5.02.2008

Iran Opens War Avoidance Flank

As threats of military action against Iran continue to issue from various spokesmen of the war party in the U.S., the Islamic Republic has launched an ambitious initiative aimed at preventing war, based on a comprehensive package of economic, political and security measures on a vast regional plane. The package includes proposals to settle remaining questions related to Iran's nuclear energy program, but is not limited to that.

Read full story

CIA 'preparing public for Iran war'

The CIA accuses Iran of 'facilitating the killing' of US troops in Iraq in what is seen as another attempt to prepare the public for war.

In a Wednesday lecture at the Kansas State University, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed that slaying US military forces has become the political strategy of Iran's highest governmental officials.

Read full story

Jewish Rabbis call for dismantling Israel

TWO Jewish rabbis yesterday called for a peaceful end of Israel saying that the existence of the “Israeli state” was contradictory to the Jewish law.

Speaking at a meeting with the Doha-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradawi, rabbis Ahron Cohen and Yisroel Dovid Weiss, who are activists at the Neturei Karta, a group known for its opposition to the establishment of Israel, said that the creation of Israel “was a heresy made up by the Zionists to undermine the true Jewish life”.

Read full story

Bush supporters forced to wait in line near peaceful war protestors (gasp)


Imagine the horror.

Click through to see some great pictures of misguided old white people, aka Bush supporters or Bushbots, waiting in line to have their books signed by Laura and Jenna.

They look like they were sucking on lemons.

Ray McGovern: "Bush planning to attack Iran this year"

Ray McGovern, a prominent former CIA analyst, says US President George W. Bush is planning to wage a military attack on Iran this year.

McGovern who has been a CIA officer under seven US presidents--presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them--believes President Bush and his administration have no intention of leaving Iraq and are preparing to attack Iran in the next few months.

Read full story

Wolfowitz: Iraq occupation ended in 2004

More fun with the English language, where words mean whatever we want them to mean. - Ed.

Former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has claimed that the occupation of Iraq by American forces 'ended in June 2004'.

"I'm afraid that the label occupation sticks to us even to this day, although the occupation ended in June of 2004," said the Iraq war architect at Hudson Institute Monday.

Read full story

FOX News throws more red meat out to its viewers

Repeating the bogus claim that Ahmadinejad has 'threatened to destroy Israel' when they know full well he said something different: the Zionist regime would disappear from the pages of time - which is not the same $&^&!! thing at all if you have two brain cells to rub together, and certainly doesn't justify starting WW III over. But by stoking the unreasonable fears of Iran, Fox will help Americans conclude that slitting our own throats and murdering millions of innocent people must be a good idea if it helps Israel feel better. Thanks, guys. You're real patriots. - Ed.

An Israel Cabinet minister says Iran could have nuclear bomb technology in 2008, at least a year earlier than previously believed.

See complete propaganda

DC Madam predicts: "They will make it look like suicide."

It doesn't sound like she was planning on committing suicide. - Ed.

Second carrier group deployed to Gulf as US approves plans for Iran counterstrike

False Flag preparations. Whatever attack is used to justify this counterstrike, it will not be done by Iran, only blamed on Iran. - Ed.

LONDON — The U.S. military has drafted and won approval for attack plans ir response to an Iran attack.

Western diplomatic sources said the U.S. military's Central Command has submitted plans for an air and naval strike on Iran. The sources said the plan envisioned escalating tensions that would peak with an Iranian-inspired insurgency strike against U.S. military assets in the Gulf.

Read full story


Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.

These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively.

Read full story

5.01.2008

Predators

In nature, predators are attracted by the presence of prey. Whenever there is a herd of beings, there will be predators watching with fascination, studying the prey very attentively. Predators pay special attention to anything wounded or young or vulnerable-seeming. When an animal is about to give birth and just after, they are vulnerable, and the newborn is easy pickings.

