“The bailout is...economically foolish...downright sinister [and] makes a mockery of our Constitution.” - Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

On Sept. 29, 2008, the House of Representatives, responding to a taxpayers’ revolt, rejected the $700 billion bailout of the greedy Wall Street bankers. Meanwhile, on Sept. 23, 2008, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in Baltimore, MD, to give a talk at the central library hawking her book, “Know Your Power.” At that point, the Congress was still debating the bailout proposal submitted to it by the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson and “The Fed’s” czar, Ben Bernanke. Speaker Pelosi didn’t mentioned the bailout in her spiel. Why? I submit because she was too overconfident and thought that there were more than enough votes to pass the financial scheme being pushed by the Bush-Cheney Gang. She was wrong! Finally, the voice of the taxpayers has been heard on Capitol Hill!

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Photo credit: Aaron Kohr and Batman 2000 -Mashed up by Robin Good

WaMu. Another Mergers and Aquisitions Deal For JP Morgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase already recieved one huge payday when they snapped up Bear/Stearns for next to nothing at $2.00 a share while the Fed, with our tax dollars, covered the Bear Stearns losses for them, and now they are ready for the next identical score with WaMu. I guess it pays to have connections to the Board of the Federal Reserve.

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The numbers are grim, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian economy is in one of its most wretched states, and the disaster is mostly, if not entirely manmade, thus reversible.

The World Bank made no secret of the fact that Israeli restrictions are largely to blame, as poverty rates in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have soared to 79.4 per cent and 45.7 per cent respectively. It concluded: "With a growing population and a shrinking economy, real per capita GDP is now 30 per cent below its height in 1999." "With due regard to Israel's security concerns, there is consensus on the paralytic effect of the current physical obstacles placed on the Palestinian economy," it added.

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Information Clearing House

Perhaps sovereignty is relative; how else can one explain the subjugation of the most powerful industrial nations to the will of another while under the delusion of independence, national interest, democracy, and even capitalism? A single country, Israel and its powerful lobby AIPAC have altered the course of history in America and by extension, the rest of the world.

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Following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN last week, Zionist and pro-Zionist circles lashed out at the Iranian leader, calling his speech “anti-Semitic.”

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Introduction: Baba Vanga, born Vangelia Goushterova, (31 January 1911 - 11 August 1996) was a famous Bulgarian prophet that lived in the Rupite area in Rila Mountain, Bulgaria.

Today many people know about Vanga, the Bulgarian prophet. Her gift is even in her name, which makes many wonder: translated from Greek, Vangelia means Herald of the Blessed Word. Vanga, truly, who, one newspaper wrote, is "the most fantastic reality and the most enigmatic truth." Her talent of prophecy has thrown many into shock. Her gifts are unique, she has the gift to foresee, clairvoyance, and she could talk with flowers, visit different places on the earth. She saw much, even though she was blind, and her face emanated light.

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Plato: Allegory of the cave

Smoking Mirrors

I’ve watched half the debate by now and one thing is very clear, neither candidate seems to have the ability to tell the truth in a direct fashion. Neither candidate is willing to address the actual conditions that have led to the conditions in which America finds itself today. Neither candidate is willing to confront the real enemy of the nation and the world. Neither candidate is doing much more than jockeying for position in order to look like the new and improved potato chips that everybody wants; apparently more than they want to hear the truth. The truth as usual is unpopular. The truth is a genital itch at an awards dinner. The truth lies beaten, bleeding and alone; mugged and gang-raped in an alley and soon to be imprisoned for causing this assault on itself.

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Long gone are the days of delusion in which financial gurus and political pundits thought that the economic problems faced by America could be swept under the carpet. For this reason, it becomes redundant to discuss the details of the current financial turmoil. If one is interested in the details and consequences of the excesses of the last few years, I highly recommend commentary by Nouriel Rubini. When it comes to economics, he has bulls-eye precision on what has happened and is happening. I am fairly certain his predictions will not be far from the mark when it comes to understanding the consequences we are all facing. Having Roubini¹s financial insights readily available, allows me to focus on other issues, which economists are not talking about and are of critical importance to the average taxpayer.

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Israeli President Peres assigns Livni to form a new government (photo: AFP)

The friendly smile hides a sinister agenda.

With Tzipi Livni succeeding Ehud Olmert as Israel's next prime minister following her slim victory over former defense minister Shaul Mofaz on 18 September, most Palestinians are pinning few hopes on the "new" Israeli government's ability to make a real difference in relations.

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I was ecstatic as I read an email sent by a manager at a Canadian toy company. The company donates a large number of toys each year to inner city kids throughout North America, using various NGOs. A few years ago, they decided to ship several thousand toys to Palestinian children. They asked for my help.

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Common Dreams

Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn't interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly -- one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk -- conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun's life, and it changed history.

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In the conduct of his war crimes, capital crimes and naked aggression, Bush ran up the largest debt and deficit in US history! The Iraq war to date is estimated to have cost you over $3 trillion! It has been 'financed' in the short term with phony-baloney "'GOP" money.

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Citizens from across the political spectrum are telling Congess – No to the Bailout. When we wrote our membership thousands responded. I’m urging people to respond again to keep the pressure building. We are having an impact but it is going to take an avalanche of citizen input to re-think the bailout. The decision Congress is considering could affect us for a generation or more. It could make progressive change financially impossible. Already, Senator Obama is saying the bailout will slow his plans for new programs to re-build the economy.

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John McCain wants laws that would force you to turn over a portion of your hard earned wages and salaries to Wall Street insiders! When Wall Street seems to be poison, Dr. John McCain's prescription: 'Just keep on doing whatever makes you sick'. McCain's campaign could not have picked a worse time to invent and exploit a phony crisis. Can you say 'idiot'?

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When Gen. Musharraf submitted to U.S. pressure after 9/11 and ditched the Taliban in Afghanistan, he provided air bases as well as logistics support and shared intelligence with CIA. He allowed CIA and FBI to recruit agents in FATA and other places and to establish their outposts. The focus of ISI and other agencies was shifted towards hunting and nabbing so-called terrorists all over the country, in monitoring dissident elements within the army and in political wheeling and dealings. The CIA acquired all the links ISI and MI had both sides of the Pak-Afghan border and gradually took most agents on ISI payroll within its fold. By virtue of having better technology and means the CIA was able to take over intelligence acquisition and dissemination system. As a consequence the troops operating in FATA became entirely dependent upon CIA inputs. Taking advantage of complete liberty of action, CIA succeeded in buying the loyalties of many tribal chiefs and notables in FATA by doling out dollars in sacks since it knew that the Pashtun could not be crushed by force but could be purchased. Those not falling in line were got killed.

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[Photo: Konstantin Käfer]

Smoking Mirrors

I’m amused by what my mind can come up with some times. For instance Goldman-Sachs; Is it a veddy British marriage title or is it some gold man’s sacks? …or sacs? Some sacks of some man’s gold?. When the ugly truth reveals itself it usually slices itself away like milk fed veal to present the chickenshit-white, First Matter of the Alchemist burbling at the center. That’s a heck of way to start off a commentary but what should I say? Come and get it? Or… don’t you get it?

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Running on a 1932 New Deal Platform, Hezbollah intends a government of all the People, by all the People and for all the People.

"We in Hezbollah want to demonstrate to our adversaries and doubters what we can achieve for our fellow Lebanese and our Palestinian brothers and sisters and to show them that our Party is 10% about military matters and 90% about ending corruption and improving the quality of lives of all who live in Lebanon.

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Since taking office in January 2001, the Bush administration targeted Hugo Chavez for removal. It tried and failed three previous times:

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US forces kill primarily women and children In South Waziristan, Pakistan.

The truck bomb that exploded in front of Islamabad's Marriott hotel killing at least 53 people heralded in the latest salvo in the U.S.'s and Mujahedin's love/hate relationship. Their relationship began in 1979 in Afghanistan and Pakistan when the U.S., starting with Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brezezinski hatched an idea of using the most extreme militant Islamists to first draw in the Soviets (to Afghanistan) then go to war against them.

