Signs of the Times Logo
Home | Site Map | Glossary | Quick Guide | What's New | Forum | Podcast | Printer Friendly | Archive | Perma-link

Signs of the Times for Fri, 03 Feb 2006

AFP
Thursday January 26, 9:33 PM
Iraq has released more than 400 detainees being held in Iraqi and US-run prisons, including five women, in a move which could help abducted US reported Jill Carroll.

Click to Expand Article
Comment: When the latest batch of "terrorists" were released, a US spokesman admitted that the prisoners were held without charge and never given a fair trial. He then claimed that the US had enough evidence to indicate that the prisoners were all threats to Iraq. So, if they really had any evidence of criminal wrongdoing at all, wouldn't US officials have pushed for fair trials? If freedom and democracy really are so important to Bush and the gang, and the evidence existed, the prisoners would have been accused of a crime and trials would have been held. It makes us wonder how many other "dangerous terrorist suspects" imprisoned by the US are really just innocent victims of the Bush regime. Perhaps we are all simply being conditioned to accept the idea that mass arrests and detention without charge or trial are "necessary evils" to keep us all "safe". Perhaps we are being prepared for the threat that the Pentagon claims is even bigger than terrorism: Mother Nature!

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
The Observer
Sunday February 22, 2004
· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

Click to Expand Article
Comment: We do not doubt that this information has been known by a select few for many years. The Bush administration, as the above article states, has deliberately buried and ridiculed any evidence that serious earth changes were on the cards. The question then is, why now? And more importantly, what will be their "rescue plan" for their citizens...

The Observer
Sunday February 22, 2004
· Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honour.

· By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.

· Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia.

Click to Expand Article
Comment: It seems the Pentagon's predictions might be a little bit off. Europe doesn't have to wait until 2010 or 2020 for the cold weather to arrive - it's here today! But that's just a fluke, right?

According to news sources, Andrew Marshall is behind the Pentagon report. Below is an interview with him conducted last year by Wired news.

By Douglas McGray
Wired.com
February 2003
For 40 years, the man Pentagon insiders call Yoda has foreseen the future of war - from battlefield bots rolling off radar-proof ships to GIs popping performance pills. And that was before the war on terror.

Click to Expand Article
Comment: And finally, speaking of potential natural disasters in our future, Halliburton just got a nice contract from the Department of Homeland Security for detaining people during - you guessed it! - a natural disaster:

By Katherine Hunt
MarketWatch
January 24, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co., said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.


By Charlie Cray
GNN
Tue, 24 Jan 2006 22:36:23 -0800
Serving dirty water to the troops, Cheney's old company is under fire again

Dick Cheney keeps using the “support our troops” line every time he needs a distraction. So he should be asked what he thinks about the new revelations that his favorite company exposed U.S. troops operating in Iraq to water that was “roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River.”

Click to Expand Article


By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
January 25, 2006
(The following is the first of a two-part series on the National Security Agency's alleged abuse of employee whistleblowers. Part 2 will be published Thursday, Jan. 26, 2006)

(CNSNews.com) - Five current and former National Security Agency (NSA) employees have told Cybercast News Service that the agency frequently retaliates against whistleblowers by falsely labeling them "delusional," "paranoid" or "psychotic."

The intimidation tactics are allegedly used to protect powerful superiors who might be incriminated by damaging information, the whistleblowers say. They also point to a climate of fear that now pervades the agency. Critics warn that because some employees blew the whistle on alleged foreign espionage and criminal activity, the "psychiatric abuse" and subsequent firings are undermining national security.

A spokesman for the NSA declined to comment about the allegations contained in this report.

The accusations of "Soviet-era tactics" are being made by former NSA intelligence analysts and action officers Russell D. Tice, Diane T. Ring, Thomas G. Reinbold, and a former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. The allegations have been corroborated by a current NSA officer, who also insisted on anonymity, agreeing only to be referenced as "Agent X."

Click to Expand Article

Houston Post Chronicle
Jan 24, 2006
A Houston-based anti-Halliburton group was spied on by a top-secret Pentagon counter-intelligence agency in 2004, according to a report in Newsweek magazine.

The peaceful protest, organized by Houston Global Awareness on June 29, 2004, was attended by approximately ten local peace activists.

The protest involved handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to employees of giant military contractor Halliburton to draw attention to allegations that the company over-charged for military food contracts in Iraq.

A report in Newsweek this week reveals that the Pentagon's Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) filed a report on the Houston protest, which took place outside Halliburton's headquarters in Houston, Texas.


