Malachi Smith's List: U.S. GOVERNMENT

• Who  Threatens You Most:  The President, Congress, Fed--Or Iran?

• by  Douglas Herman  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Exclusive  to  STR
• July  22,  2008
• Some  day  in  the  not-too-distant  future,  someone  will  pen  a  book  called  Who  Wrecked      America    ?
• If  the  book  is  honest,  fingers  will  be  pointed  at  the  crooks  and  liars  in      Washington    DC    and  Wall  Street,  at  lobbyists  (pimps)  and  Congressmen  (whores),  at  bankers  and  war  toy  makers,  at  AIPAC  and  PNAC,  at  presidents,  executives  and  generals.

  • True
• Doubtful  that  anyone  will  conclude  that      Iran    had  much  to  do  with  the  destruction  of      America    .
• Although  today      Iran    remains  in  the  gunsights  of  the  master  criminals  in  DC,  that  distant  land  does  less  damage  to      America    than  a  handful  of  high  American  officials.
• Truthfully,  I  feel  more  threatened  by  Bush  and    Bolton  ,  by  Barack  and  Barak,  by  McCain  and  Cheney  and  Pelosi,  than  anyone  in      Iran    .

  • True again..
• Nukes  or  no  nukes,      Iran    threatens  me  less  than  the  Fed,  Congress,  the      US    media  or  the  president.

  • Absolutely true..
• When  the  history  of  the  late,  great  nation  known  as      America    is  written,  our  own  homegrown  jackals  will  be  rightly  blamed  for  the  destruction.
• If  the  history  books  are  honest  and  the  historians  adroit,  the  blame  will  lie  less  with  the  Taliban  and  more  with  the  Ivy  League  educated  in  their  tailored  suits  and  power  ties.   

  • More truth...
• Forgotten  will  be  the  nineteen  G-string  jihadists  with  their  Korans  and  boxcutters.
• Who  knew  the  first      US    president  with  an  MBA  could  wield  so  much  destructive  power?
• Maybe  an  MBA  stands  for  Master  of  Bankrupting  America.   Certainly  someone  should  revoke  the  charter  of  the  university  that  bestowed  an  MBA  on  George  W.  Bush.   
• More  to  blame  than  any      US    president,  Congress  sanctions,  and  has  always  permitted,  the  wholesale  destruction  of  the  nation.

  • These jerks have out themselves out for sale and have not worked on behalf of the little people who sent them to Washington DC to do a specific job for which they were elected in the first place.
• Perhaps  the  rich  remain  loyal  to  the  rich  alone.  Indeed,  a  majority  of  Americans  do  not  even  know  that  Congress  allowed  the  creation  of  the  Federal  Reserve.
• Congress  writes  the  checks  that  allow  worldwide      US    imperialism,  funding  dictators,  toppling  democracies,  while  bankrupting      America    .
• Congress  votes  to  allow  US  presidents  wholesale  destructive  powers.
• Congress  shuns  its  sworn  duty,  to  protect  and  preserve  the  Constitution  and  the  country,  every  step  of  the  way.

  • Documented...
• Indeed,  as  I  write  this,  Congress  is  weighing  more  war  power  measures,  called  House  Resolution  362,  giving  the  president  even  more  destructive  powers.  Even  while      America    collapses  like  WTC-7,  Congress  will  find  ways  to  add  to  the  rubble  pile.
• As  Doug  Thompson  wrote  years  ago:  "Nobody's  life,  liberty  or  property  is  safe  while  Congress  is  in  session."   

  • All of them a gang of criminals
• Covert  threat  rather  than  overt.  By  continuously  spreading  false  propaganda  for  a  series  of  profitable  yet  fraudulent  wars,  the      US    mainstream  media  does  as  much  or  more  to  wreck  this  country  than  any      US    president.
• The  American  media  certainly  threatens  me  far  more  than      Iran    .
• Pundits  lament  that  fewer  Americans  read  the  newspaper  anymore.  Critic  Rick  Shenkman  calls  us  woodenheaded  or  boneheaded  for  our  ignorance  but  fails  to  note  a  far  more  serious  form  of  American  ignorance  called  subtle  brainwashing.
• By  selectively  reporting  and  slanting  the  "news,"  the  corporate-owned      US    media  is  no  different  than  a  cabal  of  mullahs  bent  on  controlling  the  behavior  and  opinion  of  the  populace.   
• Georges  Santana  wrote:  "Those  who  cannot  remember  the  past  are  condemned  to  repeat  it."  To  that  I  would  add,  those  who  profit  from  the  past  and  present  are  determined  to  control  the  future.
• Consider:  This  so-called  gas  shortage  and  the  collective  short-sightedness  of  our  so-called  leaders  seems  altogether  too  planned,  too  convenient.
• Ask<br/> yourself<br/> this<br/> question:<br/> In<br/> the<br/> wake<br/> of<br/> another<br/> attack,<br/> provocation<br/> or<br/> terror<br/> strike,<br/> would<br/> the<br/> American<br/> people<br/> be<br/> more<br/> or<br/> less<br/> controllable<br/> without<br/> a<br/> steady<br/> supply<br/> of<br/> gas?<br/> Would<br/> the<br/> American<br/> people<br/> be<br/> more<br/> or<br/> less<br/> willing<br/> and<br/> able<br/> to<br/> assemble?<br/> Would<br/> they<br/> have<br/> the<br/> means<br/> or<br/> money<br/> to<br/> drive<br/> to<br/> <st1:place><br/> <st1:city><br/> Washington</st1:city><br/> <st1:state><br/> DC</st1:state><br/> </st1:place><br/> to<br/> protest?<span style="">&nbsp;<br/> </span>Without<br/> a<br/> steady<br/> supply<br/> of<br/> gasoline,<br/> and<br/> thus<br/> without<br/> food,<br/> without<br/> work,<br/> would<br/> the<br/> American<br/> people<br/> be<br/> MORE<br/> OR<br/> LESS<br/> at<br/> the<br/> mercy<br/> of<br/> their<br/> leaders<br/> to<br/> provide<br/> it?
• Those  who  threaten  my  health  or  well-being,  endangering  those  I  love  and  destroying  both  law  and  land,  pretend  to  act  for  my  benefit.  THEY  DO  NOT.  I  never  voted  for  them,  nor  do  I  support  them  in  any  way  in  their  duplicitous  and  diabolical  agenda.

  • I agree and feel the same...

