Bonjour à vous tous, lecteurs, auteurs et commentateurs de CentPapiers!
Comme vous avez pu le constater, le 27 décembre dernier, Pierre JC Allard passait le flambeau à la prochaine génération de gestion de CentPapiers. Monsieur Allard aura accompli des étapes cruciales dans la survie du seul véritable journal citoyen du Québec, en lui permettant de grandir de nouveau et de lui permettre de se développer dans le but de lui donner son plein potentiel.
Ce potentiel est énorme puisqu'il n'a de limite que ce que l'Internet permet, avec l'imagination et la participation de tous. Je dois donc, au nom de toute l'équipe de relève, remercier du fond du coeur les efforts et sacrifices personnels que Pierre JC Allard a fait depuis presque un an.
Nous avons maintenant une base solide sur laquelle nous pourrons, grâce à lui et tous les participants de ce site, bâtir pour vous offrir le meilleur espace d'échange et de partage des idées, d'informations et d'analyses. Nous nous engageons, dans la limite de nos moyens, à vous donner tous les outils nécessaires pour que vous puissiez prendre la parole et être entendus.
À court terme, la nouvelle équipe travaillera à faire augmenter le nombre de rédacteurs de qualité sur le site, pour finalement avoir un journal diversifié pour à peu près tous les goûts. Déjà, plusieurs nouveaux auteurs se sont ajoutés à la grande équipe que nous sommes tous et beaucoup d'autres se préparent à entrer en scène, ce qui est excessivement réjouissant. De plus, pour assurer une gestion efficace de cette plateforme qui est en pleine croissance, l'équipe de CentPapiers s’agrandit peu à peu et pourrait compter quelques nouveaux collaborateurs d'ici aux prochaines semaines, au lieu d'une seule personne comme ce fût le cas pendant quelques années.
J'aimerais, par la même occasion, inviter tous les gens intéressés par l'écriture à participer à cette belle aventure; que vos passions et domaines de connaissances soient la politique, l'économie, le sport, les activités à faire et ne pas manquer, les évènements de l'actualité, psychologie, philosophie ou autres.
À moyen terme, nous entendons nous donner les moyens d'offrir une expérience multimédia unique, regroupant non seulement les meilleurs textes du Web francophone, mais aussi une section audio/visuelle. Cela sera à surveiller dans les prochains mois.
Finalement, à long terme, le but est de permettre à CentPapiers d'atteindre son plein potentiel qui est d'être un nexus, un lieu d'échange et de partage autant de l'information que des idées sous toutes leurs formes , d'analyses, de débats de société et dans la mesure du possible, d'expansion de la conscience. Il se peut que l'Internet soit le dernier bastion de la liberté d'expression et nous nous devons d'exercer ce droit fondamental pour le préserver pour les générations futures.
Cette liberté d'expression comporte des responsabilités sur lesquelles nous insisterons, dans le but de lui donner sa pleine ampleur et portée. Nous croyons qu'un site tel que CentPapiers doit fournir un environnement sain et respectueux de tous pour éviter de tomber dans les mêmes pièges qu'a rencontrés le journalisme citoyen dans son enfance de l'Internet. Personne ne grandit, n'évolue ou ne gagne quoi que ce soit en recevant des attaques personnelles et des insultes.
Le contrat commun qu'on se donne ici, c'est de se conduire honorablement et avec courtoisie. De cette façon, nos efforts seront décuplés et porteront fruit. Si chacun s'occupe individuellement de suivre cette simple ligne de conduite, il sera extrêmement facile pour nous de distinguer les gens de mauvaise foi qui ne cherchent qu'à être déplaisants et diviseurs sans rien apporter aux gens autour d'eux. Notre travail sera de protéger tous les lecteurs, auteurs et commentateurs pour que tous sachent que CentPapiers est un lieu où il fait bon vivre. Ce travail sera accompli inlassablement et avec intégrité.
Le résultat visé est d'atteindre une plus grande cohésion sociale et une diffusion sans barrière de l'information, des connaissances et de la sagesse. Il est permis de croire que nous pouvons effectivement apporter notre grain de sel dans l'évolution de nos sociétés et de l'humanité. À chaque jour, nous participons au déroulement de l'histoire. Plus nous serons organisés et unis, plus nous réaliserons que c'est ensemble que nous sommes forts et maîtres de notre destin.
C'est dans cet esprit que nous poursuivrons notre chemin tous ensemble et que nous serons en mesure de porter fièrement le flambeau qu'a passé Pierre JC Allard, pour un jour le passer à notre tour à la prochaine génération.
Sur ce, nous retournons humblement les projecteurs et le micro à tous les acteurs de CentPapiers et nous vous souhaitons la meilleure expérience qui soit sur ce journal citoyen fait sur mesure pour vous et par vous!
Et si l'histoire des rênes du Père Noël n'était qu'une histoire de champignons magiques hallucinogènes?
Ça ferait une belle histoire à raconter aux enfants... euh....
Magic Mushrooms & Reindeer
The Origin of the Santa Claus Legend?
The hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom is one of the favorite foods of the arctic circle reindeer (domesticated caribou) in Scandinavia.
Reindeer are central to the lives of the indigenous Saami peoples who herd them. The shamanic traditions of the Saami include eating the mushrooms and contacting the "Great Reindeer Spirit."
Ingesting fly agaric mushrooms can produce a sensation of flying. It is thought that the 19th century myth of Santa Claus may have its roots in older Saami traditions.
Après cette longue année mouvementée, voici arrivé la fin de 2010 avec cette période des réjouissances qu'apporte Noël et le Jour de l'An. Nous avons couvert une multitude des sujets les plus chauds, incluant la "pandémie" de grippe A/H1N1, la catastrophe de BP dans le golfe du Mexique, les dessous de la crise économique mondiale, la fraude du réchauffement climatique, l'attaque barbare en eaux internationales par Israël de la flottille d'aide humanitaire destinée aux Palestiniens, la chute des médias traditionnels, la montée de la tyrannie, du terrorisme et de ses véritables origines, du fonctionnement du système, de la fluoration et de beaucoup d'autres. Vous pouvez d'ailleurs retrouver la compilation complète de tous ces articles sur Les Nouvelles Internationales.
Bien que cela puisse être parfois déprimant, nous devons nous rendre compte d'une chose qui est très positive: l'information circule et la conscience des individus et de l'humanité ne cesse de croître. Si nous voyons des mensonges, de la corruption, de la collusion et des fraudes partout, c'est que nous en avons pris conscience plus que jamais auparavant. Cette ère du pouvoir brut se termine et une nouvelle prend définitivement sa place. Il s'agit de l'ère de l'éthique et de la conscience universelle. Nous sommes en route vers une conscience universelle de co-création. Mais avec le pouvoir, vient la responsabilité devant la vie.
Alors, en ce temps des fêtes, au lieu de discuter de sujets difficiles et peut-être un peu déprimants, je préférerais jeter un regard à ce qui est positif. Malgré tout, je conserve une confiance inébranlable en l'esprit humain et l'humanité. La science est en train de prouver que la pensée est littéralement créatrice, qu'elle influence l'organisation de la matière et même des particules. Plus ça va, plus on réalise que la pensée est créatrice et que l'intention joue un rôle primordial dans les processus de la création, d'où notre prise de conscience graduelle que nous sommes des êtres co-créateurs. Est-ce la signification profonde de l'homme créé à l'image de Dieu?
En conséquence, il apparait donc que rien n'est plus important que ce que nous pensons. Dans cette perspective, on commence à comprendre pourquoi il y a tellement d'argent dépensé pour influencer et contrôler ce que l'on pense. Il y a clairement des avantages à maintenir une population dans la peur et l'insécurité. Il y a des raisons évidentes de mal informer les gens, de les arroser de désinformation, de propagande et de mensonges. De les abrutir via le système d'éducation. De les faire sentir impuissants et incapables de se gérer soi-même. Mais à force de manquer de vision pour nous-même en tant qu'humanité et pour notre futur, nous risquons de mettre en marche les mécanismes de notre propre disparition. Plusieurs peuples et civilisations sont venus et disparus. Nous ne serions certainement pas les premiers ni les derniers.
Certains peuples n'ont pas su s'imaginer de futur et donc, ils n'en ont jamais eu. Il faudrait songer à éviter ce piège.
La plus ancienne loi de l'univers est celle-ci: «Ce à quoi vous portez attention, est ce dont vous prenez conscience».
Ce dont nous sommes devenus plus conscients en 2010, c'est l'état de pourriture du système et aussi que nous sommes menés par des gens qui sont majoritairement inconscients et insensibles, sans empathie pour la vie en général. N'est-ce pas là la définition même de la psychopathie? Si cela a pu être possible, c'est parce que nous avons laissé les choses aller, nous avons remis notre pouvoir entre de mauvaises mains, s'en remettant à des autorités extérieures au lieu de l'autorité intérieure. Nous sommes responsables de l'état du monde. Même si nous n'avons pas directement causé tous les maux auxquels nous faisons face en tant qu'humanité, population mondiale, nous en sommes responsables en notre ignorance, notre indifférence et acceptation de l'inacceptable. Mais cela change, imperceptiblement en premier lieu, mais attention au jour où cela devient apparent dans la dimension physique, car ce jour-là, tout devient possible.
L'univers et la vie ont un agenda, un sens et donc un but. Ils tendent tous deux vers plus de conscience et tout est instrument pour y parvenir. Si c'est en passant par l'expérience de fraudes monumentales, de manipulations et de sacrilèges contre la vie, ainsi soit-il. La vie est implacable. Nous avons le libre-arbitre, nous sommes libres de ne pas suivre le sens de la vie garant de la joie de vivre et de la satisfaction profonde et durable de la vie, mais nous ne sommes pas libres d'en subir les conséquences. Je vous le rappelle, des civilisations entières se sont détruites elles-mêmes, à plusieurs reprises, dans cette longue aventure de l'humanité. La vie et l'univers sont patients. S'il faut recommencer à partir de zéro, ainsi soit-il. Ceux qui ont le plus à perdre, c'est nous. Nous avons reçu le cadeau inestimable - la vie - et notre responsabilité est d'en faire le meilleur usage. Lourde responsabilité, d'où la crise d'adolescence que l'humanité traverse présentement. Nous sommes en train d'évoluer et de devenir une espèce adulte, plus mature et consciente. Voilà la vue d'ensemble qui nous manque parfois, noyés que nous sommes dans la vie quotidienne et ses aléas.
Malgré tout, ces regrettables évènements nous poussent à évoluer et faire grandir notre conscience. Et cette conscience grandit avec l'amour. Tout a un sens.
Nous sommes en train de redéfinir notre réalité et de nous redéfinir nous-mêmes en tant qu'espèce. Nos motifs, nos valeurs et ce que nous voulons être. C'est probablement ce qui se passe avec Noël aussi. Plusieurs, dont moi le premier, se plaignent de la commercialisation de Noël. Les grands magasins commencent à vendre les items de Noël au mois d'août et on voudrait nous faire croire que tout a rapport avec la valeur des cadeaux que nous distribuons. Noël est dénaturé et vidé de son sens. Bien sûr, pour la religion chrétienne, c'est la naissance du Christ et tout ce que cela signifie. Mais pour le non-pratiquant que je suis, cela signifie davantage une question de valeurs qui nous animent. C'est la famille, les amis, l'amour et la joie. C'est le partage, tendre la main et penser à l'autre. Noël, c'est donner et célébrer en famille et entre amis, être heureux, tous ensemble. Au lieu de se plaindre de la commercialisation de Noël, il nous suffit d'en faire ce que nous voulons. Ce n'est certainement pas à propos de celui qui a le plus gros cadeau, mais plutôt de profiter de ce moment pour réfléchir et méditer sur le sens de la vie en général et sur le sens de sa propre vie, incluant nos valeurs, ce que nous voulons être et ce dont nous voulons vraiment faire l'expérience, de manifester cette intention et d'être intègre.
Car si l'humanité a un espoir, c'est au coeur de chacun d'entre nous qu'il se trouve. Le Christ, c'est un symbole qui signifie «la bonne nouvelle». De nombreux prophètes ont incarné cette bonne nouvelle qui signifie qu'il est humainement possible et réalisable d'atteindre ce niveau d'achèvement et d'harmonie intérieure. C'est l'incarnation d'un niveau de conscience élevée qui nous a été démontré. Là réside toute l'importance du message et du symbole. Voilà la tâche essentielle de chaque être humain face à la vie: s'harmoniser intérieurement et s'orienter dans le sens de la vie. L'ennemi commun que nous avons tous, c'est la vanité, ou vanitas - ce qui est vide de sens. Il nous faut délaisser l'amour du pouvoir pour retrouver le pouvoir de l'amour. Il faut chercher constamment la victoire sur la vanité, mais éviter qu'elle ne se transforme en vanité de la victoire.
