SOTT Focus:

Connecting the Dots: Gulf Blood for Oil, Iran Besieged, Secret Spy Games

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:05 UTC

Nearly three months on since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the outlook is truly apocalyptic for the region's earthlings. A sure sign that the greedy dwarves are losing their PR campaign to reassure the world that everything is just fine came late June when BP and its government tools tightened media access to the affected areas. We will examine how the Gulf region now resembles a BP-controlled corporate police state and share with you what they are not saying about the real health impact for people and planet.

Little decision-making actually takes place when the G20 heads of state get together for their travelling roadshow, but it gives the perception managers an opportunity to introduce the latest gadgetry designed specifically for breaking down dissidents into compliant serfs. Eyewitness accounts from the people on the streets of Toronto, transformed into an Occupied Territory at a cost of $1 Bln, reveal choreographed violence by agents provocateurs and extreme police brutality 'in response'.

Wall Street's role behind the escalating bloodshed in Mexico and the decision to send 7,000 US Marines to Costa Rica tell us that the US government's War on Drugs™ is indistinguishable from its War on Terror™. Both disguise the same imperial designs and both are fuelled by the CIA's narcotics industry. As Afghanistan became America's longest war this past month, we take a look at the horrific events in Kyrgyzstan and wonder who primed the 'Russian Spy Scandal' just as US-Russian relations were "reset".

Israel once again demonstrated its unnatural ability to thrive in acrimony as it turned global condemnation for its massacre of innocents into UN Security Council support for US-imposed economic sanctions against Iran. Far from relinquishing its death grip on one siege, Israel is now a significant step closer to implementing another. Will Zionism's self-fulfilling prophecy inevitably take humanity down with it? The only thing that will save Israel from itself is a successful international campaign to boycott it at every level and shun it at every opportunity. The Universe is watching, so let's keep flapping those butterfly wings and connecting the dots!

Gulf Blood for Oil

"The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get a complete picture of the magnitude of the damage to the Gulf of Mexico. We have the Government of Hope to thank for this, as a new rule was announced by the Coast Guard on the first of July - backed by the force of law and complete with the threat of fines of up to $40,000 and Class D felony charges - preventing reporters, photographers or anyone with a pair of eyes to see and a voice to tell, from approaching within 65 feet of any booms, response vessels and oil-soaked wildlife. One-third of the Gulf itself is now considered a no-go area; no one can approach it without a permit.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist is donating his two cents to the campaign against the truth. Concerned about the effects on the tourist industry, he has chosen to ignore the reports of hundreds of swimmers feeling unwell. Instead,

[He] told the CBS Morning Show this week that he went for a swim on Pensacola Beach after BP crews cleaned it up. He said continual testing done by the county has shown that the waters are clean. "There isn't a toxic nature," Governor Crist said. "It's much more of a nuisance than anything at this point. But it is safe."

Swimmers must be imagining things, then. So must volunteers taking water samples from the shores of Grand Isle in Louisiana for laboratory analysis. It was found that benzene and other highly toxic contaminants were very low, however the concentration of propylene glycol was between 360 and 440 parts per million. Just 25 parts per million is known to kill most fish. Propylene glycol is just one of many ingredients found in Corexit. Dr. Harish Seethamraju, a pulmonary specialist at Methodist Hospital in Houston must also be deluded if Governor Crist isn't:

Seethamraju says potential problems include wheezing and asthma, but that's not all. "If they take a swim in these waters, the toxic chemicals can cause pneumonia and respiratory failure."

"Nobody has experience with that," said Seethamraju. "We have never seen such enormous amounts of exposure."

Now imagine the 'nuisance' when people not only feel ill after a swim, but start developing cancer or suffering neurological damage as a result of consuming contaminated seafood. There are already strong suspicions that a mysterious "disease" which has caused widespread damage to plants, weeds and organically farmed and conventionally grown crops has been caused by BP's highly toxic oil dispersant Corexit, which has probably been blown inland by ocean winds. Among other alarming signs last month that the Gulf is massively polluted was the sighting of bizarre pink ring-shaped clouds. Unsurprisingly, health complaints related to the oil spill now stretch from as far as Matamoros in Mexico, to South Carolina.

As the logic of the authorities goes, if we cannot cover the hole on the ocean floor, we should cover people's eyes. If people do not learn what is happening, how are they going to get angry and motivated enough to do anything about it? British Petroleum is leading the Orwellian efforts by insisting that clean-up workers need no respirators in spite of their illness. It has installed metal detectors in affected areas to prevent people from bringing cameras or cell phones. At night, carcasses of dead wildlife mysteriously disappear from the beaches, so people can sleep easier:

It is not only the heart-breaking images of birds drowning in toxic crude and rare majestic sea turtles being burned alive that we are not supposed to see. Or the 50 dead dolphins that we know of. Or the true numbers of clean-up workers being treated for illness in the "federal mobile medical unit" parked inside the "BP compound" in Venice, Louisiana, surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and tightly restricted by police and private security guards. The following images taken from an aircraft during the second half of June speak for themselves:

After seeing the oil being burned for "miles and miles across the horizon", do you think that the latest deployment of the "world's largest oil skimmer" is anything but yet another of BP's PR stunts? As large as the Taiwanese converted tanker may be, how many of those are realistically needed to contain the spread of oil gushing from the ocean floor at an uncontrollable rate? Even if a fleet of those managed to clean the oil visible on the surface, what about the oil that is now covering the ocean floor and surely killing far more than what the waves leave on the beaches? Remember when BP turned down the Russian government's offer of mini-subs capable of taking personnel down to the ocean floor back in April? Well the company has now gone back to them cap-in-hand in yet another stunt to make it appear that it really wants to seal this well. PR games can only be played for so long. Bob Dudley, BP's point man on the spill, originally showed great confidence in their relief wells. But as the date of the drilling approaches, he admits that "nothing is guaranteed".

You know things are desperate when that insane rumour we heard last month about nuking the well-head is still with us. "Let's just 'shock-and-awe' Mother Nature with a nuclear blast!" One of the proponents is the former Soviet minister of nuclear energy Viktor Mikhailov; another is physicist Milo Nordyke, one of the scientists behind America's nuclear energy program in the 1960s and 70s. What they are proposing would only make things much worse. If the well failed to seal, the blast could instead enlarge the leak into a giant sinkhole or even collapse the ocean floor. And that is before any consideration of the impact nuclear fallout would have on the Gulf and the world's ocean currents. There have been suggestions that the leak be plugged by way of more conventional explosives, but that BP has fought this proposal tooth and nail because it has invested hundreds of millions into this project and fully intends to make good on its investment. The oil spewing all over the Gulf is still the legal property of British Petroleum. In any sane world, the contract awarding BP ownership of the oil would have been annulled by now and responsibility for the clean-up been commandeered by the government on behalf of the public good. Better yet, BP's charter contract would be declared null and void as it has repeatedly failed to live up to its responsibilities, its assets seized and liquidated to go towards the clean-up funds, while its skilled employees could be offered paid positions within the clean-up operation as compensation for losing work with BP. Pinch us now, we must be dreaming. BP is the fourth largest corporation on the planet. It has given permission to the mainstream media to publish some measure of criticism, but the bottom line is that its owners own the media.

© Edmund D. Fountain, St. Petersburg Times/APKevin Reed weeps as he looks over the oil-coated shores of Pensacola Beach, Florida, June 24, 2010. "This will never be the same," he told the Associated Press.

Whatever brilliant ideas they have, they better get moving because hurricane season is upon us. Although hurricane Alex skirted the disaster zone to the south, by BP's admission, it still managed to drive oil towards the US coast at a higher rate than had been making landfall before. Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has warned, among others, that a hurricane could dump a mixture of oil and water all over the southern US, potentially reaching hundreds of miles inland. Gases such as hydrogen sulfide, benzene and methylene chloride will likely be absorbed by the hurricanes and dropped as toxic rain. These airborne chemicals have already entered the atmosphere and are being carried around by the wind. Air monitoring test results by the Environmental Protection Agency and analyzed by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network show that levels of airborne chemicals have far exceeded what is considered safe for human exposure. In Venice, 75 miles south of New Orleans, hydrogen sulfide was detected at concentrations more than 100 times greater than the level known to cause physical reactions in people. Likewise, volatile organic chemicals far exceeded Louisiana's own ambient air standards.

It is a safe bet that hurricanes will quickly spread the toxicity. But even if by some miracle they do not, ocean currents will do the job slowly but inevitably. A company called Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service, Inc. has been tracking the oil movement by using a combination of methods. It released a map on June 22nd showing oil extending into the Florida keys and marked a possible water-oil mixture extending up the entire east coast of Florida. We wonder how long it will be before it covers the entire Gulf and moves further north and into the Atlantic Ocean as it is carried by the Gulf Stream. All oceans are connected and if there is no stopping the gusher there is no reason why the pollution will not reach many corners of the globe eventually.

Another matter of great significance that has been overlooked is the extraordinary levels of methane - a highly flammable gas - that have been released along with the crude oil. University of Georgia's Samantha Joye, who has worked for 15 years in the Gulf, commented to the Washington Post that she has "never seen concentrations of methane this high anywhere". Images from underwater cameras show red, yellow and white substances which some have interpreted as evidence of volcanic activity, but it is more likely that the range of colors are variations common in light crude, while the white substance is probably frozen methane hydrate. The vast amounts of methane are recognized as serious threat to marine life by creating 'dead zones' where the lack of oxygen prevents the presence of any form of life. At least 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas but possibly as twice as much has leaked since the explosion, based on estimates from the US Geological Survey - making up between 40 and 70 percent of the material spilling into the Gulf (typically oil deposits would have 5 percent methane). In the words of oceanographer John Kesser from Texas A&M University, "this is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history". In some areas, Kesser says, methane levels are "astonishingly high" - as much as 1 million times the normal level.

The issue of methane has not escaped the Orwellian control of information. Joye notes: "I have read the reports from NOAA and I have yet to see methane measurements... The biggest hole [in research on the disaster] is the gas data." Perhaps this is no coincidence and the idea is to avoid further public anger and possibly panic, considering what volatile gases such as methane are capable of.

