Can you say bubble? Or, more to the point, can you say bursting?
Warren Buffett loves to bash gold — claiming that stocks are inherently superior, because they produce a return, whereas gold just sits. Trouble is, stocks (and all paper assets) are subject to counter-party risk, whereas physical gold isn’t. Gold doesn’t overcompensate its CEOs, it doesn’t leverage its productive capital in toxic derivatives, it doesn’t cause industrial disasters like Deepwater Horizon, its value isn’t dependent on central banking, or securitisation, or American imperialism, or the machinations of the military-industrial complex. It just sits, retaining its purchasing power.
Warren Buffett had a great ride: he grew his wealth and businesses in an era of unprecedented growth powered by OPEC oil, and later by Chinese industrialism. That era — the era of the American free lunch — is coming to an end. His insights are applicable to that era. Today is a different world.
Before Andrew Breitbart’s death he had been talking to anyone who would listen about a video he had of President Obama that could derail any hope for a re-election bid.
At CPAC 2012 he said:
“I’ve got videos. This election we’re going to vet him”
“To show why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008.”
“The videos are going to come out; the narrative is going to come out that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails back in the 1980s like Bill and Bernadine Dohrn, equally radical, who said one day we’re going to have the presidency. And the rest of us slept while they plotted….”
This sounds intriguing and add to that the tragic death of Breitbart the hype-o-meter is going bananas. On top of that, his death came on the same day (March 1) he said something big would happen (assuming he meant the release of the video).
Breitbart spoke to Lawrence Sinclair of Sinclair News, stating, “Wait til they see what happens March 1st.” Nobody that I can ever recall has ever picked the date of their death and says “Wait ’til they see what happens…” and it seems beyond coincidental. He died the same day the tapes were to be released. To question his death is not a conspiracy but rather shows you have a pulse.
“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. “US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he added.
From the Bloomberg article ( March 1, 2012):
” … sustained attacks with the Air Force’s 30,000-pound (13,608 kilograms) “Bunker-buster” bombs” …
… that contain depleted (or even enriched uranium):
Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.
“More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991,” said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist.
“The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive.”
“Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever.”
Obama administration officials are escalating warnings that the U.S. could join Israel in attacking Iran if the Islamic republic doesn’t dispel concerns that its nuclear-research program is aimed at producing weapons.
Four days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Washington, Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz told reportersthe Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict.
“What we can do, you wouldn’t want to be in the area,” Schwartz told reporters in Washington yesterday.
Pentagon officials said military options being prepared start with providing aerial refueling for Israeli planes and include attacking the pillars of the clerical regime, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force, regular Iranian military bases and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Pentagon plans are classified.
“There’s no group in America more determined to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon than the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Army General Martin Dempsey told the House Budget Committee yesterday. “I can assure you of that.”
Separately, unnamed U.S. officials told the Washington Post that U.S. military planners are increasingly confident that sustained attacks with the Air Force’s 30,000-pound (13,608 kilograms) “bunker-buster” bombs could put Iran’s deeply buried uranium-enrichment plant at Fordo out of commission.
Michael Lewis’ scathing, aphoristic, uber-sarcastic style need no introduction. As such we will leave this brief clip from Slate, in which The Big Short author is asked how to avoid a new financial crisis, without much commentary (the answer is that under the current status quo system it is impossible to guarantee no more financial collapses, even if Glass-Steagall were to be unwound, but that is the topic for another story), suffice to point out the punchline: “future generations will wonder, “How did you not notice 24-year-olds were being paid $2 million a year who clearly didn’t know anything?” That pretty much sums it up right there.
