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Wed, 27 Oct 2021
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Palestinians storm gate at Rafah Crossing

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© File Photo
Jerusalem -- Palestinians traveling to Egypt stormed a gate at the border crossing on Saturday after waiting for hours in buses, Gaza officials told CNN.

It is the first kink in cross-border travel after Egypt reopened the crossing with Gaza last week, a symbolic move that signaled the Cairo government's greater support of Palestinian aspirations.

The Rafah Crossing had been subject to frequent closures by Egypt after the Islamic militant group Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.

The closure of the border had been part of an embargo policy by Egypt and Israel aimed at cutting off Hamas, but the embargo created an economic hardship on the Palestinian territory by limiting shipments of goods in and out of the country.

Top Secret

Bilderberg 2011: All aboard the Bilderbus

Hotel
© The Guardian
Josef Ackerman, CEO of Deutsche Bank, practises his backflips.
As the Bilderberg conference heads towards Switzerland there's still time to book your seat on a minibus to St Moritz

As Europe groans, and austerity bites, as defaulting looms, and once proud nations fall to their knees in debt, there's only one annual conference of bankers and industrialists that can step in and save us all...

Bilderberg!

Next week, in Switzerland, Henry Kissinger and his brave band of corporate CEOs, high-wealth individuals and heavyweight thinktankers will lock arms with Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and David Rockefeller, and stand their ground against the economic contagion.

The last thing a bunch of bank bosses and multinational executives wants is for the nation-states of Europe to collapse, allowing their assets to be bought up on the cheap. Right?

Bizarro Earth

The Brazilian tribe that played by our rules, and lost

The Kayapó people's battle to save their land from flooding as the Bel Monte dam is built follows a pattern across the Americas
Chief Raoni of the Caiapo tribe
© Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino
Chief Raoni smokes a pipe while demonstrating against the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam.

The man pictured above is Raoni Txucarramãe, chief of the Kayapó people, who hail from Brazil's northern Pará province. The homeland of the Kayapó is the tropical rainforest surrounding the tributaries of the giant Xingu river, itself a nearly 2,000km long tributary of the Amazon. But the livelihood of the Kayapó people is under grave threat. Brazil's president, Dilma Vana Rousseff, has authorised the construction of a dam that will flood their homeland.

The Belo Monte dam will be the world's third-largest hydroelectric dam (after China's Three Gorges dam, itself with numerous problems, and the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu dam). It will flood 400,000 hectares of the world's largest rainforest, displacing 20,000 to 40,000 people - including the Kayapó. The ecological impact of the project is massive: the Xingu River basin has four times more biodiversity than all of Europe. Flooding of the rainforest will liberate massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas far more damaging than carbon dioxide. But the impact on Chief Raoni's people, on an entire society, is unimaginable.

The Kayapó traditionally practised slash-and-burn agriculture on small farms cut into the jungle. The rich resources of their lands (minerals, timber, and potential hydroelectrical power) have brought pressures from outside. Although the Brazilian constitution explicitly prohibits the displacement of "Indians" from their traditional lands, it provides for one convenient exception: where the National Congress deems removal of the people to be "in the interest of the sovereignty of the country". Proponents of the dam argue that its construction is in the nation's interest.

Bad Guys

Spooks as Expendable and Convenient Casualties of the War of Terror: CIA agents 'died in embassy blast'

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© AFP Photo / Files
Rescuers work to help survivors amid the devastation brought in by a bomb explosion in Al-Qaeda's first major international attack near the US embassy and a bank in Nairobi on August 7, 1998 that killed about 200 people and left more than 1,000 injured.
Two of the 12 Americans killed in the 1998 US embassy attack in Nairobi worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, a news service has reported.

The disclosure of Mr Tom Shah's and Ms Molly Huckaby Hardy's actual status comes 13 years after the bombing and coincides with Memorial Day on Monday when the US honours its war dead.


Comment: It also coincides with the recent "Osama's killing" charade. Hardly a coincidence, considering the fact that nothing is without an agenda when it comes to CIA. Otherwise Tom Shah's and Molly Huckaby Hardy's names would remain indefinitely unknown to the general public.



Mr Shah and Ms Hardy "are believed to have been the first CIA casualties" in the clandestine war against al-Qaeda, the Associated Press says in its investigative story.


Comment: Probably, not the first, nor the last. When we are dealing with CIA's dirty clandestine wars (while al-Qaeda, CIA's construct, is only one example of their mode of operation and deception), "there is no honor among thieves", and agents can be easily sacrificed in order to execute The Secret Team's agenda.


The news service says its account is based on interviews with half-a-dozen current and former US officials.

Until now, "their service remained a secret in both life and death, marked only by anonymous stars on the wall at CIA headquarters" outside Washington, the AP writes.

Comment: And how interestingly convenient, as it is being "revealed", that there was indeed a "major CIA station".


Crusader

Hijacking The Holy - C Street, Dominionism and Sarah Palin

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine]
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As a species, you'd think we'd be able to tell the difference by now between image and reality. And yet, with all our acquired scientific knowledge, the gist of which is dutifully drilled into our minds during twelve to twenty years of public and 'higher' education, we still can't get it right. Well, perhaps that isn't fair. I know a few individuals who can sniff out a pair of imitation Nikes or a Britney Spears lip-synch in a heartbeat. So we're experts when it comes to the trivial, but with anything a tad meatier, where our very livelihoods may depend on it, our discernment in separating fact from fiction is deplorable. Why is that?

