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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Upside Down

upside down baby statue
© Unknown
A message from deceptions filmmaker :
I always seem to find confirming evidence that things are horribly wrong. Nightmares about corruption and control have crept into my consciousness and are now giant objects of reality for me. I firmly believe that by controlling money and media a very small cadre of ultra elites are also controlling an unsuspecting public. They are marching us into a stark Orwellian future, a world of elite rulers and a sea of debt slaves totally dependent upon government for their very existence.
In his book "1984," which was published in 1949, George Orwell was warning us. Sixty-one years ago he saw it coming, a totalitarian world run by the power elite with party slogans of "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength." Words like doublespeak and doublethink (a willingness to believe contradictory statements when theParty demands it), a Ministry of Truth (an organization to ensure that the Party's version of the past is never questioned), the perpetual surveillance of Big Brother and the specter of Thought Police and Thought Crimes. What were mere novel terms in 1949 now pervade our society. Even the most ignorant and naïve among us cannot fail to see the parallels.

Doublespeak and doublethink are always in full force whenever the G-20 (Group of Twenty) meets. Massive public austerity was this group's answer when they met in Toronto. Entitlement programs, massive debts and run away government spending had to be curbed. While calls for "belt tightening" sprang from the board room, $1 billion was spent on security for a two day summit to protect these people from the public. Trillion dollar wars and trillion dollar bank bailouts occur at the same time that public benefits and state budgets are slashed. The cost of privatized medical care has escalated beyond belief including the salaries of every health company CEO which are in the millions. Tax cuts have also now been extended to this group of parasites. After all, the masters, the elite, the "inner party," as Orwell would say, must be taken care of.

Video

Best of the Web: Julian Assange Admits Media Censored Israeli Documents

The WikiLeaks founder speaks to David Frost and admits that he gave full control to the mainstream media who then censored documents relating to Israel

Excerpt from The Peninsula:
Assange said only a meagre number of files related to Israel had been published so far, because the newspapers in the West that were given exclusive rights to publish the secret documents were reluctant to publish many sensitive information about Israel.

"There are 3,700 files related to Israel and the source of 2,700 files is Israel. In the next six months we intend to publish more files depending on our sources," said Assange in the nearly one-hour interview telecast live from the UK.

"The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US," he added.

USA

Best of the Web: Gov. Jesse Ventura - 911 Pentagon Attack

TV host, Jesse Ventura, former Navy Seal, former Governor of Minnesota, hosts a documentary on prime-time American television and makes an open and shut criminal case tying Cheney, Rumsfeld and officials throughout the US government with complicity in the planning, execution and subsequent cover-up of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

Take the 43 minutes to watch this and then try and convince yourself "Muslim terrorists" were responsible.


Cult

Best of the Web: Vatican Christmas Shocker! Pope says child rape isn't that bad, was normal back in his day

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© UnknownIs the game up for the Catholic Church? Sadly not, as many of its brainwashed members will continue to support it in spite of its now overt symptoms of psychopathology.
Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict's claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn't considered an "absolute evil" as recently as the 1970s.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered "normal" by society.

"In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children," the Pope said.

"It was maintained - even within the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a 'better than' and a 'worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself."

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" which brought "humiliation" on the Church.

Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics "to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred" and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.

Bulb

Best of the Web: 5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam

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A conservative commentator recently made headlines by claiming 10 percent of all of the world's Muslims are terrorists. An amazing claim, considering that equals 150 million terrorists and if each were to pull off an attack killing just 40 people, they could exterminate all non-Muslim life on earth.

Either they're not all that dedicated to terrorism, or the claim is utter insanity.

Well, if there's one thing everyone thinks of when they hear "Cracked.com" it's "friend of Islam." Which is why we feel compelled to clarify a few misconceptions for our readers. Also, there is no way this article will ever come back to haunt us in any way.

