ED NOTE: NEVER thought I would seriously consider an op-ed piece in the NYT for My Catbird Seat, but here it is today:

A key quote:

"This drumbeat [to war with Iran] must be silenced, and only President Obama can silence it."

"An Israeli attack on Iran would almost certainly precipitate a devastating regional war with unforeseeable global consequences."

Not perfect, to be sure, but considering the source....

Stop the War Talk

By REZA ASLAN and BERNARD AVISHAI

GOLDBERG'S empty rhetoric plays on...

For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE & MORE HERE:

The "other half" of Amb. Freeman's very recent public utterances.
The interviewer Malsin was very competent in asking the right questions

By Jared Malsin

New York – When it comes to the normally stultified American debate on Middle East issues, Charles Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is one of the most outspoken US officials.

His pronouncements, by his own admission, break established taboos against criticism of Israel, against skepticism about the two-state solution, against supporting engagement with Hamas. And the central taboo, he argues, which underpins the others, prohibits discussion of the role of right wing organizations lobbying for Israel, such as AIPAC.

Another "FACT" Buster:

By Mehdi Hasan–

Our ex-prime minister is still the best Bliar in the business.

I’m knackered and sleepy, hungry from all the Ramadan fasting and — officially — on vacation. But I couldn’t go to bed without commenting on Tony Blair’s new book, A Journey, extracts of which have been published online here.

Much of the instant attention from the chattering classes in the Westminster village has been on the Gordon Brown (GB) chapter, and on Martin Kettle’s pre-publication interview with Tony Blair (TB) in the Guardian, in which the latter says he always believed GB would be a “disaster” as prime minister.

In what can be described as an open endorsement of eugenics, British Professor David Marsland has called for the sterilization of the people the the state deems unfit. Eugenics, the driving force behind Hitlers Holocaust, has a firm footing in our society, whether it be through the use of vaccines, Planned Parenthood, or forced sterilization.

Marsland appeared on a BBC radio program in response to a request by a local council in the West Midlands who wanted to forcefully sterilize a 29 year old girl that they had deemed mentally unfit!

All peace proposals after 1967 were based on maintaining Israel as a regional power and forcing the Palestinians to settle for less than they were entitled to. They were repeatedly offered paltry settlements that legitimised Israel's hold on most of their land and undermined their right of return.

You will not be surprised to learn that with a few honorable exceptions, high-profile TV and radio have so far shied away from the recent wave of interest in state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. (Need I point out that Judge Andrew Napolitano has been his usual fearless self, even as others have run away from the topic?) But the idea has begun to trickle out anyway. Jeff Taylor, who describes himself as being more on the left than the right, managed to bring the topic of nullification to a Huffington Post audience. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is speaking at a major nullification rally on October 10. Martha Dean, the GOP candidate for Attorney General in Connecticut, says (see 4:50) she supports legislative efforts to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. There are plenty more examples. State and local political candidates are beginning to discuss the forbidden subject. Everywhere I go around the country I’m hearing that nullification initiatives are going to be pushed seriously in upcoming state legislative sessions. The television hosts who have been AWOL so far can go on pretending this isn’t happening for only so long.

The Fed cranks the printing press as easily as a child cranks a Jack-in-the-Box... But eventually, "POP goes the weasel"...

Video from: http://inflation.us/videos.html

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County's sheriff has launched a war of words against California's medical marijuana dispensaries, saying almost all of the businesses operate as criminal enterprises.

Rick Rozoff views the United States’ growing arms exports to Middle East countries, which will spend an estimated 100 billion dollars on arms from the US by 2014, and the lost opportunities for development in a region that “has known the least peace in the past 60 years and that is in most need of it”.

One of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history has struck Christchurch and the South Island this morning.

The massive 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit before dawn, causing widespread damage and cutting power.

The quake was centred 30km west of Christchurch and 33m underground. It hit at 4.35am and there have been many reports of damage.

Jeffrey Green
Activist Post

On August 29th, Lord Stirling issued a scary report warning that "The North Atlantic Current is Gone". We were hesitant to post the article before checking with sources to confirm it's validity. After such research, many of the claims that Lord Stirling makes do indeed have some scientific evidence. However, his claims that the North Atlantic Current is "gone" and that the cause is primarily the Gulf oil disaster and subsequent dispersant spraying are slightly premature. Despite these assumptions, Stirling's report has enough support to cause alarm:

Dog Poet Transmitting…….

When you talk about British Petroleum you have to talk about the Bride of Dracula, the original noxious, bat cave, the Queen of England, also the head of the Black Nobility; or close enough. My favorite picture of this slithering reptile is when she goes around on Christmas Day or New Years and dispenses season’s greetings to the junkies and homeless on the street. After a heartfelt, “Merry Christmas!” and a brisk handshake, it’s on to the next affair of state, which usually involves a senior cabinet member porking his chauffeur.

When you talk about British Petroleum, you also have to talk about the true vampire elite, The Rothschilds

WASHINGTON – The nation’s top law enforcement official is being asked to look into whether Enbridge Energy Partners pressured Michigan residents to give up legal rights to sue in exchange for hotel rooms, air purifiers and other expenses in the wake of July’s oil spill along a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.

Maybe it’s the toxic waste dump. Maybe the pesticides, or the diesel fumes, or the arsenic. How a small-town mystery could change the way we look at pollution.

THE FIRST BABY’S NAME was America. She was born in September 2007, with Down syndrome, two heart murmurs, and part of her upper lip missing.

Vladimir Putin has announced Russia will not lift a ban on grain exports before next year’s harvest, extending the embargo for another year, sparking fears over a global food shortage.

The Russian prime minister said that it was “necessary to note that we will only be able to consider lifting the grain export ban after next year’s harvest ... and we have clarity on the balances”.

---Comment---

Russia has leaders who put Russia first, second, and third. - kdtroxel

Jakarta, Indonesia -- A volcano erupted again in Indonesia early Friday in northern Sumatra, sending hundreds of villagers fleeing as it unleashed tremors and spewed powerful bursts of hot ash and debris.

"Constant tremors were felt since yesterday and, between 4:38 and 4:51 a.m. this morning, the volcano erupted, shooting thick, hot ash 3,000 meters (1.9 miles) to the sky," said Surono, the head of the Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation. "This is the biggest one, compared to the last two."

Surono goes by one name, as many Indonesians do.