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• Air Force exec resigns, cites leader changes
• Air Force logistic chief resigns, blames leadership changes made by Gates

• LOLITA C. BALDOR
  AP News

   

  Jul 28, 2008 11:57 EST
• The Air Force's logistics chief resigned Monday, saying that the recent leadership shake up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates has hurt his ability to do his job.
• In a sharply worded memo obtained by The Associated Press, William Anderson said the leadership changes limit his ability to take care of the airmen and their families with the vigor they deserve.
• "I can no longer draw on a critical mass of leadership within the Pentagon who share your vision for the support necessary to lean forward to aggressively support these American heroes," said Anderson in a memo to President Bush.
• The Air Force said Gates has accepted Anderson's resignation.
• Last month, Gates sacked the Air Force secretary and the chief of staff.
• His decisions were triggered largely by the conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads.
• He blamed them for failing to fully address a series of nuclear-related mishaps.
• Anderson has been the assistant secretary for installations, environment and logistics since 2005. He made no reference in his memo to the string of missteps that has plunged the Air Force into turmoil for months.
• Instead, he spoke of progress the Air Force has made in improving energy programs, developing better housing for airmen, and creating the new Cyber Command, which will beef up the military's ability to wage war against terrorists hackers or other cyberspace threats.
• Last August, an Air Force B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.
• At the time, the pilot and crew were unaware they had nuclear arms aboard.
• Then, in March, the Pentagon disclosed the mishandling of the fuses and launched a broad investigation into the military's handling of nuclear related materials.
• The report was completed last month, and asserted that slippage in the Air Force's nuclear standards was a "problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade.
• Those findings led to Gates' decision to fire Michael Wynne and Gen. Michael Moseley, who were the Air Force secretary and chief of staff respectively.
• Bush has nominated Gen. Norton Schwartz, a 35-year veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, as the new Air Force chief of staff. And former Air Force official Michael Donley has been nominated to be the next Air Force secretary, and is currently serving as acting secretary.
• Both men told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that they will work to restore trust and confidence in the beleaguered service.

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• Anti-War Website Operator Threatened By Armed Thugs
• Information Clearing House editor victim of home invasions, warnings to “stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!”
• Paul Joseph Watson
   Prison Planet
   Thursday, August 7, 2008
• The operator of a leading alternative news and strongly anti-war website has become the target of nefarious thugs apparently in the employ of the U.S. government who have continually harassed him and ordered him to shut down his website.
• Tom Feeley, owner and editor of InformationClearingHouse.info, has endured public harassment, home invasions, death threats and threats to his family simply for running a website.
• Counterpunch writer Mike Whitney has circulated an e mail describing what happened to Feeley in an attempt to draw attention to the matter.
• Whitney writes that earlier this week Feeley’s wife was startled to suddenly discover three well dressed men standing in her kitchen who told her that Tom must “Stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!”
• To emphasize the point, the thug pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun while barking out the warning.
• Tom’s wife was hysterical and refuses to go back to the house.
• She contacted the FBI but was told there was nothing they could do.
• According to Whitney, “The well-dressed man told Tom’s wife that he knew where her son lived, what line of work he was in, and how many children he had.”
• Subsequently, two men in a parked car a block from Tom’s mother’s house were spotted using laptops and sped off when they were approached by Tom’s son.
• A similar incident had happened four years previously, when Feeley was approached by a stranger in the parking lot of Long’s Drug store in Southern California, after being forced to remain in his car by an accomplice who blocked him from opening the car door.
• The man told him, “You need to stop what you are doing on the web”.
• Tom was taken aback, but (after collecting himself said) “What the fuck? Who do you think you are telling me what I can do?”
• Tom said the man was overweight and had his shirt untucked.
• The man answered, “Tom, I’m just giving you some good advice. You should take my advice, Tom.”
• Alex Jones has experienced similar intimidation tactics on several occasions in the past, particularly the scenario that happened to Tom in the parking lot as well as thinly veiled threats against his family.
• In every single instance, the best response is to stand up and be vocal in the face of such harassment.
• Mafia-like thugs only continue to feed on those who put up with such treatment. The most dangerous thing to do is cower and acquiesce to the will of tyrants.
• These kind of tactics will only succeed if the thugs think their actions can have any kind of effect. Every time someone in our movement is intimidated or harassed, we should respond only by re-doubling and intensifying our efforts.
• I’ll tell you this about Tom Feeley; he is no bullshitter,” writes Whitney, “He is the “real deal” and completely committed to exposing the mob that is presently running our country.
• He does not understand why, (as he says) “They are reaching down SO far to get someone who just runs web site”. But, the truth is, they are.
• Someone wants him to “shut up” and they apparently have the muscle to do it. He knows he is in danger.”
• Feeley is ditching his cellphone and maintaining a low profile but to his credit, refuses to cave in to the threats and will continue to publish his website.
• Drawing attention to Feeley’s situation is of paramount importance to ensure his protection and also to combat head on attempts to create a chilling atmosphere and intimidate journalists and website publishers.
• Scorpion081
    August 8,2008  

   

   

  I really hope some folks have some plans to mirror his site! It would be a crying shame if his ISP were given orders to shut it all down! Mirrors everyone! I would like to see what I can do. however, I am still working from a “free” hosting account. Another idea, how about someone showing the gentleman how to use TOR/VIDALIA on his internet connection. It is open source, and very effective concerning privacy issues and net-tracking.

   

  Another sad day in America indeed!

   

  -JSSmith(Scorpion081)

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• The Proxy War: Georgia vs. Russia
• By SHARON K. GILBERT
   August 8, 2008
• CABLE NEWS viewers woke this morning to startling news out of Georgia (the country, not the state). Apparently, overnight, and out of the clear blue sky, war had broken out between Georgia and Russia over a region called South Ossetia.
• What I find most startling isn’t that fighting broke out (primarily because fighting has been ongoing for years, though on a smaller scale), but that cable news ‘talking heads’ appear to have just now noticed.
• Following the break-up of the former Soviet Union, satellite countries scrambled to declare borders and pick sides. In the case of Georgia, the northernmost region borders Russia.
• North Ossetia is not in dispute, as Russia annexed it some time ago. However, the southern half of Ossetia is claimed by Georgia (supported by NATO and the UN), despite the fact that South Ossetians consider themselves independent.
• South Ossetia (formerly the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast — say that ten times fast), is an ethnic region where the locals speak Ossetian not Georgian, and are predominantly Christian.
• Ossetians tried to declare themselves an independent nation in 1990, but Georgia would have none of it, leading to a violent clash in 1991 that ended with 1,000 dead and school buildings smoldering.
• South Ossetia considered this a victory, but most of the world yawned and declared Georgia owner and still champion of the ‘breakaway republic’.
• Apparently, Georgia had backed down fearing Russian involvement.
• Fast forward to 2003, when upstart Mikhail Saakashvili unseated hard-nosed incumbent Eduard Shevardnadze.
• Early election results showed a decided victory for Shevardnadze, but the spontaneous (dare we call it ‘miraculous’) appearance of thousands of demonstrators brandishing fresh flowers (courtesy of George Soros’s ‘Velvet Revolution’ tactics and lots of western cash) changed all that.
• The Rose Revolution blipped across our television screens, and western folk assumed the coup to be a victory for the common people Saakashvili was ultimately declared the winner and new champion of western ideals, and big business (read gas and oil) had a major foothold in the key Caucasus region.
• Rhetorical ramparts sprang up between Moscow and Washington over the affair, and Georgia’s new and very grateful president naturally turned to his handlers for aid and comfort.
• Did Putin like the smell of roses on his doorstep? You can bet, he did not.
• Both Russia and Washington want access to the prime real estate for business and military purposes.
• The South Ossetians are caught in the middle — as are most Georgians.
• The Trans-Black Sea Pipeline is a huge project that would pipe the precious commodity “from Azerbaijan in the first stage and Turkmenistan in the second — through a pipeline that would branch off in Georgia from the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas export pipeline.
• In addition to Georgia’s importance in pipeline strategies, the US would love to place missiles in Georgia as part of the growing ‘missile defense shield’.
• So far, Georgia hasn’t complied, which may be why that country’s application to join NATO has been put on hold.
• This isn’t just about a ‘breakaway region’ or about Russia versus Georgia. It’s about Western Big Business and Washington’s Military Might versus Russian Big Business and Putin’s Big Fist.
• So, as you watch your favorite cable news station over the weekend, read between the ‘lies’.
• Oh, and did anyone else notice that Russia’s puppet leader, Medvedev, has decided to take this week off while the real muscle, Vlad Putin, rubs shoulders with Western Leaders, including George Bush, in China?

