An intelligence source in the Middle East told Reuters last year Israel planned to target Iranian nuclear scientists with letter bombs and poisoned packages and had set off explosions in Iran. Analysts offered similar accounts and said such tactics would be credible, but no confirmation has been available.
Some analysts caution that reports of such a “dirty war” may form part of a psychological warfare campaign to unsettle Iran.
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The Palestinian Authority is calling for an international investigation of the weapons used by Israel during its three-week assault on Gaza. There are claims so-called DIME bombs were dropped from drone aircraft. This kind of bomb is designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space.
Mona Al-Ashkar, an 18-year-old Gaza resident, lost her left leg and half her body was paralysed, after she was hit by an Israeli shell.
“I used to dream of going to university and becoming a maths teacher. I wanted to marry and have children. But now only God knows if I can. Which man is going to marry a girl in my situation? How can I marry without a leg? I can’t move. I can’t leave this bed. I don’t know what will happen to me. Please God, please God!” she says.
According to the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), as many as 500 people in Gaza underwent amputations as a result of the recent conflict.
What distinguishes Mona’s case is the way in which her body was mutilated. Her doctors say her leg looked like it had been “sliced right off with a knife” – an unusual wound they encountered more than once during the offensive.
A cardiac surgeon Dr Eric Fosse, who treated the injured at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza for 11 days, has already returned to
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This doomsday fault is financed by amongst others Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway. That’s right Monsanto, they of the terminator seed, the one you can only use once and won’t produce usual seeds for next year, the infamous Rockefeller family amongst others are collecting every seed ever developed by mother nature to nourish us and our fellow travellers on this planet. Known for their ruthless pursuit of power and money they are collecting bio diversity. Does that make you fell comfortable? No I didn’t think so.
CHICAGO (AFP) – The stores of seeds in a “doomsday” vault in the Norwegian Arctic are growing as researchers rush to preserve 100,000 crop varieties from potential extinction.
The imperiled seeds are going to be critical for protecting the global food supply against devastating crop losses as a result of climate change, said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
“These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation,” Fowler said. “You can’t imagine a solution to climate change without crop diversity.”
That’s because the crops currently being used by farmers will not be able to evolve quickly enough on their own to adjust to predicted drought, rising temperatures and new pests and diseases, he said.
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Israeli warplanes have launched fresh attacks on the Gaza Strip, pounding several targets across the southern border with Egypt.
Witnesses told Press TV that they saw military jets bombing the strip on Monday, but no casualties have been reported.
The Israeli military confirmed the attacks on southern Gaza, saying the airstrikes targeted the Philadelphi route, an area of “tunnels through which Hamas brings arms into the region.”
It says the attacks came after two Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed at the western Negev early Monday morning. The rocket attacks, however, caused no casualties, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Earlier in the day Israeli aircrafts bombed northern areas of the territory, killing one Palestinian and wounding five others.
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While the MSM of NZ, National and their cronies are desperate to divert the blame for the the global recession away from the real perpetrators by blaming the NZ recession on Labour and I might add the average Kiwi taking it hook line and sinker John Key is preparing to do what comes natural to him and his banking scum mates. Socialist measures for the Rich while you and me, the poor slobs of this country, can go fuck themselves in their capitalist system. News flash for those of you who thought F&P was a healthy profit making business. They where until they borrowed in US dollars when the NZ dollar was the speculators favourite and it was artificially high, Now the dollar is back to where it ought to be and their debt trippled in just one year. Now it’s just another collapsing piece of trash. Unsalvable and it should be allowed to go under. That is the capitalist system. You win, you loose but nobody is oblidged to bail you out if things go south, that would be socialism.
Prime Minister John Key has signalled that the Government could step in as a last resort to prevent renowned whiteware maker Fisher & Paykel from collapsing.
Mr Key revealed yesterday that he had phoned F&P Appliances chief executive John Bongard after its shares plummeted to record low levels on the back of news of a slump in profits and ballooning debt.
