While the world slithers into the black hole of economic collapse, those that head the institutions that sit astride its nations and peoples met in Davos, Switzerland last week for the World Economic Forum. Attendance was, as always, by invitation only and that included the press so we can be sure that whatever came out of Davos 'on-the-record' was intended to. In case you doubt the ability of conference organizers to manage the information flow consider two things; there are numerous "off-the-record" briefings throughout the conference the details of which we never hear, and all those attending, including journalists, want to be invited back for they are members of the Inner Circle and rely on their membership for their place in life.

We were not invited which is somewhat galling given that in October 2005 (The Economic Collapse: An Insider's View) and then again in August 2006 (Signs of the Economic Apocalypse - Update) sott.net (or signs-of-the-times.org as it was then) was hosting podcasts in which the forthcoming collapse of the free market capitalist system was discussed in detail as well as our consistent warnings over the last five years. It is even more galling to find that Nouriel Roubini is being treated as some sort of god for saying exactly the same thing as sott.net after we said it. The upside of not being invited is that you, dear reader, can rest assured of our continued independence of both mind and spirit.

January 2009 will go down in human history as the month when the leaders of the state of Israel showed their true colors. If anyone doubted that Israeli politicians deserved a place next to the likes of Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot, their storm troopers put those doubts to rest by displaying a brutality and callousness to shock even the most apathetic. To add insult to injury, the Zionist PR machine went into top gear, using all the tricks in the big book of government propaganda. Lies through mass media and lies through their paid 'Hasbara' trolls on the Internet.

But for once a considerable number of the world population - including some in Israel itself - actually saw the genocide for what it was and demonstrated against it. This brought shame on Western governments and on the US in particular as it highlighted Obama's timidity and ultimate compliance, and the Bush administration's grotesque submission to the Zionist agenda.

"For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion."

~ Isaiah 34:8.

"An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent."

~ Edmund Burke, 1789

In his own time Douglas Lancelot Reed (1895 - 1976) was widely-read. Nowadays he is either pretty much forgotten, or the mere mention of his name evokes outrage among those Establishment experts who have heard of him. The reason for this outrage isn't hard to find: he drew attention to what he saw as a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, and wrote about its history at length in his book The Controversy of Zion. This was completed in 1956 - but not submitted for publication until 1978, two years after his death.

In the obituary for him which appeared in The Times, Douglas Reed was described as a "virulent anti-Semite". A careful reading of The Controversy of Zion, however, shows this to be questionable - even though Reed himself may on occasion have described himself as a writer of anti-Semitic material. In saying that, Reed seems rather to have been referring to his ardent anti-Pharisaism, anti-Talmudism and anti-Zionism. He doesn't however seem to have been an anti-Semite, in the sense of being a hater of Jews, as there are many, many instances where he shows considerable sympathy for ordinary rank-and-file Jews.

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.