http://www.sott.net Signs of the Times, featuring news and commentary on world events. Never wavering in our unending search for the light of truth in a pathocracy driven world! en-us Original content Copyright 2009 by Signs of the Times. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:03:44 -0500 http://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net http://www.sott.net http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196295-Swine-Flu-One-of-the-Most-Massive-Cover-ups-in-American-History What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it. - G.W.F. Hegel I have been following the evolving "pandemic" of H1N1 influenza beginning with the original discovery of the infection in Mexico in March of this year. In the course of this study I have tried to utilize as my sources high-quality, peer-reviewed journals, data from the CDC and accepted textbooks of virology. As with all such studies one has to integrate and correlate previous experiences with epidemics and pandemics. As you will see, a great deal of my material comes from official sources, such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the New England Journal of Medicine. Thus my distracters cannot claim that I am using material that is not within the mainstream. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196295-Swine-Flu-One-of-the-Most-Massive-Cover-ups-in-American-History Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:21:54 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196237-Karzai-corrupt-but-our-guy-French-foreign-minister-tells-New-York-Times President Hamid Karzai is "corrupt" but NATO has to accept that "he is our guy" in Afghanistan, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said, according to the New York Times on Thursday. Kouchner also complained that President Barack Obama's US administration was drawing up a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan without consulting its European allies within NATO, leaving them in the dark. "What is the goal? What is the road? And in the name of what?" Kouchner asked, according to the New York Times report. "Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem ... We need to talk to each other as allies." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196237-Karzai-corrupt-but-our-guy-French-foreign-minister-tells-New-York-Times Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:41:03 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196176-Former-UK-ambassador-CIA-sent-people-to-be-raped-with-broken-bottles- The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country. Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program. The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196176-Former-UK-ambassador-CIA-sent-people-to-be-raped-with-broken-bottles- Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:58:12 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196174-House-Resolution-Designates-Venezuela-a-State-Sponsor-of-Terrorism At a time of growing US poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair, imperial wars without end, and the Obama administration even worse than its predecessor, Venezuela: -- is a model participatory democracy; -- holds free, fair and open elections; -- respects the rule of law, civil liberties, and human rights; -- doesn't intimidate its neighbors; -- uses its resources responsibly for the people; -- provides essential social services for the needy; -- champions judicial fairness and the rule of law; -- has a model free and open media; -- wages no foreign wars; -- doesn't torture or imprison its adversaries; -- conducts effective operations to halt illicit drugs trafficking; -- promotes global peace, solidarity, equality and social justice; and -- its only threat is its good example that shames its northern neighbor. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196174-House-Resolution-Designates-Venezuela-a-State-Sponsor-of-Terrorism Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:28:02 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196020-Jon-Stewart-Eviscerates-Fox-News-Video- Jon Stewart dedicated more than 11 minutes of Thursday night's show on what he calls the "hyperbolic" war between the White House and Fox News. Though he certainly gave the White House a few nudges for saying they are "speaking truth to power" by fighting with Fox, Stewart spends the majority of the segment putting together one of the best and biggest takedowns of the network we have ever seen. The meatiest part involves For News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente's claim that Fox's designated "news" hours are from 9AM to 4PM and 6-8PM. Stewart explains: For the audience here, let me help you out--because it does get confusing. The three hours you spend in the morning with "Fox & Friends": not news. Your 4 o'clock to 5 o'clock post-tea and crumpets Neil Cavudo break: not news. The 5 o'clock to 6 o'clock emotional whirlwind and national group therapy session that is Glenn Beck: not even close to news. O'Reilly, Hannity, van Susteren-en-en-en: not news. This is according to Fox News. Those people--the ones featured in promos about how fair and balanced Fox News is--are not news. These people--otherwise known as the only people you ever think of when you think of Fox News--are not news. They are Fox 'opinutainment.' That's our favorite part. Please watch and tell us what yours is: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196020-Jon-Stewart-Eviscerates-Fox-News-Video- Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:47:31 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196016-Cheney-FBI-Interview-72-Instances-Of-Can-t-Recall Washington - Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way. On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy. The Cheney interview reflects a team of prosecutors and FBI agents trying to find out whether the leaks of Plame's