It has been a month now since the Signs editors engaged in a little exercise of connecting the dots: we noticed a number of high level meetings of some of the most prominent Axis of Evil personalities, and thinking it likely that there is an important reason for the activity, we published our observations here.

We have decided to make this a periodical effort of 'joining the dots', hoping to make sense of the avalanche of information that comes our way on a daily basis. It may help us to detect trends, and to understand which way the drivers are steering this bus called Planet Earth.

Well, judging by the events of April, it seems that they are taking us towards a cliff, and it is rapidly approaching.

The Food Crisis

Those of you paying attention will have noticed the great amount of news items related to food prices and shortages, some of which we already commented on, here, and in a recent economic commentary. The first significant 'dot' is Haiti. Not surprisingly, the events of Haiti were understated in the mainstream media. But they represent a milestone, considering that a week ago its prime minister was fired after the cost of food sparked riots. That's material for one of those apocalyptic sci-fi movies, isn't it?

It wasn't only Haitians in discontent. In Egypt, a country whose government has little to no political opposition, a general strike was organized in protest for rising food prices and depressed salaries. Again, we are talking about basic food, such as bread or oil.

And as noted above, we are not talking about isolated cases but about a global trend. To Egypt and Haiti we should add Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Indonesia. This is no secret; in fact, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, was already discussing the risk of toppling of governments and wars for food (quite hypocritically, by the way, since the IMF is one of the major culprits of the global disparity between the poor and the rich). In total, says French President Nicolas Sarkozy, 37 countries are experiencing "serious food crises", with food prices having increased 40 percent since mid-2007. The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the past three years. Alarmingly, just in last week the world's rice benchmark jumped 10 per cent, so we can expect worse to come.

As usual, the poorest have got the first hit. But this may change soon as there are already signs of the crisis reaching 'developed' countries, such as Japan and the U.S.

According to the UN's World Food Programme,

"It has become very difficult to find food," said Nicole Menage, head of the WFP's food purchasing service at its Rome headquarters. "Many countries have introduced limits on food exports, in Asia, Africa and Latin America."

Why would that be?

In a recent interview, writer and activist Raj Patel explains:

There are two kinds of stories that we can tell about the food prices.

One is an economic story, about a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries which is diverting grain; the high price of oil, which is driving up food - farm inputs; and at the same time, the biofuels boom, the process of growing fuels in order - sorry, growing food in order to burn it rather than eat it. All of these are economic factors that are driving up the price of food.

Funny how the discourse of global warming is now starving the world via biofuels. Did it backfire or did they make that move on purpose? We vote for the second. Patel continues:

But at the same time, there is a political story here, and it's a longer-term story of how countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers and to abandon such things as grain supplies and grain stores. This longer-term story involves organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that have an iron control over the economies of the poorest countries in the world. The World Bank, the WTO and, to some extent, the International Monetary Fund have tied these countries' hands behind their back, by binding them very firmly to an international economy in food. The consequence is that when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and no way to defend themselves economically.

In other words, this is a crisis manufactured from above. A grotesque crime on humanity - especially if you consider how members of the elite blame the victims in psychopathic fashion while the manufactured despair has driven more than 166,000 Indian farmers to kill themselves since 1997.

If that wasn't twisted enough, the corporate giants are using this crisis as a justification to speed up the takeover of GM foods, touting it as the solution, when in reality it only adds to the problem.

The food crisis may be deeper and longer for another reason: key species on the food chain that sustains the ecosystem are disappearing - some of them quite inexplicably. In the list we can include bees, bats, swallows, frogs and salmon (but let us know if we missed any, as this appears to be a clear trend). Sometimes the phantom of global warming is invoked as en explanation. It may be that climate change has something to do with it but we do not know at this point. (We prefer to speak of climate change as there have been indications of cooling rather than warming; see for example The Coldest Easter in 40 Years in the UK, Spokane, Montana, Coldest for 115 Years, Coldest February in Canada in 28 Years, and Antarctic Deep Sea Gets Colder.) As such, it may also be that the dying of some key species is not the product of human activity.

But even if so, the manipulation of the world economy brought about by the elite cannot be overlooked. It is notable that the food crisis coincides with the most recent surge in the propaganda of the war on terror, apparently designed to sell a war on Iran to the public. This leads us into our second cluster of recent news items.

The Drums of War

In principle, it is safer to pay attention to deeds than to words when assessing the intentions of the elite. Words are still important, as long as we understand that politicians and public figures in general are not interested in speaking the truth but in shaping conventional wisdom. It may happen that once in a while they do show their real intentions if it suits them, although there will always be convenient twists. They may also reveal their agenda unintentionally, by projecting their actions or motives onto their target. It is an irony that there is even a word for this - 'spinning' - for it indicates that it is now part of our conventional wisdom to accept that politicians do not exactly speak the truth, even when most people still naively believe that it will mostly be the truth.