Un moyen de demeurer humble devant la vie est de prendre conscience du côté sacré de la vie, ce qui n'a rien d'une religion, mais tout d'un sentiment de religiosité face à tout ce qui EST. De prendre régulièrement le temps de contempler ce côté sacré de la vie, d'être plein de gratitude face à tout l'univers et de montrer notre appréciation pour toute la création. Nous en faisons partie, nous ne sommes pas à l'extérieur de la création, de la vie, de l'univers et même de Dieu, pour les croyants. Il n'y a pas que des lois dans le monde physique, le monde extérieur, gérant le fonctionnement de la matière. Il existe aussi des lois immuables déterminant le fonctionnement du monde intérieur. Les découvrir, c'est aussi révéler le sens de la vie et les conditions de satisfaction de notre être. Ces lois n'ont rien à voir avec les dogmes religieux, le moralisme ou l'amoralisme. Ce sont des lois biogénétiquement fondées. Voilà, en fin de compte, pourquoi l'autorité extérieure est toujours appelée à être un échec. Seule l'autorité intérieure détient la vérité et toutes les réponses. Nous savons tous faire la différence entre ce qui est bien et ce qui est mal... à part peut-être les psychopathes inhumains jonchant cette planète. À nous d'en prendre conscience et d'agir conséquemment.
Pour terminer, j'aimerais vous partager une pensée qui sera mon cadeau de Noël pour, chers lecteurs. Il s'agit d'un passage du livre du Docteur Marianne Sedar, à la découverte de soi-même, basé sur la pensée et l'oeuvre de Paul Diel, que j'estime énormément pour sa lucidité à propos du fonctionnement du monde intérieur, ayant débouché sur l'élaboration de La psychologie de la motivation.
Pour ma part, je vous souhaite donc un vrai Joyeux Noël!
=======================================
Comprendre d'une part ce que la vie exige de chacun de nous et, d'une autre part, comment et pourquoi - pour quels motifs - nous nous détournons de cette exigence est le seul moyen de retrouver un critère de valeur sensé et de nous affranchir de tous préjugés, les croyances ou les superstitions qui nous conditionnent depuis l'enfance.
Nul ne peut changer les circonstances de sa vie passée, l'éducation qu'il a reçu,le milieu dans lequel il a grandi, les influences qu'il a subies, les frustrations de toutes sortes dont il a souffert. Mais chacun peut prendre conscience de la manière dont il réagit face à ces circonstances, de son attitude en face des accidents de la vie, et finalement des motifs qui le pousse à réagir toujours de la même manière. Pourquoi l'un se sent-il toujours coupable et inférieur? Pourquoi un autre n'admet-il jamais qu'il ait tort? Pourquoi un autre se prend-il sans cesse en pitié chaque fois qu'il lui arrive quelque chose de déplaisant? Pourquoi a-t-on peur de vivre? Pourquoi tant de personnes sont-elles angoissées, déprimées, inquiètes? Pourquoi souffre-t-on d'insécurité et de solitude?
Il y a le monde et la vie avec ses drames et ses conflits, et il y a notre manière propre de réagir face à eux. Cesser de réagir selon l'ornière creusée par nos motifs inconscients, par tous les faux jugements de valeur que nous avons emmagasinés, et agir selon des motifs plus justes et un critère plus satisfaisant est la seule démarche qui puisse faire de chacun un être responsable, libre et heureux de vivre.
Cela, c'est vivre pleinement. C'est devenir entièrement soi-même. C'est accepter de se voir tel que l'on est et c'est accepter les autres tels qu'ils sont. C'est donc devenir capable d'aimer authentiquement.
Comment y parvenir? En écartant les masques dont on est tenté de s'affubler, les comédies que l'on est tenté de se jouer, les mensonges que l'on est tenté de se raconter dans l'espoir vain de se prouver que l'on est bien tel que l'on «devrait» être. Pour devenir soi-même, il faut donc se connaître et se connaître c'est, avant tout, être capable de dépister toutes ces tentations qui menacent notre être authentique.
Être soi-même c'est finalement admettre que l'on est tour à tous bon et mauvais, juste et injuste, tendre et cruel, jaloux, possessif ou envieux et désintéressé et généreux, au lieu de se réduire à l'un ou l'autre de ces aspects de soi. C'est intégrer tous les sentiments, les émotions, les désirs qui font partie de nous-mêmes afin que de leur confrontation résulte une attitude plus sensée et plus satisfaisante.
Il ne s'agit pas de se changer par un effort de volonté, mais de s'accepter. Car s'accepter avec sa force et ses faiblesses, c'est changer. Se donner pour but de changer est au contraire refuser d'assumer ce que l'on est. C'est projeter dans un avenir plus ou moins lointain son espoir de mieux vivre. C'est se préparer sans cesse à vivre alors que la vie est ici et maintenant.
Se découvrir soi-même à chaque instant, sans se condamner ni se justifier, et à travers soi, découvrir l'humanité entière est l'expérience qui donne à la vie son prix et sa richesse. Cette expérience est à la portée de tous ceux qui cherchent à s'orienter dans un monde incertain et secoué, à trouver la voie de l'épanouissement.
* * *
Depuis des années nous assistons, impuissants, à une détérioration croissante de la qualité de la vie - de notre vie. L'incommunicabilité entre les êtres, l'indifférence générale, le «chacun pour soi» qui en témoignent, sont devenus mots courants de notre langage, lieux communs ou presque exprimant un état de fait, une réalité avec laquelle chacun s'habitue à vivre et dont il ne se sent pas personnellement responsable. L'absence de motivation dont souffre une partie de la jeunesse n'est qu'une autre manière d'exprimer ses réticences, ses hésitations, son manque d'enthousiasme à l'égard de cette réalité qu'il lui est demandé d'assumer comme si elle était l'unique réalité de la vie: une vie sans amour et sans joie, une vie réduite à sa seule dimension matérielle, économique, une vie horizontale, linéaire et quantitative.
Dans cet océan d'indifférence quotidienne, seules surnagent les passions politiques et religieuses. Mais elles dressent l'homme contre l'homme par la conviction sur laquelle elles se fondent de détenir la vérité, à l'exclusion de tout autre. Reste la science. La science porteuse de tout l'espoir du XXe siècle. Mais une science dont il faut bien dire qu'elle est en train d’accélérer notre chute en réduisant l'être humain à l'état de matière, en niant l'esprit humain sous prétexte qu'il n'est pas constatable.
Crise de civilisation, décadence de la société, perte de nos valeurs morales, quels que soient les termes employés, ne recouvriraient-ils pas tous une même question angoissée: notre passion de vivre, notre passion pour la vie, serait-elle éteinte? Le courage, l'espoir et la foi en la vie nous auraient-ils abandonné? Nos âmes seraient-elles mortes, étouffées par nos préoccupations matérielles, nos tracas quotidiens, par les menaces de toutes sortes - chômage ou guerre - qui pèsent sur le monde et qui ne le spiritualisme des religions, ni le matérialisme scientifique ne nous apprennent à affronter calmement, véridiquement.
Entre la religion qui exalte l'esprit au détriment de la matière et le matérialisme scientifique qui exalte la matière au détriment de l'esprit, n'y a t-il pas place pour autre chose, d'autres certitudes, d,autres valeurs à partir desquelles nous pourrions réinventer notre vie? Entre le moralisme de la religion et l'amoralisme de la science entre lesquels le monde vacille alternativement, n'y aurait-il pas place pour une autre morale, une morale authentique sur laquelle nous pourrions fonder notre vie et l'épanouir? Qui ne serait pas fondée ni sur une idéologie spiritualiste, ni sur une idéologie matérialiste, qui ne serait pas croyance mais certitude, qui donnerait à notre existence une orientation et un sens, qui pourrait enfin nous servir de critère de valeur et donc de guide pour penser mieux, pour aimer mieux. Un guide pour mieux vivre, qui nous conduirait vers la satisfaction profonde de nous-mêmes et de la vie.
Un tel critère existe et au milieu de la désorientation angoissée et angoissante qui est la nôtre, il est possible à chacun de nous, individuellement, de le découvrir au fond de lui-même et de ranimer ainsi son espoir en la vie et sa joie de vivre. Paul Diel disait toujours: «Je ne vous offre pas une croyance mais une expérience».
Cette foi en la justice de la vie n'est autre que la certitude sentie et réfléchie que la vie a un sens et des lois, que s'y opposer conduit inéluctablement à la souffrance psychique, affective et même corporelle, et que s'y conformer nous conduit vers la liberté, la joie de vivre et l'amour.
. Compilation des articles 2009-2010 par François Marginean
Chers lecteurs, je vous offre ici, bien humblement, les articles que j'ai produit au cours de l'année 2009 et 2010, tous réunis ici pour vous, de façon pratique. Cette série se termine avec la précédente compilation qui couvre la période de 2008-2009, donc tout y est!
Merci pour votre présence et c'est un rendez-vous pour l'année 2011!
. La police de Houston utilise des drones pour espionner le public sans mandat
Une station de télévision les a filmé malgré les interdictions aux journalistes d'assister à la démonstration. Le gouvernement local était passablement embarrassé et a dû s'expliquer, sans convaincre qui que ce soit.
L'Autre Monde 16 décembre 2010: Une dose de lucidité. Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année à tous! Pour écouter, ou pour télécharger, simplement cliquer sur le lien ici: L'Autre Monde 16 décembre 2010 120 min / Radio de l'UQAM, CHOQ FM
Actualité mondiale, le Canada et le lobby israélien, refroidissement climatique global et le flop du sommet à Cancùn, économie, Corée du Nord-USA-Japon-Russie, TSA, Wikileaks, attaque terroriste à Stockholm, Haïti, Irak et BP.
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:
Veuillez prendre en note que la station sera officiellement fermée pour la période des fêtes. Il n'y aura donc aucune émission du 18 décembre au 9 janvier inclusivement.
Epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux conducted research in Haiti on behalf of the French and Haitian governments.
The cholera epidemic has killed 2120 people, and nearly 100,000 cases have been treated, according to the Haitian government.
The report by Mr Piarroux found that the source of the outbreak was a Nepalese peacekeeping base, whose toilets contaminated the Artibonite river, according to a copy seen by the Associated Press news agency.
Webmaster's Commentary:
One has to wonder if this epidemic was "allowed" to happen to silence the Haitian people, who were beginning to speak out about the lack of promised aid and infrastructure.
There are a number of countries (the US included) which find it in their best interests to keep Haitians perpetually disenfranchised and appallingly poor.
The cholera strain devastating Haiti carries a mutation that makes it more intense and could allow it to spread further, U.S. researchers say.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Funny how Haiti didn't even have a cholera problem until they started asking where all the money collected on their behalf had gone. Then cholera shows up, blamed on a UN soldier, and now we find it is a "mutation" (reg trademark USAMRIID) that makes it more lethal and contagious!
UN peacekeepers from Brazil patrols at a earthquake survivors refugee camp in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday Nov. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Scientists reported Thursday the strongest evidence yet that a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people in Haiti can be traced to South Asia.
The analysis fits with, but does not prove, the controversial idea that the disease came from U.N. troops dispatched from that region.
DNA analysis found that cholera bacteria recovered in Haiti were nearly identical to strains predominant in South Asia, and different from those found in Latin America, researchers said.
That indicates that cholera was introduced by people, rather than arriving through ocean currents or arising within Haiti, as has been suggested, said Harvard researcher Dr. Matthew Waldor.
"It's shocking," Jon Stewart says. It certainly is. On the new 'Daily Show' (weeknights, 11PM ET on Comedy Central), Jon welcomes retired general Hugh Shelton as his guest. Shelton is the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he has written a new memoir -- in which he makes startling allegations about U.S. military conduct.
General Shelton alleges that a cabinet member in the Clinton administration was willing to kill a U.S. pilot to provoke war with Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The general states that in 1997, airmen were flying over Iraq each day, and were facing ground artillery fire from Iraqi forces.
A Clinton aide then came up with this "clever" plan: "Fly one of our [aircraft] low enough so that Saddam could actually shoot it down." Once the plane and the pilot were shot down, the U.S. would have an excuse to attack Iraq.
This was Shelton's response to the suggestion: "My fist clenched; the hair on the back of my neck stood up. ... I gritted my teeth and said [to the aide], 'I'll be willing to do that, as soon as I can get your ass qualified to fly low enough and slow enough to do it.'" The 'Daily Show' audience gave unanimous applause to these remarks. But the general doesn't claim that rushing to invade Iraq was a uniquely Democratic concept -- he says it was a bipartisan error.
US fighter jets have reportedly pounded a region in Iraq's central governorate of Babil months after Washington declared an end to combat operations in Iraq late August.
Iraqi security sources said that on Monday, US warplanes shelled a region lying north of the provincial capital of Hilla, Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.
“A number of US jets pounded this afternoon al-Buhayrat region, al-Askandariya district," said a security official, noting that Iraqi authorities had not been informed about the operation.
“The attack could [have] targeted some armed cells in the region,” he added.
It was not clear if the airstrike had left any casualties.