Read full story

Want to Win the Immigration Debate? Start Talking About Illegal Jobs

The often-overheated immigration debate is a distraction that draws attention from far-reaching problems facing American workers, particularly those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Many immigrants' right advocates argue that newly arrived workers take jobs that Americans won't do. That's only partially true; many unauthorized immigrants fill non-union jobs that are impossibly crappy, pay poverty wages and are rife with workplace violations, and they work those jobs side-by-side with millions of natives and legal residents. The reality is that there are not enough Americans who are willing or able to tolerate poverty wages and other workplace abuses.

Read full story


FDA report shows problems at Merck vaccine plant

Federal inspectors documented unwanted "fibers" on the stoppers of vaccine vials at Merck & Co. Inc.'s vast vaccine plant in Montgomery County.

They also found instances of contaminated children's vaccines and complaints that were not always investigated at the West Point plant.

Inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration spent 30 days at the plant between November and January and cited 49 areas of concern, including a failure to follow good manufacturing practices.

Read full story


High Level Officials Warn of Fake Terror

A variety of current and former high-level officials have recently warned that the Bush administration is attempting to instill a dictatorship in America, and will itself carry out a fake terrorist attack in order to obtain one.

Read full story

Networks continue to ignore NYT military analyst story, but all find time for Hannah Montana

Summary: Since The New York Times reported on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on April 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC have still not mentioned the report. By contrast, during their April 28 evening news broadcasts, all three networks reported on the Vanity Fair photo of Miley Cyrus.

Read full story

Whistleblower on Big Pharma

Erick Turner, a psychiatry professor at the Oregon State Health and Sciences University, woke up one day and realized that he was acting as a shill for pharmaceutical corporations. Worse, he was promoting drugs that not only provide very little benefit, but also do great harm. In spite of the benefits paid to him, including accommodations and thousands of dollars, and the ego satisfaction of being recognized as a "Very Important Person" by his fellow physicians, his conscience wouldn't let him continue.

Read full story

Daniel Pipes and the unfolding civil war in Iraq

Psychopathy in government. - Ed.

Daniel Pipes, the director of the neo-conservative Middle East Forum and a vociferous supporter of the invasion of Iraq, is not an inconsequential figure in the American political establishment. His writings consistently articulate and refine the views of the extreme right in the United States, a layer that exerts considerable influence over the policies of the Bush administration. It is therefore noteworthy when such an individual begins publicly arguing that a sectarian civil war in Iraq would be to the strategic advantage of US imperialism. One can conclude that similar views are prevalent in Washington’s corridors of power.

Read full story

UN Official (Falk) Calls for Study of Neocons' Role in 9/11

On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. While Mr. Falk's specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the "9-11 official version."

Read full story

Siegelman: Exposing Rove is 'worth every day in prison'

In an hour-long interview with Thom Hartmann of Air America Radio, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman pounded hard on what he sees as the three main issues raised by his case: the involvement of Karl Rove in the politicization of the Department of Justice, the apparent theft of the 2002 election in which he was defeated by Bob Riley, and money-laundering by Jack Abramoff and his associates.

Read full story

Raw Story poses tough question to Dana Perino, who balks

I thought it was shameful that 10 days after David Barstow's NY Times article about how the establishment media colluded with the Pentagon to sell the war in Iraq and the "war on terror" to the American people by hiring the Pentagon's "message force multipliers" as military analysts, no one had asked the White House about it.

I'd been trying, but I'd been on Dana Perino's 'blacklist' during my last six visits to the briefing room.

Read full story


4.30.2008

Iran ends oil transactions in US Dollars

Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran's nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.
Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

Read full story

Should the US Worry about 'Zionists' as a Fifth Column? Yes.

Last week calls by candidate Hillary Clinton to obliterate Iran for and on behalf of Israel and her willingness to commit to nuclear war costing the lives of hundreds of millions of people for and on behalf of a state that since its inception has been at war with all of its close and distant neighbor is a grave warning to Americans of the danger of Zionism on America and the world.