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• The Caucasus - Washington Risks
    Nuclear War By Miscalculation
• By F. William Engdahl*  

  8-11-8
• The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic  of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one  major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era-a thermonuclear  war between Russia and the United States-by miscalculation.
• What is playing  out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading  light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor.
• The question is whether  George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President,  Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the  NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine.
• This time Washington may have  badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq, but this time with  possible nuclear consequences.
• The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 11 piece  in this space, Georgien, Washington, Moskau: Atomarer geopolitischer Machtpoker,  is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one after  another former member as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed  and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining  the counter organization, NATO.  
• Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution  of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has  systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military  vehicle of an American global imperial rule,
• linked by a network of military  bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan.
• In 1999,  former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined  NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed  suit in March 2004.
• Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU  members of NATO, especially Germany and France, that they vote in December  to admit Georgia and Ukraine.
• The Roots Of The Conflict
• The specific conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia  and Abkhazia has its roots in the following. First, the Southern Ossetes,  who until 1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet republic,  seek to unite in one state with their co-ethnics in North Ossetia, an autonomous  republic of the Russian Soviet republic and now the Russian Federation.
• There is an historically grounded Ossete fear of violent Georgian nationalism  and the experience of Georgian hatred of ethnic minorities under then Georgian  leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia, which the Ossetes see again under Georgian President,  Mikhel Saakashvili.
• Saakashvili was brought to power with US financing  and US covert regime change activities in December 2003 in what was called  the Rose Revolution. Now the thorns of that rose are causing blood to spill.
• Abkhazia and South Ossetia-the first a traditional Black  Sea resort area, the second an impoverished, sparsely populated region  that borders Russia to the north-each has its own language, culture, history.
• When the Soviet Union collapsed, both regions sought to separate themselves  from Georgia in bloody conflicts - South Ossetia in 1990-1, Abkhazia in  1992-4. 
• In December 1990 Georgia under Gamsakhurdia sent troops  into South Ossetia after the region declared its own sovereignty. This  Georgian move was defeated by Soviet Interior Ministry troops.
• Then Georgia  declared abolition of the South Ossete autonomous region and its incorporation  into Georgia proper. Both wars ended with cease-fires that were negotiated  by Russia and policed by peacekeeping forces under the aegis of the recently  established Commonwealth of Independent States.
• The situation hardened  into "frozen conflicts," like that over Cyprus. By late 2005,  Georgia signed an agreement that it would not use force, and the Abkhaz  would allow the gradual return of 200,000-plus ethnic Georgians who had  fled the violence.
• But the agreement collapsed in early 2006, when Saakashvili  sent troops to retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia. Since then Saakashvili  has been escalating preparations for military action.
• Russia is unwilling to see Georgia join NATO.
• Critical is Russia's support for the Southern Ossetes.
• In addition, the Ossetes  are the oldest Russian allies in the Caucasus who have provided troops  to the Russian army in many wars. Russia does not wish to abandon them  and the Abkhaz, and fuel yet more ethnic unrest among their compatriots  in the Russian North Caucasus.
• In a November 2006 referendum, 99 percent  of South Ossetians voted for independence from Georgia, at a time when  most of them had long held Russian passports. This enabled Russian President  Medvedev to justify his military's counter-attack of Georgia on Friday  as an effort to "protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens,  wherever they may be."
• For Russia, Ossetia has been an important strategic base  near the Turkish and Iranian frontiers since the days of the czars.

  • And recall Russia's long history of striving to find and maintain a warm water port for it's fleets.
• Georgia  is also an important transit country for oil being pumped from the Caspian  Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and a potential base for Washington efforts  to encircle Tehran.
• As far as the Georgians are concerned, South Ossetia  and Abkhazia are simply part of their national territory, to be recovered  at all costs.
• Promises by NATO leaders to bring Georgia into the alliance,  and ostentatious declarations of support from Washington, have emboldened  Saakashvili to launch his military offensive against the two provinces,  South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
• Saakashvili and likely, Dick Cheney's office  in Washington appear to have miscalculated very badly. Russia has made  it clear that it has no intention of ceding its support for South Ossetia  or Abkhazia. 
• Proxy War
• In March this year as Washington went ahead to recognize  the independence of Kosovo in former Yugoslavia, making Kosovo a de facto  NATO-run territory against the will of the UN Security Council and especially  against Russian protest, Putin responded with Russian Duma hearings on  recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, a pro-Russian  breakaway republic in Moldova.
• Moscow argued that the West's logic on Kosovo  should apply as well to these ethnic communities seeking to free themselves  from the control of a hostile state.
• In mid-April, Mr. Putin held out the  possibility of recognition for the breakaway republics. It was a geopolitical  chess game in the strategic Caucasus for the highest stakes-the future  of Russia itself.
• Saakashvili called then-President Putin to demand he  reverse the decision. He reminded Putin that the West had taken Georgia's  side.
• This past April at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, US President  Bush proposed accepting Georgia into NATO's "Action Plan for Membership,"  a precursor to NATO membership.
• To Washington's surprise, ten NATO member  states refused to support his plan, including Germany, France and Italy. 
• They argued that accepting the Georgians was problematic,  because of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were in reality  saying that they would not be willing to back Georgia as, under Article  5 of the NATO treaty, which mandates that an armed attack against any NATO  member country must be considered an attack against them all and consequently  requires use of collective armed force of all NATO members,
• it would mean  that Europe could be faced with war against Russia over the tiny Caucasus  Republic of Georgia, with its incalculable dictator, Saakashvili. That  would mean the troubled Caucasus would be on a hair-trigger to detonate  World War III.
• Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia  looks to Russia like the cats' paw of the West.
• Russia threatens Georgia, but Georgia threatens Abkhazia  and South Ossetia.
• Since Saakashvili took  power in late 2003 the Pentagon has been in Georgia giving military aid  and training. Not only are US military personnel active in Georgia today.  According to an Israeli-intelligence source, DEBKAfile,  in 2007,  the Georgian President Saakashvili "commissioned from private Israeli  security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000,  to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery  combat tactics.
• They also have been giving instruction on military intelligence  and security for the central regime.
• Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence  and electronic warfare systems from Israel.
• These advisers were undoubtedly  deeply involved in the Georgian army's preparations to conquer the South  Ossetian capital Friday." 
• Debkafile reported further, "Moscow has repeatedly  demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally  threatening a crisis in bilateral relations.
• Israel responded by saying  that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was 'defensive.'"
• The Israeli  news source added that Israel's interest in Georgia has to do as well with  Caspian oil pipeline geopolitics.
• "Jerusalem has a strong interest  in having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port  of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network.
• Intense negotiations are afoot  between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines  to reach Turkey and thence to Israel's oil terminal at Ashkelon and on  to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas  and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean."
• This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first  battle in a new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests  and Russia.
• The only question is whether Washington miscalculated the swiftness  and intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian attacks of 8.8.08.
• So far, each step in the Caucasus drama has put the conflict  on a yet higher plane of danger.
• The next step will no longer be just about  the Caucasus, or even Europe. In 1914 it was the "Guns of August"  that initiated the Great War. This time the Guns of August 2008 could be  the detonator of World War III and a nuclear holocaust of unspeakable horror.   
• Nuclear Primacy: The Larger Strategic Danger
• Most in the West are unaware how dangerous the conflict  over two tiny provinces in a remote part of Eurasia has become.
• What is  left out of most all media coverage is the strategic military security  context of the Caucasus dispute. 
• In my book, Century of War (((Russian title and hyperlink  if possible))), I describe the developments by NATO and most directly by  Washington since the end of the Cold War to systematically pursue what  military strategists call Nuclear Primacy.
• Put simply, if one of two opposing  nuclear powers is able to first develop an operational anti-missile defense,  even primitive, that can dramatically weaken a potential counter-strike  by the opposing side's nuclear arsenal, the side with missile defense has  "won" the nuclear war. 
• As mad as this sounds, it has been explicit Pentagon  policy through the last three Presidents from father Bush in 1990, to Clinton  and most aggressively, George W. Bush. This is the issue where Russia has  drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so.
• The forceful US effort  to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present Russia with  the spectre of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a military threat  that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for Russian national security. 
• This is what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two  provinces the size of Luxemburg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo  trigger to a new nuclear war by miscalculation.
• The trigger for such a  war is not Georgia's right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather,  it is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to  Russia's door.  
• * F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American  Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press) and Seeds of Destruction:  The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation ( http://www.globalresearch.ca"  www.globalresearch.ca.
• He may be reached through his website, http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net"  www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

