nearly trump hair

[click image]

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RT tells it.

[I honestly tried to make him look a little less hideous. It was too much for me.]

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Chris Floyd tells it.

This policy is what the Nobel Peace Laureate — the first African-American president in history — is now perpetuating in the only nation to liberate itself from slavery. But of course, the most important thing is not the dispossessed in Haiti, nor the innocent people in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan being killed, day after day, by the Laureate's bombs, bullets and assassins. No, the main thing is — he's not John McCain! And we must put aside these trifles, these heaps of corpses, and rally around the prez to "defend our gains and regroup for a progressive counter-offensive in 2012!" The best is yet to come!

If you go down and read the Lendman piece in last night's nukequake post, along with this one, you might be shocked out of your groupthink "progressivism" for maybe even up to an hour....

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love, 99
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i want the good to show instead of the ugly

[click image]

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So the image of The Laureate isn't going here.

The Bolivian President and a Russian political leader have launched a campaign to revoke Obama's honour after the US attacked Libya.

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader and Vice-Chairman of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement today calling for the Nobel Prize Committee to take back the honour bestowed on US President Barack Obama in 2009.

Zhirinovsky said the attacks were "another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States," and that the attacks demonstrated a "colonial policy" with "one goal: to establish control over Libyan oil and the Libyan regime." He said the prize was now hypocritical as a result.

Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed the call: "How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defence of human rights or self-determination."

Morales won the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in 2006.

He is amongst a number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the attacks against Libya. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina have all criticised western media coverage of the Libyan crisis.

Morales and Chavez repeated calls for peace talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples." The Committee praised the "change in the international climate" affected by Obama's presidency.

In his Nobel Lecture, he discussed the "hard truth" of the inevitability of war, saying: "There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."

A message has been widely retweeted on Twitter today: "Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined."

I beg the Nobel Committee to heed these decent people and revoke that prize. Insofar as anyone respects it anymore, it is a travesty to stand back and watch "peace" laureates go on killing sprees.

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love, 99
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sputtering disbelief

[click image]

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The reference here:

What balls! What hubris! What hypocrisy! What happened to America?

to testicles is just silly, because obviously Obama's were cut off on 20 January 2009.

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Think about this one:

The BBC World Service is to receive a "significant" sum of money from the US government to help combat the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China.

All that scoffing you do at the people who insist we are still a colony of Britain? And the scoffing you do at those who insist the Queen is a Judite space lizard from a millennial line of human-enslavers? They might sound colorful. Freaked people usually do. But mayhap you should temper your scoffing just a jot?

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Not a cakewalk:

We will not let Libya be lost like Palestine, Iraq or Somalia. We are arming the people. If western countries come to Libya they will have to fight house by house. If Libya goes down, Europe goes down. If we are attacked we will fight to the death. Every man and woman. ...

Nor is there any sign that Gaddafi's loyal supporters are preparing to abandon him. "Without Gaddafi," said a mourner, "Libya will be like Somalia. There will be chaos. This is not like Iraq or Afghanistan, where someone else will take power. We don't have a Maliki or a Karzai here."

Whatever his flaws, he has been good to Libya, and we most certainly have not.

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And this so isn't going to help:

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Any Libyan malcontents our ops may have stirred to rebellion are going to be taking a harder look at their best interests now.

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Fuck yea....

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On Russia's failure to use its veto:

Medvedev defended his order to abstain from the vote on the U.N. resolution which Putin vehemently criticised. He also steered clear of chiding the United States, while Putin lambasted Washington.

"The resolution is defective and flawed. It allows everything," Putin told workers at a ballistic missile factory in Votkinsk in central Russia. "It resembles medieval calls for crusades.

Medvedev defended his decision not to use Russia's veto.

"We did not use it for one simple reason: because I do not consider this resolution wrong. Moreover, on the whole I believe this resolution reflects our understanding of what is going on in Libya as well, but not in every way."

The 45-year-old Kremlin chief's comments were widely reported on state television. Putin's crusade comment was quietly dropped from some state television news bulletins after Medvedev's criticism.

Putin, in some of his harshest criticism of the United States since President Barack Obama began a campaign to improve ties, compared the Libya intervention with the invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush and said it showed Russia was right to spend billions to bolster its military.

Medvedev did not mention the United States and stressed the international nature of diplomatic efforts over Libya.

"We did not use our veto... so to be flapping our wings and saying we did not know what we were doing would be wrong. We did this consciously," he said. "I gave the instructions to the Foreign Ministry, and they were carried out."

I'm with Putin... of course....

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love, 99
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what is wrong with this picture? — UPDATING

[click image]

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Hmmm?

U.S. President is warning Libyan leader that his forces must stop attacking innocent civilians or face military action.

If you can't answer this question instantly, I'm torn between ordering you away from my blog forever and begging you to live here.... [from 11am today]

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NOON-THIRTY UPDATE:

The French air force destroyed Libyan tanks and armored vehicles on Saturday, the first shots fired in a U.N.-mandated military intervention to protect civilians from attacks by Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

A French defense ministry official said "a number of tanks and armored vehicles" were destroyed in the region of Benghazi, with initial action focusing on stopping Gaddafi's forces from advancing on the rebels' eastern stronghold.

"Rebels"... pfeh....

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1:15 PM PDT UPDATE:

American warplanes, ships and submarines prepared to launch a furious assault on Libya's limited air defenses Saturday, clearing the way for European and other planes to enforce a no-fly zone designed to ground Moammar Gadahfi's air force and cripple his ability to inflict further violence on rebels, U.S. officials said.

"Rebels"... pfeh... talismanic words....

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Just a word about the multifarious other pushbutton revolutions in progress: People are being slaughtered and no UN mandates, no French and American airstrikes... pig shit smeared across the globe. Right now.

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7:05 PM PDT UPDATE:

The U.S. and European nations pounded Moammar Gadhafi's forces and air defenses with cruise missiles and airstrikes Saturday, launching the broadest international military effort since the Iraq war in support of an uprising that had seemed on the verge of defeat. Libyan state TV claimed 48 people had been killed in the attacks....

Fuck.

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MIDNIGHT PDT OH SHIT UPDATE:

Moscow regrets the attack from a range of European countries on Libya which is being conducted "with reference to the hastily adopted UN Security Council resolution," official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Lukashevich said on Saturday....

China regrets the multinational military strike launched against Libya, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

"China has noticed the latest development in Libya and regrets the military strike against Libya," Jiang Yu said, adding that China did not agree with resorting to force in international relations.

Part of me hopes this turns into a serious disagreement, but, of course, that's suicidal....