The villagers in Karo province had ignored warnings and returned to their homes after the volcano showed no activity since Monday. The fresh eruption forced them back into temporary shelters.

The Sinabung mountain erupted for the first time in four centuries last Sunday, forcing the evacuation of about 30,000 villagers who live within 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) of the volcano's crater.

WASHINGTON — The unemployment rate rose in August for the first time in four months as weak hiring by private employers wasn't enough to keep pace with a large increase in the number of people looking for work.

Loud noises from Washington about a US pull-out from Iraq are a poor disguise for America’s determination to keep waging war. And the same sort of spin is at work here in Britain

(*Will Run in Other Cities)

...an ad for the 2012 presidential vote with the slogan, "Where there's a Hill there's a way."

Forest fires have flared up again in Russia, this time in the south, forcing hundreds of people to leave their homes. 20 villages in the region of Volgograd have been affected so far. Temperatures here have topped 40 degrees celsius in recent days.

This is a local disaster with potentially global consequences.

Officials now say Russia’s embargo on the export of wheat will not be lifted before next year’s harvest.

As it was in the year before the invasion of Iraq, we continue to treat the significantly weaker state as the irrational aggressor that must be stopped. Meanwhile, we calmly ponder how the U.S. or Israel will launch aerial sneak attacks.

Azerbaijan has pledged to retake Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenians, at a rally in Baku held on the eve of the breakaway territory’s self-declared independence day.

In what Armenians are likely to see as a provocative gesture, a huge Azeri flag was hoisted on what is claimed to be the world’s tallest flagpole. The ceremony came one day after a deadly clash on the Azeri-Karabakh frontline, for which both sides blamed each other.

Tony Blair has announced that all proceeds from his book will be donated to a charity for helping rehabilitate seriously injured soldiers. This is very welcome but Mr Blair should be left in no doubt that donating a small fraction of the £20 million he is estimated to have earned since he left office in 2007 cannot absolve him for the war crimes he committed as prime minister.

Please send an email to Waterstone's urging them not to host Blair's memoir launch on Wednesday 8 September. Use the model letter at the link above or delete this and write your own. Personal letters are more effective.

Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a yearslong federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug.

The Justice Department and the company said Wednesday in a statement it will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of "misbranding," in which the company's marketing led physicians to use Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and cerebral palsy in children.

At long last, Nissan begins taking actual orders today for the first next-generation fully electric car from a major automaker, the Leaf.

More than 18,000 people who plunked down $99 to stay on the reservations list will have first crack at turning their interest into an actual order for the all-electric, five-seat car. Orders will be taken online and Nissan is still taking reservations on Leaf's website. Even though now you can actually pay for one, deliveries won't start until December.

The wealthiest members of Congress grew richer in 2009 even as the economy struggled to recover from a deep recession.

The 50 wealthiest lawmakers were worth almost $1.4 billion in 2009, about $85.1 million more than 12 months earlier, according to The Hill’s annual review of lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms.

Ambassador Charles W. (“Chas”) Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)

Remarks to staff of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, separately, to members of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs –

You have asked me to speak to current American policies in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in the Holy Land. You have further suggested that I touch on the relationship of the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, to this. It is both an honor and a challenge to address this subject in this capital / at this ministry.

Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Alex Snitker did not make the cut to be included in the nationally-televised debate scheduled this Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press. According to NBC, Snitker did not meet their criteria for inclusion in the debate for Florida’s Senate seat, however they did not elaborate on what the exact criteria are.

Snitker, who has earned a reputation as the feisty, grassroots underdog in this race, did not take NBC’s snub lying down. Within hours of getting word that he would be excluded, the former U.S. Marine launched a fund raising drive for the purpose of buying television ad slots during Meet The Press in Florida television markets...

They'll punch you in the face for jaywalking here too!

One persons thoughts on Mad Max

Scroll down for video

A lawsuit has been launched against the sheriff's office in Marin County, Calif., over an episode in which deputies barged uninvited into a 64-year-old man's home and shot him three times with a Taser, screaming "stop resisting" while the incapacitated victim writhed in pain on the floor.

A fuel tanker carrying nine million litres of diesel fuel has run aground in the Northwest Passage, the Canadian Coast Guard confirmed Thursday.

The tanker, which is owned by Woodward's Oil, ran aground on a sandbar Wednesday southwest of the western Nunavut community of Gjoa Haven.

Gilad Atzmon remind us of the murky not-so-distant past of former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who is a leading contender for the Labour Party leadership, from his complicity in “extraordinary rendition” to his support for suspected Israeli war criminals.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced it had sued Joe Arpaio, the controversial sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, for failing to turn over documents in a probe of whether his aggressive operations against illegal immigrants had violated civil rights...

The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion.

The announcement accompanied results from a second round of testing and analysis in the town of Pavillion by Superfund investigators for the Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers found benzene, metals, naphthalene, phenols and methane in wells and in groundwater.

On August 23 2010 following the largest mass arrests in Canadian history, 303 arrestees appeared in court for their charges during the G20 summit weekend.

Press For Truth was there to cover the event.

Down a winding road that hugs the water of Bayou La Batre in southern Alabama, out-of-work shrimp boats float quietly along the piers. Near the end of the road, the Alabama state dock houses a dozen twin-engine, steel-hulled boats that BP has under contract to do oil cleanup work. Police cars guard the entrance.

Across the harbor at the end of the public pier, four large white plastic containers sit on pallets labeled: "Nalco Corexit EC9005A. Oil Spill dispersant. Caution: may cause irritation with prolonged contact…do not get in eyes, on skin, on clothing...." Some of the containers have black hand-written letters on the back that says "oil waste water" or "clean water." Another container sits further away on a pallet by itself, with the same warning label but clean.

NEW ORLEANS — The cap that ended BP's three-month oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was set to come off Thursday as a prelude to raising a massive, failed piece of equipment and preparing for a final seal on the broken seafloor well.

Engineers and the government were not expecting crude to break out again when the cap is lifted, but the government wasn't offering any guarantees and oil collection vessels were set to be on standby on the surface just in case.

HAWIJA, Iraq — Even as President Barack Obama was announcing the end of combat in Iraq, American soldiers were sealing off a northern village early Wednesday as their Iraqi partners raided houses and arrested dozens of suspected insurgents.

