Je pense que beaucoup de gens manquent d'informations à propos de Julian Assange et de qui il est véritablement.
Parce qu’Assange semble à prime abord attaquer le pouvoir en place, dont particulièrement celui des États-Unis, il parait être un contre-pouvoir du côté de la population. Mais en regardant cela de plus près, bien que certaines informations rendues publiques font mal aux É-U et l’armée US, il fini par justifier la politique de ces derniers en donnant du crédit à l’Al Qaïda qui n’existe pas, justifiant ainsi la guerre contre le terrorisme et les occupations militaires du Moyen-Orient; il donne du poids à la version officielle du 9/11 en discréditant le mouvement pour la vérité, ce qui est une justification de plus pour la guerre contre le terrorisme et les mesures répressives et liberticides à la maison; et il associe faussement l’Iran à des actes répréhensibles, justifiant ainsi une attaque éventuelle contre ce pays.
Ces indices, et beaucoup d’autres, mènent à penser que Julian Assange est un « asset » de la CIA. En paraissant nuire au pouvoir des É-U, il peut plus facilement contribuer à renforcer l’agenda de l’élite.
Assange n’est pas un contre-pouvoir mais un nouvel outil du pouvoir.
Wiki-Leaks, c’est de l’intox comme disent les français. C’est l’art de mélanger du vrai avec du faux. Avec du vrai, on peut faire avaler des couleuvres à la population, et ça peut servir plusieurs objectifs. C’est pas innocent comme manoeuvre. Comment des USA si puissant disent craindre des révélations venant d’un site quand ils ne sont pas foutu de fermer de force ce site ? Ils ne faisaient qu’attendre ? C’est le point faible de l’histoire. C’est une histoire typique de False Flag. L’art de se faire des Jokers à la Ben Laden, made in CIA.
Beaucoup d’observateurs se posent la même question et particulièrement celle là : pourquoi ne révèle-t-il jamais rien sur le coup monté du 11/9 ? Est-ce parce qu’il a choisi d’en supprimer toute l’importance ?
Serait-il l’acteur d’une énorme manipulation de déstructuration contrôlée pour nous faire tourner la tête vers des faits moins graves ou plus banaux que ces attentats qui sont pourtant matière à donner prétextes à tous les malheurs du nouveau siècle ; que ces attentats qui sont la pierre de touche d’une énorme conspiration oligarchique, l’outil de la vérité qu’il ne faut laisser à aucun prix dans les mains du public ? Au milieu d’un lac de vérité, la lacune devient îlot de mensonge.
Toujours est-il que les faits qui sont exposés, soient-ils le produit d’une opération à dommages calculés –qu’on pourrait très bien imputer à un type du genre Zbigniew Brzezinski qui a très bien compris l’évolution de la conscience du public mondial, ne manqueront pas de nourrir ou de confirmer les argumentations de ceux qui se battent contre le nouvel ordre mondial, même s’ils servent aussi parfois la cause de cet ennemi.
Le nettoyage viendra par le haut, hélas, pour que le bas ne puisse pas récolter ni mettre à profit la trop belle évidence en menant ces suspects devant la justice.
La reprise en main de l’information qui a tout juste commencé –cf. sur Fox News, les propos d’un Glenn Beck se victimisant, les confessions de « Geraldo at Large » sur le 11/9 et les affirmations du lieutenant-colonel Anthony Shaffer et de l’ancien membre de la CIA Michael Scheuer– montre bien qu’une tentative de nettoyage contrôlée va se poursuivre afin de doubler le public dans sa prise de conscience et de tenter de le dévier à nouveau loin de la vérité au prochain virage.
Le choix de la grande presse de se faire l’écho des révélations de Wiklileaks va dans ce sens. Au peuple de rester éveillé et de ne plus se laisser conduire systématiquement par la manipulation de pensée des maîtres médiatiques.
Assange: « I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud. »
Julian Assange’s comments regarding 9/11 stick out like a sore thumb given that this « whistleblowers’ whistleblower » is now feted with the title of « the most dangerous man alive ». The reality is that the CIA could nullify the threat posed by Assange and his operation any which way it wants. Assange dismissing 9/11 as a « false conspiracy » strongly suggests that that hasn’t happened yet because he is useful to the PTB in the form of controlled opposition.
« I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud. »
Webmaster’s Commentary:
More reasons to conclude that Wikileaks is a very clever propaganda operation. Well.. maybe not all that clever.
“It seems that these [revelations] are made upon the order of the US,” Secretary-General of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights Mohammad-Javad Larijani said on Monday at the summit for reviewing the human rights situation in the US.
“The message of Wikileaks documents is that the Iraqi people have been tortured by Iraq’s security forces, and the only wrongdoing of Americans is that they witnessed the incidents and remained silent,” IRNA quoted Larijani as saying.
“This is while the US had the main role in these incidents and is the defendant,” the Iranian diplomat added.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
I tend to think Iran is correct. Wikileaks is a very clever propaganda stunt. And the proof is rather simple. Nowhere in those supposed leaked documents is there any mention of Israelis taking part on the torture of captured prisoners, and yet we know that this did indeed happen.
The « leaked » documents also support the US agenda against Iran in numerous ways, from the claims that Iran is backing the Iraqi opposition (not that anyone would blame them if they were) to the already discredited claim that the three « hikers » were captured by Iranians on the Iraqi side of the border!
Comme par magie, les fuites appuient une démonisation de l’Iran et miraculeusement, Israël est complètement blanchie, le 9/11 totalement évité. Que des coïncidences, j’imagine. Israël a attaqué des navires d’aide humanitaire en pleines eaux internationales, mais AUCUNE MENTION de cela.
Had WikiLeaks didn’t exist, Israel would have had to invent it. The massive leak of US diplomatic documents produces a clear, unequivocal picture: The whole world, and not only Israel, is terrified by the Iranian nuclear threat.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
I think Israel did invent WikiLeaks. After all, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insists there is no 9-11 conspiracy, and not a single criticism of Israel appears anywhere in this latest dump; an impossibility in the wake of the lethal Israeli attack on the aid flotilla last May!
Israel agreed to ease its restrictions on goods and materials allowed into Gaza following its attack on a flotilla of aid boats in May, in which nine Turkish activists were killed. Since then the import of food and many other consumer items has resumed, although there is still a ban on exports and severe restrictions on construction materials. Israel argues that the latter could be used by militants for military purposes.
Tony Blair, the representative of the Middle East Quartet of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia, echoed the call for Israel to accelerate its easing of its blockade in an interview at the weekend. “There has been significant change in Gaza, but not nearly as much as we need,” he told the Associated Press.
Webmaster's Commentary:
It is important to note that WikiLeaks' dump of diplomatic cables contains nothing which is critical of Israel, yet clearly such diplomatic traffic had to be occurring in the months since Israel's attack on the aid flotilla. This glaring omission by itself proves WikiLeaks is an Israeli propaganda operation.
Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn't think all the leaked information coming out of Wikileaks is a result of Army PFC Bradley Manning, as a matter of fact he suspects a foreign intelligence service may be providing the more embarrassing leaks.
Along with the obvious pander to Israel's self-image and the pushing for war with Iran, the WikiLeaks dump did indeed contain some minor embarrassing revelations, and I think the message from Israel to the US Government is clear; "You think that was bad? Do as you are told, or we will use WikiLeaks to rip the lid off of 9-11 and put the entire blame on the US Government, and the public will believe us because the story will come from "independent" WikiLeaks, backed up by the US media Israel bribes with millions of dollars, and we in Israel will have deniability for the expose'!"