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• War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?
• by Michel Chossudovsky

  
   
• August 10, 2008
• During the night of August 7, coinciding with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgia's president Saakashvili ordered an all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. 
• The aerial bombardments and ground attacks were largely directed against civilian targets including residential areas, hospitals and the university. The provincial capital Tskhinvali was destroyed.
• The attacks resulted in some 1500 civilian deaths, according to both Russian and Western sources.  "The air and artillery bombardment left the provincial capital without water, food, electricity and gas.
• According to reports, some 34,000 people from South Ossetia have fled to Russia. (Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, August 10, 2008) 
• The importance and timing of this military operation must be carefully analyzed. It has far-reaching implications. 
• Georgia is an outpost of US and NATO forces, on the immediate border of the Russian Federation and within proximity of the Middle East Central Asian war theater.

• South Ossetia is also at the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes. 
  

   

  <!-- S IIMA --> 

  
  
  
• Georgia does not act militarily without the assent of Washington.
• The Georgian head of State is a US proxy and Georgia is a de facto US protectorate.  
• Who is behind this military agenda? What interests are being served? What is the purpose of the military operation. 
• There is evidence that the attacks were carefully coordinated by the US military and NATO. 
• Moscow has accused NATO of "encouraging Georgia".

• Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov underscored the destabilizing impacts of "foreign" military aid to Georgia: .

   

   

  “It all confirms our numerous warnings addressed to the international community that it is necessary to pay attention to massive arms purchasing by Georgia during several years. Now we see how these arms and Georgian special troops who had been trained by foreign specialists are used,” he said.(Moscow accuses NATO of having "encouraged Georgia" to attack South Ossetia, Russia Today, August 9, 2008) 

• Moscow's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, sent an official note to the representatives of all NATO member countries:  

   

   

  “Russia has already begun consultations with the ambassadors of the NATO countries and consultations with NATO military representatives will be held tomorrow," Rogozin said. "We will caution them against continuing to further support of Saakashvili." 

   

  “It is an undisguised aggression accompanied by a mass propaganda war,” he said.

   

  (See Moscow accuses NATO of having "encouraged Georgia" to attack South Ossetia, Russia Today, August 9, 2008) 

• According to Rogozin, Georgia had initially planned to: 

   

   

  "start military action against Abkhazia, however, 'the Abkhaz fortified region turned out to be unassailable for Georgian armed formations, therefore a different tactic was chosen aimed against South Ossetia', which is more accessible territorially.
• The envoy has no doubts that Mikheil Saakashvili had agreed his actions with "sponsors", "those with whom he is negotiating Georgia's accession to NATO ". (RIA Novosti, August 8, 2008)
• Contrary to what was conveyed by Western media reports, the attacks were anticipated by Moscow.
• The attacks were timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympics, largely with a view to avoiding frontpage media coverage of the Georgian military operation.
• On August 7, Russian forces were in an advanced state readiness. The counterattack was swiftly carried out. 
• Tanks, armored vehicles and several thousand ground troops have been deployed. Russian air strikes have largely targeted military facilities inside Georgia including the Gori military base. 
• Russian paratroopers were sent in from Russia's Ivanovo, Moscow and Pskov airborne divisions.
• The Georgian military attack was repealed with a massive show of strength on the part of the Russian military. 
• Act of Provocation?
• US-NATO military and intelligence planners invariably examine various "scenarios" of a proposed military operation-- i.e. in this case, a limited Georgian attack largely directed against civilian targets, with a view to inflicting civilian casualties. 
• The examination of scenarios is a routine practice. With limited military capabilities, a Georgian victory and occupation of Tskhinvali, was an impossibility from the outset. And this was known and understood to US-NATO military planners.  
• A humanitarian disaster rather than a military victory was an integral part of the scenario. 
• The objective was to destroy the provincial capital, while also inflicting a significant loss of human life. 
• If the objective were to restore Georgian political control over the provincial government, the operation would have been undertaken in a very different fashion, with Special Forces occupying key public buildings, communications networks and provincial institutions, rather than waging an all out bombing raid on residential areas, hospitals, not to mention Tskhinvali's University. 
• The Russian response was entirely predictable. 
• Georgia was "encouraged" by NATO and the US. Both Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels were acutely aware of what would happen in the case of a Russian counterattack. 
• The question is: was this a deliberate provocation intended to trigger a Russian military response and suck the Russians into a broader military confrontation with Georgia (and allied forces) which could potentially escalate into an all out war? 
• Georgia has the third largest contingent of coalition forces in Iraq after the US and the UK, with some 2000 troops. 
• According to reports, Georgian troops in Iraq are now being repatriated in US military planes, to fight Russian forces. (See Debka.com, August 10, 2008)
• This US decision to repatriate Georgian servicemen suggests that Washington is intent upon an escalation of the conflict, where Georgian troops are to be used as cannon fodder against a massive deployment of Russian forces. 
• US-NATO and Israel Involved in the Planning of the Attacks

• In mid-July, Georgian and U.S. troops held a joint military exercise entitled "Immediate Response" involving respectively 1,200 US and 800 Georgian troops. 