He stressed that Mr Bongard had not asked for government help and that none had been offered. The company’s problems appeared to be “temporary”.
“It’s important to recognise that Fisher & Paykel is a profitable company … They have a plan and we are looking to them executing that plan.
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As a tulip I would have to support that of course. It’s not like we asked to have the international war crimes court to be put slab bang in the middle of the Hague.
The Hague – In 2002, Congress passed a law enabling United States forces to unilaterally storm into peaceful Holland to liberate American soldiers held for war crimes.
Coming in the early days of the war on terrorists, and as the International Criminal Court was being formed here, the measure provoked controversy and seemed to the Dutch – stout US allies – an absurd example of America’s “with us or against us” foreign policy.
The law is still on the books.
Formally titled the American Service Members Protection Act, the measure is widely and derisively known here as the Invasion of The Hague Act.
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Venezuelans give a ‘yes’ vote to President Hugo Chavez seeking to extend his term in office and bolstering support for his Socialist party.
Preliminary results in a referendum vote conducted Sunday showed that 54.36 percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment to scrap electoral term limits, the National Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said early Monday.
Chavez, 54, who has already ruled the country for 10 years, is now permitted to stand for re-election when his present term expires in 2013, bolstering support for his Socialist party and his anti-US policies.
Lucena added that 45.63 percent voted ‘No’ in the referendum that he said was conducted in a very calm atmosphere. “There has been a good turnout among the more than 16 million eligible voters,” she said.
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Japan is grappling with its worst economic crisis since the end of World War II, the nation’s economic and fiscal policy minister said Monday.
A businessman walks past a homeless man taking a nap at a Tokyo park.
The comments from Kaoru Yosano followed news of Japan’s gross domestic product falling 12.7 percent in the fourth quarter in 2008.
“This is the worst economic crisis in the post-war era,” Yosano said at a press conference, according to Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
The global economic crisis has pummeled Japan, which depends largely on its auto and electronics exports. The slump in exports has led to tens of thousands of layoffs across Japan.
“Behind [the contraction in GDP for] the October-December quarter is a terrific downturn in exports,” he said, according to Kyodo.
“Like other major countries, our country cannot avoid the pains of structural change,” Yosano said.
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People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their GMO seeds.
Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?
Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop. It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice.
And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.
1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.
2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That’s been killed.
In Illinois, which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.
3. Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack’s brainchild, actually) that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops. So if you don’t want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.
Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s. A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state. People need to check on that.
4. For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.” Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment … for EACH line of seed. Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment. And manure. Something that can contaminate seed. Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.
You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay). Try that with pesticides and fertilizers. Indian farmers have. Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.
5. Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, Missouri, in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.
So, after demanding that seed cleaners somehow be able to tell one seed from another (or be sued to kingdom come) or corrupting legislatures to put in laws about labeling of seeds that are so onerous no one can cope with them, what is Monsanto’s attitude about labeling their own stuff? You guessed it – they’re out there pushing laws against ANY labeling of their own GM-food and animals and of any exports to other countries. Why?
We know and they know why.
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SINGAPORE (AFP) — The global economic crisis heightens the potential for social unrest in Asia, where millions of people suddenly out of work will demand governments take swift and decisive action, analysts say.
And while the prospect of regimes being overthrown is remote at the moment, they say, it will depend also on how long and how deep the financial turmoil goes, in a region not unfamiliar with major political upheaval.
“It’s impossible to predict at the moment but the historical record suggests that serious and protracted economic crises may have, in some cases, serious political impact,” said Tim Huxley.
The executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Asia cited Europe’s experience during the Great Depression in the 1930s which fuelled the rise of far-right political movements in the run-up to World War II.