Wikileaks head Julian Assange told Forbes that the next leak will be regarding a major American bank. He said that Wikileaks plans to release the documents early next year.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Well, this gives the banks enough time to meet Julian's price to NOT leak the really juicy stuff, doesn't it?
Seriously, I think Julian is desperate to distract from the growing awareness that WikiLeaks is an Israeli propaganda operation, and this "tease" of revelations yet to come is just a feint.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security seized the domain names of roughly 70 websites for copyright infringement. There were no warrants, no court orders, and no court hearings before a judge. The DHS simply used their authority to grab websites on the basis they are perceived threats (apparently Osama Been Deadforawhile makes a good living with bootleg DVDs).
So, if WikiLeaks is really exposing dangerous classified diplomatic cables that are a threat to the United States, why didn't DHS seize the WikiLeaks domain? Assange was dropping hints of a major leak to come. If WikiLeaks was a real whistleblower, DHS could shut them down by grabbing their domain name just as easily as it shut down the copyright violators.
But they didn't.
The dog did not bark!
WikiLeaks is a fake whistleblower, an attempt to repackage old ABCNNBBCBS lies in a new form that the public will swallow.
There is no other possible explanation for DHS not to seize the domain as a real threat, especially since Assange was not shy about dropping hints as to what was to come!
“The principal deficiency of Wikileaks is its lack of transparency about its operators and funds, characteristics of spies and secret societies up to no good and whose main purpose is to hide from public accountability and conceal corruption and criminality.
Such organizations always use a noble purpose and claim secrecy is needed to protect supporters. In practice the secrecy protects the principal beneficiaries, the operators and sources of funds, and supporters are sacrificed to protect the continuation of the enterprise.
Iran’s president has dismissed as propaganda the leaking of US cables detailing Arab calls for Washington to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the release by the Wikileaks website of thousands of extracts from US diplomatic messages was simply psychological warfare against Iran.
He said the release would not affect Iran’s relations with other countries.
WMR has learned from Asian intelligence sources that there is a strong belief in some Asian countries, particularly China and Thailand, that the website Wikileaks, which purports to publish classified and sensitive documents while guaranteeing anonymity to the providers, is linked to U.S. cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations, as well as to Mossad’s own cyber-warfare activities.
CIA, Mossad, allez savoir…
Comme par magie, les fuites appuient une démonisation de l’Iran et miraculeusement, Israël est complètement blanchie, le 9/11 totalement évité. Que des coïncidences, j’imagine. Israël a attaqué des navires d’aide humanitaire en pleines eaux internationales, mais AUCUNE MENTION de cela.
Had WikiLeaks didn’t exist, Israel would have had to invent it. The massive leak of US diplomatic documents produces a clear, unequivocal picture: The whole world, and not only Israel, is terrified by the Iranian nuclear threat.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
I think Israel did invent WikiLeaks. After all, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insists there is no 9-11 conspiracy, and not a single criticism of Israel appears anywhere in this latest dump; an impossibility in the wake of the lethal Israeli attack on the aid flotilla last May!
Iran’s president has dismissed as propaganda the leaking of US cables detailing Arab calls for Washington to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the release by the Wikileaks website of thousands of extracts from US diplomatic messages was simply psychological warfare against Iran.
He said the release would not affect Iran’s relations with other countries.
Turkey has been pissed off at Israel because the IDF illegally boarded some of their vessels in international waters that were attempting to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza and they killed some 9 Turkish citizens in the process.
So of course, Wikileaks calls the Turks “terrorists”. This of course after Wikileaks released some “secrets” that claimed the US has only indirectly caused the deaths of a mere 15,000 Iraqi civilians over and above the “official” number and that Iran is also “supporting the terrorists” in Iraq.
Israel expressed satisfaction on Monday after the mass release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, saying it proved Israel’s position on Iran was consistent — in public and in private.
Surely readers will recall Times reporter Andrew Revkin’s inspiring statement of principle: « The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here. »
Interested readers may want to compare and contrast Revkin’s statement of principle with the editorial note posted by the Times on the WikiLeaks documents this afternoon. Today the Times cites the availability of the documents elsewhere and the pubic interest in their revelations as supporting their publication by the Times. Both factors applied in roughly equal measure to the Climategate emails.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
If one needs further proof that today’s WikiLeaks document dump is really a propaganda operation, one need only contrast how the media is treating these documents compared to other genuine leaks in the past.
The Climategate emails were a real leak, one which exposed the reality that the push for carbon taxes and a global environmental authority was built on a massive fraud, one that is rather obvious as we head into our second record setting winter in a row. But the New York Times refused to cover that story on the grounds that the source documents were illegally obtained. Even at the time this seemed a strange editorial position to take, since the New York Times had not hesitated to report on the Pentagon Papers, even though they too were leaked.
And here we are today with the New York Times excerpting and interpreting sections of this WikiLeaks document dump, even though the government maintains that these are illegally obtained, provided by an organization which maintains there was no 9-11 conspiracy, that Osama bin Laden is still alive and running Al Qaeda, and that WMDs were actually found in Iraq!
This isn’t news; it is a sales job. The New York Times is trying to sell you a load of propaganda disguised as a leak in the hopes that claims you would discard as obvious lies in the corporate media might be more successful if presented as coming from an organization hostile to the US Government. But again, with WikiLeaks supporting the official stories of 9-11, Osama, and WMDs, it is clear that the hostility between WikiLeaks and Government is about as genuine as that seen on pro wrestling!
And I note that despite the diplomatic crisis triggered by Israel’s attack on the aid flotilla last May, not one document critical of Israel appears anywhere in the millions of cables WikiLeaks is feeding you all.
Et si l’opération servirait à déclarer l’Internet comme étant une menace à la sécurité nationale des États-Unis pour justifier la mise à mort de la liberté d’expression et l’échange d’information sur le l’Internet et donc imposer un contrôle de celui-ci ou même sa fermeture?
Wikileaks, me thinks, is the Hegelian Dialectic, the Problem/Reaction/Solution for the coming shutdown of the internet, and dictatorial assault on free speech and targeting all of us, the new media, as enemies of the state. This is what the Rockefellers and Sen. Joe Lieberman want, being big fans of the Chinese model of a kill switch. If you believe the media darling and « whistleblower » Czar Assange is genuine, I have some property and a business offer to sell this corporation to you, Brewster Jennings and Associates. Valerie Plame would be your contact for more info.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer/Able Danger said tonight, « Let me state again – and be clear here – I do not believe WiliLeaks is a legitimate whistle-blowing organization – they seems more focused on being disruptive, than working to enhance oversight of/or resolution of key military and diplomatic issues, as an objective. » He’s in good company agreeing with me. ; )
Cela semble l’explication la plus plausible expliquant la notoriété d’Assange, soit de fournir un prétexte pour réglementer l’Internet, limiter la liberté d’expression des utilisateurs, et donner aux autorités des pouvoirs accrus en la matière.
Les médias jouent leur rôle en essayant de nous convaincre que les révélations d’Assange compromettent la sécurité nationale de divers pays.
