© Unknown
It isn't easy to spend several hours in front of the computer every day researching, posting, writing and editing. While it may come as a surprise to some, all Sott editors have lives and other interests that we would gladly attend to if it were not for the time and effort that we choose to dedicate to Sott.net. Certainly it is an often thankless task but we are not looking for praise or adulation. The really heart breaking part of getting up close and personal on a daily basis with the reality of life on planet earth is the realization that, despite our efforts, in the end it will not be enough. At least, it will not be enough until more people choose to make an effort to see the truth of our current world situation (a web of pernicious lies) and make true conscience their guiding light. As one great man said: Humanity neither progresses nor evolves by Nature. One can evolve; humanity cannot, for evolution proceeds only consciously.
And today, as you will see as you read on, we are in desperate need of more people to stand up and make a conscious choice. Because our world is on fire literally and figuratively, and while the fire has burned for many centuries, it is very likely that we will soon reach, and surpass, 'boiling point'. To be brutally honest, there are precious few 'fire exits' left, and if radical action is not taken, and soon, there will be nothing left but ashes and perhaps a few bones for future archeologists to dig up.
We know that, as regular readers, you are aware of how dire the situation is. The problem is that the rest of the population is still sound asleep and largely oblivious of the threat that confronts them. Despite the angst and understanding that we may never reach a wider audience, we still choose to try, because the alternative - to watch the unfolding chaos and do nothing - is too horrifying to contemplate for any person with even half a conscience.
There is a saying that, in order to help others, one must first learn to help oneself. Working on SOTT has had and continues to have profound effects on us, the editors, on many levels. We can only hope that the fruits of our effort are helpful to you the reader also and may assist you to reach a deeper understanding of our reality and the problems we face, and perhaps make a conscious choice to do something to safeguard your own future and that of your children.
For our part, we promise that we will do everything in our power to continue to be the lighthouse.
And so, without further ado;
Yet another human tragedy
Another month of human chaos and we must find a way to make sense of it. In doing so, we have to decide how to prioritize events. This is often tricky, as the mainstream media will often pick the least newsworthy items for their headlines. We have heard much from Dick Cheney and Barack Obama in the last few days of May. Certainly, that is something that we need to talk about, for it reveals how corrupt the U.S. political system really is, how bad we had it during the Bush days, and how bad it still is. Something similar can be said about the MP scandals in the UK. But we are concerned that in focusing on such issues we fail to pay enough attention to the suffering of masses of human beings elsewhere, such as in Sri-Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Palestine. So lets start with these issues, always bearing in mind that the lives and suffering of innocents anywhere in the globe - whether they are trapped in a war in Sri Lanka, or in the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib - are equally important.
© Agence France-PresseThe war zone is now a wasteland
What the mainstream media reported following the visiting UN delegation in Sri Lanka were the inhumane stories of 200,000 Tamil civilians being held against their will by the government military in a displacement camp, which has been compared by a visiting priest to the World War II concentration camps; that the battlefield where 7,000 unarmed people have lost their lives is now a wasteland; and that the civilians were shelled by both the military and the Tamil fighters.
What the UN knew before the revelations but did not report, allegedly due to personal relations of UN staff to persons of the government in Sri Lanka, is that the Tamil civilians death toll by government military fire might surpass the 20, 000 in these final weeks of the fighting alone, an account released by Amnesty International, which the UN "chews on", and the government of Sri Lanka refuses. This same government received weaponry and training from the experts at genocide: Israel. Reports reveal that Israel was "also providing weapons and training to Tamil guerrillas in order to maintain a 'market' for Israeli arms suppliers in the civil war-wracked island nation" and that in the 1990's, Sri Lankan president Premadasa, ordered an investigation into charges that the Israeli "Mossad was training both Sri Lankan and Tamil guerrilla forces"; who in turn receive constant artillery shipments from the US; who have population reduction as their foreign policy. And so the chain of obliteration spreads all over the world...
Af-Pak Attack
The article: "Obama: From Anti-war Law Professor to Warmonger in 100 Days" poses the question:
"How long does it take a mild-mannered, anti-war, black professor of constitutional law, trained as a community organiser on the South Side of Chicago, to become an enthusiastic sponsor of targeted assassinations, 'decapitation' strategies and remote-control bombing of mud houses at the far end of the globe?"Of course, Sott readers can easily answer this question. The answer is: "Obama has been an enthusiastic sponsor of targeted assassinations, 'decapitation' strategies and remote-control bombing of mud houses at the far end of the globe for several years, as Joe Quinn outlined in his editorial Barack Obama - Judas Goat of August 2007.
While the MSM was celebrating Obama's first 100 days in office, those not blind to the actions behind the slick rhetoric can now see that the 'war on al-Qaeda' has merely been renamed "overseas contingency operations" (OCO) and transformed into an expansion of the war in Afghanistan. "OCO" now includes Pakistan's "Taliban" population and the displacement of hundreds of thousands fleeing the fighting from the Swat Valley.
Obama vowed to keep US military dominance and is adopting the use of covert tactics to carry on where Bush and Cheney left off. He has the full support of the MSM to 'roll out' this new strategy. The New York Times had a big spread with the single clear message: You cannot defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan without going deep into Pakistan. Of course, the complicit American media completely ignore the truthful announcement of Zardari telling NBC News that Osama is dead and he was a US government operator.
As we discuss in more detail below, the appointment of General McChrystal to run the Afghan war is a clear indication of the change in strategy. Tom Englehart writes about the six ways the Af-Pak war is expanding;
General McChrystal comes from a world where killing by any means is the norm and a blanket of secrecy provides the necessary protection. For five years he commanded the Pentagon's super-secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which, among other things, ran what Seymour Hersh has described as an "executive assassination wing" out of Vice President Cheney's office. (Cheney just returned the favor by giving the newly appointed general a ringing endorsement: "I think you'd be hard put to find anyone better than Stan McChrystal.")To further convince US citizens that it's military is less involved than it seems, a theatrical meeting was staged on US soil. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Zardari visited Washington where they were given their scripts: 'The Operation to continue till mission accomplished'. Sure enough, after the visit to the US the Pakistan military rapidly expanded their operations creating a tragic humanitarian crisis.