By Caren Bohan
Reuters
Wednesday, January 25, 2006; 6:08 PM
FORT MEADE, Maryland - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he took Osama bin Laden's threats of another attack seriously and invoked the al Qaeda leader's recent audiotape to defend a domestic eavesdropping program.

Click to Expand Article
Comment: That Osama is one handy fellow to have around you're the US president and you happen to be in a bit of hot water.

By Frank Lindh
AlterNet
January 24, 2006
After years of almost total silence on his son's arrest and imprisonment, Frank Lindh sets the record straight about the 'American Taliban.'

Editor's Note: The public has heard little about John Walker Lindh since the media frenzy over his capture in the winter of 2001. On January 19, John's father Frank Lindh delivered an address at The Commonwealth Club of California. Lindh explained that he and his family have avoided the press for nearly four years; he now wants the public to understand the truth about his son, who he says didn't stand a chance of getting a fair trial in the emotional days following 9/11. Immediately characterized as a "terrorist" by the press and politicians, Lindh faced a jury in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Pentagon. The trial date scheduled by the judge was the anniversary of 9/11. Initially facing 11 criminal counts -- most relating to terrorism -- the only charge that John Lindh was found guilty of was violating economic sanctions by supporting the Taliban government, for which the 20-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The following is excerpted from Frank Lindh's speech.

Click to Expand Article
Comment:
"...[T]he mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was... based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case."
That statement sums up the Bush administration's handling of the entire War on Terror pretty nicely, doesn't it?


1/24/2006
ACLU.org
SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal government today agreed to pay $200,000 in attorneys' fees to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California to end a Freedom of Information and Privacy Act lawsuit that succeeded in making public, for the first time, hundreds of records about the government's secret "no fly" list used to screen airline passengers after September 11, 2001.

"This case helped shed light on the existence and creation of the 'no fly' list and other secret transportation watch lists, raising serious questions about its effectiveness and value," said Thomas R. Burke, a cooperating attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in San Francisco.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed in April 2003 on behalf of itself and two Bay Area anti-war activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, who were told by airline agents at San Francisco International Airport that their names appeared on a FBI no-fly list.

The Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agreed to pay the ACLU, who along with Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams, sued when the government refused to make public information about its secret "no fly" watch list. The settlement was approved today by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

"As thousands of innocent travelers continue to be mistakenly linked to a name on the government's 'no fly' list, the public should be able to understand and meaningfully deliberate on whether the secret lists make us safer or are just a waste of government resources," added Burke.

Click to Expand Article

ACLU.com
The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging a provision of the Patriot Act that is being used to deny visas to foreign scholars whose political views the government disfavors. The lawsuit charges that the provision, known as the "ideological exclusion" provision, is being used to prevent United States citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

Click to Expand Article

By NICK WADHAMS
Associated Press
January 26, 2006
DIWANIYAH, Iraq - The top U.S. general in Iraq acknowledged Thursday that American forces in this country are "stretched," but he said he will only recommend withdrawals based on operational needs.

Gen. George Casey told reporters he had discussed the issue with Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker on Wednesday and that the Army chief of staff believes he can still sustain the mission in Iraq.

"The forces are stretched ... and I don't think there's any question of that," Casey said.

Click to Expand Article
Comment: Rummy said "the force is not broken". Well, that may be true - but he did not say that the Army wasn't stretched. Let's face it: all this talk of a "leaner and meaner" military means absolutely nothing. These statements are coming from some of the same people who brought you other hits such as, "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, and he intends to use them" and "Absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence". If the US administration continues its push for war with all the "evildoers", its military must expand - and right now, no one wants to sign up...

(Filed: 24/01/2006)
UK Telegraph
President George W Bush has revealed he offered Tony Blair the chance not go to war in Iraq, but the Prime Minister turned it down.

Mr Bush said he made the offer amid concerns about the stability of the Labour Government in the months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

"He [Blair] was worried about his Government and so was I, and I told him one time, 'I don't want your Government to fall, and if you're worried about it just go ahead and pull out of the coalition so you save your Government'," said Mr Bush.

"And he said to me, 'I have made my commitment on behalf of the great country of Britain and I'm not changing my mind'.


"He said, 'I'm not interested in politics, what I'm interested in is doing the right thing.'