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Most people don’t realise that the money making process is completely out of our, the general populous, hands. A small group of private citizens has been given control to print money out of thin air and we the general public get to borrow it and pay interest on it and we slog our hearts out to pay of these fraudulent loans. The Money as Debt video explains this process in all it’s splendid and horrific simplicity. If, after watching that video you still think that money is a public resource responsibly created by out elected officials based on what we “the People” generate in real wealth than let the new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner relieve you of that notion. In an interview with Brian Williams he actually said that he intended to keep the system in private hands. His previous job? You’ve got it in one: President of the privately owned Federal Reserve of New York.
The same Federal Reserve to which John Key was one of only four upon invitation only advisors from 1999 until March 2001.
Most of the bad paper and non-performing loans appear to be concentrated in the very largest banks. By some estimates Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan-Chase and Wells Fargo are holding two-thirds of all the toxic mortgage-backed paper. Therein lies the problem. These banking Goliaths have powerful constituencies and substantial political power. Keep in mind, the Obama campaign received over $10 million in contributions from Wall Street, the largest contributors by far. This suggests that Timothy Geithner is point-man for the banksters and his job is to fend off nationalization. Geithner admitted as much on Tuesday in an interview with Brian Williams when he said that he intended to “keep the system in private hands”. If that’s the case, then the taxpayer better get ready for a real shellacking, because it will take many trillions to keep these dinosaurs from extinction. Mike Whitney. (Not Ready for Prime Time)
Appearing behind a podium that proclaimed, “Financial Stability and Recovery,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday carefully read from a teleprompter and provided what his flack said was a “comprehensive” plan. It was not comprehensive in any way. It seemed so amateurish and shallow that the market dropped and commentators and senators were almost incredulous at the lack of detail.
But what were they expecting? Geithner doesn’t know the details because he hasn’t been given them yet. Those who expected the details of the plan were operating under the false assumption that the Treasury Secretary―and by extension, the U.S. Government―is in practical control and charge of the U.S. economy.
Geithner’s performance followed President Obama
having advertised Geithner’s appearance in advance by saying, “He’s going to be terrific. I’m going to make sure that Tim gets his moment in the sun.” The sun? One analyst said Geithner looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
It turns out the speech, which did mention the spending of trillions of dollars, was delivered in the Treasury Department’s “Cash Room.” No kidding.
Senator Orrin Hatch had voted to confirm Geithner, saying that he “is not merely acceptable for the job―he is highly qualified.” That was largely because of his role as President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank in previous financial bailouts that have yet to succeed. Hatch understood this, but said that Geithner’s recognition that mistakes had occurred “makes him more valuable, in my view, in the continuing effort to right our economic ship.”
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Hungry families are facing empty shelves in some foodbanks as social agencies are squeezed between rising need and dwindling donations.
Foodbanks throughout the country are reporting a big jump in families seeking food parcels even before New Zealand faces many of the mass layoffs caused by the recession overseas.
But some supermarkets are tightening up and have less leftover food to give away, and cash funders such as Auckland’s ASB Trust and Tauranga’s Bay Trust have suspended grants because of huge losses on their investments.
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So who got bribed than?
Criticism is growing over a secret agreement worth $175,000 the Department of Conservation signed with Meridian Energy over a controversial wind farm.
Radio New Zealand today reported a confidential document showed Meridian agreed to pay DoC the money in return for the department not opposing the Project Hayes windfarm near Ranfurly.
The Department has also signed another deal with Trustpower regarding the Mahinerangi wind farm but Trust Power will not say for how much.
The agreement with Meridian was signed in May 2007.
The parties agreed the government department would drop all its outstanding issues in relation to Project Hayes and adopt a neutral stance on the project.
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Both Tumeke and the Standard have commented on this in debt already and I just put it here because I think every New Zealander should be up in arms about this one because it is the privatisation of human misery and jailing human beings should never ever be a money making proposition. When money comes into it human decency goes out the window. No private business making money out of keeping human beings locked up like cattle is ever interested in making less profit. In fact they would be liable if they did. The shareholders of the corporations that run these prisons want their full pound of flesh and the rehabilitation of those poor souls in the system is detrimental to the system and the profit of those shareholders. People will go in and come out more dangerous more recidivist and society will pay the price.
