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Bullseye

Best of the Web: A word of advice about the Middle East - we've reached the 'tipping point' with cliches

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Good terrorists at work
You've got to be careful when Syria's rebels are perpetually "closing in"

Remember the days when we thought Egypt's path to democracy was a done deal? Western-trained Mohamed Morsi had invited the people to come and meet him in Hosni Mubarak's former presidential palace, the old military toffs in the "Supreme Council of the Armed Forces" had been pensioned off and the International Monetary Fund was waiting to bestow some of those cruel deprivations upon Egypt that would ready it for our financial benevolence. How happy the Middle East optimists were by mid-2012.

Next door, Libya produced a victory for nice, pro-Western secularist Mahmoud Jibril, promising freedom, stability, a new home for the West in one of the Arab world's most fecund oil producers. It was a place where even US diplomats could wander around virtually unprotected.

Tunisia may have an Islamist party running its government, but it was a "moderate" administration - in other words, we thought it would do what we wanted - while the Saudis and the Bahraini autocracy, with the purse-lipped support of Messrs Obama and Cameron, quietly suppressed what was left of the Shia uprising which threatened to remind us all that democracy was not really welcome among the wealthiest Arab states. Democracy was for the poor.

Red Flag

Best of the Web: Who is Adam Lanza?

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The photos of Adam Lanza that have been circulated through the press are bizarre to say the least...
As many of you know, this entire event at Sandy Hook, CT leaves a lot more questions than answers, and with each passing day the story seems to get more convoluted and irrational. I decided to do some of my own digging into Adam Lanza's background, and so far I have been unable to even confirm that this person actually even exists.

I did two separate searches on Intelius and Spokeo and each of them resulted in the same baffling results. Both Nancy and Peter Lanza are listed in Sandy Brook, CT and their family tree shows Nancy and Peter Lanza with only one child....Ryan Lanza. Adam Lanza does not show up in the family tree at either website and searches for Adam Lanza from CT, yield only two results, which are clearly not him.

The search results are posted below. If you scroll down you will see that on each of Nancy, Peter's and Ryan's searches a family tree is given of all known members:

Comment: Here are two other versions circulating in the media of the same original photo as above, but do you notice anything funny about the background in each of these? They appear to have been photoshopped.

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Remind you of anything?

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© Life Magazine/CIA



Igloo

Best of the Web: Nearly 200 killed in cold snap across Russia, eastern Europe

Cold Snap
© Agence France-Presse49 deaths in Poland from cold in December.
A vicious cold snap across Russia and eastern Europe has claimed nearly 200 lives, officials figures showed Friday, as forecasters warned it would last until Christmas Eve.

In Russia, the cold has killed two people in the past 24 hours, the Ria-Novosti agency reported, citing medical sources, bringing the total number of deaths over the past week to 56.

The freeze had also left 371 people in hospital.

Thermometers have been stuck below minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) in Moscow -- and below minus 50 degrees (minus 58 F) in some parts of Siberia -- for a week.

Russian weather forecasters said temperature in the Khabarovsk region in eastern Russia had dropped to minus 43 Celsius, while Krasnoyarsk in Siberia reported minus 47.

This "abnormal" frost would last till Monday because of a persistent anticyclone, they added.

In Russia's European region, meanwhile, the mercury is expected to fall to minus 31 degrees Celsius on Christmas Eve before rising rapidly afterwards.

Other European countries hit hard by the extreme temperatures were counting the toll as temperatures gradually started to return to normal.

Galaxy

Best of the Web: What have we learned from December 21, 2012?

From the perspective of being the manager at a spiritual bookstore witnessing the New Age 2012 craze at ground zero in West Los Angeles, I feel it incumbent to take the opportunity to lay out some observations regarding this period in time because all too often, I meet people like this:


Hello and Namasté dear New Agers,

Well... Here we are.
Dec 21st, 2012 has come and gone.

