"Time passes, but they're always five to seven years from the bomb." -- Shlomo Brom, Israel's deputy national security adviser under former Prime Minister Ehud Barak

As Israeli politicians continue to beat the war-drums over what they (now alone) claim to be an imminent threat from a nuclear-capable Iran, very similar hysterical rhetoric is being used in the attempt to convince us of a very different if equally catastrophic threat to life on earth - "climate change". The doomsayers tell us we have ten years, at most, to reverse the inevitable destruction or face the dire consequences of cities under water, earthquakes, tsunamis and the dreaded, if not racist, tropical diseases moving north. While researching this article I came across a blog that made a very salient point:

Quite apart from the science, one thing I find suspicious about climate catastrophism is how there's supposed to be this massive and terribly deleterious change ahead of us, and yet (by what strikes me as an amazing coincidence) we are always said to still be capable of stopping it but only -- and here the speaker invariably assumes the urgent air of an infomercial voice-over -- if we act right this very minute. This is strange, given that we're dealing with what (on the catastrophist account) seems to be a slippery-slope doomsday scenario that has been building up since the Industrial Revolution. Given the long time-frame and massive uncertainties involved, you'd think that predictions of the exact timing of the "point of no return" must involve a fairly significant margin of error. In light of that, it's odd that there doesn't seem to be even one climate-change affirmer out there who's saying "Rats! I hate to tell you this guys, but it's one or two (or ten or fifty) years too late and there's basically nothing we can do now." Perhaps adding: "So we might as well just go out in style -- let's everyone head out to the SUV dealership!" Or "Let's get 10,000 of our best friends together and jet over to Bali for a big wingding!"

On the other hand, there are thousands of them who seem to think we're just a few years away from this point of no return...

And that's it: We're always a few years away from the point of no return, whether it's Iran, climate, or some other "catastrophic" event we must act now before it is too late. What if Iran already has the bomb? What if we're already past the point of no return? What will you do, what will They do then?

©Unknown

French psychiatrist Serge Hefez has written a book about the ever-present character of the French president in the minds of the French, La Sarkose obsessionnelle.

The following is a translation of a description that appeared on the French news site rue89:

After a year of familiarization, how to stop being Sarkointoxicated?

by HUBERT ARTUS | Rue89 | 06/05/2008

[...] Smoking Narcissism is bad for your health

"When I think of him, I feel overwhelmed by an obscene substance of which I am unable to rid myself."

How many Muslim lives can you get for a "golden nugget"?

Back in 2003, after the start of the Iraq invasion, then chairman of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and current head of British overseas intelligence agency MI6, requested that "ten golden nuggets" be included in the US-backed Iraq Survey Group's report on WMD's in Iraq.

©Worldofrockhounds

"Golden nuggets", as it turned out, was Mr. Scarlett's euphemistic term for "lies" and included several deliciously bogus claims:

Here's a bad joke for you: What did French president Nicolas Sarkozy say to Carla Bruni the first night they met?

Give up?

"Voulez-vous karcher avec moi ce soir?"

(Karcher is a manufacturer of power washers.)

And really, can you blame him? I mean, let's face it: there are people in this world who love to take advantage of others. These parasites use everyone around them for their own personal gain and glory. They feed off of the hard work of normal people like you and me. They don't believe in a hard day's work; they believe in hardly working. They lie, cheat, steal, and then more or less complain about how unfairly they're being treated by using the most mangled logic to justify their actions. Quite often, even when caught in a lie, they just keep on lying.

That's the kind of scum we're dealing with here.

So, I agree wholeheartedly with the good Sarkonator: break out the powerwashers!

It has been a month now since the Signs editors engaged in a little exercise of connecting the dots: we noticed a number of high level meetings of some of the most prominent Axis of Evil personalities, and thinking it likely that there is an important reason for the activity, we published our observations here.

We have decided to make this a periodical effort of 'joining the dots', hoping to make sense of the avalanche of information that comes our way on a daily basis. It may help us to detect trends, and to understand which way the drivers are steering this bus called Planet Earth.

Well, judging by the events of April, it seems that they are taking us towards a cliff, and it is rapidly approaching.

©Tooz

So, we've seen Obama being put on the ropes by Hillary over the question of Israel. The two are involved in a spitting match to see who can support Israel in the most rabid and mindless manner.

It seems some influential supporters of Israel had a little get-together back in March to challenge representatives from the three presidential candidates who have Israel's backing to make the most outrageously pro-Israel statements imaginable.

Reading an article from the current issue of Time Magazine really makes one stop and think. At the beginning of the article, one sees a lovely color photo that, except for a few fashion details, could have been taken last week in Paris.

©Andre Zucca

One of the photos showing the supposedly sunny, happy life in Paris during the German occupation

And then, one reads the text:

The photographs from the early 1940s show Paris as sunny, airy, bursting with color. Its inhabitants appear carefree, content and refreshingly unaware of their proclivity for looking très chic. It's all very much at odds with the prevailing image of the French capital suffering and smoldering under the yoke of its Nazi occupiers. Indeed, that very dissonance has made the current photo exhibit "Parisians Under the Occupation" one of the city's most controversial cultural events of late. Was life in Nazi-controlled Paris really as idyllic as these pictures suggest?

I would say that life in Nazi-controlled Paris was exactly as idyllic as life is in Neocon controlled New York City where Machine Gun-Toting Officers will be Patrolling the NYC Subway and several citizens were quoted as actually saying they now feel "safer," never mind that the Phantom Terrorist menace is exactly as real as the Jewish Terror Menace was to the Germans. This must, of course, give us pause to consider...

©Unknown

Lake View man hit by Taser dies

A 24-year-old Lake View man died Thursday, five days after suburban Cincinnati police shocked him with a Taser outside a bar there....

©John Cole

Where does one start with the new wave of propaganda that passes for US news and opinion regarding Iran? It is clear that the aim is to flood the airwaves (and our brains) with so much insanely ridiculous propaganda that we throw up our hands, give up trying to fathom the details, and retreat into a numbed state of acceptance.

What we are seeing is pure propaganda and Newspeak, and for those who know something of Pavlov and his work on Transmarginal Inhibition, the scenario is classic. People, ordinary people, do not want to go to war if left to their own devices. The kick or shove to provoke a reaction for war must come from outside. History provides us with many examples from the last 100 years: the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, 911. In each case, the event galvanized public opinion, and war, which had been unthinkable the day before, became a certainty.

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Sott.net, along with many others commentators (including US government officials), have repeatedly stated that "al-qaeda" is a fabricated enemy. That it is used to justify the Ziocon's military rampage though the Middle East while simultaneously terrorising the folks back home.

In the past 7 years the world public has repeatedly been treated to bogus missives from "al-Qaeda leaders" that strangely echo the Islamophobic claims of the leaders of the Western world.

Every time a member of the US or Israeli government expounded on the "Muslim terror threat to freedom and democracy everywhere", soon afterwards "al-Qaeda" obligingly popped up with a new video or statement in which they threatened freedom and democracy.

As the massive holes in the US government's official story of the 9/11 attacks continue to widen, and sites like Sott.net continue to point to the real culprits in Tel Aviv and Washington DC, disembodied internet voices that US government officials "believe to be that of Osama bin laden", set the record straight and claim responsibility. In spite of such strenuous efforts to fool the entire world, fewer and fewer people are buying the terror hysteria, and recently the desperation on the part of the Ziocons has begun to show.