For the record, this might be the source of the downed plane in the "rebel" city that we were assuming was Gaddafi's and setting this whole attack in motion. MIGHT be. Sarkozy's trying to get France behind him again... baaaad poll numbers... but then... the French are NOT as gung ho behind their president's military adventurism as Americans are... hey... can I say "used to be" yet?

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love, 99
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you KNOW the russians are telling you the truth

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You KNOW it. But you don't do anything about it. No matter how goofy/awful Gaddafi is, and he is, you KNOW we are being pumped with outright lies by our own government and media about this.

The world is a transitory abode,
not a permanent abode.
And the people in it
are of two sorts:
one who sells his soul
and ruins it,
and one who ransoms his soul
and frees it.
— ḤAḌRAT 'ALĪ

I implore you, look in. Letting this pass is selling out.

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love, 99
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yes, well, uhm

[click image]

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I think we better first consult Russia before believing anything our media puts out about the Paradorian dictator carrying out airstrikes against his people. Too, we need to consult our better sense to wonder anymore if that is even an over-reaction to righteous protest, now don't we? Just as we need to wonder if the Western frame for the "revolutions" in the Middle East might not be just a little on the outright preposterous side, as usual. In short, we need to think for ourselves on this one, get in touch with our own inner, and far greater than we usually settle for, SENSE.

REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
NATO’s inevitable war (Part II) — (Part I)

WHEN Gaddafi, aged just 28 and a colonel in the Libyan army, inspired by his Egyptian colleague Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Idris I in 1969, he implemented important revolutionary measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil. The growing income was dedicated to economic and social development, particularly educational and health services for the small Libyan population located in a vast desert territory with very little arable land.

An extensive and deep sea of "fossil water" existed beneath that desert. When I heard about an experimental cultivation area I had the impression that, in the future, those aquifers would be more valuable than oil.

Religious faith, preached with the fervor that characterizes Muslim nations, in part helped to compensate for the strong tribal tendency which still survives in that Arab country.

Libyan revolutionaries devised and implemented their own ideas in relation to legal and political institutions, which Cuba, as a principle, respected.

We totally abstained from expressing any opinions concerning the concepts of the Libyan leadership.

We can clearly see that the fundamental concern of the United States and NATO is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.

It is an irrefutable fact that relations between the United States and its NATO allies in recent years were excellent until the rebellion in Egypt and in Tunisia arose.

In high-level meetings between Libya and NATO leaders, none of the latter had any problems with Gaddafi. The country was a secure source of high-quality oil, gas and even potassium supplies. The problems which arose between them in the early decades had been overcome.

Strategic sectors such as oil pumping and transportation were opened up to foreign investment.

Privatizations were extended to many public enterprises. The International Monetary Fund exercised its beatific role in the implementation of those operations.

Logically, Aznar was fulsome in his praise of Gaddafi and after him, Blair, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Zapatero and even my friend the King of Spain, paraded past the sardonic regard of the Libyan leader. They were happy.

Although it might seem that I am mocking that is not the case; I am simply asking myself why they now want to take Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

They are accusing him 24 hours a day of firing on unarmed citizens who were protesting. Why did they not explain to the world that the weapons and, above all, the sophisticated machinery of repression possessed by Libya, was supplied by the United States, Britain and other illustrious hosts of Gaddafi?

I strongly oppose the cynicism and lies currently being used to justify the invasion and occupation of Libya.

The last time that I visited Gaddafi was in May 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his very modest residence, where he took me to see what was left of it. It received a direct hit from the aircraft and was considerably destroyed; his little daughter three years of age died in the attack: she was murdered by Ronald Reagan. There was no prior agreement on the part of NATO, the Human Rights Committee, or the Security Council.

My previous visit had taken place in 1977, eight years after the beginning of the revolutionary process in Libya. I visited Tripoli; I took part in the General People’s Congress in Sebha; I toured the first agricultural experiments with water pumped from the vast sea of fossil waters; I visited Benghazi, I was the object of a warm reception. It was a legendary country which had been the scenario of historic battles in World War II. It did not as yet have six million inhabitants, nor were its enormous volumes of oil and fossil waters known. The former Portuguese colonies in Africa had already been liberated.

We had fought for 15 years in Angola against mercenary armies organized along tribal lines by the United States, the Mobutu government, and the well-equipped and trained racist apartheid army. This army, following U.S. instructions, as is now known, invaded Angola in 1975 in order to prevent its independence, reaching the outskirts of Luanda with its motorized forces. A number of Cuban instructors died in that brutal invasion. Resources were sent with all urgency.

Expelled from that country by Cuban internationalists and Angolan troops to the border of South African occupied Namibia, the racists were given the mission of eliminating the revolutionary process in Angola.

With the support of the United States and Israel they developed nuclear weapons. They already possessed them when the Cuban and Angolan troops defeated their land and air forces in Cuito Cuanavale and, defying the risk – using conventional tactics and means – advanced toward the border with Namibia, where the apartheid troops were attempting to resist. Twice in their history our forces have been at risk of attack by those kinds of weapons: in October of 1962 and in southern Angola, but on that second occasion, not even deploying those nuclear weapons that South Africa possessed could they have prevented the defeat which marked the end of the odious system. Those events took place under the government of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Piet Botha in South Africa.

There is no talk of that and the hundreds of thousands of lives which the imperialist adventure cost.

I regret having to recall those events when another great risk is hovering over the Arab peoples, because they are not resigned to continue being the victims of plunder and oppression.

The Revolution in the Arab world so much feared by the United States and NATO is that of those who lack all rights in the face of those who flaunt all privileges, and thus is destined to be more profound than the one unleashed in Europe in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille.

Not even Louis XIV, when he proclaimed that he was the state, possessed the privileges of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia and far less the vast wealth that lies below the surface of that almost desert country, where yankee transnationals determine the pumping and thus the price of oil in the world.

When the Libyan crisis began, extraction in Saudi Arabia rose to one million barrels a day at minimum cost and, in consequence, by that concept alone, the income of that country and those who control it has risen to one billon dollars a day.

No one should imagine that the Saudi people are swimming in money. There are moving accounts of the living conditions of many construction workers and those in other sectors obliged to work 13 to 14 hours a day for paltry wages.

Shocked by the revolutionary wave which is shaking the prevalent system of plunder, in the wake of what took place with workers in Egypt and Tunisia, but also unemployed youth in Jordan, the occupied territories of Palestine, Yemen and even Bahrain and the Arab Emirates with higher per capita income, the upper echelons of the Saudi hierarchy has been impacted by the events.

As opposed to other times, today the Arab peoples receive almost instantaneous information on events, albeit exceptionally manipulated.