Iraq's recently-reinstated prime minister has warned against any extension to the foreign presence on the strife-weary country's soil.
Nouri al-Maliki, who was mandated earlier in the month to remain premier for another four years, said on Saturday, "I do not feel the need for the presence of any other international forces to help Iraqis control the security situation," the Associated Press reported.
"The security agreement with what it included of dates and commitments will remain valid," he said.
The remarks were reportedly some of the harshest the Iraqi leader had ever addressed to Washington.
Under the arrangement, the almost 50,000 US soldiers deployed in Iraq, are expected to withdraw by the end of 2011.
"Basra’s childhood leukemia rates compare unfavorably to those of neighboring Kuwait and nearby Oman, as well as the US and the European Union and other countries," said a study conducted by the University of Washington in Seattle, which documented the increase in the cancer rate in Basra.
A suspected source of the afflictions is the depleted uranium (DU) used by the invading forces.
It is reported that the United States and Britain used up to 2,000 tons of DU during the Iraq war.
"A report has been published indicating cancers and other diseases in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are significantly higher than those of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs of 1945.
The survey found that in the five years following the 2004 attacks by USA-led forces there has been a four-fold increase in all cancer.
The types of cancer are similar to that in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors who were exposed to nuclear fallout."
It appears that cancer is a 21st century byproduct of the way the US fights its wars.
The former chief of US intelligence warned Sunday that South Korea has lost its patience with provocations by North Korea and "will be taking military action."
Retired admiral Dennis Blair, who was director of national intelligence until May, said he did not think that hostilities would escalate into a larger war with artillery attacks on Seoul because North Korea knows it would lose.
Webmaster's Commentary:
MEMO to retired Adm. Blair:
1. North Korea responded to South Korean provocation first, after the North Korean military called the South Korean Military, requesting that they not do the live fire exercise in disputed waters, stating that there would be a robust consequence to such shelling, which South Korea ignored.
2. North Korea would probably lose to South Korea on its own. However, it is as disingenuous to say that North Korea would be "on its own" as it would be to say that South Korea is "on its own" in such a potential conflict.
3. North Korea is a client state of China: South Korea is a client state of the US.
4. Due to defense treaties in place, such a conflict will almost inevitably lead to a military conflict between the US and China, both of which are nuclear armed countries.
The Japanese government plans to boost its deployment of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missiles at air bases across Japan to counter the threat of North Korea's ballistic missiles under new defense policy guidelines to be approved later this month, officials said Friday.
A draft appendix to the guidelines to be updated as early as next week covering the five years from April 2011 also stipulates equipping all six Aegis destroyers with Standard Missile-3 interceptors while cutting tanks and artillery by about 200 each to 400, the government and Self-Defense Forces officials said.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Although this process will take time, it appears that Japan believes that there will be some kind of military conflict in the Korean Peninsula in the not too distant future.
North Korea fired artillery into waters near the maritime border with the South today as the US increased pressure on China to rein in its ally, warning that continued aggression from Pyongyang would risk another war
Webmaster's Commentary:
So, let me get my head around this: the live fire exercises the North Koreans are doing are "destabilizing", but the joint live-fire exercises the US is doing with South Korea and Japan are not "destabilizing"?!?
A joint U.S.-Japanese military exercise in the Sea of Japan was suspended when two Russian Il-38 May anti-submarine aircraft flew over the area, the NHK channel said on Wednesday citing the Japanese defense ministry.
The biennial Keen Sword drills were suspended amid fears that the Russian aircraft may obtain top-secret data, the channel reported.
Webmaster's Commentary:
It appears that Russia was sending a not-so-subtle message that it wants to see tensions on the Korean peninsula calmed, rather than exacerbated.
(MOSCOW) ABC News Radio -- Russia announced Tuesday that its armed forces in the east are on high alert. This comes in light of what it calls an "inadequate situation" on the Korean peninsula as tensions have increased in recent weeks between the North and South.
The head of Russia's military said they continue to follow what is happening and have taken measures to raise the forces' combat readiness.
Pyongyang will rely on nuclear might to defend itself against the United States and South Korea, North Korea's Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun told Russia's Interfax news agency Friday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
North Korea has had a very clear object lesson as to what happens to a country which does not have a nuclear deterrent, as was the case in Iraq.
The question is, how seriously the US is going to take this threat, based on their assessment of how advanced North Korea's nuclear program is.
The range of North Korean missiles will only allow them to target either Alaska or Hawaii; they cannot hit the mainland US.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said its army and people were ready for escalated conflicts and all-out war that would not be confined to the peninsula, the official news agency KCNA reported Saturday.
According to the KCNA, a spokesman for the National Peace Committee of Korea said in the statement released Saturday that the recent moves of the U.S. indicated that it was fully joining in South Korea's moves for a war of aggression against the DPRK after "throwing away the disguise of a hypocrite".
It was clear that if the South Korean army mobilized all flying corps, warships and missiles for a war against the DPRK and the U.S. joined them with the latest weapons, it would develop into an all-out war, not a local war, he said.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Unfortunately, there are many in the bowels of power in DC who believe that a war (any war) would be a good thing right now, no matter how horrendously things are going in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A war between North and South Korea would inevitably bring China into the fray on the side of North Korea and the US into conflict on the side of South Korea.
This is a singularly bad idea on many levels, one singular fact being that the US has lost its manufacturing capability, so cannot possibly pursue a sustained conflict; China is a manufacturing powerhouse right now.
US State Department officials are cheering tonight after TSA workers in Jackson, Mississippi subjected the Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar to an “enhanced pat-down” on the grounds that she was wearing a sari, traditional Indian garb. A cartoon in India's Hindustan Times lampoons the TSA pat-down
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also defended the frisking of the Indian ambassador, insisting that it was “by the book” and that diplomats have to subject themselves to the same “basic screening” as everyone else.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Oh, really?!? If, according to Janet Napolitano, diplomats "...have to subject themselves to the same 'basic screening' as everyone else", why not members of Congress?!? Why not Tim Geithner?!? Why not Janet Napolitano, who refused to be the first volunteer at the the installation of one of the new full body scanners?!?
Oh, I forgot: at this point, in this country's history, some animals are far more equal than others.
And a memo to anyone from any country who might have even been considering traveling to this country: just please, don't right now.
In terms of governance in the US, the inmates have definitely taken over the asylum, and one of the most telling symptoms of this having happened is the degree to which Homeland Security has run amok.
Close on the heels of the news that Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar was subjected to a ‘pat-down’ search, another incident of top Indian diplomat Hardeep Puri was subjected to a pat-down search down at Houston Airport has come to light, following which India has lodged a strong protest with the U.S.
According to reports, Mr. Puri, India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was asked by airport officials to remove his turban during a security check two weeks ago at Houston Airport.
When Mr. Puri refused to remove his turban, the officials made him to wait for over half-an-hour in a ‘holding room’.
Webmaster's Commentary:
I have a solution to the problem for any international diplomat, headed toward any meeting which might be held in the US: don't go, and demand a videoconference presence at that conference.
Tell whatever agency or organization to which you belong that you will not tolerate a trip to the US under any circumstances; problem solved!!
There are numerous reports circulating that Canada and the U.S. are secretly negotiating a security and trade deal which could be signed as early as January 2011. The proposed agreement would establish a security perimeter as a means to better secure North America and stimulate trade. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), along with other U.S.-Canada initiatives have allowed the two countries to incrementally move towards creating a common security perimeter.
When former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura asks Homeland Security spokesman, Lance Clem, who in the Federal Government oversees the network of government funded "fusion centers," his answer is "no one."
It is more than likely that corporations like the war profiteering Halliburton, slave running DynCorp and other globalist multi-nationals "oversee" and run them, as turned out to be the case in Pennsylvania when a private US-Israeli firm was caught profiling activists . . .
AP Enterprise: FAA loses track of 119,000 aircraft; faulty paperwork sparks terror fears
The Federal Aviation Administration is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft in the U.S. — a gap the agency fears could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers.
The records are in such disarray that the FAA says it is worried that criminals could buy planes without the government's knowledge, or use the registration numbers of other aircraft to evade new computer systems designed to track suspicious flights. It has ordered all aircraft owners to re-register their planes in an effort to clean up its files.
About 119,000 of the aircraft on the U.S. registry have "questionable registration" because of missing forms, invalid addresses, unreported sales or other paperwork problems, according to the FAA. In many cases, the FAA cannot say who owns a plane or even whether it is still flying or has been junked.
Airports have become a minefield of health hazards, and an investigation into airport safety has revealed that radiation emitted from various scanning machines is sometimes much higher than intended, putting workers and passengers at serious risk. And while the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) insists that the machines are safe, the agency refuses to release the actual safety inspection reports to back its claim.
A scientist associated with one of the body scanner manufacturers, Ronald J. Hughes, has submitted patent documents to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for various devices involved in airport screening of passengers to detect terrorist threats. In those documents, Mr. Hughes details serious failings of the x-ray body scanning equipment, including its lack of reliability to detect plastics or ceramics used in bomb making.
This latest false flag event in Stockholm has all the hallmarks of a MOSSAD hit!
Note that in recent months, mass demonstrations have been held in Stockholm against Israeli atrocities, particularly the Freedom Flotilla murder on the high seas.
In any crime, those who have motive are the most likely suspects. It is evident that Israel is far more likely to gain from this event. The purpose is to neutralize anti-Israel sentiment and turn the wrath of the Northern European people against the Islamic community.
Isn’t it convenient that the lone bombing suspect died in the explosion?
"A Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) employee warned an acquaintance to stay clear of an area in central Stockholm on Saturday where, several hours later, two explosions went off in what is being called a terrorist attack.
Stockholm bomber al-quaida message came supposedly from this site (Shumukh al-Islam):
Few things to note: - NOT A SINGLE MENTION OF STOCKHOLM ANYWHERE - Several links into Israeli crimes against Palestinians - Last note was posted July 20th 2009 - Last 4 blog posts were discounts and invite to BBQ - Rewiev and link to Obama deception by Alex Jones (they gave 3 stars)
Not very convincing site for a global terrorist organization that can hijack airplanes, bring down pentagon defences and train pilots inside us to fly jets into buildings
To the United States,Julian Assangemay now be Public Enemy Number One. Some American politicians have even called for his execution.
But less than a year ago, the founder of WikiLeaks was officially entertained at a US Embassy cocktail party by one of the very diplomats whose secrets he would soon spill to the world.
At the reception, held at the US ambassador's residence in Reykjavik,Iceland, Mr Assange chatted with Sam Watson, the embassy's deputy chief of mission.
Michel Chossudovsky over at Global Research has put up an interesting NPR transcript with some rather revealing statements about Wikileaks that were made by the New York Times chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger. Sanger is one of the New York Times reporters who have been reading and writing about the different state department memos “leaked” by Wikileaks. He was also involved in meetings with the Obama administration and others which selected and redacted the cables that would be published.
Webmaster's Commentary:
"... involved in meetings with the Obama administration and others which selected and redacted the cables that would be published."
As a result of WikiLeaks, the Obama Administration may introduce a new bill that would allow government officials the ability to spy on Americans through the internet. Meanwhile, an army of hackers rally behind WikiLeaks by shutting down MasterCard and PayPal because they stopped all payments to WikiLeaks. Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen says we could see massive government surveillance of our personal computers, phones and surveillance of our internet activities.
The Court distinguishes what it refers to as "independent advocacy," which it finds is not prohibited by the statute, from "advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization," which is, for the first time, found to be a crime under the statute. The exact line demarcating where independent advocacy becomes impermissible coordination is left open and vague.
Seizing on this overbroad definition of "material support," the US government is now moving in on political groups and activists who are clearly exercising fundamental First Amendment rights by vocally opposing the government's branding of foreign liberation movements as terrorist and supporting their struggles against US-backed repressive regimes and illegal occupations.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This decision by the Supreme Court sets up a mechanism for punishing all logical, peaceful dissent in this country as "material support" for "terrorists." In arriving at this decision, the Supreme Court has, for all practical intents and purposes, nullified the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.This is a truly terrifying precedent, and tears at the very fabric of what it means to be an American.
I am a peaceful, logical human being; as a published sacred choral composer, and the most radical thing I ever do is require that a singer sing the interval of an augmented 4th!
But I have watched this government over decades declare other countries as their manufactured villains for certain industries' financial gain, or to achieve a certain geopolitical outcomes.
I have watched the outcomes of such actions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and that is to say, I have watched this government put its citizens and its military in harm's way when there were other, very viable options which didn't require the firing of a single shot.
In war, the only people generally "winning" are the bankers, for whom debt is created by the borrowing from all sides, and the defense contractors.
Therefore, I will continue to peacefully protest any actions taken this government which I believe to be detrimental to We the People: it is my responsibility, as an American citizen, to do this.
I was going thru WikiLeaks mirrors list, and noticed a small oddity; http://wikileaks.psytek.net was on netblock which belonged Central Intelligence Agency. It has now changed, but 010-12-08 was still registered for CIA.
