President Bush flies into London today for the last time as US leader. In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Ned Temko on the eve of his visit, he defends his legacy, issues a stern warning to Iran ... and reveals his plans for a freedom institute devoted to 'universal values'.
For a political leader who has rivalled Gordon Brown's vertiginous nosedive in the opinion polls in the past year, president George W Bush looked remarkably untroubled by self-doubt as he crossed Europe last week.
Puppet Masters
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With Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Party nomination, it is worth noting what an extraordinary moment this is. Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President.
An earlier article by this author ("The Secret Bailout of JP Morgan") summarized evidence presented by John Olagues, an expert in options trading, suggesting that JPMorgan, far from "rescuing" Bear Stearns, was actually its nemesis.(1) The faltering investment bank was brought down, not by "rumors," but by insider trading based on a plan drawn up much earlier. The deal was a lucrative one for JPM, handing the Wall Street megabank $55 billion in loans from the Federal Reserve (meaning ultimately the U.S. taxpayer). So how did JPM get away with it? Olagues notes the highly suspicious fact that JPM's CEO James Dimon sits on the Board of the New York Federal Reserve.
It was the early 1990s and Tzipi Livni, a daughter of famed Zionist guerrillas who was scrambling for a foothold in the Israeli parliament, came up with a muscular campaign slogan: "My Name is an Institution".
The Hebrew for "institution" is "Mossad". It's also the name of Israel's feared intelligence agency, where Livni briefly worked before entering politics and becoming foreign minister and heir-apparent to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The Hebrew for "institution" is "Mossad". It's also the name of Israel's feared intelligence agency, where Livni briefly worked before entering politics and becoming foreign minister and heir-apparent to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
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Moscow: Russia's parliament on Friday ratified an agreement to write off nearly three-quarters of Syria's roughly US$14 billion (€9 billion) debt from the Soviet era.
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| ©Unknown |
| Bush frustrated by questions from the press |
Of course psychopathic behavior can't be included in Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) 35 Articles of Impeachment filed against George W. Bush [and others - ed]. A person's being a psychopath doesn't justify impeachment.
Washington - Vice President Dick Cheney's office acknowledged on Thursday that he was mistaken when he asserted that China, at Cuba's behest, is drilling for oil in waters 60 miles from the Florida coast.
In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney said on Wednesday that waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, long off limits to oil companies, should be opened to drilling because China is already there pumping oil.
In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney said on Wednesday that waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, long off limits to oil companies, should be opened to drilling because China is already there pumping oil.
The threat of military attack against Iran has continued to escalate as the European Union this week conceded to pressure from the US to implement stricter sanctions against Iran for refusing to cease from enriching uranium for its nuclear program.
Earlier this week, Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."
Earlier this week, Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."
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| Prof. Peter Dale Scott |
The Deep State and 9/11
The unthinkable - that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians - has become not only thinkable but commonplace in the last century. A seminal example was in French Algeria, where dissident elements of the French armed forces, resisting General de Gaulle's plans for Algerian independence, organized as the Secret Army Organization and bombed civilians indiscriminately, with targets including hospitals and schools. Critics like Alexander Litvinenko, who was subsequently murdered in London in November 2006, have charged that the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings around Moscow, attributed to Chechen separatists, were in fact the work of the Russian secret service (FSB).
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| Evidence that Chavez is planning a world communist revolution and corrupting the minds of the youth in Venezuela. |
Not content with their preparations for war against Iran, a war that is worryingly looking like it will involve the use of a nuclear weapon by Israel and the US while blaming the detonation on Iran, it seems that Venezuela and particularly Hugo Chavez are in the cross-hairs of the imperial war machine.
The most recent chapter of the story starts with a Columbian air raid against a camp in Ecuador on March 1st. The camp was the location of a group from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who were negotiating the release of some 700 prisoners. The raid killed FARC's second in command and top negotiator, Raul Reyes, and 23 other people, including 5 Mexican students. The air raid, followed up by a raid by special forces, was an armed incursion into Ecuador's sovereign territory and therefore an act of war against Ecuador (consider how the US would react if such an act were carried out by Iran into Iraq, let alone by Canada into the US) but this has conveniently been forgotten in the excitement that eight perfectly intact pieces of computer hardware were found at the scene of devastation.
Comment: For additional context to the ongoing vilification of Chavez, see the following:
James Petras' Venezuela: Democracy, Socialism and Imperialism and Venezuela: A Dictionary of Euphemisms of the Liberal Opposition
John Pilger's Latin America: the attack on democracy
Nikolas Kozloff's Controversy Over Guajira -- U.S. Military Bases in South America
Naomi Klein's Venezuela's Media Coup
Eva Golinger's Chronology of the 4th Generation War Against Venezuela
Troy Turner's Propaganda alert : A portrait of Hugo Chavez and his influence on American lives
Comment: In August, 2007, SoTT editor Joe Quinn wrote this paragraph, that stands as true today as it did then: