Best of the Web -- Signs of the Times News

Best of the Web

« Previous 1 2 … 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 … 254 255 Next »

Best of the Web: EU draws up plans to establish itself as 'world power'

Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:12 EDT

The European Union has drawn up secret plans to establish itself as a global power in its own right with the authority to sign international agreements on behalf of member states.

Confidential negotiations on how to implement the Lisbon Treaty have produced proposals to allow the EU to negotiate treaties and even open embassies across the world.

A letter conferring a full "legal personality" for the Union has been drafted in order for a new European diplomatic service to be recognised as fully fledged negotiators by international bodies and all non-EU countries.

Best of the Web: Max Keiser: Dollar to be buried way before 2018

Russia Today
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:48 EDT

World's major powers including China and Russia don't want to 'finance' American military adventures anymore. That's the view of Max Keiser, finance critic and former stockbroker. He says China and Russia are interested in collapsing the US economy by rejecting the dollar.

Xinhua
Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:28 EDT

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported.

At a joint press conference with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, ElBaradei brought Israel under spotlight and said that the Tel Aviv regime has refused to allow inspections into its nuclear installations for 30 years, the report said.

"Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses," ElBaradei was quoted as saying.

Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear capabilities, although it refuses to confirm or deny the allegation.

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:08 EDT

© AP / Caleb Jones
The U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial was based on the iconic Iwo Jima photo that was actually staged and eventually used to sell war bonds.

War memorials and museums are temples to the god of war. The hushed voices, the well-tended grass, the flapping of the flags allow us to ignore how and why our young died. They hide the futility and waste of war. They sanitize the savage instruments of death that turn young soldiers and Marines into killers, and small villages in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq into hellish bonfires. There are no images in these memorials of men or women with their guts hanging out of their bellies, screaming pathetically for their mothers. We do not see mangled corpses being shoved in body bags. There are no sights of children burned beyond recognition or moaning in horrible pain. There are no blind and deformed wrecks of human beings limping through life. War, by the time it is collectively remembered, is glorified and heavily censored.

David Edwards
The Raw Story
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:52 EDT

Two senior Republican senators say the United States, and not Israel, should attack Iran if military action becomes "necessary."

They also say a simple strike at the country's nuclear capability wouldn't be enough -- the US would have to launch an "all-or-nothing" war against Iran with the aim of crippling the country's military capabilities.

"I think an Israeli attack on Iran is a nightmare for the world, because it will rally the Arab world around Iran and they're not aligned now. It's too much pressure to put on Israel," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

He continued: "If the sanctions fail, and Iran's going down the road to get a nuclear weapon, any Sunni Arab state that could, would want a nuclear weapon. Israel will be more imperiled. The world will change dramatically for the worst. Military action should be the last resort anyone looks at, and I would rather our allies and us take military action if it's necessary."

But Graham doesn't think an attack should be limited to airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If we use military action against Iran, we should not only go after their nuclear facilities. We should destroy their ability to make conventional war. They should have no planes that can fly and no ships that can float," said Graham.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, agrees.

"The problem with military action also is that you're probably not going to be able to stop the production of uranium by just a simple airstrike," Chambliss said on Fox News Sunday. "Lindsey's right. It's an all or nothing deal. And is it worth that at this point in time, when we know they have the capability? We can slow them down, but a full-out military strike is what it would take," said Chambliss.

This video is from Fox's Fox News Sunday, broadcast Oct. 4, 2009.

George Monbiot
Monibot.com
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00 EDT

People who claim that population growth is the big environmental issue are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor

It's no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men: it's about the only environmental issue for which they can't be blamed. The brilliant earth systems scientist James Lovelock, for example, claimed last month that "those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational."(1) But it's Lovelock who is being ignorant and irrational.

A paper published yesterday in the journal Environment and Urbanization shows that the places where population has been growing fastest are those in which carbon dioxide has been growing most slowly, and vice versa. Between 1980 and 2005, for example, Sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5% of the world's population growth and just 2.4% of the growth in CO2. North America turned out 4% of the extra people, but 14% of the extra emissions. Sixty-three per cent of the world's population growth happened in places with very low emissions(2).

Kate Randall
World Socialist Web Site
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00 EDT

The overall poverty rate in the US rose to 13.2 percent in 2008, as workers across all sectors of the economy became jobless and increasing numbers of families were forced into destitution, according to a new government report. Real median household income also declined by 3.6 percent.

The report released Tuesday, part of the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, is the most recent to measure the recession's impact on working class families and the poor. Based on the changes between 2007 and 2008, the first full year of the recession, its findings do not reflect increases in poverty and joblessness this year as the consequences of the crisis have become even more acute.

The official poverty rate of 13.2 percent in 2008 was up from 12.5 percent in 2007. This figure translates into 39.8 million people in poverty across America. The official poverty level is set at $22,000 annually for a family of four with two children or $12,000 for an individual, an absurdly low threshold. This means that far more people than indicated by the survey do not have adequate resources to pay for food, shelter, medical care and other basic necessities.

revelationary
CBS/YouTube
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:47 EDT

Juan Cole
Informed Comment
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:11 EDT

There is no good evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. It has offered to allow regular International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the newly announced facility near Qom, which would effectively prevent it from being used for weapons production.

There is a secret nuclear facility in the Middle East, however, producing plutonium and not just enriched uranium, which has the capacity to make 10 nuclear warheads a year.

Here is a 3-D reconstruction of the most dangerous weapons plant in the Middle East, at Dimona in Israel.

glassbeadian
Youtube.com
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:14 EDT

Saturday September 26 2009: Three undercover officers attempt to infiltrate a March Against Police Brutality at the University of Pittsburgh, but fail miserably due to their horrendous disguise attempts. During the march, one of them breaks a photographer's camera. This is just one example of a larger pattern of attempts to silence the media during the G20 protests.

« Previous 1 2 … 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 … 254 255 Next »

60,179 people have viewed this page since Sun, 17 Dec 2006

Donate once - or every month! Click here to learn how you can help!

Emails sent to Signs of the Times, Ark, Laura, or Cassiopaea become the property of Quantum Future Group, Inc and may be republished without notice.

Some icons appearing on this site were taken from KDE-look.org, Afterglow, Mayosoft, Everaldo, IconDrawer, VisualPharm, IconFactory, Klukeart, Icons-land, TpdkDesign.net, and IconShock.com.

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

Original content © 2009 by SOTT.net/Signs of the Times.
See: Fair Use Policy (http://www.sott.net/signs/signs-fair-use.htm)

NEW! Available now!

Featured Book:

NEW! Available Now!

Over 1 BILLION Served!

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Donate once - or every month!
Click here to learn how you can help!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

"There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Bill Moyers

"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know.": Murray I. Gurfein

One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free. N.A. Scott