One of the two Swedish women who have filed sex complaints against the founder of WikiLeaks has reportedly left Sweden and may no longer be cooperating with the criminal investigation.
According to a report at Australian news site Crikey.com, Anna Ardin has moved to the Palestinian territories to volunteer with a Christian group working to reconcile Arabs and Israelis.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Sounds like this lady is Mossad or at least a Sayan. Her last assignment was to keep Julian Assange's name in the world press and now that she did that with this bogus rape charge she heads to her new assignment while the case against Assange collapses without her and he gets let out of jail to the thunderous cheers of his adoring worshipers.
Despite public perceptions, Wikileaks does not make the material it receives available directly to the public. It sends the documents to newspapers, which decide what news is fit to print. As of this writing, Dec 2, 2010, four days after the New York Times and other newspapers began publishing scores of articles; Wikileaks has only posted 623 of the 250,000 documents they claim to have released to their website. (2) Neither the New York Times, the Guardian or the other newspapers apparently in possession of these materials have published them either.
Worse, these 623 ‘leaks’ were apparently cleared by the State Department itself. According to noted American civil rights attorney Michael Ratner, “In the recent disclosure, Wikileaks has only posted cables that were reviewed by the news organisations and in some cases redacted. The news organisations showed them to the Pentagon and agreed to some of the government’s suggested redactions.” (3)
The TIME magazine article is curious because it seems that right off the bat they were telling us how to interpret Wikileaks in such a way that sounded strangely familiar to George W. Bush back just after 9/11…
“By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistle-blowing. That is, of course, as long as you don’t accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency.” TIME Jan. 2007
Webmaster's Commentary:
Especially when there are blogs that were blowing whistles a decade earlier (WRH started as a sub-page on my business web site on March 11, 1994). This author is correct; TIME Magazine was promoting Julian Assange and WikiLeaks before they had actually done anything at all!
Security experts see surge in downloads of spam used to attack sites hostile to WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks supporters on Friday downloaded increasing amounts of the spam-shooting software used to attack companies seen as hostile — a development that could challenge even Internet giants such as PayPal and Amazon.com during the crucial Christmas shopping season.
U.S. data security company Imperva says downloads of the attack program used to bombard websites with bogus requests for data have jumped to over 40,000, with thousands of new downloads reported overnight.
I agree with those who
Mike Rivero
I agree with those who suggest that this entire WikiSpam is a staged event; the internet version of 9-11 to justify government control of the blogs.
According to new revelations, Assange had allegedly struck a deal with Israel before the recent 'cable gate', which may explain why the leaks “were good for Israel,” as the Israeli prime minister put it.
According to an Arabic investigative journalism website [2], Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them, in a “secret, video-recorded agreement,” not to publish any document that may harm Israeli security or diplomatic interests.
The sources of the Al-Haqiqa report are said to be former WikiLeaks volunteers who have left the organisation in the last few months over Assange's “autocratic leadership” and “lack of transparency.”
Webmaster's Commentary:
Live by the whistle blow, die by the whistle blow!
Assange is running an extortion racket with the information real whistleblowers send to him!
Please copythis link everywhere you can! Especially rub the corporate media's nose in this one, as they are accessories.
Faced with growing efforts to censor the release of embarrassing information by WikiLeaks and armed with at best a tenuous grasp of the concept of irony, US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley today announced that the federal government has won the right to host “World Press Freedom Day” in May of 2011, and that the event will be held in Washington DC.
In his official statement Crowley said the move would prove the US commitment to “expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age,” but comes at a time when the State Department is not only championing the attempt to silence the release of classified cables showing a variety of crimes by officials.
Webmaster's Commentary:
One does not know whether to laugh or cry at this one, considering all the lies this government has gone to great lengths to continue to propagate, and in the process, attempting to muzzle the whistle-blowers committed to telling the truth.
What Assange has going is, fundamentally, a high-end extortion racket targeted against governments. He will make statements about information which is about to be leaked....then, he sits on the info, giving various countries the time to buy his silence, as has apparently happened with Israel.
Notice that in none of the cables which were leaked was anything stated which did not support the Israeli position on Iran.
On its website WikiLeaks says it has so far released "almost 20,000" of the "251,287 leaked United States embassy cables."
The release, however, raised questions as it doe not contain any incriminating or embarrassing document against Israel.
"No classified Israeli material was exposed by WikiLeaks," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November, suggesting that Tel Aviv viewed the release as a positive.
An Israeli-born investigative journalist has found evidence that WikiLeaks "struck a deal with Israel," based on which the websites founder Julian Assange would withhold cables incriminating Israel in exchange for money.
They are putting a brave face on it, but no matter how they try to dress it up, Chrish Huhne’s car crash has happended at Cancun, after 2 weeks of negotiating they have agreed just 1 paragraph.
It is difficult to see what the future holds for the whole UN negotiating process now, after a failure at Copenhagen followed by the car crash in Cancun, international climate deplomacy is looking to be a pointless exercise.
Even diedhard alamists like Connie Hedegaard sees no way forward:
Either way, 50°F is a new record for December low temperature, and it couldn’t happen at a more inconvenient time for the Cancun COP16 climate conference.
“It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused,”
“Scams die hard, but eventually they die, and when they do, nobody wants to get close to the corpse,” noted Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden in an opinion piece released last week. “The global-warming caravan has moved on, bound for a destination in oblivion.”
In Canada, newspapers and columnists were equally harsh. “This global-warming/climate-change stuff is a great racket,” wrote Rex Murphy in a piece entitled “Cancun sun speeds decay of global warming charade” for the National Post. He then takes aim at “the class of professional alarmists who’ve been banging on about global warming for close on two decades now” as they hold their extravaganza in a sunny resort city where tourists flock to enjoy the warm weather.
“Perhaps they know that this show of theirs is on its last legs, the jig is up, the great game is over. After the unsuccessful 2009 Copenhagen conference, they had to have realized that even Al Gore and all Al Gore's grim little men would never be able to put the whole rickety, tendentious machine back together again,” Murphy explained. “After Copenhagen, and especially after Climategate, even the true believers must have lost heart.”
And even in England — where the political class seems obsessed by global warming and carbon taxes even as the snow-covered nation suffers its fourth abnormally cold winter in a row and millions of families have trouble heating their homes — the press has been brutal to the warmists. Columnists for the Telegraph and reporters for the Daily Mail, two of the U.K.’s largest papers, have put the climate crusade to shame.
In a separate piece for the Telegraph published before the COP16, Booker called on Ministers of Parliament to face the cold, hard truth. After blasting British and European politicians for groveling over the discredited theories, he puts a price tag on some of the more outrageous programs. “Not a single MP of any party has yet found the courage to mount a properly briefed challenge to all this lunacy. So what do we pay them for?” he wondered in the column, entitled “The climate change scare is dying, but do our MPs notice?”
The Daily Mail, another prominent British newspaper, also revealed a massive hole in the warmists’ arguments as the Cancun conference was becoming increasingly shrill about the supposed warming. "For the past 15 years, global warming has stopped,” noted the report, calling this fact an “inconvenient” truth in honor of alarmist-in-chief Al Gore. “This isn't meant to be happening. Climate science orthodoxy, as promulgated by bodies such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), says that temperatures have risen and will continue to rise.”
“Little by little,” explained the article, “the supposedly settled scientific 'consensus' that the temperature rise is unprecedented, that it is set to continue to disastrous levels, and that it is all the fault of human beings, is starting to fray.” Next, it cited former climate luminaries — most of whom have since fallen in disgrace — admitting there was indeed a medieval warm period and that “there has been no statistically significant warming” since 1995, in the words of the now-discredited Climategate “scientist” Phil Jones.
“The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple,” the article concluded. “Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?”
Of course, there are still numerous establishment organs pushing alarmist man-made global-warming theories in the United States — the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the New York Times among the more prominent. Around the world, the situation is similar.
But the number of writers and publications taking a firm stand against the alarmists is steadily growing. Human Events and Canada Free Press have both published scathing pieces about the alarmists and their claims. And around the world, more and more media are risking the ire of bureaucrats and officials to expose the fraudulent warmist hypotheses.
The New American magazine predicted the slow death of the global-warming crusade in an article earlier this year as politicians who supported the hysteria began dropping like flies and the warmists were still licking their wounds from Copenhagen and a devastating series of scandals. But with so much invested in the scam, it will definitely not go down quietly or without a fight. For now, the embattled parade is scheduled to limp on in Durban, South Africa, next year.
Delegations at the UN climate conference in Cancún close to agreement that will establish $100bn climate fund.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This headline not only confirms that the global warming scam was always about redistribution of wealth, but ignores the fact that Cancun was a disaster, with Japan refusing to continue the Kyoto accord, failure to reach agreement on everything but one symbolic paragraph, and many of the delegates blindly signing a petition against water! Video of wild parties by the very people demanding eco-austerity from the rest of the world did not help, nor did the fact that hundreds of cold temperature records were set in the last week around the world, including Cancun itself!
Top NASA experts say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
According to Lahouari Bounoua of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and other scientists from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), existing models fail to accurately include the effects of rising CO2 levels on green plants. As green plants breathe in CO2 in the process of photosynthesis – they also release oxygen, the only reason that there is any in the air for us to breathe – more carbon dioxide has important effects on them.
Most current climate models don't account for green plants can be expected to grow as they find it easier to harvest carbon from the air around them using energy from the sun: thus introducing a negative feedback into the warming/carbon process, according to Bounoua. Some do, but they fail to accurately simulate the effects – they don't allow for the fact that plants in a high-CO2 atmosphere will "down-regulate" and so use water more efficiently.
The NASA group concluded that the increase in precipitation contributes primarily to increase evapotranspiration rather than surface runoff, consistent with observations, and results in an additional cooling effect not fully accounted for in previous simulations with elevated CO2.
The NASA and NOAA experts used their more accurate science to model a world where CO2 levels have doubled to 780 parts per million (ppm) compared to today's 390-odd. They say that world would actually warm up by just 1.64°C overall, and the vegetation-cooling effect would be stronger over land to boot – thus temperatures on land would would be a further 0.3°C cooler compared to the present sims.
International diplomatic efforts under UN auspices are currently targeted to keep global warming limited to 2°C or less, which under current climate models calls for holding CO2 to 450 ppm – or less in many analyses – a target widely regarded as unachievable. Doubled carbon levels are normally viewed in the current state of enviro play as a scenario that would lead to catastrophe; that is, to warming well beyond 2°C.
If Bounoua and her colleagues are right, and CO2 levels keep on rising the way they have been lately (about 2 ppm each year), we can go a couple of centuries without any dangerous warming. There are lots of other factors in play, of course, but nonetheless the new analysis is very reassuring.
"As we learn more about how these systems react, we can learn more about how the climate will change," says Bounoua's colleague Forrest Hall, in a NASA statement accompanying the team's scholarly paper. "Each year we get better and better. It's important to get these things right."
The NASA/NOAA boffins' paper Quantifying the negative feedback of vegetation to greenhouse warming: A modeling approach is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage. The [WikiLeaks] US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009. Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected. Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries' negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental "treaty circumvention" and deals between nations.
Research into the possibility of engineering a better climate is progressing at an impressive rate—and meeting strong opposition. Geoengineering is shorthand for the idea of fixing the problem of man-made climate change once the greenhouse gases that cause it have already been emitted into the atmosphere, rather than trying to stop those emissions happening in the first place. Many people think such ideas immoral ... and certain to provoke unintended consequences, to boot. Over the past few years research in the field has boomed. What is sometimes called Plan B seems to be taking shape on the laboratory bench—and seeking to escape outside. Polluting the stratosphere. Liming the oceans. Locking Greenland’s glaciers to its icy mountains. It is easy to see why sceptics balk at geoengineering. And if viewed as a substitute for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, a cover for business-as-usual into the indefinite future, then it might indeed prove a Faustian bargain. Fertilising the ocean with iron has already been tried—admittedly without much success, but also without perceptible harm being done. The harm done by stopping geoengineering experiments is that the good which might come from them will never be known. Yet even some enthusiastic researchers worry about undue haste. Geoengineering’s growth spurt will need to be matched by some grown-up questioning. Who benefits? Who decides? Who faces the risk?
Note: What this article fails to mention is that geoengineering has already been secretly used over many decades for military purposes as well as weather modification. For reliable information on this, click here.
The record snowfall that has been hitting London and other communities in southwestern Ontario is expected to ease Thursday, but there is more snowy weather in the forecast.
Some areas east of Lake Huron have already seen as much as 177 centimetres fall since the weekend, and the region's communities are forecast to receive another five to 10 centimetres Thursday, as well as two to four cm Friday.
To add to the province's weather woes, a "monster storm" developing in Colorado may hit all of southern Ontario on Sunday, potentially bringing 10 cm of snow to Toronto and freezing rain to the Ottawa Valley, she said.