Un truc qui résume bien la situation. Désolé pour ceux qui ne lisent pas l’anglais…
Wikileaks, following much media fanfare (reason for suspicion right there) has just released a huge number of documents supposedly leaked to WikiLeaks and no other websites’. The media is denouncing this as a threat to the United States while US politicians wring their hands and wonder when they will be free of the curse of the First Amendment and all that troublesome nonsense about Freedom of Speech. Many observers think this is a propaganda set up and that neither Julian Assange or WikiLaeks should be taken at face value. After all, Julian Assange keeps insisting there was no 9-11 conspiracy and the 9-11 truth movement a « distraction. » Apparently Julian Assange has patented conspiracy and nobody else may expose one except himself!
As for the present batch of documents, again it is a rehash of stories already known to the blog-o-sphere. Even those people who did not know US diplomats spy on their United Nations counterparts did not find it surprising or in any way a new idea.
So what is the real purpose of Assange’s little charade? Propaganda.
Propaganda is like rat poison. 95% of it is tasty, healthy food. But the purpose is to get you to swallow the poison. The same is true of the WikiLeaks document dump. The bait are all these old stories which we already knew about, used to convince us that the entire pile is « tasty, healthy food, » except that it isn’t. Buried in the pile of delicious, albeit past the expiration date morsels are the bits of poison which the US Government knows you will no longer accept at face value from the controlled media, but hope you will eat if handed to you by a con artist posing as hostile to the government.
So, given that 95% of the current WikiLeaks is really old news, as a public service I will point out the bits of poison that Julian hopes you will eat.
1. Iran is bad so you should all want to kill them.
2. Saudi Arabia is bad because they are funding Al Qaeda so you should all want to kill them.
3. North Korea is bad because they gave really long range missiles to Iran for Iran to put their nuclear warheads in, so you should all want to kill them.
4. China is messing with your computers, so you should all want to kill them.
That about sums it up. Oh yes, there is nothing negative about Israel in all these diplomatic messages, an impossibility given the lethal Israeli attack on the Aid Flotilla last May. That suggests who Assange really works for.
Funny thing about rat poison. After a while the rats learn to eat the food and leave the poison behind.
. Vidéo: Une véritable solution pour la sécurité dans les aéroports, au lieu des porno-scanners
Voici une solution de loin meilleure que les scanners pornographiques. En Irak, l'armée US s'est débarrassé des scanners corporels parce qu'ils les ont jugé INUTILES! Ils ont recours aux chiens pisteurs d'explosifs.
Voilà une solution qui préserve la dignité humaine tout en élevant considérablement le niveau de sécurité.
Le coût d'un scanner est de $150 000 alors qu'un chien entrainé coute $8500!
L'Autre Monde 25 novembre 2010: L’étau de la tyrannie se ressert, TSA, économie et actualité Pour écouter, ou pour télécharger, simplement cliquer sur le lien ici: L'Autre Monde 25 novembre 2010 90 min / Radio de l'UQAM, CHOQ FM
Actualité mondiale, quels sont les véritables risques de terrorisme, la TSA, retour sur les derniers développement dans le dossier de l'économie et mesures totalitaires frappant la population qui est considérée être l'ennemi d'État.
Soyez de la partie les jeudis dès 11h sur les ondes de CHOQ FM, la radio officielle de l'UQÀM, l'alternative à Montréal et dans le monde!
***Hyperliens vers les sources des informations discutées sur l'émission d'aujourd'hui:
“Our concern is that the public not confuse the people implementing the policies with the people who developed the policies,” said Sharon Pinnock, the union's director of membership and organization."
Webmaster's Commentary:
You know, they already tried that "We are only following orders" excuse once before.
With the recent uproar of the new TSA enhanced screening and full body scanners it wasn’t any surprise when a senior ranking American Airlines insider confided that their customer service complaint line has been besieged with TSA complaints.
An opt-in program that charges airline passengers to bypass airport security lines is being resuscitated more than two years after its abrupt shutdown. The CLEAR program re-launched in Orlando last week, and is preparing to start up in Denver.
After submitting fingerprints and iris scans, members are issued a CLEARcard with these biometric data. Kiosks at participating airports then allow them to confirm their identity and “speed through security.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I wonder if this is the TRUE reason for the TSA outrages we are suffering? Are they trying to condition us to accept this desired outcome as a welcome relief to porno groping and scanning?
There was a bank run in Ireland on Wednesday. LCH Clearnet, a London based clearinghouse, surprised the markets by announcing it would increase margin requirements on Irish debt by 15 percent. That's all it took to send investors fleeing for the exits.
So, the Irish government could have let the bankers and bondholders suffer the losses, but decided to bail them out and pass the debts along to the taxpayers instead. Sound familiar? Only, in this case, the obligations exceed the country's ability to pay. Austerity measures alone will not fix the problem. Eventually, the debt will have to be restructured and the losses written down. Here's another clip from Kelly's article:
"As a taxpayer, what does a bailout bill of €70 billion mean? It means that every cent of income tax that you pay for the next two to three years will go to repay Anglo’s (bank) losses, every cent for the following two years will go on AIB, and every cent for the next year and a half on the others. In other words, the Irish State is insolvent: its liabilities far exceed any realistic means of repaying them....
Guess what, Ireland. Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen just sold you down the IMF river. Why? To bail out bank bondholders and giant European banks. Of course! That's what governments are for these days, apparently. And they'll tell you that the bailout policy is all for you own good. And for little old ladies and pensioners and orphans. Just don't tell that to the cancer patients.
Anglo-Irish Bank did not represent a systemic risk to the Irish economy, it wasn’t a high street bank like AIB or the Bank of Ireland. If it had been allowed to go the way of Lehmans the only losers would have been shareholders and bondholders. The Irish state stepped in and nationalised a bank that was basically run by crooks lending to property speculators.
The Irish people are taking losses that should rightly have been shouldered by bondholders.
Every child in Ireland is being bequeathed a huge debt at birth to protect the interests of foreign, mainly German, bondholders – why? Guido was once a bond trader, it was always understood that sometimes the bond issuer defaults.
That is the risk investors take.
So why is Dublin’s political establishment so keen to protect foreign investors at the expense of future generations? Guido has obtained the list of foreign Anglo-Irish bondholders as at the close of business tonight. These are the people whom Dublin’s politicians really seem to care about:
and International Monetary Fund. It's the second emergency rescue package organized by the Eurozone, after similar measures were taken for Greece. RT talks to Sam Bowman, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
A federal Europe, with more sovereign power ceded to the centre, is the best defence against any future crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund has declared.
Warning that "the sovereign crisis is not over", Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF managing director and a likely French presidential candidate, called on the European Union to move responsibility for fiscal discipline and structural reform to a central body that is free from the influences of member states.
Critical Thinking Alert: Didn't Globalisation cause these problems, and isn't the solution to move back to de centralised poliicies??
What is the most immediate danger for 300 million Americans from the limitless bailout of the most politically powerful special interest group in America, the bankers of Wall Street? Author and financial expert Daniel R. Amerman, CFA, illustrates the very real danger of a 12% to 28% plunge in the standard of living for the average family, and shows how it could occur in a matter of weeks or months.
Huge cracks are finally appearing in the Wall Street mortgage mega fraud. Here's a fresh deposition video of a single loan processor who fraudulently signed 5,000+ loan documents PER DAY.
Yes, you read that right: FIVE THOUSAND.
