Former UN Ambassador John Bolton believes the security of the United States is at dire risk under the Obama administration. And before a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Thursday morning, he suggested, as something of a joke, that President Barack Obama might learn a needed lesson if Chicago were destroyed by a nuclear bomb.
Read more @ Mother Jones
2.27.2009
Insider spills the beans on offshore banking centers
The oil industry created the practice of countries (SHIPS?) flying "flags of convenience" as a means of avoiding income taxes nearly a century ago. Since the 1960s the U.S. Government itself has encouraged American banks to set up branches in Caribbean hot-money centers and more distant islands as a means of attracting foreign money into the dollar. The initial aim was to help finance the Vietnam War by turning America into a new Switzerland for the world's hot money.
This policy succeeded in turning the United States into a flight-capital center for third-world dictators, Mexican presidents and Russian oligarchs. The former Soviet Union now finances a substantial portion of the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit with the flight capital that neoliberal "reformers" facilitated by backing the kleptocrats. The result has grown into a full-blown system enabling multinational corporations to evade taxes everywhere, including the United States itself. It enables domestic investors to globalize their operations by setting up offshore affiliates Enron-style in the Cayman Islands, Dutch West Indies or some small and newly notorious Pacific Island of their choice.
Iran says no military agenda in nuclear plan
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Friday Tehran's atomic plans were not of military nature, urging Russia to complete Iran's long-delayed nuclear power plant.
"In the Friday prayer sermon, we don't make false promises. Therefore I declare that Iran's nuclear plan is not to build weapons ... and we are ready to prove it in negotiations," he said in a sermon carried live on state radio.
Bibi still whining
Israel's prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu says talks to include the centrist Kadima party in a coalition have ended without agreement.
The Likud leader said he had faced "categorical rejection" in 90-minute talks with Kadima leader Tzipi Livni.
Minutes earlier, Mrs Livni said the meeting "concluded without agreement on key issues".
Mr Netanyahu has been tasked with forming a government in the wake of elections earlier this month.
In other regional developments, Israel's military attacked alleged smuggling tunnels in Gaza on Thursday, in what it said was retaliation for earlier rocket launches.
Treasury set to convert Citi preferred to common
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Treasury Department announced on Friday that it will convert a significant share of the preferred stock it holds in struggling bank Citigroup Inc to common stock as long as others also do so.
In an early-morning announcement, Treasury said it would convert dollar-for-dollar its preferred shares to match conversions by private preferred holders in a bid to strengthen Citigroup's capital base.
Why all porn is gay
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
(originally posted in Feb. 2006)
In 2004, a woman revealed details of Hugh Hefner's sex life.
If the Playboy founder is any indication, a life dedicated to porn and promiscuity leads to homosexuality and impotence. The 60's icon of suave masculinity is, in old age, a grotesque self-parody.
Hefner, 82, pays a bevy of whores $2000 a week to be his girlfriends and have sex with him every Wednesday and Friday. He uses Viagra and watches male gay porn to stay erect while as many as ten concubines mount him in succession. The other girls simulate lesbian sex to arouse him.
"He doesn't really do anything," says Jill Anne Spaulding, author of the book "Upstairs." He just lies there with his Viagra erection. It's just a fake erection, and each girl gets on top of him for two minutes while the girls in the background try to keep him excited. They'll yell things like, "F-k her daddy, f-k her daddy!" There's a lot of cheerleader going on!"
No one becomes a playmate without having intercourse with Hefner. The "girl next door" is now a whore; and Hefner's maudlin example of arrested development is a fitting epitaph for his Playboy Philosophy.
Playboy was not a spontaneous phenomenon. It was social engineering designed to foster homosexuality and family breakdown. See my "Playboy and the (Homo) Sexual Revolution." This is why Spaulding's revelations got so little publicity.
Vatican's chief astronomer - Advanced ET life not an accident
The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations perhaps more evolved than humans.
"In my opinion this possibility exists," said the Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI, referring to life on other planets.
Kenny's Sideshow: The media war on you
Excerpt:
Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support.
While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.
As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:
- Using selective stories that come over as wide-covering and objective.
- Partial facts, or historical context
- Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on the security of the individual.
Goon Squad: Israel's "special" relationship with the US
Hmm, how is it that the world's leading terrorist state, Israel, enjoys such a special relationship with the USA?
Read more @ Goon Squad
How can the US recover without manufacturing capacity?
by Glen Ford
The strength of the federal economic stimulus package is seriously diluted by the fact that many of the manufactured goods that will be purchased for the attempted recovery must be imported from outside the United States. America simply doesn't make lots of things, anymore. That means many billions of dollars that folks assumed would go towards fueling an American economic comeback, will instead provide work and paychecks to employees in other countries, that still have manufacturing bases. That's fine with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is dominated by large multinational corporations - the same guys that began stripping the United States of manufacturing jobs decades ago.
