Around the World
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 21 December 2005
UK Independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 21 December 2005
UK Independent
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
The campaign to try to force schools in the United States to teach an alternative to Darwinism has suffered a severe set-back after a judge ruled that to do so was a violation of the constitution.
The judge also said that proponents of so-called Intelligent Design had repeatedly lied about the religious convictions that drove them.
In a ruling that will reverberate in schools across the country, US District Judge John Jones ruled the Dover school board in Pennsylvania had been wrong to insist that a statement about Intelligent Design (ID) be read to pupils during biology lessons. He said such a policy represented "breathtaking inanity".
December 20, 2005
WorldTribune.com
December 20, 2005
WorldTribune.com
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
LONDON Syria has signed a pledge to store Iranian nuclear weapons and missiles.
The London-based Jane's Defence Weekly reported that Iran and Syria signed a strategic accord meant to protect either country from international pressure regarding their weapons programs. The magazine, citing diplomatic sources, said Syria agreed to store Iranian materials and weapons should Teheran come under United Nations sanctions.
Comment: Comment: We seem to remember that somebody claimed that Saddam had shipped all his WMDs out and that's why Bush didn't find any under his desk. We also recall a report that the Bush Gang was caught trying to PLANT WMDs in Iraq. So, this looks like they are setting the stage just in case Iran does NOT have WMDs. Our guess is, they wouldn't be getting ready to attack if Iran DID have them. After all, Saddam didn't have them, but N. Korea did. So, who did the U.S. attack? Also, don't forget that Russia has agreed to back Syria up. So, where's all this going? WWIII?
21.12.2005
mosnews.com
21.12.2005
mosnews.com
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Ukrainian cruise missiles with a range of 3,000 kilometers and capable of carrying nuclear warheads have ended up in Iranian hands after being transported via Russia, Israels Director of Military Intelligence Major General Aharon Zeevi (Farkash) said on Tuesday.
Zeevi said that Iran had recently received 12 of the cruise missiles. 18 such missiles were transported from Ukraine to Russia, of which 12 had somehow managed to end up in Iranian hands. The other six were received by China, Haaretz.com quoted Zeevi.
Comment: Comment: Yada yada yada. Saddam has WMD! Saddam has WMD! Saddam bought Yello Cake from Niger! Al Qaeda pulled off 9/11... and on and on they drone...
17 May 2003
From New Scientist Print Edition
Dominic Murphy
17 May 2003
From New Scientist Print Edition
Dominic Murphy
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
But many researchers, including ones who don't take an evolutionary line, think there might be rational and successful psychopaths in the general population. Hervey Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity was the standard text on psychopathy for years. Cleckley included in his case studies the psychopath as scientist, the psychopath as physician, the psychopath as psychiatrist, the psychopath as man of the world, and so on. He thought there was a genuine psychopathic type and that you had to look carefully to watch the mask slip occasionally. If you apply our concept of mental illness then these people are functioning as Mother Nature intended because Mother Nature intended them to be bastards!"
Tue Dec 20, 2005
Reuters
Tue Dec 20, 2005
Reuters
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
DUBAI (Reuters) - The leftist winner of Bolivia's presidential election, Evo Morales, was quoted on Tuesday as calling President George W. Bush a "terrorist," but a spokesman in La Paz said the remark must have been mistranslated.
Morales spoke in Spanish to Arabic satellite television station Al Jazeera, which dubbed his comments into Arabic.
"The only terrorist in this world that I know of is Bush. His military intervention, such as the one in Iraq, that is state terrorism," Al Jazeera quoted him as saying.
"There is a difference between people fighting for a cause and what terrorists do," Morales was quoted as saying.
"Today in Bolivia and Latin America, it's no longer people that are lifting their weapons against imperialism, but it's imperialism that is lifting its weapons against people through military intervention and military bases."
A Morales spokesman in La Paz, who was present during the interview, said he did not remember Morales saying that and that he must have been translated incorrectly. Reuters translated Al Jazeera's Arabic into English.
Morales, who calls himself a nightmare for the United States, has alarmed the Bush administration with his opposition to its strategy in the war on drugs and his admiration for presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba, both vocal foes of the United States.
Comment: Comment: Morales remarks about Bush seem right on the money to us, yet his spokesperson still felt the need to do a bit of damage control.