The London area has received more than a metre of snow since the weekend, more snow than is considered normal for the entire month of December. The snow was blamed for hundreds of accidents and brought communities in the region to a standstill.
MINNEAPOLIS - The inflatable roof of the Minneapolis Metrodome, where the Minnesota Vikings play, has collapsed following a snowstorm that dumped 43 centimetres on the city.
The Metrodome is operated by the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission.
Its executive director, Bill Lester, said Sunday morning the damage is being assessed and the agency will issue a statement later. He says he has no details yet on what happened.
The National Weather Service says the storm that hit Minneapolis and much of the Upper Midwest has dumped more than 50 centimetres of snow in some areas.
Hard freezes are expected this morning and Wednesday as severe cold settles into the Tampa Bay area, dropping temperatures into the 20s and 30s, putting farmers on alert and opening cold weather shelters.
Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency Monday because of the threat to the state's agricultural products.
Dozens of helicopters whir above Florida's valuable and sensitive veggie crops, an unusual approach by farmers worried that an uncommon freeze could wipe out their harvests.
The choppers hover low over green bean and sweet corn fields, moving back and forth in the early morning hours to push warmer air closer to the plants -- and, the farmers hope, save the plants from a deadly frost.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This is a very costly way to save the crops. Normally, farmers would use smudgepots to protect crops from a frost, but since we were not supposed to have much snow this year according to the Carbonazis, farmers did not buy enough fuel.
3 of them crashed.....
billythekid
Last week in just one night trying to keep the crops from freezing here in South Florida!! Thus making it a very dangerous way to keep the crops warm!!
Environment Canada has issued a winter storm warning for the Barrie and Collingwood areas of central Ontario.
A low pressure system centred over Iowa is tracking east towards the lower Great Lakes and will intensify into a winter storm as it reaches western New York state by Sunday night, the weather office says.
An expanding area of snow is expected to move into southern Ontario first thing Sunday morning as the low gets closer and deepens. Environment Canada warns the snow will become heavy at times, with 15 to 25 centimetres likely by Monday morning.
And before we head to our weather segment...if you were thinking about traveling to oh, say Florida to escape our cold temperatures...don't bother...In fact, this morning Ft. Lauderdale and Miami broke records. Ft. Lauderdale shattered a 169-year-old record low when the temperature dropped down to 40 degrees overnight. A freeze watch is in effect there.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Meanwhile, the Carbonazis are still trying to reconcile the record cold across the globe with their Warmista religion.
The storm this weekend is part of a wintry weather pattern that has developed across the eastern part of the country. The storm is also potentially one of several storms that could bring a white Christmas to many areas across the Midwest and Northeast.
Bastardi is predicting that the pattern will result in over 50 percent of the country having a white Christmas which is well above the average coverage of less than 25 percent of the country which is usually covered by snow Christmas Day.
So far December has seen some of the coldest temperatures and heaviest snowfalls since 1981, but with no let up on the horizon, it could end up being the worst winter since 1910.
Parts of northern England and central Scotland have seen lows of (0F) -18C while the mercury has continued to drop in the south.
But apart from a brief respite over the coming weekend, when temperatures are expected to climb slightly, the cold snap is likely to continue throughout Christmas and well into January.
The army was put on high alert last night as Britain headed towards its coldest December for 100 years.
As temperatures plunged to -18c (0f) David Cameron said the military ‘stands ready to help’.
The Prime Minister also revealed Cobra-style emergency meetings of senior officials and Ministers had been held to discuss the Government’s response to the big freeze.
Motorways in the Paris region were described as impassable as snow that had already hit other areas of France spread to the capital.
Elsewhere in Europe, a boy drowned in southern Spain when his father's car was swept into a flooded river.
In Poland, a further three people died because of the extreme cold.
The authorities there said 66 people had lost their lives since the severe wintry weather began in late November.
The Meteo France service reported that one of its Paris weather stations had recorded 11cm (4.5in) of snow. The French capital has not seen a larger one-day snowfall since 1987.
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president," the wire service reported Gore saying.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The lesson here is that the push for alcohol fuels was never about efficiency but about money and politics. In hindsight, and with all due respect to the member posting all the pro-alcohol stories, ethanol was never carbon neutral, and because ethanol does not contain the energy of hydrocarbons you have to buy and burn more ethanol to obtain the same amount of actual work. Finally, as many owners of older cars have discovered to their horror, fuel systems are not designed to work with alcohol and the gaskets and other soft parts were destroyed by alcohol. New cars are designed to work with both fuels (so they say) and cost more money for the additional components.
When you see things like this (from MBH98 co-author Malcolm K. Hughes) on the MCA/MWP:
A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia.
And look at the attendee list and lack of press coverage, you realize it’s the same gang of people running the same game all over again.
Webmaster's Commentary:
In George Orwell's warning about dictatorships, "1984", the main character, Winston Smith works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. His job is to alter historical records so that they match the current political agenda of the dictator.
And now we see it actually happening!
The Medieval Warm Period is a major embarrassment for the global warming cultists. The climate was much warmer than today, and there were no dire consequences. The ice caps did not melt, the shorelines did not flood, the polar bears and walruses survived just fine. Indeed it was a golden time of plenty for all. There was so much food people had time left over to build great cathedrals, and the Vikings started colonizing North America! It was a golden age that supported the flowering of art and science and the Renaissance.
All this is a threat to the warmist agenda, which seeks to use the "threat" of global warming to force a global government and a carbon tax on us all!
History does not support the global government carbon agenda. So, history must be changed! The warmistas, real life Winston Smiths, are trying to lay the groundwork to erase the Medieval warm period from history, because it does not support their push for global government and a carbon tax.
You should oppose this with all your strength and rage, not only to free yourself from a carbon tax, but because a government brought into existence using the methods described in "1984" will be exactly like the government described in "1984."
After all, "Room 101" already exists at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo!
The controversy over ‘Satellitegate’ hots up as NOAA faces a court appearance for refusing to release evidence that would show whether one or more US satellites exagerrated global warming temperatures.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a federal agency focused on reporting the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. When the story first broke NOAA bizarrely announced it would withdraw satellite ‘images’ from its archives but failed to state whether reams of cooked data had also been withdrawn.
What it means In summing up their findings, Dawson and Smithers write that "contrary to perceptions, Raine Island did not erode but instead modestly accreted during the 40-year study period," and they therefore conclude that "future management strategies of Raine Island and other islands of the Great Barrier Reef should recognize that perceptions of reef island erosion can arise from large short-term seasonal and storm-derived sediment redistribution from one part of the island to another or to a temporary storage on the adjacent reef flat," but that these phenomena do not necessarily lead to "a net permanent loss from the island sediment budget." And considering the similar positive findings of Webb and Kench (2010), it can be concluded that the most likely effect of a rising sea level is to actually add to the area and volume of low-lying reef islands.
Based on radiocarbon dating of the fossil wood remains of eight larch (Larix decidua) stem fragments found one meter beneath the surface of the ground at the base of the front of the Piancabella rock glacier (46°27'02" N, 9°00'07" E) in the Southern Swiss Alps in September 2005, the authors determined that the wood was formed somewhere between AD 1040 and 1280 with a statistical probability of 95.4%.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This confirms that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. Obviously the world did not end.
The specific charge brought against the Kiwi government was that it’s climate scientists had taken the raw temperature records of the country and then adjusted them artificially with the result that a steeper warming trend was created than would otherwise exist by examination of the raw data alone.
Indeed, the original Kiwi records shows no warming during the 20th century, but after government sponsored climatologists had manipulated the data a warming trend of 1C appeared.
In this study, cloud profiling radar data from the CloudSat satellite were combined with lidar data from the CALIPSO satellite to obtain 3D profiles of clouds and precipitation regimes across the tropics.
Webmaster's Commentary:
So what this study is reporting is that the computer models used by the warmistas to "prove" that humans are warming the Earth are so flawed they cannot even accurately model the cloud cover we are seeing today, a major factor in whether the Earth is warming or cooling.
Nations must substantially narrow their differences ahead of crunch summit in Mexico later this year, Artur Runge-Metzger tells delegates at China climate talks.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Notice how they dropped the phrase "global warming?" Now it's "climate change", but climate is always changing. So what these politicians are doing is taking something that happens naturally, declare it a crisis and force you to buy their "solution"; a carbon tax.
As a result of the huge backlash in response to the shocking 10:10 Global climate change infomercial, in which children are liquidated for not expressing support for reducing carbon emissions, Sony has been forced to disassociate itself from the eco-fascist group behind the video.
In an email, Sony Europe Director of Corporate Communications Nick Sharples has “taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time.”
Taxes on international flights, shipping and financial transactions, as well as a global carbon price of $20 to $25 may be key to annually mobilising $100 billion in climate funding by 2020, according to the United Nations high level advisory group on climate change financing which submitted its report in New York on Friday.
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
‘NOAA-16’ was launched in September 2000, and is currently operational, in a sun-synchronous orbit, 849 km above the Earth, orbiting every 102 minutes providing automated data feed of surface temperatures which are fed into climate computer models.
NOAA has reported a succession of record warm temperatures in recent years based on such satellite readings but these may now all be undermined.
World-renowned Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball, after casting his expert eye over the shocking findings concluded, “At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day.”
Chart of Earth's Temperature When we open up the scale of a chart of Earth's Temperatureto a much longer period of history, we see that there is nothing at all abnormal about the current climate. We are warmer than the ice ages (one of which we just came out of) but colder than the Cretaceous. And ignoring the effects of the Chixulub Asteroid Impact, life on Earth seems to have survived quite well at far warmer temperatures than we have now.
The fight against the delusion of dangerous man-made global warming remains an uphill struggle. For decades, the climate debate has been obfuscated by cherry-picking, spin-doctoring and scaremongering by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists, including the environmental movement and mainstream media. Their massive campaign to overstate the threat of man-made warming has left its imprint on public opinion.
Économie:
Si vous ne l'avez pas encore vu. :
Les assassins économiques:
John Perkins : Nous, assassins économiques, sommes les réels responsables dans la création du premier véritable empire global et nous travaillons de plusieurs façons différentes. Mais, peut-être que la plus commune est que nous identifions un pays détenant des ressources, comme le pétrole. Alors, nous arrangeons un énorme prêt pour ce pays auprès de la banque mondiale ou l'une de ses organisations sœurs mais l'argent ne va jamais réellement au pays. Il est plutôt utilisé par nos grosses corporations pour construire des projets d'infrastructure dans ce pays. Centrales énergétiques, parcs industriels, ports... Des choses qui profitent à quelques personnes riches de ce pays, en plus de nos propres corporations, mais certainement pas à la majorité des gens du tout. Dans tous les cas, les gens, l'ensemble du pays conserve une dette énorme. C'est tellement une grosse dette qu'ils ne peuvent payer, et ça fait parti du plan... Ils ne peuvent pas la rembourser!
The U.S., the world’s largest wheat shipper, may not have the logistical capacity to meet rising global demand after rains cut the quality of the harvest in Canada and Australia, the United Nations said . . .
Dec 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's balance sheet expanded for a sixth straight week, bolstered to a record by purchases of Treasuries, Fed data released on Thursday showed.
The balance sheet, a broad gauge of Fed lending to the financial system, rose to $2.364 trillion in the week ended Dec. 8 from $2.329 trillion the previous week.
Last month, the U.S. central bank began a second bout of quantitative easing, known as QE2. The Fed expects to buy about $600 billion in U.S. government debt purchases over an eight-month period in an effort to stimulate the economy.
The balance sheet exceeded the previous record of $2.333 trillion set in May as the Fed was about to end its initial round of bond purchases that involved $300 billion of Treasuries and $1.425 billion in mortgage-related securities.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This has nothing to do with stimulating the economy, and everything to do with propping up the Fed's own financial wealth, at the cost of the economy.
And remember: the Federal Reserve is a private banking entity, not at all a true division of the US government.
Today, the United States has become the police of the world. The U.S. military has a total of over 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world. Total military spending by the U.S. government is nearly equal to the combined military spending of the rest of the globe. Meanwhile, the federal government is literally drowning in debt. So if we make some significant cuts to military spending will we fix the national debt problem? Of course not. In fact, it would only put a small dent in it. But at least it would help. The truth is that we cannot afford to be the police of the world and the Pentagon wastes so much money that it is almost incomprehensible.
The following are 12 facts that show that we cannot afford to be the police of the world.... #1 Today the U.S. military has over 700 bases (some say it is actually over 1000 bases) in 130 different countries around the globe. It is estimated that it costs about $100 billion a year to maintain these bases. #2 The U.S. military budget for 2010 was $693 billion.
#3 However, when you throw in all "off budget" items and other categories of "defense" spending not covered in the Pentagon budget you get a grand total of somewhere between $1.01 and $1.35 trillion spent on national defense in 2010. #4 The truth is that U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined. #5 Total U.S. military spending makes up approximately 44 percent of all the military spending on the entire globe.