   

  The announcement by the Georgian Ministry of Defense on July 12 stated that they US and Georgian troops were to "train for three weeks at the Vaziani military base" near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. (AP, July 15, 2008).
• These exercises, which were completed barely a week before the August 7 attacks, were an obvious dress rehearsal of a military operation, which, in all likelihood, had been planned in close cooperation with the Pentagon. 
• The war on Southern Ossetia was not meant to be won, leading to the restoration of Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia. It was intended to destabilize the region while also triggering a US-NATO confrontation with Russia.
• On July 12, coinciding with the outset of the Georgia-US war games, the Russian Defense Ministry started its own military maneuvers in the North Caucasus region.
• The usual disclaimer by both Tblisi and Moscow: the military exercises have “nothing to do” with the situation in South Ossetia. (Ibid)
• Let us be under no illusions. This is not a civil war.
• The attacks are an integral part of the broader Middle East Central Asian war, including US-NATO-Israeli war preparations in relation to Iran. 

  • SEE: Ezekiel chapter 38 & 39
• The Role of Israeli Military Advisers
• While NATO and US military advisers did not partake in the military operation per se, they were actively involved in the planning and logistics of the attacks.
• According to Israeli sources (Debka.com, August 8, 2008), the ground assault on August 7-8, using tanks and artillery was "aided by Israeli military advisers".
• Israel also supplied Georgia with Hermes-450 and Skylark unmanned aerial vehicles, which were used in the weeks leading up to the August 7 attacks. 
• Georgia has also acquired, according to a report in Rezonansi (August 6, in Georgian, BBC translation) "some powerful weapons through the upgrade of Su-25 planes and artillery systems in Israel". According to Haaretz (August 10, 2008), Israelis are active in military manufacturing and security consulting in Georgia. 
• Russian forces are now directly fighting a NATO-US trained Georgian army integrated by US and Israeli advisers.
• And Russian warplanes have attacked the military jet factory on the outskirts of Tbilisi, which produces the upgraded Su-25 fighter jet, with technical support from Israel. (CTV.ca, August 10, 2008) 
• When viewed in the broader context of the Middle East war, the crisis in Southern Ossetia could lead to escalation, including a direct confrontation between Russian and NATO forces.
• If this were to occur, we would be facing the most serious crisis in US-Russian relations since the Cuban Missile crisis in October 1962.
• Georgia: NATO-US Outpost 
• Georgia is part of a NATO military alliance (GUAM) signed in April 1999 at the very outset of the war on Yugoslavia.
• These underlying military agreements have served to protect Anglo-American oil interests in the Caspian sea basin as well as pipeline routes. 
• It also has a bilateral military cooperation agreement with the US.
• Both the US and NATO have a military presence in Georgia and are working closely with the Georgian Armed Forces.
• Since the signing of the 1999 GUAM agreement, Georgia has been the recipient of extensive US military aid. 
• Barely a few months ago, in early May, the Russian Ministry of Defense accused Washington, "claiming that [US as well as NATO and Israeli] military assistance to Georgia is destabilizing the region." (Russia Claims Georgia in Arms Buildup, Wired News, May 19, 2008).

• According to the Russian Defense Ministry

   

   

  "Georgia has received 206 tanks, of which 175 units were supplied by NATO states, 186 armored vehicles (126 - from NATO) , 79 guns (67 - from NATO) , 25 helicopters (12 - from NATO) , 70 mortars, ten surface-to-air missile systems, eight Israeli-made unmanned aircraft, and other weapons. In addition, NATO countries have supplied four combat aircraft to Georgia. The Russian Defense Ministry said there were plans to deliver to Georgia 145 armored vehicles, 262 guns and mortars, 14 combat aircraft including four Mirazh-2000 destroyers, 25 combat helicopters, 15 American Black Hawk aircraft, six surface-to-air missile systems and other arms." (Interfax News Agency, Moscow, in Russian, Aug 7, 2008)
• NATO-US-Israeli assistance under formal military cooperation agreements involves a steady flow of advanced military equipment as well as training and consulting services. 
• According to US military sources (spokesman for US European Command), the US has more than 100 "military trainers" in Georgia.
• A Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman "said there were no plans to redeploy the estimated 130 US troops and civilian contractors, who he said were stationed in the area around Tblisi" (AFP, 9 August 2008).
• In fact, US-NATO military presence in Georgia is on a larger scale to that acknowledged in official statements. The number of NATO personnel in Georgia acting as trainers and military advisers has not been confirmed.
•  In 2005, Georgian president proudly announced the inauguration of the first military base, which "fully meets NATO standards".
• Although not officially a member of NATO, Georgia's military is full integrated into NATO procedures. 
• Immediately following the inauguration of the Senakskaya base in west Georgia, Tblisi announced the opening of a second military base at Gori which would  also "comply with NATO regulations in terms of military requirements as well as social conditions." (Ria Novosti, 26 May 2006).
• The Gori base has been used to train Georgian troops dispatched to fight under US command in the Iraq war theater. 
• It is worth noting that under a March 31, 2006, agreement between Tblisi and Moscow, Russia's two Soviet-era military bases in Georgia - Akhalkalaki and Batumi have been closed down. (Ibid)  The pullout at Batumi commenced in May of last year, 2007. The last remaining Russian troops left the Batumi military facility in early July 2008, barely a week before the commencement of the US-Georgia war games and barely a month prior to the attacks on South Ossetia.  
• The Israel Connection
• Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.
• Israel is a partner in the Baku-Tblisi- Ceyhan pipeline which brings oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean.
• More than 20 percent of Israeli oil is imported from Azerbaijan, of which a large share transits through the BTC pipeline.
• Controlled by British Petroleum, the BTC pipeline has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucusus: 

• "[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)

   

  
• While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will "channel oil to Western markets", what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel, via Georgia. In this regard, a Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has also been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel's main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.
• The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat.
• The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are far-reaching. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 2006)
• What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon. 
• "Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East, 

• The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines.  

  http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961328841&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

• “Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]" 

   

  "Ceyhan and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400 km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or via specially constructed under-water pipeline. From Ashkelon the oil can be pumped through already existing pipeline to the port of Eilat at the Red Sea; and from there it can be transported to India and other Asian countries in tankers. (REGNUM) 
• In this regard, Israel is slated to play a major strategic role in "protecting" the Eastern Mediterranean transport and pipeline corridors out of Ceyhan.