This all occurred in the aftermath of US "precision" strikes that killed 100, mostly civilians. Further reports showed that 140 Afghan villagers were killed by the attack of which 93 were children. In Afghanistan the massacre brought rioting in villages over the air-strike atrocity. Predictably the Americans blame the Taliban and refuse to accept responsibility:
The protest in Farah City is the latest sign of a strong Afghan reaction against US air attacks in which explosions inflict massive damage on mud-brick houses that provide little protection against bomb blasts. A claim by American officials, which was repeated by the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday in Kabul, that the Taliban might have killed people with grenades because they did not pay an opium tax is not supported by any eyewitnesses and is disproved by pictures of deep bomb craters, one of which is filled with water. Mr Gates expressed regret for the incident but did not go so far as to accept blame.
© David Guttenfelder/APZachary Boyd from the US Army First Battalion, 26th Infantry takes a defensive position at firebase Restrepo after receiving fire from Taliban positions in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar Province
US soldier takes on Afghan militants - in pink underpants
U.S. defense chief lauds soldier in pink boxers
"U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday praised an Army soldier in eastern Afghanistan who drew media attention this month after rushing to defend his post from attack while wearing pink boxer shorts and flip-flops."This particular story with full size photo, was front page headline news in the New York Times on May 12th.
In short, the ongoing massacring of Pastun Afghan and Pakistani villagers is a "necessary evil" in the Obama government's unchanged war of Imperial expansion. The agendas that are fulfilled by the US presence in this area are numerous and varied. There is the agenda to thwart the building of the Iran-Pakistan-India oil pipeline which would pass through Balochistan in South Western Pakistan (on the Afghan border) and give Iran a welcome financial boost. There is the agenda to maintain control over the Pakistani government in order to ensure that, as climate change and the ensuing global chaos take hold, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal does not fall into the hands of anyone who does not serve US interests. There is the simple agenda of justifying the presence of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan - there must be 'evidence' of an enemy to fight in order to convince congress to keep the money flowing. And there is the agenda to maintain a complete encirclement of that persistent threat to US imperial designs in the region - Iran.
For further details on these agendas read this Asia Times article.
Fascisraeli news
© Unknown
The Israeli war against the Palestinian people continued during May with the Israeli occupation forces inventing preposterously cruel ways to lock down and eradicate the Palestinians by:
- burning their crops
- kidnapping Palestinian males with no pretext whatsoever
- arresting women and boys accused of the "grave offense" of carrying knives
- shooting 12-year old girls who merely stand by the window of their house and unarmed teenage demonstrators
- killing truck drivers attempting to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza
- murdering infants and toddlers by refusing them the right to medical care when they desperately need it
- forcing Gaza Strip residents out of their homes by issuing warnings to those living barely 10 meters from the occupation wall to stay 300 meters away, or else...
- secretly planning to steal Jerusalem from the Palestinians.
Not that the Israeli government gives a damn about UN warnings. Unaffected by guilt or remorse, they appear unperturbed by the UN investigation into Israel's crimes during the Gaza bloodbath last January, which they rushed to reject, using their favorite tactic of accusing Hamas of influencing public opinion. A member of the American delegation at the UN was quoted as saying that the report is "unprecedented in its gravity towards Israel," which "will have to lick the wounds of the report for many years, if the current wording is accepted as it is."
Note that the UN investigation only covered the bombings at the UN controlled centres in Gaza, and not the full scale of the slaughter, including the cold-blooded murder of 131 children. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he would "pressure Israel to pay compensation in excess of the $11 million in damages caused to UN property" and "rejected the board's recommendation to expand the investigation into other examples of war crimes during the conflict and to hold perpetrators accountable."
Notice that when confronted with Israeli aggression, the U.N., supposedly an international organization whose stated aims are to "facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achieving world peace", has been reduced to little more than a private institution as it attempts to recoup damage to its own buildings. What about Palestinian human rights, homes, land and lives?! and what about international law?!
Perhaps because Israeli leaders know that they can commit war crimes with impunity, and make it clear to all that Israel is a fascist state, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party proposed a bill that would force Israeli Arabs to swear allegiance to Israel as a 'Jewish, Zionist and democratic state' or lose their citizenship. The bill would also allow the government to revoke the citizenship of anyone who does not comply or perform some form of military or national service.
© UnknownNakba - "The Calamity"
There was one news item, though, published in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, that made clear that Lieberman's plans for a 'pure Jewish and Zionist state' is more than the mere Utopian dream of a schizoidal psychopath. In fact, it seems that plans are afoot to impose even tighter controls over the Israeli Arab population and even labeling them as potential "enemies of the state".
In the article Shin Bet has warned Israeli citizens to beware of attempts by terrorist groups to recruit them as agents via Facebook and other social networking sites on the Internet. According to Shin Bet, in a recent incident, a man who called himself "a Lebanese agent" offered an Israeli Facebook user money in exchange for classified information. Strangely enough, on the same date, theJerusalem Post published a story that Lebanese citizens suspected of spying for Israel have fled the country and crossed the border into Israel.
As it turns out, in recent years Shin Bet has interrogated and sent to trial a number of Israelis (Israeli Arabs, to be exact) who were allegedly recruited to participate in terrorist activities inside Israel via the Internet, while in reality they were duped or manipulated and used to 'create the reality' of an enemy that does not exist. Considering the above, it might be safe to assume that recent 'recruitment attempts' are also part of the continuous plan on Israel's behalf to present the Israeli Arab population as a clear danger and strip them of the minimal rights they have left.
But not only is the Israeli government attempting to erase the past and manipulate the future, the present is under fire too, as the government has rejected the testimony of its own soldiers regarding Gaza atrocities committed by the IDF:
For the first time in its history, the Israeli Military College has published very damaging statements and accounts by its own soldiers, describing their killing of innocent and mostly unarmed civilians and their wanton vandalism during Israel's 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip.The audacity and mendacity shown here is rather breathtaking considering the amount of evidence gathered by the UN, the Red Cross, numerous eyewitness accounts, and video reportage from hospitals and other targets in Gaza. But then, Israel has always exhibited a robust Orwellian spirit and to the Zionists, Palestine was "a land without a people, for a people without a land". Just ignore the 750,000 people who had been living there for centuries...
[...]
The Israeli military, however, quickly closed the investigation into the soldiers' testimonies, calling the accounts inaccurate and stating: "The military police investigation found that the crucial components of their descriptions were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge."
War on the Middle Eastern horizon. As usual.
To divert attention from their fascist domestic policies and the crimes they commit daily, the blood thirsty hawks of the Israeli government have been busy once more, trying to manipulate the international opinion about the fictional Iranian threat, whilst keeping a deaf ear in the demands for halting the settlement process and implementing the Two State solution.