Lake Nyos in Africa is an active crater lake containing large amounts of CO2 dissolved at depth as a result of volcanic activity. On the 21st of August of 1986, a limnic eruption occurred there which triggered the sudden release of some 1.6 million tonnes of CO2. The gas rushed down two nearby valleys, displacing all the air and suffocating up to 1,800 people within 20 km of the lake, mostly rural villagers, as well as 3,500 livestock. About 4,000 inhabitants fled the area, and many of these developed respiratory problems, burns, and paralysis as a result of the gases. Could a similar scenario occur in the much larger Gulf of Mexico with unprecedented amounts of highly combustible methane? The History Channel explored the possibility of a methane eruption and explained the ramifications in graphic detail:

Given that one of the possible reasons for Lake Nyos' eruption was a mud slide, it is interesting that the Florida Atlantic University and other oceanographic institutions are contemplating a collapse of the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico in the near future. Two possible scenarios are being invesitgated. The first one is a complete collapse of the ocean floor at and around the well. This is least likely at the moment, but should nuclear weapons be factored in, then all bets are off. A vast amount of oil and methane would be released immediately, generating a tidal wave that would hit shores around the Gulf. The second scenario is a partial collapse of one side of the well in the form of a large mud slide, causing a similar effect but to a lesser extent given that the collapse would happen with less energy behind it. A wave would still be sent towards the coastline, but it would be far less destructive. There would be a considerable spread of oil and Corexit in both cases, so it's not like Gulf residents should be hoping for one scenario over the other. In fact, it seems wisest to assume the worst for now. The Gulf is a No-Speech Zone after all! You have been deemed to have no "right to know". BP is legally entitled to censor whatever information comes from the Gulf: it is now effectively a crime to report what is happening there.

There appears to be very little future for those living in the affected region. The future remains open, it's not set in stone, but the possibilities for one that doesn't involve total ruin for tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans are collapsing fast. Rather than watch their loved ones become poisoned and die slow, premature deaths (like anyone who worked on the Exxon Valdez clean-up), it seems as good a time as any for people in the US to network, coordinate what resources they have, then make their way in convoys for Washington DC, where they should occupy government buildings en masse until the corporate government of, by and for psychopaths, is run out of town. Forget about waiting until a sponsored "million-man march" comes round next year seeking compensation for the victims. It will be too late by then.

This remains fantasy for now but it's the kind of fantasy that needs to manifest in some way soon. At the very least people should think about planning an exit strategy. In the event of mandatory evacuations as a consequence of a "toxic hurricane", only those who have undergone a hazmat induction course and received their "hazmat ID cards" will be allowed to return to their home once the storm blows over:

In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they'll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation.

Storm-wizened locals know that it can take days, even weeks, for roads to open and authorities to allow residents to return to inspect the damage and start to rebuild after a hurricane moves through.

In the case of a "toxic storm," only residents with hazmat cards would be allowed to cross bridges to return home, Greve says, since toxicity risks would be too high for untrained residents.

BP intends to begin drilling in the Arctic this fall, helped every step of the way by the US government. (This is what oil giants do. They drill, take what they can, then leave. There are 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf alone and no one - not industry, not government - is checking to see if any are leaking.) If you thought the Deepwater project was recklessly ambitious, the Arctic plan is to drill down from an island, then horizontally for between six and eight miles to the oil field:

Here's what BP has in store for the Arctic: First, the company will drill two miles beneath its tiny island, which it has christened "Liberty." Then, in an ingenious twist, it will drill sideways for another six to eight miles, until it reaches an offshore reservoir estimated to hold 105 million barrels of oil. This would be the longest "extended reach" well ever attempted, and the effort has required BP to push drilling technology beyond its proven limits. As the most powerful "land-based" oil rig ever built, Liberty requires special pipe to withstand the 105,000 foot-pounds of torque - the equivalent of 50 Mack truck engines - needed to turn the drill. "This is about as sexy as it gets," a top BP official boasted to reporters in 2008. BP, a repeat felon subject to record fines for its willful safety violations, calls the project "one of its biggest challenges to date" - an engineering task made even more dangerous by plans to operate year-round in what the company itself admits is "some of the harshest weather on Earth."

British CEO Tony Hayward has become the lightning rod for his company's deeds, but its worth remembering that BP ownership has been split evenly between British and American ownership since its inception. The behemoth was founded during the push by British elites to retain their decades-long control Iranian oil in the early 1950s and led directly to the CIA's overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953, illustrating how the real locus of power in the US and UK is one and the same entity. Documentary film-maker Adam Curtis has dredged up pertinent archival footage of BP's past involvement in the Middle East. When the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Psychopaths Ltd, er... British Petroleum Ltd in 1954, it strong-armed the Shah of Iran into believing that only the British oil company had the skill to deal with disasters, in particular blow-outs and explosions at oil wells. The implication was that the Iranians wouldn't know how to put them out, but we British do and should therefore be allowed to stay in Iran because the oil wells will be safe in our hands. BP has spent $195 million on lobbying in Washington, DC in the past three years alone. Consider also that the US war machine is largely fueled by BP's oil: "More than $2 billion in annual US defense contracts" makes BP the "premier provider of fuel to the world's largest consumer of oil and gas: the Pentagon." In the days when the British were at the helm of the Pathocrats' Empire, its Royal Navy was fuelled by Iranian oil. So we should remember that every time the US-UK-Israeli Axis of Evil talks about levelling Iran: its crime is to make a stand against the very nexus of power that would destroy the whole planet before halting its plunder of the planet's resources.

G20 Toronto: Occupied Territory

© Simon Hayter/Getty ImagesDespite being armed to the teeth with a $1 BILLION budget, Toronto police apparently fainted when "confronted" by protestors and quickly abandoned tens of police cars as they fled in panic. Not to worry though; they regained composure and returned the following day to brutalise everyone in sight

All too often in the past 10 years, we have been witnessing what is becoming an increasingly disturbing trend in the infiltration of protest groups: the use of carefully placed undercover operatives and unbelievably timed circumstances designed to spread chaos and destruction in the name of peaceful protesters. This modern day COINTELPRO agenda has followed a steady pattern from event to event, and the recent G20 protests in Toronto were no exception.

As we reported back in May, the security operations mounted by Canada for the G20 summit was the largest such undertaking in that nation's history. With the total cost ending up at over 1 billion dollars, and presumably being the highest state of security this otherwise peaceful region has ever seen, you could be sure that any outbursts of violence would be taken care of quickly and efficiently. Or so one would think. If you have any doubt whatsoever as to how well this event's security was planned for, 6 kilometer fence and all, Al Jazeera has a good video recap here. The total number of law enforcement present was ultimately estimated to nearly 20,000 strong, according to heavily censored and biased mainstream media reports, and arrests exceeded 1,000.

It doesn't take long to spot the psychopathic expressions that inevitably come with such statistics. There have been many detailed reports of these arrests, and their often dubious nature, including this article recently featured on SOTT. There are continuing and serious allegations being made by those involved that the majority of the arrests and other actions taken were unlawful, and at many times specifically targeted members of the press. One journalist who experienced a makeshift detention center describes horrifying accounts of gangbanging rape threats made by officers designed to make her 'never want to be a journalist again,' in addition to an allegation of full body cavity searches performed on female detainees by male officers.

This first video is narrated and taken by a journalist who attempted to follow the 'black bloc' and document their activities. He explains how for over an hour, the violent group was given free reign to commit damage, with zero interference from police. Once the hour long rampage was complete, they removed the black clothing and disappeared. 5 minutes later, riot-gear clad police arrived to beat down, pepper-spray, and disperse the remaining peaceful protestors who of course had nothing to do with any of it.

It is as if during all the actual criminal acts being committed, all 19,000 officers on staff for the event were simply told to go take lunch at precisely the moment they had all been waiting and training for - and to clock back in and dress up the moment it was over. Many are claiming the violence was at the very least intentionally permitted to occur so that the billion dollar price tag could be publicly and politically rationalized.

There is a more graphic video that captures some of the violence in action, but is heavily edited. Notice the total lack of police action during all the acts of vandalism. Those that are present, are only photographing or passively observing. At any point in time, the thousands of officers present could have moved in to take out the one or two 'violent protestors,' but this is never done or even remotely attempted.

Instead, in the same fashion as so many large protests before it, quite the opposite occurs. The metaphorical keys to the city are given to protesters using the black bloc's violent tactics of agitation, and no prevention or law enforcement of any sort is attempted. There is an unspoken encouragement factor here in this volatile gathering of anarchists and protesters, especially taking into account the psychology of the situation.

Police cruisers are even strategically placed and left intentionally unattended for the protesters to torch, deface, smash, and light ablaze over a period of time. The cars are then left to burn, still unattended for over an hour. Well, unattended isn't exactly accurate - there was certainly a plethora of media outlets covering the "police cars taken over and violently destroyed by protesters." The images on the news came out looking like a warzone - minus the fact that one side forgot to show up to the battle.

In fact, in one such video of this vandalism, a fellow protestor attempts to detain and arrest the perpetrator who appears to be acting totally alone. In less than 5 seconds, a man dressed in black appears on a bicycle along with many others to forcibly remove the man holding the criminal subject, who immediately disappears. Another, more successful, attempt by citizens to prevent violence can be seen here.

A familiar scene referenced in the first video we chose to embed is the incident in Montebello, containing both video and photographic evidence of potential agents provocateur being spotted, defused, and either reclaimed or arrested by police depending on your perspective.

Direct accounts or suspicions of this type of behavior have been springing up at almost every major inter-governmental summit protest since 2001, when the truth came out about direct police involvement in creating violence at the G8 summit in Genoa. In that case, after much public pressure, the Italian public prosecutor's office was forced to declare that "the violence at the Genoa demonstration had been initiated by a hard core of approximately 200 persons, a considerable number of whom were either undercover policemen or right-wing extremists hired by the police. The provocateurs discussed their tactics with police, disguised themselves as anarchists and mixed with peaceful demonstrators before undertaking their criminal operations."