#6 The Pentagon currently gobbles up 56 percent of all discretionary spending by the federal government. #7 Together, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost more than $150 billion a year. #8 Up to this point, it is estimated that the U.S. government has spent over 373 billion dollars on the war in Afghanistan.
#9 Up to this point, it is estimated the the U.S. government has spent over 745 billion dollars on the war in Iraq. #10 Since 2001, the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan breaks down to $3,644 for every man, woman and child in the United States. #11 The total price tag for each F-22 fighter jet is approximately $350 million.
#12 The Sustainable Defense Task Force has produced a report which shows that the U.S. could easily slash a trillion dollars from the defense budget over the next ten years. But isn't the U.S. the wealthiest nation in the world? Can't the U.S. government afford all of this military spending? No. The truth is that the U.S. government has accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.
The U.S. national debt is 13 times larger than it was just 30 years ago. We are literally drowning in red ink, and the farther you project things into the future, the more apocalyptic the financial outlook becomes. We have become so addicted to debt that we have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from China, Russia and other strategic enemies in recent years - thus putting our national security at risk. Sadly, as bad as they are, the "official" budget deficit figures are largely a fraud. If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion.
The figure reflects a $31 billion hike in the country's military budget for the 2010 fiscal year, which is reportedly $128 billion. Now the official cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost the past decade has surpassed $1.1 trillion.
The bill needs to be passed by the Senate and then signed by US President Barack Obama to take effect, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
The White House is in the midst of a strategic review of Afghanistan. This review is coming at a time when the reality is hard to ignore: Afghanistan cannot be won, the cost is escalating at a time when the U.S. economy is in collapse and the war is undermining U.S. national security and the rule of law. It is time to end the war-based foreign policy of the United States.
Immediately on the heels of reports in the Guardian and other Western news media that the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization has crafted a strategy to intervene with nine army divisions in the Baltic Sea area, President Barack Obama met with his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski at the White House and confirmed plans to increase U.S. military hardware and troops in the latter’s country.
The two heads of state agreed on expanding bilateral military relations "in the spirit of the 2008 U.S.-Polish Declaration on Strategic Cooperation," [1] including the stationing of 16 U.S. F-16 jet fighters and four C-130 Hercules military transport planes on Polish air bases beginning in 2013.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Russia cannot possibly be pleased with these developments, and these actions on the ground by the US in Poland cannot be interpreted as peaceful toward Russia.
More confirmation of what I have been saying; the dark secret of Wall Street are the fraudulent mortgage-backed securities sold around the world for the last 9 years. Now that banks and mortgage companies are being forced to buy them back, the government has taken away your high paying jobs so the banks can take your homes to re-capitalize their balance sheets. Yes, it is that simple!
At a Senate Budget Committee hearing in 2009, I asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to tell the American people the names of the financial institutions that received an unprecedented backdoor bailout from the Federal Reserve, how much they received, and the exact terms of this assistance. He refused. A year and a half later, as a result of an amendment that I was able to include in the Wall Street reform bill, we have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed, and the American people now have this information.
It is unfortunate that it took this long, and it is a shame that the biggest banks in America and Mr. Bernanke fought to keep this secret from the American public every step of the way.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The reason the banks fought it every step of the way is that what they did with all that money is buy back the fraudulent mortgage-backed securities Wall Street was peddling around the globe for the last 8 years, in order to keep the Wall Street scammers out of prison, while sticking the American people with the losses!
According to analysis released Thursday by the research firm Zillow, U.S. homes are expected to lose more than $1.7 trillion in value this year. Since the market peaked in June 2006, the company says homeowners have been stripped of $9 trillion in equity.
To put things into perspective, Zillow cites a report by the Congressional Research Service, which says from 2001 to the end of September 2010, the war in Iraq has cost the United States $750.8 billion. That means the value lost in residential property values since mid-2006 exceeds the cost of 12 Iraq wars.
The depreciation of residential property values this year is 63 percent more than the $1 trillion lost in all of 2009, according to Zillow.
The drop in home values pushed more buyers underwater, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, Zillow said. The percentage of homeowners with so-called negative equity reached 23.2 percent in the third quarter, up from 21.8 percent at the end of 2009.
Brace yourself for another rough year in housing: The number of foreclosures is expected by many to increase in 2011 as more troubled mortgages work their way through the pipeline. [sun1212mw] Tom Bloom
Next year could very well be a peak year for foreclosures, says Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties. The market is expected to tally about 1.2 million bank repossessions in 2010, up from 900,000 in 2009, he says. "We expect we will top both of those numbers in 2011."
Webmaster's Commentary:
How those in Washington can possibly use the words "economy recovery", looking at projected numbers like this, boggles the imagination.
Detroit has been bankrupt for years. It simply refuses to admit it. Detroit's schools are bankrupt as well. A mere 25% of students graduate from high school.
Yet, in spite of hints and threats from mayors and budget commissions, and in spite of common sense talk of bankruptcy, Detroit has not pulled the bankruptcy trigger.
In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing's latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.
TJX Cos. plans to cut 4,400 jobs as it converts 91 A.J. Wright stores into T.J. Maxx, Marshalls or HomeGoods stores and closes the brand’s remaining 71 locations...
Grocery store chain A&P, which filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, may have to shutter a quarter or more of its stores if it hopes to survive, analysts say.
In bankruptcy, the company officially known as The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co GAPTQ.PK will get a chance to perform radical surgery on itself as it faces growing pressure in the low-margin supermarket business...
Plans to close down the chain of A.J. Wright retail stores nationwide will cost the jobs of 725 workers for the company in northern Indiana.
Documents filed with the state Department of Workforce Development and posted by the state online late Monday confirm that all of the workers in an A.J. Wright warehouse in South Bend will be let go as of Feb. 8...
O'Charley's Inc. has closed 16 underperforming restaurants across the country, including 11 locations of its flagship casual-dining brand, the company said Monday.
Five locations of the Ninety Nine Restaurants brand also were shuttered, said O'Charley's, which also owns the Stoney River Legendary Steaks concept..
Since September of 2009 we have added a stunning 6,000,000 Americans to the nationwide food assistance program. In fact, even as some are touting how great things are in the last month we added 521,000 more Americans to the food assistance program. Let me reiterate, we added half a million Americans to the food assistance program in the latest month of data. Is this really what we have in mind as a recovery?
- Regulators on Friday shut down small banks in Michigan and Pennsylvania, boosting the number of U.S. banks that have failed this year to 151 as bad loans have mounted and the economy has been slow to heal.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Paramount Bank, based in Farmington Hills, Mich., with $252.7 million in assets and $213.6 million in deposits; and Earthstar Bank, based in Southampton, Pa., with $112.6 million in assets and $104.5 million in deposits.
Public transport has come to a halt in Athens as union workers slap the Greek capital with crippling strikes in protest to the government's austerity measures.
The Chinese appetite for gold continues unabated. Gold imports by China—the largest producer of the yellow metal in the world—is set to touch a record 260 tonnes for the year 2010, bullion dealers predicted on Thursday.
Already, the yellow metal import by China has increased five-fold for the last 10 months of 2010. By the end of November 30, the Chinese gold imports stood at 209 tonnes. In 2009, China had imported just 45 tonnes of gold, compared to the massive 350 tonnes of gold that rival India had imported in the same year. India is currently the largest gold importer and consumer in the world.
But on Thursday, silver prices declined sharply to touch at $28.76 per ounce. Though analysts have argued that the drop in silver prices has been thanks to market corrections, there are some bullion dealers who suggest that the silver price is being manipulated these days.
Here is what Silver Investing News reported this week on possible silver market manipulation by banks:
Webmaster's Commentary:
Both J.P. Morgan and COMEX are massively shorted on silver. They have ample motive to try to manipulate the price of silver downward in order to not be driven into insolvency covering the longs.
A client of a major Swiss bank was recently refused access to his physical gold and had to hire attorneys and threaten to expose the bank publicly before finally getting it back in his own hands, according to Jim Rickards of Omnis.
“My inference is that that gold was not there,” Rickards told King World News. “The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery.”
I am hearing more and more questions about how to buy gold and silver. How do you buy it? Why should I buy gold and silver? What kind of gold and silver should I buy? What is the difference between numismatic and bullion coins? Which of these should I buy?
Do buyers get some kind of confirmation that what they are buying from these shops is real and certified? Will the government confiscate my gold and silver? Can the government make owning gold illegal? How do I know if my gold and silver dealer is reputable? Where can I buy gold and silver? These are just some of the questions I will try to answer in this post.
First off, why should you own precious metals? Read this:
The worldwide derivatives market is based primarily on credit and it is approximately ten times larger than it was back in the late 90s. There has never been anything quite like it in the history of the world.
So what in the world is going to happen when this thing implodes? Are U.S. taxpayers going to be expected to pick up the pieces once again? Is the Federal Reserve just going to zap tens of trillions or hundreds of trillions of dollars into existence to bail everyone out?
Nobody knows for certain how large the worldwide derivatives market is, but most estimates usually put the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market somewhere over a quadrillion dollars. If that is accurate, that means that the worldwide derivatives market is 20 times larger than the GDP of the entire world. It is hard to even conceive of 1,000,000,000,000,000 dollars. Counting at one dollar per second, it would take you 32 million years to count to one quadrillion. So who controls this unbelievably gigantic financial casino? Would it surprise you to learn that it is the big international banks that control it?
The New York Times has just published an article entitled "A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives". Shockingly, the most important newspaper in the United States has exposed the steel-fisted control that the big Wall Street banks exert over the trading of derivatives. Just consider the following excerpt from the article....
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.
The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.
Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk.
In theory, this group exists to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the dominance of the big banks.
The banks in this group, which is affiliated with a new derivatives clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available.
Banks’ influence over this market, and over clearinghouses like the one this select group advises, has costly implications for businesses large and small, like Dan Singer’s home heating-oil company in Westchester County, north of New York City.
This fall, many of Mr. Singer’s customers purchased fixed-rate plans to lock in winter heating oil at around $3 a gallon. While that price was above the prevailing $2.80 a gallon then, the contracts will protect homeowners if bitterly cold weather pushes the price higher.
But Mr. Singer wonders if his company, Robison Oil, should be getting a better deal. He uses derivatives like swaps and options to create his fixed plans. But he has no idea how much lower his prices — and his customers’ prices — could be, he says, because banks don’t disclose fees associated with the derivatives.
“At the end of the day, I don’t know if I got a fair price, or what they’re charging me,” Mr. Singer said.
Derivatives shift risk from one party to another, and they offer many benefits, like enabling Mr. Singer to sell his fixed plans without having to bear all the risk that oil prices could suddenly rise. Derivatives are also big business on Wall Street. Banks collect many billions of dollars annually in undisclosed fees associated with these instruments — an amount that almost certainly would be lower if there were more competition and transparent prices.
Just how much derivatives trading costs ordinary Americans is uncertain. The size and reach of this market has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Pension funds today use derivatives to hedge investments. States and cities use them to try to hold down borrowing costs. Airlines use them to secure steady fuel prices. Food companies use them to lock in prices of commodities like wheat or beef.
The marketplace as it functions now “adds up to higher costs to all Americans,” said Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates most derivatives. More oversight of the banks in this market is needed, he said.
But big banks influence the rules governing derivatives through a variety of industry groups. The banks’ latest point of influence are clearinghouses like ICE Trust, which holds the monthly meetings with the nine bankers in New York.
Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, many derivatives will be traded via such clearinghouses. Mr. Gensler wants to lessen banks’ control over these new institutions. But Republican lawmakers, many of whom received large campaign contributions from bankers who want to influence how the derivatives rules are written, say they plan to push back against much of the coming reform. On Thursday, the commission canceled a vote over a proposal to make prices more transparent, raising speculation that Mr. Gensler did not have enough support from his fellow commissioners.
The Department of Justice is looking into derivatives, too. The department’s antitrust unit is actively investigating “the possibility of anticompetitive practices in the credit derivatives clearing, trading and information services industries,” according to a department spokeswoman.
"Bank of America entities have agreed to pay a total of 137.3 million dollars in restitution to federal and state agencies for its participation in a conspiracy to rig bids in the municipal bond derivatives market," the Department of Justice said in a statement.
"Bank of America entered into agreements with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and 20 state attorneys general, the department said.
"The combined outcome provides for payment of restitution to the IRS and to municipalities harmed by the bank's anti-competitive conduct in the muni-bond derivatives market."
US Treasuries last week suffered their biggest two-day sell-off since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The borrowing costs of the government of the world’s largest economy have now risen by a quarter over the past four weeks.
Liam Halligan Telegraph
Such a sharp rise in US benchmark market interest rates matters a lot – and it matters way beyond America. The US government is now servicing $13.8 trillion (£8.7 trillion) in declared liabilities – making it, by a long way, the world’s largest debtor. Around $414bn of US taxpayers’ money went on sovereign interest payments last year – around 4.5 times the budget of America’s Department of Education.