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Source: Financial Times

In covering the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, don't repeat the failed lapdog practices that so damaged our reputations in the rush to war in Iraq and the adoption of the Patriot Act. Don't assume that Congress must act instantly, as so many news stories state as if it was an immutable fact. Don't assume there is a case just because officials say there is.

The coverage of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan focuses on the edges -- on the details. The focus should be on the premise. And reporters should be skeptical of what gullible Congressional leaders, most of them up before the voters in a few weeks, say after being given a closed-door meeting on supposed horrors.

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"...despotism corrupts the person who submits to it far more than the person who imposes it."

Alexis de Tocqueville observed the American way of life, government and politics when the country was still young in 1835. His observations show that while there are new problems and social issues today, many of them have haunted this country since its early days.

Tocqueville's observations, in his own words, will be biting and offensive to some Americans, but this is only because the truth in what he says cannot be avoided. He saw a new kind of tyranny rising that was more effective than brute force, a tyranny that went straight to the soul.

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Today is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the coup in Chile; a coup in
which a terrorist superpower brutally overthrew a democratically
elected government. Few Americans will remember this anniversary,
they'll be solemnly remembering one of their own -- an anniversary
brought about, in part at least, because of the kind of imperialist
despotism that September 11, 1973 so clearly reminds us. Long live
the memory of Salvador Allende and the brave Chilean people!
[Photo: Salvador Allende]

Allende was not killed because he was a socialist—he was not. But he was anathema to vested capitalist interests in Chile and to American imperialism because he advocated a certain measure of protected national development.

The Judge and the General tells the story of recent efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of horrific acts of political repression committed three decades ago under Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet. In their documentary, co-directors Elizabeth Farnsworth, a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) correspondent, and Patricio Lanfranco weave together historical film footage and poignant and informative interviews with individuals victimized by the regime and those who have fought for justice for the victims.

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"The response to the massacre at Sabra-Shatila was for the resistance to become active in Lebanon. If the Lebanese people had given up on the resistance, they too would have been complicit in the massacres of Qana and Sabra and Shatila."
– Hasan Nassallah June 4, 2002

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I was asked to write a follow up analysis to “The Clintons’ Contributions to the Iraq War”, which showed the continuity of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East spanning one Republican and two Democratic presidential administrations and how they paved the way for Bush II to invade Iraq.

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"We have lost control. We cannot stabilize the dollar." - Ben Bernanke

"It's a jungle here--right now we're advising our clients to put all they can into canned goods and shotguns!" - Brain Gremlin in the movie Gremlins II: The New Batch.

Close your eyes and picture your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all alone and scared, in an old, abandoned graveyard. The moon disappears behind one of the gathering storm clouds. Lurching forms begin to emerge from behind tilting gravestones.

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One keeps hearing about 'obvious' airliner wreckage that was found at the Pengaton. One 'hears' about it! One NEVER sees it because there was none. Talk about 'obvious wreckage' come the people who have a vested interest in promoting the official conspiracy theory. People who have a vested interest in promoting cover ups are, most likely, partners to the crime. The fact is there was absolutely no Pentagon wreckage traceable to a 757.

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There is no need to be a forensic pathologist to understand the cause of death of America’s financial institutions and our credibility abroad. The only thing required is a familiarity with our history.

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Maha lost her left foot and the calf of her right leg. Fifteen year old Jaber sitting on a plastic chair…
He informed me, "A shell destroyed me... I have no legs." Little Fatima suffers daily nightmares.

[Al Shj'aya, East Gaza City, September 22, 2008] The fault Israeli policy of collective punishment has had a great effect on civilians lives in the Gaza strip and West Bank. Those people are being punished for no reason but being part of the area they live in. In the Gaza Strip, the siege imposed since more year ago still going on. The West Bank is still under complete control of Israeli army and settlements swallow more Palestinian lands. In the Gaza strip where I live there are many hidden stories for those punished people!

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Nahom Barnea is a prominent Israeli journalist and regular columnist at the mass-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.

On Friday, 19 September, he revealed shocking details of a recent “security coordination” meeting between Israeli and Palestinian security commanders.

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"New World Order" by Gladys Holding. An illustration from part of
"The Wasteland" by T.S. Elliot, translated into a contemporary
comment on today's world situation.

In an address delivered to the Union League of Philadelphia on November 27, 1915, Nicholas Murray Butler said: The old world order changed when this war-storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that days sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow.

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Are Americans ready for a revolution? What worse than the current meltdown of the financial sector, the unraveling of our economy, and burdening us and future generations with astounding debt is needed to convince Americans that the two-party plutocracy has sold out ordinary Americans?

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Edward Said

Born in West Jerusalem in 1935. Exiled in December 1947. Said was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1991, a malignant cancer of the bone marrow and blood. At 6:45AM on September 25, 2003, he succumbed (at age 67) after a painful courageous 12 year struggle. Tributes followed and resumed a year later. In a testimony to his teacher, Professor Moustafa Bayoumi called him "indefatigable, incorruptible, a humanist and devastatingly charming....leav(ing behind) legions of followers and fans in every corner of the world. I am lost without him....I miss him so."

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The aggressive stance taken against Russia by Condoleeza Rice, Richard (Dick) Cheney, John McCain and Sarah Palin (and of course George W. Bush himself, although one has to give him a discount) after their American forces aided the Georgian armed forces in a criminal act of murderous aggression against Russians living in South Ossetia (and planned a similar attack on Russians living in Abkhazia) was, more than the fury felt by the side that lost and got totally humiliated by the magnitude of Russia’s victory, a telling insight into the soul of those who manage Washington, be they donkeys or elephants.

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Image: HATCH

Smoking Mirrors

Can anyone doubt that the time is at hand? It’s funny how everything from Biblical prophecy to the Mayan Calendar; everything from sources channeling The Cassiopeans to those channeling The Pleiadians; everything from rational atheists to practicing metaphysicians all say some day is just about now. Economists (who aren’t lying sacks of shit) say so. The same liars go on from one day to the next cosmeticizing this hyena culture while they loot the till.

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Michael Hayden said the clandestine agency is using Predator missile attacks to "tickle" enemy groups, to provoke a reaction.

"We use military operations to excite the enemy, prompting him to respond."

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The United Nations' International Day of Peace established in 1982 is a day when individuals, communities, nations and governments highlight efforts to end conflict and promote peace.

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Albert Speer is credited with having said that Nazi Germany was built upon empty, meaningless platitudes. The same can be said of every GOP 'reign of terror' --be it Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or, more, recently George W. Bush. The rule of law means nothing to the GOP but that matters little to goppers. GOP demagogues have even less to offer. As a Reagan devotee swooned at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston: "Ronald Reagan made us feel good about ourselves".

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The bailout is corporate-government on display -- the corporate representatives (the Fed is the banking and finance system) go in the back room to meet with the congressional leadership of both parties -- all of whom are funded and put in office by the corporations -- they come out all smiles and the stock market goes up -- big finance is happy. The capital-economy is being saved on the back of taxpayers. Glen Greenwald put it well:

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Influential Zionist circles around the world have been bullying western governments to promulgate legislations that would incriminate critics of Israel on the ground that anti-Zionism is actually anti-Semitism in disguise.

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Activists are driven by passion fueled by a radical hope that the power of just one can indeed help change the way things happen to be. St. Augustine defined Hope as having two children: Anger at the way things are and Courage to do something about it.

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(on behalf of all the poor and near-poor who "litter our streets")

So Wall Street is in a panic! So the trillion-dollar corporations are in danger of going broke! So the big-time investors are in danger of losing their silk shirts! So what?

We have been told for years that we must not be cry-babies who go bawling to the government for handouts to help us through the bad times; we must bear up under the load of "personal responsibily"; when our jobs disappear into the "global economy" we must "re-train", mechanical engineers need to become truck drivers, automobile designers to learn to put roofs on house, and secretaries and bookkeepers should go to school to "re-train" for jobs as motel maids!