The worst thing for the status quo of the privileged sectors is that those persistent events are coinciding with a considerable increase in food prices and the devastating impact of climate change, while the United States, the largest producer of corn in the world, is wasting 40% of that product and a significant part of soy production on biofuels to feed automobiles. Lester Brown, the best informed American ecologist in the world on agricultural products, can surely give us an idea of the current food situation.

The Bolivarian president, Hugo Chávez, is making a valiant effort to find a solution without NATO intervention in Libya. The chances of his attaining that objective would improve if he can achieve the feat of creating a broad movement of opinion before and not after the intervention takes place, and the peoples do not have to see the atrocious experience of Iraq repeated in other countries.

End of Reflection.

The need to open one's mind, to cut from the consensus trance being dictated by our execrable media is so blaring that it makes one squint, hurts one's ears. There is relief to be had by just doing it, at last—quit clinging to the fringes of this obviously sociopathic course at all, quit thrashing around in these oceans of cognitive dissonance, and just get the hell to it. No?

Yes.

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love, 99
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!!! RED ALERT !!!

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CODE RED CODE RED CODE RED

An Army private suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive and classified documents to the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group was charged Wednesday with aiding the enemy, a crime that can bring the death penalty or life in prison.

The Army filed 22 new charges against Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, including causing intelligence information to be published on the Internet. The charges don't specify which documents, but the charges involve the suspected distribution by the military analyst of more than 250,000 confidential State Department cables as well as a raft of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. Thousands of the documents have been published on the WikiLeaks website.

Although aiding the enemy is a capital offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Army prosecutors have notified the Manning defense team that it will not recommend the death penalty to the two-star general who is in charge of proceeding with legal action.

The Army has not ruled out charging others in the case, pending the results of an ongoing review. Army leaders have suggested that there may have been supervisory lapses that allowed the breach to occur.


CODE RED CODE RED CODE RED


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love, 99
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australia swims up for air

[click image — yuh, I switched out images because this one just keeps making me laugh]

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I am sure they'll be dunked again, but at least they're still thrashing.

Robert Stary, Assange's Melbourne-based lawyer, thinks his client's defense should be pretty straightforward, because he considers Assange to be a journalist, protected by U.S. First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

But Stary is worried about some possibilities: "Our main concern is really the possible extradition to the U.S. We've been troubled by the sort of rhetoric that has come out of various commentators and principally Republican politicians — Sarah Palin and the like — saying Mr. Assange should be executed, assassinated."

On her Facebook page, Palin suggests that Assange should be "pursued with the same urgency as al-Qaida and Taliban leaders."

Anyone who incites others to commit violence against his client, even outside Australia, Stary says, is violating Australian law, and can be held accountable for it.

"Certainly if Sarah Palin or any of those other politicians come to Australia, for whatever purpose, then we can initiate a private prosecution, and that's what we intend to do," Stary said.

Poor Sarah. Her bloody rhetoric keeps taking hits lately.

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And, it appears I'm getting some support from a Russian author for my assertions about the intertubes NOT going to be taken away:

Part of the argument I'm making in the book is that authoritarian governments have immensely benefited from the web, and I point to three features. One of them is propaganda; one of them is new ways of censorship; and one of them is increased surveillance, more sophisticated surveillance.

So relax....

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love, 99
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scanning cables from our embassy in moscow

[click image — the link, here, is acting strangely. If it doesn't bring up the Moscow cables, you should click in the sidebar for them....]

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I wonder that Russia doesn't just oust our "diplomats"... so... now... er... but this bit:

Founder of the controversial website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been granted a Russian visa and plans to visit the country soon.

The visit may happen in a couple of weeks, reports the Russian News Service citing WikiLeaks supporter and friend of Assange, Israel Shamir. No details of the agenda and schedule have been disclosed. However, by that time a Russia-based pro-WikiLeaks NGO currently being established is likely to get its official registration.

Assange is now in Great Britain, where he faces possible extradition to Sweden. The Scandinavian country wants him for alleged sex crimes. With the next court hearing scheduled for February 7, Assange may be able to visit Russia in three weeks, but only if the Swedish extradition request is turned down by Britain.

WikiLeaks gained worldwide publicity in 2010 after making public thousands of confidential documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the diplomatic cables of the US State Department.

is darn thought-provoking, no?

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I find I can't quit associating this bit of news with the handover of Swiss banking documents earlier this week.

As a July 1, 2009 [State Department] cable released by Norway’s Aftenposten [and WikiLeaks] makes clear, the US and Switzerland included the acceptance of three Gitmo detainees and a settlement in a suit accusing UBS of harboring tax cheats–along with an effort to shut down a Swedish company’s business with Iran–in negotiations “resolving all issues between our countries.” ...

One of the recipients of the cable was Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz.

Mind you, the Swiss minister in question has denied there’s a “direct link.” So maybe not a direct quid pro quo — just Switzerland “indirectly” doing us two big favors in exchange for our DOJ limiting how many of the rich tax cheats we pursue in Switzerland. But the favors may go both ways: among those reportedly involved in the UBS scandal were American politicians. ...

But not long after the negotiations, we sentenced the whistleblower in the case, Bradley Birkenfeld, to 40 months in prison. ... [T]here’s a bunch of sealed documents in it starting the month before this [] cable and continuing up to the point where the judge gave Birkenfeld more time in prison than prosecutors requested.

Those cables from our Ambassador to Russia were chock full of the very nastiest allegations of government corruption, purporting financial perfidies of almost every description by Russian officials. So I'm wondering if maybe, say, RIA Novosti or RT might not want to be negotiating to release the Swiss banking documents....

Just a thought... a daydream of poetic justice....

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love, 99
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transferring back to the death star

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They really said no? Who Knew?

Members of Switzerland’s parliament are demanding the ouster of US diplomats who are believed to be involved in illegal spying activities out of their Geneva embassy, a revelation which came out of a WikiLeaks cable from 2005.

The cable, released by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, cited US embassy officials “checking out” a Middle Eastern-looking couple on the grounds that they were near the embassy and had the word “Islam” on a sign inside their car.

The Swiss Justice Ministry is investigating the program, and says there is evidence of the same sort of widespread surveillance out of the Geneva embassy as the US was found to be conducting in Norway and Denmark.

However while Norway eventually conceded that certain of its officials had secretly approved of the spying (while not telling the officials launching the investigation), Swiss officials say the US approached them on the possibility of launching such operations and was rebuffed at least twice. The evidence now is that they decided to go through with it anyhow.

Sorta like here, where we keep saying no to fascist stuff and they do it anyway.

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Coleen Rowley....

