SOTT Focus:


Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: Unprecedented Gaza Emergency Meeting, New York City, Jan. 14th 2009

speakers
© 2009 Sott.netSome of the speakers at the emergency meeting on Gaza Jan. 14th 2009
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:

Heart - Black

SOTT Focus: The Butchering Of Gaza - Nazi Germany Revisited

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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.

Stormtrooper

SOTT Focus: Connecting the Dots: A New Year Begins with Israel's War and Warnings of Riots

Marching Hammers - Pink Floyd
© Pink Floyd - The WallMarching Hammers, from Pink Floyd - The Wall
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.

Ambulance

SOTT Focus: The Economic Noose Tightens

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.

Bell

SOTT Focus: Happy Winter Solstice! We Won!

William Blake
© William BlakeThe Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun
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.

Magnify

SOTT Focus: The Slow Slide Continues and the Strange Affair of Bernie Madoff

The markets last week saw alarming signs of global deflation. Oil prices continued their fall, closing the week down 7% in dollars and 11% in euros. The three-month U.S. Treasury bill closed the week with a negative yield (-0.01%). The gold/oil ratio closed at a startling 19.53, significant because it reflects gold's role as money gaining ground on its role as a commodity. For a while, gold and oil moved in tandem, but not recently.

We are told the reason oil is dropping so sharply is plummeting world demand. World demand is plummeting because the bottom is falling out of the world economy, which until recently was propped up by massive amounts of unsustainable debt.

The Madoff affair seems to us just too scripted and convenient to be true which leads us to speculate as to what is really going on.

Cult

Flashback SOTT Focus: Internet Free Speech Under Threat! Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute Sue QFG for 4.47 Million Over SOTT Forum Comments!



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©Oregonian
"Master" Eric J Pepin

Yesterday, as I was working on finishing up the next installment of the Comet Series of Articles, FedEx delivered a packet of mail from our corporate registered agent in the U.S. It was "Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial" filed in the State of Oregon by Eric Pepin's Higher Balance Institute, LLC. The reason? A discussion on the SOTT Forum that begins HERE.

Well, that was entertaining enough when you think about the fact that the discussion that he objects to was centered on several newspaper articles that describe his close calls with the legal system in Oregon over charges of sex abuse.

Comment: Oregon police say man abused teen in cult-like operation
"Two Aloha men arrested on sex-abuse charges"
Leader of Washington County Internet company acquitted of sex abuse
Sexual predators in the religious scene

Make no mistake about it: This is an attack on internet freedom and freedom of speech, plain and simple. If Eric Pepin were to win, based on the accusations in the complaint, it would set a precedent that would reverberate across the world. It would make anyone who had a different opinion or view of the world - other than that which is approved by the PTB - subject to suppression and censure. The issues of psychopathy and conspiracy are specifically named in the complaint as well as the connection between religion and making money. If this suit were to succeed, it would significantly chill further discourse about conspiracies, pathological deviance, mind control methods and real cults, including the Judao-Islamo-Christian dominator trio. It would be a disaster.

And so, I think we can begin to notice who is and is not interested in assisting us in publicizing this threat, what so-called "alternative news" sites or "conspiracy theory" sites are willing to come to our aid in facing this threat against all of us on the net.

Certainly there are people and sites that have felt the sting of our critique and we have felt theirs more than once. This is the watershed. As Martin Niemöller said:
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
It's time for those who stand for freedom of speech, for our First Amendment Rights, to speak up or forever be silenced. Because that is what will happen if Eric Pepin and the Higher Balance Institute prevail. He will create the precedent for total suppression for the PTB masters whether that is his intention or not.


Control Panel

SOTT Focus: One giant Ponzi scheme and the Obama Illusion

The big news this week was the sudden exposure of a massive $50 billion Ponzi Scheme run it seems singlehandedly by Bernard Madoff a prominent New York Zionist, financier and philanthropist. The exposure is somewhat surreal while the resulting financial waves seem likely to hit, so we are told, many of the leading names in banking together with many of the most wealthy individuals in the US. There is certainly ample reason to believe that there is much more to the story than meets the eye.

In the same week the surreal dominated the news with US Treasuries briefly touching negative interest rates, the US automaker bailout descending into political farce, Marc Dreier the highly successful New York lawyer is caught trying to con hedge funds out of $380 million and Obama's team talk of which nations the US will leave to collapse in 2009. Of course silence echoes through the corridors of power in relation to the Israeli perpetrated holocaust in Palestine.

Heart - Black

SOTT Focus: State Repression and the Establishment of Capitalism

We ended last week saying that "we find ourselves today much as those hapless English found themselves centuries ago; we have been disenfranchised; we are having our "land" in the form of homes, jobs, security, income and inheritance taken from us even as you read this; and we have lost our rights to privacy and to protection from wrongful arrest and imprisonment. We face forces arrayed against us as formidable as any known in history; forces that are preparing, just as those who have come before, to use every tool of repression available to keep us subservient, to keep us ignorant, divided and confused, thereby ensuring our political and economic impotence."

If we are to find a way through the webs of deceit that surround and ensnare us we need to go back to the history of resistance against despotism and tyranny. Despotism and tyranny might sound a little strange if you find yourself reading this seated comfortably in a warm and comfortable home with money in your bank, but if you are not so fortunate you will have an inkling of the appropriateness of these terms. Of course those that have the greatest understanding of despotism and tyranny are those that cannot read this essay because they are illiterate, uneducated, too poor or all of the above. Of course, there are also the many thousands who have been imprisoned without trial, often in our name.

Clock

SOTT Focus: Economy, Markets and Finance - December 9th

The markets last week reacted in a deflationary mode, spurred by the stunning loss of a half million jobs in the United States in November. Commodities were down, stocks were down, and US bonds were up (driving yields down) while Japanese bonds dropped on fears of increased government borrowing next year. Oil dropped sharply (23%), gold fell 7.5% and interest rates are falling closer and closer to zero. How close? The yield on the 3-month U.S. Treasury Notes, for example, is now 0.01%. In other words, if prices are going down, you are better off having money rather than things.

It's not looking out in the real economy but it's all roses for the banks as the EU began approving the various European bank bailouts. Hedge Fund news is dire with many, including the once mighty Fortress, stopping or severely limiting investor withdrawals while being reported to be "crumbling".

With the crisis in the auto sector, Ford is looking to sell Volvo the Swedish carmaker it bought ten years ago in a bid to raise cash.

Comment: We have decided to separate the market and financial news section of our analysis from our broader analysis and commentary. This week's continuation of State Sanctioned Theft, State Repression and the Establishment of Capitalism can be found here.