http://www.sott.net/signs/list_bestofweb Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring news and commentary on world events. en-us Original content Copyright 2012 by Signs of the Times/Sott.net. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:15:20 -0600 http://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net http://www.sott.net http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241386-U-S-officials-tell-NBC-News-Israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-Iran-s-nuclear-scientists- Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran's leaders. The group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars. The Iranians have no doubt who is responsible - Israel and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, known by various acronyms, including MEK, MKO and PMI. Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describes what Iranian leaders believe is a close relationship between Israel's secret service, the Mossad, and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241386-U-S-officials-tell-NBC-News-Israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-Iran-s-nuclear-scientists- Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:09:48 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241311-US-Drones-Coming-Soon-to-An-Airspace-Near-You Congress has approved a bill that will allow military, commercial, and private unmanned drones to fly over regular US airspace. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's an unmanned drone! Congress today approved a bill that allows unmanned aircraft to fly in the same airspace as commercial airliners, private planes, and cargo jets. The legislation allocates $63.4 billion over the next three and a half years to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), $11 billion of which will be used to update air traffic control systems at 35 US airports to handle the remote-controlled aircrafts. The deadline for the systems update is June 2015. The change to flight regulations will allow military, commercial, and private drones to fly over US territory. Currently, drones are only allowed over certain military airspace, along US borders for surveillance purposes, and to about 300 public agencies, according to the Associated Press. The FAA must submit its plan for how to safely allow wide-spread drone flight within nine months of the bill's passage. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241311-US-Drones-Coming-Soon-to-An-Airspace-Near-You Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:24:07 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241309-US-New-DHS-Report-If-You-Love-Individual-Liberty-Or-If-You-Believe-In-Conspiracy-Theories-You-Are-A-Potential-Terrorist Do you love America? Are you against a one world economy and a one world government? Do you deeply love individual liberty? Do you believe in conspiracy theories? If you answered any of those questions affirmatively, then you are a potential terrorist according to a brand new Department of Homeland Security report that was just released in January 2012. The report is entitled "Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008", was produced by the "National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism" for the Department of Homeland Security. As you will see detailed later on in this article, the most shocking part of this report is when it discusses the "ideological motivations" of potential terrorists. The report shamelessly attempts to portray red-blooded Americans that love liberty and that love their country as the enemy. Once upon a time, deeply patriotic Americans were considered to be the backbone of America, but today they are considered to be potential terrorists. And this report is yet another example of how the definition of "terrorism" has changed. A decade ago, the entire focus of the "war on terror" was on radical Muslims and we were told that we had to send our boys and girls to the other side of the world to defeat them. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241309-US-New-DHS-Report-If-You-Love-Individual-Liberty-Or-If-You-Believe-In-Conspiracy-Theories-You-Are-A-Potential-Terrorist Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:59:52 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241229-Propaganda-US-FBI-Warns-of-Threat-from-Anti-Government-Extremists Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday. These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference. The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard. Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division. "We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241229-Propaganda-US-FBI-Warns-of-Threat-from-Anti-Government-Extremists Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:26:27 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241217-Chemotherapy-Negatively-Impacts-Genetic-Coding-for-Future-Generations Chemotherapy is an accepted method by the mainstream medical establishment as a means to fight against cancer, but its effectiveness and reliability is highly in question. Now, research even brings into question the effect chemotherapy has on your entire hereditary line, with researchers linking chemotherapy drug usage with DNA mutations that extend to your offspring. You probably know somebody who has undergone some cancer treatment at one point or another. The effects of chemotherapy on the body are highly destructive, and often