Private companies will again compete with the Corrections Department to run new prisons, including a 900-to-1200-bed jail due to open by 2012.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins has told officials to draw up law changes that would allow private companies to tender for jail management contracts, with legislation expected later this year.
The move, promised in National’s law and order policy, is set to reignite debate on the private sector’s role in public services. It comes as Mrs Collins signals that heads could roll in Corrections after a spate of escapes this year.
The previous National government allowed private companies to tender for jail contracts, and let the management of the new Auckland Central Remand Prison, opened in 2000, to an Australian firm.
Labour canned the contract in 2005 when it passed a law that removed the ability of private companies to run jails.
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At least 6 months ago my husband who works as an industrial electrician was send out to do some work in one of the Fonterra storage houses and he told me that the place was stocked to the roof and people working there told him that nothing was moving.
Nothing moved!! That means that Fonterra is stuck with huge amounts of dairy and not clients to take orders from.
They are producing to much!!! but prices here are not going down are they? So technically there is a glut and in a free market system that would mean prices would have to come down but they are not. Sounds to me like Fonterra is using it’s monopoly position to artificially keep prices high while the populations is under pressure with joblosses and ricing prices.
Fonterra has laid plans to follow the lead of the American government and begin stockpiling surplus milk powder.
Fonterra’s managing director of global trade, Kelvin Wickham, last week pointed the finger at the US Department of Agriculture for buying up more than 100,000 tonnes of surplus milk powder from US producers and stockpiling it in limestone caves near Kansas City.
What Wickham did not mention was that Fonterra was already well advanced in its plans to begin doing the same thing here, but not in limestone caves. Instead Fonterra will be stockpiling excess milk powder in modern, high stud warehouses up and down the country.
The diary giant is believed to have leased up to 70,000m2 of industrial storage space over the past two months.
Fonterra’s commercial director of global trade, Guy Roper, would not say by how much the company’s milk powder inventory had increased. But the storage industry’s rule of thumb suggests 70,000m2 would be sufficient to store around 120,000 tonnes of milk powder, roughly equivalent to 12% of this country’s milk powder exports last year.
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Of course
Jon Moulton, the private equity chief, warned a City lunch this week that he feared serious civil unrest. There was, he said, a 25 per cent chance of one of the 15 member countries of the eurozone pulling out of the currency club. That, he said, would be a catastrophic shock leading to a “far greater financial crisis” than the current one.
The mind boggles at a financial crisis far worse than the current one. Is such a thing possible? Even with this one, it may already be too late to prevent social unrest, especially in Britain, which is tipped to be one of the worst-hit countries economically.
The spectacle of bankers continuing to award themselves bonuses while taking taxpayer support is feeding an extraordinary public rage and a fierce sense of injustice. With 40,000 people losing their jobs each month, it is a recipe for trouble, come the traditional rioting months of the summer.
It won’t be bankers being lynched, of course, but small shopkeepers in inner-city areas having their windows smashed and their stock looted. The only surprise is there haven’t already been antibanker demonstrations in Threadneedle Street – secretly cheered on by 99 per cent of Middle England.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday the Obama administration might reconsider its plans to deploy an ABM system in Eastern Europe – if Iran agrees to compromise on its nuclear program. Clinton made her statement in Washington after talks with Karl Swartzenberg, the Foreign Minister of Czech Republic, which is currently presiding over the Coucil of the European Union until July 1 of this year.
Some analysts are interpreting the statement as a clear signal to Russia to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.
Clinton included another hurdle that the ABM system must clear: it must work. The secretary of state said the radar in the Czech Republic and ABM interceptor missiles in Poland will be deployed only if their effectiveness and technical reliability are proven. This is a qualification that the former Bush administration tried to ignore.