Multiply him by a few hundred (or thousand) and you'll have some sense of how deep the hole Wall Street cut into the legitimate economy with its massive, multi-year, top down directed mortgage securities fraud.
Today, most American students don't even understand what a central bank is, much less that the battle over central banks is one of the most important themes in U.S. history. The truth is that our nation was birthed in the midst of a conflict over taxation and the control of our money. Central banking has played a key role in nearly all of the wars that America has fought. Presidents that resisted the central bankers were shot, while others shamefully caved in to their demands. Our current central bank is called the Federal Reserve and it is about as "federal" as Federal Express is. The truth is that it is a privately-owned financial institution that is designed to ensnare the U.S. government in an endlessly expanding spiral of debt from which there is no escape.
Unlike QE1, QE2 is not about saving the banks. It's about saving the country from Greek-like austerity measures necessitated by a burgeoning federal debt [and its associated interest].
...QE2 is not a "helicopter drop" of money on the banks or on Main Street; it is the Fed funding the government virtually interest free, allowing the government to do what it needs to do without driving up the interest bill on the federal debt. The Fed failed to revive the economy with QE1, but it may yet redeem itself with QE2. QE2 could set a bold precedent prompting other countries to break the chains of debt peonage and fund their governments with their own national credit.
In FY 2010, 46% ($414B) of our federal personal income taxes ($899B) went to pay the interest on the federal debt. If folks are concerned about taxes, they should be as, or more, concerned about UNNECESSARY interest paid to private banksters. In other words, we should have a PUBLIC central bank that creates money interest-free, which is effectively what the Fed is reluctantly doing with QE2.
Charles Ortel, managing director of Newport Value Partners, tells Accuracy in Media in an exclusive interview that the Federal Reserve plan to buy $600 billion of U.S. Government securities “borders on the criminal” because the impact will be the devaluation of the dollar by 20 percent and the destruction of $10 trillion of household net worth.
“Any potential benefit to GDP and incomes [from the Fed’s action] pales in comparison to the wealth loss (in real terms) and to the damage done to foreign investor confidence,” Ortel says.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The Fed just declared war on America, and in this war there is little difference between red ink and blood.
It's one thing to understand that the housing bubble is over and times are tough. It's something else entirely to see it in BRIGHT LIVING COLOR on a chart.
One glance at this beauty shows that consumers have barely begun the process of deleveraging. It's going to be several more years before household balance sheets are repaired and ready to assume more debt.
The age of the plain old credit score is gone, says a report at the Wall Street Journal, and it's been replaced by ever more intrusive efforts by banks and credit agencies to gauge exactly what you're worth, and what you can pay.
Webmaster's Commentary:
As we reach the age of the "cashless society", every financial institution on the planet may well know everything about about your financial picture, even without your permission.
Regulators shut down four more banks Friday, bringing the 2010 total to 143, topping the 140 shuttered last year and the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago.
Webmaster's Commentary:
One cannot possibly look at numbers like these, and utter the phrase "economic recovery" with a straight face.
The Legalized Crime Of Banking is a simple story of The Federal Reserve System, dealing principally with the unconstitutional creation of money and the control of credit by private corporations. The author suggests a concrete, simple solution, which Congress could employ, which would make the transition from private banking to the Treasury without injuring anyone enjoying a constitutional right, or without upsetting our normal course of trade, industry, and agriculture.
$10.2 trillion: The amount of money advanced-nation governments will need to borrow in 2011
As the debts of advanced countries rise to levels not seen since the aftermath of World War II, it’s hard to know how much is too much. But it’s easy to see that the risk of serious financial trouble is growing.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Because the people of the world have realized that government is borrowing new money to pay the interest on the old money and sticking the people with the ruinous interest payments for generations to come, and most people have decided this is nonsense. We did not give consent to live shackled to endless debt by bankers. The government borrowed without our permission and they can pay it back without our help.
There might not have been a second round of quantitative easing, if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke shopped at Walmart.
A new pricing survey of products sold at the world’s largest retailer [WMT 54.13 -0.21 (-0.39%) ] showed a 0.6 percent price increase in just the last two months, according to MKM Partners. At that rate, prices would be close to four percent higher a year from now, double the Fed’s mandate.
This is a hell of a story. Legal documents included.
This sort of abuse is far more serious than robo signing. This practice has all the appearances of MULTIPLE COVERUPS. The steps undertaken here look to be a deliberate, concerted effort for the bank to get its way, THE LAW BE DAMNED.
"If such problems were to arise on a large scale, the housing market could experience even greater disruptions than have already occurred, resulting in significant harm to major financial institutions," the report states."
Webmaster's Commentary:
Read this one carefully, folks. This is the start of a propaganda campaign (already reported to be the tone of NPR's news broadcasts) to sell you the idea that the banks need to be let off the hook for the mortgage backed security fraud, or else the damage will only be worse. In other words, yeah, we caught the bankers screwing us all in the ass, but we better not try to punish them for it, or there will be worse problems. Of course, there will be, for the bankers. But like that executive for J. P. Morgan who walked away clean from a hit and run, bankers believe they should be above the laws, and in true fascist style that the losses from their crimes ought to be paid for by the general public without complaint.
Do any of you agree with the above?
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out." -- Andrew Jackson
A debt collector in Erie, Pennsylvania, is accused of running a fake courtroom, complete with fake court documents and people dressed up like judges, to intimidate consumers into paying debts, according to the Erie Times-News.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Home owners have been tricked into turning over assets believing they are in a real court room.
Now remember, citizens, it's the people who neglected to yank out their gold fillings to pay their credit card bills after they lost their jobs who are the real bad guys here. A debt is a debt, after all, and an honorable person would go without food or shelter to pay the crooks who are collecting the money!
Lenders seized more U.S. homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market began to bust in 2006. But many of the foreclosures may be challenged in court later because of allegations that banks evicted people without reading the documents.
A total of 288,345 properties were lost to foreclosure in the July-September quarter, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. That's up from nearly 270,000 in the second quarter, the previous high point in the firm's records dating back to 2005.
Banks have seized more than 816,000 homes (1 in 139 homes) through the first nine months of the year and had been on pace to seize 1.2 million by the end of 2010.
---Past Wisdom Required---
“Where law ends, tyranny begins.” – William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778)
“Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law.” – Justice Louis D. Brandeis
“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.” – Thomas Cooper (1759-1851)
“The Strength of a nation is derived from the integrity of its homes.” – Confucius (551-479 B.C.)
If a deficiency action is available against the mortgagor or any other person, CitiMortgage may proceed for the deficiency. CitiMortgage may retain 25% of the net proceeds received from a mortgagor pursuant to a deficiency action as compensation for proceeding with the deficiency action.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Short version: the bank makes a 25% bonus if they foreclose! The financial incentive is to take away people's homes and bury the over-sold mortgages in the wreckage.
Getting some shuteye in one New Jersey town could land you in hot water, depending on where you lay your head, 1010 WINS’ Steve Sandberg reports.
In Roselle Park, it is against the law and you could be fined or arrested for sleeping in public.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The criminalization of homelessness continues apace in this country.
And the utterly braindead concept of fining the homeless for sleeping in public: where are they supposed to get the money to pay the fine if they are jobless and homeless?!?!?
A lot of thought must have gone into the creation of this legislation!
As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail.