leave the cancer patient in a worse state than they were in before. Unfortunately, using an unnatural chemical substance to effectively blast the cancer cells has the same effect on the healthy functioning cells as well. As a result, most chemotherapy patients are highly damaged by the process and sometimes sustain injuries that are irrevocable. Three common drugs used for chemotherapy have been found to cause DNA mutations within the users. This is already highly dangerous, but according to new research, this damage may have the ability to pass into future generations. These findings shed light on the long term negative effects pharmaceuticals are having on our bodies. If the bodily effects were not enough to cope with, the use of these treatments may actually have a long term effect on the health of those to come afterward. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241217-Chemotherapy-Negatively-Impacts-Genetic-Coding-for-Future-Generations Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:08:17 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241215-US-Sanctions-in-Gallop-9-11-Lawsuit-Send-a-Message-Seek-Justice-at-Your-Own-Risk The message is loud and clear. Go after justice for 9/11 in the courts, and not only will you lose, you'll be punished. That's what April Gallop and her lawyer, William Veale, found out as their lawsuit against former vice-president Dick Cheney, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers concluded with a final slap in the face. This came in the form of a $15,000 fine levied against Veale for filing a "frivolous" appeal (the appeal had already been turned down in April of last year). The decision was handed down by a three-judge panel headed by Justice John M. Walker, who just happens to be George W. Bush's cousin - proving that the American justice system has a twisted sense of humour at times. In March 2010, a lower court threw the original case out, stating that it was based on "cynical delusion and fantasy." Gallop, a former U.S. Army executive administrative assistant and her then two-month-old son were injured in the Pentagon event on 9/11 when an explosion in her office brought the ceiling down on them. Gallop's desk was in the Pentagon's E Ring, the outermost of the building's five rings. Her desk was reported to be just 40 feet from where Flight 77 is supposed to have hit the building shortly after 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 11. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241215-US-Sanctions-in-Gallop-9-11-Lawsuit-Send-a-Message-Seek-Justice-at-Your-Own-Risk Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:57:17 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241179-Bizarre-Unexplained-Marine-Colonel-Suicides-What-the-Hell-s-Going-on- A highly decorated Vietnam War pilot and one of the highest ranking officers to be killed in the Iraq War... What explains the tendency of 'full-birds' in the Marine Corps- men who attained the rank of colonel, to commit suicide when they are at the pinnacle of a spotless career? It is a haunting question that should be studied and the results published. There aren't very many Marine colonels in the first place. One source I checked (ask.metafilter) states that the Marine Corps is authorized to maintain 35 brigadier generals, the rank of colonel is the next one down, you get the idea. Also demanding research, are the amazing macabre things that these Marine colonels manage to do when they commit 'suicide'. The stories conjure up visions that Hollywood could scarcely replicate; even if the official government stories seem like they evolved from rejected 'b' movie scripts. Col James Sabow The government says Colonel James Sabow committed 'suicide' in 1991 at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. This would have had to have been an extremely technical 'suicide'; one that would have taken great, painstaking planning. According to the official reports, this man who flew 220+ missions in Vietnam and was a proud father, husband and third Marine in charge of his base, shot himself in his own backyard when he was actually either dead, or near death. A unique story indeed. Exactly how Mr. Sabow managed to do this is something the government could never explain, however they did accept the matter as a 'suicide' without any argument. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241179-Bizarre-Unexplained-Marine-Colonel-Suicides-What-the-Hell-s-Going-on- Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:30:05 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241175-Return-of-Cheney-s-One-Percent-Doctrine Just as happened before the Iraq War, those who want to bomb Iran are scaring the American people with made-up scenarios about grave dangers ahead, new warnings as ludicrous as the "mushroom cloud" tales that panicked the U.S. public a decade ago, reports Robert Parry. A weak point in the psyches of many Americans is that they allow their imaginations to run wild about potential threats to their personal safety, no matter how implausible the dangers may be. Perhaps, this is a side effect from watching too many scary movies and violent TV shows. But this vulnerability also may explain why the current war hysteria against Iran is reviving the sorts of fanciful threats to the United States last seen before the Iraq War. Since right-wing Israelis and their neocon allies are having trouble selling the U.S. public on a new preemptive war in the Middle East, they have again resorted to dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to scare easily frightened Americans. For instance, in a New York Times Magazine article on Jan. 29 by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman - which essentially laid out Israel's case for attacking Iran - Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's vice prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, is quoted as explaining the need to make Americans very afraid of Iran. Bergman wrote: "It is, of course, important for Ya'alon to argue that this is not just an Israeli-Iranian dispute, but a threat to America's well-being. 