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As each day brings new details of the terrible human cost of the bush fires that hit Victoria last weekend, evidence mounts that government neglect, the run-down of emergency services and the lack of any comprehensive plan were direct contributors to the tragic loss of life.
The official death toll is currently 181, but the final casualty figure is expected to be well over 300 as police, soldiers and military personnel continue their search for bodies in the burnt-out ruins of around 1,800 homes.
So far more than 5,000 people have been left homeless by the inferno, which has burnt out more than 450,000 kilometres, along with schools, small businesses and local facilities. Many homeowners face financial ruin, with property losses conservatively estimated at over $2 billion. According to Australia’s Insurance Council, up to one in five of those affected may not have had insurance coverage.
Milder weather conditions and rain on Wednesday and Thursday brought relief in some parts of the state but there are more than a dozen fires still burning, with several towns in danger. The Department of Sustainability and Environment warned today that the town of Healesville with a population of 6,700 is under serious threat from nearby fires. Hot weather forecast for this weekend is expected to produce new outbreaks in the state.
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Yep, privatising infrastructure really works.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its 2009 Report Card on the state of infrastructure in the US late last month. The report is a stinging indictment of the state of the nation’s infrastructure, assigning it an overall grade of “D”.
The report card evaluates the categories of Aviation, Bridges, Dams, Drinking Water, Energy, Hazardous Waste, Solid Waste, Inland Waterways and Levees, Public Parks and Recreation, Roads, Railroads, Schools, Mass Transit and Wastewater.
The ASCE estimates that it would take an investment of $2.2 trillion over the next five years to update the nation’s infrastructure. By the most generous calculations, the funds allocated in the final version of the Obama stimulus package would provide less than 5 percent of what is required.
Infrastructure conditions have worsened considerably since the ASCE’s last report card was issued in 2005. The cost of improving US infrastructure has increased by over $500 billion since 2005. The state of mass transit and aviation both dropped from D+ to D and roads declined from D to a D-. The report card cited the lack of a modern air traffic control system as causing increased delays and poor conditions at airports.
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Staggering falls in exports across Asia have shocked economic analysts and ended all claims that the global slump may be nearing its bottom. The IMF’s growth forecast for Asia this year is just 2.7 percent—less than a third of the 9 percent growth rate of 2007. The prediction is a full percentage point less than during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
IMA Asia analyst Richard Martin commented in the Australian: “It’s a bit like watching a train wreck in slow motion. North Asia is suffering the biggest collapse in demand since World War II.” Westpac bank’s Richard Franulovich said that the “speed of the decline embedded in the latest Asia data is on par with the collapse in the US during the 1930s Depression.”
Japan, the world’s second largest economy, is already in recession and still declining. Japanese exports fell 35 percent in December from a year earlier, as the global demand for its cars, electronics and capital goods dried up. Industrial production plunged a record 9.6 percent, month on month, in December.
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Statistics released Thursday by the European Union’s Eurostat agency reveal that production plummeted across Europe at the end of 2008. The figures announced were far worse than analysts had anticipated. Industrial production declined across Europe by 2.6 percent in December compared to the previous month. On a year-to-year basis, European production has slumped 12 percent.
For some time, leading European politicians have attempted to put a positive gloss on declining figures for European production, but the results released Thursday ushered in a new tone. European Union Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen told the Financial Times Deutschland, “The extent and speed of the crisis is completely new.”
One day previously, an Ifo Institute for Economic Research survey revealed that business sentiment within the 16-country common-currency eurozone declined for the sixth consecutive quarter, plunging to its lowest point since the survey began 16 years ago. The European Central Bank (ECB) also issued a warning that the recession gripping Europe will not be short-lived. Rather, it will be a “long-lasting and clear downturn,” the ECB said.