Growing up, I had the opportunity to sit in on more than a few 'polite' dinner conversations among adults. Not having much to say, I tended to listen. And, more often than not, as one topic led to another, as the pace of speech quickened and voices became slightly higher in pitch, that inevitable conversation stopper reared its head. "No religion or politics!" Such things are off limits, you see, and when discussed in 'polite' company, all rationality seems to fly out the window and a battle of wills ensues.

USA

Warning: This Message Contains Democracy

constitution shred
© n/a
No great civilization is ever destroyed from without, or conquered by external forces, until it first destroys itself from within. America's leaders should have thought long and hard about that before voting to extend the Patriot Act last week.

Unhappily it's official. We the People are the enemy. We have dared to prod and examine government policy too closely. We have questioned government leadership when we should rightly have obeyed without challenge. Some of us have exposed wrongful government practices and deceptions, expecting to hold Congress and White House leaders accountable to voters. Foolish us!

Last week Congress set the record straight. Breaking campaign promises to defeat the Patriot Act, Congress blocked hearings and debate on amendments that would fix problems in surveillance rules, and rammed a four year extension on the American People. Only 31 Republicans and 122 Democrats voted against the Patriot Act in the House.

Top Secret

Charges of Corruption Taint Organic Trade Association

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© Organic Consumers Association
A new short film claims that the board of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) is undermining the ethic of of the organic movement. The film, embedded below, was released by an anonymous person or group called Organic Spies, suggests that at least four current board members of the OTA are in conflict of interest because the companies they represent overwhelmingly rely on genetically engineered ingredients, something that is anathema to the organic movement.

I love a shadowy figure as much as the next guy, but I also checked with former OTA director and board member Arran Stephens, CEO of the still independent and fiercely organic cereal company, Nature's Path, to get his take on this breaking scandal.

Whistle

Obama Murdering Americans? Deregulates GMO Crops Despite Supreme Court Injunction

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© care2.com
Early this spring, while the world was distracted by Egypt's uprising, President Barack Obama pushed the Secretary of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets in the United States. The USDA came through as he directed, totally deregulating these Monsanto-patented genes in early February.

In so doing, Obama and the USDA have chosen to override and ignore decisions and injunctions made by the U.S. Supreme Court that banned planting of genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets without consideration of the Environmental Impact Assessments, which showed high risks to organic and conventional (chemical) farmers.

So how does this affect you and me? Neither of us remembers seeing alfalfa or sugar beets on our breakfast table or even on our Seder table. Or do we?

Sugar beets provide over 50 percent of the sugar Americans use in their coffee, cereals, and desserts. For the moment, let's not focus on the fact that sugar beets can cross-pollinate with red beets and make our borscht genetically modified.

Alfalfa reaches our tables within milk, cream, butter, and meat, as it is used as a major animal feed in the dairy industry. It is also used to enrich soils in organic farming.

Star of David

Israel Lobby, Laying Out The Facts: 1990 Congressional Record of Rep. Gus Savage

Congressional Record, 101st Congress (1989-1990)

House of Representatives

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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Savage] is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. SAVAGE. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to deal with the problem that occurred in my recent primary election, the one in which--let me just say that I was successful, despite this problem. However, I want to bring it to the attention of our Nation tonight. For while I mention it in reference to my own experience in the recent primary election, I am convinced that it constitutes a danger for all America and threatens to rip the fabric of our democracy.

I represent the Second Congressional District in Illinois. It is not an inner-city district. It consists mainly of bungalows, semi-professional, and blue collar workers, second and third generation families there. It is approximately 30 percent suburban, approximately 30 percent nonblack. It is an industrial district that has housed most of the heavy industry in Illinois--automobile assembly plants, stamping plants, three steel mills, at one time, four.

In this campaign a strange thing occurred. A column was written by a columnist in the Sun-Times, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, by the name of Vernon Jarrett, that raised questions about who really was my opponent, because of what appeared to be a strange tilt in the sources of his campaign funding.

I want to share some facts with Members here this evening, that perhaps could be shared by some others who have been targeted, apparently as I was in this primary, and unfortunately, they lost their reelection bid.

Yoda

Cynthia McKinney: On President Obama and Libya, Japan and 9/11 Truth

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© Unknown
Barack who?... Cynthia McKinney is a real leader
In 2005 in the basement of the United States Capitol at a meeting convened by Congressman John Conyers on the subject of the "Downing Street Memo," Ray McGovern uttered the following truth: he testified that "the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel, and military bases craved by administration neocons" so that "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." McGovern went on to testify truthfully that "Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation. The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

The routine condemnations of McGovern could be heard from all of the sources inside the U.S. political structure that has at its base finance from pro-Israel sources; that included from Dr. Howard Dean who was Chair of the Democratic National Committee at the time. This finance nexus has been thoroughly identified by Dr. James Petras, for those who want to do further reading.

Condemnations, however, do not disprove McGovern's statement, but point, instead, to the political untouchability of the topic. However, if one wants to truly understand the formulation of U.S. foreign and military policies, one must carefully consider McGovern's testimony.