Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 28 Sep 2023
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Bad Guys

Dick Cheney, the Ultimate American Terrorist

William Rivers Pitt
Truthout
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:44 UTC
Dick Cheney
© Doug Mills / The New York Times
Vice President Dick Cheney in a June 20, 2007 file photo.
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

- Dick Cheney

It is axiomatic by now: when someone leaves government service, especially from a high-profile position, they write a book. They all do it, sometimes more than once. Richard Nixon is the main example of one who produced a multi-volume apologia; by the time he went into the ground, he'd penned enough books to fill a wide shelf. Henry Kissinger was similarly prolific, which leads one to wonder about the relationship between criminal activities and the printed page. Nixon was chased from office after a series of crimes that, at the time, had no precedent, and Kissinger is still so infamous that he cannot travel abroad for fear of arrest. Both wrote enough books to take up half the political science section of any local bookstore, perhaps in the vain attempt to explain away the lasting damage their actions did to the republic.
      Read More...
Bad Guys

NATO prepares bloodbath in Sirte

Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:04 UTC
Nearly six months after securing a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya and the use of "all necessary measures... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack," the US and its NATO allies, former colonial powers, are mounting a barbaric siege of a major population center that threatens to produce civilian casualties on a mass scale.

In their breathless promotion of the "final battle" to realize the real US-NATO aim in Libya - regime-change - few in the Western media have bothered to consider the fact that the major imperialist powers are carrying out precisely the kind of act they claimed their war was designed to prevent.

Gaddafi's troops were marching on Benghazi, the world was told, and only a "humanitarian" intervention by NATO could save the city's innocent population. Now the "rebels" are encircling Sirte, led by British and Qatari special forces troops, intelligence operatives and mercenary military contractors, while the city's population is being pounded by NATO bombs and cut off from food, fuel and all basic supplies.

The sheer contempt shown by the US and the Western European powers for legality and world public opinion is breathtaking. The pretense that NATO is acting under the terms of the UN resolution that provided a fig leaf for its intervention is more than absurd; it has become obscene.
      Read More...
Crusader

US: Left Paints the Campaign as A Religious War

Byron York
Washington Examiner
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:40 UTC
Image
© Brandon Thibodeaux/Getty Images
Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks to an estimated 30,000 attendees at the non-denominational prayer and fasting event, 'The Response,' on August 6, 2011 in Houston, Texas.
The fundamental facts of the presidential race at this moment are that unemployment is high, the economy is by far the most important issue to American voters, and President Obama's handling of economic questions is overwhelmingly unpopular. Republican presidential hopefuls Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and others are hammering the president daily on matters of job creation and economic growth.

Now some of Obama's activist allies and supporters in the press are engaged in a sharply focused effort to change the subject. Even as economic anxieties continue to rise, some of the nation's premier political journalists are consumed with the alleged influences of obscure religious philosophers on Republican candidates; on questions of creationism, evolution, and the age of the Earth; and on the fantasy that a Republican president might transform the United States into an Iranian-style theocracy.

For example, the Daily Beast/Newsweek recently published an article titled "A Christian Plot for Domination?" claiming that Perry and Bachmann are "deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism" known as Dominionism. A widely discussed article in the Texas Observer claimed that Dominionists -- a "little-known movement of radical Christians" -- are readying an "army of God" to "commandeer civilian government," with Perry the "vessel" for their ambitions. Finally, the New Yorker published a long article claiming that Bachmann believes "Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns."
      Read More...
Eye 1

5 Unexpected Places You Can Be Tracked With Facial Recognition Technology

Tana Ganeva
AlterNet
Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:58 UTC
CCTV
Facial recognition technology has become more advanced, and it's increasingly popping up in two realms: law enforcement and commerce.

Earlier this summer Facebook rolled out facial recognition software that identifies users even when they appear in untagged photos. Like every other time the social networking site has introduced a creepy, invasive new feature, they made it the default setting without telling anyone.

Once people realized that Facebook was basically harvesting biometric data, the usual uproar over the site's relentless corrosion of privacy ensued. Germany even threatened to sue Facebook for violating German and EU data protection laws and a few other countries are investigating. But facial recognition technology is hardly confined to Facebook -- and unlike the social networking site, there's no "opt-out" of leaving your house.
      Read More...
Eye 1

Body Scanners Scrapped from German Airports After Error-Filled Trial


Herald Sun
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:45 UTC
body scanner

Body scanners being trialed at a German airport were so inaccurate that the whole scheme has been scrapped.
Body scanners being trialled at a German airport ahead of a planned nationwide roll-out were so inaccurate that the whole scheme has been scrapped, a government official has announced.