Click to Expand Article
Comment: We had a really good laugh at Bush's alleged comment that:
"He [Blair] was worried about his Government and so was I, and I told him one time, 'I don't want your Government to fall, and if you're worried about it just go ahead and pull out of the coalition so you save your Government'," said Mr Bush. "And he said to me, 'I have made my commitment on behalf of the great country of Britain and I'm not changing my mind'. "He [Blair] said, 'I'm not interested in politics, what I'm interested in is doing the right thing.'
We can exclusively reveal the rest of that specific conversation, which continued as follows: "You know George [Blair said], we have to save the world, those evil terrorists want to kill us all, and we have to make the world safe for mankind. At this point George began to cry and told Tony that he loved him.

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday January 26, 2006
The Guardian
US senators yesterday accused President Bush of stonewalling a congressional inquiry into the government response last year to Hurricane Katrina, despite earlier promises to cooperate.

The senators said the White House had failed to make key officials available to the inquiry or turn over documents on internal government communications in the days before and immediately after the storm hit New Orleans and the Gulf coast on August 29.

One document leaked this week showed the White House situation room was warned the same day that Katrina would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching". On September 1, however, President Bush told reporters: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Click to Expand Article
Comment: It does get old, doesn't it, this constant replaying of the same old tapes, the claim that the investigation will be thorough made by the president and broadcast across the States by the administration's mouthpieces in the corporate media, followed by the predictable stonewalling and claims of presidential confidentiality that have to be respected.

It's always the same scenario. And it works every time!

www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-26 13:54:04
BEIJING, Jan. 26 -- UK antivirus company Sophos has released its ranking of spammers for the fourth quarter of 2005, with the United States still topping the list.

Dubbed the "dirty dozen", Sophos' list of 12 countries in the period from October to December 2005 has United States in first position with 24.5 percent. The latest figures mark the first time that U.S. accounts for less than one quarter of all spam relayed.

The U.S. is closely followed by China, with 22.3 percent, according to Sophos. South Korea comes in third with 9.7 percent.

Click to Expand Article

By RON WORD
Associated Press
January 26, 2006
LAKE BUTLER, Fla. - A car full of siblings headed home was crushed between a truck and a stopped school bus, killing the seven adopted children just two miles from where they lived.

Click to Expand Article

Have a question or comment about the Signs page? Discuss it on the Signs of the Times news forum with the Signs Team.
Some icons appearing on this site were taken from the Crystal Package by Evarldo

Atom Feed

Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!
Send your article suggestions to: email


Fair Use Policy

Contact Webmaster at signs-of-the-times.org
Cassiopaean materials Copyright ©1994-2014 Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. All rights reserved. "Cassiopaea, Cassiopaean, Cassiopaeans," is a registered trademark of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
Letters addressed to Cassiopaea, Quantum Future School, Ark or Laura, become the property of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Republication and re-dissemination of our copyrighted material in any manner is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.



Sitemap Generator [Valid Atom 1.0]

Signs Archive


JFK

The Debris of History

The Gladiator: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The Bushes and The Lost King

Sim City and John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy and All Those "isms"

John F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Organized Crime and the Global Village

John F. Kennedy and the Psychopathology of Politics

John F. Kennedy and the Pigs of War

John F. Kennedy and the Titans

John F. Kennedy, Oil, and the War on Terror

John F. Kennedy, The Secret Service and Rich, Fascist Texans

John F. Kennedy and the Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy



Recent Articles:

New in French! La fin du monde tel que nous le connaissons

New in French! Le "fascisme islamique"

New in Arabic! العدوّ الحقيقي

New! Spiritual Predator: Prem Rawat AKA Maharaji - Henry See

Stranger Than Fiction

Top Secret! Clear Evidence that Flight 77 Hit The Pentagon on 9/11: a Parody - Simon Sackville



Latest Signs of the Times Editorials

Executing Saddam Hussein was an Act of Vandalism

What Is the 'Root' of Evil?

OPEN LETTER: To Our U.S. Senators: Show Me the Money

The "Demonization" of Muslims and the Battle for Oil

Clash of the Elites: Beltway Insiders Versus Neo-Cons

Sacrifice Translates into More Dead People

Soldiers and Imperial Presidents

Will Jimmy Carter's Book Liberate the Palestinians?

A Lynching...

The Capture, Trial and Conviction of Saddam Hussein - Another US Intelligence Farce



Signs Editorials By Author

Click Here For Full Listing



Blogs:

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Ponerology

iChing Political Forecast



Latest Topics on the Signs Forum



Signs Monthly News Roundups!

June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006



Articles en Français
Artì­culos en Español
Artykuly po polsku
Artikel auf Deutsch



This site best viewed
with Mozilla Firefox

Get Firefox 2



Join the Mailing List

Sign up for the Signs Mailing List and get the latest Signs of the Times in your inbox!