Handcuffs

Best of the Web: Terrorist by Association

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© Peter HoldernessJoe Iosbaker, a Service Employees union steward, and Stephanie Weiner, a Palestinian solidarity activist, at home in Chicago. The FBI used their porch as a staging area before the September 24 raid. Watch In These Times' video interview with the couple in their home below.
The Justice Department targets nonviolent solidarity activists.

September 24 began like any other Friday for Joe Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner. Then, at 7 a.m., FBI agents knocked on the door of the Chicago couple's house in the city's North Side.

Armed with a search warrant, more than 20 agents examined the couple's home, photographing every room and combing through notebooks, family videos and books, even their children's drawings. Some items were connected to their decades of anti-war and international solidarity activism, but others were not. "Folders were opened, letters were pulled out of envelopes," says Weiner, an adult education professor at Wilbur Wright College. "They had rubber gloves and they went through every aspect of our home." (See video interview with Weiner and Iosbaker below.)

Ten hours after their arrival, as television news crews filmed and activist supporters stood on the sidewalk, the agents drove away with nearly 30 boxes of material, including t-shirts and a photograph of Malcolm X. By that time, Iosbaker and Weiner had been served subpoenas to appear before a grand jury investigating "material support" for "foreign terrorist organizations." And they knew theirs wasn't the only home invaded that day. More than 70 FBI agents had raided seven residences in Chicago and Minneapolis and questioned activists in Michigan, California and North Carolina, serving subpoenas to 11 people. A few days later, the Justice Department subpoenaed members of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee (AWC), whose office was also raided on September 24, raising the number to 14. (Editor's note: five additional Chicago-area activists were subpoenaed in early December; see update below.)

Question

Best of the Web: Wikileaks: Play the Ball, not the Man - and Check Who's Kicking it

wikileaks hourglass graphic
© unknown
'When people write political commentary on blogs or other social media, it is my experience that it is not - with some exceptions - their goal to expose the truth. Rather, it is their goal to position themselves among their peers on whatever the issue of the day is. The most effective, the most economical way to do that is simply to take the story that's going around - it has already created a marketable audience for itself - and say whether they're in favor of that interpretation or not.'[1]
So said Julian Assange in an interview with Time magazine on 30 November, presumably to justify why he chose to release Cablegate through the very mainstream media whose ineptitude, bias, and lack of courage purportedly necessitated the formation of Wikileaks in the first place.

But even that description does not quite do him justice. Assange has gone further than providing the story - or selected excerpts at least - he has also created the market, through deals with major media players and hidden financial backers,[2] and intends it to be played out for some time through protracted releases.

With few exceptions the majority of the public, but more worryingly, many supposed investigative and/or independent journalists, have dismally failed to exercise even the most minimum capacity for critical assessment, either talking-up the revelations (many of which were already common knowledge, or should have been to journalists doing their job properly) and/or participating in the indecent stampede to lionise Assange as some great champion of freedom of information and open government - or both.

This, like the cables themselves, conveniently deflects attention from the real issues - the right to information, the desirability of open government, the protection of whistle-blowing, and the protection for individuals from state abuses of the judiciary for political purposes. Moreover it achieves this deflection not by presenting all of the information in its original form, which might conceivably pass as a search for truth, but by presenting selected and redacted information, ie spin, which does not pass as a search for truth. The protracted nature of the releases suggests an eye on income, as well as keeping the world's attention distracted from any and everything else, like, perhaps, the next Operation Cast Lead.

Question

Best of the Web: Who's Who at Wikileaks?

J Assange
© Reuters/Valentin Flauraud
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." --Franklin D. Roosevelt

After the publication of a series of confirmations rather than revelations, there are some crucial unanswered questions regarding the nature and organizational structure of Wikileaks.

Shrouded in secrecy, the now famous whistleblowing site and its director Julian Assange are demanding "transparency" from governments and corporations around the world while failing to provide some basic information pertaining to Wikileaks as an organization.

Who is Julian Assange?