Are you "enlightened" yet?
Was there a "global awakening"?
Are you still in a human suit, marooned in Monkey Land, where governments kill, steal, and oppress? Where cultures distract and ensnare you with lies and myths to coerce your obedience through empty promises, convolution, illusory Left/Right paradigms, and fear?

Yep.

So, do you realize what it means?
It means these MANY YEARS of flashy "You Create Your Own Reality" and New Age marketing leading up to the "Awakening/ Ascension of 2012″ was a MANUFACTURED LIE. The planets were never going to "align" and there was never going to be a worldwide global enlightenment on Dec 21, 2012.
"Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true."

~ Adyashanti

Gear

Best of the Web: New York's top court highlights the meaninglessness and menace of the term 'terrorism'

judges gavel
© AlamyA new ruling from New York's highest court illustrates vital points about "terrorism".
A fascinating new ruling unwittingly illustrates the separate system of 'justice' invented for Muslims in the US after 9/11

Valuable revelations are often found in unlikely places. Such is the case with a fascinating ruling released last week by the New York Court of Appeals, that state's highest court, in the criminal case of People v. Edgar Morales. The facts of the case are quite simple, but the implications of the ruling are profound.

The defendant, Morales, was a member of a Bronx street gang known as the "St. James Boys" (SJB). In August, 2002, Morales and fellow gang members went to a party, saw someone from a rival gang which they believed responsible for a friend's death, and told him to leave. When he refused, they planned to attack him after the party. When the party ended, Morales shot at the rival gang member and his cohorts, severely wounding one of them but also accidentally shooting and killing a 10-year-old girl who was a bystander.

Prosecutors were not content to charge Morales with murder and related crimes. Instead, they charged him with crimes of "terrorism" under an anti-terrorism law that was enacted in New York in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. When enacting the law, the legislature stated that it is designed to ensure that terrorists "are prosecuted and punished in state courts with appropriate severity". Under the law, this newly created "terrorism" crime is committed whenever one acts with the "intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population", but the law contains no definition of that term.

At trial, Morales vehemently argued that what he was accused of doing could not possibly be "terrorism", but the prosecutors insisted - and the trial court agreed - that his violence "furthered the [gang]'s objective to intimidate or coerce other Mexican-American gangs in the Bronx and, as a result of those activities, the [gang] intended to intimidate and coerce the entire Mexican-American community." The jury found him guilty on all counts, including the "terrorism" charges, and the Court of Appeals set out to determine whether the terrorism charges were validly applied to this violence.

Gold Seal

Best of the Web: British State Terrorism from Northern Ireland to Syria

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From Northern Ireland to Syria, it's all the same to the British elite...
This story connects far-flung places. Kenya, Malaya, Northern Ireland and now Syria. The one over-arching theme is British counter-insurgency strategy, or more plainly, the use of state terrorism by British forces to achieve political objectives.

The story came alive again this week with two seemingly unrelated news developments. First, we learn of deeper involvement of Britain's military in the violence raging across Syria. British military officers and Special Forces are reportedly training - in Jordanian territory - foreign-backed militants to step up their campaign of terrorism across Syria.

These terror gangs, whom the Western mainstream media call "freedom fighters", have been plunging Syria into bloody chaos for the past 22 months, with car bombs ripping through civilian neighbourhoods and death squads massacring whole villages, the latest being Aqrab in Hama Province where over 125 people where murdered this week. Ample evidence shows that the mercenaries, recruited from various countries including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, are covertly supplied with weapons and training from the US, Britain and France via the conduits of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

Comment: The British regime is conservatively estimated to have directly or indirectly killed between 7.5 and 11.5 million people around the world from WWII to 2004 [Source: Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses, by Mark Curtis].


Gear

Best of the Web: Which Obama should we believe?

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Crocodile tears: Obama kills thousands of children in the Middle East with drones without batting an eye.
As the news of the Connecticut school massacre sinks in, it would take a hard-hearted person not to feel for the parents, families and friends of the victims. It is the sort of event which most of us will not experience first-hand, but some of us may know someone who has gone through a similar tragedy.