Damn right, Helen....

Nick Turse....

LEAVE CHILE RIGHT NOW....

COMPLETELY doesn't matter WHAT we say... ever....

Oh, fucking hell, I guess I can stop worrying about lifesaving pharmaceuticals drying up in the crash....

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The CIA is "out of control" and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.

"The CIA currently doesn't work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn't and it's out of control," says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.

Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.

William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform.

The 2003 interview, among others conducted by the 9/11 Commission, was posted on the website Cryptome, which is often compared to the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website. The report was not a leak, however, but one of many records relating to the 9/11 Commission that have been released and made available on the National Archives website.

"Quite a few remain 'access restricted' for classification review," John Young, who runs Cryptome, told AOL News in an e-mail about the records, some of which he has reposted. "We expect to make an FOIA [Freedom of information Act] request for their release once we have a full listing of those restricted."

In the commission interview, Odom portrayed CIA officers as individualistic, saying they were interested in writing "exposes." He also accused the CIA of not sharing "humint," meaning intelligence collected through contact with people, and of trying to sabotage the Pentagon's own work in this area.

"The director of the CIA has as much reason to brief the president as the man on the moon," Odom told the staff of the commission investigating the failure to prevent the terror attacks.

Odom also believed that intelligence officials weren't held sufficiently accountable for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said he believed that the heads of the NSA and the CIA should both have been fired by the president after 9/11 for "symbolic purposes."

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Ravingly-jealous old fuck is either poisoning the well or warning compatriots... which?

Something else to heap sleeping powder on the masses and come to naught....

Today's Keiser Report....

Austerity hits home....

Got food?

Whut, restoring their buddhas and installing satellite dishes?

Third millennium opium den....

Gorgeous toxic soup....

Stuxnet not so threatening... but nice try....

HAIL MEDVEDEV....

Hail Mary....

Yuh, "rambling" probably was more like "sputtering" over the psychedelia we call "policy" nowadays....

It's come to this....

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In the early months of Obama's presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically "soft on Terror") and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama's switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).

As early as May, 2009, former Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith wrote in The New Republic that Obama was not only continuing Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but was strengthening them — both because he was causing them to be codified in law and, more important, converting those policies from right-wing dogma into harmonious bipartisan consensus. Obama's decision "to continue core Bush terrorism policies is like Nixon going to China,"Goldsmith wrote. Last October, former Bush NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden — one of the most ideological Bush officials, whose confirmation as CIA chief was opposed by then-Sen. Obama on the ground he had overseen the illegal NSA spying program — gushed with praise for Obama: "there's been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president." James Jay Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, told The New York Times' Peter Baker last January: "I don’t think it's even fair to call it Bush Lite. It's Bush. It's really, really hard to find a difference that's meaningful and not atmospheric."

Those are the nation's most extreme conservatives praising Obama's Terrorism policies. And now Dick Cheney himself — who once led the "soft on Terror" attacks — is sounding the same theme. In an interview last night with NBC News, Cheney praised Obama for continuing his and Bush's core approach to Terrorism:

He obviously has been through the fires of becoming President and having to make decisions and live with the consequences. And it's different than being a candidate. When he was candidate he was all for closing Gitmo. He was very critical of what we'd done on the counterterrorism area to protect America from further attack and so forth. . . .

I think he's — in terms of a lot of the terrorism policies — the early talk, for example, about prosecuting people in the CIA who've been carrying out our policies — all of that's fallen by the wayside. I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he's learned from experience.

Cheney was then specifically asked whether he stood by his early attacks on Obama's national security policies — "You said you believe President Obama has made America less safe. That he's actually raised the risk of attack. Do you still feel that way?" — and Cheney, not exactly known for changing his mind, essentially said that, thanks to Obama's continuity, he now does not:

Well, when I made that comment, I was concerned that the counterterrorism policies that we'd put in place after 9/11 that had kept the nation safe for over seven years were being sort of rapidly discarded. Or he was going to attempt to discard them. . . . As I say, I think he's found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did.

It overstates the case to say there are no differences. There were some: Obama formally ended the "enhanced interrogation program" (the authorization for which had been withdrawn when he took office); banned CIA black sites (which were empty when he took office); and has not invoked the Article II lawbreaking theories of Bush's first term (Bush largely abandoned them as well in his second term as Congress began legalizing his programs). And there is a more conciliatory tone, and some greater technocratic efficiency, in some foreign policy pronouncements. But the crux of Bush/Cheney radicalism — the mindset and policies that caused much of the controversy — continues and has even been strengthened. Gen. Hayden put it best, as quoted by The Washington Times:

"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."

And that list, impressive though it is, doesn't even include the due-process-free assassination hit lists of American citizens, the sweeping executive power and secrecy theories used to justify it, the multi-tiered, "state-always-wins" justice system the Obama DOJ concocted for detainees, the vastly more aggressive war on whistleblowers and press freedoms, or the new presidential immunity doctrines his DOJ has invented. Critically, this continuity extends beyond specific policies into the underlying sloganeering mentality in which they're based: we're in a Global War; the whole Earth is the Battlefield; the Terrorists want to kill us because they're intrinsically Evil (not in reaction to anything we do); we're justified in doing anything and everything to eradicate Them; the President's overarching obligation (contrary to his Constitutional oath) is to keep us Safe; this should all be kept secret from us; we can't be bothered with obsolete dogma like Due Process and Warrants, etc. etc.

Aside from the repressiveness of the policies themselves, there are three highly significant and enduring harms from Obama's behavior.

First, it creates the impression that Republicans were right all along in the Bush-era War on Terror debates and Democratic critics were wrong. The same theme is constantly sounded by conservatives who point out Obama's continuation of these policies: that he criticized those policies as a candidate out of ignorance and partisan advantage, but once he became President, he realized they were right as a result of accessing the relevant classified information and needing to keep the country safe from the Terrorist threat. Goldsmith, for instance, claimed Obama changed his mind about these matters "after absorbing the classified intelligence and considering the various options. GOP Sen. Susan Collins told the NYT's Baker that Obama "is finding that many of those policies were better-thought-out than they realized." Cheney boasted that Obama "obviously has been through the fires of becoming President and having to make decisions and live with the consequences." Predictably — and understandably — here's the headline Cheney's interview generated in The Hill this morning.

This has settled in as orthodoxy: one could criticize Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies only out of ignorance and/or being free of the solemn obligation to Keep America Safe.

Second, Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies. At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them. At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values.