While the Obama administration has dramatically reduced the number of troops and rebranded the mission, the operation in Hawija was a reminder that U.S. forces are still engaged in hunting down and killing al-Qaida militants — and could still have to defend themselves against attacks.

lashed out at the Palestinians, saying that they should all be annihilated. “May God destroy them with a plague,” said the elderly rabbi.Yosef’s remarks should be taken seriously as they seem to reflect a deepening grave phenomenon in the Israeli Jewish society. It is Jewish fascism, pure and simple. It is racist, virulent and violent.

While the democratically elected government of Palestine is left out of "Peace" negotiations between Israel and Palestine, yes they still call it "Peace negotiations", the Jordanian and Egyptian governments have been invited to partner the negotiations as has been going on every two years, with no results. The name of the game is: “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.” Have these men no shame ?

--Debbie Menon

Salem-News.Com

President Obama with leaders of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan & Egypt, White House Photo, Pete Souza, 9/1/10

Remarks by President Obama, President Mubarak, His Majesty King Abdullah, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas Before Working Dinner?. East Room 7:05 P.M. EDT

Rabbi Yosef said that the Palestinians and their leaders are “evil and damnable.” That “God should strike them with a plague.” And just in case God doesn’t get them all, Israel “must send missiles to them and annihilate them.” He finished up with “Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) and all these evil people should perish from this world.”

Last year Rabbi Ovadia Yosef publicly insulted the president of the United States and the US Zionist controlled media has of course kept a lid on the story . He described the President as "a slave" who rules the world and who wants to control Israeli policy when it comes to building in occupied Jerusalem.

Obama is US president courtesy of the pro-Israel lobby. He is like putty in their hands. And he’s so ill-informed that he told AIPAC it's OK for Israel to grab the hallowed City of Jerusalem and turn it into the permanent headquarters of the Zionist regime. Jerusalem "will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided," he blurted. When it dawned on him that he’d made a monumental blunder he tried to wriggle out.

Not only has Sarah Palin called upon peaceful Muslims to reject the building but Newt Gingrich, a hopeful in the race to be the Republican candidate for President said: "The folks who want to build this mosque are radical Islamists." Again, I would refer Newt to my first solution and point out, it's not a mosque. Secondly, building a cultural centre with modern facilities doesn't sound so radical to me. What are they going to do that's so radical on a basketball court? They're not going to play lacrosse on it instead are they? The animals!

Good, sensible editorial... for once

Let's see where this story takes us over the next few days. It would not surprise me should we find out this is some part of an exercise, if not just an angry guy, yet the manipulators are assuredly already giddy at the thought of jumping to use this for the own agendas, such as the Carbon Tax Warmistas, the Security State Apparatchiks, the Eugenics Genocidalists (Corporate Environmentalists), the Manipulated Virginia Tech Assassin type or the Cass Sunstein Brigade.

Sheriff Larry Dever, whose officers patrol Cochise County along the border between Arizona and Mexico, said he finds it “amazing” that the U.S. State Department would refer the recently passed immigration law in his state to the United Nations Human Rights Council for review.

“Well, it’s just amazing to me,” Dever told CNSNews.com. “Course, I have about as much regard for the U.N. as I do the vermin that hides in the rocks around my house here and reaches out and tries to bite me every now and then.”

Here’s a news flash for Tel Aviv: it’s not a sign of respect when the bulk of humanity views you as psychopathic.

The concerns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are misplaced. The legitimacy of Israel is no longer threatened. It’s already lost. Long gone. Kaput.

Nation states are shared states of mind. The mindset in Iceland differs from India. Israel is the most unlike of all. Founded by extremists and terrorists, it’s been downhill ever since.

Psychopaths want to be loved. That’s why they’re so charming, albeit only superficially. They’re also pathological liars, egocentric, callous and remorseless.

In a scene reminiscent of a Brave New World and despite numerous concerns, health officials are advising basically everyone in the United States to get the flu vaccine.

The CDC is openly demanding that you take a vaccine that is, on record, extremely dangerous. Multiple countries throughout the world have BANNED flu vaccines due to their dangerous side effects.

Marin Katusa
Chief Energy Strategist
Casey’s Energy Opportunities

The International Energy Association (IEA) has spoken. What the world needs now is a clean energy technology revolution.

June saw the 2010 launch of IEA’s biannual report, Energy Technology Perspectives. Speaking at the launch was Nobuo Tanaka, executive director for IEA. The Gulf oil spill, he said, could prove to be a tipping point in the world’s energy consumption habits. He added that the disaster serves as a tragic reminder that our current path is not sustainable.

Christina Romer, outgoing Chairwoman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, today called for more government spending and less taxes as a way to bring down unemployment. The combination of more government spending and less taxes equals massive inflation, but this represents the state of mind in Washington today. Inflation is still the last thing on their minds because they don't see it yet.

Rising gold and silver prices indicate that the U.S. is headed for an explosion in budget deficits that will rise far beyond what it can pay for through borrowing. Leading Chinese economists are now calling Japanese debt less risky than U.S. debt and with the Japanese savings rate in decline, the U.S. will soon have nobody left to borrow from. The only option will be monetization and already the Federal Reserve is getting ready to buy $10 billion to $30 billion per month in U.S. treasuries to keep its balance sheet at inflated levels.

Stuart Littlewood argues that the US-sponsored direct talks between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas are farcical, lopsided and designed to achieve “a fake, temporary peace” whose aim is temporarily “to save a few worthless political skins”.

Jonathan Cook considers the legal battle of one Bedouin to repossess his ancestral land in the Negev – a battle that could have ramifications for tens of thousands of Bedouin whose land had been stolen long ago as well as for millions of Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East.

Eugenics Anyone?

The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:

1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.

In this edition of the Reality Report, Gary exposes the propaganda campaign initiated by one Missouri High School and asks you to take action. Nina breaks down this week's headlines including how preschool students in one California County are now being tracked by RFID and who mainstream media employees give their donations too. She also discloses who the Department of Justice defines as extremists by reviewing their new leaked document. Is your group mentioned? Two very special guests join Gary this week including Richard Gage, the founder of Architects and engineers for 9/11 truth who discusses his 9/11 investigation, and the co-founder of the Constitutional Alliance, Mark Lerner who comes to talk about his new book, "Your Body is Your ID."

Bravo Democrats . . . you took your one chance to finally fix the nation's healthcare system, and forced every citizen to become a paying customer of the insurance agencies you've been vilifying throughout this charade.