This is the dirty secret of the rocket docket: The whole system is set up to enable lenders to commit fraud over and over again, until they figure out a way to reduce the stink enough so some judge like Soud can sign off on the scam. "If the court finds for the defendant, the plaintiffs just refile," says Parker, the local attorney. "The only way for the caseload to get reduced is to give it to the plaintiff. The entire process is designed with that result in mind."
Now it appears that Congress may attempt to prevent any MERS meltdown from occurring. MERS is owned by all the biggest banks, and they certainly do not want it to be sunk by huge fines. Investors in mortgage-backed securities also do not want to see the value of their bonds sink because of doubts about the ownership of the underlying mortgages.
So it looks like the stage may be set for Congress to pass a bill that would limit MERS exposure on the recording fee issue and perhaps retroactively legitimate mortgage transfers conducted through MERS private database.
It appears that the Obama administration is ready to pardon all the securitization deviants by signing this bill into law. This information is corroborated by several people who are in sensitive positions — persons who would be the first to know such proposals.
Unconfirmed but from a reliable source KARL DENNINGER.
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. also said it paid $5.6 billion in benefits to participants in company pension plans that failed in fiscal 2010, ended Sept. 30. It noted that 147 pension plans failed, up from 144 a year earlier.
Middle-class professionals and savers are facing a tax raid on their pensions under measures to be unveiled by the Coalition.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Do you get it yet? The government sold its soul to the bankers and the looting of your lives for the benefit of the bankers will go on until YOU make it stop!
The average household income fell faster during the recession than at any time since the aftermath of the Second World War, official figures revealed yesterday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
"Yee-HAAAA; we DID IT!" -- Bank of Pigland
(Ahem)
Back in ancient Rome there was this guy, Marcus Licineus Crassus. He was the Howard Hughes of his day. He grew rich by inventing the fire department. He had trained slaves with special wagons filled with firefighting equipment located throughout Rome. When a fire broke out, which was often, Crassus and the wagons would race to the scene whereupon Crassus would offer to buy the property on the spot for a fraction of its value.If the owner sold, the fire was put out. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus would allow the property to burn to the ground. By means of this simple method, Crassus soon became the largest landowner in Rome and the richest man in the then-known world. Crassus' greed was legendary and he entered politics, becoming a financial backer of Julius Caesar against Cicero. Following his exploitation of the Spartacus revolt, Crassus became Praetor and then First Consul of Rome, ending the Republic and setting the stage for the reign of the emperors. Among his other ostentatious shows of wealth, Crassus is credited with the trick of putting bits of gold leaf into his wine, a harmless bit of egotism which inspired the present day Goldschläger. When finally brought down by his enemies, Crassus' reputation for greed sealed his fate, and the Parthians poured molten gold into his mouth as punishment for his greed
Gary Shilling, who predicted the U.S. housing collapse, says the stock market is overvalued and foresees a “significant” selloff within a year as the Federal Reserve fails to stimulate economic growth.
Webmaster's Commentary:
With all due respect to Schilling, but he is mistaken. The sell-off already occurred with small investors already departing the markets. The market remains high and will be kept high because the banks and investment houses have been buying up stocks under the guise of "plunge protection" and now have significant portions of their balance sheets hostage to the already over-valued stock prices. In the event of a downturn, Goldman Sachs, BofA, even the Fed itself would be instantly insolvent to a degree that even Ben Bernanke's printing presses could not overcome. Bernanke himself stated in a recent op-ed piece that the goal of QE2 is to keep the stock market up, to protect the capital structure of the Wall Street banks and investment houses. All other considerations are secondary.
If you think residential real estate is having problems, you should shift your gaze to the mammoth issues confronting commercial real estate. Little is mentioned about commercial real estate (CRE) in the mainstream media yet this is a $3 trillion market (or twice the annual GDP of Texas). Much of the problems in CRE are profound and pose systemic risks to the banking sector. While the current attention is on fraudulent paperwork on residential housing, the biggest and most hushed bailout of commercial real estate is occurring. The Fed directly buying up questionable mortgages from banks is an indirect form of bailing out CRE. Yet in some instances, the Fed has gone ahead and directly taken on the role as owner for places such as a mall in Oklahoma. While U.S. residential property prices have fallen approximately 30 percent CRE has fallen by 42 percent.
I’m glad we’re helping out those poor Hilton Hotels. I’m sure the 43 million Americans in poverty are glad that their bailout funds are being used to support the neediest in our country. No wonder why this bailout is happening behind the scenes. The public would be up in revolution if they only knew what the Fed has actually bailed out with their tax dollars. Some will say that none of this matters since we will earn our money back at some point in the distant future. But since the Federal Reserve was put into business in 1913 purchasing power has eroded with inflation:
“Can you spot where the Fed was created?”
Either way, this entire real estate crisis is far from over and banks know it. Their data tells you everything you need to know and their raiding of the American people is simply incredible.
Globalists Collapsing Society To Bring In Martial Law
U.S. troops now being trained to boss communities and run local governments are being readied to oversee a post-collapse America in which riots and civil unrest similar to that now exploding in Europe over austerity measures and pension cuts ravage the United States and are met with the iron fist of a militarized police state.
Americans are acquiring guns, silver and food stamps at record levels in reaction to the crumbling economy, trends indicative of a fearful public who are struggling financially and preparing for potential mass civil unrest in the aftermath of a total economic collapse.
Video: This protester does not like foreclosure liars...
Absolutely brilliant. These are by far my favorite type of clips - Random, live, televised episodes of public-humiliation for the criminal bankster elite.
The anger is definitely growing. The good guys are fighting back.
According to the September 2010 Monthly Wholesale Trade: Sales and Inventories [PDF] report released by the U.S. Census Bureau, alcohol consumption may be on the rise.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Alcoholism was rampant in the USSR just prior to the collapse.
CNBC VIDEO - Sir Evelyn de Rothschild with Maria Bartiromo
Our earlier story on the IMF bailout for billionaire bondholders uncovered that the Rothschild Group is one of the Anglo-Irish bank creditors getting paid 100 cents on the dollar by U.S. taxpayers (thru the IMF) for their failed investments.
"People Who Resist Authority, Stand Up for Privacy, Could Be Classified As Mentally Ill"
"According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association, nonconformity and freethinking is a mental illness labeled "oppositional defiant disorder" trouble de défiance oppositionnelle or ODD. If psychiatrists follow the Fourth Edition of DSM diagnosis guidelines, people who stand up for privacy and freedom might be labeled as mentally ill.
U.S.G.W.O. reports that it has confirmed "basically that anyone who disobeys authority or even questions authority is now considered mentally ill and can be thrown in a prison-like mental institution under tax payers dollars." I haven't read the entire book, but U.S.G.W.O. states that according to the psychiatric manual the following people would be diagnosed as having ODD:
* Freethinkers * Constitutionalists * Oath Keepers * Nonconformists * Peaceful Activists * Peaceful Resistors * Those who partake in Civil Disobedience * Those that question Authority * Highly creative artists"
YIKES: I'M 8 OUT OF 9 ON THIS LIST!! :-) If this doesn't put a chill down the back of your spines, I don't know what will!
Sometimes a story is so troubling that it takes some time to digest, and the ruling delivered last Wednesday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (PDF), in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of five men subjected to "extraordinary rendition" and torture, is one such story.