Decision to force bondholders to pay for banking system's collapse appears to pay off as economy grows 1.2% in third quarter.
In contrast to Ireland, Iceland's taxpayers refused to foot the bill for the debts accumulated by the banking sector. Bondholders were told to accept dramatic reductions in the value of repayments on bank debt after the sector borrowed beyond its means to fund ambitious investments abroad.
The return to growth is likely to put pressure on Irish politicians to explain why Dublin rejected a more radical restructuring of its debts and a departure from the eurozone.
Webmaster's Commentary:
In short, the people of Iceland told the bankers Vadd?rassgat and refused to pay for the bankers' greed. Iceland's economy is now out of recession. Quite a contrast with the United States Government, which has plunged you all into a quarter million in future tax debt to bail out Wall Street and offshored your jobs so the banks could confiscate your houses to recapitalize their balance sheets after having to buy back those fraudulent mortgage backed securities.
So, why are the Icelandic people doing so much better than Americans?
Well, to start with, they kicked out the government that sided with the bankers over the people.
The pictorial evidence tells the whole story. Especially that the BP narrative is nothing but a corporate-created illusion – a web of fabrication spun in collaboration with the US Federal Government and Mainstream Media. Big Oil, as well as the Military-Industrial Complex, have aided and abetted this whole scheme and info blackout because the very future of the Oil & Gas Industry is at stake, as is the future of the US Empire which sprawls around the world and requires vast amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is pushing all members of America’s armed service to buy and eat as much seafood as possible.
This is as sinister as it gets! BP has destroyed the gulf and is now working with the U.S. military to get it in the homes of American troops(already poisoned by continued exposure to depleted uranium) throughout the country! Multiple scientists have declared gulf seafood toxic and for good reason. Over 2 million gallons of toxic dispersant has been sprayed in and around the gulf. The facts are so heavily documented that there is no logical way that any literate human being not pushing an agenda could believe otherwise.
Test from several independent laboratories have confirmed that Gulf seafood contains a high level of toxic compounds as a result of oil contamination.
BP's Deepwater Horizon well leaked over 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a five month period, yet government officials have gone out of their way to assure the public that shrimp, fish, and crab harvested from those waters is completely safe to eat.
...
"I wouldn't eat shrimp, fish or crab caught in the Gulf," Naman told Raw Story. The seafood Naman tested displayed an unusual high concentration of oil and grease in its digestive tracts: 193 parts-per-million.
State wildlife officials are investigating a large fish kill at the mouth of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.
"By our estimates there were thousands, and I'm talking about 5,000 to 15,000 dead fish. Different species were found dead including crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout, red fish, you name it, included in that kill," said parish president Craig Taffaro.
“We’re more concerned about the dispersant and the dispersant mixed with oil–the dispersed oil, if you will–than we are about the crude oil itself.”
Tests conducted in recent months by[University of Southern Maine Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health director John] Wise’s lab, using human cell lines, show that dispersants cause cell death and DNA damage, which has been linked to cancer and reproductive problems.
An executive helping to guide BP's recovery from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a top Texas lawyer and his mother-in-law were killed in a small plane crash in waters off northern Florida, officials said Wednesday.
James Patrick Black, 58, died about a mile from the Destin airport in the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday night, said BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick.
Brand new laboratory test results just in Monday morning are showing troubling problems with gulf seafood. WFTV sent shrimp to be tested after scientists disagreed on whether it is safe to eat after the oil spill, and the results are raising a lot of red flags.
"Yeah, okay; we're lying to you. But we really did it for your own good! You are such simple minds, children really, and I felt it was better for you not to know you were all dying. I mean, why upset you pointlessly, especially before an election?" -- Official White Horse Souse
On the 204th day of the continuing BP’s Oil Spill disaster, BP quietly informed through a teleconference on 10 Nov that the “plug and abandonment of the Macondo 152 well” was completed two days prior. But what was most interesting was the picture they chose to display for the article. Not only was the still image of the “well” outdated by more than 157 days (8 June 2010) it is also the wrong image of the well.
BP has long denied ever drilling more than 1 well at the Macondo 252 prospect. That is a complete lie. Images of 2 different well-heads were published on 11 Nov 2010 to prove this. More images captured by BP’s ROVs are given here to provide the conclusive proof that the third and deepest well (S20BC) did exist. That well was the only well (out of the three) to have reached the oil reservoir at 18,300 ft bml. Images to prove that BP had not ceased chemical spraying despite public denials were published on 13 Nov 2010.
So when Tony Hayward swore to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth before Congress, was he not guilty of perjury?
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at Louisiana State University, Overton, who has been criticized for downplaying the effects of the worst offshore oil spill in history, has also headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chemical hazard assessment team for over 25 years.
Yet in nearly every media appearance, and even during congressional testimony, Overton, an environmental chemist, has omitted this long-term, high-level contracting position for the federal government through LSU, a Raw Story investigation has found.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This is how lying to the public gets purchased by the Federal Government.
Bon Secour shrimpers say their nets and catch were covered with oil from Gulf floor during a shrimping trip off the coast Louisiana Saturday.
Debra Nelson says her husband and two sons headed offshore, about forty miles from where BP's oil rig exploded, to waters that were recently opened in hopes of catching royal red shrimp. When they pulled up the nets after a three-hour drag, they found an unusable catch coated in oil.
What makes this finding so extraordinary is that it came from a citizens’ initiative -TESTING THE WATERS – which was formed by Gulf Coast residents who simply want to know if their beaches are oil free, the water is clean enough to swim in, and the seafood is safe to eat.
Isn’t this what government is supposed to do? Test the water! They test it for everything else, and yet getting regular testing like this done seems to take an act of GOD.
A survey of the seafloor near BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico has turned up dead and dying coral reefs that were probably damaged by the oil spill, scientists said Friday.
The coral sites lie seven miles southwest of the well, at a depth of about 4,500 feet, in an area where large plumes of dispersed oil were discovered drifting through the deep ocean last spring in the weeks after the spill.
The large areas of darkened coral and other damaged marine organisms were almost certainly dying from exposure to toxic substances, scientists said.
The corals were discovered on Tuesday by scientists aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel using a submersible robot equipped with cameras and sampling tools.
Webmaster's Commentary:
If the coral is dying here, how in the sam hill can the fish caught from this region possibly be safe to eat?!?
Remember, this is the same NOAA which was conducting "sniffing tests" to allegedly determine if seafood was safe, as reported on 13 July 2010, as follows:
"Each day, his team of seven sensory experts dip their noses into large Pyrex bowls of snapper, tuna and other raw seafood to test for even a whiff of the pungent oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
"We use specific terms for the aroma," said Downs, who supervises the seafood smellers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine lab here. "Diesel oil. Bunker oil. Asphalt. Rubber-band-like. Tar." Each olfactory analyst has a super schnoz, able to smell oil diluted to one part per million. That's 40 times more sensitive than your average proboscis."
One has to wonder if a more truly scientific analysis would have shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the fish was fouled from both the oi, and the toxic dispersant BP used.
ORANGE BEACH, Alabama, Nov 15, 2010 (IPS) – Increasing numbers of U.S. Gulf Coast residents attribute ongoing sicknesses to BP’s oil disaster and use of toxic dispersants.
“Now I have a bruising rash all around my stomach,” Denise Rednour of Long Beach, Mississippi told IPS. “This looks like bleeding under the skin.”
Rednour lives near the coast and has been walking on the beach nearly every day since a BP oil rig exploded on Apr. 20. She has noticed a dramatically lower number of wildlife, and said that many days the smell of chemicals from what she believes are BP’s toxic dispersants fill the air.
Yet her primary concern is that she and many people she knows in the area have gotten sick.
Why has Greenpeace remained relatively silent about the Gulf of Mexico disaster? Does it have something to do with their relationship with the Rockefellers and the buried history of Standard Oil?
Scientists have found evidence of "dramatic" damage to deep-sea coral near the site of the Gulf oil disaster, with one biologist describing it as a shocking find that "slapped you in the face."
NEW ORLEANS — For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well – a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged.
At least $65 billion might be raised by taxing foreign-exchange transactions and auctioning pollution permits, a United Nations panel said today in a report recommending ways to finance aid for fighting global warming.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This has nothing to do with the planet or the environment or global warming. This is a scam to grab more money to fund the push for a global government.
But a global government brought into existence by deception and lie is a global government that can never allow freedom of speech, thought, or inquiry, lest the illegitimacy of its birth be exposed for all to see. Hence. The global government they are trying to build will, should they succeed, be the greatest tyranny the world has ever seen!
The federal government is going out of its way to assure the public that seafood pulled from recently reopened Gulf of Mexico waters is safe to consume, in spite of the largest accidental release of crude oil in America's history.
However, testing methodologies used by the government to deem areas of water safe for commercial fishing are woefully inadequate and permit high levels of toxic compounds to slip into the human food chain, according to a series of scientific and medical professionals interviewed by Raw Story.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The Federal government's response to this disaster was to get it out of sight and out of mind before the elections, no matter what harm had been done to the people or the seafood here.
After all, BP was one of the most significant contributors to Obama's 08 campaign, and therefore had to be protected at all costs!
The fact that 96% of the Gulf of Mexico is now open for fishing is scary. The chemicals from the dispersant used in the supposed clean up of the gulf mixed with the VOC’s are a very toxic combo.
The fact is that poisons and toxins have not only harmed humans, they have also caused massive fish kills and an untold number of wildlife deaths.
While authorities cited tests showing seafood caught along the coasts of Florida and Alabama found no obvious oil, dispersant or chemical smell, experts say the tests did not search for toxic heavy metals which can bioaccumulate up the food chain after major disasters like an oil spill.
The area covers 6,879 square miles (17,800 square kilometers) off the coasts of Florida and Alabama, and is the ninth reopening of waters since the spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement on Friday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The question of when seafood from the area affected by the Gulf catastrophe will actually be safe to eat is still very much up in the air.
These tests which have been performed are no where near thorough enough to honestly make the declaration that the seafood harvested from here is actually "safe to eat": Obama and BP simply want the issue to go away for the election.
Were fish I was thinking about buying identified as coming from this region, I would probably say "no thanks" for quite some time to come.
In a seemingly never-ending parade of radio, television, print and web ads, in addition to numerous official statements, BP officials have repeatedly insisted that the company intends to make the Gulf Coast and its residents "whole" again. In the latest such PR blitz, BP employee and New Orleans native Iris Cross reiterates that the company will do everything it has to do in order to "make this right."
But yesterday in federal court, an attorney for the oil giant sent shockwaves throughout the Gulf region by suggesting that BP may seek shelter under the $75 million liability cap polluters can invoke under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The Oil Pollution Act, introduced by Walter B. Jones, Sr., Democrat North Carolina following the Exxon Valdez disaster, limits the amount of damages oil companies have to pay when they have a major spill. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the US Senate briefly entertained a retroactive raising of the cap from $75 million to $10 billion, but that bill went nowhere because after all oil campaign contributions trump the well being of the American people any day.
"We are not under Israel's control and we have their permission to say so!"
Canadian grad student, Jewish anti-Zionist activist, and descendant of Holocaust survivors Jenny Peto is breaking new ground with her University of Toronto master’s thesis The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education, though perhaps not in the way she intended.
It has provoked intense debate online, in academia and even the political realm. Progressive Conservative MPP Steve Clark raised it in the legislature Tuesday in response to sharp criticism in the Jewish community, calling it “shockingly anti-Semitic.” Citizenship and immigration minister Eric Hoskins likewise condemned the thesis in the legislature saying he was “greatly disturbed and, in fact, disgusted,” when he read media coverage about it.
These attacks (by some if not many who haven’t actually read it) on a master’s thesis, one that has already been through an academic review no less, are unprecedented. Also from The National Post:
Michiel Horn, a York University history professor and author of Academic Freedom in Canada: A History: “I know not of a single case where a master’s or a phD paper has been subject of discussion in the legislature of any province in Canada,” he said.
You can read Jenny Peto’s thesis yourself by downloading it here. Her abstract states:
This paper focuses on issues of Jewish identity, whiteness and victimhood within hegemonic Holocaust education. I argue that today, Jewish people of European descent enjoy white privilege and are among the most socio-economically advantaged groups in the West. Despite this privilege, the organized Jewish community makes claims about Jewish victimhood that are widely accepted within that community and within popular discourse in the West. I propose that these claims to victimhood are no longer based in a reality of oppression, but continue to be propagated because a victimized Jewish identity can produce certain effects that are beneficial to the organized Jewish community and the Israeli nation-state. I focus on two related Holocaust education projects – the March of the Living and the March of Remembrance and Hope – to show how Jewish victimhood is instrumentalized in ways that obscure Jewish privilege, deny Jewish racism and promote the interests of the Israeli nation-state.