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On February 14, Australian News Agency “The Age” reported:
A SENIOR Israeli diplomat has warned that Israel is ready to launch a military offensive against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
In an interview with The Age, Dan Gillerman, who was Israel’s permanent representative at the United Nations from 2003 until last September, said time for diplomatic efforts to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear capability might have already expired.
“The world cannot afford to live with a nuclear Iran,” Mr Gillerman said.
The truth is that, after witnessing Israeli war crimes in Lebanon and in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, the world cannot afford to live with nuclear Israel. As opposed to Iran, Israel has secretly developed hundreds of nuclear warheads and delivery weapons outside of any supervision by international community. Iran continues to run its nuclear program in cooperation with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
According to the Press TV report of February 13,
The new chief of US intelligence has confirmed the findings of a 2007 intelligence report that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
Dennis Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee that his organization has assessed that Tehran does not have nuclear weapons design and weaponization work.
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), issued in November 2007 by the sixteen US intelligence agencies, clarified that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
The 2007 intelligence report was widely seen as a setback for Bush administration efforts to pressure Iran and halt its nuclear program.
The UN nuclear watchdog, which has carried out the highest number of inspections in its history on Iranian nuclear sites, has also found nothing to indicate that the program has diverted toward weaponization.
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The last months of 2008 witnessed what is being called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1929-30. The first indications of a serious crisis appeared in January 2008. On 15 January, news of a sharp drop in the profits of the Citigroup banking led to a sharp fall on the New York Stock Exchange. On 21 January a spectacular fall in share prices occurred in all major world markets, followed by a series of collapses. A number of American and European banks declared massive losses in their 2007 end of the year results.
Later months of the year witnessed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a 158-year old investment bank, the takeover of the stock-broking firm and investment bank Merrill Lynch, and the move by Goldman Sacks and Morgan Stanley to seek banking status in order to receive protection from bankruptcy. During the same weeks, the remaining four investment banks on the Wall Street all went under in one way or another. To stop further collapse and to ward off total economic catastrophe, the US government made its most dramatic interventions in financial markets since the 1930s. Only the infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars into the US banking system, coinciding with equally colossal interventions in Europe, staved off an entire crash of the world’s financial markets.
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I just received another link to a prominent website about 911 and decided to dedicate a post to the fat that more and more professional groups unite around the topic of the events of 911. All these sites share one common denominator the quest for a new and independent investigation into the events of 911.
I hope that you will visit them and support their petitions and their quest for that new investigation by spreading them to your friends and colleagues. I also hope that these sites help you in convincing people that we are no longer mere “Conspiracy theorists but that the questions that remain unanswered to this day about the events of that day are real and pressing and in dire need of answers.
So here they are:
This website was set up by a group of prominent Lawyers, Attorneys and barristers from around the world.
Among them illuminaries such as
Roy H. Andes.
Former Assistant Attorney General, State of Montana.
James Edyrn Baker.
Attorney, Washington. Former member of the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association.
Stephen Fournier.
Attorney, Connecticut. Former Lecturer in Law, University of Connecticut School of Law Criminal Clinic.
Ferdinando Imposimato.
Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy. Former Senior Investigative Judge, Italy. Presided over several terrorism-related cases, including the kidnapping and ultimate assassination of President Aldo Moro, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, other political assassinations and kidnapping cases and several cases against the Mafia. Former Senator who served on the Anti-Mafia Commission in three administrations. Former legal consultant to the United Nations regarding institution of laws to control drug trafficking.
This site is set up by US fire fighters who have serious questions and their examination of what happened to the destruction of the 911 crime scenes is devastating to say the least.
Religious leaders for 911 truth
This group has an impressive list of supporters with amongst them prominent 911 activists such as David Ray Griffin, and Greame McGueen. Please support them by signing their petition.
I put it to you that these are not people given to vague speculation and if they are prepared to pu their good name and careers on the line to add pressure to our quest for a new and independent investigation than they deserve all the support they can get.