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If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it. ~ Julius Caesar

In 2000, the long fought for and long admired democracy of the United States of America began a slow and steady decline toward fascism - a Bush family tradition - with the installment of a president - a man the citizens overwhelmingly rejected (although the funny math told a still believed myth) - by a few corrupt judges on the US Supreme Court. That coup is now nearly complete and checkmate is all but unavoidable.

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The fact that George W. Bush ordered and/or 'signed off' on that series of crimes called 911 can be proven in court. George W. Bush, therefore, must be prosecuted for the crimes of high treason, waging war upon the people of the US, and instances of mass murder in the US, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

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“We seek an...investigation and audit of ‘The Fed.'" - Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr (1)

On Sept. 16, 2008, Ben S. Bernanke, the Chair of the Federal Reserve, aka “The Fed,” along with the Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., made a trip to Capitol Hill. Why? It was a courtesy call to brief the hapless politicos of the U.S. Congress, such as Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “The Fed” had agreed, on its own whim, to loan American International Group, (AIG), $85 billion! It was, at that moment, the largest financial intervention in our nation’s history. Absorb this salient point: Congressional leaders found out about it, “only after” the deal was done! They had no say in the massive bailout. Yet, it was $85 billion of the taxpayers’ money!

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"We know McCain and Palin have no problem with more war."

I am sad today. I am sad for my country, sad that there seems to be little to be done about it. As the campaigns flare up, we have gone beyond the usual slandering and now just turned to out and out lies. I have been following very closely the recent TV appearances by McCain and Palin, and watched the latest ads. I read every story I can get my hands on, and many say that McCain and Palin are repeating things that have been proven as untrue.

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You Don't Mess with the Zohan is a new American comedy film. It tells the story of Zohan Dvir (Adam Sandler), the IDF's Number 1 counter-terrorism killing machine who has simply grown tired of his military murderous engagement. At a certain stage, he fakes his own death while in action in order to pursue his real dream: that of becoming a hairstylist in NYC.

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Smoking Mirrors

As I expected, before I wrote the last several pieces, there was some amount of static about perspective and attitude. It was a lot less than I thought it might be and well off-set by the majority of responses. Some of them thought it was my best work ever. I would definitely disagree with that but it just goes to show… you never know what’s going to ring people’s bells and what’s going to piss them off.

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Photo: Amnesty International Canada

AntiWar

Today, Omar Khadr, the sole Canadian citizen in Guantánamo, marks his 22nd birthday in isolation. Seized in Afghanistan when he was just 15 years old, Omar has now spent nearly a third of his life in US custody, in conditions that ought to be shameful to the US administration responsible for holding him, and to the Canadian government that has abdicated its responsibilities towards him.

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Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy

It was upon the death of Dr. Martin Luther King that Robert Kennedy, JFKs younger brother, addressed the issue of what we need in the United States. One can be sure that upon that tragic occasion, Kennedy had not intended to lecture or proselytize.

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Wayne Madsen Report / Online Journal

WMR has learned from government sources that the Bush administration has authorized massive surveillance of the Internet using as cover a cyber-security multi-billion dollar project called the “Einstein” program.

Billed as a cyber-security intrusion detection system for federal computer systems and networks, WMR has been told that the actual intent of Einstein is to initially monitor the email and web surfing activities of federal employees and contractors and not in protecting government computer systems from intrusion by outsiders.

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Jockeying for an advantageous public posture vis-à-vis Hamas, the Fatah movement has been calling for the organization of presidential and parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa used exceptionally tough language during a Cairo news conference 9 September, when he lashed out at Palestinian factionalism, saying that the League is going as far as studying the possibility of imposing sanctions on quarrelling Palestinians.

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Video

Recently Senator Biden spoke with Shalom TV and stated that, "There is this inextricable tie between culture, religion, ethnicity that most people do not understand…You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, I am a Zionist." [1]

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Photo of Wafa Daghma provided by Saleh
Jadallah, palestinemonitor.org

I have had a very hard time the last few days. Time passed ever so slowly as I sat watching my mother lying helplessly in her hospital bed, in a coma. I could do nothing but shedding my tears, and saying my prayers. Unbearable!

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Danny Schechter is a media activist, critic, independent filmmaker, TV producer as well as an author of 10 books and lecturer on media issues. Some call him "The News Dissector," and that's the name of his popular blog on media issues. He's also co-founder of Media Channel.org. It covers the "political, cultural and social impacts of the media," and provides information unavailable in the mainstream.

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"Got a match?"

I didn't know where he came from, but there he was, right behind me—as usual. "You know I don't smoke," I told Marshbaum. "Come to think of it, you don't either. What's up?"

"Not much. Planning to roast some marshmallows and hotdogs. Burn some books."

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Al Gore’s carbon trading business GIM was banked with Lehman Bros. It will be interesting to see how this will play in the future but I suspect that this increases the risk of participating in Carbon trading. Merrill Lynch was also deeply involved in this business.

Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

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Scottish Friends of Palestine remembers and commemorates the 60th Anniversary of the murder of Count Folke Bernadotte

Sixty years ago on the 16th September 1948, UN appointed mediator in Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, completed the report which outlined his proposals for the resolution of the Palestine question. This report offered hope to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees created by the decision of the United Nations to partition the homeland of the Palestinian people between the indigenous Palestinian people and the Jewish colonial settlers who had arrived over the past three decades.

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September 17 is Constitution Day, but very, very few Americans know this or will celebrate it. If you think of yourself as a politically engaged, civic-minded and patriotic American, then I urge you to celebrate today by expanding your mind about a critically important but never-used part of our Constitution.

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“The Dems...are weaklings who blow where the wind takes them while frittering away our...lifeblood.” - Cindy Sheehan

It’s painful for me to watch the Dems, the political party of my youth, self-destruct. I’m sure this is how members of the Whig Party must have felt as they witnessed their organization fade from the national scene. The Whigs were the heirs of the Federalist Party, originally led by George Washington. A split over the issue of Slavery, however, just before the Civil War, marked the death knell of that once influential entity. The Dems, on the other hand, are going down because they no longer stand for anything. They are morphing into a Duopoly--the DemRepublicrats. The Peace Mom, Cindy Sheehan, correctly wrote that the Dems are only good for “careful fence sitting and pandering.” (1)

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“Suppose that some great disaster were to sweep ten million families out to sea and leave ‘em on a desert island to starve and rot. That would be what you might call an act of God, maybe. But suppose a manner of government that humans have set up and directed, drives ten million families into the pit of poverty and starvation? That’s no act of God. That’s our fool selves actin’ like lunatics. What humans have set up they can take down….Whoever says we’ve got to have a capitalist government when we want a workers’ government, is givin’ the lie to the great founders of these United States….” 'A Stone Came Rolling'- Olive Tilford Dargan

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What Really Happened

Dictators do not appear overnight. They must gradually assume more and more power over time so that the population does not realize what is going on, or does not feel it is worthwhile to object.

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When it becomes obvious to the rest of the country that we are truly locked into a life or death struggle the people will rise-up from their easy chairs and demand answers. If we cannot make them aware of the obvious fateful track we are now on before then, then it will be too late for us all.

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The Ugly Truth

Sabra and Shatilla are two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon where over two thousand Palestinians were massacred during three days in September 1982 by hundreds of Lebanese Phalange and Haddad militiamen with the aid and support of the Israeli Defense Forces.

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Sarah Palin. Death becomes her. And we have become death.

Savage animal slaughterer that she is, it’s apt that Sarah Palin has now brutally plunged a razor-sharp knife into the very heart of the seemingly invincible doubts concerning her capacity to be Vice-President of the United States. Wielding her chutzpah with the awe-inspiring deftness with which she employs her gun or rifle when hunting defenseless wolves or moose, she appeared on 20/20 and left our skepticism writhing on the ground in agony, immersed in its own blood and gasping its last.

