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Americans Are Living In 1984 - A people as gullible as Americans have no future

Paul Craig Roberts
Lew Rockwell
Tue, 10 May 2011 21:08 UTC
freedom is slavery
© dgp.utoronto.ca

The White House's 'death of bin Laden' story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama's Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?

So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the Seals killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.

Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.
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Bell

Italy: Clinton Raises Alarm on Rising Food Prices

Matthew Lee
The Associated Press
Fri, 06 May 2011 05:37 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press / Jacquelyn Martin, Pool
Fabiola Farabollini, a staff member of the U.S. Embassy in Italy, holds a book about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the U.S. Secretary of State's visit at the Ambassador's Residence in Rome, on Friday, May 6, 2011.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Friday that global shortages of food and spiraling prices threaten widespread destabilization and is urging immediate action to forestall a repeat of the 2007 and 2008 crisis that led to riots in dozens of countries around the developing world.

Clinton told a meeting of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization that urgent steps are needed to hold down costs and boost agricultural production as food prices continue to rise.

Although the situation is not yet as dire as it was four years ago, she said the consequences of inaction would be "grave."

"We must act now, effectively and cooperatively, to blunt the negative impact of rising food prices and protect people and communities," she said at the FAO's headquarters in Rome.
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Bad Guys

Interview with Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology (Full Transcript)


Sott.net
Tue, 10 May 2011 19:49 UTC
Interview by Geoff Brady from In Other News Radio with Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology and psychopaths.

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Magic Hat

Staged Bin Laden Killing Hokum

Stephen Lendman
Steve Lendman
Tue, 10 May 2011 18:23 UTC
As reported, it sounded more like bad fiction than eliminating "Enemy Number One," especially with no visuals, corpse, independent proof, and shifting official accounts.

In Hollywood, it's called rewrite. In politics, it's lying, a Washington bipartisan specialty, notably on issues mattering most.

Also at issue is conducting lawless operations for any purpose. More on that below.

Two previous articles discussed the staged May Day hokum: here and here
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Bad Guys

Every Six Hours, the NSA Gathers as Much Data as Is Stored in the Entire Library of Congress

Dan Nosowitz
PopSci
Tue, 10 May 2011 12:45 UTC
Hard Drive
© Matthew Field via Wikimedia Commons
Hard Drive Platter
The National Security Agency is, by nature, an extreme example of the e-hoarder. And as the governmental organization responsible for things like, say, gathering intelligence on such Persons of Interest as Osama bin Laden, that impulse makes sense--though once you hear the specifics, it still seems pretty incredible. In a story about the bin Laden mission, the NSA very casually dropped a number: Every six hours, the agency collects as much data as is stored in the entire Library of Congress.

That data includes transcripts of phone calls and in-house discussions, video and audio surveillance, and a massive amount of photography. "The volume of data they're pulling in is huge," said John V. Parachini, director of the Intelligence Policy Center at RAND. "One criticism we might make of our [intelligence] community is that we're collection-obsessed - we pull in everything - and we don't spend enough time or money to try and understand what do we have and how can we act upon it."
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Bad Guys

How Politicians Answer Questions Without Actually Answering

Jennifer Welsh
Live Science
Tue, 10 May 2011 16:39 UTC
US Capitol Building
© Architect of the Capitol
US Capitol Building.
Research has confirmed that politicians are smooth talkers. A study found they evade answering tough questions during debates by addressing similar, though not identical, questions.

"When you pay attention to it, communicators are often evading questions that are asked," said Todd Rogers, a political psychologist and executive director of the Analyst Institute, a group focused on understanding voter communication. "Unless you are asked to pay attention to it, they can get away with it."

To determine how they get away with it, Rogers showed participants video clips of a simulated debate. The "candidate" was asked about universal health care or a similar question about the war on drugs. The actor answered both questions with a statement about universal health care.

Only 40 percent of the listeners could remember the original "war on drugs" question, compared with 88 percent of those who heard the "health care" question. If the listeners couldn't remember the question correctly, the speaker was determined to have successfully dodged that question, satisfying viewers with an alternate, though similar, answer.
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Coffee

Propaganda Alert!: Pakistan finds secret al-Qaeda™ and Taliban underground cave complex

Douglas Stanglin
USA Today
Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:26 UTC
Pakistan tunnel cave
© By A Majeed, AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani forces have discovered an abandoned complex of caves apparently used recently by Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, including Ayman al-Zawahri, the second-in-command to Osama bin Laden, The Times of London reports.

The network of 156 caves is located in Damadola in the semi autonomous Bajaur tribal region. Pakistani Maj. Gen. Tariq Kahn said the arrival of his forces marks the first time Pakistan's flag has flown over the village since Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, the newspaper says.
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Chess

Bin Laden's Teen Daughter Reportedly Escapes House Arrest in Tehran

Douglas Stanglin
USA Today
Tue, 10 May 2011 16:22 UTC
Osama bin Laden's 17-year-old daughter, who has been under house arrest in Tehran for eight years with five siblings and a stepmother, has escaped from her guards and taken refuge in the Saudi Embassy, the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reports.

The newspaper says Iman Bin Laden called her brother, Abdullah, in Syria to say they have been held by Iranian authorities since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001.
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Chess

Hypocrisy: The West's Silence over Bahrain

Hooshang Amirahmadi and Kaveh Afrasiabi
The Guardian
Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:14 UTC
billboard, Muharraq, Bahrain
© Hasan Jamali/AP
A billboard in Muharraq, Bahrain, demanding no leniency for those who opposed the regime.
The absence of pressure on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain will only deepen the gulf of distrust between Iran and the west

The European Union and the Obama administration have made a splendid art of double standards by imposing sanctions on Tehran's rulers for their human rights violations and taking military action against the Libyan dictator while failing to address the appalling repression of the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain.

For the US and the EU, which claim to uphold principles over interests, this contradictory policy and their silence over the Saudi intervention in Bahrain is particularly harmful.
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Coffee

The Cost of bin Laden: $3 Trillion Over 15 Years

Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley
National Journal
Thu, 05 May 2011 15:35 UTC
The most expensive public enemy in American history died Sunday from two bullets.

As we mark Osama bin Laden's death, what's striking is how much he cost our nation - and how little we've gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down.

What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden's terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt, which threatens to hobble the economy unless lawmakers compromise on an unprecedented deficit-reduction deal.

Comment: Indeed, we need to ask the question: 'Who benefits?' Considering that bin Laden has been dead for years, and that he had nothing to do with the September 11th false flag attacks, '"he" has wrought nothing. The cost that our blinkered authors are about to describe is the fruit of a plan of action. A plan not born of the long dead bogey man, but of those in positions of economic and political power who are the real beneficiaries. What is a $3 trillion cost to the American tax payer, is a $3 trillion profit for the military industrial complex and the psychopathic forces that drive it.


911 fire fighter
© Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The crash: The 9/11 attacks alone cost the U.S. economy $50 billion to $100 billion.
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