Webmaster's Commentary:
So, it's official: torture and extraordinary rendition have now been enshrined as thoroughly legitimate in the eyes of American jurisprudence.
President George W. Bush admits for the first time in his new memoir that he personally approved the use of waterboarding, a technique in which an interrogator simulates drowning on a suspect. The method, which most describe as torture, has since been banned by the Justice Department.
In his book, "Decision Points," Bush asserts that he was asked by the Central Intelligence Agency whether he would support the agency's waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind.
"Damn right," Bush says that he said.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Why is this man not standing before the International Court at the Hague, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity?!?
Due to the utterly filthy depth of complicity, between the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, and State Department, and the Court System, coupled with an American people too cowed to think straight, everyone complicit in this process was so thoroughly tainted to the point that they did not want to criticize what were essentially immoral, and more importantly, illegal acts under American law.
So what did the White House do? Courtesy of their attorneys, who behaved as though they had doctorates in Orwellian doublespeak, tortured language, so that prisoners of war were now "enemy combatants", and torture became "enhanced interrogation"
We have known, from the times of the Catholic Inquisition, that torture does not bring the truth; it only gets the tortured individual to say whatever his torturer wants them to say to get the torture to stop.
The articles to follow, covering the rest of the prisoners still held, deal with those seized in particular locations: two cover prisoners seized in Afghanistan; two more tell the stories of prisoners seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001; two deal with prisoners seized in Pakistan; and the final article covers the “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006, and other prisoners, seized in a variety of countries, who were subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment in secret CIA prisons.
The US Justice (sic) Department even told US Federal District Court Judge John Bates that the US judiciary, formerly a co-equal branch of government, has absolutely no legal authority whatsoever to stick its nose into President “Change” Obama’s decision to assassinate Americans. The unaccountability of the president’s decision to murder people is, the US Justice (sic) Department declared, one of “the very core powers of the president as commander in chief.”
If the Obama Regime wins this case, the US will have become a dictatorship
Webmaster's Commentary:
If extrajudicial assassinations become institutionalized into US law as the outcome of this case, the rights of Americans recognized by the Constitution and Bill of Rights for generations will be gone from this country forever.
Former President George H.W. Bush is among 15 people selected to be awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom, the White House announced Wednesday night.
The Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, is awarded for "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."
This week, after anti-U.N. riots and inquiries from health experts, the top U.N. representative in Haiti said he is taking the allegations very seriously.
"It is very important to know if it came from (the Nepalese base) or not, and someday I hope we will find out," U.N. envoy Edmond Mulet told The Associated Press.
The answer would have implications for U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world, he said.
The latest Nepalese deployment came in October, after a summer of cholera outbreaks in Nepal. The changeover at the base, which guards the area south of the central plateau town of Mirebalais, was done in three shifts on Oct. 9, 12 and 16.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Forgive me, but if the UN is importing "peacekeepers" from an area where there has been a cholera outbreak to a country whose citizens have no immunity to cholera, why would it not be protocol that these soldiers be checked for the disease before being transported to their next tour of duty?!?
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever: the Haitian people were sitting ducks for this horrendous outbreak.
After the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Port au Prince, Clinton became co-chair of Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. He is now the country’s neo-colonial overlord. He has betrayed all his humanitarian promises and failed to collect even a fraction of the promised $10 billion for reconstruction. And his reconstruction plan is the same free market plan he has been touting since 2004. He is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital.
The last thing Haiti needs is more "help" from Bill Clinton and the U.S. Instead, the U.S. and other imperial powers including the U.N. should get out of Haiti and pay reparations so that Haitians can rebuild their country in their own interests.
South Korea's defense minister says his country may consider having U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed on its soil for the first time in 19 years.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young raised the possibility Monday during talks with a parliamentary committee about North Korea's latest nuclear escalation. He said the issue could be raised when a joint U.S.-South Korean military committee meets next month to discuss North Korea's nuclear programs.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Such a move would only escalate tensions between North and South Korea even further.
Tensions are mounting after a North Korean artillery attack left at least 14 South Koreans injured and 2 dead. The South was apparently conducting a routine drill near the near the area that was attacked.
Talk of nuclear redeployment and swift retaliation has lead some to believe that war is imminent. On Monday, before the artillery attack, South Korea officials denied that they were considering redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapon in respond to the Norths nuclear aggression.
Debkafile is now reporting that Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called Obama and demanded that the United States, Japan, and South Korea attack North Korea!
President Barrack Obama's opulent tour of Asia this month included talks with South Korea over free-trade agreements.
Those talks ultimately failed, Thursday, November 11, 2010, sending the bewildered president back home reinforcing to the world the weak hand America is now playing. This failed free-trade agreement between the US and South Korea is a continuation of President Bush's failed efforts during the latter part of his administration to push through the deal.
"A North Korean artillery unit staged an illegal firing provocation at 2.34pm local time (1634 AEDT) and South Korean troops fired back immediately in self-defence," a ministry spokesman told AFP.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Or someone pretending to be a North Korean artillery unit. Seriously, knowing how eager (indeed desperate) Obama is for another war to use as a distraction, why would North Korea do something that stupid over a relatively unimportant island? We are clearly not getting the whole story.
While North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is a madman, and while North Korea was the first to kill anyone in today's skirmish, it was actually the South Koreans who fired first.
The skirmish began when Pyongyang [i.e. North Korea] warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul [i.e. South Korea] refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations....
In addition, the two South Koreans killed were marines, not civilians, stationed in a military town.
Obviously, firing artillery into the water and actually killing people are very different, and I am in no way defending North Korea or its crazy leader. I am simply trying to point out that the headlines can't be taken in a vacuum.
SEOUL Nov 23 (Reuters) - South Korea said it was conducting regular military drills off the west coast before North Korea started firing dozens of shells, but that its firing exercises did not aim to the North.
"We were conducting usual military drills and our test shots were aimed toward the west, not the north," a South Korean military official said.
North Korea said on Tuesday that Seoul had initiated firing of shells, prompting it to take an instant military action. [ID:nTOE6AM05B]
(Reporting by Ju-min Park, writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Yoo Choonsik)
The skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population.
Webmaster's Commentary:
70,000 SOUTH Korean troops plus some U.S. "advisers" were taking part in an Invade NORTH Korea drill at the time.
On June 25, 1950, the north and the south each claimed the other side had invaded. The first reports from U.S. military intelligence were that the south had invaded the north.
On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported "renewed attacks" against American destroyers operating in Vietnamese waters, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" on the USS Maddox while it was on "routine patrol".
Webmaster's Commentary:
Is history repeating itself in Korea? The North Koreans know how desperate Obama is for another war. Why would they stage such an obvious provocation over a relatively unimportant island? If North Korea really intended an attack they could have just as easily shelled Seoul to the east! But attacking an island opens up another possibility of a submarine mounting a WW2 vintage deck gun firing those shells onto the island. Fool me once...
President Lee Myung-bak ordered his military Tuesday to strike North Korea's missile base around its coastline artillery positions if it shows signs of additional provocation, his spokeswoman said.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Let us hope that, IF North Korea is actually responsible for this provocation, that cooler heads on both sides of the DMZ (and in DC and Beijing) will prevail.
What North Korea has wanted for decades is rather simple: respect, the ability to trade, and a peace treaty to replace the cease-fire which technically ended the war back in the 50s.
