http://www.sott.net Signs of the Times, featuring news and commentary on world events. Never wavering in our unending search for the light of truth in a pathocracy driven world! en-us Original content Copyright 2008 by Signs of the Times. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:40:11 -0500 http://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net http://www.sott.net http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169342-Will-The-US-Government-Accept-Responsibility-For-The-Slaughter-Of-Over-1-000-000-Iraqis- Will The US Government And Media Finally Report The Slaughter Of Iraqis By The US Military? I recently received a set of questions from Le Monde Diplomatique reporter Kim Bredesen about the 2007 Project Censored story about 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths due to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The questions and answers are, I think, useful in framing both the untold story of the slaughter in Iraq and the failure of the U.S. media to report on its extent or on U.S. culpability for the deaths of 4% of the Iraqi population. Bredeson : I observed recently that your story on Iraqi deaths caused by US occupation became story no. 1 in this year's listing by Project Censored. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions on e-mail regarding this issue? Regards, Kim Bredesen, Le Monde diplomatiqe (Norway) These are my questions. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169342-Will-The-US-Government-Accept-Responsibility-For-The-Slaughter-Of-Over-1-000-000-Iraqis- Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:58:01 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169348-America-s-Moronic-Iraqi-Policy According to all accounts the US faces its worse economic crisis since the Great Depression with $2 trillion in near-term financing needs for bailouts and economic stimulus. This is an enormous sum for any country, especially for one that is so heavily indebted that it is close to bankruptcy. If the money can't be borrowed abroad, it will have to be printed--a policy that carries the implication of hyper-inflation. In normal life a borrower who must appeal to creditors makes every effort to bring order to his financial affairs. But not the Bush regime. The out-of-pocket costs of Bush's Iraq war are about $600 billion at the present moment, a figure that increases by millions of dollars every hour. In addition, there are the much larger future costs that have already been incurred, such as long-term care for the wounded and disabled US soldiers, the replacement costs of the used up equipment, interest payments on the war debt, and the lost economic use of the resources and manpower squandered in war. Experts estimate that the already incurred out-of-pocket and future costs of Bush's Iraq war to be $3 trillion and rising. Even these costs might be small if an article by Richard LaMountain in the November 2008 Middle American News is accurate. According to LaMountain, US refugee programs for Iraqis displaced by the US invasion and occupation could result in a large and growing Muslim US population. These would be people whose lives were adversely impacted by the US invasion of Iraq. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169348-America-s-Moronic-Iraqi-Policy Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:57:44 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169366-Holocaust-s-unholy-hold Reporting from Nataf, Israel -- Even today, when economic storms are shaking markets around the world, posing a threat to the stability of entire countries and societies, Israel continues to conduct its business far from the turmoil, as if swimming in a private ocean of its own. True, the headlines are alerting the public here about the crisis, and the politicians are hastily recalculating their budgets. But none of this is dramatically changing the way we think about ourselves. Comment: Here we have a report, seen from the Jewish point of view. Not even a 'mainstream' Jewish viewpoint, but an independent thinker who has apparently started to question and reject some of the lies that he has been fed. What is tragic is not only the level of misrepresentation of the truth (which can be found in numerous commentaries on Israel), but that the author Avraham Burg may in fact be genuine, having rejected Israeli politics, and yet still finds himself mired within the lies that the global pathocracy uses to perpetuate itself. It seems that our psychological defence mechanisms (denial, projection, attachments) are used oh so effectively against us, to further our own enslavement within the pathological reality. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169366-Holocaust-s-unholy-hold Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:00:55 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169349-Naomi-Klein-on-the-Bailout-Profiteers-and-the-Multi-Trillion-Dollar-Crime-Scene "The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal," says Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine. AMY GOODMAN: World leaders from nearly two dozen countries met in Washington over the weekend to discuss plans to increase regulation of international financial activity. They acknowledged that a failure of market oversight in countries like the United States had precipitated the financial crisis. Meanwhile, here at home, it's been a month into the Bush administration's more than $700 billion bank bailout. Last week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson outlined a new bailout strategy intended to boost consumer borrowing and promote financing for companies that give out loans. President-elect Obama's transition team is reportedly working on improving the management of the bailout come January 20th. But that's two months away and according to the Washington Post, with $290 billion already committed, the Bush administration has taken no action to fill congressionally-mandated independent positions to oversee how the bailout is used. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169349-Naomi-Klein-on-the-Bailout-Profiteers-and-the-Multi-Trillion-Dollar-Crime-Scene Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:25:42 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169284-Inside-The-LC-The-Strange-but-Mostly-True-Story-of-Laurel-Canyon-and-the-Birth-of-the-Hippie-Generation-Part-XI "By that, I mean, 'Get me a lead singer. He's got sort of an androgynous blonde hair, very pretty. We need a guitar player, sort of hatchet-faced, wears a hat, plays very fast, very dramatic. He must be very dramatic. Get me a pound of bass player, pound of drummer ... they're making little cardboard cutouts. They hire a producer, they hire writers ... And in the current stuff now, they don't even bother getting people to play. Don't bother with that guitar player, bass player, drummer - nonsense ... The people in those bands can't write, play, or sing." David Crosby, describing the synthetic, manufactured nature of today's rock bands "David was obnoxious, loud, demanding, thoughtless, full of himself - of the four of them [David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young], the least talented." David Geffen First of all, before getting back into the Laurel Canyon scene, I need to say that some of you people really need to mellow out on the visits to my website. Seriously. This isn't a crack-house, for fuck's sake, so just chill out a little bit. I mean, I've grown accustomed to the fact that you feel free to drop in unannounced at all hours of the day and night, but maybe, just maybe, you could consider doing it a bit less frequently. Is that so much to ask? Don't get me wrong here - I'm flattered by the attention. I really am. The problem though is that you have overloaded my now-overworked website, causing it to spontaneously disappear on, of all days, the morning of September 11, 2008. And to add insult to injury, the generic, no-frills page that popped up instead, proclaiming that my site was under house arrest for the crime of exceeding its bandwidth allocation, was arguably more attractive than my actual homepage. Luckily, this problem was quickly brought to my attention by a few alert readers and I was able to liberate my site by digging deeply into my pockets to come up with the bail money that the jailers were demanding (I think they referred to it as "adding resources" to my site, but I wasn't really fooled by that. And I didn't, by the way, really dig that deeply into my pockets. But that's not the point. No, the point is that my site is - and I'm sure that there are many of you who do not know this - primitive by design. It is my belief that the 'retro website' look will soon be all the rage, and I want to be at the forefront of that movement. Everything old will someday become new again, and the 'net has been around for long enough now, given our collectively short attention span, that a return to basics - to those first tentative baby-steps some of us took in creating one of those newfangled things called 'websites' - is all but guaranteed. My site, needless to say, will become the template that will be followed by everyone who wants to run with the in-crowd. I will, of course, be regarded as something of a visionary. Unfortunately though, I will ultimately be revealed as a fraud when, a few years down the road, legions of fans suddenly realize that, long after the fad has passed, my site is still retro. Self-righteous critics will denounce me as a poser, a charlatan - they may even invoke that most demeaning of future slurs and label me a 'Palin.' But before that happens, the brief time during which I shall have basked in the limelight will have made it all worthwhile. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169284-Inside-The-LC-The-Strange-but-Mostly-True-Story-of-Laurel-Canyon-and-the-Birth-of-the-Hippie-Generation-Part-XI Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:20:21 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169277-The-Real-Goal-of-Israel-s-Blockade The latest tightening of Israel's chokehold on Gaza - ending all supplies into the Strip for more than a week - has produced immediate and shocking consequences for Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants. The refusal to allow in fuel has forced the shutting down of Gaza's only power station, creating a blackout that pushed Palestinians bearing candles on to the streets in protest last week. A water and sanitation crisis are expected to follow. And on Thursday, the United Nations announced it had run out of the food essentials it supplies to 750,000 desperately needy