Those debates are no more. Even the hardest-core right-wing polemicists — Gen. Hayden, the Heritage Foundation, Dick Cheney — now praise Obama's actions in these areas. Opposition from national Democrats has faded away to almost complete nonexistence now that it's a Democratic President doing these things. What was once viewed as the signature of Bush/Cheney radicalism is now official, bipartisan Washington consensus: the policies equally of both parties and all Serious people. Thanks to Barack Obama, this architecture is firmly embedded in place and invulnerable to meaningful political challenge.

Third, Obama's embrace of these policies has completely rehabilitated the reputations and standing of the Bush officials responsible for them. Yesterday, J. Gerald Herbert — a long-time DOJ official — told The Raw Story that Obama's refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush era crimes is both a violation of DOJ's duties and sets a "dangerous precedent" by vesting lawbreaking elites with immunity. The active protection of torturers and other high-level lawbreakers both signals that they did nothing seriously wrong and, independently, ensures that such conduct will be repeated in the future.

But Obama's impact in this area extends far beyond that. Dick Cheney is not only free of ignominy, but can run around claiming vindication from Obama's actions because he's right. The American Right constantly said during the Bush years that any President who knew what Bush knew and was faced with the duty of keeping the country safe would do the same thing. Obama has provided the best possible evidence imaginable to prove those claims true.

Conservatives would love to bash Obama for being weak on Terrorism so that, in the event of another attack, they can blame him (and Cheney, in last night's interview, left open that possibility by suggesting Obama may suffer from unknown failures). If it were at all possible, they'd be out accusing him of abandoning critical programs that Keep us Safe; that's what they do best. But they cannot with a straight face claim that Obama has abandoned their core approach, so they do the only thing they can do: acknowledge that he has continued and strengthened it and point out that it proves they were right — and he was wrong — all along. If Obama has indeed changed his mind over the last two years as a result of all the Secret Scary Things he's seen as President, then I genuinely believe that he and the Democratic Party owe a heartfelt, public apology to Bush, Cheney and the GOP for all the harsh insults they spewed about them for years based on policies that they are now themselves aggressively continuing.

Obama has won the War on Terror debate — for the American Right. And as Dick Cheney's interview last night demonstrates, they're every bit as appreciative as they should be.

—Glenn Greenwald

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About sums it up, eh?

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DEPRESSING ENOUGH?

I mean—and I should strive to be clearer always—does all this help blank out the urge to do something? And do you realize that you are relying on it? It's NOT merely that they're doing it to you. You are relying on it. Do you see how this is so?

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love, 99
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making dubya look even dumber

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Genghis Ponzi Yoo continues to conduct the Bush Administration STARTLINGLY better than ever before.

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love, 99
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they're catching on

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I wonder what Cusack sounds like in dubbed Russian....

A future of small brutal wars
RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik
9 January 2011

It is said that the world has been war-free since World War II. That is only partially true. There have been no all-out wars between great powers since 1945 only because, in a nuclear world, annihilation would inevitably ensue.

Some say wars have become more humane. Again, this is only partially true. After the horrors of WWII, the great powers have done their utmost to prevent any repetition of the atrocities committed against POWs and civilians in German and Japanese occupied territories. Moreover, planning, preparing, initiating, or waging a war of aggression have all been declared crimes.

Unfortunately, only great powers respect this rule and have learned to negotiate compromises more energetically and effectively.

Many small wars instead of one big war

The world is not limited to great powers and their closest allies. Unwilling to test their luck in a nuclear war, the leading countries never miss a chance to test their opponents in localized wars and have provoked many a small regional conflict. They use these conflicts to strengthen or protect their positions in key regions. As more colonial countries gained independence (only to end in neo-colonial dependence), the great powers are now more likely to engage in combat while not actually waging war.

These small, brutal wars are hellish for everyone caught up in them, because numerous “national liberation” fronts and armies and other “liberation” movements as a rule disregard all rules of war and norms of behavior.

Worse still, European and U.S. troops themselves commit crimes against humanity in wars they wage far away from prying eyes back home. Some do become public. Take the My Lai massacre in 1968, which saw a U.S. Army unit exterminate unarmed people in a South Vietnamese village, all the victims were civilians and a majority of them were women, children (including babies) and the elderly. But many more such crimes remain hidden.

And lastly, mercenaries have reappeared on the stage en masse. Although denounced by international law, mercenaries are routinely hired by Private Military Companies (also known as contractors or PMCs), which have become a fact of war in the modern world.

PMCs do not provide troops for inter-state wars, as mercenaries are not deemed combatants and hence would be considered common criminals if caught armed on the battlefield. Under the laws of war, they may be shot on the spot. PMCs hire mercenaries for conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the adversary is not a state but the armed groups that cannot be defined formally as a warring side.

The wars in the former Yugoslavia (Croatia 1991-1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995, Kosovo and Metohija 1998-1999, and southern Serbia and western Macedonia 2000-2001) were the first large-scale operations to involve mercenaries. PMCs play a variety of roles, from offering officer-training support for local armies to providing security guards as well as logistics and mine-clearing specialists.

Private wars: An alarming prospect

PMCs earned their fame in Iraq, where tens of thousands of mercenaries fought in military operations and guarded transport convoys in militant-controlled areas. This is also their role in Afghanistan.

How these PMCs behave in the theatre of conflict is, to a great extent, a consequence of their undefined status. Their recruits could be seen as either respectable security guards or armed criminals, and while some mercenary units comply with generally accepted rules, others let themselves go, and there have been instances of the indiscriminate killing of civilians by PMC personnel.

Despite these excesses, PMCs are on the rise. Great powers are very wary of high body counts and long drawn out, expensive military conflicts because of the adverse response they increasingly elicit from society. Hence, to an extent, PMCs controlled by the security services or defense departments have replaced the “liberation” fronts and movements of the 1960s and the 1980s. But only to an extent, those “liberation” fronts have vanished from the scene.

Hellish localized wars not only continue to take place, but have become almost uncontrollable, and PMCs will be used ever more frequently because doing so allows the larger players to interfere in a conflict without becoming directly involved.

Moreover, commercial structures also use PMCs. We may soon see commercial wars waged by large companies through PMCs, for example over the right to mineral deposits.

The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. [But still....]

Probably just as good....

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love, 99
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turning out to be a particularly bad new year for russian bears

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No. Really a very bad week for the bears... only one minor victory....

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love, 99
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all the world is buddha

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Seeing Raimondo talking about "real reality" has lifted my mood.