So as you can see, there is nothing new happening here with all this talk of infiltration and subversion - it's all quite the old hat trick designed and proven to better control the outcome of the protests by creating and controlling the problems that will arise.

Back to the most recent iteration of events. In the following video we see indisputable footage of dozens of plainclothes officers, one dressed all in black no less, anxiously hurrying away from the public to a police safety line, clearly frightened of being discovered. Notice that most of the people you see in the beginning of the video actually appear to be police quietly and quickly trying to get to the protected zone, while the cameraman is beaten by an unbelievably upset plainclothes officer for no good reason whatsoever.

There is also a most remarkable video circulating which shows the military taking a protester into custody via an unmarked car that quickly speeds away. Again up for debate is whether an arrest was being made, or if they were simply reclaiming one of their own.

Things turn from bizarre to surreal when we consider the following video, in which all 19,000 officers appear to go on yet another unexplainable hour-long lunch break during what appears to be another purposefully and carefully planned event. In this incident, one 'bait' police car is left completely abandoned for a long period of time in the heart of the protest. As with the others, the one also ends up set on fire. But the events leading up to this particular series of events are only now coming out - and they again seem designed to ensure that the crimes would be committed. Once more the police are totally absent, and after the damage is done, it is used as an excuse to suppress any peaceful protest within sight. Listen carefully to the observations made by the protesters throughout the audio. The protester who tries to stop the fire from being started in this video, is later on injured attempting to extinguish the flames, as after the video ends the car is successfully set ablaze. It is later confirmed that the division code on the vehicle does not correspond to any actual Toronto police division, further lending support that the car was an intentional decoy.

And while none of those images made it to the nightly news, you can be sure photos like this did:

Protester jumps on burnt-out police care

One local news channel did manage to interview a resident who sensibly explained her viewpoint of it all. It is the concept that all of the violence was permitted to occur simply to justify the immense costs associated with law enforcement. A show to satisfy the crowd and the taxpayers, and to escape any potential fallout that would come from an entirely peaceful protest.

Coming back to the more obvious, run-of-the-mill tactics of police brutality used against the public this weekend, there was the story of a credentialed journalist who was punched in the face twice (and then later had his microphone briefly stolen) by the police in a separate, but related incident. John Pruyn is a 57-year-old resident of Ontario. He lost his left leg in a farming accident 17 years ago and now wears a prosthetic leg. He was sitting with his daughter on the grass at Queen's Park on June 26, when armoured police suddenly entered, approached and barked at them to clear off. Pruyn isn't - understandably - the quickest on his feet, so when he fell as he tried to get up, his daughter pleaded with the stormtroopers to give him a moment to right himself. Their answer was swift and merciless:

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn's head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later.

Accusing him of resisting arrest, they pulled his walking sticks away from him, tied his hands behind his back and ripped off his prosthetic leg. Then they told him to get up and hop, and when he said he couldn't, they dragged him across the pavement, tearing skin off his elbows , with his hands still tied behind his back. His glasses were knocked off as they continued to accuse him of resisting arrest and of being a "spitter," something he said he did not do. They took him to a warehouse and locked him in a steel-mesh cage where his nightmare continued for another 27 hours.

In another of hundreds of similar stories, police dressed in riot gear made an example out of a protestor who was not complying with their request (because he is totally deaf in both ears). As the crowd became concerned for this individual's safety, the police literally began to attack everyone.

Listen carefully to the beginning of this interview, and to the tone of the officer speaking at the press conference. He seems just a little too eager to be able to offer photographic evidence proving black bloc tactics being used, despite being told point blank that the video evidence indicates a total lack of such.

Now all this isn't to say that there weren't signs of something amiss before the protests ever began. News about black bloc tactics and their history of violence ran regularly in the local mainstream media in the days leading up to the event, preparing the public for exactly what to expect in the days to come. Police infiltrated and subsequently raided political interests groups on campus, using piles of black clothing as evidence of planning to commit a crime. In a story almost reminiscent of the fake evidence in the recent Flotilla crisis, in which photographic evidence of weapons were heavily doctored, we also ran an recent article showing similar tactics being employed by the police in charge of G20 security. Despite the truth having been long known about the photographs not actually being of weapons at all, they were displayed by the police department and presented on the news as absolute proof of the coming violent black bloc protests.

Just in case you are thinking any of this is being even slightly exaggerated, we have the case of the protesters who are truly minding their own business and peacefully singing Canada's national anthem to the police at the other end of the block, without moving one step in any direction. At the end of the song they begin to sit down, one by one, about 50 meters away from the police line. In a vulgar display of power, a full-fledged barrage of rubber bullets is unleashed upon them, dozens of officers charging simultaneously, riot shields to the face, and even police horses join in the disheartening trample of dissent.

Whew, after a litany of crime like that, surely the local authorities would come down hard on the psychopathic thugs masquerading as police officers that ran riot all weekend, endangering the lives of decent, hardworking, peaceful Torontonians? Er, actually, no. The Toronto City Council voted 36-0 in favour of commending the police for their "outstanding work." Whether it's at the level of international governance or the local political level, psychopaths and people with personality disorders find themselves in positions of social responsibility, rising to the top like scum. Incidentally, the G20 leaders agreed to cut government deficits in half by 2013. Translated into real human terms, that means they are going to slash our welfare states and make all of us suffer as much as they can.

The real message being sent over and over again at these protests seems to be coming clear: organized protest against the international corporate cartels will not be tolerated without consequences. Taxpayers are picking up the bill and lining the pockets of the security-military industry for the burgeoning Globalized Police State. All this comes with awfully convenient timing as the warpath to Iran and potential Armageddon heats up.

A couple of interesting signs related to the G20 protests: With Toronto turned into a Baghdad-like Green Zone, the two-day summit and protests were preceded by a magnitude-5.0 earthquake on the Ontario-Quebec border that rattled buildings and led to evacuations in Toronto and Ottawa, then followed by a city-wide blackout from a fire at a power station. All that energy spent placing the city in lockdown must have blown a collective fuse in the local psyche!

Cocaine Wars

© Bernandino Hernandez/APWar Zone: Mexican marines run down a street after a gun battle erupted June 16 in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco. A national newspaper reported that on June 14, 96 people were assassinated in drug-related violence across the country — the highest daily death toll since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels in December 2006.

The drug trade has claimed over 23,000 lives in the US-Mexican borderlands in the past 4 years, a figure that can match any formally designated 'war zone'. Over the past weeks there have been horrific stories coming out of central America that put the Reagan era atrocities in the shade. The tense atmosphere along the border itself boiled over this month as US border agents shot and killed two Mexicans, the latest victim being a 15 year old boy who was shot in the head on the Mexican side of the border for throwing stones at the guards' hut. Psychopathic security personnel shooting children dead at checkpoints... it seems totally fitting that the same corporation that built the Apartheid Wall through Palestine is also the contractor for the US-Mexican border fence. When FBI investigators turned up to "recover" the evidence, their Mexican counterparts threatened to kill them if they crossed the border, prompting both sides to draw their guns.

Mass murders are a daily occurrence in northern Mexico but the bandidos' murderous appetites have steadily escalated as the bodies pile up. On June 11, Mexican officials found 20 people shot dead in Ciudad Madero in Tamaulipas state; another 19 people were killed on June 9 in an execution-style attack at a drug rehabilitation center in the northern state of Chihuahua. Gunmen killed 10 police officers and injured several more in Michoacan state on June 15. Hours later 28 inmates were killed in a prison riot in the city of Mazatlan. Nearly all the murders were "closely tied with the illegal drug trade" (which means that the only viable economy for millions of Mexicans impoverished by decades of US imperialism is the illegal drug trade). Then there was the tragic death of Mexican singer Sergio Vega, murdered late June while on tour, and which came just hours after he told entertainment website La Oreja that online reports of his death were untrue. A massive gunfight between gangs apparently contesting for control of migrant-trafficking routes left 21 dead and 6 injured 12 miles from the Arizona border, while the assistant attorney general for Chihuahua state and one of her bodyguards were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez where 4,300 people have been murdered in the past three years.

The violence is part of the justification given by the Arizona state legislature for bringing in a new law to curb illegal immigration and the crime that comes with it. In practice Mexicans living in the state know that it will lead to their harassment and mistreatment by Arizona's authorities. They are apparently leaving the state in droves ahead of the law's introduction later this month. The Obama administration is contesting the law, but its motive is more to do with preventing Arizona's initiative from setting an example for other states than any concern for "illegals" in the US: the federal government's preferred method for dealing with the violence is to send troops down to the border and to deploy two drones overhead. The running gun battles in Kingston, Jamaica late May that left at least 60 people dead were also the result of gang warfare over control of the drug shipments that pass through the island nation. Washington had demanded the extradition of the local kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke, but his people resisted, government forces were sent in to arrest him and bloodshed ensued. Elsewhere this month 4 severed heads were left outside a shopping center and government buildings in Guatemala City.

When US officials refer to the rest of the western hemisphere as their "backyard", they mean it in the literal sense of the word: the War on Drugs™ has littered the continent with the debris of broken lives and broken bodies, while hundreds of thousands are incarcerated in the US for possessing a few flakes of marijuana to cope with the incredible stress of living under rule by psychopaths. The producers in Colombia, the transport hubs in the Caribbean and the central American countries, the cartels in Mexico, and the distribution network in the US... none of this can function without money and none can benefit from the trade without the ability to launder that money. Enter Wall Street. A startling report in Bloomberg late June puts the whole criminal enterprise in perspective: one bank alone, Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo, laundered a staggering $378.4 billion on behalf of drug and people trafficking cartels in Mexico between 2004 and 2007, a sum equal to one third of Mexico's current GDP. This is how hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines reach Americans. Wachovia wasn't alone. Bank of America, American Express Bank, HSBC, Santander, Citigroup are among the US and European banks that are financing this tragedy. It is not a case of Wall Street making a little on the side: the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has said that this cashy money literally saved certain (as yet unnamed) "too-big-too-fail" banks from collapse when lending seized up as a result of Goldman Sachs' financial terrorism in the fall of 2008.

Obama the Peacemaker

"The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers."