Read full story

Consider the Consequences of Bombing Iran's Nuclear Power Plants, and Pray

Excerpt:

The nuclear fallout from bombing Iran will have a half life of 700 million years. That is a duration difficult to comprehend. Jesus Christ was preaching a mere 2 thousand years ago. In the evolution of humans, our earliest ape-like ancestors were walking upright a mere 5 million years ago. The Bush administration and its Israeli advisors are now planning to contaminate the planet for 700 million years. From the rhetoric of Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they, too, think that is a good idea. The US media seem to applaud.

Either Americans do not understand what it is they are preparing to do, or they think themselves immune to the consequences. The planet is not large. What goes around, comes around. Smoke from the Gulf War oil fires went around the world and was detected in South America. Radioactive fallout from bombing a nuclear reactor will also go far, especially considering that it has millions of years to make the trip.

Read full story

Shoveling Coal for Satan

Excerpt:

All journalists are cowards. Hitchens knows it, I know it, everybody in this business knows it. If there were any justice at all, every last goddamn one of us would be lowered, head-first, into a wood-chipper. Over Arizona. Shoot a nice red mist over the whole state, make it arable for a year or two. A year's worth of fava beans and endive for the children of Bangladesh: I dare anyone in our business to say that that wouldn't represent a better use of our rotting bodies than the actual fruits of our labor.

Read full story

Future cost of gas: $7-10/gallon

Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.

That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.

Read full story


Global Famine? Blame the Fed

The stakes couldn't be higher for Ben Bernanke. If the Fed chief decides to lower rates at the end of April, he could be condemning millions of people to a death by starvation. The situation is that serious. Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soya are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said it best:

"It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."

Read full story

SOTT: JFK Spins From the Grave

Excerpt:


So what do we do about all this? That's a very popular question nowadays. People want to do something, but like always, they want to go along with the crowd. They want someone else to lead the way. They want to continue to be followers instead of leaders.

And so, it is for this very reason that I am sitting here writing this little article. But, let's face it: I'm no literary genius. And besides, I'm an engineering type, and we just hate inefficiency. So, I figure, "Why reinvent the wheel?!" There is one man in particular whose words remain so powerful and relevant today that I could hardly hope to best them myself. That man is JFK.

Read full story


Did CIA 'Photoshop' Syrian Military Pics?

Professor William Beeman at the University of Minnesota passed along a note today from "a colleague with a U.S. security clearance" about the mysterious Syrian site targeted in a Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike.

The note raises more questions about the evidence shown last week by U.S. intelligence officials to lawmakers in the House and Senate.

The author of the note pinpoints irregularities about the photographs. Beeman’s source alleges that the CIA "enhanced" some of the images. For example he cites this image:

Read full story


Soaring Prices Putting Basic Food Staples Out of Reach, Middle Class Turning to Food Banks

It seems as if the cost of everything is outpacing people's pay these days. Gas, the rent, utility bills — and now food.

According to the Labor Department, the average cost of groceries is climbing at an annual rate of about 5%, the sharpest increase in 18 years. Average weekly earnings are rising at an annual rate of 3.3%.

This disparity has resulted in significantly higher customer traffic at bakery thrift outlets, employees say, as well as a surge in people turning to food banks.

Read full story

4.29.2008

The Plunge Protection Team

Some people foolishly think that Washington's recent high-profile effort to steer, subsidize and protect the American financial sector is the beginning of something new -- a revolutionary development.

It isn't. Consider that the President's Working Group on Financial Markets – nicknamed “the Plunge Protection Team” by The Washington Post in 1997 & ndash; quietly observed its 20th birthday on Mar. 18.

Read full story


US intelligence on Syrian reactor: justifying last year's crime to prepare for new one

More than seven months after Israeli warplanes destroyed a building in Syria’s eastern desert, the Bush administration has released intelligence purporting to prove that Damascus was building a nuclear reactor at the site, with the assistance of North Korea, as part of plans to build an atomic bomb.