At the beginning of May, the extremist foreign minister Lieberman presented his delusional ideologies in soft tones during a stroll through Rome, Paris, Berlin and Prague, which appears to have not delivered him the anticipated support.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Netanyahu seems to have found supporters for their future crimes in the Obama administration. Not a surprise, since it is known that Israel holds the US on a leash, the latter forced to cover the former's illicit deeds, even if America tries to control the monster it helped create from time to time. Before their meeting, Obama warned Netanyahu against surprising him with an Iran strike, and even at the start of the month, Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, made a visit to Israel in order to receive assurances from both the Prime Minister and Defence Minister that their government will "not attack Iran without alerting Washington". It is unclear though, what Middle East scenario the Obama administration has in mind, since the US president himself adds oil to the fire with statements of the likes of "I understand very clearly that Israel considers Iran an existential threat, and given some of the statements that have been made by President Ahmadinejad, you can understand why".
Actually, no, we don't understand why, since we are well aware that the Iranian president did not make any existential threats towards Israel, as the American president must also be aware of, if he has any inclination to know and two neurons firing to make the connection. But the voices coming from the Zionists in Israel have been louder and more aggressive than ever, when spewing the same old poisonous lies:
At the same time, the US and other nations, are joining hands on behalf of Israel to make sure that the popular party among Lebanese, Hezbollah, does not win the upcoming elections. American Vice President, Joe Biden, made a trip to Lebanon suspiciously close to the election date, while senior Hezbollah official, Nawaf al-Musawi, warns that Israel has been conspiring with "many states" to assassinate Nasrallah, a move that is likely to "set the region ablaze".
No doubt, it was to influence the aforementioned elections that the German Der Spiegel, in a devoid-of-facts propaganda piece which we have every reason to believe was hand-delivered by the notorious Israeli secret agencies - has claimed connection of Hezbollah to the Hariri assassination. Hezbollah's Secretary General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah answered the accusation by pointing out the obvious: "The Israelis are acting preemptively before it is discovered that their spying networks were involved in the assassinations in Lebanon"
© GettyThe Israeli army has shown the world that it is ready to follow the orders of their psychopathic leaders anywhere: be it Gaza, Lebanon, Iran...
Is it a coincidence that Israel is setting up the stage for the wars it envisions with its current Turning Point 3 five-day drill? And what exactly will this drill include? Here's the answer:
Representatives from 70 nations are participating as observers in the drill, which simulates a war with Hamas, Hizbullah, and Syria that also leads Arabs within Israel to riot and commit terrorist attacks.The Israeli residents are already reporting feeling the panic from the "drill":
Turning Point 3 involves the IDF, police, emergency medical services, government offices, and all of the nation's civilians. Some Arab countries, nervously watching Israel prepare for the exercise, have claimed that the exercise is just a front for an Israeli attack.
The drill is intended to prepare the Jewish State for the worst possible scenario, beginning with a war that ignites in Gaza after a three-month escalation, bringing Israeli civilians in the Negev under rocket bombardment. The fighting then spreads to Israel's northern border, where Hizbullah opens a second front and initiates rocket fire reaching all parts of the country.
The war next engulfs Syria, and at the same time authorities must deal with uprisings among the local Arab population, including terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. At the same time, emergency services will train for other disasters such as an earthquake, an epidemic outbreak, or a hazardous materials spill.
As far as the general population is concerned, Turning Point 3 reaches its peak on Tuesday, when a nationwide siren sounds at 11:00 a.m., sending civilians to the nearest bomb shelter. The Home Front Command recently released a map showing that every Israeli citizen has come under rocket threat from either Hamas or Hizbullah, and explaining how much time a person has to reach a shelter based on his location.
The action started very suddenly with a terrific bang around 12:30. A tremendous BOOM hit, so strong it shook the house, tipped over my water battle, set car alarms blaring, and made my dogs run to get under the bed [...] It hasn't been that long since booms like that were actual bombs, so as usual, I listened for sirens. Then I remembered. This was just the war games we'd been warned about.Turning Point 3 has been a success in terrorizing both the Israeli citizens and their neighbors... so far...
Barking dog
There is a war going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan; another one just ended in Sri Lanka, and another one is cooking in Israel's kitchen. Yet we are asked to focus our panic and attention on North Korea. But who's doing the asking? It seems that whenever there's a real danger that the warmongers in Israel and the US start agitating for a regional Mideast war, somehow North Korea finds it convenient to ramp up the rhetoric, launch a few missiles and test a nuclear bomb.
So North Korea tested a nuclear weapon 'as powerful as Hiroshima bomb' and threatened to attack US and S. Korea warships while Russia fears Korea conflict could go nuclear.
We are not saying that a war is not possible; but looking at the situation coldly, North Korea has everything to lose and nothing to win if it were to carry out its very outspoken threats. The strength of Kim Jong-Il's regime - certainly megalomaniac and pathological - relies on the increasingly surreal propaganda directed at the North Korean people and as such North Korea appears to be little more than a useful distraction. In short, barking dogs seldom bite. Conversely, dogs which are notorious for attacking innocent bystanders are more likely to do it again. For this reason we should be much more concerned about that rogue nuclear state Israel with it's at 200+ warheads than North Korea.
In this context, North Korea may well have a defense agreement with Iran and Syria and perhaps even Hezbollah. So any attack by Israel during their Total War "drill" beginning June 1st is likely to produce a few surprises from some far off 'friends' to occupy the US military while Hezbollah's bombs rain down on Jewish settlers' outposts.
Memo from the Board of Directors - not for the eyes of slaves... err, employees
Let's not lose sight of the fact that the actual and potential wars described above all fall within the sphere of governance of what we have been discerning throughout previous months as a 'World Government' of sorts. We recently had another possible clue. The Bilderberg Plan for 2009: Remaking the Global Political Economy, is a fascinating article in its speculative insight into how the wealthy elite will manipulate the orchestrated economic crisis to their advantage:
Apparently, the main topic of discussion at this years meeting was to address the economic crisis, in terms of undertaking, "Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty ... or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency."[...]"One of Bilderberg's primary concerns according to Estulin is the danger that their zeal to reshape the world by engineering chaos in order to implement their long term agenda could cause the situation to spiral out of control and eventually lead to a scenario where Bilderberg and the global elite in general are overwhelmed by events and end up losing their control over the planet."Among other interesting proposals being considered by the Bilderberg gang, is the idea of turning the IMF into a World Treasury and the World Health Organization into a World Department of Health. Also, the G20's decision to increase the usage of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a synthetic paper currency which would become a de facto world currency, is supposed to go "hand in hand with the Bilderberg discussion on the potential collapse of the US dollar". As the dollar's hegemony unlikely to be seriously undermined by market forces, the idea is to "create and allocate a massive amount of new SDRs to the IMF's members." Apparently Sub-Saharan Africa is already receiving $10 billion in SDRs from the IMF, and it plans to "issue $250 billion worth of SDRs, which can be used to boost foreign currency reserves."
