Puppet Masters
An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies. Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
Gold closed at 532.00 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 4.6% from the week before. The dollar closed at 0.8466 euros for the week, down 0.8% from 0.8534 at the previous Friday's close. That put the euro at 1.1812 dollars, compared to 1.1718 the previous week. Gold in euros would be 450.39 euros an ounce, up 3.8% from 433.86 at the close of the week before. Oil closed at 59.76 dollars an ounce, up 0.7% from 59.32 the Friday before. Oil in euros would be 50.59 euros a barrel, compared to 50.62 the previous week. The gold/oil ratio was 8.90 at Friday's close, up 3.9% from 8.57 the week before. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.53%, up two basis points from 4.51 the previous week. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow closed at 10,778.58, down 0.9% from 10,877.51 the Friday before. The NASDAQ closed at 2,256.73, down 0.7% from 2,273.37 at the previous week's close.
It's happening. Much of what we've been predicting for the past year seems to be taking place. The housing bubble has popped, gold and other precious metals are shooting up in price as those with money are rushing to seek shelter.
It's happening. Much of what we've been predicting for the past year seems to be taking place. The housing bubble has popped, gold and other precious metals are shooting up in price as those with money are rushing to seek shelter.
Running Time: 00:41:46
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It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.
Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.
In this case, it, is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America.
The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.
Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.
In this case, it, is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America.
The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.
Comment: Comment: Don't hold your breath. See: Political Ponerology for a better understanding of what is going on here on the planet today: it is a process that has been witnessed and identified and examined carefully. It is advisable for all of you to read and consider this information now: your future may depend on it.
Here at Signs of the Times, we have talked about this censorship (and attendant COINTELPRO defamation campaigns) on a number of occasions. When we first brought it up - having collected and analyzed certain data with the assistance of several computer/internet techs, we were ridiculed for even suggesting such a thing. When Laura wrote, on September 14, 2001:
...if nothing that is sensible prevails, the one thing we CAN expect is a severe and sudden infringement of our freedoms.... she certainly could see where the events of 9/11 were designed to take us.
Unless the reality changes through awareness, I may not be able to say much more very much longer. Phones and computers will be monitored, or severely controlled. Restrictions may be legislated so as to create a basis for prosecution. Individuals may be rounded up and taken to detention centers. In a state of war, or under threat of terrorist attacks, all constitutional rights (which are amendments, by the way) are suspended.
We may be told what we can or cannot say and to whom we may say it. And this may be within a matter of days.
I hope all who are reading this realize that. I have known for some time that the powers that be - and I don't necessarily mean the government, though it will be effected through the government - will seek a way to curtail the communication between people that has been growing apace for the past few years via the internet. What better way to do it than war?
We have arrived.
In this age of modernity and technology, where the television monitor has become the center of the average American household, from cradle to grave acting as surrogate parent, teacher, role model and as influencer of human thought, it should come as no surprise that entire populations can be controlled with such facility and efficiency, turning once thinking humans into grazing sheeple. For in today's day and age, he who controls television controls the masses, and he who controls the masses controls the nation.
Television has become, quite simply, the greatest tool of mass manipulation and thought control civilization has ever seen, an incarnation of the myriad of myths, fables, fictions, story telling, theologies and all other forms of bread and circus' history's elite have concocted from which to retain power and control the lower echelons of man's corrosive pyramid of hierarchy.
In the television the elite have found the greatest weapon of mass control, seemingly able to dictate culture, politics, events, thought and destiny from the moment of birth to the time of death. It can even be said that it is they who can determine reality in twenty-first century America, magically making history disappear, altering the past, changing the present and molding the future. Reality is what they want it to be, shifting culture to their dictates, conditioning minds to fit their goals, pushing society in the direction that most benefits them and erasing from memory any manifestation that does not correspond to the reality they wish to create.
Television has become, quite simply, the greatest tool of mass manipulation and thought control civilization has ever seen, an incarnation of the myriad of myths, fables, fictions, story telling, theologies and all other forms of bread and circus' history's elite have concocted from which to retain power and control the lower echelons of man's corrosive pyramid of hierarchy.
In the television the elite have found the greatest weapon of mass control, seemingly able to dictate culture, politics, events, thought and destiny from the moment of birth to the time of death. It can even be said that it is they who can determine reality in twenty-first century America, magically making history disappear, altering the past, changing the present and molding the future. Reality is what they want it to be, shifting culture to their dictates, conditioning minds to fit their goals, pushing society in the direction that most benefits them and erasing from memory any manifestation that does not correspond to the reality they wish to create.