Back in October, when Greece was rewarded with further bond haircuts for progressively missing its economic targets, even after having gotten caught on at least one occasion making its economy appear worse than it was, we said that it is only a matter of time before “Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy will promptly commence sabotaging their economies (just like Greece) simply to get the same debt Blue Light special as Greece.” In the aftermath of this statement, we got the Irish and the Portuguese proceeding to slowly but surely do just that. Today, it was Spain’s turn to make it 3 out of 4 after as Reuters noted so appropriately, “Spain defies Brussels on deficit target” clarifying that “Spain set itself a softer budget target for 2012 on Friday than originally agreed under the euro zone’s austerity drive, putting a question mark over the credibility of the European Union’s new fiscal pact. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy insisted he was acting within EU guidelines because the plan was still to hit the European Union public deficit goal of 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013.” That Italy is sure to follow is absolutely guaranteed, however just because the ECB is now indirectly monetizing BTPs the true impact will be delayed far more, and instead of taking prompt steps to remedy the situation, the European complacency will be accentuated by the fact that bond yields are very low, and supposedly indicates the true state of the economy. No. All it indicates is the conversion of future inflation (courtesy of €1 trillion in new money in the past 3 months) for a very temporary respite before all hell ultimately breaks loose as countries pretend everything is ok as bond yields are pushed artificially low. And in doing nothing, the fundamentals in the economy only get worse and worse. Germany knows this very well, and the Economist explains the reaction to Spain’s surprising statement today perfectly…
A novice in European summits, Mr Rajoy has been playing a strange game. He was careful not to discuss specific figures with fellow leaders. But as soon as he emerged from the summit he declared that Spain’s deficit this year would be 5.8%, rather than the agreed target ratio of 4.4%. He insisted, though, that Spain would still fall below the 3% deficit limit in 2013, as planned.
Germany, moreover, seems to be in an intolerant mood. There is irritation that the Spanish government is delaying its budget pending regional elections in Andalusia that Mr Rajoy’s party hopes to win, and suspicion that it is inflating last year’s deficit figures to blame its Socialist predecessor. The commission says it wants to double-check the numbers. But a senior source in Berlin puts it more bluntly: “Everybody knows the Spanish are lying about the figures.”
Funny. And yet the people are supposed to believe in the mumbo jumbo that is Europe’s fiscal pact, or frankly anything else? Perhaps the senior source in Berlin should have just stepped up and told the outright truth: “Everybody knows that everyone in Europe is lying about everything.”
BANK CEO AND EXECUTIVE RESIGNATION UPDATE 2/27/12
……………………………
81 RESIGNATIONS FROM WORLD BANKS:
(1) 9/01/11 (USA NY) Bank of New York Mellon Chief Resigns in a Shake-UP
http://loanworkout.org/2011/09/bank-of-new-york-mellon-chief-resigns-in-a-shake-up/
(2) 09/20/12 (SCOTLAND) SCOTTISH WIDOWS (RETIREMENT INVESTMENT SAVINGS FUND) There could be no Scottish representative on the board of Lloyds Banking Group, owner of Bank of Scotland, in future after it announced the departure of Lord Sandy Leitch, the chairman of Scottish Widows and group deputy chairman.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/business/company-news/warning-as-last-scot-leaves-lloyds-board-lloyds-could-lack-scottish-voice.15150830?_=20e772c9486b6372433ff2b886a31e9fca7eeb2a
(3) 9/25/11 (SWITZERLAND) Bank chief resigns over £1.5bn rogue trader crisis
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2041385/Oswald-Gruebel-resigns-UBS-boss-steps-Kweku-Adoboli-trading-scandal.html
When something looks dangerous, it generally is. And few things look quite so high-wire right now as the European Central Bank’s efforts to hold the euro together by flooding the banking system with free money.
This week, the ECB injected a further 529.5 billion euros via “long-term refinancing operations”, or LTROs, bringing the tally to more than 1 trillion euros.
When Mario Draghi, the new ECB president, embarked on the programme shortly before Christmas, it was hailed as a masterstroke which had saved the eurozone from financial and economic calamity. Even the Jeremiahs of Germany’s Bundesbank, proud keepers of the sacred flame of monetary conservatism, were stunned into grudging acquiescence by the evident seriousness of the crisis. But now the doubts are beginning to set in, and with good reason.
Mitt Romney was once again fighting to shake off his image as an accident-prone candidate on Thursday after he was accused of “flip-flopping” over whether US employers with religious affiliations should be forced to pay for contraception.
Asked if he supported a Republican bill that would exempt Catholic and other religious-backed hospitals and schools from a White House rule requiring them to provide free birth control insurance coverage, Mr Romney said he did not.