  • One of the triggers for the Gog-Magog invasion of Israel?
• Concurrently, it also involved in channeling military aid and training to both Georgia and Azerbaijan. 
• A far-reaching 1999 bilateral military cooperation agreement between Tblisi and Tel Aviv was reached barely a month before the NATO sponsored GUUAM agreement. It was signed in Tbilisi by President Shevardnadze and Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyu.
• These various military cooperation arrangements are ultimately intended to undermine Russia's presence and influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. 
• In a pro forma declaration, Tel Aviv committed itself, following bilateral discussions with Moscow, on August 5, 2008, to cut back military assistance to Georgia. 
• Russia's Response
• In response to the attacks, Russian forces intervened with conventional ground troops.
• Tanks and armored vehicles were sent in. The Russian air force was also involved in aerial counter-attacks on Georgian military positions including the military base of Gori. 
• The Western media has portrayed the Russian as solely responsible for the deaths of civilians, yet at the same time the Western media has acknowledged (confirmed by the BBC) that most of the civilian casualties at the outset were the result of the Georgian ground and air attacks. 
• Based on Russian and Western sources, the initial death toll in South Ossetia was at least 1,400 (BBC) mostly civilians.
• "Georgian casualty figures ranged from 82 dead, including 37 civilians, to a figure of around 130 dead....
• A Russian air strike on Gori, a Georgian town near South Ossetia, left 60 people dead, many of them civilians, Georgia says." (BBC, August 9, 2008). Russian sources place the number of civilian deaths on South Ossetia at 2000. 
• A process of escalation and confrontation between Russia and America is unfolding, reminiscent of the Cold War era. 
• Supported by media propaganda, the Western military alliance is intent on using this incident to confront Russia, as evidenced by recent NATO statements.
• Are we dealing with an act of provocation, with a view to triggering a broader conflict? 

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• How Foreign Policy Functions Shifted to the Pentagon
• By Walter Pincus

   Monday, August 4, 2008;
• Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opened a hearing last Thursday on the creeping militarization of U.S. foreign policy by saying: "There has been a migration of functions and authorities from U.S. civilian agencies to the Department of Defense."
• He noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has described the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development as "chronically undermanned and underfunded for too long."
• As the hearing showed, two programs that began in 2006 provided through the Pentagon the kinds of military and development funds to partner countries in the fight against terrorism -- support that is traditionally directed by the State Department.
• Section 1206 programs gave the Pentagon the authority to spend $200 million to train and equip foreign military forces to carry out counterterrorism operations in their own countries or give support elsewhere -- say, Iraq -- in association with U.S. forces.
• This change was needed because the traditional approach through State was "too slow and cumbersome," according to a May 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
• Section 1207, also initiated in 2006, gave the Pentagon the authority to transfer as much as $100 million in equipment, services or training to the State Department, which used the money for "reconstruction, stabilization or security activities in foreign countries," according to another May 2008 CRS report.
• Section 1207 programs were originated by country teams and needed approval from Defense and State leaders before they could be carried out.
• In testimony Thursday, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte called this a "dual-key" authority to ensure that Pentagon security needs met State Department foreign policy objectives.
• Undersecretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman, who appeared at the hearing, said these programs were born of "a fundamental mismatch of authorities, resources and capabilities."
• In short, the Pentagon had the money and people, and State had the legal authority to act.
• In its latest request, for fiscal 2009, the Pentagon sought $750 million in Section 1206 funds and $200 million in Section 1207.
• Though Negroponte and Edelman tried to arrest concerns that the programs were a step toward militarization of civilian authority, not all senators were convinced that traditional foreign policy standards were being met.
• For example, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) noted that a section of the Foreign Assistance Act bars security aid to governments that engage in "a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." He then asked about $6 million given to Chad under Section 1206 in 2007, the same year State declared that country's security forces "were engaging in extra-judicial killing, arbitrary detention and torture," according to a May 2008 CRS report.
• The $6 million, the report said, was used to establish a "light infantry rapid reaction force."
• Edelman said: "I know that we, as a matter of law, are barred from providing assistance to units that we know are involved in any human rights violations, and we certainly abide by that."
• National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them tofineprint@washpost.com.

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• U.S. Launches Airlift to Aid Georgia
• By JOHN D. MCKINNON and NEIL KING JR. in Washington and MARC CHAMPION in Tbilisi, Georgia
  August 14, 2008; Page A1
• WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush dispatched Navy ships and Air Force planes to deliver aid to war-torn Georgia, bringing a dose of Cold War-style brinksmanship to the confrontation between the U.S. and Russia.
• The move, which marked a sudden shift in the U.S. response to the crisis, put U.S. and Russian military forces in close proximity amid an ongoing conflict -- a rare event even in the decades when the U.S. faced off against the Soviet Union around the world.
• Despite a Tuesday cease-fire brokered by the French, Russian troops followed by irregular fighters pushed deep into Georgia, seizing the strategic city of Gori and cutting the main highway that crosses the country to the capital, Tbilisi.
• Reuters U.S. Air Force servicemen unloaded humanitarian aid from a U.S. military cargo plane at Tbilisi airport Thursday.
• Mr. Bush said he would send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to meet personally with Georgian officials in Tbilisi and "convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government."
• Both U.S. and Georgian officials employed Cold War language to bolster their positions, with frequent references to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
• The Russians, firing back, said the U.S. would have to choose between its support of Georgia and winning the support of Russia for other international endeavors, such as containing Iran.

  • Kiss our "Yankee" butts, Ruskie!!
• Still, both sides appeared to be calibrating their moves carefully to avoid direct hostilities.
• Mr. Bush's move to provide humanitarian assistance may have been geared in part to assuage critics at home and reassure allies abroad.
• Russian officials said they were abiding by the terms of the cease-fire, which they contend doesn't call for an immediate troop pullout.
• EPA Refugees rest on the outskirts of Gori Wednesday before continuing their flight from Russian troops. President Bush said the U.S. will use military aircraft and naval forces to deliver aid to Georgia.
• Fighting broke out last week between Russian and Georgian forces over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, which is closely tied to Russia.
• The Bush administration has been a vocal backer of Georgia -- a former Soviet state that has pursued democracy, and is a key conduit to the West for Central Asian oil.
• Moscow has feuded with Georgia for years, and has long backed Georgia's two separatist territories.
• Daring Russia
• Russian troops on Wednesday fanned into the countryside near Gori, where local militias drove ethnic Georgians from their villages and burned houses, according to fleeing residents and witnesses from Human Rights Watch, the civil-liberties group.
• Mr. Bush cited reports that Russian armored vehicles are blocking access to the port of Poti, and that "Russia is blowing up Georgian vessels" there.
• The Bush administration has concluded that Russia is not abiding by the peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
• Mr. Bush is demanding that both sides pull their forces back to where they were before the hostilities began. "We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected," Mr. Bush said.
• The White House, in essence, is employing mercy missions to Georgia -- with echoes of the 1948 Berlin airlift -- to reassert its security interests in the Caucasus, daring Russia to block the U.S. diplomatic and relief efforts.
• "We expect Russia to honor its commitment to let in all forms of humanitarian assistance," Mr. Bush said.
• The president repeated his warning that Russia's actions are risking its place in international organizations. Other officials say those could include its membership in the Group of Eight, and its prospective membership in the World Trade Organization.
• Already, Russia has set up a de facto blockade outside Poti.
• When five leaders of Eastern European countries tried to fly into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Tuesday, Russia refused to allow them to land. Instead, they had to land in neighboring Azerbaijan, and drive to Georgia.