Read full story

The Bees Die...The Planet Dies

The planet is the common good of humanity. Taking care of it gives life a meaning.

It is necessary to make the farmers understand what their responsibility is, but they seldom have Internet. The bees are the second factor of life on our planet. There is nothing left but our awareness which can act on the totalitarian power of money. It is necessary to react, to transmit this important message to all and to find solutions because it is as serious as the war of Iraq. This poisining is a planetary genocide.

Read full story


Psychopaths always blame their victims

I’m sure you haven’t heard on TV news that the IDF killed a Palestinian family of four small children and their mother, among others, as they were getting ready to eat breakfast. I mean, if an Israeli family was killed we’d be hearing about it non-stop; but this was just a Palestinian mother and her four little children. Just some collateral damage…

Read full story

Molten STEEL Flowed Under Ground Zero for Months After 9/11

In response to the numerous reports of molten metal under ground zero, defenders of the official version of 9/11 have tried to argue that it was not steel, but some other kind of metal with a lower melting point.

Read full story

Pablo Ouziel: 'Blood Diamonds', 'Blood Oil' and 'Blood Food'

For a while now, I have been thinking about what George W. Bush signifies from a socio-political perspective. Looking at the world from the time of the “Big Bang” of September 11th, 2001, until today, almost seven years later, one can clearly observe how monstrous our human interaction has become. After much reading and analysis, I now understand that September 11th was not the starting point of a new world order, but to the contrary, it was purely the end of a specific human state of affairs.

Read full story

Jeff Cohen: Military Propaganda Pushed Me Off TV

Excerpt:

Except for the brazenness and scope of the Pentagon spin program, I wasn't shocked by the recent New York Times report exposing how the Pentagon junketed and coached the retired military brass into being "message-force multipliers" and "surrogates" for Donald Rumsfeld's lethal propaganda.

The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld or the Pentagon. It's the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism.

No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one antiwar advocate - affirmative action for hawks.

Read full story


Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

Mother of dead soldier tries to hand laminated letter to Laura Bush but is hustled away by Secret Service agents. - Ed.


Washington , D.C. – The First Family Security Bubble was nearly pried open for a moment last Friday; but in the end Disneyland remained blessedly undisturbed.

On a particularly warm spring evening, Laura and Jenna Bush alighted from a squadron of black SUVs at the Borders book store in downtown Washington, D.C., right on schedule at 7:00 pm. Flanked by Secret Service agents, they went inside to an area set up for authors to sign books – yes, sign books. The two Bush women have co-authored a 32-page children's book, “Read All About It,” the story of Tyrone, a youngster who is good at everything in school but reading.

Read full story


Pictured: Inside the cellar where father locked daughter for 24 years and repeatedly raped her

This is the man who today confessed that he imprisoned his daughter in an underground chamber for 24 years and fathered her seven children.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, was raped repeatedly since being lured into the dungeon built below the family home in a small Austrian town. Police said she had been "broken" by the experience.

Read full story

4.28.2008

Scott Ritter: Evidence-based Bombing

By publishing intelligence on a possible Syrian nuclear facility, the US has endorsed after the fact Israel's illegal use of force in attacking it.

Read full story

Raised in boom times, many Gen X and Yers see their dreams go bust

Jason Liebrecht used to write about his motorcycle adventures on his blog. But since early this month, the 36-year-old San Diego computer software engineer's daily musings have been about a less thrilling new experience: unemployment.

"Do I find a job, or do I head to Central and South America on the motorcycle?" he wrote on Day 4. By Day 7, he had become more realistic: "So far in the last week I've made $1,245 off of EBay sales. Mostly stuff I wasn't using, or don't need much. Nice way to clean the house up!"