In any case, the point is that lies and spinning have a logic of their own: the logic of propaganda. As such, a lot can be understood by paying attention to their words. Thus, we cannot ignore an increase in the war rhetoric and threats between the US, Britain and Israel, and Iran.

Threats alone would be counterproductive without some sort of justification. If Iran is justified in feeling threatened, for neocons and zionists it is a matter of fabricating excuses. This month they have offered us a few beyond the usual 'nuclear weapons' scare. Most notably, here is one by General David Petraeus:

Last week's congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and Green Zone administrator Ryan Crocker set the propaganda stage for a Bush regime attack on Iran. On April 10 Robert H. Reid of AP News reported: "The top US commander has shifted the focus from al-Qaida to Iranian-backed 'special groups' as the main threat . . . The shift was articulated by Gen. Petraeus who told Congress that 'unchecked, the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.'"

Thanks to the magic of spinning words, the phantom of al-Qaeda, first transplanted from Afghanistan into Iraq, is now being diluted into mysterious 'special groups' and merged with the 'Iranian threat'. Petraeus has a problem, as not even in his surreal logic is there a way to match the claims of Iranian officials:

"Officials in Iran confirmed for the first time Saturday that the country played an important role in brokering a recent truce between the Iraqi government and anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Shiite Iran helped end the clashes between Iraqi government troops and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia for the sake of Shiite unity, said a senior Iranian official who deals with Iraq."

Other items to consider as part of the prelude for war:

- The Bush Administration silently launches an economic war on Iran, apparently with the ultimate goal of turning the nation into "another Gaza or Iraq under the economic sanctions of the 1990s, with devastating impact on the economy and society."

- Israel announces it will connect to U.S. missile early warning system; while both Israel and Syria have military drills and exercises.

- There are rumors that Iran and the U.S. are already engaged in a proxy war through rebel Iranian Kurds in the border with Iraq.

- There were reports of a fire at Iran's Mehrabad airport, possibly caused by a malfunctioning training aircraft which crashed in the vicinity. A couple of days before there was an explosion in a mosque in the Iranian city of Shiraz that killed 12 people and wounded more than 200. While Iranian officials insist this was an accident we cannot rule out a political motive related to the larger context of a war in the near future.

- Jane's Intelligence Review published a piece of propaganda - reminiscent of Collin Powell's UN presentation before the Iraq war - alleging that satellite images show a "secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe".

- Something to keep an eye on for the near future: At the end of last month, Israel advised its citizens against traveling to the following countries: Cyprus, Venezuela, Angola, Malaysia, Indonesia and Mauritania. And now the US State Department has issued a travel warning on China, warning citizens that "any large-scale public event such as the upcoming Olympic Games may present an attractive target for terrorists...There is a heightened risk that extremist groups will conduct terrorist acts within China in the near future." This should be read in the context of the terror propaganda, but it is possible that it holds a clue about the plans for the next 'big event'.

A Word on an Orwellian Nightmare

Lets assume for a moment that there are no coincidences on the world scene and that the preparations for war are not isolated from anything else. Would it be any surprise, then, that Western nations are experiencing an increase in the 'war on terror' scare? And if so, we would naturally expect further steps taking us deeper into the Big Brother society in which we already live. Among other items to consider:

- The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities.

- As outrageous as it sounds, the U.S. government is also trying to develop a technology aimed at detecting and decoding brain activity, with potential to be used in law-enforcement to remotely detect "suspicious brain activity".

- While they get their gadgets, the Transportation Security Administration already has in place a "behavior detection" program to spot "dangerous air travelers by way of subtle clues in the way they act."

- Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that he will activate a new domestic satellite surveillance office, in spite of criticism from Congress.

The above measures are just a sample of items that indicate a trend not only in the U.S. but worldwide, as a search on surveillance in the UK, Australia and Germany (among others) will show.

The purpose of surveillance has nothing to do with our safety and everything to do with control and discipline of society. We should ask ourselves why they need even more control if they already have our minds enslaved by the media and our pockets hijacked by the global economic system. The way things are, there is no possibility for any successful revolutions. So why the control? Is it that they are expecting something big to happen in the near future? Or is it already happening with the food riots? What will follow when the next war begins?

And war and starvation themselves, are they being escalated as a distraction from something else? In which case we need to pay attention to the signs from Mother Nature.

Earthquakes below, fireballs above

Here's a timeline of earthquakes and their magnitudes around the world since the 30th of March.