The WikiLeaks cables continue to bear fruit, and what a golden harvest it is: the US spying on the world’s diplomats (and even collecting their bank card numbers!); the US hiding behind the rather thin skirts of the Yemeni "air force" as we bomb and strafe their citizens; the US letting the Israeli Mafia into the country without so much as a by-your-leave; the US standing passively by as their Iraqi sock puppets torture and murder detainees. And now this: 

An observer for the International Bar Association stated his belief that the trial is being conducted fairly…. XXXXXXXXXXXX told us December 23 that he believes the trial is being conducted fairly and that Judge Danilkin has been doing everything in his power to make sure that the defense gets a fair opportunity to present arguments and challenge the prosecution’s evidence."

Written a year ago today by Deputy Chief of Mission Eric Rubin, the cable doesn’t exactly comport with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s outburst of moral indignation at the news of Khodorkovsky’s conviction. According to her, the verdict raises "serious questions about selective prosecution—and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations."

Unfortunately, Google Translate has yet to develop a Bizarro World option, and so in translating Hillary-speak into plain English, just remember the Bizarro principle of inversion: whatever comes out of her mouth is the exact opposite of the truth. Keeping this in mind, Clinton’s pronouncement should be read as follows: the United States government is allowing political considerations to overshadow the facts (as reported in the Rubin cable).

The White House, not about to be outdone in the Russia-bashing department, mounted an even higher horse:

We are troubled by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends. The apparent selective application of the law to these individuals undermines Russia’s reputation as a country committed to deepening the rule of law.

Selective perception of the facts is a cognitive disability seemingly rife within the ranks of this administration. Their people on the ground feed them the facts, but they just fart out the same old flatulent cold war rhetoric, just as if it were 1962 all over again.

Not that this administration is any different from its immediate predecessors. When the facts on the ground meet a self-serving ideological narrative it’s the former that  invariably gives way. The Bush crowd was open about it, but it takes WikiLeaks to really get a fully rounded picture of the same principle operating in Obama-land.

Which raises a more general point: If you’re an empire, with its vaunted self-assurance and air of invulnerability, any sort of sustained "realist" foreign policy is fundamentally impossible because appearances must be kept up, no matter what the facts might be. Retreat is not an option: the frontiers of empire must be pushed ever-forward, never back.

The idea that the Russians are falling back into a form of neo-communism, or neo-Stalinism, with Putin in the role of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, is utter nonsense, and yet it serves the purposes of the War Party, which can never run out of enemies. Ever since the rise of Vladimir Putin, the US government and its ideological enablers the world over have been spinning this storyline of a "resurgent Russia" out to take back its empire and reestablish the Warsaw Pact. Yet the reality is quite different: Russia is a ramshackle nation with a rapidly diminishing population and a faltering economy. It is, in short, neither a military nor an ideological threat to the West. The Ossetians and Abkhazians voted in a referendum to secede from the central Georgian government and are now allied with Russia: who is the US to intervene? What standing do we have in the region, aside from lavishing millions of our tax dollars on a tinpot dictator like Saakashvili?

The myth of Russia’s re-Stalinization is equally tenuous. If we look back at the dark abyss the Russians have climbed out of—the Soviet Mordor, with its gulags and orc-like nomenklatura—the Russia of today seems a positive paradise. The Western media’s attempt to create some pseudo-historical costume drama, based on cold war stereotypes, has so far proved to be a box office flop. Russia has free and relatively fair elections: Putin’s party keeps getting reëlected because Putin is very popular, not because Russian voters are presented with no alternatives. And surely the quality of Russian "dissidents" has gone waaaay down: in the old days, we had Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Cardinal Mindszenty, today we have embezzler-billionaire oligarchs and National Bolsheviks.

The Russian system is no more undemocratic than, say, that of Georgia, our "democratic" ally, whose provocations aimed at Moscow nearly dragged us into a military conflict-by-proxy with Moscow. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we know that, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, our embassy in Tbilisi stupidly accepted Saakashvili’s version of events at face value—that the Russians had attacked first, and Putin’s army was about to march on Tbilisi. When the Russians stopped fifty miles away, and it turned out that it was the Georgians who initially launched an all-out assault on Tskinvali, the Ossetian capital, the US was left holding the bag—while our Georgian "allies" blamed the Americans for their defeat.

Here, also, the two-facedness of American foreign policy is underscored with a vengeance: US rhetoric, aimed at the Kremlin, was belligerent, and support for Saakashvili—in words—seemingly unconditional. No wonder the Georgians assumed we’d back them if they carried out a revanchist military campaign against their breakaway provinces. Saakashvili made the mistake of conflating the official reality with the real reality, an error thousands of Georgian soldiers paid for with their lives.

This, it seems to me, is the chief benefit of the WikiLeaks phenomenon: we get a chance to look at the real reality, or at least catch vivid glimpses of it—and to anyone who wants to understand American foreign policy and where it is going wrong, that is an invaluable tool indeed.

Getting on the right track is the name of the game.

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love, 99
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all you turkeys wanna think about this when the tsa is grabbing yer giblets

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WHAT are we being basted with?

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And WHY is it this cold?

Global warming activists have warned for years that warming could cause the "great conveyor belt" of warm ocean water to shut down. They say that such a shut down could - in turn - cause the climate to abruptly change, and a new ice age to begin.

Also, see this, this and this. I mean, I don't know why suddenly it's so bad that airports are staying closed down THIS long. Seems to me that in blizzards past it was always they'd be closed only for the worst of it and and happening as soon as the runways were scraped, and now it seems that every volcano and storm is shutting down travel for days and weeks instead of a matter of hours.

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love, 99
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they hate him for his staunch antifascist position

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And don't mind propagandizing the living snot out of everyone in the Western World to vilify him. I have turned into such a Putin fan, not just because I know it's the opposite of what they want me to think, but because he has shown very real indications that he means business, and will sit on any oligarch who attempts to actually oligarch. It was beyond fair to let them know they could keep their ill-gotten gains if they stayed the hell out of politics, and IF he is having people assassinated for trying to dupe the public, which has not by any means been shown, even if they are dupes themselves, that is clearly in defense of the Russian people, as opposed to The Laureate having people assassinated in furtherance of our terrorization and enslavement.

Cablegate has just occasioned a reiteration of the single thing that helped me out of my media-induced trance:

It refers obliquely to a meeting in 2000 when Vladimir Putin, then still president, met Khodorkovksy and 20 other oligarchs and reportedly warned them to stay out of politics in return for their businesses being left in peace.

One of the most statesmanlike moments in world history. And it contrasts sharply with the filthy collusion, back room deals, in which President Hopey Changey Shit Not Working Out For Us regularly, unerringly, engages.

No. Really. Wipe the sleeping powder off your expanding girth. This is no time to be an all-American jackass.

The truth is: Russia has convicted a couple of their most corrupt sociopathic fucks and the PTB don't want us realizing it because we might get ideas about demanding some of ours suffer similarly.

