Global financial events seem to be moving with such speed and complexity that it can be difficult to see just where we are headed. Using an imperfect scientific analogy, we seem to be experiencing a Phase Transition, a change from one economic state to another. Just as in a Phase Transition in the physical world, a great deal of heat/energy is involved in the transition. In the economic phase transition this heat is felt keenly on both a personal material and emotional level while the intellect struggles to make sense of it all.

Naturally, we all seek to explain what we perceive in terms of the phase we have been in rather than in terms of the phase we are moving towards. We are like water molecules trying to understand the process of boiling and evaporation in the absence of any concept of being in a gaseous (vapour) state.

What is important is that we understand that we are in a controlled Phase Transition. It may seem chaotic to us but there is an underlying order to it. We are being taken to a new economic phase or Economic Order. The separation between the state and big business is long gone, we find ourselves with increasingly narrow options as our environment changes around us in ways increasingly unfamiliar. We have to apply ourselves in seeking to understand as exactly as possible the new economic environment so as to be better able to navigate our way through it.

We are moving, without doubt, towards totalitarian government first on a national, then regional and ultimately global scale. Totalitarianism has to be resisted on the street, in the market place and in our hearts and minds. Protest is crucial to resistance for it shows us that we are not alone. Similarly economic boycotts at an individual level seem as a drop in the ocean but when added together the economic actions we all take are the economy; if we all boycott a country's products then there will be no market for them; if we all take our bank deposits from the banks there will be a real banking crisis.

Cute, cuddly, harmless-looking, liberal Barack Obama. Now there's a guy to get the U.S. back on track! If he can just 'win' the primary (s)election process, and then the (s)election process after that, what's it called...oh yeah, the (p)residential (s)elections, he'll bring an end to the mindless massacring of innocent civilians for profit that has come to define the "war on terror", and the American people need never again be stirred out of their mind-numbing complacency by stories of small brown children being decapitated by a brave American teenager with a .50 caliber machine gun. I mean, Viet-nam and My Lai was containable, it was successfully pitched as an "American tragedy", but this Iraq business is getting out of hand! After all, the harsh realities of war 'over there' are meant to stay 'over there', not ooze out of the carefully manipulated American daily broadsheets and into the fragile mind of the average American.

So Obama's the man to fix it all, right? He'll stop the Republican rot! Or am I missing something?

A propaganda battle designed to promote the plan to spread war throughout the greater Middle East is now under way and will soon hit the airwaves in the United States. The plan will be presented as a television advertising campaign to promote Israel as the victim of terrorism backed by the government of Iran. The advertising campaign is due to air on television during the inauguration period of President-elect Barack Obama.

The organization responsible for this soon to be aired propaganda is "The Israel Project". "The Israel Project" touts themselves as an international non-profit organization that "provides journalists and leaders accurate information about the Middle East". For some reason they make a point of declaring to the public that they are "not related to any government or government agency".

The Israeli government repeatedly denies that its treatment of the Palestinians is anything like the treatment suffered by Jews under the Nazi regime. But the Nazis too denied that they were engaging in genocide and war crimes.

Rather than attempting to argue in writing the point that the stewards of the state of Israel appear to be the ideological descendants of the Nazis, the following photo essay of juxtaposed images of Palestinian life today in the occupied territories and Jewish life 68 years ago in Germany and Poland say much more than words ever could:

The Enlightenment brought with it the idea that Reason should govern the affairs of man thereby ensuring Liberty. That Reason and Liberty have been hijacked by the banking and corporate elites who engage in open war and genocide with impunity has never been clearer than today.

Reason has fled, all rationality is gone, we are therefore called to act in defiance of the genocidal murderers in Palestine. In just the same way as the economy is being used to control us, we can exert similar pressure on Israel by boycotting all Israeli goods, all Israeli services and any company that does business with Israel however small.

Organized by the Revolution Books in Manhattan, an unprecedented Emergency Town Hall Meeting took place last night at the New York City Society for Ethical Culture on 2 West 64th Street. The focus of the evening was the intolerable humanitarian catastrophe that is being inflicted on the Palestinian People by the Israeli military in Gaza.

SOTT.net editors attended the event, this is their report:

Much has already been written about the eight-day-long running massacre of Palestinians that is taking place in Gaza. Indeed, what more can be said when it is clear that the Israeli government is intent on blithely ignoring all petitions, both the ambivalent and the unequivocal, to stop the indiscriminate murder.

At least 450 dead so far (other reports put the figure closer to 500), many of them civilians, women, children, old and young, the rest policemen or Hamas officials. At least 2000 injured, many too seriously to survive or be treated in Gaza's severely blockaded hospitals. In short, in the last eight days the state of Israel has murdered approximately 500 innocent Palestinians and seriously injured 2000, and the representatives of the world's leading democracies sit virtually silent. Make no mistake and do not be fooled by the mainstream media reporting, every single Palestinian that has died or been injured as a result of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is innocent. When a people that have been dispossessed of their land, livelihoods and homes, occupied, periodically murdered and regularly starved take action to resist and defend themselves, they are guilty of nothing but standing up for their human rights and their rights under international law.

If there is a phrase that summarizes 2008 it probably is 'Humanity in Crisis'. Suffering takes many forms, and most of us got a little - or a lot - of it, whether as a consequence of the food and economic crises, climate change, the ongoing war of terror sponsored by the American Empire and its allies, or the wars of oppression around the world, most notably in the Middle East and Africa.

The new year does not look very promising as the pathocrats in Israel have stolen their Christmas 'present' from the tree of humankind by force, initiating their long-planned invasion of Gaza. In the background we hear the rumble of more wars to come, poverty, hunger and riots; and all of this takes place in the context of a strange and disturbing cosmic and earthly climate that no one quite understands.

It is hard to focus on the economies of the world when Palestinians are being blown to pieces by US supplied warplanes and smart bombs delivered by Zionism, one of the central evils on this planet. It is hard to focus when reading the inhumanity that spews forth from the mouths of the world's leaders in abject supplication to Zionism and the supporting voices of the ignorant and empathyless in the world's media.

But focus we must, for economics is the 'non-violent' means by which those same forces we see at work in Palestine exert their tentacles of control across this once beautiful and bounteous planet. While F16s and GBU-39s deliver death and suffering instantly, economics and more particularly the control of economies and money deliver their payload of death and suffering with a long slow interminable inevitability; an inevitability that has become a permanent feature for most people on earth and one that is fast approaching the doorsteps of the US and Europe.

It is no coincidence that Israel's latest war crimes come during the financial crisis; for empathy and the desire to defend the helpless victims of naked aggression are quick to evaporate when people are fearful for their own safety and security.

On December 18th, 2008 an Opinion and Order was handed down by Chief Judge Ancer L. Haggerty of the Oregon court in civil case 08-233-HA, brought by Eric Pepin's Higher Balance Institute against Quantum Future Group, Quantum Future School, Signs of the Times and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. The case claimed libel/defamation, false light and intentional interference with economic relations. The case was answered with a special motion to strike the claims under Oregon's anti-SLAPP statutes. This Opinion and Order was the court's judgment on that special motion.

To cut to the chase, because this news is just too good to wait until Christmas to unwrap, the anti-SLAPP motion was granted and the claims of Higher Balance Institute have been stricken. In the process, the term "horse hockey" has been enshrined in American Case Law.