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"Out of the Darkness" (2003 © D.E. Christman)

Smoking Mirrors

Yes… here it comes people. It’s a big, awkward, ungainly beast and it is collapsing through the wreckage of a large infrastructure so it may be a little while yet before it hits the ground, pulverizing the infrastructure beneath it. The greed goblins and psychopaths all have (treasure of) Sierra Madre Fever so they are only concerned with grabbing as much loot as possible before the beast crushes everything beneath it. However, like monkeys trying to steal avocados or mangos out of a clay vase, they’re not going to let go of the fruit. They just can’t… even if it means their life. More power to them in that endeavor.

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Global Research

George Bush sent to Bolivia his Ambassador of Ethnic Cleansing [original title translated from the Spanish]

He presented his credentials before President Evo Morales on October 13, 2006; but three months before his arrival in Bolivia, when he was still in Pristina fulfilling his role as head of the US mission in Kosovo, it was already being said that the new US ambassador designated by George Bush for this Andean country, Philip Goldberg, would come to take part in the separatist process that was being cultivated in the background to pierce the Bolivian regime.

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"Our Resistance continues, the Sacred Cause of all people of good will endures, and the Dream of our full Return shall never die!" - 14 year old Fairouz Husseini, Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon

On September 16, 2008, at precisely 10:30 am, Fairouz Husseini and a gathering of survivors, relatives and friends of the Sabra-Shatila massacre victims, some foreign delegations, students, NGO representatives, a few government officials, dignitaries, and members of the Camp community will gather outside the Kuwaiti Embassy roundabout, on the edge of Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut, Lebanon.

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Yannone

"The date was Oct. 26, 1967. I was on my 23rd mission, flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive at about 4,500 feet, when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came up – the sky was full of them – and blew the right wing off my Skyhawk dive bomber." ~ John McCain

Over and over again it has been said or inferred that one of the reasons John McCain deserves to be president is because he is a war hero. Even Barack Obama has called McCain "a genuine American hero." -Make that an American war criminal.

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Meanwhile in Bolivia....By Carlos Latuff [ENLARGE]

The Smirking Chimp

With the recent expulsion of the U.S. ambassador from Venezuela, thus greatly reducing the chances of promoting a coup, I mean, cooperation there, I see that the anti-American, thrice freely-elected dictator, Hugo Chávez, is at it again. His belligerent refusal to play fair-and-square by doing things the right way -- ours -- brings to mind something I read about the underhanded, overly-informed oppressor a couple months back in Costa Rica’s leading English-language newspaper, The Tico Times. The July 4 article lead, “[S]ome 800 (Costa Ricans) have traveled to Venezuela for free eye surgery over the last few years, 93 (in June) alone, on a gift from President Hugo Chávez’s government.”

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The Ugly Truth

Less than 2 weeks before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejhad is scheduled to speak on the floor of the UN General Assembly, Israel–using as her personal mouthpiece one of the most important figures in the history of the Jewish state with regards to spying, assassination and Zionist intrigue, Rafael Eitan–has threatened that Israel may “kidnap him” and bring him to trial for ‘incitement to genocide’ regarding some of the inflammatory (but truthful) statements he has made in recent years concerning the great experiment in Jewish self-rule in the Middle East. In addition to this, the US–like some effeminate, limp-wristed yes-man always willing to debase itself for Israel’s benefit–is holding up Ahmadinejhad’s visa for entry into the US.

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Zionist massacre of Palestinian Arabs in 1948

“The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israel was not an unintended consequence, or fortuitous occurrence, or even a ‘miracle’, as Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann later proclaimed; it was the result of long and meticulous planning,” Ilan Pappe, Professor of Political Science at Haifa University, in his book ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’.

This week, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought to rewrite history by equating the violent uprooting and dispersal across the four winds of the native Palestinian community at the hands of Zionist Jews with the ideologically-motivated immigration of Jews from the Middle East to Palestine.

=> Read more!

For the first time, since the U.S.-hosted Annapolis conference on November 27 last year re-launched the Palestinian – Israeli negotiations, which were interrupted by the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 after the collapse of the Camp David trilateral summit, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas came out for the first time on record in Cairo on September 6 to “doubt” striking a peace deal with Israel “by the end of the year because very little time is left;" on September 10 he reiterated his skepticism in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz.

=> Read more!

When the CIA engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 in favor of the more compliant Shah, who would have ever thought that 26 years later the nation’s youth would invade our embassy and take our diplomats as hostages?

=> Read more!

Ben-Ami Kadish

“Spies are...a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors...sadists and drunkards.” - John le Carre, author.

In May, 2008, an ex-U.S. military engineer, Ben-Ami Kadish, age 84, was charged in Federal Court with four counts of conspiracy for passing classified, defense-related documents to the Israelis. The foul deeds supposedly happened over 20 years ago. The Feds contend that Kadish’s case has ties to the matter of the convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. (1) In 1986, Pollard got a life sentence for his treachery. The speculation is that the FBI is hot on the trail of yet another crafty Israeli spy--a mole-- buried deep inside the security state. One expert believes that it’s an individual “who held very high senior security positions in the [Bill] Clinton and [George W.] Bush White Houses.” (2) This Israeli spy is known to the Intel boy-ohs only as “Mega!” (3)

=> Read more!

Palestinian refugees forced to flee their homes when Israel was established in 1948

“Why should I, a Jew from north London, be permitted to take up Israeli citizenship, when that right is denied to a Palestinian who languishes in a refugee camp in Lebanon? Especially when I acknowledge that a large majority of those that left in 1948 was ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces.” Alex Stein, a British Jewish academic.

=> Read more!

In America and elsewhere, electoral fraud isn't new nor should anyone be surprised it occurs. But as technology improves, so are better ways found to pre-arrange outcomes. It's easier than ever today so more time, effort, money and other resources are earmarked for it. The result:

-- elections and their run-up are mere kabuki theater; the major media and PR industry play the lead role; everything is pre-scripted;

=> Read more!

US backed Death Squads in Iraq continue to murder Iraqi freedom fighters

AlAlrab Online

Bob Woodward’s newest book “the War within” which he reveals in it how the Bush administration has administrated the war in Iraq and in it he talks about a US secret program to counter the Iraqi insrugency. Woodward told CNN’s Larry king, earlier this week, that he has obtained secret information on the workings of US military in Iraq that enabled the US forces to stem the tide of violence and al-Qaeda terrorism in Iraq.

Though it looks like it is a super secret as to what kind of program the US forces had developed to counter the military-style attacks in Iraq against its forces, but this supposed super secret is not quite that big of a secret after all.

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"But it's OK - they're white!"

BuzzFlash

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

=> Read more!

A top Saudi cleric is reported to have issued a religious decree claiming that it is "lawful to kill" owners of Arab television networks broadcasting "depravation and debauchery".

=> Read more!

The party conference season is in full swing in the UK and the Liberal Democrats begin theirs this weekend.

The agenda includes a motion to endorse Policy Paper 74, "Britain’s Global Responsibilities: the international rule of law, as a statement of party policy on international law" - see www.libdems.org

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The GOP is prepared to embrace all kinds of junk science if it will get them off the hook for supporting industries, technologies and politicians that support disastrous but profitable policies. These deniers of 'global warming have more than money riding on their attempts to discredit science. They will oppose 'global warming for the threat it poses to their investments and for the psychological threat it represents to their self-esteem, their ideologies and shibboleths. To this end, 'deniers of global warming, primarily the GOP, have invented an entirely new phenomenon: galaxy warming.

=> Read more!

Israeli occupation troops and paramilitary Jewish settlers on Saturday rampaged through several Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, killing at least one Palestinian civilian and injuring several others, including three people suffering critical gunshot wounds.

=> Read more!

Few would argue that the indirect Israel-Syria talks through Turkish mediation, which were first announced 21 May, were a sign of political maturity and readiness for peace. In fact, while the discussions seemed concerned with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Israel's desire for security at its northern borders, the true objective behind the sudden engagement of Syria is largely concerned with Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas.

=> Read more!

Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli education minister, minister of communication and minister of science and the arts, in her book published last week, condemned "the domination of the apartheid system in the West Bank, the regime's constant refusal to a peace deal for decades and Israelis atrocities in the Palestinian territories…She further linked the 1995 assassination of Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to legislation of racist laws since the 1980's, raising the possibility that SHABAK (Israel security agency commonly known as the Shin Bet) might have been behind the killing. Aloni recalled the instigations against Rabin and accused Jewish settlers of ' Mussolini's fascism'. Aloni said, "The Israeli rightists and settlers are not after peace but they want the whole Holy Land without Arabs or mosques," and that calling Israel a democracy is a ploy to give Israel an acceptable image in the world's eye."[1]

=> Read more!

‘Bitch’–It’s an ugly word, for sure, and I am not using it as cavalierly as some might imagine here. I always winced when I heard it growing up as a kid, mostly because I always held women in such high respect and because I was sure that in 9 out of 10 cases where the word was used it was most likely unjustified. After all, they–women–are the bringers of life and who civilize us (hopefully) through their influence in the home. Can you imagine what a mess the world would be in if it was the guys raising the children instead of the gals? The kids would speak in mono-syllabic grunts rather than full sentences and would settle all issues with their fists instead of their mouths and brains.

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Viet Nam Veterans and North Vietnamese call McCain 'Songbird" because he 'sang' like one while while a POW in Viet Nam. How does that qualify him to lead the US into war against people who had absolutely NOTHING to do with 911? It doesn't. McCain, like Giuliani before him, must be desperate. McCain is running on Giuliani's tried and failed mantra --911, 911, 911, 911.

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The US is pushing Abbas into another dead end.

Despite official denial, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel are formulating a "shelf agreement" which both sides will consider the basis of further negotiations to be resumed in 2009.

=> Read more!

There is a phrase that has been applied to dating, sports and politics – “dance with the one who brung you.” Darrell K. Royal, a College Football Hall of Fame member and the winningest coach in University of Texas Longhorn history used the expression to make the point that you go with the players and plays that brought you to the championship. This is a lesson that Senator Obama needs to apply his election campaign.

=> Read more!

Mustafa Sabri

Masked men affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mukhabarat or General Intelligence on Friday nabbed a Palestinian journalist minutes after he was released from jail in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya, the journalist’s family and lawyer said.

=> Read more!

The Israeli Palestinian conflict is the core of all problems in the Middle East. Ignoring the problem from all sides is the key reason for all our troubles. Palestinians are being ignored since long time ago. Israel is still not recognizing the United resolutions which aim at ending this conflict by having two independent states. It bets on time and negotiating until having nothing to negotiate about with the Palestinian.

=> Read more!

Global Research

The media presented the flight paths of all four hijacked airliners but this data did not come from official FAA records. Its source was unknown but rumored to be the product of a private firm. The FAA was repeatedly asked for information on Flight 77 and its course but steadfastly refused comment on the airliner’s flight. The course shown for Flight 77 was displayed as a dotted line from the Ohio-West Virginia border to Washington. -If FAA was not able to track Flight 77 how was it possible to establish its course?

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Facts-not-Fairies

Note: Although the points are stated briefly, I give in each case the pages in my most recent book---"The New Pearl Harbor Revisited"---where the issue is documented and discussed more extensively.

(1) Although the official account of 9/11 claims that Osama bin Laden ordered the attacks, the FBI does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which he is wanted and has admitted that it "has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11" (NPHR 206-11).

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WMR / Online Journal

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, insider trading “put options” were placed on United and American Airlines stocks. The speculative options on United were placed between September 6 and 7, 2001 and on American on September 10 at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange.

Put options are bets that a stock will fall in value and the owner has the option of buing the stock at a lower rate and sell them at the highest rate, thus earning a quick windfall profit. The put options on the two airlines’ stock was reportedly six times higher than normal. Other unusual “put option” activity was registered with three European reinsurance firms, Germany Re, Swiss Re, AXA of France, in addition to World Trade Center occupant Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

=> Read more!

Alaska leads the US in global warming! As for Polar Bears --Alaska's entire population of Polar Bears will be killed off by the year 2050 unless Palin's policies are stopped now. These developments are concurrent with the increase of oil exploration and drilling in Alaska. Palin is lying about Alaska, about oil, about Polar Bears and about Global Warming.. [See: Washington Post, Polar Bear Population Seen Declining;]

=> Read more!

The Guardian

This was supposed to be my first year of medical school. Instead, I am stuck here in Gaza in my father's house inside the Jabalia refugee camp, with few options and no way out. After I finished high school last year, I decided to become a doctor. Gaza cries out for bone specialists, but the training I need is available only abroad.

=> Read more!

Here we are once again, on the anniversary of the most important world-changing event since Pearl Harbor. Like other crucial historical dates, most people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on that date. I don’t want to get into all of the evidence for or against the government’s version of this day but, suffice to say, I definitely don’t believe what we’ve been told.

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'I was the man paraded blindfolded and handcuffed.'

The Palestine Chronicle

Last night as I lay in bed wishing for sleep, I thought I saw a spider scurry across the moonlit ceiling. I closed my eyes only to have uninvited thoughts intrude in that drifting space between wakefulness and slumber. Images floated by. There in that nether world, shimmering threads criss-crossed the darkness of the unknown luring me to come closer until I saw the faces of millions caught in a gigantic, glistening spider’s web. The faces were my own.

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In 2002, arch-conservative Matthew Scully wrote a book called, Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy, that was universally and uncritically acclaimed by the animal advocacy movement. Because this movement is overwhelmingly single-issue in its focus, and in most cases doesn’t care about a person’s views or politics except how they relate to animals, no one had a problem with the fact that Scully was a senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He wrote some of the key fear-peddling diatribes that got Bush elected and he was recently re-enlisted to help Bush sell the Iraq war “surge” to the American people.

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So far, the world's press had considered only some of the relatively less significant effects of what have become the treasonous implications of the actions of Senator Chris Dodd, Congressman Barney Frank, and Treasury Secretary Paulson. Now, those in the British Empire who may have been gloating, momentarily, should also recognize that the U.S. bomb over which they have gloated, was the bomb on which they have been already sitting at that time.

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"Morning in America" An elderly Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim
security agent the celebration of blind justice? -Or is it simply an admis-
sion of absurdity? ENLARGE

AntiWar

Try to laugh, please. The news is now officially parody and a game for all the family to play.

First question: Why are "we" in Afghanistan? Answer: "To try to help in the country's rebuilding program." Who says so? Huw Edwards, the BBC's principal newsreader. What wags the Welsh are.

Second question: Why are "we" in Iraq? Answer: To "plant a western-style open democracy." Who says so? Paul Wood, the former BBC defense correspondent, and his boss Helen Boaden, director of BBC News. To prove her point, Boaden supplied Medialens.org with 2,700 words of quotations from Tony Blair and George W Bush. Irony? No, she meant it.

=> Read more!

Two-state solution negotiations are still amounting to nothing.

Another failed meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas took place this week, generating more frustration and uncertainty, especially on the Palestinian side.

=> Read more!

When laws become unjust, tyrannical and stupid, everyone becomes a terrorist. The GOP 'national convention is proof of it! Otherwise peaceful demonstrators, exercising free speech guaranteed them by the US Constitution's Bill of Rights have been arrested, jailed, and accused of being terrorists!

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I confess. I believe there is a ruling class that sustains the two-party plutocracy running the nation for the benefit of the rich and corporate class. Their broad strategy is deception and delusion. Tactically, they use government, the mainstream media, the financial services sector, funding of politicians and the two major parties, and many other parts of the culture and economy to maintain their power and control.

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“Adults in Canada believe the consumption of cannabis should be allowed in their country, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies. 53 per cent of respondents support the legalization of marijuana.”

=> Read more!