Report from Iron Mountain

We are told that Costa Rica has "invited" the US to occupy its country in the name of the War on Drugs™, effectively a second front in the Axis of Evil's Global War Without End. The US is deploying 7,000 Marines, 46 warships, and hundreds of helicopters, ostensibly to "fight drugs", but actually to support its Latin American drug running operations just as the CIA's high-grade Afghan heroin bankrolls US counter-insurgency and special ops in central Asia. Where Bill Clinton's Plan Colombia provided US personnel with a base from which to subvert Ecuador and Venezuela, Operation Joint Patrol will enable Obama to oust Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government, which recently severed all ties with Israel over the Flotilla Massacre. In fact, from Costa Rica this US expeditionary force can be dispatched against any South American leader who refuses to toe the Pentagon line.

With American troops stretched desperately thin in the Empire's wars, the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate announced July 1 the formation of a new "civilian expeditionary force" that will be as large as the current forces and can be deployed abroad for "nation-building duties." America's real unemployment rate is around 20-25% so Obama should have no problem finding new recruits for doubling the size of the already gargantuan US Army. At this rate it won't take long for him to surpass Tony Blair's bloody record on behalf of global genocide, which were recently rewarded with a $100,000 prize along with the "Liberty medal", given to him by the National Constitutional Center in Washington, DC. His achievement? "Bringing liberty to people around the world." Here's an idea: why don't they just award him the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize?

Afghanistan is now America's longest war. Where are the people on the streets? Where are the Martin Luther Kings and the student protests? What is so different this time around? Sadly, the American people have been defeated. COINTELPRO figured largely in that as the Pathocrats applied lessons learned from the mass movements of the 1960s, which Samuel "Clash of Civilizations" Huntington described, in a report for the elitist Trilateral Commission, as "a crisis of democracy" and "stemming from an excess of democracy". June 2010 was the bloodiest month for the Imperial forces in this 9 year long war, with 104 being killed despite their overwhelming technological superiority.

Remember the hyped US offensive earlier this year against an insurgent stronghold in Helmand province? Well, it failed completely... because it was meant to. Obama's "surge" has consolidated the Afghan resistance to US occupation, so the Pentagon now has the 'market' to throw another $3 billion worth of technology into the battlefield. Of course, the top brass don't care about the human costs, not even of their own troops. They just want to take the latest toys from the arms industry for a test drive, like these ridiculous tethered surveillance blimps.

The infamous Rolling Stone article, in which NATO commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal made disparaging references to the White House administration, was sold as the reason for his sacking: the civilians were retaking control of the military. But the civilians owe their positions to the Military-Industrial Complex, so there had to be deeper reasons for McChrystal's replacement with Petraeus. The warmongers planted stories in the US media to inform Americans that McChrystal's counterinsurgency games and indiscriminate drone bombings of funerals and weddings had failed because he was too soft! As Joe Kishore explains,

In the week since the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by Petraeus, it has become clear that the shift in command is bound up with a decision to significantly step up the killing and wounding of Afghan civilians in an effort to crush the massive popular support for anti-US insurgents. A series of articles - including the original Rolling Stone article that led to McChrystal's firing - have pointed to restrictions in McChrystal's rules of engagement that somewhat limited US firepower in the name of reducing civilian casualties.

A New York Times article that appeared on the day of McChrystal's firing quoted unnamed soldiers complaining of "being handcuffed" by limits on the use of lethal force.

Paul Craig Roberts wonders if this move actually heralds the complete fusion of the civilian and military command of the Imperial forces and asks if McChrystal's replacement is really Obama's replacement:

Once the Roman senate, the legislative branch, collapsed, the caesars, the executive branch, became the captives of the military. Now with Gen. Petraeus once again moved to the fore as McChrystal's replacement in Afghanistan, we have Obama elevating Petraeus to the Republican presidential nomination in the next election. Thus has Obama replaced himself with a man who will unify the military and executive branch. [...]

Petraeus is an evolved form of general. He "won" in Iraq by paying protection money to the Sunnis who were effectively resisting the US occupation. Petraeus figured out that it was far cheaper and more efficient to put the Sunnis on the US military payroll and to pay them to stop fighting, which is how the war between the Sunnis and the Americans ended. To keep the Americans out of the ongoing large scale sectarian violence that continues to slaughter Iraqis, the US military was confined to remote bases.

Can we expect Petraeus to implement the same policy in Afghanistan? Will he buy victory by paying off the Taliban? US counterinsurgency and special ops are already funding the Taliban, something this report says everyone in Afghanistan knows; NATO and USAID staff, members of international media organisations, NGOs, Afghans themselves of course, and even advising US diplomats not privy to the inside track. It's taken nearly a decade for them to grok that this "war" is a Pentagon boardgame and that each piece is moved with the long-term goal in mind. The reason why the war is fake can be boiled down to this: the prevailing policy coming from the US is to prolong the conflict by funding, arming, training and relocating the Taliban from one end of the country to the other because the PTB want the US to stay in Afghanistan for the long term. Whoever controls Asia controls the world. The decision to rev up or tamp down the heat in Afghanistan depends on the fun and games going on elsewhere. Afghanistan was never meant to be "won" in any conventional sense of the word. Gordon Duff reminds us that it is in the mess it is in because long-term strategy intended it to be so:

The major accomplishment would be to attract extremist elements from the Islamic world, into an environment filled with weapons, training expertise and American soldiers to kill. The underlying task was to create, not a ten year war, but a 50 year War on Terror to replace the failed Cold War, a multi-generational conflict that could be controlled like turning the knob on a stove. Just as with Operation Northwoods, the Department of Defense plan to stage terror attacks to justify an invasion of Cuba in 1962 or the recent admissions of rogue Israeli operations, operations exposed by the brave admissions of Ambassador Michael Oren, this kind of war could be nurtured, managed a thousand ways.

When Obama bowed to McChrystal and agreed to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan last year, part of the deal was that US forces would begin withdrawing from the country next July. But the incoming NATO commander General David Petraeus has dismissed that deadline: it aint gonna happen next year, or the year after that, or the year after that... In the meantime, expect a lot more bloodshed as the gloves come off for the ominously named "Hitler Option" and ordinary Afghans are punished for resisting US occupation.

Siege of Iran

A US fiscal deficit of stratospheric proportions is clearly no impediment to the Pentagon war machine. The Obama administration announced that a half billion dollars is to go towards expanding the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, while another half billion has bought Mahmoud Abbas' silence following the Freedom Flotilla massacre. It is not cheap cleaning up after Israel's bloodbaths. All that excitement about Israel being raked over the coals at the United Nations resulted in Iran being punished with a fresh round of sanctions designed to effectively blockade the country and tighten the economic noose around its neck. Ron Paul is right to call this an act of war: Iran is legitimately entitled to respond militarily (and that may be the intended outcome of course). Just when it seemed like the UN Security Council was finally going to censure Israel for its slow-motion genocidal siege of Gaza, the tables were turned and the Council instead strengthened the Siege of Iran by "imposing penalties on foreign entities that sell refined petroleum to Iran or assist Iran with its domestic refining capacity." This act of war could destroy Iran's economy just as sanctions against Iraq did in the 1990s. Already BP has told its franchises not to refuel Iranian airplanes at European airports.

As eyewitnesses to the horror aboard the Freedom Flotilla continued to come forward, new video footage of the Marmara Massacre surfaced. Despite destroying nearly all equipment belonging to the activists, some video footage survived. It's interesting to compare it with the footage replayed over and over on the Zionist media. There is strong evidence to suggest that the Israeli government completely staged its version of the invasion of the Marmara: actors are seen walking through walls and bulwarks. The 'night-vision' footage of the activists masked in scarves and clubbing the 'brave' Israeli commandos appears may have been taken on a different ship altogether. Turkish forensics have confirmed that most of the fatalities were shot multiple times from close range with bullets that left unusual fragment clusters lodged inside their bodies. A survivor recounted how Israeli commandos had planted their own weapons among the activists' possessions, then filmed themselves "discovering" the cache.

Barely any mention was made in the US about the American teenager executed by Israel aboard the Mavi Marmara, while the country's only real journalist, 89 year old Helen Thomas, was effectively fired by the Zionist lobby last month when her comments for Israelis to "get the hell out of Palestine" replaced the real event with another distraction to divert Americans from Israel's latest atrocity.

It must be difficult for Israelis to fathom why more people would want to try and break the siege again. Psychopaths don't seem to understand that they run the risk, once they resort to barbaric violence as a deterrent, of having their human opponents return stronger every time. A crew of about 50 women from Lebanon were all set to sail for Gaza in late June until the Lebanese government stepped in, following Israeli threats to blow them out of the water. Because the all-female crew, largely made up of nuns and members of religious charitable organisations, are cunningly disguised terrorists, naturally. People travelling with humanitarian convoys in future are reminded to leave their bank cards at home; Israelis have been maxing out their stolen cards.

As it became apparent that the Israeli government had only announced an easing of the blockade on Gaza for western public consumption (in fact, it didn't take long for Netanyahu to declare that the blockade would be strengthened), the EU turned the screw on Iran with even more sanctions against ordinary Iranian people, specifically targeting trade, finance, transport, Iranian banks and key energy sectors. Chossudovsky asks if this "turns Iran into a sitting duck," and whether this is "a green light for Israel to attack"? This certainly represents an escalation, but Israel doesn't wait for the lights to turn green. It shoots first, knowing that its US protectorate has its back every time. Iraq was a sitting duck for the US Axis (in the beginning at least, until it was forced to buy the Iraqi resistance). But Iran will be a whole other experience, regardless of its success in obtaining defensive S300 missiles from Russia. No amount of pre-war analysis or Pentagon game theory will successfully predict this outcome. Once Israel makes the first move, all bets are off. Saudi Arabia handed Israel some rope when it announced that a deal with the US State Department had been made whereby it will stand down its air force when Israeli jets commence bombing raids. In contrast, Turkey has closed its airspace to Israeli flights and given Israel three options: "They will either apologise or acknowledge an international, impartial inquiry and its conclusion. Otherwise, our diplomatic ties will be cut off." Israel's apparent answer was an attempted assassination of Prime Minister Erdogan, who has been targeted by the Mossad, which the Turkish government suspects of involvement in the PKK's terrorist attacks on Turkish soil immediately prior to the Flotilla Massacre. On June 19, the Egyptian government gave the all clear for a fleet of 12 US and Israeli warships to pass through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, a move that forced the Iranians to indefinitely delay sending two aid ships to Gaza.