“I’m not for the bill,” Mr Romney told an interviewer while campaigning in the crucial swing state of Ohio. “The idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I’m not going there.”
However within an hour Mr Romney had apparently changed his mind, with campaign officials saying their candidate had “misunderstood” the question.
“The way the question was asked was confusing. Governor Romney supports the Blunt Bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in health care for religious institutions and people of faith,” said Andrea Saul, a spokesperson for Mr Romney.
Washington, D.C.’s Metrorail says it cannot remove an advertisement in one of its subway stations that criticizes President Obama.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) called for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which oversees the subway system that runs in the capital region, to remove the ad because it is “deeply disrespectful to the president of the United States.”
But the transit agency, which runs trains and buses in Washington as well as the Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs, said it is prohibited from refusing advertisements for political reasons.
“WMATA advertising has been ruled by the courts as a public forum protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and we may not decline ads based on their political content,” the agency said in a written statement that was provided to The Hill.
“WMATA does not endorse the advertising on our system, and ads do not reflect the position of the authority,” the Metro statement continued.
The ad, which appears in a metro station in Virginia, is for a film that is critical of the federal health law and includes the phrase “Go to hell, Barack.”
Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook died (within a month) from a heart attack after writing this article in the Guardian:
“Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”
Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart claims to have film of US President Barack Obama during his young, radical college years. He tells the CPAC audience that he will release them during the upcoming presidential campaign to expose the president’s radial roots.
In light of the comments which have been posted on this article we want to make something perfectly clear. We are not and have not said nor do we believe the death of Andrew Breitbart is the result of anything other than a believed heart attack. We simply reported that different media outlets reporting the cause of death as being of “natural causes” before a cause of death has been determined is wrong and has created this sense of something more sinister. While we are certain Joel Pollak meant well with stating his opinion as to the cause of death (as did Andrews father-in-law) reporting “natural causes” as being “fact” before a cause had been official determined and entered on a death certificate is wrong for so many obvious reasons.
In attempting to gather as much information as possible for this story we ran into some very confusing statements along the way to confirming Andrew Breitbart’s death. Calls to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center have discovered some confusing information. According to the Hospital Andrew Breitbart was not admitted to the Hospital, the Hospital then transferred us to the Emergency Department saying they did not have access to the ER Dept’s information. Speaking with the Emergency Room they state:
“B as in boy R… I do not have anyone by that name having been here.” We then began spelling “Breitbart,” when she stopped us and said, “like I said B as in boy R, I am looking at our records which are in alphabetical order and we have had no one by that name in the last 72 hours brought into our ER.”
We have emailed Breitbart’s attorney seeking clarification and we decided to call Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center ER again just to see if they give the same response given earlier. We were not surprised to find the ER gave completely different info after the call the second time went directly to the nurses station. We were eventually transferred to the Hospitals Media affairs office where we were asked for our name and number and were told someone would call us. Within seconds we received a call from Roxanne Moster of UCLA media affairs office where we were told “Because of Patient privacy laws we can not confirm nor deny reports that Mr. Breitbart was ever brought into UCLA or reports that he died here.” At that we asked Ms. Moster why the previous call to UCLA ER had UCLA medical Center staff saying NO one by the name of Breitbart has been taken to the ER in the past 72 hours, and Ms. Moster said she could not answer that. Moster suggested we contact the LA County Coroners office which we did.
We have spoken with Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Ed Winter with the Los Angeles Coroners office who confirms Andrew Breitbart was pronounced dead at 00:19 AM March 1, 2012. Winter says the body has been picked up by the Coroners office and an autopsy will be performed tomorrow. (Note: We have no idea why the audio in the below video suddenly stopped and became distorted and are trying to fix it now) Claims that Andrew died of “natural causes” are the opinions of his Attorney Joel Pollak and not the statements of any medical personnel from UCLA or the LA County Coroners office. LA Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Ed Winter says autopsy to be done tomorrow (Friday March 2, 2012) and no offical cause of death has been determined.