In fact, a good friend of mine lost one nephew in a bomb attack in 2008 and last month another nephew was seriously wounded in almost identical circumstances. On the second occasion, President Barack Obama gave the people who wounded the young man - one leg was blown off, as was half of an arm - the green light to continue with their maiming and slaughter of innocents "in self-defence". My friend, as you might have guessed, is a Palestinian from Gaza; his nephews' attackers were Israelis. There was no sign of any grief from Obama, the newly-elected US president on either occasion. No wiping of a tear, nor heartfelt words to try to comfort those left behind to cope with their grief and efforts to re-establish a normal life of the kind we all take for granted.

Like all of his predecessors since World War Two, Obama gives Israel carte blanche to do whatever it wants to the Palestinians. Indeed, he even makes sure that it has the most up-to-date arsenal with which to do its dirty work. Just last week, it was announced that America will replace the munitions used by Israel in its massive bombardment of civilians in the Gaza Strip for eight days and nights in November. Has he suggested that arms and ammunition should be made easier for US citizens to obtain in the wake of Connecticut? No way; he's already, less than 24 hours later, talking of re-opening the debate about gun control. The President of the United States is, however, more than willing to pump the most lethal munitions the military-industrial complex can produce to a state which breaks international laws and conventions at will, and with impunity thanks to his country's unflinching support.

USA

Best of the Web: Western smoke-and-mirrors terrorism

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© Press TV
Barack Obama, America's Conjurer-in-Chief, is trying to entertain the world with a new smoke-and-mirrors trick, with the announcement that his government is recognizing the Syrian National Coalition as "the sole representative of the Syrian people".

The chemical weapons trick seems to have fizzled like a damp squib. So, now it's time for another illusion - the "worthy Syrian opposition".

This motley crew of treasonous exiles - who mysteriously, somehow, have bags of money to trot all over the globe from Doha to Cairo, Tokyo to Marrakech - are all of sudden anointed by the American President as the next government of Syria.


Comment: While it appears sudden, this move has actually been in the pipeline for some time:

True colours shining through: François Hollande bypasses international law, calls on al-Qaeda-in-Syria to form provisional government


Anyone who has read the Doha Protocol that the SNC willingly signed up to while seduced in a luxury hotel last month by their Qatari sponsors should be under no misapprehension. This group of self-serving opportunists has been cobbled together with the sole purpose of selling Syria's sovereignty to the highest, or even lowest, bidder. The people of Syria have been spared no treachery low enough in the imperialists' manifesto of regime change, including surrender of wealth, natural resources and all of Syria's independent foreign policy principles.

Vader

Best of the Web: The truth about Libya, Gaddafi and why the Western elite murdered him

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Muammar Gaddafi, murdered King of Africa
The following is five-part video showing how the psychopaths in power in the Western Empire once again engineered a fake media revolution, bombed innocent civilians, blamed their deaths on their target 'régime', and got away with it by presenting it all under the guise of 'humanitarian intervention'.

Part 1


Part 2


Pirates

Best of the Web: U.S. recognizes unelected terrorists as Syrian 'representatives'

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Could it BE any clearer that the US and UK are now partners with Al Qaeda? Or does this mean that they are now overtly enjoying a close relationship that existed throughout the War on Terror?
US admits Al Qaeda "amongst" Syrian rebels, recognizes them as the "legitimate representative of the Syrian people"

As expected, after a long pause of feigned "consideration," the US has recognized the militants it has been arming, funding, aiding logistically and supporting diplomatically since as early as 2007, as the "legitimate representatives of the Syrian people," with the added caveat, "in opposition to the Assad regime." The Wall Street Journal would report that US President Barack Obama's announcement actually read:
"The Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime."
The bizarre, uncertain wording sends a message of both uncertainty and resounding illegitimacy, indicating that the US itself recognizes the true nature of the so-called "Syrian" opposition is apparent to an increasing number of people both in public office and across the public, and that a certain degree of rhetorical distance must be kept.