The outcome of the Israeli election has sounded the death knell for the two-state solution. There are not 61 votes for it in the new Knesset of 120 seats. A good 64 of the just-elected and/or re-elected Members of Parliament favor accelerated Israeli colonization of the West Bank and oppose Palestinian statehood. Most militant of all is Avigdor Lieberman, a former bouncer from Moldova who has risen in Israeli politics on a platform of racial hatred for Israeli-Palestinians (20% of the population), whom he has urged be “executed” or made to take loyalty oaths, stripped of their citizenship and possibly transferred to the Palestine Authority.
With Lieberman emerging as kingmaker in the new government, logically speaking, there are only three other plausible future relationships of Israel and the Palestinians:
1. Apartheid, with Israeli citizens dominating stateless Palestinians and controlling their borders, land, water and air. Apartheid would be accelerated under Lieberman’s baleful influence. Over time, this outcome would break down, since it will be unacceptable to the rest of the world over the coming decades).
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Western countries are worried that some of their citizens, in particular young men of Pakistani descent, who support the militant cause might travel to northwest Pakistan for militant training and to plot violence.
Yesterday, I reported that the Age a Australian Fairfax owned online newspaper mentioned in September 2008 that Jihadist websites called upon Australian Muslims to torch Australian bush. A strange and unconfirmed allegation which never the less made it to a Fairfax owned outlet months before major news outlets around the world started to spread the rumours of arsonists around the world.
Today the front news in the NZ Herald is that a man by the name of Mark Taylor who allegedly tried to travel to a an “al Qaeda” stronghold in Pakistan. Am I mistaken or are we having an increase in the “aarghhh terrorists are with” paradigm us just as we are being confronted with the chances in the police laws and the pressure about our involvement in Afghanistan and let’s not forget the total collapse of our economic system. Inother words another shock to our system to makes us scared enough to accept the new laws and to keep us from rebelling against our masters.
Watch this video about the shock doctrine to understand what I’m talking about:
Pakistani intelligence officials who declined to be identified have said they suspected he might have links with Islamist militants.
The man, identified on his passport as Mark Taylor, was detained at a paramilitary checkpost on the outskirts of Tank town, about 280km southwest of Islamabad, which is the gateway to South Waziristan.
The top government administrator in Tank, Barkatullah Khan, said, the man had told the soldiers who detained him that he was going to South Waziristan to get married.
“He was travelling in a passenger van. He has a beard and was wearing a shalwar kamiz as a disguise,” Khan said, referring to a traditional baggy trousers and tunic outfit worn by men.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said New Zealand’s honorary consul in Pakistan had been informed of the arrest.
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And while you are pondering the impact of my previous posts and you try to get some of this out on blogs such a the Standard where people are still discussing the pro’s and con’s of Socialism versus Capitalism this is something you might want to point them too.
February 10, 2009 “Information Clearinghouse” — After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.
The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.
Plutocracy vs. Democracy
Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.
The Constitution itself was fashioned by affluent gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to repeatedly warn of the baneful and dangerous leveling effects of democracy. The document they cobbled together was far from democratic, being shackled with checks, vetoes, and requirements for artificial super majorities, a system designed to blunt the impact of popular demands.
In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.
Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently “malfunction” to the benefit of the more conservative candidates.
At times ruling interests have suppressed radical publications and public protests, resorting to police raids, arrests, and jailings—applied most recently with full force against demonstrators in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy’s social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non-toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one’s own choosing.
About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state–with its police, militia, courts, and laws—was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.
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And to top it of here’s a bit of information about the global food production for 2009. Are we immune from the global starvation that is about to hit us? Well let’s put it this way. All those breakfast cereals your kids like so much? Gone. The cheap meat, and veggies we import from China? Gone. The cheap clothes we buy one day and ditch the next? Gone. The plastic crap we’ve been filling our houses with? Gone. The cheap crap we’ve been building our houses with? Gone. Our international trade that was keeping this country prosperous? Gone. So you get the message, no we are not immune to the Depression coming our way, in fact we are quit vulnerable to it.