?Andrew Breitbart was one of the inspirations behind our consolidation of our multiple domain names into what has become Sinclair-News-LSNewsGroup. With the announcement of Andrew’s passing overnight we could not help recalling our conversation just 3 weeks ago in Washington, DC. Andrew said on Feb 9, 2012 in Washington, DC “wait til they see what happens March first.” We are forever grateful to Andrew for telling us that our November 2011 story about Ben Smith and Politico killing the 2008 sourced story showing Obama had lied about the extent of his relationship with Bill Ayers was trueful and the media knew it was true.
“Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles,” Breitbart.com said. “We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior. ”
With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles.
We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.
Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.
Andrew recently wrote a new conclusion to his book, Righteous Indignation: I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and—famously—I enjoy making enemies.
Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I’ve lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I’ve gained hundreds, thousands—who knows?—of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.
Andrew Breitbart has made an impression which will live on, that impression has had the main stream media and the likes of Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and Huffington Post lose many nights of sleep. Today those same leftist blogs are openly demonstrating their totally lack of respect for life of any kind with their open celebrations of Breitbart’s death. From the Tweets to the BuzzFeeds, the leftist make it perfectly clear that Andrew Breitbart made a difference and was successful at calling them out over their bias and bully tactics.
Andrew Breitbart’s life was meaningful and his mission will live on in all of us who demand honesty and accountability in the media and our politicians.
With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles.
We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.
Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.
Andrew recently wrote a new conclusion to his book, Righteous Indignation:
I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and—famously—I enjoy making enemies.
Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I’ve lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I’ve gained hundreds, thousands—who knows?—of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.
Andrew is at rest, yet the happy warrior lives on, in each of us.
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.
In an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, scientists argue that killing newborn babies is ethically no different than abortion and should therefore be openly allowed in society. The paper says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and that they do not have “a moral right to life.” (See sources, below.)
The authors of the article are mainstream medicine ethicists named Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. One is a former Oxford scholar. In their paper, they argue “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”
Several death threats have been leveled against the scientists, although it’s hard to actually call them “death” threats since scientists who recognize no sense of life in newborn babies can’t possibly be living themselves, right? At best, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva are mindless zombies, so whacking off their heads with a chainsaw would seemingly be no more meaningful than turning off the switch to a hollow sack of skin that contains no soul.
I’m being sarcastic, of course, by using their own mad reasoning against them. They call the murder of infants nothing more than “after-birth abortion” and declare that “it should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is.”
Can we still abort these scientists? Or is it too late for that?
Finally out in the open: The mass murder / eugenics agenda of abortion pushers
“(Soldiers are) dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” (as quoted in Woodward and Bernstein’s “The Final Days”, ch. 14) – Henry Kissinger
From the article:
“They’re hoping we die off, so you apply [for benefits], you get turned down,” Josephs said. “And it just goes on for years and years, and they just want to wear us down. They want to use young men as guinea pigs and throw them away.”
The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place.
“It just did not look like a military base, more like a hospital,” recalled Josephs, a Pittsburgh native. Josephs had volunteered for a two-month assignment at Edgewood, in Maryland, lured by three-day weekends closer to home.
“It was like a plum assignment,” Josephs said. “The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals.”
But when he went to fill out paperwork the morning after his arrival, the base personnel were wearing white lab coats, and Josephs said he had second thoughts. An officer took him aside.
“He said, ‘You volunteered for this. You’re going to do it. If you don’t, you’re going to jail. You’re going to Vietnam either way — before or after,'” Josephs said recently.
From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches’ brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ.
Forget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government’s widely used measure of inflation.Everyday prices are up some 8 percent over the past year, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.
HSBC, the biggest bank in Europe, handed more than £1m to 192 of its top staff in 2011, a year when profits at the bank slipped 6%.
As the chairman, Douglas Flint, described overall performance as “satisfactory in aggregate”, the bank admitted that 64 of the 192 paid more than £1m were based in the UK.
The shares were one of the biggest fallers in the FTSE 100 as even though at first sight the profits were up 15% at $21.9bn (£13.8bn), the market focused on a $17.7bn figure which stripped out $3.9bn of gains on the value of the bank’s own debt.