This brings us to the issue of those soon-to-be useless green pieces of paper. In the context of the world's major economies announcing staggering first-quarter contractions in May (an indication of the real state of the economy), some are wondering if the dollar is heading for a "mighty crash" as a consequence of pumping newly printed cash into the markets, thus inducing inflation. Seeing the opportunity that will be created by the vacuum left by the dollar, it is no surprise that Moscow is aiming at making the ruble a leading regional reserve currency.
The Bilderberg article also discusses the Billionaire club which is sponsored by Bill Gates in a bid to curb overpopulation:
America's richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a 'disastrous' environmental, social and industrial threat"Alternative"? Were we ever given one? Interestingly, last week, just a day or two after the above meeting, Obama gave a speech on National security in which he referred to Sec. of Defense Robert Gates as "William Gates". Now why would Bill have been on the president's mind....
Some of America's leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world's population and speed up improvements in health and education.
The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.
Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America's wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.
"This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers," said a guest. "They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming."
Why all the secrecy? "They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government," he said.
It is very probable that members of this club such as Oprah Winfrey are there simply to make it appear that the club's agenda is altruistic in nature. After all, everyone knows that Oprah does such good work for charity! But Oprah et al are unlikely to be privy to the less charitable plans of people like Buffett, Soros, Gates and Rockefeller. And what is the group's real agenda? In the above article we read:
"Some of America's leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world's population"This is 'billionaire foundation' speak for "let's discuss the already well-developed plans to reduce the world's population before the manufactured economic crisis and upcoming climate change cause massive food shortages and the population revolts and kicks us out on our asses, or worse."
You see, these billionaires are very fond of their power and positions and would like to hold on to them. They are billionaires only because 99% of the population are, relatively speaking, on skid row. From their point of view they are rich and powerful because you and I are stupid. So you will excuse the likes of Gates and Buffet and Rockefeller if they do not adhere to the idea that every human being has inalienable rights to life and liberty. We're just useless eaters don't ya know.
So, population reduction before economic crisis and climate change and crop failure hit hard. How to do it? Well, it has already begun, and you couldn't have missed it. It even has a name, albeit a misnomer: "Swine Flu".
Yes indeedy, "swine flu" is set to make a comeback this winter. You can call it "Swine Flu 2 - The Revenge" if you like, but this is no Hollywood production, it's more likely to be straight out of some secretive US military biowarfare laboratory. (More on that below)
The story so far is that swine flu and avian flu were mixed to create a new strain which was then released in Western America in April this year. That specifically bioengineered strain was not really deadly, but was disseminated in order to condition the public for a secondary release in the winter of 2009 and also to allow the strain to mutate after having 'done battle' with the human immune system. That mutated strain, with a few tweaks and additions in the lab, will debut later this year with devastating effect on the human population. In short, population reduction by way of deception.
This appears to be the plan that has been many years in the making. For this plan to work, an essential ingredient was to first severely compromise people's immune systems by forcing them to ingest toxic chemicals in almost all of their food. This part of the plan has been very successful given that the average person, especially in Western societies, eats chemically laden, processed and nutrient deficient food at every meal.
So if you believe yourself to be eligible for exemption from the depopulation plan then you are advised to prove it by taking immediate action to detoxify your body and eat healthy food in order that you not succumb to a deadly flu strain this winter. No wheat, no refined sugar, no candy bars, no McDonalds, no hormone-chemical-laden meat, no chemical-laden fruit and vegetables, brown rice, not white and start to follow a detox program of the type outlined here.
So that is how the global management is taking place at the macro-level: initially through economic measures that involve taking money and options away from the masses to be followed by climate change. At the micro level however, the global 'Chief Executive Officers' are also quite skilled at implementing massive control that reaches right into your car...(which you won't have for very long by the way)
Every breath you take, I'll be watching you
The PTB are working hard on implementing their plans for Totalitarian control while at the same time trying to present to their citizens that the increasing clamp down on civil liberties is for our own protection. This trend is evident from the recent announcements and legal results on both sides of the Atlantic. The FBI use of Patriot Act authority increased dramatically in 2008. The British equivalent of these laws that were sold on the pretext of catching 'terrorists', is apparent with ridiculous abuses like a Council using terror laws to spy on it's employees showering.
Even though Street CCTV has little effect on crime, Britain is increasing it's use of surveillance technology and is well on it's way to the Police State number one spot. Our suspicions that agent provocateurs would be used during the G20 riots were confirmed after a British MP saw undercover cops inciting the crowd of protesters.
A database of all children has been launched and the dangers of the move towards the complete centralisation of these databases is clearly visible with the announcement that the UK taxman will be allowed access to personal data from ID cards.
Citizens will have no privacy on their movements after the Government's plans to have a fully-operational network of cameras fitted with license plate recognition software:
The new system will allow any vehicle in the United Kingdom to be tracked to its precise location.How British citizens spend their evenings out is also being spied upon:
Pub owners across London have been warned that they must first install cameras if they want police approval on a license application - clubs are being asked to keep records of all revelers as well as fingerprints, owners also have to promise to hand over any footage the police want.Stasi-style tactics are being employed: Town halls hire citizen snoopers as young as SEVEN to spy on neighbours and report wrongs and MI5 blackmails British Muslims: by telling them to 'Work for us or we will say you are a terrorist'. Another example is the report of the State 'spying on Heathrow critics' when dossiers compiled of legitimate objectors to a third runway were handed to police.
Not to be outdone, France continues its campaign to pass the worst Internet-related laws around, and in the U.S. Homeland Security will scan citizens on their exit. If they stay, the FCC can search homes without a warrant.
Reports of Police Officers lying to protect colleagues in court highlight the ponerizaton of society creeping further down the social structure. Why would it be surprising that behaviour tolerated, even encouraged at the highest levels of government, is showing up at the local level? As Political Ponerology states:
"In a pathocracy, all leadership positions, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule. However, such people constitute a very small percentage of the population and this makes them more valuable to the pathocrats. [...] After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way.Unfortunately, the majority of the American people missed all the news items covered above, because those who do read the news spent their 15 minutes daily attention span on the remake of...
Under such conditions, no area of social life can develop normally, whether in economics, culture, science, technology,administration, etc. Pathocracy progressively paralyzes everything."