I myself can’t wait to read it. There’s not a lot here that those seriously familiar with these Jewish institutions and Israeli history and politics could really argue with. For too long, the central organizing principle of much of institutional Jewry has been fear, which has been essential in, among other things, enabling an unaccountable Israel. And few programs more dramatically reflect this than the March of the Living which inflicts a proxy Holocaust trauma on Jewish teenagers (without proper context and support, so I hear from friends who have gone) as an essential right of passage into Jewishness.
To the young N. American Ashkenazi Jews especially who can’t help but notice that Jews as a whole occupy places of real economic and racial privilege in their communities, the messages of perpetual victimhood (and the implied privileges that might go with it, as in the case with the free pass that Israel tends to get) just don’t compute.
I’d imagine that in addition to her own experience, Peto had plenty to draw on from work and discussions happening in academic environments these days regarding Holocaust studies, Israeli politics, white privilege and so on. Is it possible that Peto’s crime is to have thought too complexly –in an academic setting.
Academics are calling the Ontario government's condemnation of a university student thesis an attack on scholarly freedom, but those offended by the controversial paper insist they won't let "hate" hide behind the veil of academia.
Jenny Peto's 100-page thesis argues that today's Jews of European descent "enjoy white privilege" and maintain a victim identity by participating in "hegemonic" Holocaust remembrance programs such as the March of the Living, during which young Jewish people visit Poland and Israel. The University of Toronto accepted the defended thesis and awarded a master's degree to the 29-year-old, who is an activist associated with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid group. She's also Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors.
France has declared that it will recognize a free and independent Palestinian state based on borders before the 1967 war, becoming the first European nation to do so.
A text, seen by The Daily Telegraph, warned of EU "readiness, when appropriate, to recognize a Palestinian state" increasing the international pressure on Israel following the effective collapse of direct Middle East peace talks last week.
Argentina and Uruguay said Monday they were joining Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestinian state, earning praise from Palestinian officials ng>an immediate sharp rebuke from Israel.
Speaking today in Santiago, Chile, Undersecretary of State William Burns condemned the moves by multiple South American nations to recognize Palestine as an independent nation, calling the moves “premature” and insisting such recognitions were unacceptable until Israel agreed to a two-state solution.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Memo to Undersecretary of State William Burns: are you suffering from selective amnesia, sir?!?
This was precisely how Israel declared itself a nation!
The House of Representatives earlier this week approved a significant increase in the level of military aid to Israel, pushing the level to $3 billion in flat military aid, with an additional $205 million set aside for a short range rocket system.
Both of the increases were already planned as part of a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Israel, but were formally approved as part of the 212-206 vote in the House on Wednesday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
So, Israel gets billions while homeless Veterans sleep in our streets, and US infrastructure is crumbling?!?
L’art de se dégager de ses responsabilités et de mettre la faute sur les autres
Alors que Tel-Aviv continue de se ficher de la communauté internationale en bafouant ses propres engagements auprès de l’Autorité Palestinienne, autorisant la construction de milliers de demeures sur les territoires occupés palestiniens, notre premier ministre canadien, Stephen Harper, revient sur sa défaite du vote à l’ONU, quant au siège temporaire au conseil de sécurité, et en remet la totalité de la faute sur l’antisémitisme apparent des Canadiens, plus précisément, des Québécois.
Or, Stephen Harper ne peut que s’en prendre à lui-même, puisqu’il a décidé en 2006, en 2008 et en 2010, de soutenir les atrocités commises par Israël, dont des crimes de guerre des plus atroces et des actes terroristes, usant l’Arme de Destruction Massive qu’on reprochait pourtant à Saddam Hussein de posséder…, cela servant de prétexte pour envahir l’Irak et y perpétrer d’autres massacres d’innocents via la guerre, une guerre que défendaient et monsieur Harper du Parti conservateur canadien, et monsieur Ignatief du parti libéral canadien.
Les crimes de guerre et les actes terroristes d’Israël au Liban
En 2006, l’opération israélienne dans les territoires libanais tue plus de 1100 civils, dont une famille montréalaise qui sera complètement décimée. Pour ce faire, Tsahal utilisera des armes de destruction massive, dont la maniabilité ne permet pas de faire distinction entre combattants et civils. Elle accusera le Hezbollah d’user des civils comme bouclier humain, mais la police, à ce qu’on sait, ne tire pas sur les otages d’un preneur d’otages, sous prétexte qu’il retient ces otages comme bouclier humain.
Tsahal usera également de bombardements aveugles via les airs et l’artillerie, de phosphore blanc utilisé à des fins offensives –crime de guerre-, de NAPALM, d’obus à l’uranium appauvri et de multiples armes dont la destruction était certes massive.
Bref, le Liban sera dévasté, ses infrastructures détruites, ses civils, meurtris. Aucune condamnation ne surviendra de la part de Stephen Harper, tout au contraire, offrant son plein soutien à l’État voyou en pleine infraction des droits internationaux et du droit humain en général.
Les crimes de guerre et les actes terroristes d’Israël dans la bande de Gaza.
Dans la bande de Gaza occupée, les Palestiniens se sont habitués aux martyrs et à la tyrannie de Tel-Aviv. Mais le 27 décembre 2008, Tsahal décide d’envahir pleinement la bande de Gaza afin de mettre fin aux tirs de roquettes Qassam, qui ne font en fait, eux-mêmes, que venger la mort de camarades tombés sous les balles et les obus d’Israël.
Cette attaque, usant elle aussi d’ADM de divers calibres, dont de phosphore blanc utilisé offensivement, sera comblée en crimes de guerre et en crimes contre l’humanité, retransmis d’ailleurs, sur toutes les chaînes médiatiques du monde. Qu’importe ces crimes prouvés sur vidéo, Stephen Harper, premier ministre du Canada, donnera son plein appui à Israël, allant jusqu’à justifier ces meurtres de masse au nom du droit à la «défense», terme employé par Tel-Aviv pour désigner une «attaque».
En fait, un peu plus et le premier ministre canadien condamnait les civils palestiniens de se trouver en travers de la trajectoire des ADM larguées par Tsahal, conséquent qu’il est.
Actes de piraterie dans les eaux internationales
En mai 2010, Israël n’a pas fini de faire jaser la communauté internationale, Stephen Harper non plus.
Tel-Aviv intercepte alors un convoi humanitaire dans les eaux internationales, dont l’objectif avoué est de transpercer le blocus illégal, maintenu contre les Palestiniens, occupés déjà, par Israël. Durant l’intervention, 9 hommes non-armés périront et 26 autres seront blessés sur leur embarcation privée, laquelle sera assaillie par les forces spéciales israéliennes pendant la nuit. Il sera conclu au terme d’une enquête que les 9 hommes tués furent assassinés d’une balle dans la nuque, à bout portant.
Le convoi tentant de braver le blocus illégal d’Israël à l’endroit des palestiniens se trouvait alors, pourtant dans les eaux internationales, à plusieurs milles nautiques des frontières «palestiniennes».
Pour l’occasion, Benjamin Netanyahu se trouvait à Toronto et remerciait, ironiquement, Stephen Harper d’être si fidèle à ses politiques. Il va s’en dire que ces «politiques» n’auraient pas été acceptables pour la communauté internationale si elles avaient été prises et tenues par Saddam Hussein, par Salvador Allende, Fidel Castro ou par Kim-Jong-Il. Tous n’ont pas l’avantage de l’impunité qu’Israël possède.
TNP, AIEA, où sont passées les sanctions?
Comble de l’ironie, Stephen Harper qui condamne Téhéran de vouloir se doter de l’arme nucléaire, cela, sans preuve, il ne condamne pas Israël de détenir ces mêmes armes nucléaires, alors que Tel-Aviv ne cesse de repousser les agents de l’Agence Internationale de l’Énergie Atomique hors de ses frontières, et qu’elle refuse de signer le traité de Non-Prolifération nucléaire.
Israël qui pourtant bafoue tous les droits humains de nations bien souveraines, versus l’Iran qui n’a pas engagé de réel combat depuis des décennies, devrait être suspectée de poser problème en cas de détention de telles armes. Or, Stephen Harper fustige ses opposants de baigner dans l’antisémitisme, puisqu’ils dénoncent les violations de l’État juif.
À titre d’exemple de contradiction, il est prouvé qu’Israël détient des armes nucléaires et d’autres types d’armes proscrites selon les conventions signées à l’ONU par le Canada, mais il n’existe aucune preuve de la volonté réelle de Téhéran de vouloir se doter de telles abominations. Qu’importe les faits, Stephen Harper se fait conséquent avec ses principes, il arrose l’Iran de sanctions sévères, tout en serrant la main d’un État voyou, fidèle à ses habitudes.
Un État en voie de disparition?
Stephen Harper s’éprend de morosité quant à la potentielle disparition de l’État hébreu. Mais en cela, il nie que l’État voyou israélien soit entrain de faire disparaître l’État palestinien, alors qu’on parle internationalement, d’un génocide déguisé.
La carte de la région pourtant, parle d’elle-même! Les territoires palestiniens furent réduits à quasi nuls depuis la création de l’État hébreu. Et hier encore, on annonçait via nos médias officieux, que Tel-Aviv donnait son aval à la construction de milliers de nouveaux logements dans les colonies juives, occupant les territoires palestiniens.
Il va donc s’en dire que c’est l’État palestinien, inexistant désormais, qui risque de disparaître à tout jamais.
Sinon, Stephen Harper serait vite rabroué par les petits pays risquant de disparaître, engloutis par les océans, à cause de la fonte des glaces dans nos pôles, issues d’un changement climatique que le premier ministre canadien qualifiait de «complot socialiste». D’ailleurs, c’est un peu ces petits pays qui ont eu raison, avec les opposants à l’État voyou d’Israël, des conservateurs canadiens à l’ONU. Risquant de disparaître sous les eaux, ces petits pays ne se sont certainement pas sentis respectés par le Canada des conservateurs, niant leur potentielle disparition, via leur négation des faits climatiques, prouvés scientifiquement, ces faits retenus par plus de 98% de la classe scientifique du monde entier. Il faut être un «Jacques Brassard» pour nier l’évidence, ou un conservateur après tout.
Antisémitisme au Canada et au Québec?
Stephen Harper termine donc ses pleurnichages en prétextant que de critiquer les crimes de guerre et les crimes commis contre l’humanité par Israël, n’est qu’un antisémitisme camouflé. Or, serions-nous anti-gros, si nous dénoncions un gros voleur se préparant à voler un dépanneur de ses croustilles et sa liqueur? Non.
Alors, je refuse qu’on me traite d’antisémite, parce que je dénonce les crimes de guerre et les crimes commis contre l’humanité, d’un État voyou, ne pouvant se justifier que par le soutien d’acolytes indifférents, voire complices de ses crimes!
Stephen Harper peut bien ravaler sa propagande pro-Israël, et s’étouffer avec. Je l’accuse, ici même, et publiquement, de soutenir les actes terroristes d’un État voyou, qui détient de plus, l’arme nucléaire, sans avoir déclaré celle-ci à l’AIEA, et sans avoir signé le T.N.P.!
Les Canadiens et les Québécois qui dénoncent les crimes de guerre et les crimes contre l’humanité commis par un État hébreu, ne deviennent donc pas antisémites. Cela n’est que de la basse politique, de la propagande populiste crasse, qui mérite toutefois qu’on s’y attarde.
Il faudra penser à faire enfermer les terroristes de notre versant, un de ces jours. Stephen Harper, quant à moi, mérite la prison pour support au terrorisme étatique d’Israël. Il pourra bien arguer ce qu’il voudra devant un tribunal international.
It is really beyond the pale of understanding to see people try to ban criticisms of a state whose modus operandi is based on murder, ethnic cleansing, land theft and lying. Perhaps this is an allegory of the time in which we living.
In the final analysis, countries fall down when the level of their morality goes down. Canada ought to wake up before it is too late.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Canadians need to understand that when the US falls, the parasites who destroyed this nation in service to Israel will not hesitate to hop across the border and loot Canada. Please, learn from our mistakes!
His dedication to that country supersedes his commitment to his own. That would be disturbing enough if Harper were merely a private citizen. But as prime minister it is beyond the pale and it isn't much of a stretch to suggest it borders on the betrayal of Canada and certainly Canadian interests. For what does it mean that Harper will defend Israel no matter the consequences for Canada?
Harper referred in his speech to "the anti-Israeli mob." I have to presume here that he is referring to all the Arab and Muslim countries which regularly criticize Israel at the UN. But, of course, not only them. UN resolutions criticizing Israel are regularly supported by virtually every country with the exception of Israel, the U.S. and -- sometimes -- El Salvador. Is the whole of the UN membership part of the "mob"?
Harper's disturbing performance sends a clear message: Canada is prepared to sacrifice relations with all other countries if it has to defend Israel. Coming off the rejection of Canada for a Security Council seat, Harper deems determined to islate himself even more, and Canada along with him.
Documents whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group Gisha. The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level
Documents whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group Gisha. The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are "putting the people of Gaza on a diet".
Webmaster's Commentary:
This is only one component of Israel's "Final Solution" for Gazan Palestinians.