The so-called backscatter scanners had an error rate of 54 percent during their year-long trial at Hamburg Airport, The Local reported.

The controversial screening devices are similar to the "naked scanners" already in the US at several major airports.

But the German models proved unusable, returning false results triggered by folds in clothing and even by perspiration.
      Read More...
Stormtrooper

London Neighbourhoods Terrorized by Police Raids

Paul Stuart
World Socialist Website
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:22 UTC
Metropolitan Police Raid
© Getty
30,000 arrests planned

One month after major disturbances were provoked by the August 4 police killing of Mark Duggan in north London, the Metropolitan Police in the capital are intensifying raids on working class communities.

Entire neighbourhoods have been sealed off, with riot police smashing down doors and dragging people away. So far this has resulted in over 2,000 arrests in London alone, averaging approximately 100 a day since the riots began. The media, tipped off in advance, has filmed the build-up, the actual raids and the spectacle of youth being thrown into police vans.

A police source told the Sunday Times that the police are hunting 30,000 people they say were involved in the disturbances. Nationally, 40,000 hours of CCTV footage will be examined and senior police officers are expecting the investigation to last for years.
      Read More...
Propaganda

Catapulting the Propaganda: Is China Planning a Surprise Missile Attack?

Gordon G. Chang
World Affairs
Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:00 UTC
Image
A retired Chinese general recently revealed that his country might be planning a surprise missile attack on the United States. The public comment of Xu Guangyu came in response to WikiLeaks revelations that last year Washington had warned its allies beforehand of China's test of a missile interceptor.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a classified cable sent last January 9th, instructed American embassies in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand to notify those countries of upcoming Chinese launches two days later. The cable included details of the launch sites for the interceptor and the target, the models of the missiles, the purpose of the test, and the test date.

Yesterday, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post carried comments from Xu, now at the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, to the effect that American satellites would have detected activity at the launch sites but that some of the information in the cables - specifically the types of missiles and the day of the test - must have come from a source on the ground. WikiLeaks's release of this cable, revealing one or more American spies in China's strategic missile corps, is perhaps the website's most significant compromise of US security to date.

Comment: Whatever about China's intentions, it's clear that US propaganda would like us to believe that China will be the belligerent in "the clashes that lie ahead." Could this be the grand stage the PTB will use to take the War on Humanity to the next horrifying level?

7 Reasons To Brace For Impact

      Read More...
Attention

7 Reasons To Brace For Impact

Snordelhans/Zen Gardner
YouTube
Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:48 UTC

Comment: The PTB appear to be setting the stage for a US-China clash to usher in the next level of the post-9/11 Reign of Terror.

      Read More...
Vader

Mark of the Beast: Legal dispute over fees lifts lid on US Torture Inc.

Ian Cobain and Ben Quinn
The Guardian
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:13 UTC
Image
© Alamy
Court documents show how a network of US private companies profited from rendition operations.
Court documents illustrate how US contracted out secret rendition transportation to a network of private companies

The scale of the CIA's rendition programme has been laid bare in court documents that illustrate in minute detail how the US contracted out the secret transportation of suspects to a network of private American companies.

The manner in which American firms flew terrorism suspects to locations around the world, where they were often tortured, has emerged after one of the companies sued another in a dispute over fees. As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the mass of invoices, receipts, contracts and email correspondence - submitted as evidence to a court in upstate New York - provides a unique glimpse into a world in which the "war on terror" became just another charter opportunity for American businesses.

As a result of the case, the identities of some of the corporations involved in the rendition programme have been disclosed for the first time, along with the names of some of the executives who knew the purpose of the flights.
      Read More...
People

Pentagon Allows Near "Slavery" Conditions Among Foreign Workers

Sherwood Ross
American Pendulum
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:00 UTC
Many of the 70,000 "third country national"(TCN) service workers employed in Afghanistan and Iraq "recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses," reports Sarah Stillman in a June 6th article in The New Yorker magazine titled "The Invisible Army." In fact, the system resembles nothing so much as a twisted form of modern slavery.

"These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, (and) eat at meagre chow halls..." she reports. "A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law."

Since the U.S. invasions, more than 2,000 contractor fatalities and 51,000 contractor injuries have been reported in Iraq and Afghanistan as the soaring casualty rates "are now on a par with those of U.S. troops in both war zones," Stillman writes.
      Read More...
Revolt! T-shirts