The Revenge of the Sith
© Unknown
"No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives... I think it's very, very important that we have a clear understanding that what happened here was an honourable approach to defending the nation, that there was nothing devious or deceitful or dishonest or illegal about what was done."Remarkable hubris from somebody responsible for the deaths of millions.
"Bottom line is, we successfully defended the nation for seven-and-a-half years against a follow-on attack to 9/11," Cheney said in an interview with Fox Business Network.
"That was a remarkable achievement. Nobody would have thought that was possible, but it was. I believe it was possible because of the policies we had in place, which they're now dismantling."
His daughter Lizzy, herself a member of the Bush II administration, has been equally vocal - making no less than 12 media appearances in 9 days during May - defending her father's policies at every turn and accusing Obama of "siding with the terrorists":
"He certainly did not plan when he left office to be doing this," Cheney's daughter said. "But I think as we watched in those very first days and weeks after President Obama came into office when he released the memos that lay out for the terrorists - the techniques we used to question them. Then when he suggested in the Oval Office itself that he would be open to the prosecution of former Bush administration officials including many who weren't political appointees potentially, you know really, I think, made my dad realize this was just fundamentally wrong. We had to speak out."There you have it: the Cheneys have taken this principled stand because they fear Obama will feed them to the lions. All month long we've heard their tortured logic in defence of reprehensible behaviour repeated ad nauseum. Despite evidence from every quarter contradicting the fantasy in which he plays America's saviour, Cheney was on a roll:
Perhaps because he long ago renounced interest in seeking the presidency, he feels liberated now to man the party's conservative barricades. He even defended right-wing polemicist Rush Limbaugh, who declared on the air that he hoped Barack Obama would fail, and said that retired Gen. Colin Powell would be better off leaving the GOP and becoming a Democrat, after having voted for Obama "purely and solely based on race."His antics prompted some to wonder if he was maneuvering himself into contention for the White House in 2012:
"I like Jeb. I think he's a good man. I'd like to see him continue to stay involved politically. I'd probably support him for president," Cheney said during an interview with Fox News.Doesn't bear thinking, does it? Surely history cannot repeat itself so soon! Pat Buchanan reckons Cheney might be have been put up to this by the CIA, but that angle doesn't hold up as they refused his request to release supporting documents. Furthermore, Senator Carl Levin called Cheney's bluff and said his claim that torture saved lives was an outright lie:
Levin noted that the two CIA documents that Cheney wants released "say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques."Obama is considering declassifying a report written in 2004 "as thick as two Manhattan phonebooks that was simply sickening" in its details of abuse carried out by soldiers who "have become frighteningly dehumanized". The is-waterboarding-really-torture? charade of the previous month is dwarfed by the revelations that waterboarding is merely the tip of a sordid iceberg of sadistic government-approved violent sexual abuse.Significantly, Naomi Wolf has reported that original documents reveal how
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice were present in meetings where sexual humiliation was discussed as policy; the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 was written specifically to allow certain kinds of sexual abuse, such as forced nakedness, which is completely illegal and understood by domestic and international law to be a form of sexual assault; Rumsfeld is in print and on the record consulting with subordinates about the policy and practice of sexual humiliation, in a collection of documents obtained by the ACLU by a Freedom of Information Act filing, compiled in Jameel Jaffer's important book, The Torture Administration.William Rivers Pitt reckons Cheney is making the 'torture tour' now because he knows that the cesspit of abuse yet to come is degrees worse than what we have been told already. He quotes investigative journalist Seymour Hersh from 2004:
[I]t is proof of the fact that the most senior leadership - Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, with Rice's collusion - were running a global sex crime trafficking ring with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram as the holding sites. The sexual nature of the torture also gives the lie to Cheney's and others' defense of torture as somehow functional: the sexual perversity mandated from the top reveals that it was just plain old sick sadism gratified by a very sick form of pleasure.
Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.Indeed, the London Telegraph reported that the photos Obama is refusing to release show, among other sexual tortures, an American soldier raping a female detainee and a male translator raping a male prisoner; as well as the rape of prisoners with foreign objects such as wires and lightsticks. Major General Antonio Taguba has called the images "horrific" and "indecent" - but thinks they should not be released. The guys at the Pentagon - not known for their loyalty to the truth - have denied this. Who knows, maybe next thing we'll see is Cheney reassuring us that rape, like water-boarding, is not torture. And Obama will keep walking the non-existent and imaginary tight-rope that lies between justice and injustice."Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
While Cheney's motivations to hold back the dam of widespread public knowledge of this are obvious, what to make of Obama's reciprocation? Why did he flinch? Is this a case of 'you show me your pictures, I'll show you mine'? Does Cheney have a library of blackmail material from spying on just about everyone over the last decade? One thing is apparent: unconstrained by the pretense of playing second fiddle to W, this humanoid is freely exercising its power in a country that has internalised, thanks largely to the media, such copious quantities of paramoralistic gibberish that a psychopath can brazenly challenge the president safe in the knowledge that he will rally at least those amenable to his paranoid worldview.
Not only is Obama playing to Cheney's tune by choosing not to release the evidence of sadistic torture, his administration is shielding Cheney from his other crimes by...
... Blocking the Plame appeal:
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of a lawsuit brought by Mrs. Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, against several top Bush administration officials. The department's move continued the Bush administration's policy to fight the suit, which has already been dismissed by two lower courts.... Defending the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program:
Obama has defended the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and broadened the government's legal argument that "sovereign immunity" protects government officials from prosecution and civil suits when they violate US law and constitutional protections of citizens. Obama's Justice Department has taken up the defense of Donald Rumsfeld against a case brought by detainees whose rights Rumsfeld violated....Upholding the Executive's use of 'state secrets' privilege:
Obama's Department of Justice continues to rely on an alleged "state secrets" privilege. It has thus tried to block lawsuits by victims who alleged they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. intelligence even though they were innocent of wrongdoing, on the grounds that such trials would reveal state secrets. The same state secrets doctrine was used by Obama's DOJ in an attempt to block investigations of Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretaps. Likewise, the DOJ has attempted to block lawsuits seeking the release of Bush-era e-mails and to prevent prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from appearing before a judge to challenge their imprisonment.It was left to former military officials and interrogators to squarely flatten Cheney's contention that torture 'saved' American lives:
"At the prison where I conducted interrogations," Maj. Alexander said, "we heard day in and day out, foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason that they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."... while Cheney's chief of US Central Command in Iraq, General David Petraeus, came forward to admit that yes, the US had violated the Geneva Conventions.
Dave Lindorff naturally wonders if Obama is channelling Cheney:
In reversing himself and declaring that the US government will not release further photos in its possession of torture being practiced on captives held by the US military and the CIA, President Obama is sounding increasingly like the Bush/Cheney administration before him.This is the same McChrystal who Seymour Hersh fingered as Cheney's henchman behind the assassinations of Benazir Bhutto and Rafiq Al Hariri. Hersh subsequently denied making these statements, but the cat was already out of the bag:
The illogic of Obama's position on these photos is stunning. Since we know the photos exist, the refusal to make them public can only feed a sense that they must be worse than the horrific photos of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison which were already released.
The war in Afghanistan, which now must be called Obama's War, thanks to his policy of escalation, is also becoming Cheneyesque, with the firing of Gen. David McKiernan, and his replacement as head of the Afghanistan War by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Gen. McChrystal hails from the Special Forces, and played a role in the torture that was integral to the US war and occupation in Iraq. Far from being put in charge of operations in Afghanistan, where public backing for the US military is virtually non-existent at this point, McChrystal should be facing investigation and possible prosecution here at home for his role in torture of captives.
Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the orders of the special death squad formed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, which had already killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.In 'speaking out' Cheney is defending not only himself but the very basis on which his administration justified its invasion of Iraq. As events transpire, the source of the "solid evidence" Powell touted during his conceited sales-job the UN linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 is now dead: his name was Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. He was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001, 'extraordinarily rendited' to a dungeon in Libya and there subjected to endless rounds of brutal torture during which the requisite confession citing ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda was extracted. Buried amidst the avalanche of noise was the news that he was suicided at the end of April, just as US lawyers were seeking to interview him about the 'alleged' abuse he had suffered.
The squad was headed by General Stanley McChrystal, the newly-appointed commander of US army in Afghanistan. It was disclosed by reputed US journalist Seymour Hersh while talking to an Arab TV in an interview.
Hersh said former US vice-president Cheney was the chief of the Joint Special Operation Command and he clear the way for the US by exterminating opponents through the unit and the CIA. General Stanley was the in-charge of the unit.
Seymour also said that Rafiq Al Hariri and the Lebanese army chief were murdered for not safeguarding the US interests and refusing US setting up military bases in Lebanon. Ariel Sharon, the then prime minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot.
To seasoned sadists like Cheney and high level members of the CIA it was clear that far from being a reliable way to extract accurate information from a prisoner, torture was much better suited to forcing a prisoner to state something that was not true - prisoners like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (who coincidentally appears to have been suicided recently in prison in Libya) and Abu Zubaydah who remains in Gitmo to this day.The phony debate about the validity of information extracted under torture masks the fact that what was sought was not information that was true, but information that would support the reality which Cheney and friends sought to create. In truly psychopathic fashion, they would beat a man insane - or until he told them what they wanted to hear - document the "evidence", then use it to form the legal basis for initiating wars of aggression; crimes for which the legal standard sets the punishment of death by hanging. Paul Craig Roberts:
We now know that the reason the Bush regime tortured its captives was to coerce false testimony that linked Iraq and Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda and September 11. Without this "evidence," the US invasion of Iraq remains a war crime under the Nuremberg standard.Taken in this context, Cheney finds himself in the position of defending a much greater crime: the War against Humanity. Torture is incidental to his mind; while he knows that it is a useful tool for manipulating others to his advantage, he cannot understand the fuss those other people make about it. He imagines himself to be on the frontline in the war against 'the others' and their alien, fact-based reality. "If I don't confront them, who will?"
Torture, then, was a second Bush regime crime used to produce an alibi for the illegal and unprovoked US invasion of Iraq.
"Everybody's in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve."Joe Quinn explains that
...the essence of the "war on terrorism" [is] fiction, albeit a fiction written in the very real blood and suffering of millions of innocent people. From CIA, MI6 and Shin Bet- tortured patsies like those mentioned here, to the multitudes of Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian civilians, their lives snuffed out in an second by US, Israeli and British air force pilots or by the trigger-happy foot-soldiers of empire.Whether Cheney's crusade is a desperate attempt to save his own skin from the ghost of administrations past, influence policy to his liking in the present or rally the right-wing for a future presidential candidacy, it's notable that his domination of the airwaves ultimately serves to deflect attention from Obama's Fake-change agenda and buffers Americans from the deeper darker truth about the American myth. Arthur Silber frames it succinctly:
Perhaps now we understand what's eating Dick Cheney; that the CIA tortured people on his orders? He cares not. That the CIA tortured people on his orders to make a case for the Iraq invasion? He shrugs indifferently. That he, as the most powerful US Vice President ever, used torture and assassination to manufacture evidence for the reality of the "war on terror", which in turn was used to retrofit evidence that Islamic terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks which, in reality, were carried out by a cabal of Israeli and US psychopaths, among them Cheney himself? Well, that calls for a few public snarls and not-so-subtle hints to the Obama administration that, while he may be out of office, Cheney's nobody's patsy.
By seeking to localize the evil in only one aspect of the much broader and more fundamental evil involved and within a falsely delimited period of time, the torture obsessives would thus whitewash the American project as a whole.While the media paired Obama and Cheney up for a "Clash of the Titans," Chomsky reminds us that the contrast between the carefully fostered myth of American benevolence and the sadistic abuse of reality perpetrated by successive American regimes through history belies the fact that the US is an empire and has been so for a long time. Torture is as old as conquest and America has been a-conquerin' since way back when:
As Allan Nairn, who has carried out some of the most revealing and courageous investigations of torture, points out: "What the Obama [ban on torture] ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under U.S. patronage. Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so."License to steal
Obama did not shut down the practice of torture, Nairn observes, but "merely repositioned it," restoring it to the American norm, a matter of indifference to the victims. "[H]is is a return to the status quo ante," writes Nairn, "the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more U.S.-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years."
Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward - a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs.
Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon, not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity, but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.
It's such a pity that the British public didn't notice any of the above either. Instead they were debating the pros and cons of Susan Boyle and the scandal of MPs' tax evasion and phantom mortgages. We politely decline to comment on the former but would like to insert a couple of brief observations about the MP scandal. Apart from the exposure of the corruption that is inherent in the UK political system, the scandal has caused a host of MPs to resign across all parties. What we may be seeing here is 'housekeeping', a useful justification to get rid of a whole lot of personnel who are not quite conspecific in order to create a power vacuum ready to be filled by 'something else' - exactly what, we do not yet know - possibly David Cameron.