In the introduction to the book Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997), by Julian Assange and Suelette Dreyfus, Assange begins with the following quotes:

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." -- Oscar Wilde

"What is essential is invisible to the eye." -- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

From the start, Assange states that he undertook the research for the book; however, he fails to mention that he was actually one of the hackers analyzed in the book, going by the name of Mendax, a Latin word for "lying, false...".

Although we cannot confirm that the above quotes referred to him, they nonetheless suggest that Assange, at the time, was hiding his true identity.

Comment: SOTT.net is collecting these articles because they are important for keeping track of what may be going on behind the scenes as well as in the court of public opinion. SOTT's official view can be found here. SOTT supports Julian Assange and Wikileaks fully, and hopes to see his legal troubles come to an end and the future of global leaking of evil secrets assured.


Yoda

Best of the Web: Left Bows Down to False WikiLeaks Prophet

wikimonitor
© Newscom
Wide-eyed, unquestioning worship of Julian Assange is embarrassing and creepy.

Just in time for Christmas, the cult of Julian Assange has reached a Messianic crescendo.

As millions of Christians give praise to the man-god they consider to be "the way and the truth and the life", so radicals, who are normally so sniffy about anything that looks or sounds like religion, are bending their collective knee to that "truth teller" Assange.

Here's a man who simply wants to reveal to us The Truth, we are told, yet who is persecuted and even imprisoned for doing so.

"Truth in chains" is how one WikiLeaks-loving hack described Assange's temporary imprisonment in Britain for alleged sexual offences committed in Sweden, as if Assange himself is truth, the physical embodiment of all that is right and real.

The pursuit of Assange by law enforcers represents the "persecution of truth itself", an American journalist says.

Just as Christmas is tinged with sadness for Christians because they know where this newborn babe of truth will end up at Easter time, so the Assange apostles warn us that their "truth teller" could end up dead, too, killed by the jealous and furious authorities as surely as Christ was.

Comment: SOTT.net is collecting these articles because they are important for keeping track of what may be going on behind the scenes as well as in the court of public opinion. SOTT's official view can be found here. SOTT supports Julian Assange and Wikileaks fully, and hopes to see his legal troubles come to an end and the future of global leaking of evil secrets assured.


Vader

Best of the Web: 'I didn't think of Iraqis as humans,' says U.S. soldier who raped 14-year-old girl before killing her and her family

steven green
© APSteven Green, pictured in April 2009, is serving five life sentences for rape and murder in Iraq. He has launched appeal but doesn't have 'much hope' of ever being freed

An Iraq War veteran serving five life terms for raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her parents and sister says he didn't think of Iraqi civilians as humans after being exposed to extreme warzone violence.

Steven Green, a former 101st Airborne soldier, in his first interview since the 2006 killings, claimed that his crimes were fuelled in part by experiences in Iraq's violent 'Triangle of Death' where two of his sergeants were gunned down.

He also cited a lack of leadership and help from the Army.

'I was crazy,' Green said in the exclusive telephone interview from federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. 'I was just all the way out there. I didn't think I was going to live.'

Green talked about what led up to the March 12, 2006, attack on a family near Mahmoudiya, Iraq, that left him serving five consecutive life sentences.

The former soldier, who apologised at sentencing for his crimes, said he wasn't seeking sympathy nor trying to justify his actions - killings prosecutors described at trial in 2009 as one of the worst crimes of the Iraq war.

But Green said people should know his actions were a consequence of his circumstances in a war zone.

'If I hadn't ever been in Iraq, I wouldn't be in the kind of trouble I'm in now,' Green said. 'I'm not happy about that.'

Green was discharged with a 'personality disorder' before federal charges were brought against him.

Prosecutors sought a death sentence, but a federal jury in Paducah, Kentucky, opted for five life sentences on charges including the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Al-Janabi and the shooting deaths of her mother, father and younger sister.

Four other soldiers were convicted in military court for various roles in the attack. Three remain in military prison.

Green is challenging the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows the federal government to charge an American in civilian court for alleged crimes committed overseas. He was the first former soldier convicted under the statute. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled arguments for January 21.