Gazans. "This has become a blockade against the United Nations itself," a spokesman said. In a further blow, Israel's large Bank Hapoalim said it would refuse all transactions with Gaza by the end of the month, effectively imposing a financial blockade on an economy dependent on the Israeli shekel. Other banks are planning to follow suit, forced into a corner by Israel's declaration in Sept 2007 of Gaza as an "enemy entity". http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169277-The-Real-Goal-of-Israel-s-Blockade Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:07:13 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169276-Is-Israel-Deliberately-Strengthening-Hamas- Let's not be dragged into calculating how many tons of rice, flour and cooking oil there are in the Gaza Strip 10 days after Israel once again hermetically sealed all the crossings into the enclave. Let's not count the number of children who wait for a nutritious meal at UN Relief and Works Agency schools, and the number of families to whose doorstep Hamas delivers boxes filled with grocery staples. (There are those who swear that these groceries are only given to Hamas members and supporters.) Let's not calculate the number of people dependent on their families for sustenance. There is food in the Gaza Strip, and there will continue to be. Does anyone really think that Israel, the state of the Jews, would allow 1.5 million people to be tossed, crowded and crammed, behind the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers surrounding the narrow strip and starve to death? http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169276-Is-Israel-Deliberately-Strengthening-Hamas- Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:04:28 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169122-An-offer-they-couldn-t-refuse-The-CIA-s-involvement-with-US-film-making Everyone who watches films knows about Hollywood's fascination with spies. From Hitchcock's postwar espionage thrillers, through cold war tales such as Torn Curtain, into the paranoid 1970s when the CIA came to be seen as an agency out of control in films such as Three Days of the Condor, and right to the present, with the Bourne trilogy and Ridley Scott's forthcoming Body of Lies, film-makers have always wanted to get in bed with spies. What's less widely known is how much the spies have wanted to get in bed with the film-makers. In fact, the story of the CIA's involvement in Hollywood is a tale of deception and subversion that would seem improbable if it were put on screen. The model for this is the defence department's "open" but barely publicised relationship with Hollywood. The Pentagon, for decades, has offered film-makers advice, manpower and even hardware - including aircraft carriers and state-of-the-art helicopters. All it asks for in exchange is that the US armed forces are made to look good. So in a previous Scott film, Black Hawk Down, a character based on a real-life soldier who had also been a child rapist lost that part of his backstory when he came to the screen. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169122-An-offer-they-couldn-t-refuse-The-CIA-s-involvement-with-US-film-making Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:44:32 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169121-Exposed-Federal-Air-Marshals-Too-Busy-Smuggling-Coke-and-Molesting-Kids-to-Protect-You Since 9/11, air marshals have logged an impressive number of hours committing felony-level crimes. Shawn Nguyen bragged that he could sneak anything past airport security using his top-secret clearance as a federal air marshal. And for months, he smuggled cocaine and drug money onto flights across the country, boasting to an FBI informant that he was "the man with the golden badge." Michael McGowan used his position as an air marshal to lure a young boy to his hotel room, where he showed him child porn, took pictures of him naked and sexually abused him. And when Brian "Cooter" Phelps wanted his ex-wife to disappear, he called a fellow air marshal and tried to hire a hit man nicknamed "the Crucifixer." Since 9/11, more than three dozen federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct, an investigation by ProPublica has found. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169121-Exposed-Federal-Air-Marshals-Too-Busy-Smuggling-Coke-and-Molesting-Kids-to-Protect-You Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:33:57 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169095-Let-the-Trials-Begin- The Election is Over; Time to Move On to the Recriminations Amid the euphoria and angst of the Obama apotheosis, the unreality of a mismanaged, two trillion dollar, taxpayer funded bailout of freewheeling capitalists, and the wars of limbo in Iraq and Afghanistan, one little thing is being overlooked. George W Bush. The Decider. The psychopath responsible for this appalling mess we're in. The architect of America's ignoble descent into moral darkness. The washed up and universally despised pseudo-despot who reveled in torture, kidnapping and assassination. The War-Monger. "Bring 'em On!" "Dead or Alive!" The raving ignoramus whose words will haunt us forever. The spoiled child of privilege playing with the lives of our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, as if they were his personal toys. The mass murderer who illegally invaded and occupied a foreign nation, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, utterly destroying their cities and bridges, power plants and schools, and scattering millions of them to the wind, as if he were GOD! The Comic Book Madman obsessed with Death, reading CIA memos about Al Qaeda, sending kidnappers and hit teams and drones around the world, anywhere he wanted, to kill his imaginary enemies, while America burned. The Super Traitor. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169095-Let-the-Trials-Begin- Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:33:35 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169086-Leading-Economist-Warns-of-Food-Riots When top trend forecaster Gerald Calente predicted riots and revolution, many people shrugged and thought, "he's gone off the deep end". But leading economist Nouriel Roubini is also now warning of food riots, and blaming it on the Fed and Treasury's policies and bank priorities: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169086-Leading-Economist-Warns-of-Food-Riots Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:10:42 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169079-Wall-Street-s-Bailout-is-a-Trillion-Dollar-Crime-Scene-Why-Aren-t-the-Dems-Doing-Something-About-It- Washington's handling of the bailout is not merely incompetent. It may well be illegal. The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal. In a moment of high panic in late September, the U.S. Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed -- a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice." Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending -- for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc. -- is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used. Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169079-Wall-Street-s-Bailout-is-a-Trillion-Dollar-Crime-Scene-Why-Aren-t-the-Dems-Doing-Something-About-It- Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:34:28 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169062-Gaza-Strip-runs-out-of-food-supplies-amidst-catastrophic-human-condition The UNRWA, the UN agency that caters for Palestinian refugees, has announced Thursday that food supplies and basic needs in Gaza Strip had ran out due to the Israeli rejection to allow the agency trucks into the populated Strip. John Ging, the operations manager of the UNRWA in the Strip said in a press statement that the agency won't be able to bring food supplies into Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli refusal to open the border-crossings with Gaza, describing the situation there as "catastrophic". He added that UNRWA ran out of supplies on Thursday evening and will not be able to distribute more unless the crossings are opened and food aid is allowed in. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169062-Gaza-Strip-runs-out-of-food-supplies-amidst-catastrophic-human-condition Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:29:17 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169060-The-Five-Stages-of-Collapse 1. Hello, everyone! The talk you are about to hear is the result of a lengthy process on my part. My specialty is in thinking about and, unfortunately, predicting collapse. My method is based on comparison: I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and, since I am also familiar with the details of the situation in the United States, I can make comparisons between these two failed superpowers. I was born and grew up in Russia, and I traveled back to Russia repeatedly between the late 80s and mid-90s. This allowed me to gain a solid understanding of the dynamics of the collapse process as it unfolded there. By the mid-90s it was quite clear to me that the US was headed in the same general direction. But I couldn't yet tell how long the process would take, so I sat back and watched. I am an engineer, and so I naturally tended to look for physical explanations for this process, as opposed to economic, political, or cultural ones. It turns out that one could come up with a very good explanation for the Soviet collapse by following energy flows. What happened in the late 80s is that Russian oil production hit an all-time peak. This coincided with new oil provinces coming on stream in the West - the North Sea in the UK and Norway, and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska - and this suddenly made oil very cheap on the world markets. Soviet revenues plummeted, but their appetite for imported goods remained unchanged, and so they sank deeper and deeper into debt. What doomed them in the end was not even so much the level of debt, but their inability to take on further debt even faster. Once international lenders balked at making further loans, it was game over. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/169060-The-Five-Stages-of-Collapse Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:58:56 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168962-Spiritual-Predators-The-Top-Ten-Power-Brokers-and-Pathological-Minds-of-the-Religious-Right You might have heard of Pat Robertson and James Dobson, but they're just the tip of the iceberg. For the past two years, numerous media pundits have been all abuzz over the so-called "death" of the Religious Right. There is one problem, however: Someone forgot to tell the Religious Right. A recent Americans United study of the finances and influence of the Religious Right shows a movement that is very much alive and kicking. Indeed, our research shows that the nation's leading Religious Right organizations took in more than half a billion dollars over a recent 12-month period. Several of the organizations reported dramatic increases in their budgets; only a few showed a drop. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168962-Spiritual-Predators-The-Top-Ten-Power-Brokers-and-Pathological-Minds-of-the-Religious-Right Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:00:47 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168947-The-Obama-Drama-Osama-and-Al-Qaeda-Marching-Band I want to give Obama a chance. I really do but then he put that Mossad Capo with short man's disease in charge of who sees Obama and what Obama hears ...and now comes another curious thing which actually should be put in the "None of Obama's Business File" and I'm starting to think that Ozzy Osborne may be singing "Chosen One" to the tune of "Fortunate Son" at the inaugural ball. Look, the truth is that Lieberman is a neo-con who puts Israel first before the interests of the United States. That is a given. He should be stripped of his committee chairmanships at the very least because he is a traitor to the party he is supposed to serve. I don't want to hear about how he is now an Independent. He promised certain things and then didn't do them. He's a weasel. If he isn't punished for what he's done then it's just one more example of who controls America and one more example of why America is going down the tubes. It's none of Obama's business what Congress does in its internal workings. I seem to remember that that was why they separated the branches of government and we've seen what has happened over the last eight years when those lines were muddied to the point of no longer being visible at all. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168947-The-Obama-Drama-Osama-and-Al-Qaeda-Marching-Band Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:49:08 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168926-Impeach-Bush-Before-He-Pardons-Himself According to Seymour Hersh there is a conga line of insiders waiting until January 20th to spill the beans on the gross criminality of the Bush/Cheney administration. Waiting . . . because if they did it now the two of them would be tarred and feathered on the way out the door. But we the people do not have to wait. We can and must demand the immediate impeachment of both Bush and Cheney for what is already known. At the very least the defiance of congressional subpoenas at the behest of the White House is an open and shut case for accountability now. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168926-Impeach-Bush-Before-He-Pardons-Himself Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:12:28 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168925-Citizen-Gore-Vidal-Elections-won-t-reverse-the-decline-of-American-democracy Gore Vidal is one of the singular literary figures of this era. A scion of a political family, he grew up in a milieu of power and politics. Winner of the National Book Award in 1993 and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1982, Vidal is the author of scores of plays, screenplays and historical novels, including Lincoln and Julian. He also has written a number of bestselling nonfiction books, including Dreaming War, Imperial America and Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. The Washington Post calls him "the master essayist of our age". http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168925-Citizen-Gore-Vidal-Elections-won-t-reverse-the-decline-of-American-democracy Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:06:07 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168895-Conned-Again-Obama-Rahm-bo-and-the-End-of-the-New-American-Century If the change President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America's wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama's choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama's election. The only thing different about the new administration will be the faces. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168895-Conned-Again-Obama-Rahm-bo-and-the-End-of-the-New-American-Century Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:51:10 +0000 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168808-Missing-The-Point-The-End-of-Prosperity From too much of a good thing. From the 1980s and 1990s excesses. From the longest ever US bull market. Heavily manipulated to keep it levitating. From August 1982 to January 2000. An illusory reprieve from October 2002 to October 2007. Fluctuations aside, all lost in the past 12 months. The wages of sin are now due, and payment is being painfully extracted. From all nations globally. Affecting ordinary people the most who had nothing to do with creating booms and busts. They got little on the upside but are paying dearly for the down. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168808-Missing-The-Point-The-End-of-Prosperity Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:37:07 +0000