Proof that Israel has tightened it's grip on Gaza came late June as the outdoor prison descended into complete darkness when it's last remaining generator completely ran out of fuel. Their only power plant was destroyed four years ago when Israeli jets bombed it out of commission. While Netanyahu was in Washington DC for an Oval Office photo-shoot that one commentator described as "so artfully choreographed to convey rediscovered mutual respect" but the real purpose of which was for Bibi to tell Barack how it's going to be from now until mid-term elections in November, his evil twin Avigdor Lieberman announced (via English-language Jerusalem Post) Israel's Final Solution for the Palestinians: they are to be stripped of their Israeli citizenship and sent to concentration camps aka the Occupied Territories for the crimes of "inciting against Israel, glorifying murder, stigmatising Israel in international forums, boycotting Israeli goods and mounting legal offensives against Israeli officials." All 1.3 million of them. How close to "ein volk, ein reich, ein führer" can Israel get? 87 out of 100 US Senators immediately wrote to Obama to give their approval to Israel's "right to self-defense."

Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren told Haaretz in June that infamous spy Jonathan Pollard was not on the Mossad payroll when he was passing US documents along to the Soviet Union: instead he was working for "a rogue Israeli intelligence agency." Could this have been a reference to the Secret Team? This shadowy group of high-level operatives working for the 'High Cabal' is known to have effectively created 'a CIA within the CIA', so it stands to reason that it has done likewise within the Mossad and elsewhere, enabling them to reach down into and across the global intelligence network, which ultimately answers to this small 'super-agency.'

From the Secret Team with love

This makes us wonder how much of the spy vs spy games are the Secret Team running interference as they move the chess pieces under cover of distraction. The day after a G8 meeting in Canada at which Russian President Medvedev again brought up the creation of a new international monetary control system in which "additional reserve currencies" would replace the US dollar's stranglehold of global finance, and just three days after the momentous 'Cheeseburger summit' at which Presidents Obama and Medvedev reaffirmed their commitment to significantly reduce their countries' respective nuclear arsenals, the American media broke out in another fit of hysteria over the indictment of 10 people accused of spying on behalf of Russia in the US. They were not actually charged with espionage but with "failing to register as agents of a foreign government." Specifically, they were accused of "trying to seek out and develop ties and friendships in policy circles of the United States and send back reports." That sounds to us like the kind of legitimate activity that goes on everyday in capitals the world over - especially in Washington, DC where policy-making is for sale to the highest bidder and its government is effectively run by the foreign agents of multinational corporations (and Israel).

Some of the charges brought against the 'spies' were specious to say the least. One was Vicky Pelaez, an American columnist for the Spanish-language El Diario newspaper for more than 20 years. Was she even aware that her husband of 30 years was a Russian spy? It's interesting that her 'political' activities mark her out as an 'enemy of the state' in the US these days:

In her column, Vicky Pelaez discusses social issues and has taken a stand as a supporter of socialist governments in Latin America, including Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, and against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her articles also advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples and undocumented immigrants in the U.S. while criticizing the foreign policies of the U.S. in Latin America.

Because of her political ideas and activism, most of Pelaez friends and supporters believe that she is the subject of political persecution, that she is completely innocent.

The "evidence" against another 'spy', Anna Chapman, the supposed "femme fatale" whose life story was splashed all over the media, possibly reveals the invisible hand in this set-up:

Another one of the arrested individuals, Anna Chapman, was said to have "met with an individual purporting to be a Russian Government official in Manhattan, New York, at which she received a fraudulent passport," according to the official criminal report.

Chapman, however, immediately went to the local police and gave them the passport.

CNN reported that Chapman never "fulfilled the mission" of delivering the fraudulent passport that the undercover FBI agent gave to her.

"She met an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian who set up an urgent meeting asking her to deliver a passport," reported Deborah Feyerick, a commentator with CNN. "This was her first person-to-person mission, but it [the passport delivery] never happened."

Just like we've seen with the patsies entrapped by the FBI in order to build a perception of "domestic terrorism" in the US' fake War on Terror™, again we see people selected and tracked for future use, pawns in the real spy game that produces smoke and mirrors to titillate the masses and apply pressure upon political figures to 'make the correct choice.' Decoded messages sent in invisible ink, video surveillance, suspects swapping identical orange bags on the street, wads of cash buried in fields... it sure sounds like they had fun playing up to the public perception of what spies get up to! The Russian media could see through the charade though:

[...] there are reports of a decrypted message from Moscow to two of the suspects, apparently reminding them that they were sent to the United States for "long-term service."

"Your education, bank accounts, car, house, etc. - all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in the US and send intels back to center," the alleged document reads.

Such a message is strange to say the least. To suggest that these individuals, who allegedly received extensive training, needed a reminder from their handlers of their mission sounds more like poorly scripted fiction than true espionage. Even a civilian arm-chair observer can understand the inherent risk of dispatching a letter - even coded - that basically outlines the entire mission, not to mention outing the agents.

The Russian government immediately suspected third party involvement, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was in Jerusalem at the time (interestingly enough), saying, "The timing [...] was chosen with particular sophistication." Another, Nikolai Kovalyov, a former director of the FSB, said, "I think that certain technicians are trying to infect the U.S. president's reset program with some destructive virus." Indeed, the timing strongly suggests that Obama and Medvedev were blindsided by a third party, one with significant influence within the US government and which is weary of a cosy US-Russian relationship. Both administrations played it down while admitting everything: the White House claimed foreknowledge that the FBI was set to pounce and the Kremlin later accepted that these 'illegals' (so called because they were neither government nor diplomatic staff) were Russian citizens. They clearly want to bury this story as quickly as possible. As we go to press, Russia has agreed a 'spy swap deal' with the US in which the ten accused have been exchanged for four US spies jailed by Russia. The whole episode is really bizarre!

The whole incident is a throwback to the Cold War era in more ways than one. Eisenhower's attempt to reach out to Khrushchev in the 1950s was shot down by the sabotage of a U2 spy plane over Russia, an interjection that killed a peace conference at which the two leaders anticipated bringing the Cold War to an end. Eisenhower had no choice but to accept responsibility for the Secret Team's U2 stunt; Khrushchev had no choice but to condemn US espionage, even though he knew Eisenhower had been set up by a rogue element within the CIA.

Many have noted that today's story reads like a movie script - a prescient analogy given that it was, in all probability, scripted from start to finish and released to drive a wedge between the US and Russia just as they are getting ready to ratify the START arms reduction treaty. Curiously, there have been numerous spy rings exposed in the US in recent years involving real matters of national security but they never receive media attention because the foreign government these agents work for is Israel. The strongest message we see coming through this is that Russian spies are bad because they "infiltrate our society", but Israeli spies are friendly despite doing exactly that and some; they took over and now control US society.

Perhaps some of the events running in the background can shed some light on this weird spy scandal. In May a real spy, Gennady Sipachev, was sentenced for treason in Russia after he was found guilty of handing over top secret Russian military maps to the US Defense Department. Curiously this was the first time such an incident had been publicised in years, coming as it did on the back of numerous cases involving American spies in Russia and just before the first installment of US Patriot missiles arrived in Poland - supposedly to defend eastern Poles against an Iranian attack (yeah right!). As we go to press, Poland has agreed to extradite an Israeli Mossad agent to Germany where he is wanted for involvement in the Dubai hit on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Both countries are obedient "friends" of Israel, but the images showing Uri Brodsky under heavily armed guards in Poland betray a deep mistrust of Israel and an understanding by the Polish authorities that the Mossad is psychologically and physically capable of storming the courtroom to rescue its man.

Fun and Games in Kyrgyzstan

Kurmanbek Bakiyev came to power in Kyrgyzstan during the so-called 'Tulip Revolution' in 2005 on the promise of deconstructing Askar Akayev's corrupt regime. When he turned out no different, the people threw out his government in April this year. An interim government has been given a mandate to rule until elections in October. But the successful referendum late June nearly didn't happen after violence exploded in the Ferghana Valley region where Kyrgyztan meets Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The trickle of reports became a flood as international human rights groups and western media reported "ethnic clashes" between the minority Uzbeks and majority Kyrgyz population. It's hard to know whether or not the figures were being exaggerated or downplayed. The leader of the interim government, Roza Otunbayeva is herself a longtime senior political figure in Bishkek, having served as foreign minister, ambassador to Washington, and an ally of Bakiyev during the Tulip Revolution. She has chastised the western media for focusing on the ethnic dimension to the violence, in which as many as 2,000 people have been killed and some 400,000 Uzbeks - 8% of Kyrgyzstan's population - have been cleared out of the cities of Osh and Jalalabad. Refugees are massed along the border with Uzbekistan, but that country's tyrant, Islam Karimov, sealed the crossings once the first 100,000 escaped.

While it's clear that highly organised assaults on civilians were carried out amidst the mindless rampages of mobs armed with metal bars and baseball bats, it's not clear who was instigating it. Kyrgyz residents of Osh blame ethnic Uzbeks for starting the carnage by attacking students and Kyrgyz women, after which ethnic Kyrgyz from the surrounding area invaded the city in revenge. Uzbek survivors gave a very different account: beginning June 10, armoured personnel carriers and several hundred young Kyrgyz men armed with Kalashnikovs and wearing military uniforms, ransacked Uzbek neighbourhoods, methodically shooting, looting then setting houses alight. The only consistent reports are of heavily armed gunmen whose identities remain unknown. The interim government has labeled them "militants" but the fact that it could not rely on its military or police to confront them suggests a rogue element within Kyrgyzstan - "shadowy nationalist forces", as suggested here - with outside funding and coordination. In any event, Otunbayeva was so alarmed by the assaults that she asked Russia to send troops down to quell the situation. Perhaps weary of doing anything to jeopardise warming relations with the Obama administration, Russia turned down the offer, although it did send a small contingent to bolster its military base at Kant in the north of the country. In contrast, no request for military aid was made to the Pentagon. The mayor of Jalalabad told reporters that they were supporters of Bakiyev, and that they attacked both Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in order to incite broader ethnic violence and perhaps sow the seeds for Bakiyev's return to power in the future. The country's new leadership blames Bakiyev and his son Maxim for financing the ethnic slaughter and have requested his extradition from the UK, where he was arrested on Kyrgyz tax fraud charges the moment he stepped off the plane from Latvia. They also published an audio recording of a conversation from May in which a man said to be Bakiyev is heard discussing with a male relative his plan to foment chaos.