As leader of the opposition Conservative party Cameron has pledged to 'devolve' power back to the regions and away from the centralized Parliament as part of his election manifesto. The devolution of power in this way is actually the opposite of what it seems because the power will be moved towards these European Union new 'regions', areas within the UK who's authority bypasses Westminster completely, and who report directly to Brussels, hence speeding up the creation of the EU superstate, and the disintegration of a UK-centered power.
Another move on the chessboard by the 'World Government'.
European Commission under fire
One of the most famous lines in Mikhail Bulgakov's infamous The Master and Margarita is: "manuscripts don't burn". But evidently some documents do burn, especially if some people would like certain details to be forever buried.
© BGNES An exterior view shows smoke rising from the 'Berlaymont', after a fire broke out in the building that houses the European Commission, in downtown Brussels.
Some news items say that the fire started on the top (13) floor. While others say that it started in the print shop of the EC spokespersons, located near the main press conference hall. Another one identifies a storeroom in the bowels of the building as a primary suspect and that the fire was confined to a vertical shaft housing cables.
Now, you may wonder why this story warrants any special attention. Fires, office fires in particular, are an unfortunate everyday occurrence all over the world. Some faulty wiring or a little human error and the rest is history and of interest only to insurance companies. At least this is true in most cases, but now and again an everyday office fire stands out as something more than ordinary and everyday. Take the fire in Cheney's ceremonial office for example. Considering Cheney's long and bloody history and actions during his term in the office, including the mysterious deletion of emails sent by the former VP between 2003 and 2005, we might assume that this time Cheney chose the old fashioned way of destroying evidence.
The missing emails, in case you missed it, covered a time frame that included the lead up to the Iraq war, a lawsuit involving the identities of individuals and corporations who advised Dick Cheney on energy policy and the leak by White House officials of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Pretty heavy stuff, so to say.
The influenza of the media
© AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo
A top virologist UK professor estimates that 30,000 people in the UK alone may be infected with the swine flu; as well as 100,000 in the US and another 30,000 in Japan. Although this was reported in a rather alarmist tone, the fact is that people are not dying massively, as you would expect with those numbers. Actually, the fact that it has spread so much (if it has) is a testimony of its mildness.
Considering the above, may we ask what is all the fuss about? There are many other causes of death killing more people on a daily basis. One possibility is sending a message to Mexico that it had better toe the line regarding the US border patrol/drug cartel policies. The massive losses Mexico suffered in tourism revenue is eerily reminiscent of the SARS scare in Canada.
The possibility of the swine flu being anything significantly more than a media event is that it will later (perhaps in autumn) come back with a vengeance. But that is yet to be seen. In the mean time, what do you do with 26 million doses of expired H5N1 vaccines?
© Reuters File Photo
- Sanofi Aventis Invests 100 Million Euros In New Facility In Mexico To Produce Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Vaccine ( this was just before the Mexican outbreak. Coincidence?)
- CSL to Start Making Swine Flu Vaccine Next Week for Human Tests
- Australia orders 10 million H1N1 vaccines - step right up!
- Swine Flu Scare: Stock Market Bonanza for "Politically Connected" BioTech Companies
Murdering Innocence
Stories about extreme cruelty toward children by their parents always leave us shocked and speechless. Those cases touch deep because we have a clear understanding on an instinctual level that there are things that shouldn't be done under any circumstances, and this is perhaps most true of inflicting pain or harming the innocence and defenseless members of the human race. But apparently, not all of us share the same understanding. And it's not surprising considering the current state of the world where pathological behavior is not only a norm but is being rewarded in some cases.
Here are but a few examples of the increasing insanity:
Georgia Father gets 100 years for poisoning kids' soup
Update: New Mexico mom charged with killing son on the playground
Florida: Baby dies after being attacked, thrown from car
Russian boy kills 4-year old girl for crying too loud
UK: Baby P death - psychopathic mother and boyfriend jailed
Murder-suicides:
3 dead in apparent double murder-suicide in Texas
Three Found Dead in Suspected Murder-Suicide Near Los Angeles
Sheriff: Florida father kills wife, 2 sons, himself
Greece: Man kills wife, jumps off balcony with sons
Russian priest murders wife, son, commits suicide
Other examples of violent and cruel psychopathic behavior:
Gunman in wig kills Connecticut student at bookstore
Dad, pregnant mom killed in front of California boy, 9
Azeri mass shooter 'killed for pleasure'
New Zealand: Police hunt 'psychopaths' over cattle cruelty
Russia: Police officer who started shooting massacre at supermarket doesn't repent
Rattling and Rolling
The Merry Month of May has seen its share of odd earthquakes, including waiting till the end of the month for the largest:
A few odd ones for the US:
US: Rare 3.1 Earthquake Shakes Central Arizona
US: Four earthquakes in three days across East Tennessee
US: 7 Earthquakes hit Yorba Linda, California
Update: Earthquake Magnitude 4.7 in Greater Los Angeles Area
Several in Mexico:
Earthquake Magnitude 4.9 - Off Coast of Jalisco, Mexico
Earthquake Magnitude 5.7 - Puebla, Mexico
Several larger ones around the world:
Strong quake hits Macedonia near Greek border
6.1-magnitude earthquake hits New Zealand's Kermadec Islands
6.7 Earthquake Shakes New Zealand
Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 Off Coast Of Ecuador
Guatemala: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1
And saving the largest for the end of the month:
7.1 earthquake topples homes, kills 2 in Honduras
Cosmic traffic
The number of UFO reports is skyrocketing (excuse the pun). Every day there are four or five eye-witness accounts, mostly (but not exclusively) from England and the U.S. - although that is just probably a consequence of the language barrier in the media. We should assume that sightings around the world have increased also.
Here is a sample:
England: Couple spot UFO over Luton
Belarus: UFO reported by villagers
US: Gustine, California - Star-Like Object
England: Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Cleveland, North Yorkshire - Speeding Green Neon-Type Light
Northern Ireland: North Coast of County Down - Two Orange Glowing Spheres
England: Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire - Trail of Lights All in a Line
England: Brixworth, Northampton - Six Orange Orbs
England: Lowestoft, Suffolk - UFO Illuminates and was Hard on the Eyes
Wales: Llantwit Fadre, Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan - Ball of Flame (Light)
Canada: Brampton, Ontario - Green Lights with a Soft Noise Which Increased to Quite Loud
Australia: Perth, Western Australia - A Flashing Streak of Light
Australia: Murarrie, Brisbane, Queensland - An Object Traveling Fast, Vanishes, Turns to Stardust
Australia: Coomera, Gold Coast, Queensland - A Red Orange Light Changes Shape
Australia: Werribee, Victoria - Triangular object the size of a single-story house
Scotland: Kennoway, Fife - Bright Glowing Orange Ball Traveling Very Fast
England: Tattingstone, Ipswich - Orange Ball of Light Disappearing and Reappearing
England: Warwick - Red Dot Appeared Over the House
US: Dallas, Texas - Eleven to Fifteen Star-Sized Objects Flying in Formation
England: Sale, Manchester - Very Bright White Light
US: Multiple UFO sightings reported May 28th in the Phoenix, Arizona area
And this sample, dear friends, was from the last two or three days only. For a comprehensive view of the whole month, please visit Our Haunted Planet section.