30th of March: 6.5 - Sumatra
1st of April: 4.2 - Nevada
1st: 4.4 - Kamchatka
4th: 6.4 - Southern Iran
4th: 5.0 - Tokyo
5-6th: Swarm, 4.2-5.1 - Aleutian Islands (Alaska)
7th: 3.7 - South Texas
9th: Swarm 5.0-7.3 - Vanuatu and New Caledonia (South Pacific)
11th: 7.3 - Macquarie Island Region (South Pacific)
12th: 3.8 - Rome
4th-14th: Swarm, up to 5.4 - Off Oregon coast
14th: 5.6 - Indonesia
14th: 6.1 - Guatemala
15th: 6.5 - Alaska
16th: 5.8 - Indonesia
17th: 5.7 Japan
18th: 5.4 - Illinois
21st: 4.5 aftershock - Illinois
22nd: 4.1 - Off Oregon coast

Some of the usual places, such as the South Pacific, Japan and Alaska were rocked. While those are always a matter of concern, notice the unusual swarm off the coast of Oregon. The area is not typically known for its seismic activity, being in the middle of a plate. Geologist Robert Dziak said:

"In the 17 years we've been monitoring the ocean through hydrophone recordings, we've never seen a swarm of earthquakes in an area such as this," [...] "The fact that it's taking place in the middle of the plate, and not a boundary, is puzzling," Dziak admitted. "It's something worth keeping an eye on."

Indeed. When we see swarms of earthquakes where there shouldn't be any, we wonder if the cause may be something different than the usual colliding tectonic plates. One possibility is that some of the tremors of our planet are not caused from below but from above: fireballs and meteorites that go unreported.

If so, fireballs may also be the cause of fires. (See Comet Biela and Mrs. O'Leary's Cow for a historical case.) Consider the recent case of Argentina, where thousands of acres were consumed in the districts of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios. It turns out that just before the fires a fireball fell somewhere in or nearby Entre Rios, while another fireball was reported some ten days earlier in the same region.

There are two more recent reports of fires, this timefrom Russia and New York State. Local farmers were blamed in Russia, while the cause in the U.S. was "under investigation". However, we do not rule out the possibility that these might have been more fireballs.

We will continue paying attention to any mysterious fires and earthquakes. Other possible signs of cosmic bombardment to consider: overhead explosions and rumbles, such as recently experienced in Indiana; sonic booms, as in South Australia; and even dead fish, as a case from early April in Dubai suggests.

Wild Card: The Weird Factor

Here at SOTT we try to think out of the box. We understand the Universe as a mysterious system of endless and unexpected connections, and so we seek to discover those threads - if possible - by keeping track of seemingly unrelated events as well as those that fit under the category of High Strangeness. Some of them are worth mentioning here, even if only for their symbolic significance. We make no claim about their meaning or cause.

- The town of Bridgend in South Wales, UK, of less than 40,000, suffers from a 'suicide epidemic'. Since 2007, at least 18 youngsters have taken their own lives, six in the last year, and the number of cases keeps rising.

- Within less than a month, three prominent and outspoken women - supermodel Katoucha Niane and artists Anna Mikhalchuk and Pippa Bacca - were murdered in strangely similar circumstances across Europe. The similarities extend to their life stories and careers.

- Strange odors in Ohio (twice) and England and Wales, within a week.

- Some interesting sightings of UFOs and strange creatures, in chronological order according to the date of the report:

2nd of April: Dead animals linked to reports of "Lizard man"
3rd: Philippines: Trekkers' cameras catch flying rod objects
3rd: New Zealand: Fiery object caught in digital camera
7th: Argentina: Sighting of large and yellowish object confirmed by Air Force
9th: UFO spotted above Alice, Texas
10th: Mexico: Crews of 5 airliners report flying spheres surrounded by lights
11th: Mexico: "Chupacabras" attacks sheep
11th: UK: Lights spotted over Southampton
12th: UK: Strange light reported
14th: UFO accidentally photographed over Argentina
15th: Balls of light over Scotland
16th: Deputies observe triangular object over Wisconsin
21st: Orange orbs reported over Florida
22nd: Light formations spotted above Phoenix

The Final Aim?

So why is it, that even that during these times of 'high strangeness', every effort is made to distract us from paying attention, and the pathocrats' agenda of chaos is progressed so determinedly? Just what is going on?

"The final aim is the destruction of all religion and nationhood and the establishment of the super State, ruling the world by ruthless terror." - Controversy of Zion, Douglas Reed.

That is the picture that we, too, see emerging by connecting the dots. And though the protocols are said to have been written by Jewish wisemen, it is obvious from our research that they are written by psychopathic individuals, using not only Jews, but also followers of other major religions, as convenient instruments for their plans. It appears that everything is going according to 'plan'. Keeping in mind that Douglas Reed wrote the following half a century ago:

"When it was published this work was the typescript of a drama which had not been performed; today it has been running for fifty years and its title is The Twentieth Century. The characters depicted in it move on our contemporary stage, play the parts foretold and produce the events foreseen.

Only the denouement remains, fiasco or fulfillment. It is a grandiose plan, and in my estimation cannot succeed. But it has existed for at least 180 years and probably for much longer, and the Protocols provided one more proof in a chain of proofs that has since been greatly lengthened. The conspiracy for world dominion through a world slave state exists and cannot at this stage be abruptly checked or broken off; of the momentum which it has acquired it now must go on to fulfillment or failure. Either will be destructive for a time, and hard for those of the time in which the denouement comes."

It is clear from the 'dots' that we daily gather here at SOTT, that we are close to seeing either the fulfillment or failure. Each individual action counts towards either...