  • Russian sons 'a bitches!!
• The U.S. sent a C-17 cargo plane, which arrived unmolested in Tbilisi on Wednesday night, carrying 31 metric tons of gear, ranging from medical equipment to cots, sleeping bags and sheets.
• Another plane is expected to arrive Thursday with additional medical supplies, including 104,000 doses of antibiotics. The State Department is also moving in thousands of blankets, tents and jerrycans.
• Mr. Bush's statements Wednesday contrasted with the tone of remarks by top administration officials on Tuesday, when Russia appeared ready to accept a cease-fire and remove its forces from Georgia. Bush aides said that if Russia withdrew, no clear consequences would flow from the invasion.
• President Bush spent the morning in the White House Situation Room with his top security advisers. He announced he was sending Ms. Rice to Europe, and then on to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
• Reports of continuing Russian troop movements prompted the White House to get much tougher.
• Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili later said Mr. Bush told him he was up throughout the night weighing the move.
• Ms. Rice, in a news conference, echoed the tougher tone. "This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it," she said. "Things have changed."
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the U.S. of ignoring Georgia's aggression in attacking South Ossetia, describing Georgia's leadership as "a special project of the United States."
• He told reporters that Russian forces Wednesday had not targeted Georgian ships in Poti, and that military actions within the country were aimed at eliminating large troves of ammunition and supplies left behind by fleeing Georgian troops.
• The French government said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had reiterated that Russia was abiding by the six-point cease-fire agreement. Among other things, the pact calls for a lasting end to hostilities, and international discussions on the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two Georgian regions that sparked the conflict.
• Georgian President Saakashvili praised the U.S. move to help, terming it "long overdue" but "very strong."
• Mr. Saakashvili said Mr. Bush's offer was critical to defeating a Russian tactic of shutting down Georgia's airports and ports in order to squeeze its economy and demoralize its population.
• Those tactics, he said, were designed to secure "all of Georgia" for Russia, and to force a change of government.
• Mr. Saakashvili said Mr. Medvedev twice pressed the French president, Mr. Sarkozy, to make the removal of Mr. Saakashvili part of Tuesday's cease-fire deal, but that Mr. Sarkozy had refused.
• A person close to the French president confirmed Mr. Medvedev's negotiating stance.
• The U.S. remains constrained in its options. Ms. Rice sought to damp suggestions that U.S. troops would somehow be securing Georgian territory and infrastructure. "It's not the intention of the U.S. to take control of facilities" in Georgia, she said.
• Likely Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, who has long taken a hawkish position on Russia, said he supports the steps outlined by President Bush. In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal Thursday, Sen. McCain backed an independent peacekeeping force in the separatist regions. (See article on page A13.)
• Humanitarian Response
• The Navy's chief hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, was in its home port of Baltimore and would take weeks to arrive in the Black Sea. Navy officials said that any Navy excursion to the Georgian Black Sea coast would be restricted by a 1936 convention governing the size and type of naval vessels that can pass through the Bosporus.
• Many aspects of the U.S. humanitarian response remain unclear.
• Some experts said the U.S. hasn't gone far enough.
• "I strongly doubt that [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin is going to be deterred by the prospect of a U.S. humanitarian effort," said Frederick Kagan of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
• Mr. Kagan suggested the U.S. could resupply the beleaguered Georgian military, call a session of the former Group of Seven leaders, halt negotiations over Russia's accession to the WTO, and accelerate reconsideration of Georgia's NATO application.
• A long-term and more symbolic option would be to threaten a boycott of the 2014 Olympics to be held in the Russian resort of Sochi.
• Russian forces have targeted key Georgian military assets, ranging from Poti to the military base of Senaki, the first base built explicitly to NATO standards.
• Any move to rebuild the Georgian army would set the U.S. on a collision course with Russia, which has objected to such U.S. military assistance.
• Pentagon officials said they were sending in an assessment team to analyze what was needed.
• Ms. Rice's arrival in Paris on Thursday will help fill a U.S. diplomatic void.
• Washington is Georgia's firmest supporter in the West, strongly backing its NATO candidacy and providing its military with advisers and equipment. But the Bush administration has played a backseat role since the fighting erupted, ceding the diplomatic lead to France and others within the European Union.

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• “President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?”
• PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
   Counterpunch
   Thursday, Aug 14, 2008
• The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war.
• Back in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony.
• Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states.
• The neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union.
• The NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
• Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does “today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
• The Bush Regime, having established a puppet, Mikhail Saakashvili, as president of Georgia, tried to bring Georgia into NATO.
• For readers too young to know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a military alliance between the US and Western European countries to resist any Soviet move into Western Europe [and to ensure European countries lined up behind the US, and bought its weapons systems. Editors] .
• There has been no reason for NATO since the Soviet Union’s internal political collapse almost two decades ago.
• The neocons turned NATO into another tool, like the NED, for US world hegemony.
• Subsequent US administrations violated the understandings that President Reagan had reached with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and have incorporated former parts of the Soviet empire into NATO. The neocon goal of ringing Russia with a hostile military alliance has been proclaimed many times.
• Western European members of NATO balked at the admission of Georgia, as they understood it as a provocative affront to Russia, on whom Western Europe is dependent for natural gas.
• Western Europeans are also disturbed at the Bush Regime’s intentions to install ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic as the consequence will be Russian nuclear cruise missiles targeted on European capitals.
• Europeans don’t see the advantage of helping the US block Russian nuclear retaliation against the US at the expense of their own existence.