The Bakiyevs may well play a role in this, but there are other factors at play here. Like all the other former Soviet Republics, Kyrgyzstan was gutted by vulture capitalists during the 1990s and its per capita income halved. The country has been turned into a transit point for heroin produced in US-occupied Afghanistan en route to Russia and Europe. In place of a functioning state, Kyrgyzstan has become a network of trafficking routes controlled by narco-barons and their extended families. It is also rich in minerals and strategically sandwiched between China, Afghanistan and Russia. It is also the only country where both Russia and the US have military bases. The US base at Manas, outside Bishkek in the north, is a key hub for US air refuelling tanker planes and for the giant transport planes that ferry US troops and supplies to and from Afghanistan. Bakiyev and his family, particularly his son Maxim, "benefited enormously from padded contracts paid by the US government for servicing the Manas airbase." The new government has bravely threatened to revoke the US lease on its facility at Manas if Obama doesn't lean on the British government to extradite Maxim.

The day after Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's cosy cheeseburger summit in Washington, DC, the Russian government made its move. Apparently its refusal to send troops to southern Kyrgyzstan when trouble broke out was just a ruse to buy some time and avoid falling into a possible trap. Now Moscow announced plans to build a second base in either of the two cities paralysed by violence, Osh or Jalalabad. Six days prior to this, Medvedev had said that the US base should not become a permanent fixture. Three days later the Russian 'spy scandal' broke in the US. Curiously, The Telegraph cited Russian analysts as saying that the reason for the Russian reversal to send troops into the affected area - and on a permanent basis - was because Russian military intelligence had become convinced that Russian influence in the region "is under threat from an unnamed 'third force.'"

Hmmm, we wonder who or what that could be?...

We'll leave you to consider some food for thought in a comment left here (h/t CrazyorNot)

Some C Theorists would say that Langley and others are behind this...

After all it was the Langley boys who supplied the Solidarity movement in Poland with two way radios to coordinate strikes across the country and assist in bringing about the collapse of the USSR. Soaking up Russia's resources with infighting and quelling civil unrest has long been on the radar of the boys from Virginia. Remember that Brzezinski funded the Mujahideen in order to entice Russia southwards into a long futile conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Undermining and destablising nations that do not foster kindred values is always on the table.

That is not to say riots in Tehran (for example) do not happen without "assistance". Sure there are ethnic or political differences all over. What is key is the prominence these events are given in the media. Like the children's battleship game, either a "hit" or "miss" gets recorded and a flurry of stories swarm the airwaves. If Senators are signing off tax dollars then it has to be recorded officially or otherwise that the money was well spent.

Don't take my word for it. Mr Oliver Stone's movie South of the Border will be available to all shortly highlighting interference in Latin politics. But just on a logical level, 5000 highly trained people - mostly graduates of military intelligence, espionage, counterinsurgency and generally gaining advantage for the USA by means other than 'diplomacy' - have to do something all day, every day, year in and year out. They don't make coffee and just chat about it; they are actively out swinging the game (hi boys). And for ventures that don't leave a paper trail all the way home, drugs are the unmarked currency of choice. Pay your hitmen in heroin and they are likely to keep quiet with jail time and a drug cartel breathing down their necks.

It all becomes a bit of a no brainer when you look at the motives...

lt's an insane world.

WikiLeaks Plugged?

We were disgusted, but ultimately not surprised, to learn that the source of the brutally effective WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video released in March, was betrayed by an informant late May. Army Specialist Bradley Manning, aged 22, gradually becoming disabused of the brainwashing drilled into him all his life, sent the video files along with who-knows-what-else to the WikiLeaks website. The official line is that Manning contacted one Adrian Lamo out of the blue sometime in late May. Adrian Lamo isn't just anybody; he's a "former" hacker who once got his teenage kicks from creeping people out by hacking their systems and is now "reformed" and apparently working as an informant for the US government. Manning supposedly read a May 20 profile of Lamo in Wired.com and "thought he might appreciate what he had done." That is how it got spun into Manning "boasting" to Lamo about having leaked the Collateral Murder video to Assange's team. This older profile of Lamo in Wired.com strongly suggests Lamo may be a psychopath. Here's a snippet:

Lamo's unwritten code of ethics includes some disturbing fine print. If he feels that a store clerk has been surly, for instance, he's not above picking through dumpsters for that employee's personal information. Three years ago, when Lamo had a falling-out with several contributors on Observers.net, an anti-AOL site, he took revenge by appropriating the offenders' online identities. His ex-girlfriend, who requested that her name be withheld, has also accused him of stalking her. "Every time I moved, he'd send an anonymous email," she remembers. "Sometimes he'd include my unlisted phone number, which nobody else had. He made a point of showing that he knew where I was." The court issued a restraining order against Lamo, following a complaint in which his then-girlfriend described an ongoing pattern of harassment and abuse. "He carried a stun gun, which he used on me," she recalls. "He was very controlling. He wanted to know where I was constantly. After we stopped talking, he would hack into the phone company's service center and change my phone services."

In 2002 Lamo spent several months playing on Lexis-Nexis via the New York Times' op-ed database, listing himself as a contributor in order to dig for personal information on other hackers and journalists who had written critically about his "work" as a hacker. Running up a bill of $300,000 on behalf of the newspaper, which pressed charges following an investigation, he eventually cut a deal with the FBI by entering a plea bargain in 2003. Saddled with up to $70,000 in fines, the likely scenario is that Lamo was 'turned' and recently agreed to partake in the sting operation against Private Bradley Manning (who was probably on a short-list of suspects by this time) then set about befriending the soldier. Manning was apparently endeared to Lamo because of the recent Wired.com profile on Lamo, but had he known of the hacker's history, he might have been aware of Lamo's abilities to manipulate others. Lamo is no "GrayHat" - he's a snitch of the first degree and (probably) a psychopath that looks out for none but itself. He told the Washington Post that he sold Manning out "in the name of national security" while crying crocodile tears about how difficult it was for him to rat on the brave soldier. "He just wanted somebody to talk to, somebody he could confide in, and I wish to God he had left it to that instead of going on to discuss classified material with me." Horse hockey! Lamo was clearly pulling the information from Manning because despite knowing that Manning was about to be arrested (based on their online conversations which he had already turned over to his handlers at the Army Criminal Investigation Division), he asked the young soldier the day before his arrest: "What would you do if your role [with] Wikileaks seemed in danger of being blown?" This 22 year old Army specialist had opened his heart to someone he thought was a kindred spirit, but who was in fact an informant pumping him for every last bit of info he could get before betraying him.

Whatever the nature of Wired.com's relationship with Lamo, it's clear that the news outlet has become a sort of platform for the informant (or the agents behind him: transcripts of Manning's conversations with Lamo were also leaked to Wired.com). In it's recent profile of him, Wired.com reported that Lamo was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a diagnostic label that has come to portray psychopaths as unfortunate victims wronged by a world that doesn't understand them. While there may well be essentially normal people who have autistic traits resulting from brain-chemical imbalances and can be said to genuinely suffer from Asperger's (and Lamo's history with drugs certainly fits the bill), Lamo's actions past and present suggest that this label masks his true underlying pathology. He admits himself that, "If, in fact, the diagnosis is accurate, it had zip to do with my actions at that time." If Asperger's is a reasonably correct diagnosis of Lamo, it is possible that he was himself manipulated into the role of snitch by Pentagon officials determined to discover the mole responsible for leaking the video. Along this vein, the Wired.com profile published May 20 assisted Lamo in setting up his 'serendipitous' online meeting with Manning and provided necessary cover so that others would look favourably on his actions and associate him with that other well-known hacker diagnosed with Asperger's: Gary McKinnon. There's a fundamental difference in the moral consequences of their actions however: McKinnon came across sensitive information that was walled off from public knowledge "for reasons of national security" - and was therefore working against the National Security State (which is why it has pursued him relentlessly ever since) - Lamo is working for that same psychopathic apparatus "in the name of national security" and his actions therefore go against the public's interest.

The Pentagon has now turned its sights on Julian Assange, owner of WikiLeaks. Another video allegedly showing strikes by F-18 and B1 planes near Garani in Afghanistan which killed 147 civilians is set to be released online any day now. If Assange is genuinely on the run and not part of some Protocol 12 operation, then it is surely only a matter of time before he is brought in on trumped up charges, no matter if he is hiding in Sweden, Iceland or anywhere else with healthy regimes protecting whistleblowers. The Pentagon is the metal heart of the Empire and if he is not voluntarily handed over, the CIA will not have to exert much effort to kidnap him or arrange an "accident." The unfortunate Bradley Manning is currently being held in Kuwait (a US outlet for "extraordinary rendition") charged with violations of the US Espionage Act. So much for freedom of information under an Obama administration. The trigger happy Apache crew remain uncharged but this young man's conscientious decision to expose a snippet of the barbarity from the Occupation of Iraq (that Obama promised the American people he would end) is set to lock him away for decades.