This "overhaul" ended up being one more way to track and control the public, which makes me think this was probably the goal all along.

Some say Obama is Muslim, but why would a Muslim surround himself with so many Jewish Czars? We now have more czars than imperial Russia. Let’s consider Obama’s czars: Economic Czars – Larry Summers & Paul Volker, Regulatory Czar – Cass Sunstein, Pay Czar – Kenneth Feinberg, Military Jails Czar – Daniel Fried, Car Czars – Steven Rattner and Ron Bloom, Border Czar – Alan Bersin, Health Rationing Czar – Dr.

OMAHA, Neb. — More than a third of supply managers in nine Midwest and Plains states surveyed for a regional business index expect a recession in 2011.

As part of the Mid-America report released Wednesday, supply managers were asked their expectations for 2011, and 35 percent said a recession was likely or very likely.

Abdul Hamid Abdul Latif Sa'id Abu Haniyeh was beaten up severely before being hit hard by a large jolt of electricity.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday added the Pakistani Taliban to its international terrorism blacklist, targeting the group blamed for the failed car bombing in New York's Times Square and its leaders with financial and travel sanctions.

Every women wants a man to show her his chivalric side - but when this damsel was distressed by a spider, and her husband had a burning desire to save the day, there were explosive results.

IT engineer Chris Welding, jumped into action after the arachnid frightened his wife Janine yesterday evening, and chased the spider into their bathroom in Clacton, Essex.

Wielding a flammable aerosol can, he sprayed the spider as it cowered behind the toilet pan - then lit a cigarette lighter to see if he had killed it.

However, the flame ignited the gas and caused a massive explosion which blew the man off his feet and lifted the loft door off its hinges, causing severe burns.

Eric Blair
Activist Post

America, and especially California, are in dire economic straits. Their day of fiscal reckoning is coming and it's not going to be pretty. Consequently, it is has been suggested that something dramatic will have to happen for Congress to pass any form of relief because the American public was bitterly against the TARP and the Stimulus bill. I'm not advocating another massive bailout for the states, but it seems that if something meaningful is not done soon to restore economic viability to the United States, it will shatter into a million pieces.

Uri Avnery, an Israeli peace activist and Arafat friend, once wrote: "If you are a Palestinian in Jenin [in the West Bank] with a rifle, and you hear their names [Abbas and his team], your reaction is: 'Who are these guys anyway? Who are they to tell me what to do?' Their authority will be superficial."

By Alan Hart — My Catbird Seat

I never thought a day could come when I would agree with anything stated by Moshe Arens (three times an Israeli minister of defense, a one-time foreign minister, a former ambassador to the U.S. and, in my opinion, Zionism’s in-Israel equivalent of Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle in America). But the day came.

On 31 August, in article for Ha’aretz with the headline Blame game on the horizon. Arens wrote the following about the nakedness of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as he was making his final preparations for the start of direct negotiations in Washington DC.

Any serious effort to understand the extraordinary influence of the Zionist power configuration over US foreign policy must examine the presence of key operatives in strategic positions in the government andlocal Zionist organizations affiliated with mainstream Jewish organizations and religious orders.

There are at least 52 major American Jewish organizations actively engaged in promoting Israel’s foreign policy, economic and technological agenda in the US (see the appendix).

A YouTube video of Maidhc Ó Cathail’s article on the “radical Muslims” behind the South Park controversy shows just how easy it is to foster Islamophobia in America…

Like the contrived Danish cartoon controversy, the much-hyped Times Square car bomb incident provided an ideal opportunity for those who seek to make Islam look bad in the eyes of the world.

Before the arrest of Faisal “The Fizzler”...

Go here to view and read the the full article:

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/09/view-video-how-to-foster-islamophobia...

Chris Wood, Editor
Casey Research

Here at Casey Research, we really don’t enjoy being a buzz-kill. It’s just that we think it’s more important for investors to be well informed about the reality in which we find ourselves today than it is to be happy-go-lucky all the time.

The good news is that when the stuff hits the fan, as it has for going on two years now, it opens up a number of unexpected opportunities for profit. Even in the hairiest situations, there are ways to protect yourself.

Mamoon Alabbasi argues that, five years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the principal lesson from that disaster – the need to put humanity above prejudice and greed – has still not been learnt, and greed and inhumanity can be found in the responses to the Haiti earthquake and the Pakistan floods.

DENVER — A man has pleaded guilty to sending letters containing white powder to President Barack Obama, members of Congress from Colorado and Alabama, and to Argentine consulates.

Jay DeVaughn pleaded guilty Thursday to 13 federal counts of mailing threatening communications. DeVaughn, also known as Jay Paige Ewards, mailed a letter to Obama that was intercepted Sept. 10, 2009.

In light of this story published in the Telegraph today I thought it a good time to post my plan.

Barack Obama has bowed before the UN over Arizona immigration law

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100051882/barack-obama-...

Snip:

The Obama administration however has submitted a report to the UN Commissioner on Human Rights, South African judge Navanethem Pillay, which makes direct reference to a popular Arizona immigration law aimed at tackling illegal immigration, which is fiercely opposed by the White House, and is the subject of legal action by the Justice Department.

Brian Mitchell
Activist Post

By now it is common knowledge the healthcare system in the USA is a disaster. It was a disaster before the recent “overhaul," and I’m betting is will be an even bigger disaster after the new laws actually go into effect.

For the record, I’m a proponent of public healthcare, and I was actually looking forward to the Obama administration fixing this issue. The result they gave us is not a fix, though; it’s not even a Band-Aid. What it is, is a flat out screw job to every U.S. citizen, along with a massive payday for the private insurance agencies. Why else would insurance company stocks go up after this new bill was passed? Apparently someone expects them to make a lot more money going forward, and honestly I can’t see how they’d be wrong.

Orwellian DoubleThink Series 2
Activist Post

Rights are Privileges (Freedom is Slavery): The primary duty of all public officials is to protect the rights of citizens as defined in the Constitution, where they shall not make or enforce any laws that violate those rights. In fact, the "checks and balances" were put in place to assure that rights of citizens are not being trampled by one branch of the government. After 9-11, President Bush and other public officials proclaimed that their most important job was protecting the safety of the American people, which basically put an end to our rights coming first.