In October of 2003, Morales
stated:
"When we speak of the 'defense of humanity,' as we do at this event, I think that this only happens by eliminating neoliberalism and imperialism. But I think that in this we are not so alone, because we see, every day that anti-imperialist thinking is spreading, especially after Bush's bloody 'intervention' policy in Iraq. Our way of organizing and uniting against the system, against the empire's aggression towards our people, is spreading, as are the strategies for creating and strengthening the power of the people."
Morales closed the speech with:
"If we want to defend humanity, the American imperialist system must be brought down."
December 19, 2005
By NORMAN SOLOMON
CounterPunch
December 19, 2005
By NORMAN SOLOMON
CounterPunch
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
More than a dozen years ago, I joined with Jeff Cohen (founder of the media watch group FAIR) to establish the P.U.-litzer Prizes. Ever since then, the annual awards have given recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.
It is regrettable that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer. In 2005, a large volume of strong competitors made the selection process very difficult.
And now, the fourteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media performances of 2005:
ABC Radio Australia
Last Updated 21/12/2005, 17:05:08
ABC Radio Australia
Last Updated 21/12/2005, 17:05:08
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale rocked the Pacific seabed between the island groups of Micronesia and Guam.
The quake, which occurred 6 kilometres below the seabed, was centred 425 kilometres southwest of Yap in Micronesia and 435 kilometres west-southwest of Hagatna, Guam.
No injuries or damage have been reported so far and no tsunami warning has been issued by the Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.
Ananova
December 21, 2005
Ananova
December 21, 2005
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Women in a Croatian village have seized power from their lazy menfolk in local elections.
After their success, the women of Lozisca on the island of Brac vowed "to let the men back into our beds, but never back into politics".
They won all seven seats on the local council after deciding they were sick of seeing the village men doing nothing for the community.
By Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
By Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
A swath of space beyond Neptune is getting stranger all the time as astronomers find an ever-more diverse array of objects in various orbits and groupings.
A pair of discoveries this month along with a handful of others in 2005 have begun to reveal what some astronomers long suspected: The outer solar system contains a dizzying array of round worlds on countless odd trajectories around the sun, often with multiple satellite systems.
The problem is, current theories of the solar system's formation and evolution can't account for it all.
medialens.org
19 Dec 2005
medialens.org
19 Dec 2005
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Introduction - Factory Labels
The most effective way to control people is to control their assumptions about the world. The task of propaganda is to apply power-friendly labels and make them stick - it is the key to everything. The labelling factory par excellence - the machine that applies the right labels in the right way over and over again - is the mass media system.
Activists have lambasted governments, corporations, whole industries for decades, but they are swimming against a relentless tide. As has been demonstrated so clearly in Iraq, governments and businesses can do pretty much what they like just so long as the media factory is on hand to label it better: to label away the crimes, the lies, the outrage, the desperate need for change.
The media are, and always have been, the supreme obstacle to change. But you would not know it because all media corporations apply the same potent label to such a thought: 'Unthinkable.'
Comment: Comment: We would like to emphasize a few comments from the above article:
"...if even high-profile dissidents can be painted as wretched, sickly fools, then which reader or viewer would want to be associated with dissent? Then 'normal' - conforming, consuming, looking after 'number one' - can be made to seem healthy, balanced, sensible and sane. Historian Howard Zinn made the point well:
"Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be sceptical of someone else's description of reality." (The Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.338)
The great task of propaganda is to make dissent seem unrealistic, embarrassing, and absurd.
The dynamics of how and why this state exists in our world are carefully explicated and analyzed in psychologist, Andrew Lobaczewski's
Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.
Pathocracy is a disease of great social movements followed by entire societies, nations, and empires. In the course of human history, it has affected social, political, and religious movements as well as the accompanying ideologies
and turned them into caricatures of themselves
.
The actions of [pathocracy] affect an entire society, starting with the leaders and infiltrating every town, business, and institution. The pathological social structure gradually covers the entire country creating a new class within that nation. This privileged class [of pathocrats] feels permanently threatened by the others, i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man.
And so, because they are so threatened by healthy minds, they must warp and twist them with their lies, with their psychological manipulations, with their pathological abuse of everything normal human beings consider to be good and noble and right. In a land where psychopaths rule, they make psychopaths of everyone.
267,771 people have viewed this page since Tue, 19 Dec 2006
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: 
Original content © 2009 by SOTT.net/Signs of the Times. See: Fair Use Policy
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/images/valid-atom.png?1222505720 "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
![[Valid RSS 2.0]](/images/valid-rss.png?1222505756 "Validate my RSS 2.0 feed")