In March 2004 16 year old would-be Palestinian suicide bomber, Husam Abdu, was arrested at the Hawara Israeli check point in the occupied West Bank. At the time, the incident was presented to the world as evidence of the "evil" that the Israeli government was confronting, yet BBC reporter Orla Guerin's description of the affair as "Israel's cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes" was much more accurate.
Tony Blair told parliament today he knows nothing about alleged torture going on in CIA detention camps in eastern Europe, speaking during his first prime minister's questions opposite the new Tory leader, David Cameron.
"In respect of the allegations of so-called torture facilities or detention facilities across Europe, I really know nothing about them at all. I clearly know there aren't any such here," he said in response to a question from the Labour backbencher David Winnick.
He said that extraordinary rendition - in which terror suspects are flown from the countries where they were arrested to ones where rules on prisoner rights are more lax - was different from torture.
"In respect of the allegations of so-called torture facilities or detention facilities across Europe, I really know nothing about them at all. I clearly know there aren't any such here," he said in response to a question from the Labour backbencher David Winnick.
He said that extraordinary rendition - in which terror suspects are flown from the countries where they were arrested to ones where rules on prisoner rights are more lax - was different from torture.
Comment: If there is no torture being planned when prisoners are "rendered," then why "rendition" at all? This is the most illogical and pathetic "explanation" that has ever been manufactured for public consumption. Andrew Lobaczewski writes:
The conviction that moral values exist but that some actions violate moral rules is so common and ancient a phenomenon that it seems to have some substratum at man's instinctive endowment level, and is not just a representation of centuries of experience, culture, religions, and socialization. Thus, any insinuation enclosed in a moral slogan is always suggestive even if the moral criteria used are just an ad hoc invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or moral by means of using paramoralisms through active suggestion and people who will succumb to this manipulation are plentiful.
Paramoralistic statements and suggestions so often accompany various kinds of evil that they seem quite irreplaceable. Unfortunately, it has become a frequent phenomenon for individuals, oppressive groups, or patho-political systems to invent ever-new moral criteria for someone's convenience. Such suggestions deprive people of their moral reasoning and deform its development in children. Paramoralism factories have been founded worldwide, and a ponerologist finds it hard to believe that they are managed by psychologically normal people.
The conversive features in the genesis of paramoralisms seem to prove they are derived from mostly subconscious rejection (and repression from the field of consciousness) of something completely different which we call the voice of conscience. Like all conversive phenomena, the tendency to use paramoralisms is psychologically contagious.
Gold closed at 508.40 dollars an ounce on Friday, breaking the $500 barrier and closing up 2.3 percent, after rising 2.2 percent the week before. The dollar closed at 0.8534 euros for the week, down 0.2% from 0.8547 at the previous Fridays close. The euro, in turn, closed at 1.1718 up from 1.1700 the week before. Gold in euros, then would be 433.86 an ounce, up 2.1% from 424.87 the week before. Oil closed at 59.32 dollars a barrel, up 2.2% from 58.03 at the previous Fridays close. Oil in euros would be 50.62 euros a barrel, up 2.1% from 49.60 the week before. The gold/oil ratio would be 8.57 at Fridays close, unchanged from the Friday before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,877.51 on Friday, down 0.5% from 10,931.62 at the previous Fridays close. The NASDAQ closed at 2,273.37 up 0.5% from 2,263.01 the week before. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.51%, up seven basis points from 4.44 the week before.
Running Time: 00:36:27
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Washington - In order to contain Iran's nuclear development and prevent a nuclear arms race in the region, Israel must begin nuclear disarmament.
This, according to a recent report, entitled Getting Ready for a Nuclear Ready Iran, published by the US Army War College, commissioned and partially funded by the Pentagon, argues that Iran's nuclear weapon development cannot be stopped by any current military or diplomatic options.
This, according to a recent report, entitled Getting Ready for a Nuclear Ready Iran, published by the US Army War College, commissioned and partially funded by the Pentagon, argues that Iran's nuclear weapon development cannot be stopped by any current military or diplomatic options.
Comment: It is so handy to have torture to fall back on to "create" terrorists. Hmmm... makes one wonder if Osama was "rendered" and now just appears on film from his secret CIA prison cell to act the role of the boogie man?