The US should be working in tandem with China to see that this happens, and assist in bringing North Korea into the 21st century. We have robust trade relations with Viet Nam at this point, for heaven's sake!
INCHEON, South Korea (Reuters) - A U.S. aircraft carrier group set off for Korean waters on Wednesday, a day after North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island, in a move likely to enrage Pyongyang and unsettle its ally, China.
South Korea said the bodies of two civilians were found on
the island after Tuesday's attack, which is likely to stir up
more resentment in the country against its prickly neighbor.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which carries 75 warplanes and has a crew of over 6,000, left a naval base south of Tokyo and would join exercises with South Korea from Sunday to the following Wednesday, U.S. officials in Seoul said.
"This exercise is defensive in nature," U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement. "While planned well before yesterday's unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates the strength of the ROK (South Korea)-U.S. alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence."
VIDEO - Stone is interviewing former President of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner. He relates a personal conversation with GW from Monterrey, Mexico in January of 2004.
Anyone needing any more proof regarding the ingrained power of the military-industrial complex is advised to contact the Bushes in Crawford, Texas.
Reuters - LISBON (Reuters) - NATO agreed on Saturday to hand control of security in Afghanistan to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 and said the NATO-led force could halt combat operations by the same date if security conditions were good enough.
In its “global web of specialized institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C.”
The description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept” conference. Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”. And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent”.
November 10, 2010 "Wired" - - The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.
1. Nato discusses Afghan 2. Russia co-operating with NATO - which is historic 3. Ecomomics - divergant approaches of Europe/US to the budget 4. Occupying forces to withdraw from Afghan by 2014 (rebadged as "training").
The U.S. military is sending a contingent of heavily armored battle tanks to Afghanistan for the first time in the nine-year war, defense officials said, a shift that signals a further escalation in the aggressive tactics that have been employed by American forces this fall to attack the Taliban.
"We've taken the gloves off, and it has had huge impact," one of the senior officials said.
Webmaster's Commentary:
One has to wonder when the phrase "body count" is going to again creep into the corporate "newspeak" accounts of what is going on in Afghanistan.
And how in heaven's name can Petraeus begin to make the case the case to NATO that "...the military's strategy is working..." nine years on in this quagmire?!?
Are the US and NATO hellbent on destroying the entire country in order to "save" it?!? Apparently so: In the US/NATO strategy, "liberation" of Afghanistan appears to mean death to as many Afghans as possible.
Borrowing a page from its infamous "pacification" effort in South Vietnam, where peasant villages were napalmed and burned to the ground to "save them from the communists," the Obama-ordered surge in Afghanistan has been secretly blowing up thousands of homes and leveling portions of the Afghan countryside.
As tens of thousands of U.S. troops have surged into southern Afghanistan, villagers have fled. Then the Petraeus-led occupation forces have determined which homes will be destroyed.
US soldier in Afghanistan walks past Afghan child. A decision by US President Barack Obama to extend the presence of American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 is likely to increase the remaining cost of the unpopular war to USD 413 billion.
On Saturday, NATO Secretary General said the US-led military alliance will remain in Afghanistan for as long as it takes to finish off its enemies there.
The newly defined deadline comes with a heavy price tag at a time when the US and many of its allies are facing increasing deficit cuts at home.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Terrific: while homeless Veterans sleep in our streets, our infrastructure is crumbling, and ever more Americans are jobless, this is the wisest use of taxpayer dollars the Federal government can come up with?!?!? The only people "winning" in Afghanistan are the drug lords, and the defense contractors!!
Fewer than one in 10 Afghans are aware of the 9/11 attacks and their precipitation of the war in Afghanistan, says a study from an international think tank.
A report (PDF) from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the coordinated multiple attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. It also shows that four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to "destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan."
To be sure, the survey can't claim to be definitive: It only canvassed men, and relied primarily on respondents from Helmand and Kandahar, the two most war-torn provinces in the country. But the results nonetheless show that Western forces fighting insurgents in Afghanistan have largely failed to connect with the local population.
Afghans are practically left to deal with drug problem on their own, says Russia’s drug control chief, Viktor Ivanov.
Webmaster's Commentary:
It is interesting to note that under the rule of the Taliban, opium poppy production was pretty much eradicated.
One has to understand that there was no coincidence between the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the soaring opium production which happened afterward.
The only people "winning" in Afghanistan are the drug lords, and the defense contractors providing mercenaries, materials, and logistics, and that's a pretty damned depressing, but honest assessment, almost one decade in.
Some 140,000 U.S. soldiers dispatched to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI) between 2001 and October last year, according to a U.S. Department of Defense study.
The total makes up about 7 percent of all U.S. servicemen and women dispatched to the two countries.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Are those the ones that come back and get recruited by the police department? Or do they run for Congress?
Three NATO troops were killed Friday in Afghanistan in a surge of attacks that raised the death toll to 17 over the past three days for international troops in the country.
A new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross warned today that civilian casualties are soaring in Southern Afghanistan, and that those directly wounded are a comparatively minor part of the problem.
The statement also warned that the escalation of fighting and deteriorating security across the nation is making it more and more difficult to maintain presences in Afghanistan. Death tolls in the war have been at record levels this year, in the wake of the December escalation of the NATO occupation.
The Red Cross report comes at a particularly inopportune time for NATO, as they issued their own report today claiming that the civilian death toll in the war was in “sharp decline.”
Webmaster's Commentary:
Right now, I would be rather inclined to believe the Red Cross report, rather than that of NATO.
Petraeus had been a major proponent of air strikes in Iraq despite the danger to the civilian population, and given that his entire strategy seems to be to shoehorn Iraq into Afghanistan wherever possible (and in many cases where it isn’t possible) it is perhaps unsurprising to see the increase in attacks, and the growing number of resultant civilian casualties in Petraeus’ Afghanistan.
Webmaster's Commentary:
One has to wonder when the phrase "body count" will re-emerge on corporate news coverage of this war, as it did during the Vietnam War.
Away from the headlines, Palestinians have been trying to advance their statehood agenda in small but symbolic ways in United Nations agencies that fall off the radar for most people.
But even on the outer reaches of the sprawling U.N. system, their efforts are seen to have been blocked by a United States seemingly resolved not to display any tilt toward Palestinians as it tries to broker peace talks with Israel.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The US is completely disingenuous in its stance toward the potential establishment of a Palestinian state.
So what we are about to see happen here is a brisk Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Jerusalem, coupled with forcible expulsions of Palestinians who have lived in their ancestral homes for generations; it's just a question of when.
The Chinese military’s non-nuclear missiles have “the capability to attack” and close down five of six major U.S. Air Force bases in South Korea and Japan, an unpublished government report says.
China’s improved inventory of short- and medium-range missiles provides a “dramatic increase” in its ability to “inhibit” U.S. military operations in the western Pacific, according to excerpts from the draft of the 2010 annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission scheduled for release on Nov. 17.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how, all of a sudden, China has seemed to become the US's "enemy #1" after the US didn't get what they wanted from China at the G20 regarding a possible revaluing of its currency?
Pentagon planners were wary of China’s double-digit military-budget growth rates even before the global economic crisis put the squeeze on America’s own defense investment. Now the Chinese army’s growth continues while America’s flat-lines. That’s got the U.S. military, especially the Navy, scrambling for new ideas.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Anyone who believes, for one second, that defense spending is going to get cut in the next round of Congressional appropriations, is dreaming.