Earthquakes

June 10: Magnitude 6.0 - Vanuatu
June 12: Magnitude 7.5 - Nicobar Islands, Indian Ocean
June 13: Magnitude 6.1 - Near East Coast of Honshu, Japan
June 15: Magnitude 7.0 - Near North Coast of Papua, Indonesia
June 15: Magnitude 5.7 - Southern California, US
June 15: Magnitude 6.4 - Near North Coast of Papua, Indonesia
June 15: Magnitude 5.4 strikes directly below Hualien, Taiwan
June 16: Magnitude 6.6 - Near North Coast of Papua, Indonesia
June 16: Magnitude 5.4 - Banda Sea, East Timor
June 16: Magnitude 4.1 - Sweden
June 17: Magnitude 6.0 - Kermadec Islands
June 17: Magnitude 4.2 - Washington, US
June 23: Magnitude 5.0 - Ontario/ Quebec Border, Canada
June 24: Magnitude 6.1 - New Britain Region, Papua New Guinea
June 26: Magnitude 6.7 - Solomon Islands
June 29: Magnitude 3.3 & Magnitude 2.2 - Arkansas, US
June 30: Magnitude 6.2 - Oaxaca, Mexico
June 30: Magnitude 6.3 - South of Fiji Islands
July 2: Magnitude 6.3 - Vanuatu
July 4: Magnitude 6.4 - Near East Coast of Honshu, Japan
July 7: Magnitude 5.4 - Southern California
July 10: Magnitude 6.2 - South of Mariana Islands

Volcanoes

Klyuchevskaya Volcano, Kamchatka, Russia: the highest and most active volcano on Kamchatka released a faint plume of volcanic ash in early June.
Shiveluch Volcano, Kamchatka, Russia: currently spewing plumes of ash up to a height of more than 6 kilometers (3.7 miles).
Karymsky Volcano, Kamchatka, Russia: has been spurting ash up to 3.7 miles into the atmosphere. 180 earthquakes recorded within 24 hours in early July.
Askja Volcano, Iceland: eruption could be imminent as seismic activity increases. Shares the same tectonic plate as Eyjafjallajokull. For the past few centuries it has erupted every 40 years or so. Its last eruption was in 1961.
Gorely Volcano, Kamchatka, Russia: began spewing ash plume for 100km in June after decades in dormancy
Mount Ulawun, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea: has been emitting vapour over the last few weeks; strong possibility of an eruption.
Nevado del Huila Volcano, Colombia: in June the government raised the alert code to orange after an increased level of volcanic activity was detected.
Mount Paektu, China: last volcanic eruption was in 1903, but monitors said it is showing signs of erupting "at any time."
Mount Sakurajima, Japan: broke its own record of 548 eruptions last year by reaching 550 already this year; volcanic activity is expected to intensify.
Mount Longonot, Kenya: long considered dormant, recent satellite images indicate that the mountain has grown in elevation by several inches, a tell-tale sign of increased volcanic activity caused by rising magma.

Dark Skies

© AP Photo/Eric GayThe rising Rio Grande is seen under International Bridge No. 1 in Laredo, Texas, early Thursday July 8, 2010. The bridge also known as Gateway to the Americas connecting Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico is closed due to the rising water.

As Europe and North America finally shake off winter and bask in midsummer heatwaves, Australia has entered deep winter earlier than usual with widespread snowfall and plunging temperatures making June one of the coldest in living memory. The number of reports we received this past month of freakish storms and flash floods is alarming. The following is only a sample of the deluges and damage brought on, we suspect, by the vast increase in evaporation taking place in our oceans. 42 people were reported killed, but hundreds more are missing and around 115,000 homeless in Brazil after floods submerged the cities of Alagoas and Pernambuco in the northeast of the country. Entire villages were swept away and bodies washed up on beaches and riverbanks. The tragic thing for these people is that the same thing happened there last year. Hurricane Alex may have skirted south of the mess in the Gulf but it thrashed Monterrey in northern Mexico, killing at least 12 people in the state of Nuevo Leon and caused the Rio Grande rise dramatically, forcing the closure of border crossings in this region fraught by increasing violence and flooding hundreds of thousands of homes on both sides of the border:

Rain, hail, thunder and lightning set off fires and floods in Calgary, Canada on June 22, while another powerful storm swamped parts of Saskatchewan under several feet of water two days later because the deluge was so intense that the storm sewer system was not able to drain the water fast enough. Vehicles were carried down the streets of Saskatoon by the rising water levels as eighty to 100 millimetres of rain fell on the city during a three-hour period. A powerful storm of flooded parts of Washington state early June, where the combination of severe cold, high winds and excessive rains this year have forced the governor to request farm disaster assistance from the federal government. A flash flood in Arkansas on June 11 swept away at least 16 people from a remote camping site as nearly 8 inches of rain fell overnight. The nearby river rose at a rate of 8 feet per hour and flooded the area so quickly and with such force that trees were actually flattened by the water. Others had bare spots where the water apparently wiped the bark clean from their trunks. This rate of precipitation was topped in Oklahoma City where 10 inches of rain fell over an 8 hour period three days later, overwhelming the city's renowned storm drainage system. In early June a tornado unleashed a "war zone" of destruction, destroying homes as a cluster of intense storms killed at least seven people in Ohio and plowed through central Illinois. June 17 saw 36 tornadoes touch down in Minnesota, exceeding the 1992 state record of 27 sightings in one day. It's amazing that only three people were killed because hundreds of homes and buildings were destroyed across the state. By the following week another wave of severe storms crashed through the Midwest, bringing flash floods and more tornadoes to parts of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Tornadoes are expected in many parts of the US at this time of year but the one that tore through Connecticut's largest city last month was a rare occurrence.

Torrential rain caused widespread flooding across northern Spain as rivers burst their banks at a time of year that normally brings drought. The following week flash floods killed at least 15 people in southern France as 80 millimetres (seven inches) of rain fell within 12 hours in the Côte D'Azur region. The water rose so quickly that people didn't have time to seek higher ground and were forced to wait on the roofs of their homes where they watched vehicles floating away in the flood currents. Persistent heavy rain combined with meltwater from the Tibetan Plateau to drown at least 400 people in south China and left around 100,000 more homeless. Deadly landslides followed heavy downpours in Sichuan Province, China, where the side of a mountain came down on construction workers and killed 23 of them. Another 42 people were killed by landslides which followed flash flooding in Bangladesh on June 15.

There have been a cluster of reports of 'sinkholes' appearing in the ground this past month. Firstly in China, where they have been manifesting at diverse locations for over two months now:

The latest known sinkhole formed on June 4, in the middle of a freeway in Zhejiang Province on the nation's eastern coast. The sinkhole measured 20 feet deep and 27 feet wide.

The hole occurred when a light truck drove over the spot. The truck rolled over when its rear wheels were caught at the edge of the hole. The slightly injured driver climbed out and stopped traffic when he saw the giant hole. [...]

Later the same day, about 300 miles west in Nanchang City, capital Jiangxi Province, a moving car was trapped when a hole about the size of the car suddenly opened up on a main road.

On June 3, four huge sinkholes opened up in Guangxi Province where a torrential storm was raging.

That last datum might suggest that they are related to torrential rainfall. All that rain has to go somewhere after all, so these pits spontaneously opening up could be part of nature's storm drainage system! Or these could just be unusually large pot-holes? But if you recall the perfect hole-puncher of a pit that swallowed buildings in Guatemala City in last month's Connecting the Dots, it's clear that something out of the ordinary is happening here. That one happened at the height of a severe tropical storm, but for the latest bizarre occurrence of the ground literally opening up, this time in Malaysia on June 30, the weather was fine. Officials have no idea what caused the five meter wide crevice to appear... or where the ground that was there before went to! But rest assured, they're looking into it:

Chasm: The five metre wide hole mysteriously opened in a road in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, last night.

Solar climate change

Do you recall, dear readers, the hype surrounding some obscure mad scientists' theory called 'man-made global warming'? It went something like this: humankind became too greedy and as a result ate too much beef and had too much freedom to travel. This increased atmospheric CO2 levels so much that it heated the entire planet causing all the glaciers and the poles to melt, the seas to rise and the cities to become inundated with seawater. Well, except that didn't happen because the elites successfully intervened by convincing people to become vegetarians and stay at home to watch TV. Anyway, another chunk of that propaganda, er... theory, fell away recently with the news that the Antarctic sea ice extent has reached its third highest in the satellite record. Which basically means that it's colder than usual at the South Pole this year.

What is going on with our sun? The relative paucity of sunspots prompted NASA physicist David Hathaway to say of the sun, "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory." This report in the New Scientist informs us that

"Sunspots and other clues indicate that the sun's magnetic activity is diminishing, and that the sun may even be shrinking. Together the results hint that something profound is happening inside the sun. The big question is what? [...]

The answer lies in the behaviour of two vast conveyor belts of gas that endlessly cycle material and magnetism through the sun's interior and out across the surface. On average it takes 40 years for the conveyor belts to complete a circuit.

When Hathaway's team looked over the observations to find out where their models had gone wrong, they noticed that the conveyor-belt flows of gas across the sun's surface have been speeding up since 2004.

The circulation deep within the sun tells a different story. Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, have used observations of surface disturbances, caused by the solar equivalent of seismic waves, to infer what conditions are like within the sun. Analysing data from 2009, they found that while the surface flows had sped up, the internal ones had slowed to a crawl."

Like the planets, the sun also rotates, though not as a single body - it spins differentially, rotating faster at its equator than at its poles. As we have outlined elsewhere, some cosmic force (or combination of forces) appears to be slowing down the rotation of our planet slightly, enough to weaken the magnetic field and open up the planet. This is releasing methane in vast quantities, increasing volcanic activity and producing more earthquakes. The next question to consider is whether this same force is also slowing down the sun's rotation? It would certainly explain its behavioural changes. What is the hidden mechanism of the solar system that can affect the rotation of celestial bodies in this way, particularly one as large as the sun? Something Wicked This Way Comes. The above New Scientist article is just one of many we have noticed creeping into the field recently. There seems to be a big push underway to prepare people for major disturbances that will be explained as having originated from the sun:

NASA warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation

Daily Telegraph
Tuesday, 15 June 2010

© Unknown
Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm", Nasa has warned.

National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes "from a deep slumber" sometime around 2013.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightning" and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. [...]

"We know it is coming but we don't know how bad it is going to be," Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, told The Daily Telegraph in an interview. [...]

While scientists have previously told of the dangers of the storm, Dr Fisher's comments are the most comprehensive warnings from Nasa to date.

