Strange as it may seem, a couple of weeks ago as I ruminated on Obama's broken promise to bring the troops home, his attempt to out-warmonger the Bush administration and his plummeting popularity, I thought to myself: "ya know, what that guy (or rather the disgruntled US public) needs is a good old fashioned 'Muslim terror attack'. Preferably one that includes a ranting 'terrorist' message about Afghanistan and 'slaughtering infidels'. That'll soon silence the rabble and get them behind Obama's Afghan surge!"
And so it was that, as I sipped my eggnog on Christmas day, I was shockingly unsurprised to read the headlines about an 'underwear bomb' (as shown above).
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Presumably with a straight face, he squawked about how lucky we were because the failure of this near-disaster could be chalked up to yet another "terrorist" who turned out to be bumbling and inept, like the "shoe bomber" and a string of others. Yet, still, we should all be having nightmares about this suicidal "gang who couldn't shoot straight" because they represent a clear and present danger to the lives of all Americans!
This commentator is of the highly articulate, smart-sounding, yet profoundly ignorant type who claims free thought and independence from partisanship, but would immediately join the Xenophobic Jingoist Authoritarian party if one officially existed. He seems to believe that entire nations of people are "crazy" and that vast populations "hate freedom" (which makes about as much sense as "hate breathing," if you think about it).
Or did it?...
On September 11th 2001, eyewitnesses to the attack on and collapse of the Twin Towers said:
"At first I thought it was -- do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear "Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop"? That's exactly what -- because I thought it was that." - Daniel Rivera -- Paramedic (E.M.S.) [Battalion 31
"... it almost actually that day sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then just a huge wind gust just came."
- Thomas Turilli -- Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.)
"... that's when the south tower collapsed, and it sounded like a bunch of explosions."
- Stephen Viola -- Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.)
"I guess about three minutes later you just heard explosions coming from building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there were about ten explosions." - Craig Carlsen -- Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.)
"I should say that people in the street and myself included thought that the roar was so loud that the explosive - bombs were going off inside the building."
- James Drury -- Assistant Commissioner (F.D.N.Y.)
"My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV." - Thomas Fitzpatrick -- Deputy Commissioner for Administration (F.D.N.Y.)
Danish police numbered today's demonstration at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen at 30,000 people, but Danish TV tripled that figure to at least 100,000.
The British Telegraph reported that 21 people were arrested "after some 300 youths, many wearing black and with their faces covered, went on the rampage in the heart of the city." If recent experience at the G20 demonstrations in London and Pittsburgh is anything to go by, we naturally wonder if they were incited to serve as a distraction and justify a heavy-handed police response. When asked what the "youths" were arrested for, a police spokesman said that wearing a mask on your face was illegal under Danish law.
In fact, around 700 people were arrested and humiliated in the freezing temperatures:
"The need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor. Some states have striven to overcome domestic failure and internal contradictions by blaming external enemies. The ploy of finding a scapegoat is as old as mankind itself - when things become too difficult at home, divert attention to adventure abroad. Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one, or else one invented for the purpose." (p.71)Against The Tide - A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done, W. Kundt, 2008:
The common enemy of humanity is Man
"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself." (p.75)
The term 'Gold Effect' was coined by Raymond Lyttleton in [1981], after a conversation with [Austrian astrophysicist Thomas Gold] during which Gold had explained how a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory - a dogma - through the screening action of refereed literature, of meetings planned by scientific organizing committees, and through the distribution of funds controlled by 'club opinions'.

NASCAR auto races at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday, Nov. 6, 2009
A Fort Hood soldier was sentenced Wednesday to a month in jail for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan over his beliefs that the war violates international law.Fort Hood US Army base in the heart of Texas is home to some 50,000 US soldiers, their families and civilian support staff. The complex is next door to the town of Killeen where in 1991 another infamous shooting took place: a man rammed his truck into a cafe and shot dead 23 people, yelling beforehand, "This is what Central Texas did to me!"
Spc. Victor Agosto, 24, of Miami, pleaded guilty to disobeying lawful orders and was sentenced at the central Texas Army post.
"I really had no Army way of being consistent with my conscience," Agosto said. "The courts haven't recognized soldiers' rights to refuse an order they believe to be illegal.... I believe future courts will find that the Afghanistan war is illegal because it violates international law."
But first, let's look at some of the influences we've all come under during the month of October. Vaccination season has kicked off in US, Canada and UK and Obama has declared the swine flu a national emergency! Well, if Mr. Charm, Change and Hope says so, it must be true! Right? Read on and we'll take you through the talking points...
The UN fact finding mission on the Israeli attack on Gaza from Dec 27th 2008 to Jan 18th 2009, aka "The Goldstone Report" was released on September 15th 2009. Initially the scope of the investigation was limited to violations of international and human rights law by Israeli forces alone. The official wording was:
to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission.
But in many ways, he's dead already. Like many soldiers who've come back from the middle east, he's wired on self-destruct. My Sister has told me that she can't count the times she's taken guns away from him when he was threatening suicide because those times have been so many.
When I was a child, I was highly idealistic. I wanted to swim the English Channel. I wanted to live an exceptional life. I wanted to graduate from the university and perform work that would improve the lives of others. I wanted to be a peace maker and I wanted to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.
Back then, I didn't know about the dirty money connected with the prizes; that they came from money made from munitions or that the principal of the endowment was invested in more implements of war and/or of human oppression like capitalism that rapes the world for cheap natural resources and cheap human labor.
Comment: Update
The above article was written within a few days of the "Detroit terror attack". Since then, further details have emerged/been dug up:
Yemen has international debt totaling almost $6 billion, much of it owed to the IFC (basically the World Bank) and the Paris Club (same thing). What is most interesting however is that almost ALL of this $6 billion appeared on Yemen's books in the last 6 months of 2009.
In short, the Yemeni government sold its soul, or more specifically, the lives of many Yemeni civilians, to the World Bank. What it got in return is open to debate. When this type of thing happens (which it has, often, especially in the last 10 years) I like to think that the leaders of the lucky country in question received first class seats on the "rapture train", but I could be wrong.
More details about the bomber's father's banking interests have also appeared. Part of Yemen's debt is financed by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) which just happens to be the bank that financed the opening of Nigeria's first Islamic Bank, Jaiz Bank, in 2007. The bombers father is chairman of the Board of Directors of Jaiz bank
It's interesting, to say the least, that the father of the underwear bomber is financially beholden to/in bed with the banking institutions that recently gave Yemen stacks of cash, cash which said banking institutions (and the World Bank) probably stood to lose if the Houthi tribesmen in the North and the various social activist groups throughout Yemen were to succeed in their aim of homegrown regime change.
Could it be that, in bombing Yemen, the US government is simply following the orders of those mythical bankers? And if so, does that mean that said mythical international bankers actually exist??!
Having scoured their favorite "jihadist web sites" and message boards, it seems that the only beef IntelCenter/the mainstream media could come up with on the young underwear bomber was that he was lonely, as opposed to a radical hate-filled Islamophile jihadist bent on destroying Western civilization. Oh well.
However, the FBI did interview him and claimed that: So do we think that was before or after he came out of the trance?
According to one of his classmates, Mutallab: Strangely enough, I had the same impression, and I didn't even know him.
One last thing, that is perhaps of note. In September 2008, the Nigerian government were debating whether or not to allow the Mossad to come and train Nigerian security forces. It seems they probably decided to go with the idea because, according to one of the Nigerian MPs: Famous last words perhaps, at least for the young Mutallab, and the aspirations of the Yemeni people.