The United States has reiterated its pledge to send a super carrier to the Yellow Sea for joint naval drills with South Korea without specifying the timing, despite China's objections.
"The only thing I'd answer is those are international waters and they aren't owned by China," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a media roundtable in Melbourn, Australia, Monday, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon, Tuesday. "They aren't owned by Korea. They're international waters in which we have and many other countries have sailed forever. My expectation is we'll continue to do that."
Webmaster's Commentary:
If this happens, this action is bound to exacerbate the situation with China, rather than resolve it.
In a much-anticipated report, the US-China Economic and Security Review commission has accused Beijing of deceptive economic practises, effectively reigniting the two countries' spat over currency and trade issues.
Presenting its findings to the US Congress, the congressional advisory panel has recommended the Obama administration to take tougher actions against what it calls China's policy of keeping its currency undervalued.
On Wednesday, the commission said that China is creating global imbalances and using "market access-limiting practises" that fall outside its World Trade Organisation commitments.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This a petulant President's revenge for not getting what he wanted out of the G20 conference.
China is not to blame for the US's financial woes: our current domestic, foreign, and banking policies have brought us to the place we are now.
China has an enviable surplus: the US government may well collapse, choking under the weight its own deficit.
Jobs have been allowed by this government to be offshored, creating a huge unemployment problem in this country.
Those people who, legitimately, qualified for a mortgage when they got it, but are now without work, cannot keep up the payments, so houses are foreclosed on, and these people are now both jobless and homeless.
You have a situation where he banks have deliberately oversold those mortgages to the point where no one really knows exactly who holds the title.
Obama has continued an endless cycle of costly wars, with the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq going horrendously badly; yet, we are also at war in Pakistan, and soon, Yemen.
The only people actually "winning" in these situations are the defense contractors, who provide mercenaries, supplies and logistics, and the drug lords.
Did the Chinese government do anything to cause any of the above to happen?!? Not at all.
The US government is desperately attempting to deflect blame from the fact that it is US governmental policies which have wreaked havoc on the lives of the American people, not the Chinese government.
A leading Chinese telecommunication company has rejected the US claims implicating the firm for some temporary redirecting of sensitive Internet traffic on US websites.
China Telecom, one of the country's major telecommunications operators, rejected US claims that its servers "hijacked" highly sensitive Internet traffic for 18 minutes on April 8 on American government and military websites, AFP reported on Thursday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
More gratuitous China-bashing and rather lame since there is no reason for such sensitive US traffic to even leave the US networks let alone route through Chinese servers. Since the "great revolt" that transformed the ARPAnet into the Internet, the military has set up a parallel network of their own, which for obvious reasons is not connected to the global internet. So this story was a non-starter, to begin with
St. Petersburg, Russia - China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday.
Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.
"About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.
The formation of the two new divisions means that India's deployments in the eastern sector of its border with China now matches the five army divisions that existed in 1986-87, when the two countries nearly went to war.
Gen Singh was not available for comment but one of his staff officers, on condition of anonymity, told the BBC that the army chief had "pushed very hard to fast-track the raising of the two divisions".
He said that they should be "fully operational" by March 2011.
He said their formation was India's response to the "huge Chinese build-up" in Tibet over the last three to four years. But he did not wish to elaborate.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This entire area has become a tinderbox of tensions, just waiting for some misunderstanding to ignite it.
North Korea is supplying banned nuclear and ballistic equipment to Iran, Syria and Myanmar using "surreptitious" means to avoid international sanctions, according to a UN report released Friday.
International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukiya Amano said this week that the stand-off with North Korea was now "very bad".
China has been the North's main ally on the international stage and it had blocked the report since it was prepared in May, diplomats said.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Although the culprit in this report is North Korea, it is an indirect bash at China, conveniently published right after the G-20, during which China and the rest of the world told the US what to do with its "quantitative easing" policy.
And a logical question comes to mind: how did China block the release of this report, if it in fact had been finished in May?!?
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A pair of American drone strikes killed 14 suspected militants in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, local intelligence officials said, in the latest attacks against al-Qaida and Taliban militants seeking sanctuary in the region.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official said Saturday the U.S. is seeking to expand the areas where American missiles can target Taliban and al-Qaida operatives but that Pakistan has refused the request because of domestic opposition to the strikes.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Pakistani leadership had better get used to the concept that once they allowed US to target alleged militants with these drone strikes, they gave up all pretense of being a sovereign nation.
The US is, most likely, going to ignore what the Pakistani government wants in this case, and will simply escalate the drone attacks in the border areas with or without the government's approval.
The News International, Pakistan‘s largest English-language newspaper, published a report on October 13 based on excerpts from American journalist Bob Woodward’s recently released volume “Obama’s Wars” which stated that during a trilateral summit between the presidents of the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan on May 6 of 2009 Pakistani head of state Asif Ali Zardari accused Washington of being behind Taliban attacks inside his country with the intent to use them so “the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons.”
Webmaster's Commentary:
This appears to have been the game plan all along.
But one has to wonder why Zardari is making this claim so late in the process, and expressing outrage now.
The civilian and military leadership, who have been well-bribed to look the other way while US drones kill their citizens will enjoy a very comfortable life in exile, when this whole episode is over, courtesy of the American taxpayers.
Currently, the clashes between the Pakistani military forces and the militant groups are continuing at a concerning level in four provinces in the country’s northwestern region, while the US continues to bomb two more provinces in the area with its drones. In addition to civilian deaths and according to the latest available data of the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), an estimated 2 million people have been displaced in the country because of the violence.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The "war against terror" in Pakistan has morphed into a war by the US against the Pakistani people, and the Pakistani civilian and military leaders have been well compensated to turn a collective blind eye to the carnage.
What the US wants is control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, coupled with a "regime change" in the government to make the next Prime Minister completely compliant with the US's demands.
The US military doesn't care how many innocent civilians they slaughter on the way to achieving the outcomes outlined above.
Gul Nawaz, from North Waziristan, was watering his fields when he heard the explosions of drone missiles: "I rushed to my house when I heard the blast. When I arrived I saw my house and my brother's house completely destroyed and all at home were dead!" Eleven members of Gul Nawaz's family were killed, including his wife,two sons and two daughters as well as his elder brother, his wife, and his four children.
According to recent reports US military officials, facing growing administration pressure to show something that seems like progress in the endless Afghan War, is looking to press Pakistan for more attacks inthe tribal area, and some are even advocating crossing the border with US forces and expanding the war formally into Pakistan
Webmaster's Commentary:
A war actually against Pakistan has been where US governmental policy has been going all along.
The United States is trying to expand a secret CIA operation designed to eliminate radical Islamic militants’ havens located in Pakistan near the Afghan border, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Though the Pakistan border has reopened to NATO traffic, the need to rely on Pakistan for some 80% of the Afghan War’s supplies has been problematic, to say the least, and the alliance has been looking elsewhere for routes to the landlocked country.
But they won’t find one in Russia, which today announced that it had formally denied NATO permission to transport military supplies through its country.
Based on intelligence sources, WMR previously reported a link between the Dick Cheney-Pentagon Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) assassination team and the the assassination in December 2007 of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. WMR has now obtained from knowledgeable Pakistani sources the logistical network behind the killing of Bhutto.