Geomagnetic storms from the sun may well increase in the years ahead and cause havoc with terran systems, but that misses the point that the source of these interruptions is not the sun itself but the cosmic factor that is causing the sun to behave in this way. Like the shadows in Plato's Cave, people are going to be focused on the sun, oblivious to the storm coming from deep space.

Again this month the Universe supplied countless signs of increased cometary interaction with our planet. Eyewitnesses in Cuba describe seeing a "huge white fireball" traverse the night sky over Cuba on the night of June 11, leaving behind a "bright greenish white trail" and then exploding. The following morning a "white ball of fire" struck a farm in Canada, leaving a burnt patch of hay in a field. It would have torched the dry field if the farmer hadn't witnessed the event and put the fire out with his pitchfork. The local fire department investigated and reported that "We found some stuff there but we don't know what it is... It's interesting." On June 19 a farm hand in Brazil saw and heard a fireball explode and break into pieces during daytime. One of the meteorites landed 15 meters from where he was standing!

He walked over to the spot and picked up a 600 gram meteorite that had just fallen from the sky. He saw others fall at about the same time nearby but hasn't been able to find them yet. He commented that the air had a "strong smell of iron".

A very bright fireball (mag -13) exploded high above Denver, Colorado on the night of June 23. Initially thought to be part of the June Lyrid meteor shower, its speed suggested otherwise. The following night people from all across the US northeast - the Washington metropolitan area to Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut and West Virginia - were treated to a dazzling display from a meteor.

"It was a very bright object," said Chris Wood, who saw it from the deck of a house in Potomac. "It was so bright that the trees cast shadows" in its light, he said.

"It just kept going until it was past the horizon," he added.

Witnesses described it as having a green tail and a yellow fireball head. It travelled from east to west, following a similar trajectory to another spectacular fireball almost exactly one year ago on July 6, 2009. A video camera in York, Pennsylvania that captured last year's event caught this year's too. The meteor turned night into day for about 5 seconds before exploding in a huge flash of blue light. Witnesses in Lancaster, Pennsylvania are certain that it came to ground somewhere nearby. On July 4 a "smouldering chunk of space rock", presumably a meteorite, punctured the Smalls' driveway in Decatur, Georgia .

While up to a billion people were absorbed in the football World Cup taking place in South Africa, a "giant fiery ball moving at high speed" left a red trail in the night sky over Cape Town on June 25.

Xiaoshan airport in the city of Hangzhou was shut down in dramatic fashion on the night of June 30 after air traffic controllers allegedly spotted an "incoming UFO" on their radar systems. The closure followed reports of a "comet-like fireball" over the city earlier that day. Chinese authorities appeared to go into damage control, saying that the UFO "had a military connection."

Also on June 30 the following spectacular footage was filmed over the city of Sensey in Kazakhstan:

This event appears to have been mentioned in passing in the above report about the Chinese "military connection" to the UFO:

Another official daily, Global Times reported that "a UFO trailed by a fan-shaped white light appeared last Wednesday in Urumqi, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region."

It was later identified as debris from an intercontinental missile launched by the US, Song Huagang, secretary general of the Xinjiang Astronomy Society said.

Similar footage of a rocket was filmed over Kopeysk in southern Russia, just over the border from Kazakhstan, last December:

Whether these are US ICBMs being launched or, as seems more likely given their locations, Russian rockets like the one that produced a weird spiral effect off the coast of Norway during the same week last December, what makes them so dramatic is the interaction of their exhaust with comet dust in the upper atmosphere, causing the trails to dissipate slowly as if suspended in a denser atmospheric solution than normal.

Another tell-tale sign of this is noctilucent clouds, which appear when sunlight is reflected off these very high-altitude "clouds" long after sunset. They have recently been appearing over Europe as far south as France. We leave you this month with a sample of their beautiful silvery trails on the night sky.

Reader Comments

rkt9 · 2010-07-13T02:07:01Z

WOWIE ZOWIE !

Goodness Gracious, quite a comprehensive article, who puts all this together, it took me hours to get through it. Actually I just skimmed through much of the last half.

Interesting about the elusive vandals in Toronto, must be some way to expose them in the future.

The oil disaster, wow great stories there, can even find that on the mainstream lefty sites.

Sad there are no commenters on most of these stories.

Third_Density_Learner · 2010-07-13T08:50:37Z

UFO spirals

Don't forget the "UFO spiral" seen from most parts of eastern Australia back in June. It is hard to believe in the rocket theory given the location.

nick-ynysmon · 2010-07-13T16:11:31Z

an excellent articlde but....

why oh why are you always so obsessed with psychopathy? there truly are many psychopaths in society, but you seem utterly fixated by them. as though every other person in some postion of power is a psychopath. This I strongly disagree with. there is no evidence of this, short of a clinical examination of someone, it is I assume impossible to say whether someone in the public eye has this medical disorder, however badly they may behave.
It spoils your articles to have this epithet of psychopath used against someone who one may say is of the elite. Why not simply deluded, personality disordered, or quite simply, selfish and evil which I think best fits many of those you so cleverly write about. Your article is excellent , but i would prefer to see these people simply seen as selfish, brainwashed maybe, deluded, certainly, and in some cases plain evil. Calling them all psychopaths well......
In the end it all comes down to where the focus of consciousness is in the individual, do they see only the surface of the ground they walk on or do they strive to see the glory of the stars? Self love or the love of others?

ocean59 · 2010-07-13T17:14:09Z

Not all adjectives are epithets.

Psychopathy is largely defined by a person's behaviors. I would recommend the following article as an introduction as to why the identification of (and collecting information about) psychopathy is crucial at this time:

[Link]

Also see the following:

[Link][Link][Link]

Woodsman · 2010-07-14T22:44:47Z

A rose by any other name. . .

-Except, that does a disservice to the flower.

"Psychopath" is an excellent label and it isn't used often enough. The idea needs to be well established in everybody's minds because it is one of the top control mechanisms used to affect and shape the human experience for the last few thousand years.

The world shrinks from the notion that all people don't have souls; that there could exist unfeeling predators in high seats of power who feed on the misery of those around them. It has been baked into human programming that when one is abused the "correct" course of action is to, "Turn the Other Cheek," to "Forgive and Forget" and to suffer quietly like Jesus on his cross. Our culture hides from the word "Psychopath", hides from the very idea.

But the hard and fast reality of the psychopath finally makes sense of our world, and yes, at first it is a frightening reality which one might well wish would go away. Perhaps this is why you would rather there not be monsters out there, but simply misunderstood souls, "deluded, personality disordered, or quite simply, selfish and evil". -Because even a magical word like "Evil" is far less worrisome than the idea of sharks wearing human skins. Even Darth Vader could be saved after all, if only we tried hard enough to love and understand him.

But sharks there are. Both genetic, and programmed, and until they are named and observed without trying to explain away their behavior by projecting our own feelings and motivations upon them, we will not have a chance to free ourselves of their influence. The choice will not even be available until we understand the nature of the problem.

So, yes, the word creates a knee-jerk emotional reaction, people shrink from the very idea, and that is why it must be repeated.

"Psychopath."

System · 2010-07-13T22:43:24Z

Limited hangout spy swap...

Quote from the opening paragraphs:

"...and wonder who primed the 'Russian Spy Scandal' just as US-Russian relations were "reset".

Anna Chapman? aka Anna the Jackal; British intel asset

Anna Chapman being highly trained in sexual entrapment on Wall Street for naked short selling of BP prior to the disaster. This rig was sabotaged; check the cement bond log. You can't, the bond log wasn't done.

This is being event arbitraged out of the City of London. The Americans and Russians are natural allies and there are powerful forces within these respective countries that have had enough of this British (Dope. Inc.) mercantalist war on the world and are seeking independent nationhood status. This was a City of London run operation; Anna Chapman was recruited in Russia by Brit assets. Once again, the 500 yr-old ploy of setting nation against nation is a British specialty.

Read on...

“The British tabloid News of the World has an interview (link NSFW) with the ex-husband of hottie Russian spy Anna Chapman .. Anna and 10 others were arrested last week for allegedly living double lives as agents of the Russian government. Anna Chapman is by far the hottest and she lives a glamours life in Manhattan .. 30 year-old British dude Alex Chapman told NOTW he met Anna, then merely a hot economics student, at a rave in London. They started doing it a lot: "Anya was great in bed and she knew exactly what to do .. For the first few months we met for sex about five days a week .. He took topless pictures of her (available uncensored at News of the World) and they played with sex toys: "the 27-year-old femme fatale loved to wear nipple clamps and wield a WHIP like an interrogator as they were Ivan it off." .. The two got married in 2002 and divorced in 2005 when Anna started dating wealthy bankers and entrepreneurs. But Alex got a fun reminder of their relationship when he was contacted by an MI-5 agent after Anna's arrest in New York last week. “According to reports, Chapman lived in the UK for four years from 2003. Private plane hire firm NetJets Europe said: "Ms Chapman was employed by NetJets Europe from May to July 2004, as an executive assistant in the sales department." .. In addition to working at NetJets Europe, her profile says she worked in the investment banking division at Barclays Bank and also at Navigator hedge fund .. She claims to speak Russian, English, German and French and to have a masters degree in economics from a Russian university [Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, the same as Carlos the Jackal] Her profile claims she studied financial planning at the UK-based BPP International Educational Centre'"

"We have a moral obligation to think hard." Blaise Pascal

Electricdragon · 2010-07-15T03:21:22Z

Psychopathic culture

Unfortunately, our programmed response to stimulus is and has been manipulated so that all who conform must be somehow Psychopathic!

There is much more to this problem than meets the eye.

Our illustrious leaders are, indeed, touched.

Good article. Gets it right that this is an economic battle(not between ideologies and nation states). If your personal production (household GDP)...

TBoris

That sounds as mature as my older brother.🙄

LindaMay

Voici the details in comments tekdude + [Link]

LindaMay

What are they??? - They're flame tips coming off of a ball of fire. Okay?...

tekdude

I guess his uncle was Micheal Rockefeller? [Link]

Animanarchy

SOTT Focus:

Connecting the Dots: Gulf Blood for Oil, Iran Besieged, Secret Spy Games

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