U.S. police can search a cell phone for its number without having a warrant, according to a federal appeals court ruling.
Officers in Indiana found a number of cell phones at the scene of a drug bust, and searched each phone for its telephone number. Having the numbers allowed the government to subpoena the owners’ call histories, linking them to the drug-selling scheme.
Virginia’s Senate voted today (39-1) to nullify NDAA 2012 provisions to seize American citizens at the dictate of the federal executive branch. They joined the House’s 96-4 vote.
Do an Internet news search for this story (like this); you won’t find any corporate media coverage. This is what Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld meant with Information Operations Road Map (specifically with endnote 76 in an article on the also non-covered Martin Luther King civil trial that found the US government guilty of assassinating Dr. King), and what CIA-disclosed Operation Mockingbird was meant to achieve: no corporate media opposition.
“The US Constitution refutes the so-called “National Defense Authorization Act” provisions for US military to seize people in America (here, here, here). The 5th and 6th Amendments of the US Constitution promise that if the government is to seize you, they damn sure have to demonstrate you’ve committed a crime (my comments). Note that these promises apply to all persons, not just citizens:
A mind-boggling 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 disaster, scientists say.
Michio Aoyama, a senior researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute, released the finding at a scientific symposium in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Feb. 28.
The figure, which represents about 20 percent of the discharge during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, is twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas.
(updated below – Update II [Wed: response from NBC] – Update III [Wed.])
In 2009, The New York Times‘ David Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize for his two–part series on the use by television networks of retired Generals posing as objective “analysts” at exactly the same time they were participating — unbeknownst to viewers — in a Pentagon propaganda program. Many were also plagued by undisclosed conflicts of interest whereby they had financial stakes in many of the policies they were pushing on-air. One of the prime offenders was Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was not only a member of the Pentagon’s propaganda program, but also, according to Barstow’s second stand-alone article, had his own “Military-Industrial-Media Complex,” deeply invested in many of the very war policies he pushed and advocated while posing as an NBC “analyst”:
Through seven years of war an exclusive club has quietly flourished at the intersection of network news and wartime commerce. Its members, mostly retired generals, have had a foot in both camps as influential network military analysts and defense industry rainmakers. It is a deeply opaque world, a place of privileged access to senior government officials, where war commentary can fit hand in glove with undisclosed commercial interests and network executives are sometimes oblivious to possible conflicts of interest.
Few illustrate the submerged complexities of this world better than Barry McCaffrey. . . . General McCaffrey has immersed himself in businesses that have grown with the fight against terrorism. . . .
Many retired officers hold a perch in the world of military contracting, but General McCaffrey is among a select few who also command platforms in the news media and as government advisers on military matters. These overlapping roles offer them an array of opportunities to advance policy goals as well as business objectives. But with their business ties left undisclosed, it can be difficult for policy makers and the public to fully understand their interests.
On NBC and in other public forums, General McCaffrey has consistently advocated wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests. But those interests are not described to NBC’s viewers. He is held out as a dispassionate expert, not someone who helps companies win contracts related to the wars he discusses on television.
Despite Barstow’s Pulitzer, neither Brian Williams nor anyone else at NBC News ever mentioned any of these groundbreaking stories to their viewers (even as Williams reported on other Pulitzer awards that year); the controversy over the Pentagon propaganda program was simply suppressed. And NBC continued to feature those same ex-Generals as “analysts” — including McCaffrey — as though the whole thing never happened.
Apparently, not only does NBC continue to present McCaffrey to its viewers as some sort of objective analyst, but NBC News executives use him as some kind of private consultant and briefer on the news. On January 12, 2012, McCaffrey presented a seminar to roughly 20 NBC executives and producers — including NBC News President Steve Capus — entitled “Iran, Nukes & Oil: The Gulf Confrontation.” We’ve obtained the Power Point document McCaffrey prepared and distributed for his presentation, and in it, he all but predicts war with Iran within the next 90 days: one that is likely to be started by them. The first page of the breathlessly hawkish document is entitled “Iran & the Gulf: Creeping Toward War,” and the first sentence excitedly proclaims (click to enlarge):
Most of the report emphasizes the likelihood that Iran — not the U.S. — will act aggressively and trigger a war:
He adds: “We should not view the Iranian rhetoric as empty threats. They are likely to further escalate. There is great opportunity for miscalculation on their part. . . . They will not under any circumstances actually be deterred from going nuclear. They will achieve initial nuclear capability within 36 months.” About a war with Iran, he says: “Israel would welcome such a confrontation. They have an existential threat to their survival looming in their very near future.” Among his conclusions:
“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.” – Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary
Just one month after this article, published in the Guardian, Robin Cook DIED:
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that Al Qaeda and other organizations on the US “terror list” are supporting the Syrian opposition.