Below are two more sightings caught on video. The most interesting aspect of these two is probably the reaction of the witnesses, which suggests that people knew they were seeing something quite extraordinary. The first of those videos shows a couple of helicopters having a closer look!
Of gooseberries and truth
To conclude May's CTD, we would like to remind our readers (and ourselves) why we dedicate as much time and energy as possible towards the effort to to see and understand the objective reality of our planet - a reality which is often depressing and even painful to behold. This time, we would like to use a fragment of classical literature to illustrate the point. Anton Chekhov, considered one of the greatest short story writers of all times, had deep insights on human life and its complexities. As seen from the surface, his stories are rather unremarkable episodes - yet a careful look will reveal ironic and reflective subtexts that suggest moral and existential dilemmas.
In one such story, 'Gooseberries', Ivan Ivanych is telling his friends about the life of his brother Nikolay, a man whose single objective in life was to own a countryside property with gooseberry bushes. To do so he sacrificed his life to austerity, saved all his money and married a rich widow. She died shortly afterward as a consequence of her husband's obsession. When he was old, he finally got what he wanted, and enjoyed his status as a landlord as best as he could, even at the expense of the local farmers and villagers with whom he was in constant conflict. It is at this point that Ivan Ivanych pays him a visit after many years of not seeing each other. He describes the end of his first day at his brother's house:
'In the evening, while we were drinking tea, the cook brought a large plate of gooseberries to the table. They had not been bought, they were his own gooseberries, picked for the first time since the bushes had been planted. Nikolay Ivanych chuckled and looked at the gooseberries for a minute in silence, with tears running down his cheeks - he was so excited he could not speak, then he put a gooseberry into the mouth, looked at me triumphantly, like a child who has finally been handed a favourite toy, and said: "How delicious!"Through the voice of Ivan Ivanych, Chekhov has described one of the most important existential and moral dilemmas of human beings who have had the fortune of living relatively undisturbed lives, i.e. free from extreme poverty, the experience of surviving a war, or any other similar event of pronounced or prolonged suffering. Human beings in this position can, and most often do, aspire to extract as much happiness from life as possible. The dilemma is that in a world in which suffering, ignorance, lies, war, poverty and hypocrisy are all too common, such a 'bourgeois' happiness (using the term loosely) comes only by sacrificing truth and living in 'collective hypnosis'. Like the gooseberries of Nikolay, which brought him great satisfaction in spite of being hard and sour, and only after sacrificing his life and selfishly sacrificing the lives of others.
'He started eating greedily and saying over and over: "Ah, how delicious! You must try one!"
'They were hard and sour, but as Pushkin said, "the lie which exalts us is dearer to us than a host of truths." I was watching a contented person, whose cherished dream had so clearly become a reality, who had achieved his aim in life, who had got what he wanted, and who was happy with his lot and with himself. There has always been some sadness mixed in with my thoughts about human happiness, and now, seeing this contented person, I was overcome by a dreadful feeling which was close to despair. It was particularly awful during the night. A bed was made up for me in the room next to my bedroom, and I could hear that he was still awake and was getting up and going over to the plate of gooseberries and taking one after the other.
I started thinking about how many contented, happy people there are in actual fact! What an oppressive force! Think about this life of ours: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, unbelievable poverty everywhere, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy, deceit... Meanwhile all is quiet and peaceful in people's homes and outside on the street; out of the fifty thousand people who live in the town, there is not one single person prepared to shout out about it or kick up a fuss. We see the people who go to the market for their groceries, travelling about in the daytime, sleeping at night, the kind of people who spout nonsense, get married, grow old, and dutifully cart their dead off to the cemetery; but we do not see or hear those who are suffering, and all the terrible things in life happen somewhere offstage.
Everything is quiet and peaceful, and the only protest is voiced by dumb statistics: so many people have gone mad, so many bottles of vodka have been drunk, so many children have died from malnutrition... And this arrangement is clearly necessary: it's obvious that the contented person only feels good because those who are unhappy bear their burden in silence; without silence happiness would be inconceivable. It's a collective hypnosis. There ought to be someone with a little hammer outside the door of every contented, happy person, constantly tapping away to remind him that there are unhappy people in the world, and that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show its claws; misfortune will strike - illness, poverty, loss - and no one will be there to see or hear it, just as they now cannot see or hear others. But there is no person with a little hammer; happy people are wrapped up in their own lives, and the minor problems of life affect them only slightly, like aspen leaves in a breeze, and everything is just fine.'
Ivan Ivanych, on the other hand, is troubled at the realization that such happiness is phony, and filled with regret for having wasted his youth when he could have done something about the state of the world. But in spite of Nicolay's contented life and Ivan's distress, the fact is that by choosing the Truth, Ivan is on his way to freedom and a deeper and richer meaning of life, eventually opening the possibility to a genuine kind of happiness. More important, people like Ivan are the only ones who are in a position to restore some balance between light and darkness to this dark and unbalanced world, by waking up and helping those who are tired of the collective hypnosis; and combating hypocrisy and lies, which are the preconditions of evil and the suffering of the masses.
This ideal is what inspires SOTT.net. We have decided to choose Truth over a contented life, not because we do not value happiness - but because we believe there is a more genuine type of happiness available for us and everyone else who dares to face into the darkness that is threatening to engulf life on planet earth, and do something about it. But that potential for happiness is under severe threat at this point in time. Those that desire to enslave humanity and create a literal "hell on earth" have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and are closer than ever to achieving their goals. People must awaken from their slumber, before it is too late.
© Jack TurnerCrop circle at Windmill Hill, near Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire; reported 25th May.
I once had a long conversation with a Jewish settler living in the West Bank about the oppressive policies of the Israeli government. Finally, he asked my why I cared? "You live half way across the world. What does it matter to you?" I paused and thought for a second and replied, "because one day when I'm standing at a checkpoint for hours just to cross town, I will have no time to fight."