As far as I know, nobody has focused upon the real roots of the war on terror, which are also the solution to it—American-sponsored terrorism. Paid military extremist types, trained by us to carry-out attack missions upon civilians are terrorists, our terrorists. They attack civilians, often women and children, as an indirect method of warfare, to topple governments who oppose American expansion. Has anybody questioned what military challenge the world would face today, if the US suddenly stopped all of these covert programs that perpetrate most of the world's "terrorism"?

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Last week, hundreds of protesters in St. Paul were arrested outside the Republican National Convention by helmeted police officers wearing black uniforms and full body armor reminiscent of scenes from the 1987 movie, RoboCop featuring: “Part man. Part machine. All Cop. The future of law enforcement.”

=> Read more!

As the world remembers the anniversary of 11 September, Osama Al Zain’s feature documentary Palestine Post 9/11 becomes ever more relevant in providing an analysis of the international system where war became an instrument of politics and priorities and alliances reordered to fight terrorist threats that may have been blown out of all proportions.

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ENLARGE

Smoking Mirrors

There was an old comic routine that the Three Stooges used to do that was called, “Slowly I Turned.” As I look at the world these days that routine comes to mind. A presumably sane person is sent over the edge from hearing a phrase. A ‘presumably’ sane world seems poised for a similar event.

Many people are wondering how it is that the McCain/Palin ticket could be neck and neck with the Obama ticket after eight years of bitter misery and lies at the hands of the worst administration that America has ever known; an administration that wasn’t even legally elected either time. It becomes more absurd when you see that this new ticket agrees the majority of the time with what the former administration did. The former administration is guilty of high crimes and treason. There is more evidence than any court would need to confer the death penalty on these miscreants. Yet… more of the same seems on the way.

=> Read more!

Unknown to most of the world, satellites can perform astonishing and often menacing feats. This should come as no surprise when one reflects on the massive effort poured into satellite technology since the Soviet satellite Sputnik, launched in 1957, caused panic in the U.S. A spy satellite can monitor a person’s every movement, even when the “target” is indoors or deep in the interior of a building or traveling rapidly down the highway in a car, in any kind of weather (cloudy, rainy, stormy). There is no place to hide on the face of the earth.

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Exposing Israel

When members of the National Socialist Party of America (the Nazi Party) declared their intention to march through the predominantly-Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie in 1977, Jewish groups vociferously denounced the “attempted re-enactment of the Nazi nightmare.”

And while the American Nazis claimed the right of free speech in accordance with the First Amendment, the Jews and their supporters claimed that their right to live without intimidation and harassment did override the Nazis’ right to freedom of speech and expression.

Eventually, after exhaustive legal actions by both sides, the Nazis were allowed to parade in Skokie.

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On September 3rd, Republican VP candidate and current Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave a very impressive acceptance speech. She seemed strong, bright, poised, and confident.

=> Read more!

WTC Technical Information Repository
Attn: Stephen Cauffman,
NIST, 100 Bureau Dr., Stop 8611,
Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-8610.

Dear Sirs:

I have examined the documents¹ you provided on your theory of the collapse of WTC 7 due to fires by way of thermal expansion. It is apparent that you have spent a great deal of time, effort, money and thought on this project.

However, like Ptolemy’s Theory of Epicycles, you begin with a faulty and unproven assumption. It is also the least likely assumption based on the evidence. Therefore, although your computer modeling may be intricate, your results are completely speculative and have no connection with the reality of what happened to that building. You are simply “adding epicycles” to a theory based on a false premise.

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The answer to the above question would very much depend on what sorts of issues and constraints are taken into consideration. To be sure, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program has been the focus of much international attention ever since it came to light in 2002, the sort of attention, of course, that has so far led to three devastating rounds of economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United Nations Security Council. Though the Islamic Republic is maintaining that its interest in developing nuclear technology is solely for peaceful purposes, the Bush administration has, albeit unsuccessfully, strived hard to prove otherwise.

=> Read more!

Secret FEMA Plan To Use Pastors as Pacifiers in Preparation For
Martial Law.

Since that day our bumbling boy wonder stole the office of president, some have wondered about the ulterior purposes behind this administration and its nefarious doings. They have not been alone in this mini-quest. Part of the dilemma for anyone who truly wants to understand these actions and re-actions is that 'nothing they do' within the circles of power and greed seems to make any logical sense.

Ordinary criminal schemes are usually easy to decipher. Money trails can be found, and their telltale tracks followed to whatever may have been the point of such an effort. But this 'super-plan' for domination includes the complete destruction of most (or all) that matters - and none of it makes sense to the civilized world.

=> Read more!

LA Progressive

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

=> Read more!

The Palestinian Information Center (PIC)

Dr. Eyad Al-Sarraj, the founder of the Gaza community mental health program, announced Saturday that the international Palestinian campaign to break the siege intends to collect one million signatures from Gaza citizens and submit them in a document to the UN general assembly in order to urge it to take immediate decision to end the unjust siege on the Gaza Strip.

=> Read more!

Vladimir Putin & Gerhard Schröder

Redress

The Associated Press reports that President Bush intends to punish Russia by cancelling an agreement on civilian nuclear exchanges. This is consistent with the hysterical media condemnation of Russia on both sides of the Atlantic as well as that of most of the political class who seize the photo opportunity to pose as statesmen/women, issuing threats and stern warnings to Russia. What is the effect of all this on the Russians and where will it take us? We need some predictive pointers.

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Sarah Barracuda Palin...Political high flyer with the killer instinct

Smoking Mirrors

What shall we talk about today? Hurricanes? Ongoing preparations for upcoming voter fraud? Is Bush drinking again? Three and a half million people went to Google to ask about that… but no- let’s talk about Eskimo Cheesecake; Hurricane Sarah… a lot of people want to know about that and a lot of people don’t want to know about that and as you know, I like to please everyone.

=> Read more!

"illegal American aggression in Pakistan's Frontier region"

"The American people realize this election represents a turning point. In two months they will decide the future direction of our nation. It's a decision to follow one path or another." Rudy Giuliani

The choice we face in November is very clear. It is a choice to continue to support the US terror war, or to turn away from this path of unlimited destruction. This lie-based war is all about terrorism – whether America actually fights terrorism or promotes its use. To find the answer to this conundrum all we have to do is turn our gaze to Pakistan.

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For whom do corporate news media speak?

The State, of course. [1]

The State simply can not allow law-abiding citizens to accuse the State of doing what the State does; so itcommits "preemptive" violence against non-aggressing, liberty-exercising individuals on private property.

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Cheney's special brand of insanity seeks to return the world to 1991, where he left it, while serving under the first bloodthirsty Bush as Sec. Defense. He commissioned the new Defense Planning Guidance package from Wolfowitz when George Bush I refused to move on Saddam Hussein and to take military advantage of the broken Soviet empire. This is the moment he has been planning for since then, taking over the entire Middle Eastern region.

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This headless baby is just one of over 100 civilians massacred by the Israeli army in
Qana 1996. Shimon Peres right.

Once again, we are affronted by another despicable statement by Shimon Peres, the deceitful elderly Israeli president who has spent a lifetime serving the evil Zionist enterprise.

In a statement in Rome on Friday, 5 September, Peres called for barring Hamas from taking part in any future elections in occupied Palestine until the group terminated all forms of resistance to the Nazi-like Israeli occupation.

=> Read more!

Nick honored his mother's request and moved with her back to her home town in Syria, just a few weeks after we met with Amy Goodman for lunch, in April of 2007.

Nick phoned last night from his roof top apartment in Latakia, which overlooks the Mediterranean. He gave up brokering real estate in Fort Lauderdale to work sixteen hours a week for the British Council for Cultural Affairs. He takes the elevator to the first floor classrooms where he teaches English to university students and professionals; mostly by leading them in uninhibited renditions of Beatles songs.

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The Republican Convention was an early Halloween Party. The leaders of the party, including Sen. John McCain, dressing up and pretending to be something they are not. The party in power for eight years is pretending to run away from itself, putting on a false mask in order to continue the masquerade for 60 more days until Election Day.