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love, 99
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i love how hard glenn greenwald is fighting for the truth

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And I seriously love the Russians suggesting a Nobel Prize for Assange... although, after last year's Peace Prize, I'm not completely sure they weren't just making a dig at The Laureate.

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love, 99
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i've been thinking this for quite a while

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That the so-called PIIIGGS are not bankrupt. Their BANKS are. The only one that has dealt with it properly is Iceland. You should really listen to this Keiser Report. It puts things in perspective.

Another thing I noticed is that RT's report on the Putin interview with Larry King used a translator with a deep voice and a smooth translation rather than the geeky-voiced sputterer CNN used. Hmmmmm. I mean, I've only seen some snippets, still hoping the whole thing comes up, but already we are seen to be using the same low tricks we use on Ahmadinejad... the old crap about finding the most unflattering images of people we don't like to help foster negative impressions.

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For those on the feed and any who have been interested especially in certain recent developments, I did quite a few updates last night, so you might want to click in and skim down the page for thrilling and engaging things you'd have missed without this courtesy notice. I mean, if I'm going to be a maniac, I should at least mention it....

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love, 99
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oh, man

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HERE'S THE AUDIO....

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Now I'm desperate to see it.

Russia's Putin warns West over missile defense: report
By Steve Gutterman Steve Gutterman – Wed Dec 1, 8:38 am ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told CNN television that Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and "strike forces" if it were shut out of a Western missile shield, adding punch to a warning from President Dmitry Medvedev.

In an interview with Larry King taped on Tuesday, Putin also said the WikiLeaks scandal was "no catastrophe" and told the United States not to meddle with Russian elections.

Putin said missile threats against Europe must be tackled jointly — a reference to an agreement reached at a November 20 Russia-NATO summit to cooperate on missile defense. Plans are sketchy and Russia has warned it wants an equal role.

If Russia's proposals are rejected and Western missile defense installations create "additional threats" near its borders, "Russia will have to ensure its own security," he said.

Russia would "put in place new strike forces ... against the new threats which will have been created along our borders," he said, according to a translation in an excerpt on CNN's website. "New missile, nuclear technologies will be put in place."

Putin said Russia was not threatening the West, but the remarks underscored the Kremlin's insistence on maintaining a significant role in a missile defense system and suggested improving ties could sour again if agreement is not reached.

In his state of the nation address on Tuesday, Medvedev warned that a new arms race would erupt if U.S. and NATO offers of cooperation on missile defense failed to produce a concrete agreement within a decade.

"That's not our choice, we don't want that to happen. This is no threat on our part," Putin said. "We've been simply saying that this is what all of us expect to happen if we don't agree on a joint effort there."

U.S. plans for a missile shield have been a major irritant in its ties with Moscow since the Cold War. Now both Russia and the West are casting missile defense cooperation as a crucial ingredient in recipes to bring the former foes closer.

As part of a campaign to 'reset' strained relations with Moscow, President Barack Obama last year scrapped Bush-era plans for a radar and interceptor missiles in eastern Europe that Russia said would be a major threat to its security.

POWERFUL PUTIN

Russia has been far more accepting of Obama's revised blueprint, which involves shorter-range interceptors. But Putin suggested Russia would feel threatened if the United States pushes ahead without significant Russian input.

The Kremlin warnings come amid uncertainty over U.S. Senate ratification of New START, a strategic nuclear arms limitation treaty signed by Obama and Medvedev in April and seen as the linchpin of improving relations.

Russia emphasizes it could withdraw from New START if a U.S. missile shield develops into a threat to its security.

Putin's interview was conducted shortly after Medvedev delivered his biggest annual address in the Kremlin, timing that seemed to emphasize that the former president has a strong hand on Russia's reins despite now holding Russia's No. 2 office.

"I think he is underscoring for the West that he remains one of Russia's two leaders — that he maintains serious reserves of power and would like to continue to take part in determining foreign policy," analyst Alexei Makarkin told Ekho Moskvy radio.

U.S. diplomatic cables revealed by the website WikiLeaks describe Putin as Russia's "alpha-dog" ruler and Medvedev as a sidekick-like "Robin to Putin's Batman."

In an excerpt from the interview, Putin said the WikiLeaks scandal was "no catastrophe" and that some experts believe it could have been engineered for "political purposes."

Putin steered Medvedev into the Kremlin in 2008 and has suggested he may return in a 2012 vote. He said he and Medvedev would make a "concerted decision" about who would run, CNN said.

Responding to a leaked cable citing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates as portraying Russia as undemocratic, Putin said Gates was "deeply misled," CNN reported.

He said that when Russia raised shortcomings in U.S. democracy, it was told not to interfere. "I would also like to advise you, don't interfere either (with) the sovereign choice of the Russian people," CNN quoted him as saying.

Somebody's just got to get that Larry King interview on tape for me.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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yes, i know about the sco

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I found some glasses just in time to note that only a couple hunnert of the hunnerts of thousands of cables are up at Wikileaks so far. So I guess I don't have to worry about sinking just yet.

I press on to some of my usual haunts and notice Max asking if anyone knows about the SCO. Well, yes, yes, actually, I do and have kept half an eye on it for the past couple years. It seems, despite my intermittent mention of it, though, many do not. Back of hand to forehead: Why do I bother? Anyway, his link for this was apocalyptically slow, so I decided to just post the whole thing for you here in case it's the page staggering under the weight of Max Keiser and going to vex everyone trying to take his point for the next few hours/days.

China, Russia, Iran Dumping Dollar For Gold
Posted on Pakalert on November 26, 2010

Something is going on that your government does not want you to know about. Very few journalists have written about it and little or nothing has appeared in the mainstream media. The story could be one of major stories of our time.

Western powers have tried to destroy gold as a backing for currencies for many years. Presently the major media won’t touch the story and that is understandable.

Something we have been writing about for years is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization known as SCO. Few have been listening and few have been interested in what their mission is and what they have been up to.

Some of the members are large oil producers and some, like China, are large oil users. Some have very large US dollar surpluses. As well, some are large commodity and gold and silver buyers. In fact, members are in a great part responsible for driving these prices higher. It is debatable, but we believe there is a conscious effort to accumulate gold and silver, dump dollars and to back their currencies with gold.

China and Russia are both large gold producers and for a number of years have been buying up domestic gold and silver production, so that it never reaches the market and does not affect prices. If anything the absence of sales tends to push the markets higher. As a matter of fact Russia and India are visible buyers. Even Iran with its oil surplus recently announced that they had purchased 340 tons of gold. Their recent gold purchases are very significant as affiliate members, which have access to the present and ultimate direction of the group. You might say buying gold has been a protective effort to shield members and close observers from the problems generated by dollar policies. They are accumulating gold, as many have been worldwide, for the past ten years, but particularly over the past few years.