The only way to stop the rot is for President Obama to consider for a moment what is good for the United States rather than for his political party’s hold on power. He should act like a true statesman instead of a used car salesman.

By Gus Bridi (Sabbah Report)

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”- Newt Gingrich

Has Lebanon officially become more tolerant and progressive than the United States?

Let’s talk about Lebanon’s Ground Zero and you can decide for yourself.

One must first understand what “Ground Zero” means to most Lebanese.

The 31-ton drill bored 50 feet into the rock, the first step in the weeklong digging of a "pilot hole" to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill will be outfitted with larger bits to expand the hole and pull the men through — a process that could take four months.

Amid reports that the miners had moved their camp to a drier area nearly 1,000 feet deeper into the mine, a new video showed them to be generally upbeat but emotional about their separation from families.

Common Purpose marxist front group Demos says state needs to “fight back” against people who question the authorities to “increase trust in government”

Paul Joseph Watson

Monday, August 30, 2010

Furious that state involvement in major terror attacks is being exposed to a wider audience than ever before via the Internet, a UK think tank closely affiliated with the Downing Street has called for authorities to infiltrate conspiracy websites in an effort to “increase trust in the government”.

“A Demos report published today, The Power of Unreason, argues that secrecy surrounding the investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London merely adds weight to unsubstantiated claims that they were “inside jobs,” reports the London Independent.

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic2/

Click on the hurricane icon for more info.

Antiwar.com radio

Among nations considered to be friendly to Washington, Israel leads all others in its active espionage directed against American companies and the Defense Department. It also dominates two commercial sectors that enable it to extend its reach inside America’s domestic infrastructure: airline and telecommunications security. Israel is believed to have the ability to monitor nearly all phone records originating in the United States, while numerous Israeli air-travel security companies are known to act as the local Mossad stations.

This mainstream media report acknowledges the validity of predictive programming. Stating that it is from "science fiction 20 years ago, but a biometric reality today," as well as citing the movie, Minority Report, it lays out the future we can expect by 2017. The fusion of security features, with the all-sacred consumer convenience worshiped in the United States, portends the high-tech control grid. The piece ends with a reference to the Brave New World that awaits us. Curiously enough, the date of 2017 was the one chosen by Paul Craig Roberts as The Year America Dissolved -- Nicholas West

"There would have been no aggression and blood if not the rearmament of Georgia two years ago; we had been telling this to our partners, including to our European friends; and everyone kept silence; and how did it all ended? It led up to the war. This rearmament continues today," Putin said.

This is Russia's escape clause in the flawed 6-point ceasefire agreement which Sarkozy screwed up while he was so busy looking in the mirror at himself on the world stage.

.....That's right, the bottom 80% of this nation only hold 7% of its wealth! When I came across that statistic I was floored. As far as the top 20% of Americans, the top 1% of Americans holds 42.7% of this nation's wealth, while the other top 19% hold 50.5%.

As I see it, that is quite a disparity in social classes. I'm surprised that people haven't made this a centerpiece in political circles. If the Democrats were really the party of the average working people of this nation, why isn't the disparity between the haves and have not's brought to everyone's attention? If I were running for political office, I would be driving that point home to the average American voter every chance I had. I think that maybe most of the politicians that currently hold public office don't really want that information to be something that families talk about over the dinner table. The reason is probably because most Congressmen and Senators belong to the top 20% that own 93.3% of the nation's wealth, or that they believe they will enter that bracket sooner than later.

As Chilean government rescuers prepare to start the monthslong task of digging out 33 miners trapped half a mile below ground, questions are emerging about whether the men will be paid during their ordeal.

The firm that ran the mine, Cia. Minera San Esteban Primera, has said it may have to declare bankruptcy, because of the shutdown of the mine and the flurry of government investigations and civil actions it is facing.

In America , terrorism is always condemned by the government, and, accordingly, America is never a perpetrator of terrorism, but always the victims of it. The US war on terror is the ultimate expression of this principle: it is a military response to terrorism; violence in self-defense, not (ostensibly) violence for a political purpose.

That’s the official story – the assumption. But I’m going to show that America does engage in terrorism – violence against civilians for political purposes. This “state” terrorism, however, is covert, in so far as it is equated with national security, and thanks to that built-in ambiguity, it has both stated and unstated purpose.

While conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck is holding his rally on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the same location where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic “I have a dream” speech, and on the anniversary date of this speech, it is important for us to remind our readers of what Glenn Beck has said regarding the 9/11 victims and their families.

This is an audio excerpt from Beck's radio show which aired on September 9, 2005 in which he also rants against the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

“You know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? Took me about a year. [...] And when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, "Oh shut up!" I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them.” — Glenn Beck

US Marines and IDF Battalion Participate in Joint Urban Warfare Exercise
13:36 GMT, August 25, 2010 During a training drill at the Mala Urban Warfare Training Center (UWTC), participating soldiers work to overcome language barriers, and mutually appreciate each other through culture differences.
The so-not-Israeli soldiers arrived in the Holy Land about a month ago, as part of their training in the US Marines.
"During the total darkness of the desert night, the “Flying Lion” Battalion begins to move towards the training grounds which resemble a Palestinian village. The Marines are currently split into two platoons, which are under the command of Israeli Company Commanders.

On BlackBerry bans and the real threat to national security
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Mohannad El-Khairy
"Thousands of Israeli companies have contributed to the information and communication technology needs of modern day life. What do they, along with the names mentioned above, share in common?"
"Unlike Dubai, Unit 8200, known as “Shmone Matayim” in Hebrew, doesn’t like the lime light. Set up in the 1959 on Mount Avital in the occupied Golan Heights, Unit 8200 is as a secretive electronic warfare unit responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption."
"Both Gadi Mazor and Ron Maor of Onset and Nobex Technologies are veterans of Unit 8200 as well; so is the influential Yossi Vardi.
Arab resistance groups have taken notice."

By Alan Hart for My Catbird Seat

Short answer. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad did NOT call for Israeli Jews to be annihilated. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas party, HAS called, more than once, for the Palestinians (and, in fact, all Arabs) to be exterminated.

As reported by the mainstream Western media, Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. What that meant, it was asserted, was the destruction, the driving into the sea, of Israel’s Jews.

A record number of people are living on government handouts in the US, as one out of six Americans now gets various anti-poverty supports, including food stamps...