The Republican Party is so unpopular their disguises are essential for electoral success. If voters see them for what they are then they will be landslided even if the Democrats continue to run their flawed campaign.

=> Read more!

ENLARGE

Dare not to sleep!
By Arnulf Øverland
Translated from Norwegian by Lars-Toralf Storstrand

I was awakened one morning, by the quaintest of dreams
‘twas like a voice, spoken to me
It sounded afar - like an underground stream,
I rose and said: Why do you call me?

Dare not to slumber! Dare not to sleep!
Dare not believe, it was merely a dream!
Yore I was judged.
The gallows were built in the court this evening,
They’ll come for me — 5’ in the morning

=> Read more!

I have just survived the worst and most insidious 'virus/trojan' attack since I got my first PC. Despite the fact that I was loaded to the gills with anti-malware, this one ran and survived the gauntlet, set up shop and had the nerve to threaten to shut me down. The ensuing epic struggle was a 'virtual' Armageddon, a final, desperate battle between me and the Four Horsemen of Digital Apocalypse.

=> Read more!

The series of unfortunate and costly decisions made during the two terms of the Bush administration, combined with economic decline at home, might devastate the US's world standing much sooner than most analysts predict. What was difficult to foresee was that the weakening of US global dominance, spurred by erratic and unwise foreign policy under Bush, would re-ignite the Cold War, to a degree, over a largely distant and seemingly ethnically-based conflict -- that of Georgia and Russia. Who could have predicted a possible association between Baghdad, Kabul and Tbilisi?

=> Read more!

With obvious American approval and encouragement, the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime in Ramallah is seriously persecuting the very people it is supposed to protect and whose interests it claims to safeguard.

=> Read more!

A Munich-based historian Wolfgang Eggert, 46, has launched an Internet petition to demand action on powerful Jewish and Christian cults that want to instigate a nuclear holocaust to fulfill Biblical prophesy.

=> Read more!

Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford and Dick Cheney

The Real Truth Blog

The political infrastructure for martial law in the U.S. is already in place. Apparently unsure that the USAPATRIOT Act(s) and the Military Commissions Act weren’t strong enough, on May 9, 2007, Bush issued a document doubly titled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51″ and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.” This document supposedly outlines the federal government’s plan for maintaining continuity in the face of a “catastrophic emergency.”

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Mount McKinley (also known as Denali). From Denali National Park, Alaska

“There is not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties.” - George C. Wallace

The national conventions of the DemRepublicrats (the Duopoly) are expensive shows. Think $50 million for each one, thanks mostly to corporate donors. Every four years they are used to convey their nominees, and the party’s line, to the faithful in attendance, as well as to voters watching the TV/Cable tubes out in the hinterlands. When Sen. John McCain recently picked Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin as his GOP vice-presidential running mate, the Dems and their elitist media allies, could have let out a big collective yawn. Said something, like: “Sarah Who?” Then, they could have went back to sleep, like they have been doing the last eight years under the reign of the Bush-Cheney Gang. Instead, they overreacted to the choice--badly!

=> Read more!

Rolling Stone

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it — thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port — to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture — the crack cocaine of capitalism.

=> Read more!

Dick Cheney - proud mass-murderer

Bzangy Groink

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has condemned what he called Russia’s “illegitimate” attempt to change Georgia’s borders last month.

Mr Cheney added that Russia’s actions during the recent conflict with Georgia had cast doubt on its reliability as an international partner.
(Source: BBC News)

This is the same Dick Cheney that said that the butchering of over one million Iraqis by illegally invading US forces was, in his words, a “major success.” (Source: ABC)

Was Cheney so worried about borders when his country invaded a sovereign, non-aggressor nation, committing a war crime?

=> Read more!

Global Research

As details of the larger strategic picture emerge over what is at stake in the Georgia and larger Caucasus crisis it is becoming clearer that Moscow is determined to roll back not to the borders of Stalin and the Cold War of 1948. What Putin and now Medvedev have begun is a process of defusing the highly dangerous NATO expansion, led by the Washington warhawks since the end of the Cold War in 1990.

Had events progressed as Washington had planned up until the surprise rejection of NATO membership from no less than 10 European NATO member countries, including Germany and France, at the April NATO Summit, Georgia would today have been in the admission process to NATOization along with Ukraine. That would have opened the door to full-scale encirclement of Russia militarily and economically.

=> Read more!

More than half the tropical rainforests are gone and at the rate we’re going, we will
have reduced chopped, hacked, sawed, dozed, and burned our way to the virtual
eradication of the “lungs of the planet” by the year 2030.

I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers. –Ymber Delecto

What a sorry lot we humans are, particularly those of us immersed in the “American Way of Life.” Killing is indeed our business. And business has never been better.

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What words can I conjure to give meaning to the visions that dominate my brain, images of evil and bloodlust, consuming the flesh of an unwary people. I see the rapidly approaching epic, the cataclysmic convulsion of a violent racist culture, stabbing feverishly at its own womb, hoping to abort the birth of the new man of peace and unity.

=> Read more!

The US-led coalition in Afghanistan said it had 'no information to give' regarding the
allegation (Sky News)

Creative-I

I love it! I just came across an article, “Did We Just Invade Pakistan?” but you’ll search in vain for any headline in the mainstream media that even comes close to calling it a US invasion of Pakistan.

This is how the BBC reported it,

“Pakistan fury over ‘US assault’
Pakistan has summoned the US ambassador to protest at an alleged cross-border raid which officials say killed at least 15 villagers in the north-west.”

Talk about double-standards!

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Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, opens his remarkable study of Jewish nationalism quoting Karl W. Deutsch:

A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours [1]

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Smoking Mirrors

I’ve been away for awhile… maybe a month or more… maybe I’ve always been away and just drop in on occasion with a new personality for the next period of engagement. It’s hard to know what’s what. Look at the problem people have with reality. They must have a problem with it because they will accept anything but and they generally prefer to be told what is happening rather than look into the situation themselves. By the title of this piece and by your own observations, I guess you know I’m talking about significantly more than half of the population.

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Renamed and back, but first a personal note. Post-Katrina, writing about "The New Orleans Aftermath and (its) Ugly Glimpse of the Future" turned this retiree into a writer and radio host.

Now three years later, Gustav threatened and, on August 30, got New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to hype the risk, scare the public, and order a dusk-to-dawn curfew and evacuation of the city's 239,000 residents ahead of what he called "the mother of all storms." Many hundreds of thousands more along the Gulf coast. "Nearly two million people from Texas to Alabama," according to an August 31 New York Times report. Thankfully without cause as "the storm of the century" made landfall as a Category 2, weakened to a tropical depression on September 2, and Louisianans were spared the worst of their fears.

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Attiqullah prays in the graveyard (NBC News)

Information Clearing House

"I thought American forces were in Afghanistan for our security," said Attiqullah, his voice trembling. "I could never have imagined that they would bomb my wedding party. They killed my entire family. I will never forgive them."

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McCain's choice was motivated by the fact that 'age' had already become an issue and he hoped to blunt it. If McCain had chosen well, it might have been unfair to ask: what if the old codger should die in office? Now, it is irresponsible NOT to ask that question. McCain's Palin pick --focus group designed to blunt the criticism in the bud --has backfired. The campaign is now all about age.

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I write this testimony not just about me but about my shipmates as well, what they have told me about themselves. I look in the mirror and I am them. How did we get here together with our lives so intertwined when we all went our different ways, not to see each other for as much as 20 years or more and yet we are the same? I have walked in your shoes, brothers. I was a 20-year old sailor, loving life, enjoying seeing the world. I had great shipmates, family and friends. I was just an all around red-blooded American young man.

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Click here to read Part I

The reality is that George W. Bush and his minions have created the milieu that has brought the world to “the lowest common denominator.” It was Bush who said, “Damn the United Nations, damn what the inspectors say, damn international law, damn the opinion of the rest of the world, damn the argument that war should only be used as a last resort. And most of all, damn the truth!” The question is why didn’t they see this milieu coming?