Read full story

Kunstler: Belief System

A friend asked me how come the public apparently grasps the reality of climate change but can’t seem to wrap its collective brain around the unfolding oil crisis.

I'm not convinced that the public does grasp climate change. It's perceived, perhaps, as a background story to daily life, which goes on regardless. Are you even sure Hollywood didn't invent it -- and maybe some boob at Time Magazine is selling it as though it were really happening?

Read full story


IDF murders Palestinian mother and small children, makes lame excuses

Four Palestinian children, all members of one family, were killed Monday morning in an Israel Defense Forces strike in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources reported.

According to the report, an IDF shell hit a house in the town of Beit Hanoun, killing five members of the Abu Meatak family. Palestinian medics identified the dead children as sisters Rudina and Hana Abu Meatak, aged 6 and 3; and their brothers 4-year-old Saleh and 15-month-old Mousad. Their mother, Miyasar, was in her late 30s. Her two older children were critically wounded in the strike, the officials said.

Read full story

Political Ponerology: What we can learn from Conservatives about winning in politics

Make no mistake: When the conservatives set out to take over America 30 years ago, they were working off of a well-thought-out plan.

The plan was put in place by a wide variety of thinkers -- but three of the main strategists were Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Paul Weyrich, each of whom wrote important books and papers laying out the goal of creating a conservative America, and showing specifically how the movement could make that happen.

Read full story


Connecting the Dots: Shortage of Food and Signs of War; The Future is Now

It has been a month now since the Signs editors engaged in a little exercise of connecting the dots: we noticed a number of high level meetings of some of the most prominent Axis of Evil personalities, and thinking it likely that there is an important reason for the activity, we published our observations here.

We have decided to make this a periodical effort of 'joining the dots', hoping to make sense of the avalanche of information that comes our way on a daily basis. It may help us to detect trends, and to understand which way the drivers are steering this bus called Planet Earth.

Well, judging by the events of April, it seems that they are taking us towards a cliff, and it is rapidly approaching.

Read full story


Strategic Israel

Despite Israel's refusal to acknowledge its nuclear weapons status, its secret arsenal is an open secret that Israeli policy makers don't go out of their way to deny. From its beginnings in the mid-1960s, Israel's program has developed into one that rivals those of larger powers like France and Britain. Here, based on interviews with U.S. intelligence officials and nuclear experts, is a portrait of Israel's strategic weapons programs.

See interactive map, read full story


Assad says facility Israel bombed not nuclear

The Syrian site Israel bombed in September was not part of a nuclear weapons program, but was a military facility under construction, President Bashar al-Assad said in remarks published on Sunday.

Last week, Washington released intelligence alleging Syria had built a nuclear reactor with North Korean help before an Israeli air strike destroyed the facility on September 6.

Read full story


The collapse of the US is accelerating: Oil in Euros vs US

In the last eight years implementing the plans for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) designed "to promote American global leadership" has backfired.

To accomplish PNAC's goals, all threats needed to be eliminated. From the onset, the United Sates earmarked two countries as mortal enemies: Venezuela and Iran. With Venezuela, it is well documented that the CIA attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chavez. And with Iran, the United States continues to use it as a scapegoat for its failures in Iraq. These cold war tactics however are proving to be US's undoing.

The United States is hemorrhaging from every orifice, and oil prices can be used to measure the rapidity of its demise.

Read full story

Mayday Alert: Terror Drills Could Go Live

An impressive array of military men join Captain Eric H. May, the Internet intelligence writer, in issuing a false flag alert for May 1-8, when the Bush administration will be conducting nationwide terror exercises.

The name "false flag" comes from the old pirate's ruse of flying another country's flag during an attack, thereby shifting blame for the attack to a party that had nothing to do with it. Governments use false flag attacks to push their nations into dictatorship or war. As military experts, we fear that national terror drills, scheduled for May 1-8, could be used to camouflage a false flag attack in the United States.

Read full story