Clinton said: “We have a very dangerous set of actors in the region, al-Qaida [sic], Hamas, and those who are on our terrorist list, to be sure, supporting – claiming to support the opposition [in Syria].” [1] (Click here to watch video)
Yet at the same time, in the above BBC interview the US Secretary of State repeats the threadbare Western claim that the situation in Syria is one of a defenceless population coming under “relentless attack” from Syrian government forces.
There is ample evidence that teams of snipers who have been killing civilians over the past year in Syria belong to the terrorist formations to which Clinton is referring to.
“I am delighted to be here in these new [Council on Foreign Relations] headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.” – Hillary Clinton
As Michel Chossudovsky points out in a recent article: “Since the middle of March 2011, Islamist armed groups – covertly supported by Western and Israeli intelligence – have conducted terrorist attacks directed against government buildings, including acts of arson. Amply documented, trained gunmen and snipers, including mercenaries, have targeted the police, armed forces as well as innocent civilians. There is ample evidence, as outlined in the Arab League Observer Mission report, that these armed groups of mercenaries are responsible for killing civilians. ??While the Syrian government and military bear a heavy burden of responsibility, it is important to underscore the fact that these terrorist acts – including the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children – are part of a US-NATO-Israeli initiative, which consists is supporting, training and financing ‘an armed entity’ operating inside Syria.” [2]
The admission at the weekend by Hillary Clinton corroborates the finding that armed groups are attacking civilians and these groups are terroristic, according to US own definitions, and that the situation in Syria is not one of unilateral state violence against its population but rather is one of a shadowy armed insurrection.
Clinton’s admission retrospectively justifies the stance taken by Russia and China, both of which vetoed the proposed UN Security Council Resolution on 4 February, precisely because that proposal was predicated on a spurious notion that the violence in Syria was solely the responsibility of the Al Assad government.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the first bits of tsunami debris will make landfall soon on small atolls northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. The rest of the debris was expected to reach the coasts of Oregon, Washington state, Alaska and Canada around 2014.
NOAA’s tsunami marine debris coordinator, Ruth Yender, told an online news conference Tuesday that agency workers were boarding Coast Guard flights that patrol the archipelago. NOAA also asked scientists stationed at Midway and other atolls to look for the debris.
The German city of Braunschweig has a new benefactor. An anonymous donor has been stuffing envelopes filled with 10,000 euros in cash into the mailboxes of charitable organizations. His latest contribution was an anomaly. A local hospice found the money under its doormat.
There are stories that are so good they are hard to believe. Henning Noske laughs when he hears such sentiments. A section editor with daily Braunschweiger Zeitung, Noske has been a journalist for thirty years and if there is one thing he knows, it’s that a good story is a good story.
These are crazy times for Noske. His phone is constantly ringing with major German television stations seeking to speak with him. All because his little paper has been thrust into the limelight by a local story. “Every editor dreams of such a story!” says Noske.
It all started with an article about a local robbery. A short while later an envelope, sent by an anonymous donor, found its way to the local victim support center. The envelope contained €10,000 — in cash. Twenty €500 notes.
Further envelopes followed:
€10,000 for a day-care center
€10,000 for four local churches
€10,000 for a choir
€10,000 for a group providing meals to the homeless
€10,000 for a soup kitchen
and on and on.
Over the weekend, the anonymous giver made another donation. An intern at a local hospice found an envelope stuffed with €10,000 hidden under the doormat as she was taking out the garbage.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