I received a second email from the Corbett Report, a video report whose Sunday stories were the Ground Zero Mosque Distraction, Israel Lobby, Apple and Orwell, the first with some fascinating information about Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, who heads up the Cordoba Initiative, i.e., the building of the Ground Zero Islamic center. Eureka!

The Cordoba Initiative, and Imam Rauf, Corbett went on to say, were affiliated with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and support for that came from fellow Council on Foreign Relations’ members. Imam Rauf himself was on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Religious Advisory Committee. The Cordoba initiative’s website cited “Christian support for the Cordoba House” from a Christian publication, “Sojourners,” which is owned by evangelical Christian writer and political activist Jim Wallis, also a sitting member of the CFR’s Religious Advisory Committee. Wow!

On November 3, 2006, in Lucas Heights Australia, OPAL, the Open Pool Australian Light-Water Reactor was throttled to full power. There was grave opposition to this $400 million science research/nuclear facility, a facility used for the science and manufacturing of nuclear medicines. Those who opposed the facility claimed that the dangers of a nuclear fission facility were too high to allow such a facility to operate in Australia.

The public was reassured by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency that the reactor was based on the most up to date technology and was fitted with many different safety features.

September could be the month Blockbuster Inc. finds its way to bankruptcy court.

The Dallas-based company has been warning for almost two years that it might need bankruptcy court protection to reorganize its nearly $1 billion in debt, as it struggles with dwindling cash and a shrinking business hurt by competition and its own store closings...

Here was Ron Paul’s message to the Tea Party via The New York Times just the other day:

“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”

NEW YORK – Two state legislators want to require farmers in New York to vaccinate their chickens against salmonella.

Sen. Daniel Squadron and Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh announced their proposal Sunday in front of a supermarket in New York City.

Sally O'Boyle
Activist Post

Re: SPLC list of "Active Patriot Groups" and DOJ's "Criminal Extremist List"

I am wondering if you will start a Patriot Persons list to go along with your Patriot Groups list? If so, I'd like to apply. If your criteria* is the same for People as for Groups, I might be a pretty good fit!

I am definitely against any "New World Order" or "One World Government" scheme. The U.S. must remain a sovereign nation as outlined in our Constitution. (Besides, and I don't mean to be catty here, but the idea doesn't seem to be working out so bloody well for the EU.) Do you know if there is an active attempt by the U.S. government to join into a world government? If so, please let me know! I'd like to sign and circulate a petition against that.

Michael Edwards & Jeffrey Green
Activist Post

By all honest accounts, 2010 has been a terrible year for traditional agriculture worldwide. Extended severe weather events have cut many crop harvests in half. Farmers are going bankrupt as crops fail, commodity prices are exploding, and millions of people more have been added to the list of those who go hungry on a regular basis. Already a record 40 million Americans are receiving food stamps at a time when economy is a disaster and state and Federal governments are essentially bankrupt.

Well, well, well. It’s about time. Kind of like when Fox News gave $1 million in campaign contributions to Republicans. It wasn’t exactly a secret before, but now it’s official. The Gates Foundation just bought a whopping 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with buying stock. My parents hold lots of BP stock, and they are hardly guilty of dumping the 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. But this is one more step in a long line of actions by the Gates Foundation in which it is advocating policies and agricultural technologies that will directly benefit and profit Monsanto while screwing over the most vulnerable people on earth: hungry subsistence farmers in developing countries.

NEW YORK — Stocks edged lower Monday as investors took a cautious approach to trading before the government's latest report on the jobs market.

A new report showed personal spending credit higher last month, but it had little affect on trading, even though shoppers returning to stores would help the economy. Investor enthusiasm was not strong after the report because traders are skeptical spending will continue to grow long-term without significant increases in hiring.

Nik Wallenda, a seventh-generation funambulist from the Flying Wallendas circus family, cycled more than 100ft (30m) along the wire strung between two hotels at the Paradise Island Atlantis resort in the Bahamas.

The new record for the highest traverse of a high wire on a bicycle is subject to confirmation by Guinness World Records.

Mr Wallenda is the current holder of the records for the longest distance and greatest height travelled by bicycle on a high wire, which he set by travelling 235ft (72m) at a height of 135ft (41m) in Newark, New Jersey in 2008.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said recently that Abbas was too weak to stand up to Israel and negotiate a just deal at the talks in Washington. “If the talks succeed they will succeed to Israeli standards and liquidate the Palestinian cause. They’ll give us parts of 1967 lands. They’ll draw the borders as they want and they’ll confiscate our sovereignty,” said Meshaal

The fact that not all Zionists are Jews and not all Jews are Zionists, it is nonsensical to claim that criticism of a political state and its idiosyncratic ideology is the same as criticism of a worldwide religion and people.

Who is behind this? The FED since it greatly benefits due to the monetary scheme called "fractional banking"

The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

Economic Collapse Blog
Monday, August 30, 2010

Why should Hamas or any Palestinian accept Israel’s political demands, like recognition, when Israel refuses to recognize basic Palestinian demands like the right of return for refugees?

“Islamic terrorism”, including “Al-Qaeda”, the Taliban, etc. are assets of the CIA a myth designed to obscure a vast covert operation and war plan. The “Militant Islamic Network” was created by the CIA, and has continued to operate on behalf of Anglo-American military-intelligence interests.

This superlative op-ed, which I read at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29abunimah.html, provides ample evidence to justify my great respect for Ali Abunimah. He’s fearless, uncompromising, articulate, knowledgeable in both historical and current facts, and right: right for our America, right for Palestine, and, yes, right even for Israel, if only it were capable of regaining its sanity and applying norms of morality, law and justice commonly accepted by the community of man. If right were to take hold and to prevail in our country, Ali Abunimah would be on the evening news as an analyst/commentator every night, every channel.

Thanks to the New York Times for (unexpectedly, to be sure) offering space to him.

– Robert H. Stiver
Pearl City, Hawaii

KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq – A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.

As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Gary Bauer Sees AA Flight 77 Hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001
Did no one remember Bauer was the only Evangelical Christian leader who signed the Statement of Principles, for the Project for a New American Century, in June of 1997? Some of the other 24 co-signers include Dan Quayle, Lewis Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, and the trifecta of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz.

