Puppet Masters
Bush has opened a Pandora's box with his shock and awe tactics. The ultimate quagmire will keep mutating and unleashing its deadly new powers for years on end. And there is nothing anyone - not even the "indispensable nation" - can do about it. We have all been, and will remain, shocked and awed.
Iraq is a giant, messy albatross hanging from President George W Bush's neck. The faith-based American president believes "we are winning the war in Iraq". The reality-based global public opinion - not to mention 59% of Americans, and counting - know this is not true.
Bush felt that "God put me here" so he could conduct a "war on terror". Somebody up there must have a tremendous sense of humor - once again manifested in the way He allotted winners and losers in Iraq's December 15 parliamentary elections.
Donald Hunt
SOTT.netMon, 19 Dec 2005 12:00 UTC
Gold pulled back last week, closing at 505.50 dollars an ounce, down 5.2% from $532.00 last week. The dollar closed at 0.8323 euros on Friday, down 1.7% from 0.8466 euros the week before. The euro, then, was worth 1.2015 dollars at Friday's close, compared to 1.1812 the previous week. Gold in euros, then, would be 420.72 euros an ounce, down 7.1% from 450.39 the Friday before. Oil closed at 58.06 dollars a barrel, down 2.9% from $59.76 at the previous week's close. Oil in euros would be 48.23 euros a barrel, down 4.9% from 50.59 euros the week before. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.71, down 2.2% from 8.90 the previous week. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.44%, down nine basis points from 4.53 the week before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,875.59 on Friday, up 0.9% from10,778.58 at the previous Friday's close. The NASDAQ closed at 2,252.48, down 0.2% from 2,256.73 the week before.
Another strange week. With the price of gold falling more than 5% and oil down about 3%, both markets that are susceptible to short term manipulation, it looks like they want us to keep our heads in the sand for a few more weeks or at least until after Christmas. But the people don't seem to be falling for it completely this time, as holiday retail sales are okay but not great, due to consumer anxiety:
Gaby Hinsliff and Robin McKie
The ObserverSun, 18 Dec 2005 12:00 UTC
Government ministers tried to suppress a health scare over milk potentially contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals, the head of Britain's independent food watchdog has revealed.
Sir John Krebs said he was put under 'enormous pressure' not to make public the risks which arose from the handling of the foot and mouth outbreak, because of the potential impact on struggling dairy farmers. When the pressure from agriculture ministers failed, he was told that Downing Street would be 'very unhappy' with him.
Comment: And yet, people still believe that these psychopaths are looking out for their best interests in passing laws against smoking???!!
A reader sent in an interesting article by Dmitry Orlov that compares the former Soviet Union to modern-day America, which is currently falling into an economic abyss. This week, we analyse and discuss the implications of Orlov's article. We also address one of the biggest questions people have about the economic crash: how can I prepare in order to survive the turmoil I see ahead? To answer this question, we expand on Orlov's historical observations to provide a solution that is surprisingly simple - and probably not what most people have in mind...
Running Time: 00:32:28
Download: MP3
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.
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?
Donald Hunt
SOTT.netMon, 12 Dec 2005 12:00 UTC
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.
The Signs of the Times editors invite Laura Knight-Jadczyk back to continue their discussion of Pyschopathology. Two weeks ago we discussed Psychopathology in general terms. One week ago we refined our discussion and looked at evidence of the hand of the psychopath in the world of global politics and big business. This week, we get a little more personal, and discuss "the psychopath next door".
Running Time: 00:41:46
Download: MP3
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.
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.
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?
... she certainly could see where the events of 9/11 were designed to take us.
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.
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.
Comment: And yet, people still believe that these psychopaths are looking out for their best interests in passing laws against smoking???!!