The answer evolves from the arrogant doctrine of “neo-conservatism” (hereinafter neo-fascism) subscribed to by the Bush dictatorship.

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The Populist Party

The only demonstrably true statement George Bush has made in his sorry eight years in office is that the Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper." While it wasn't the point he was making, when he reportedly shouted this at a couple of Republican members of Congress who were questioning the constitutionality of some of his actions, he was right that the nation's founding document is only worth the parchment and ink it's composed of, unless people use it and defend it.

I was a speaker last week at an anti-war event sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County, Progressive Democrats of America and Democrats For America in Lincroft, NJ, near the shore. It was a great group of activist Americans who want to see this country end the Iraq War, turn away from war as a primary instrument of policy, and start dealing with the pressing human needs of the country and the world.

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SF Gate Chronicle

The numbers don't add up.

$3.8 billion: The initial Help America Vote Act allocation that California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen said "pushed many counties into buying electronic systems that ... were not properly reviewed or tested."

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Middle East Times

NATO guarantees that an attack against one member country is an attack against all are no longer what they used to be. Had Georgia been inside NATO, a number of European countries would no longer be willing to consider it an attack against their own soil.

For Russia, the geopolitical stars were in perfect alignment. The United States was badly overstretched and had no plausible way to talk tough without coming across as empty rhetoric. American resources have been drained by the Iraq and Afghan wars, and the war on terror. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it, Washington must now choose between its "pet project" Georgia and a partnership with Moscow.

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I don't throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things. - Gordon Gekko

In the 1990s, Wall Street brokers told average investors to buy stocks and mutual funds in the high-tech sector because high-tech stocks were the next big thing and investors would make a killing with them. And average investors did-- for a while.

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Online Journal

Although Americans have access to the greatest selection of information sources in the world, including books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and the Internet, the frequency of the news cycle has increased to the point where we have forgotten that our president and vice president have committed horrendous war crimes, or we may have missed the fact as it flashed by.

Most of us may have been fleetingly aware in 2006 that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were lying to us about their reasons for the Iraq War, which caused the murder and maiming of tens of thousands of our American troops and the waste of billions of our tax dollars. We elected a majority of Democrats to Congress to hold them accountable; however, the Democratic leadership immediately announced that impeachment was off the table and it has been business as usual ever since.

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Amy Goodman Arrested at RNC (Video)

Detain This

Thereby Covering Themselves -For whom do corporate news media speak? -The State, of course. [1]

The State simply can not allow law-abiding citizens to accuse the State of doing what the State does; so it commits “preemptive” violence against non-aggressing, liberty-exercising individuals on private property. And when independent media or dissenting public intellectuals threaten to expose these State crimes, the apparatus ”preempts” them too.

But these illicit acts can eventually go “viral,” thus requiring massive PR (Propaganda Reconnaissance) to whitewash the State’s crimes against the people. That’s where corporate-statist news media come in. They do the same thing as the government, only on a different level: they commit preemptive information warfare on the minds of their unsuspecting audience, numbing the consciences of those who trust them and inhibiting the will to recognize — much less resist — federal tyranny.

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It is easier for evildoers to lower others to their depths than it is for those who do good to elevate others to their heights.

The most graphic illustration of this has been the abysmal legacy of George W. Bush and his cabal of criminals. In a few short years, his dictatorship has reduced the once hallowed principles of the United States to their “lowest common denominator.” And the rest of the world has followed.

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"US military personnel were in South Ossetia during the attack..."

Was an independent Ossetia inevitable after Kosovo or is it an US election ruse gone wrong.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a gritty, straight-talking 30-minute interview with CNN this week in Russian. It was not translated or reported on widely in the US media, which is a shame. He charged that US military personnel were in South Ossetia during the attack, and lectured about such topics as Ossetia’s long membership in the Russian empire (since 1801) and Ossetians’ age-old resentment of Georgian chauvinism, especially following the 1917 Russian revolution and the 1990 declaration of Georgian independence. A South Ossetian legislator has already mooted the possibility that it will eventually become part of the Russian Federation.

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Ancient One sat in the shade of his tree in front of his cave. Red People came to him and he said to Red People, "Tell me your vision."

And Red People answered, "The elders have told us to pray in this manner, and that manner, and it is important that only we pray as we have been taught for this has been handed down to us by the elders." -"Hmmmm," said the Ancient One.

Then Black People came to him and he said to Black People, "Tell me your vision."

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ENLARGE

In a court of law, once you are caught lying, you are through. The judge is no longer listening to you, for you have ruined your credibility in his eyes and you will never regain his trust again. Case closed, you lose.

And so it is with the western corporate media, caught lying once again by trying to pass off film footage of the destroyed Ossetian capital Tskhinvali and claim it was Gori, in Georgia, and a result of Russian bombing. Their history of lying is all too familiar to most: weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iraq was behind 9-11, Sadaam’s people were throwing babies out of incubators. Now the latest, they are trying to paint Russia as an aggressor, as a country violating international law, knowing full well that both are bald faced lies.

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ENLARGE

"Needless each side will say the other is in control, but when you see the disproportionate influence of Jewish people in the think tanks, the media, Hollywood, the banks, the Cabinet of the American President, is it not fair to ask why such a small group has so much influence? Is it not fair to ask that even before you ask why does a group, which has many members who are loyal to a foreign state before that of the government they presumably serve, the same ones who are running the foreign policy of that government? Dual loyalty is a valid concern, particularly when it comes to people serving in government."

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CounterPunch

The Lobby as Juggernaut

The Israel Lobby Juggernaut scares the hell out of people. It tries to crush those who stand up against them; some suffer but persist, and the pragmatics survive by changing their tune. Nobody is immune; reporters, editors, columnists, professors, academics, politicians.... Everyone is labeled “anti-Semite” when s/he criticizes the power of the Israel Lobby or talks about the misery of the Palestinian people. Even a greeting kiss upsets them! And enquiries are never allowed to be held into Israel’s crimes.

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"One nation above others is an obstacle - Russia. It's powerful and can't be
intimidated like most others."

Prior to entering WW II, US strategists had a clear aim in mind at its conclusion - to hold unchallengeable power in a new post-war global system: military, economic and political in a "Grand Area" encompassing the West and Far East. Essentially most parts outside the communist bloc and exploiting it under disarming rhetoric like being "selfless advocates of freedom for colonial peoples (and an) enemy of imperialism." Championing "world peace (also) through multinational control."

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'A soldier is still responsible for his conduct.' (Photo: via Google)

Palestine Chronicle

Eighteen-year-old Sahar Vardi is currently in an Israeli military prison. She is being punished for the crime of refusing to be conscripted into the Israeli military.

A few weeks before her imprisonment she wrote Israel's Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, explaining her decision to become a conscientious objector:

"I have been to the occupied Palestinian territories many times, and even though I realize that the soldier at the checkpoint is not responsible for Israel's oppressive policies, that soldier is still responsible for his conduct."

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"The Global Elite"

New Dawn Mag

Food protests and riots have swept more than 20 countries in the past few months. On 2 April, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told a meeting in Washington that there are 33 countries where price hikes could cause widespread social unrest. The UN World Food Programme called the crisis the silent tsunami, with wheat prices almost doubling in the past year alone, and stocks falling to the lowest level since the perilous post-World War II days.

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Recently I’ve come across a few articles discussing the effects of inflation on the global economy. Many countries are facing rapidly rising prices:

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This election is not about Hillary supporters or glass ceilings. It is about a nation on the edge of total disaster.

Maybe it’s genetic, but Sarah Palin sure is good with a gun. It seems that daddy loved bringing down those nasty Alaskan brown bears in a town where little Sarah first learned to alarm the local moose community. But trust me, I’m not knocking moose stew; it might be a really good meal.

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Four decades ago, Israel banned The Beatles fearing their revolutionary message of love and peace would corrupt their youth.

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