This buying, for protection, has served to thwart the efforts of US policymakers, the Treasury, other central banks in Europe and the Fed, from being able to continue the blatant suppression of both gold and silver prices. The malefactors, except for forays into derivatives and futures, which are transitory, have lost control and suppression of gold and silver prices, and it is only a matter of time before all visages of any control will be visible. Since 1988, in August when Present Reagan signed the Executive Order creating, “the President’s Group on Financial Markets” and the subsidiaries that have grown out of that policy, that the Treasury won many if not most of the battles. The SCO in part changed that and now they and the public are winning the war for a fair and free gold and silver market. The current class action lawsuits, including RICO, are a testament to the market manipulation in silver, which is finally coming to an end. HSBC and JPMorgan Chase, the latter that is the major owner of the Fed, are going to be finally prohibited from rigging these markets. Their officers all belong in jail, but elitists never go to jail; they pay fines, and keep right on robbing the public.

Other SCO members and observers are accumulating gold as well, be it in smaller amounts. We might add that other nations observing Russia and China and their gold purchases are buying as well. These participants must believe that there could be a return to sound money; otherwise they wouldn’t be gold buyers. Buying gold is certainly preferable to holding US dollars, which have consistently fallen in value versus other currencies over the past ten years. Then again all currencies have fallen versus gold over that period, some 19.6% annually. It is nice to see nations are finally waking up to the reality that fiat currencies will all over time deteriorate versus gold. The temptation is enormous to deficit spend.

The most interesting aspect of the SCO is that they do not strive for political agreement such as the European Union. They are interested in economic stability and development and security. There is no overall binding laws. Nations retain their sovereignty, which is the exact opposite of what the elitists in the US and Europe desire, and that is world government. The SCO has provided great flexibility something that is non-existent in elitist controlled countries. Another interesting facet is that the SCO probably represents half of the world’ population, far more than the US and Europe. As these nations accumulate gold so does some of their citizens, which puts strong upward pressures on gold prices on a continuing basis.

In addition some of these nations, such as China, are spending dollars by buying natural resources and other things in other nations in an attempt to relieve themselves of excess dollars earned in trade. Both Russia and China fully realize that the US dollar is in serious trouble and has been for a number of years due to fiscal debt and the unbridled creation of money and credit by the Federal Reserve. They well know the dollar is in serious trouble and what the outcome will probably be.

As the economies of the US and Europe become more deeply mired in problems the economies of SCO nations more and more resemble the free economies of old that were very successful. You might say they have found their way back to basics and sound money. As the dollar comes under further downward pressure more nations will probably join the SCO to escape the clutches of European and American imperialism and bureaucracy, which for some years has been onerous and unsuccessful. What we see is a natural path by nations to extricate themselves from the control of Wall Street and the City of London, which have dominated the world for so long. All these facts considered we believe gold will find its way substantially higher with the participation of these nations, a factor the West never figured on. These ten nations are sucking excess gold out of the market every day and that will continue indefinitely.

These SCO nations are well aware that the surge of hot dollars created by the Fed out of thin air are headed their way and with them inflation. Brazil was the first nation to attempt to stop this onslaught by imposing a 6% tariff on interest and dividend paying Brazilian securities, purchased with US dollars. Over the last two years between stimulus and the Fed $2.5 trillion has been injected into the US and world financial system. As a result commodity and gold and silver prices have exploded. This has caused the dollar to fall in value versus other currencies and gold. There is no question more and higher inflation is on the way, as the Fed gets into QE 2. You can also bet that QE2 will not be $600 billion, but more than $2 trillion. Inflation is already showing up in food, petroleum products, airline fares and in many other items that we use every day. As usual the government says there is little or no inflation. Even competent economists still use government’s bogus figures. What can they be thinking of? They know what is going on as well as we do. That means we are embarking on the highest inflation rates in US history. Thus far the undertow of deflation has been superseded by government banking and Fed aggregate creation. The Fed, in order to subdue deflation and such spending has to always overshoot the inflation they create, so that they can be sure that deflation cannot take hold. This money and credit is in the process of working its way through the economy, spreading inflation as it winds its way through.

The only investors who are being afforded protection are those who have invested in gold and silver and commodities. That is less than 2% of the American population. We predicted in mid-May that QE2 and QE3 would take place for a combined $5 trillion over the next two fiscal years. In fact, the Fed was late in starting in June and as a result 4th quarter GDP growth will probably be 1% and the 1st quarter of 2011 will probably be in the minus column, as unemployment heads to 25% and extended benefits run out. We are not seeing growth; we are seeing forced feeding.

The Fed’s promises are not worth the paper they are written on. Ben Bernanke will print money until he cannot anymore and we have hyperinflation. That is because he has no other choice. He has no way out and he knows it won’t work. Tragically, this is where we are headed and there is no way to stop what the elitists have put deliberately in motion.

As long as quantitative easing is official Fed and Wall Street policy, gold is going to continue to rise with silver, and the stronger the case is that gold is the real world reserve currency. That means all currencies will eventually have to be backed by gold. We believe that elitists have accepted this fact and that was borne out recently by World Bank President, CFR, Trilateralist and Bilderberger Robert Zoellick. We can assure you that was no slip of the tongue. That was a cleverly planted trial balloon to get public reaction.

We do not see QE2 and QE3 as incompetence or bungling. It happens to be the only option available to the powers behind government. The same errors committed during the Great Depression of the 1930s are being repeated and economists, including Mr. Bernanake know they do not work. Yes, the Fed contracted money supply and when they let it loose again, it was too late for it to be in anyway effective. Next comes tariffs as an outgrowth of: currency wars; interest and dividend penalties on the inflow of hot, inflationary dollars and retaliatory tariffs as a result of losing 8.5 million jobs and 432,000 businesses over ten years to free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. Smoot-Hawley tariffs and even dumb Fed moves were bad enough, but Hoover’s raising of taxes by 150% was a monumental piece of stupidity.

At the root of all this is that the Fed is supposed to be saving the US economic and financial structure. They are not doing that, they are saving the banking system and Wall Street instead and these are the miscreants that caused the problem in the first place. The result of this policy of zero interest rates and easy money is that few are saving.

There you have it, planned destruction. Is it any wonder the SCO members and observers are buying gold on every dip and will not stop doing so until they run out of dollars. Our only question is; what took them so long and why are they not buying more faster?

Welcome to the Dystopian Century.
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love, 99
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