The PNAC is back - same old liars with a brand new name
by CA Libertarian
Tue Feb 26, 2008
There's a new think tank on the loose, guys, and it's called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. They're on a veritable rampage, penning articles and missives to the editor on a set of issues we are all too familiar with.
It doesn't take long to see these clowns for what they are, another front for the neoconservative agenda: anti-U.N., pro-Iraq war, shills for Israel via proxy (in this case, Lebanon), and pro-Iran invasion.
But let's take a closer look at who is behind this.

Lawrence Davidson considers a recent Yale University conference on anti-Semitism which, instead of engaging in an objective discussion of an age old form of racism, ended up tying itself to an ideological view of the world that is itself racist and dedicating itself to the idea that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

All the talk of gold infuriates some investors. They argue that it is too expensive, and its price could drop sharply if the hedge funds and asset managers with the largest positions in the market sell. "There is so much hype attached to gold mainly because it's perceived to be a safe haven," says Patrick Connolly, an adviser with the Bath firm AWD Chase de Vere. "But it doesn't give off income and the price is very high and depends solely on demand and supply. We are nervous of investing in any asset class that has risen so much in value."

But a cadre of loyalists claim that gold offers a hedge against both inflation and deflation and is a store of value when equity and bond markets fall apart. Their enthusiasm ranges from mild appreciation of gold's ability to outperform in a downturn to more zealous admiration.

One thing some "gold bugs" do not buy is the idea that gold is too expensive; in fact, they argue that the price would be much higher were it not for the manipulation of the market by central banks and bullion banks, which handle government trades.

"This price suppression is a scandal," says Bill Murphy, founder of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA). "And it's going to be huge when it is exposed."

A senior American staff officer has been sacked after publishing a rant against the bureaucracy and endless PowerPoint briefings at Nato's Kabul headquarters.

Col Lawrence Sellin was sent home after generals read an opinion piece he had written revealing "little of substance" was done at the coalition's joint command in Afghanistan.

He went on to paint a picture of a bloated organisation, swollen by the vanity of commanders, where endless slide show presentations are given to brief "cognitively challenged" generals.

The U.S. government told staff at its consulate in Monterrey to send their children out of the northern Mexican city where drug violence has been escalating, the consulate said on Friday.

The decision follows an apparent kidnap attempt outside an elite private school attended by children of U.S. consulate staff, amid rising drug violence in Mexico's business capital that has surged since the start of this year.

"U.S. government personnel from the consulate general are not permitted to keep their minor dependents in Monterrey," a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said in Mexico City. "As of September 10, no minor dependents, no children of U.S. government employees will be permitted in Monterrey," she added.

---Comment---

The Mexican drug war has killed thousands of people since it started. Rival drug lords fighting the state and themselves for the lucrative drug smuggling routes into USA. Most of this violence could be ended with a stroke of a pen, by legalizing marijuana. A drug that has never killed anyone by overdose. A drug that is known to have cancer curing properties. -- kdtroxel

A mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after he was given the controversial MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 compensation.

The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab.

Robert Fletcher, 18, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself.

Chicago Climate Exchange or CCX, is North America’s sole voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas trading and carbon “offset” projects in North America and Brazil. Rueters reported on Aug 11th that Intercontinental Exchange Inc, the operating body for the CCX, will be scaling back major operations this month, a move that includes massive layoffs. This is likely due to the complete market free-fall of their only product… carbon emissions.

The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes preemptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary's computer network overseas - but it is still wrestling with how to pursue the strategy legally.

The department is developing a range of weapons capabilities, including tools that would allow "attack and exploitation of adversary information systems" and that can "deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy" information and information systems, according to Defense Department budget documents.

If you are what you eat, we are all in deep trouble. What constitutes healthy food is a debate that can encompass different viewpoints. In spite of this, control of the food chain is a concern that crosses all ideological perspectives. The most essential of all human rights is the effective ability of access and ingestion of nutrients that are necessary to sustain life. Forced feeding of toxicants, as the only foodstuff available to the masses, is a true crime against humanity.

RICHMOND, Calif.—California officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices they say will save staff time and money.

The system was introduced Tuesday. When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children's whereabouts, attendance and even whether they've eaten or not.

By Mike Whitney ( Information Clearing House)

– Robert Herz was forced to resign from his job as chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) because he insisted that the banks assign a fair value to their assets. That’s not what you’ll read in the papers, but it’s true just the same. Herz was a major proponent of mark-to-market accounting, a simple means of determining the value of a bond or security by comparing the price of similar assets sold at market. In other words, Herz is a defender of universally-accepted accounting principles, which is why he was terminated, er, I mean, resigned. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Now, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen says he owns the technology behind all these ideas, and he's demanding that some of the world's top Web companies pay up to use them.

By Gordon Duff

IS THE SILENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COMPLICITY IN WAR CRIMES?

I am not against war. I am a combat veteran. I sit on my tail, watch TV, go to restaurants and have fond delusional memories about Vietnam. In my bedroom closet, I have a trash bag. It is never opened, it has been there for years. It has, along with other “military mementos,” a small green “government issued” address book. Marines, long ago, scrawled their names in it. Half of them never came back from Vietnam, never had children, grandchildren, got to finish college or even high school. Many, maybe most, had never had sex, owned a car or traveled more than 50 miles from home.

The space where Palestinians are living is shrinking. The Israelis want to confine the Palestinians into smallest space possible and take as much Palestinian land as possible.

The crowd stretched from the memorial to the base of the Washington Monument, about a mile away, as Beck took the stage after the singing of the national anthem.

"Hello, America. I have just gotten word from the media that there is over a thousand people here today," Beck said, with a hint of sarcasm. He later said he had heard the crowd was between 300,000 and 500,000, "and if that's coming from the media, God only knows."

While influential conservative groups and politicians had endorsed or supported the event, Republican party leaders carefully avoided it.

By Stuart Littlewood

The Palestinians’ champion – their White Knight – is preparing to ride forth next week and do battle at the negotiating table with the racist regime’s Black Knight and his minder, the Great Satan.

The rules of chivalry don’t apply, so the outcome is not in doubt.

However, the White Knight is not quite as white or brave as he seems. Eager to do his lord’s bidding, Mahmoud Abbas is a willing fall guy. On this occasion Obama has imperiously snapped his fingers and announced he wants direct talks started “well before” the Black Knight (aka Israeli prime minister Netanyahu) ends the partial freeze on illegal settlements in a month’s time.