Read more @ Atheo News
The strength of the federal economic stimulus package is seriously diluted by the fact that many of the manufactured goods that will be purchased for the attempted recovery must be imported from outside the United States. America simply doesn't make lots of things, anymore. That means many billions of dollars that folks assumed would go towards fueling an American economic comeback, will instead provide work and paychecks to employees in other countries, that still have manufacturing bases. That's fine with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is dominated by large multinational corporations - the same guys that began stripping the United States of manufacturing jobs decades ago.
Read more @ Atheo News
Breathless Propaganda
The Iran-Israel nuclear endgame is now much closer
In recent days, four key developments have clicked in to edge Iran and Israel much closer to a military denouement with profound consequences for American oil that the nation is not prepared to meet.
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410719930&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
In recent days, four key developments have clicked in to edge Iran and Israel much closer to a military denouement with profound consequences for American oil that the nation is not prepared to meet.
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410719930&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Israel's rightward shift: a history of the present
A withered left, a fragmented right, a stagnant politics and a frozen peace compose the bleak Israeli ingredients of the search for national and regional progress, says Colin Shindler.
Read more @ Open Democracy
Read more @ Open Democracy
2.26.2009
More Official Sloppiness, this time with deadly viruses
Yesterday the missing radioactive materials just being written off, today experimental deadly virus material unaccounted for. Gee. Do you think they behave like morons on purpose? - Ed.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
What happened to the ferrets that received Baxter’s H5N1 virus material?
The animals died “promptly” according to the story below.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: Did any ferrets in neighboring cages—that didn’t receive the Baxter H5N1 virus—also get sick and die? The answer to that question is conveniently missing from every story that I have found about this incident.
If the answer is ‘yes’ it means that Baxter didn’t supply standard H5N1 virus, but rather a weaponized/pandemic version that is the same as or similar to the one that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was developing.
CIA signals continuity with Bush era
WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency's new director outlined spy policies Wednesday, including an aggressive campaign in Pakistan, that underscored considerable continuity with the Bush administration.
CIA Director Leon Panetta, in his first meeting with reporters, said the agency will continue to carry out drone attacks on militants in Pakistan. He also said that while CIA interrogations will have new limits, President Barack Obama can still use his wartime powers to authorize harsher techniques if necessary.
CIA adds economy to threat update
Pay attention...this is the NWO plan unfolding before our eyes. - Ed.
The daily White House intelligence report that catalogs the top security threats to the nation has a grim new addition, reflecting the realities of the age: a daily update on the global financial crisis and its cascading effects on the stability of countries through the world.
The first Economic Intelligence Briefing report was presented to the White House yesterday by the CIA, the agency's new director, Leon Panetta, revealed at a news conference. The addition of economic news to the daily roundup of terrorist attacks and surveillance reports appears to reflect a growing belief among intelligence officials that the economic meltdown is now preeminent among security threats facing the United States.
CIA Director Panetta already talking tough
Late last year former Monterey Rep. Leon Panetta was busy giving transition advice to then-President-elect Obama's team while insisting he had no desire to leave the Carmel Valley.
"They did mention Commerce," Obama's new CIA director told reporters Wednesday. Noting Obama's troubles in filling that job, he added, "I guess I made a good decision."
The 70-year-old former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, who just a month ago was running his Panetta Institute at Cal State Monterey Bay, now is knee-deep in some of Washington's thorniest debates: Where will detainees go when Guantanamo Bay is closed? How aggressively should terrorist suspects be interrogated? Is Iran close to having a nuclear weapon?
EU trio propose tougher list of Iran sanctions
LONDON (Reuters) - France, Germany and Britain are proposing a tough list of additional sanctions to be imposed against Iran over its disputed nuclear program, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
A confidential document seen by the FT and Italian newspaper Il Riformista lists 34 Iranian entities and 10 individuals believed to be linked to covert nuclear or biological weapons programs, the London-based daily said.
The FT quoted some European diplomats as saying the list was meant to provide U.S. President Barack Obama's administration with a "bigger stick" in a carrot-and-stick approach aimed at getting Iran to stop nuclear activity.
Egypt urges rival Palestinian factions to end divisions
Egypt urged all Palestinian factions on Thursday to work on ending their internal chasm in reconciliation talks aimed at pushing rivals Hamas and Fatah to form an interim unity government.
"Your people are looking forward to seeing the beginning of your unity," said Gen. Omar Sulieman, Egypt's intelligence head, in nationally televised comments Thursday.
Read more @ Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410726254&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
"Your people are looking forward to seeing the beginning of your unity," said Gen. Omar Sulieman, Egypt's intelligence head, in nationally televised comments Thursday.
Read more @ Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410726254&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
New US Intel Chief: Support of Israel Not a US Interest
Excerpt:
Typical of Freeman's viewpoints is a statement he made in a speech before the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2007, in which he more or less blames international terrorist acts on Israel:
"American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel’s American backers as against Israel itself. Under the circumstances, such retaliation – whatever form it takes – will have the support or at least the sympathy of most people in the region and many outside it. This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture."
Read more @ Israel National News
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