And who will save us? Well, not our banking scum, short vision dude John Key.
By the way it seems that on these two maps NZ doesn’t exist I’ll leave you to do the maths on that one.
After reading about the droughts in two major agricultural countries, China and Argentina, I decided to research the extent other food producing nations were also experiencing droughts. This project ended up taking a lot longer than I thought. 2009 looks to be a humanitarian disaster around much of the world
To understand the depth of the food Catastrophe that faces the world this year, consider the graphic below depicting countries by USD value of their agricultural output, as of 2006.
Now, consider the same graphic with the countries experiencing droughts highlighted.
The countries that make up two thirds of the world’s agricultural output are experiencing drought conditions. Whether you watch a video of the drought in China, Australia, Africa, South America, or the US , the scene will be the same: misery, ruined crop, and dying cattle.
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The verdict is out on the length of the Depression not on whether we have one because a depression is what it is but if a close ally of Gordon Brown is telling us that it’s going to be 15 years and Martin Armstrong (do be sure to link to the full PDF of Martin Armstrong’s predictions) a brilliant economist is telling us that it is going to take more than 25 years I get very worried.
Britain is facing its worst financial crisis for more than a century, surpassing even the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of Gordon Brown’s most senior ministers and confidants has admitted.
In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary’s comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers’s closest allies.
Mr Balls said yesterday: “The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I’m sure, over 100 years, as it will turn out.”
He warned that events worldwide were moving at a “speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before” and banks were losing cash on a “scale that nobody believed possible”.
The minister stunned his audience at a Labour conference in Yorkshire by forecasting that times could be tougher than in the depression of the 1930s, when male unemployment in some cities reached 70 per cent. He also appeared to hint that the recession could play into the hands of the far right.
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As seen in this revealing photo the Twin Towers' destruction exhibited all the characteristics of destruction by explosions: |
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| 1. |
Extremely rapid onset of “collapse” |
| 2. |
Sounds of explosions at plane impact zone — a full second prior to collapse (heard by 118 first responders as well as by media reporters) |
| 3. |
Observations of flashes (seen by numerous professionals) |
| 4. |
Squibs, or “mistimed” explosions, 40 floors below the “collapsing” building seen in all the videos |
| 5. |
Mid-air pulverization of all the 90,000 tons of concrete and steel decking, filing cabinets & 1000 people – mostly to dust |
| 6. |
Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds |
| 7. |
Vertical progression of full building perimeter demolition waves |
| 8. |
Symmetrical collapse – through the path of greatest resistance – at free-fall speed — the columns gave no resistance |
| 9. |
1,400 foot diameter field of equally distributed debris – outside of building footprint |
| 10. |
Blast waves blew out windows in buildings 400 feet away |
| 11. |
Lateral ejection of thousands of individual 20 - 50 ton steel beams up to 500 feet |
| 12. |
Total destruction of the building down to individual structural steel elements – obliterating the steel core structure. |
| 13. |
Tons of molten Metal found by FDNY under all 3 high-rises (no other possible source other than an incendiary cutting charge such as Thermate) |
| 14. |
Chemical signature of Thermate (high tech incendiary) found in slag, solidified molten metal, and dust samples by Physics professor Steven Jones, PhD. |
| 15. |
FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples |
| 16. |
More than 1000 Bodies are unaccounted for — 700 tiny bone fragments found on top of nearby buildings |
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And exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e. |
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| 1. |
Slow onset with large visible deformations |
| 2. |
Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, intact, from the point of plane impact, to the side most damaged by the fires) |
| 3. |
Evidence of fire temperatures capable of softening steel |
| 4. |
High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never “collapsed” |
