war, collective violence, and democide, which is that the less freedom people have the more violence, the more freedom the less violence. I put this here as the Power Principle: power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.

read more here

it's almost funny how bad these people behave

1. Israel preparing public for new war in Gaza

Israeli Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, director of Military Intelligence, announced Tuesday that Hamas launched a rocket some 60 kilometers into the sea, apparently as an experiment. Such a rocket, if fired from the northernmost point of the Gaza Strip, could strike the southern cities of the Gush Dan area - including Rishon Letzion, Holon and Bat Yam - and possibly reach as far as Tel Aviv itself.

Although Yadlin didn't specify the type of the weapon used, it appears to be a standard, foreign-made rocket smuggled into Gaza. Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Israeli Defense Committee that Hamas has accumulated an arsenal of rockets slightly larger than the arsenal it possessed before last winter's Operation Cast Lead.

...
Israeli military sources claimed that despite the improved rockets, Hamas' ability to launch missiles into central Israel is limited, but added that it was only a matter of time before this ability is improved, with Iran's support.

...

The rocket was fired in rough weather, apparently in an attempt to hide the experiment from Israeli eyes. But Israel's radar installations registered the launch, even if the exact spot where the missile hit the sea is unknown. Israel believes Hamas considers the new rocket a strategic asset, a "doomsday weapon" of sorts, and therefore avoided publicizing the experimental launch, in the hope of using the weapon as a surprise during some later confrontation.

perhaps you might consider apparently reading more, possibly, @ al manar tv



2. Obama: Iran "must choose" it's future path - (from the one option we are providing wink wink)...and if Iran doesn't "choose" the "right path" we will have "no choice" but to look at all our "options" which will be "on the table"

Iran "must choose" whether to open the door to opportunity and prosperity, President Barack Obama said Wednesday in a statement marking 30 years since the storming of the US embassy in Tehran. "We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for," Obama said. "It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity and justice for its people."

read more @ al manar tv


3. pure psyops: SITE: qaeda blasts Saudi king

RIYADH - The US-based SITE reported that Yemen-based branch of Al-Qaeda has slammed Saudi King Abdullah for launching the kingdom's first mixed public university.

"The father of the daughter or the brother of the sister or the husband of the wife, how can they accept that these (women enroll) in this university," said Ibrahim al-Rubaish, a Saudi member of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), according to a transcript issued late on Tuesday by SITE, a US-based monitoring group.

read more @ middle east online

AQ bad, Saudi king good according to SITE. ok? ok. check. - ed.


4. Steny Hoyer really really doesn't like that Goldstone report

The US House of Representatives was expected to easily approve a sharply worded resolution Tuesday denouncing a UN report that Israel and Palestinian militants committed war crimes in the Gaza war.

...
"I'm going to vote emphatically for it," said Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. "I think the UN report is unbalanced, and unfair, and inaccurate. "It's unfortunate that the United Nations deals with Israel, in my opinion, in a totally biased and unbalanced way. And it is the only country in the world, Israel, that has a special focus by the United Nations," he added.

...
The resolution, crafted by Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, expressed support for the Obama administration's condemnation of the report and urges opposition to its findings in any international forum.

...Hoyer claimed that rocket fire from Palestinian fighters in Gaza had placed Israel in "an unfortunate position" and stressed that Israel "is as careful a government as there is in terms of prosecuting its own defense" officials
.

read more @ al manar tv


5. Syria visiting Iran, Iran visiting Saudi Arabia

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hassan Qashqavi, announced on Wednesday that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem will visit Tehran on Wednesday.

Qashqavi said that the Syrian FM’s visit to Iran is in line with the “ongoing communication and coordination on the regional level between high-level officials in the two countries,” describing Syrian-Iranian relations as “brotherly and strong.”

The Iranian news agency Mehr also reported on Wednesday that Iranian FM Manouchehr Mottaki is expected to visit Saudi Arabia this week to resolve the issue of Iranian pilgrims after calls have been made not to politicize Hajj.


source: al manar tv


6. Israel raided German ship

Israeli Navy captured a German ship Francop in the Mediterranean. Among its hundreds of containers, the ship transported a few with weapons, allegedly transported from Iran to Syria.

The US spotted the ship, but allowed Israel to intercept it to avoid disrupting Obama’s dialogue with Tehran.

Technically, Israeli actions constitute a blatant act of piracy, which once again testifies to idealism and inapplicability of international law in time of war.

Hijacking a foreign ship for routine deliveries of small arms and Katjyusha rockets would be too much. The explanation lies in a terse official announcement that the cargo included anti-aircraft batteries “not seen in the region before.”

source: http://samsonblinded.org/news/israel-raided-german-ship-14463

Africa up next, count on it

1. FIMA 2009: the new international fashion trend will be African

The seventh edition of the International Festival of African Fashion (FIMA) 2009, ended Sunday in Niger. This latest edition focused on the professionalism and talent of African designers, as it also marks the beginning of a much needed awareness about the urgency of promoting the economic role of the fashion industry.

African fashion is doing well and is gearing up to hit the international scene. This leitmotiv has become the driving force for both established designers and young artists alike who took part in the "L’Afrique est à la mode — Africa is fashionable," competition, organized by Culturesfrance, at the 2009 International Festival of African Fashion (FIMA). A flood of creativity and know-how flooded "La Pilule", the chosen site for the seventh edition of FIMA, situated at the Gorou Kirey village, 15 km outside Niamey, the capital of Niger.

read more @ afrik.com


2. scramble for Africa: Brazil gaining on China

By Ed Cropley, African Investment Correspondent

China is leading the pack in the 21st century 'scramble for Africa' but anybody who thinks Beijing has the continent sewn up need only glance at the passport of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

By the time he first visited the European Union in 2007, four years after coming to office, Lula had racked up six trips to Africa, covering 16 countries.

Then, in July, he was guest of honour at an African Union summit in Libya, a reminder to Beijing ahead of its second Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Egypt on November 8-9 that it is not alone in courting the continent and its raw materials.


Reflecting Lula's push, Brazil's annual trade with Africa has jumped from $3.1-billion (R24,5-billion) in 2000 to $26.3-billion last year, a rate of growth outpaced only by China, which has seen two-way commerce soar tenfold this decade to $107-billion.

China has now eclipsed the United States as the continent's biggest trading partner.

"The balance of commercial power has shifted entirely," said Martyn Davies of Frontier Advisory, a South Africa-based consultancy for investors in emerging African markets.

"This is not something new - it's just been accelerated by the economic crisis. It's towards inter-emerging market trade, rather than the traditional north-south trade."

It is not only Brazil and China that are muscling in on Africa. The two other members of the so-called BRICs grouping - India and Russia - are also setting up stall in a region that for generations European powers regarded as their own back yard.


read more @ iol