CIA identity were orchestrated at the highest level of the White House and carried out by, among others, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196016-Cheney-FBI-Interview-72-Instances-Of-Can-t-Recall Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:19:20 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195936-Be-Prepared-for-the-Worst Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession. A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195936-Be-Prepared-for-the-Worst Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:14:48 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195920-9yr-old-boy-tortured-says-former-Guantanamo-abductee A British Muslim detained for three years at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison manned by the United States, revealed that the youngest detainee he knew of was a nine-year-old boy who was also tortured like the rest. Ruhal Ahmed's story was among more accounts of atrocities committed against the detainees at Guantanamo, told before an open commission hearing which began Friday on the sidelines of an international conference to criminalise war. The testimonies before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission Hearings will be submitted to a tribunal in conjunction with the Criminalise War Conference and War Crimes Tribunal 2009 spearheaded by former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195920-9yr-old-boy-tortured-says-former-Guantanamo-abductee Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:17:59 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195916-Enjoy-the-warmth-while-it-lasts Thank your lucky stars to be alive on Earth at this time. Our planet is usually in a deep freeze. The last million years have cycled through Ice Ages that last about 100,000 years each, with warmer slivers of about 10,000 years in between. We are in-betweeners, and just barely - we live in (gasp!) year 10,000 or so after the end of the last ice age. But for our good fortune, we might have been born in the next Ice Age. Our luck is even better than that. Those 10,000-year warm spells aren't all cosy-warm. They include brutal Little Ice Ages such as the 500-year-long Little Ice Age that started about 600 years ago. Fortunately, we weren't around during its fiercest periods when Finland lost one-third of its population, Iceland half, and most of Canada became uninhabitable - even the Inuit fled. While the cold spells within the 10,000 year warm spells aren't as brutal as a Little Ice Age, they can nevertheless make us huddle in gloom, such as the period in history from about 400 AD to 900 AD, which we know as the Dark Ages. We've lucked out twice, escaping the cold spells within the warm spells, making us inbetweeners within the inbetween periods. How good is that? http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195916-Enjoy-the-warmth-while-it-lasts Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:51:51 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195766-Ignored-by-western-media-Indonesian-asteroid-exploded-with-energy-of-small-atomic-bomb- Picture this: A 10-meter wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb. Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky. This really happened on Oct. 8th around 11 am local time in the coastal town of Bone, Indonesia. The Earth-shaking blast received remarkably little coverage in Western press, but meteor scientists have given it their full attention. "The explosion triggered infrasound sensors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) more than 10,000 km away," report researchers Elizabeth Silber and Peter Brown of the Univ. of Western Ontario in an Oct. 19th press release. Their analysis of the infrasound data revealed an explosion at coordinates 4.5S, 120E (close to Bone) with a yield of about 50 kton of TNT. That's two to three times more powerful than World War II-era atomic bombs. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195766-Ignored-by-western-media-Indonesian-asteroid-exploded-with-energy-of-small-atomic-bomb- Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:36:52 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195694-Secret-Team-outs-Afghan-President-Karzai-s-brother-as-CIA-Why-now- Kabul, Afghanistan - Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials. The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.'s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai's home. The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America's war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House. The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America's increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.'s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195694-Secret-Team-outs-Afghan-President-Karzai-s-brother-as-CIA-Why-now- Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:55:24 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195845-The-Murderous-Thugs-We-are-Supporting-in-Afghanistan-and-Why-a-Heroine-Wants-Us-Out Malalai Joya is an incredibly courageous Afghan woman, only 30 years old, living under the constant threat of being killed because she dares to speak the truth. The people who want to kill her are the people we put into power in Afghanistan. Ms. Joya lived in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan during Taliban rule. She loved to read and wished to share this gift with other Afghan women. With the support of a charity, Ms. Joya snuck back into Afghanistan and opened a secret school to teach young girls to read. This was at great risk to her personal safety, for the Taliban would have punished her severely if they found her out, which nearly occurred on a number of occasions. One would think, given this history, that she would be pleased about the ejection of the Taliban and its aftermath. Not so: Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments [speaking to a British reporter]. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is] what your soldiers are dying for. (quote from this piece in The Independent, October 21, 2009, which provides the material about Joya for this post). http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195845-The-Murderous-Thugs-We-are-Supporting-in-Afghanistan-and-Why-a-Heroine-Wants-Us-Out Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:39:48 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195840-Propaganda-Alert-Magic-Al-Qaeda-passports-place-9-11-patsies-in-Pakistan Pakistani troops sweeping through the mountains of South Waziristan have discovered startling evidence that appears to show a direct link between the lawless tribal belt and al-Qaida attacks in America and Europe. Last week soldiers raiding Taliban compounds in Shelwasti village, on the edge of the Mehsud tribal territory, recovered a passport in the name of Said Bahaji, a German national accused of being part of the Hamburg cell that coordinated the September 11 2001 attacks. They also found a Spanish passport in the name of Raquel Burgos García, whose Moroccan husband, Amer Azizi, is accused of playing a role in the Madrid train bombings of 2004. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195840-Propaganda-Alert-Magic-Al-Qaeda-passports-place-9-11-patsies-in-Pakistan Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:03:40 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195817-Secret-Team-s-definition-of-fun-and-games-CIA-kept-detainees-alive-to-keep-torturing-them According to human rights lawyer John Sifton, the CIA tortured some of its detainees in the War on Terror so severely that it had to take measures to keep them alive so they could continue being tortured. Sifton, who is the executive director of One World Research, told an interviewer for Russia Today that there was both a CIA detention program and a military detention program and that "The CIA program was by far the most secretive. ... That's the one that only had a few dozen detainees at any given time -- but it's the one that saw the biggest abuses, the most serious forms of torture." "In the military, there was actually a larger number of deaths than with the CIA," Sifton continued. "The CIA engaged in some horrendous abuses, but they appear to have taken precautions to have actually prevented people from dying -- which might sound humanitarian, but in fact was kind of sickening." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195817-Secret-Team-s-definition-of-fun-and-games-CIA-kept-detainees-alive-to-keep-torturing-them Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:56:47 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195796-Control-of-the-Female-Body-and-Humiliation-When-women-are-sinners-in-the-eyes-of-extremists Somalia is in the grip of famine and chaos but officials there are inspecting bras The Shabaab movement in Somalia controls large parts of the south and centre of the country, and because officials in this movement embrace the Wahabi ideology they have imposed their views on Somalis by force and have issued strict decrees banning films, plays, dancing at weddings, football matches and all forms of music, even the ring tones on mobile phones. Some days ago these extremists carried out a strange operation: they arrested a Somali woman and whipped her in public because she was wearing a bra. They announced clearly that wearing these bras was unIslamic because it is a form of fraud and deception. We may well ask what wearing bras has to do with religion, why they would consider them to be a form of fraud and deception, and how they managed to arrest the woman wearing the bra when all Somali women go around with their bodies completely covered. Did they appoint a special female officer to inspect the breasts of women passing by in the street? One Somali woman called Halima told the Reuters news agency: "Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts... They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women's chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195796-Control-of-the-Female-Body-and-Humiliation-When-women-are-sinners-in-the-eyes-of-extremists Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:48:14 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195783-How-the-EU-is-watching-you-the-rise-of-Europe-s-surveillance-state As ratification of the EU Lisbon Treaty draws closer, new research from Open Europe warns that the Treaty will help accelerate moves towards an EU surveillance state. The Lisbon Treaty marks a significant shift of power from national governments to the EU in the field of justice and home affairs. It will lead to an increase in the volume and scope of EU legislation, which is already having a profound impact on EU citizens' civil liberties and privacy. As well as measures on asylum and immigration policy, EU ministers and the European Commission are currently negotiating a raft of controversial new proposals, which are set to radically increase the EU's role in policing, criminal, and security matters. EU leaders hope to reach formal agreement on many controversial new initiatives by the end of the year. They include: a target to train a third of all police officers across the EU in a "common culture" of policing; the mass collection and sharing of personal data including DNA records into an EU-wide database; controversial surveillance techniques including 'cyber patrols'; the creation of a fledgling 'EU Home Office' with powers to decide on cooperation on police, border, immigration and criminal justice issues; an EU "master plan" on information exchange; the transfer of criminal proceedings among EU member states; a three-fold increase in the number of controversial EU arrest warrants; access to other member states' national tax databases; and EU laws on citizens' right to internet access, among many other things. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195783-How-the-EU-is-watching-you-the-rise-of-Europe-s-surveillance-state Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:37:46 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195782-AFRICOM-and-America-s-Global-Military-Agenda-Taking-The-Helm-Of-The-Entire-World "The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa...[A]nalysts caution that similar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq, where the civilian population continues to bear the brunt of the US intervention." "AFRICOM facilitates the United States advancing on the African continent, taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe." October 1st marked the one-year anniversary of the activation of the first U.S. overseas military command in a quarter of a century, Africa Command (AFRICOM). AFRICOM was established as a temporary command under the wing of U.S. European Command (EUCOM) a year earlier and launched as an independent entity on October 1, 2008. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195782-AFRICOM-and-America-s-Global-Military-Agenda-Taking-The-Helm-Of-The-Entire-World Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:29:00 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195744-America-s-Drug-Crisis-Brought-to-You-by-the-CIA Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: "Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work." Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan's stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the world's major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the CIA payroll. Okay, the article was lacking much historical perspective (more on that later), and the dead hand of top editors was evident in the overly cautious tone (I loved the third paragraph, which stated that "The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raises significant questions about America's war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House." Well, duh! It should be raising questions about why we are even in Afghanistan, about who should be going to jail at the CIA, and about how can the government explain this to the over 1000 soldiers and Marines who have died supposedly helping to build a new Afghanistan). But that said, the newspaper that helped cheerlead us into the pointless and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003, and that prevented journalist Risen from running his exposé of the Bush/Cheney administration's massive warrantless National Security Agency electronic spying operation until after the 2004 presidential election, this time gave a critically important story full play, and even, appropriately, included a teaser in the same front-page story about October being the most deadly month yet for the US in Afghanistan. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195744-America-s-Drug-Crisis-Brought-to-You-by-the-CIA Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:49:16 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195666-War-Is-a-Hate-Crime Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is wrong. So is violence against people in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the bizarre culture of identity politics, there are no alliances among the oppressed. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first major federal civil rights law protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, passed last week, was attached to a $680-billion measure outlining the Pentagon's budget, which includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democratic majority in Congress, under the cover of protecting some innocents, authorized massive acts of violence against other innocents. It was a clever piece of marketing. It blunted debate about new funding for war. And behind the closed doors of the caucus rooms, the Democratic leadership told Blue Dog Democrats, who are squeamish about defending gays or lesbians from hate crimes, that they could justify the vote as support for the war. They told liberal Democrats, who are squeamish about unlimited funding for war, that they could defend the vote as a step forward in the battle for civil rights. Gender equality groups, by selfishly narrowing their concern to themselves, participated in the dirty game. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195666-War-Is-a-Hate-Crime Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:49:50 -0400 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195644-The-New-Twilight-Zone-Obama-Declares-Swine-Flu-Emergency The shocking truth about why Obama announced a National Public Health Emergency in the US this weekend. President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency on Friday October 23, empowering the health secretary to suspend federal requirements and speed up treatment. His declaration authorizes Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to bypass normal federal regulations so health officials can respond more quickly to the outbreak, which, allegedly, has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States. "As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Obama wrote in the declaration, which the White House announced Saturday. He said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources." Because of vaccine production delays, the government has backed off initial estimates that 120 million doses would be available by mid-October. As of mid-October, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctor's offices and other providers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said. The government now estimates to have about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine out by mid-November and 150 million in December. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195644-The-New-Twilight-Zone-Obama-Declares-Swine-Flu-Emergency Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:23:50 -0400