And, by the way, US mid-term elections are coming up in two months’ time and Obama has to look good.

So Abbas jumped.

A French farmer is suing his country’s Ministry of Defence after two low-flying fighter jets caused 4,800 of his chickens to drop dead.

Etienne Le Mehaute said there was an 'almighty din' when the planes passed over his farm in Pelguien, Brittany, on Tuesday afternoon.

'We were having lunch when there this enormous roar of engines,' said Mr Le Mahaute. ‘We could feel the shockwaves down our back.

‘The chickens were absolutely terrified and thousands dropped dead. We piled their bodies up and there were some 4,800 who did not pull through.’

U.S. and Afghan troops repelled attackers wearing American uniforms and suicide vests in a pair of simultaneous assaults before dawn Saturday on NATO bases near the Pakistani border, including one where seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack last year...

BILOXI, Miss. — More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds that were earmarked for Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm, a fact noticed by at least one congressional leader who's eager to spend it elsewhere.

In June, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ordered data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on how much remains unspent from the Community Development Block Grants that were earmarked in hurricane relief funds for Gulf Coast states after the 2005 storms. The answer: about $5.4 billion, comprising $3 billion of the $13 billion earmarked for Louisiana and $2 billion of the $5.5 billion for Mississippi.

The U.S. military is demanding to know what happened to $1.9 million worth of computers purchased by American taxpayers and intended for Iraqi schoolchildren that have instead been auctioned off by Iraqi officials for less than $50,000, the military said Friday.

The U.S. press release was a rare public admission by the military of the loss of American taxpayer money in Iraq and an equally rare criticism of Iraqi officials with whom the Americans are trying to partner as the military hands over more and more responsibility and withdraws troops from the country.

A shipment of computers intended for schoolchildren in the central Babil province was found to have been auctioned on Aug. 16 for $45,700 _ before the computers could be sent to the province, the U.S. military said.

The computers were auctioned off by a senior Iraqi official at the southern port of Umm Qasr, the statement said.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Vietnam Veterans of America asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Central Intelligence Agency, for failing to produce documents on the CIA's testing of hundreds of kinds of drugs - including sarin and phosgene nerve gas and LSD - on thousands of soldiers.

The Vietnam Veterans of America sued the CIA in January 2009, claiming the agency had experimented on soldiers at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Md., testing the effects of mind-controlling drugs.

The VVA says soldiers were treated "in the same capacity as laboratory rats or guinea pigs." The underlying federal complaint claims that at least 7,800 soldiers were subjected to "at least 250, but as many as 400 chemical and biological agents."

Note: It is an absolute disgrace what the police have become in the United States. Their brutality is escalating, and no one is immune as this video shows. A veteran exercising his free speech has no rights in America. For anyone who believes that this is acceptable because he is hurling an insult at the president, I would remind you that the president is not the government; the people are the government. If this type of free speech is restricted today -- and you agree with it -- your free speech will be eliminated tomorrow. -- Michael Edwards

Early in the morning of July 21, police stormed the offices of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union in Basra, the poverty-stricken capital of Iraq's oil-rich south. A shamefaced officer told Hashmeya Muhsin, the first woman to head a national union in Iraq, that they'd come to carry out the orders of Electricity Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to shut the union down. As more police arrived, they took the membership records, the files documenting often-atrocious working conditions, the leaflets for demonstrations protesting Basra's agonizing power outages, the computers and the phones. Finally, Muhsin and her coworkers were pushed out and the doors locked.

Shahristani's order prohibits all trade union activity in the plants operated by the ministry, closes union offices, and seizes control of union assets from bank accounts to furniture. The order says the ministry will determine what rights have been given to union officers, and take them all away. Anyone who protests, it says, will be arrested under Iraq's Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005.

---Comment---

The Iraqi invasion morphed into the ideal of spreading Democracy into the middle east; now we are seeing the results of this failed justification. “Democracy is a social invention of and by the people it is meant to govern, anything less is a fraud.” – kdtroxel

Body of official dumped beside road near scene of killing of 72 Central and South American migrants in Tamaulipas

The body of an official investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants killed in a ranch in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas was found today dumped beside a nearby road alongside another unidentified victim, according to local media.

Earlier, two cars exploded outside the studios of the national TV network Televisa in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. There were no casualties, but the blasts added to a growing sense of fear in the aftermath of the worst single act of violence in the country's raging drug wars.

If you can still put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. There are millions of Americans out there right now that are really, really suffering. The cold, hard reality of it is that there aren't even close to enough jobs out there for everyone right now. It is almost as if we are all caught in a really bizarre game of musical chairs where the losers get stripped of their tickets to the middle class. What this horrible economy is doing to the dignity of millions of middle class Americans is incredibly saddening. There are a lot of very highly educated and very hard working Americans who cannot seem to get jobs no matter what they do and now find themselves doing whatever they can just to survive. It can be really hard to keep your dignity when you played by all the rules and you worked as hard as you could all your life and now you find yourself a half step away from being homeless. Those of us who are still doing okay should never look down on those who are struggling in this economy, because the truth is that any of us could be next.

Election Watchdog: 'Most brutal voter disenfranchisement, election tampering case we have witnessed yet...like watching a 2 week bank robbery in process'...

"Wildest election tampering yet in memphis," Harris' detailed text message read. "7 out of eight candidates black in black locations with 70 percent dems but white republican sweep."

"Ten candidates filed lawsuit today," the message continued, as she explained that over the past two weeks she and Pynchon "watched as [election officials] wheeled cartloads of computers out of the building. Thousands and thousands of votes don't add up...poll tapes in trash and much more."

"Even the candidates could not get their own results and were told they were 'not available,'" she wrote. "They certified [the elections] and STILL did not give out results until threatened by a lawyer and even then the results said 'unofficial'. There is hilarious video of repub lawyer shouting 'keep those women away from me!'"...

"Stand-Off On Shelby County Voting Numbers" Video Link: http://www.wreg.com/videobeta/b6aecad0-b3ff-4fbd-a9a5-276facde9e95/New...

...In the end, I expect that the centre will be built because the crusadists can mount no credible argument against it. The object of their hatred is not Park51 but the U.S.Constitution, which does not discriminate against Muslims as Israel demands. This document is more of a threat to Israel than any bomber, and herein lies the desperate irrationality of the real terrorists in America.