'The Iranian regime will be several times more dangerous if it has a nuclear device in its hands,' he went on. 'One that it could bring into the United States. It is not for nothing that it is establishing bases for itself in Latin America and creating links with drug dealers on the U.S.-Mexican border. "'This is happening in order to smuggle ordnance into the United States for the carrying out of terror attacks. Imagine this regime getting nuclear weapons to the U.S.-Mexico border and managing to smuggle it into Texas, for example. This is not a far-fetched scenario.'" http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241175-Return-of-Cheney-s-One-Percent-Doctrine Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:09:28 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241174-US-Why-Do-Dangerous-Financial-Criminals-Roam-Free- Prosecutors like Eric Schneiderman need cops on the beat to put financial crooks behind bars. But thanks to Bush, these cops are missing in action. American Public Media's "Marketplace" had a recent segment focused on why it has taken so long to bring criminal prosecutions related to the financial crisis. Reporters observed that at the beginning of the crisis, the Obama administration wanted to calm the financial industry rather than impose accountability. They speculated, along with Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street participants, many of whom have been calling for prosecutions, that Obama's creation of a new group to prosecute mortgage fraud led by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman was likely to be politically motivated. And they indicated that financial crimes are complex and prosecutors need time to develop their cases. But here's what they didn't say: A major reason the prosecutions don't exist is that President George W. Bush took the cops off the beat. Think about street crime. Imagine, for example, a protection racket in which gangs extort payment from fearful shopkeepers. Prosecutors rarely initiate criminal prosecutions; indeed, they may not even know that the crime is occurring. The police pound the beats that keep them aware of the increase in crime, respond to complaints, investigate, determine that a crime may have occurred that warrants attention, create a file and send it to the prosecutor's office. In routine cases, the prosecution proceeds on the basis of the police report alone. In more complex cases, the prosecutor may supplement the police investigation. But prosecutors rarely initiate cases. Even when a task force is appointed to target crime in a particular sector, it typically involves prosecutors working with the police. The prosecutors simply don't have the skills or the manpower to detect crime, conduct investigations and make the record necessary to prosecute. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241174-US-Why-Do-Dangerous-Financial-Criminals-Roam-Free- Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:10:47 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241117-Iraq-An-Education-in-Occupation-and-Institutional-Destruction As the last American soldiers left Iraq in December, so, too, did many of the journalists who had covered the war, leaving little in the way of media coverage of post-war Iraq. While there were some notable exceptions -- including two fine articles by MIT's John Tirman that asked how many Iraqis had been killed as a result of the US invasion -- overall the American press published few articles on the effects of the occupation, especially the consequences for Iraqis. As a college professor, I have a special interest in what happened to Iraqi universities under US occupation. The story is not pretty. Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students -- churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country's burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991. (This is, incidentally, better than Princeton was doing as late as 2009.) With a reputation for excellence, Iraqi universities attracted many students from surrounding countries -- the same countries that are now sheltering the thousands of Iraqi professors who have fled US-occupied Iraq. Iraqi universities began their decline in the 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War. As the international sanctions regime cut off journal subscriptions and equipment purchases, academic salaries fell precipitously, and 10,000 Iraqi professors left the country. Those faculty who remained were increasingly closed off from new developments in their fields. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241117-Iraq-An-Education-in-Occupation-and-Institutional-Destruction Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:23:41 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241093-Georges-Fenech-of-the-MIVILUDES-The-economic-crisis-a-fertile-ground-for-cults- Translated by SOTT Comment: The U.S. government has taken away all the freedoms that they have claimed the Islamic Terrorists hate us for! And governments all over the world, sometimes in slightly different ways, are doing exactly the same. In France, it's an organization known as MIVILUDES that has taken on this role, and their mandate seems to be exactly the same as that promoted by Evgeny Morozov, cited in Columnist Calls for Internet Quality Control" to Quash Dissent where you will read: Do you think anthropogenic global warming is a hoax? Are you unconvinced that your ancestors had more in common with Cheetah than with Tarzan? Have you any doubts about the official version of how 9/11 went down? Then you, according to Evgeny Morozov, are part of a "kooky" "fringe movement" whose growth must be checked by forcing you to read "authoritative" content whenever you go looking for information on such topics on the Internet. Morozov is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and a former fellow at George Soros' Open Society Institute - in other words, a reliable bellwether of globalist establishment thinking. What shows the terrible, collective, weakness of character of the soft and hedonistic U.S. population is their acceptance of the loss of their freedoms in exchange for protection from those who are claimed to "hate us because of our freedoms." This same poison is being spread in France by the above mentioned MIVILUDES in lock-step with the Globalist Elite agenda. A French doctor of my acquaintance showed me a magazine that she (as a physician in France) receives. In the last issue, there was an article explaining to doctors that they need to be on the lookout for anybody who thinks or acts "different from the norm". Doctors are, apparently, being encouraged to abrogate their Hippocratic Oath in favor of reporting on their patients who might be holding "aberrant ideas" such as that vaccines may be bad, vitamins are good, food does have an effect on your health, and so forth. Doctors in France are even being offered special perks if they take a course in "spotting cult members"! I kid you not! The same types of articles are being included in legal journals that attorneys and judges subscribe to! And all of this activity, undertaken by MIVILUDES, is being financed by the French government! Invited by the order of lawyers, Georges Fenech, president of the MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances), will be in Toulouse next Wednesday. An ex-magistrate, deputy of the Rhône departement in 2002 and 2007, Georges Fenech, 57, came back to the magistracy in 2008. Since then, upon nomination by the Prime Minister, he's the head of the MIVILUDES. Why taking part in a symposium about the training of lawyers? Georges Fenech: I was invited by the president of Toulouse's bar, and training constitutes one of the essential missions of the MIVILUDES. We attach a lot of importance to it. It allows us to transmit information, to go deeper in the analysis of the phenomenon and to train on the issue of cultic deviances, on detecting criteria, and on the means to counter them. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241093-Georges-Fenech-of-the-MIVILUDES-The-economic-crisis-a-fertile-ground-for-cults- Sat, 04 Feb 2012 04:40:38 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241081-When-it-comes-to-dangerous-asteroids-any-solution-is-still-a-fantasy Back in September, The Takeaway was gazing up at the sky in trepidation at the news that yet another piece of redundant manmade space junk was hurtling back to Earth, threatening to extensively remodel someone's lawn. Four months later and we are ducking again, but this time the author of our fear is not some rocket scientist who forgot that what goes up must come down, but the universe itself. It isn't, it turns out, the old tin cans we should be concerned about so much as the thousands of Near-Earth Objects (NEO) - asteroids large and small - heading our way, some with the potential to explode in our atmosphere with the force of a nuclear arsenal and cause an Extinction Level Event. Remember the dinosaurs? Well exactly. The good news is that we are getting quite good at spotting these things. So far Nasa, which began looking in earnest in 2005, has discovered 8,000, with another 70 popping up every month. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241081-When-it-comes-to-dangerous-asteroids-any-solution-is-still-a-fantasy Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:36:30 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241035-Nine-Men-Plead-Guilty-To-Terrorism-Charges-Inspired-By-Pentagon-Asset Nine Muslim men have admitted to various terrorism charges, after being inspired by a US Pentagon intelligence asset [1]. Mohammed Chowdhury, 21 of Stanliff House, Tower Hamlets, Shah Rahman, 28, of St Bernard's Road, Newham, Gurukanth Desai, 30, of Albert Street, Cardiff, and his brother Abdul Miah, 25, of Ninian Park Road, Cardiff, have all admitted to planning an attack on the London Stock Exchange. They are charged with engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism. Usman Khan, 20, of Persia Walk, Mohammed Shahjahan 27, of Burmarsh Walk and Nazam Hussain, 26, of Grove Street, all areas in Stoke, admitted attending operational meetings in Roath Park, Cardiff on 7 November and in a Newport country park on 12 December. They are alleged to have discussed leaving homemade bombs in the toilets of their city's pubs and travelling abroad for terror training. They are charged with engaging in conduct for the preparation of terrorism. Omar Latif, 28, of Neville Street, Cardiff, admitted to attending meetings with the intention of assisting others to prepare or commit acts of terrorism. Mohibur Rahman, 27, of North Road, Stoke, admitted possessing two editions of alleged al-Qaeda magazine "Inspire" for terrorist purposes. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241035-Nine-Men-Plead-Guilty-To-Terrorism-Charges-Inspired-By-Pentagon-Asset Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:33:12 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241009-Columnist-Calls-for-Internet-Quality-Control-to-Quash-Dissent Do you think anthropogenic global warming is a hoax? Are you unconvinced that your ancestors had more in common with Cheetah than with Tarzan? Have you any doubts about the official version of how 9/11 went down? Then you, according to Evgeny Morozov, are part of a "kooky" "fringe movement" whose growth must be checked by forcing you to read "authoritative" content whenever you go looking for information on such topics on the Internet. Morozov is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and a former fellow at George Soros' Open Society Institute - in other words, a reliable bellwether of globalist establishment thinking. His musings in Slate - in which he argues that while outright censorship of the web may not be possible, getting browsers and search engines to direct people to establishment-approved opinions would be an excellent idea - offer "proof of how worried the bad guys are about popular disbelief in State pieties, and about sites ... that stoke it," Lew Rockwell averred, citing his own website as an example. The New American undoubtedly would fall under that rubric as well. The problem, as Morozov sees it, is that people who "deny" global warming or think vaccines may cause autism - opinions that conflict with those proffered by governments, the United Nations, and other globalist organizations - can post anything they want on the Internet with "little or no quality control" over it. As a result, he says, there are "thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories." http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/241009-Columnist-Calls-for-Internet-Quality-Control-to-Quash-Dissent Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:05:03 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240992-It-s-Time-For-Science-to-Move-On-from-Materialism The rigid 19th-century orthodoxy should be challenged to allow broader interpretations, as Rupert Sheldrake argues Werner Heisenberg, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, once observed that history could be divided into periods according to what people of the time made of matter. In his book Physics and Philosophy, published in the early 60s, he argued that at the beginning of the 20th century we entered a new period. It was then that quantum physics threw off the materialism that dominated the natural sciences of the 19th century. Of materialism, he wrote: "[This] frame was so narrow and rigid that it was difficult to find a place in it for many concepts of our language that had always belonged to its very substance, for instance, the concept of mind, of the human soul or of life. Mind could be introduced into the general picture only as a kind of mirror of the material world." Today we live in the 21st century, and it seems that we are still stuck with this narrow and rigid view of the things. As Rupert Sheldrake puts it in his new book, published this week, The Science Delusion: "The belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith, grounded in a 19th-century ideology." http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240992-It-s-Time-For-Science-to-Move-On-from-Materialism Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:41:15 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240939-Helicopters-rescue-Europeans-stranded-by-snow Belgrade, Serbia - Rescue helicopters evacuated dozens of people from snow-blocked villages in Serbia and Bosnia and air-lifted in emergency food and medicine as a severe cold spell kept Eastern Europe in its icy grip. The death toll from the cold rose to 79 on Wednesday and emergency crews worked overtime as temperatures sank to minus 32.5 C (minus 26.5 F) in some areas. Parts of the Black Sea froze near the Romanian coastline and the rare snow fell on Croatian islands in the Adriatic Sea. In Bulgaria, 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago. In central Serbia, choppers pulled out 12 people, including nine who went to a funeral but then could not get back over icy, snow-choked roads. Two more people froze to death in the snow and two others are missing, bringing that nation's death toll to five. "The situation is dramatic, the snow is up to five meters (16 1/2 feet) high in some areas, you can only see rooftops," said Dr. Milorad Dramacanin, who participated in the helicopter evacuations. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240939-Helicopters-rescue-Europeans-stranded-by-snow Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:17:48 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240936-US-Intel-Director-Prepares-Public-for-False-Flag-Event Desperate for war, US prepares to blame Iran for false flag attack. "...it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) " -US foreign policy makers in the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report, pages 84-85. Considering that the Gulf of Token incident was a deliberate fabrication to escalate the Vietnam War, one many members in Congress are shown to have acknowledged and debated even at the time, or the more recent Iraqi WMD hoax, there is certainly a historical precedence to create such provocations when targeted nations refuse to provide them. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240936-US-Intel-Director-Prepares-Public-for-False-Flag-Event Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:41:58 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240920-US-Mysterious-Cape-Cod-Dolphin-Beachings-Continue More than 100 dolphins have stranded themselves along Cape Cod's 25-mile coastline in the last three weeks, and the number is growing. Rescuers there say it's just about the worst they've ever seen. And scientists are still looking for answers. The alarming number of dolphins beaching themselves along the 25-mile Cape Cod coastline was baffling scientists for a third week. On Monday, they responded to a call that three dolphins were approaching shore. Two swam away unharmed, but one got too close to the beach and needed intervention by rescuers from the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The animal later died and, along with three more carcasses discovered over the weekend, the number of dolphin beachings swelled to 102, nearly the normal amount for an entire year. Katie Moore, manager of the Marine Mammal Rescue Team, says she simply doesn't know why this is happening. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240920-US-Mysterious-Cape-Cod-Dolphin-Beachings-Continue Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:38:47 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240855-The-Truth-About-Fat-Women-and-Self-Control If the choice between being fat and thin were a simple, conscious decision, most of us would likely be slender. Nevertheless, new research suggests that the discrimination and prejudice faced by overweight people, especially women, are driven by the preconceived notion that body fat is somehow optional. "Fat women experience both the stigma of unattractiveness and the stigma that they lack control," writes researcher Christine A. Smith in a new literature review published online Jan. 18 in the journal Sex Roles. It's that perceived lack of self-discipline that leads to prejudice, said Smith, of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. "If people are, say, unattractive due to a facial deformity, there tends to be a sympathy factor" that mitigates discrimination against them, Smith said. But because many people think weight is controllable, "for large folks, there doesn't tend to be the sympathy factor." http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240855-The-Truth-About-Fat-Women-and-Self-Control Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:59:54 -0600 http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240881-Finally-We-Can-Now-See-the-True-Cost-of-Globalisation The worldwide public realises there is something deeply wrong with today's world economic system When Karl Marx called for the workers of the world to unite, it seems unlikely he had in mind an iPhone boycott. But suggestions for just such a campaign in the US have thrown the spotlight on possible abuses at firms producing goods for hi-tech giant Apple, urging the public to think again about what happens at the other end of the production pipeline that leads to its swish, minimalist stores. Stung by the criticisms, Apple boss Tim Cook told his staff last week: "We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain," and the company is now inspecting scores of factories, providing the latest evidence that the public is no longer willing to ignore the dark underbelly of world capitalism. Before the Great Crash, critics of globalisation were isolated on the loony fringe: tear-gassed in Seattle and whacked with truncheons in Prague, as the west's leaders gathered to congratulate themselves on reaping the benefits of unfettered world trade. When the Asian financial crises of the 1990s toppled governments and forced one desperate country after another into mass impoverishment and emergency bailouts by the International Monetary Fund, the west's leaders - even many on the left - explained it away as a result of shoddy governance or poor economic management, instead of a devastating side-effect of globalisation. And even after the financial shock waves rippled out from the American housing market in 2007 and caused catastrophic collateral damage in countries across the globe, and the deepest world recession since the 1930s, many felt that a few tweaks to bank capital rules, and sharper teeth for financial regulators, would fix the system. Yet two things have derailed world leaders' attempts to get back to business as usual. The first is that in many countries, more than four years on from the start of the credit crisis, millions of people still wait for economic recovery to take hold. Growth is sickly or non-existent; unemployment is rising; the only people who seem to escape are a tiny, super-rich elite. http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/240881-Finally-We-Can-Now-See-the-True-Cost-of-Globalisation Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:57:38 -0600