  • While I adamantly oppose the Neocon tactics, I also would reply to Europe that in two prior world wars, their troubles with Germany were also none of we American's business either. As far as I am concerned all Europe could be goose stepping today; singing the Horst Wessel Leid and speaking a Bavarian dialect!
• Ballistic missile defenses are not useful against cruise missiles.
• Every country is tired of war except for the US. War, including nuclear war, is the neoconservative strategy for world hegemony.
• The entire world, except for Americans, knows that the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia was entirely due to the US and its Georgia puppet, Saakashvili.
• Americans, alone in the world, are unaware that the hostilities were initiated by Saakashvili, because Bush, Cheney and the Israeli-occupied American media have again lied to them.
• Everyone else in the world knows that the unstable and corrupt Saakashvili, who proclaims democracy and runs a police state, would not have taken on Russia by attacking South Ossetia unless given the go-ahead by Washington.
• The purpose of the Georgian attack on the Russian population of South Ossetia is twofold:
• To convince Europeans that their action in delaying Georgia’s NATO membership is the cause of “the Russian aggression” and that to save Georgia from conquest Georgia must be given NATO membership.
• To ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of its Russian population. Two thousand Russian civilians were targeted and killed by the US-equipped and trained Georgian Army, and tens of thousands fled into Russia.
• Having achieved this goal, Saakashvili and his puppet-masters in Washington quickly called for a cease fire and a halt to “the Russian invasion.”
• The hope is that the Russian population will be afraid to return or can be prevented from returning, thus removing the secessionist threat.
• No doubt the Bush Regime can con the American population, just as it did with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and 9/11 itself, but the rest of the world is not buying it, not even America’s bought-and-paid-for European allies.
• Writing in the Asia Times, Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, a former career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, notes the disinformation that is being peddled by the Bush Regime and the US media and reports that “at the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested.”
• Amb. Bhadrakumar notes that the American and Georgian resort to violence and propaganda has brought an end to the Russian government’s belief that diplomacy and good will can bring about a settlement of the South Ossetia issue.
• If Russia wished, Russia could terminate Georgia’s existence as a separate country at will, and there is nothing the US could do about it.
• It is certain that the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was a Bush Regime orchestrated event.
• The American media and the neocon think tanks were ready with their propaganda blitzes. Neocons had ready a Wall Street Journal editorial page article for Saakashvili that declares “the war in Georgia is a war for the West.”
• Faced with the collapse of his army when Russia sent in troops to protect South Ossetians from the Georgian troops, Saakashvili declared: “This is not about Georgia any more. It is about America, its values.”
• The neocon Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., quickly called a conference hosted by warmonger Ariel Cohen, “Urgent! Event: Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World.”
• The Washington Post hosted neocon Robert Kagen’s war drums, “Putin Makes His Move.”
• Only a fool like Kagen could think that if Putin intended to invade Georgia he would do so from Beijing, or that after sending the American-trained Georgian army in flight, he would not continue and conquer all of Georgia in order to put an end to American machinations on Russia’s most sensitive border, machinations that are likely to eventually end in nuclear war.
• The New York Tiimes hosted Billy Kristol’s rant, “Will Russia Get Away With It?”
• Kristol thunders against “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” that “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.” Kristol presents a new axis of evil–Russia, China, North Korea and Iran–and warns against “delay and irresolution” that “simply invite future threats and graver dangers.”
• In other words, “attack Russia now.”
• Dick Cheney, the insane American Vice President telephoned Saakashvili to express US solidarity with Georgia in the conflict with Russia and declared: “Russian aggression must not go unanswered. Only an idiot would tell Saakashvili anything other than “to cease immediately.”
• What must be the effect on US Intelligence services and the US military of Cheney’s propagandistic and irresponsible statement of US support for Georgia’s war crimes?
• Does anyone really believe that the CIA or any US intelligence service told the vice president that Russia opened the conflict with an invasion? Russian troops arrived in South Ossetia after thousands of Ossetians had been killed by the Georgian attack and after tens of thousands of Ossetians had fled into Russia to escape the Georgian attack.
• According to news reports, Russian forces have captured Americans who were with the Georgian troops directing their attack on civilians.
• The US military certainly has no resources for a war against Russia on top of lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a planned war with Iran.
• With its Georgian venture, the Bush Regime is guilty of a new round of war crimes. What will be the consequence?

• Many will reply that having got away with 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and with its preparations for attacking Iran, the Bush Regime will get away with its Georgian venture as well.

   

  Possibly, however, this time the Bush Regime has overreached.
• Certainly Russia now recognizes that the US is determined to exert hegemony over Russia and is Russia’s worst enemy.
• China realizes the US threat to its own energy supply and, thereby, economy.
• Even America’s European allies, chafing under their role of supplying troops for America’s Empire, must now realize that being an American ally is dangerous and has no benefits.
• If Georgia becomes a NATO member and renews its attack on South Ossetia, it must drag Europe into a war with Russia, a main supplier of energy to Europe.
• Moreover, if Russian troops are sent across European frontiers, there is nothing to stop them.
• What does America offer Europe, aside from the millions of dollars it pays to buy off Europe’s political leaders to insure that they betray their own peoples? Nothing whatsoever.
• The only military threat that Europe faces comes from being dragged into America’s wars for American hegemony.
• The US is financially bankrupt, with budget and trade deficits that exceed the combined deficits of the rest of the world together. The dollar has wilted. The American consumer market is dying from the offshoring of American jobs and, thereby, incomes, and from the wealth effect of the real estate and derivatives collapses.
• The US has nothing to offer Europe. Indeed, American economic decline is killing European exports by driving up the value of the euro.
• America long ago lost the moral high ground.
• Hypocrisy has become America’s best known hallmark.
• Bush, the invader of Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies and deception, thunders at Russia for coming to the defense of its peacekeepers and Russian citizens in South Ossetia.
• Bush who ripped Kosovo out of Serbia’s heart and handed it to the Muslims, has taken an adamant stand against other separatist movements, especially the South Ossetians who wish to be part of the Russian Federation.
• The neoconned Bush Regime is furious that the Russian bear was not intimidated by the US supported aggression of the American puppet state, Georgia.
• Instead of accepting the act of American hegemony that the neocon script called for, Russia sent the Americanized Georgian army fleeing in fear.
• Having failed with weapons, the Bush Regime now unleashes the rhetoric. The White House is warning Russia that failure to acquiesce to US hegemony could have a “significant, long-term impact on relations between Washington and Moscow.”
• Do the morons who comprise the Bush Regime really not understand that short of a surprise nuclear attack on Russia there is nothing whatsoever the US can do to Moscow?

• The Bush Regime owns no Russian currency that it can dump. The Russians own US dollars.

   

  The Bush Regime owns no Russian bonds that it can dump. The Russians own US bonds.

   

  The US can cut Russia off from no energy supplies. Russia can cut America’s European allies off from energy.
• President Reagan negotiated the end of the cold war with Soviet President Gorbachev.,The neoconservatives, whom Reagan fired and drove from his administration, were furious.
• The neocons had hoped to win the cold war, thereby establishing American hegemony.
• The Republican Establishment reestablished its hegemony under Bush 1st that it had lost to Ronald Reagan. With this feat, intelligence was driven from the Republican Party.

• The neocons engineered their comeback with the First Gulf War and their propaganda, pure lies, that Iraqi troops bayoneted Kuwait babies in hospitals.

   

  The neocons made a further comeback with President Clinton, whom they convinced to bomb Serbia in order to permit separatist movements to become independent states dependent on America.
• With Bush 2nd, the neocons took over.
• Their agenda, American world hegemony, includes Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
• So far the schemes of these ignorant and dangerous ideologues have come a cropper. Iraq, formerly in the hands of secular Sunnis who were a check on Iran, is, after the American invasion and occupation, in the hands of religious Shi’ites allied with Iran.

  • Slick move, ExLax
• In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent, and a large NATO/US army there is unable to control the situation.
• One consequence of the neocons’ Afghan war has been the loss of power of the American puppet president of Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons.
• The puppet president now faces impeachment, and the Pakistani military has informed the Americans to stop conducting military operations in Pakistani territory.
• The American puppets in Egypt and Jordan might be next to fall.
• In Iraq, the Shi’ites, having completed their ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from neighborhoods, have declared a cease fire in order to contradict the US propaganda that American withdrawal would lead to a blood bath.
• Negotiations on withdrawal dates are now underway between the Americans and the Iraqi government, which is no longer behaving like a puppet.
• Last year Hugo Chavez ridiculed Bush before the UN. Russia’s Putin ridiculed Bush as Comrade Wolf.
• On August 12, 2008, Pravda ridiculed Bush, “Bush: Why don’t you shut up.”
• Americans may think they are a superpower before whose presence the world trembles. But not the Russians.
• Those Americans stupid enough to think that America’s “superpower” insures its citizens from danger need to read the total contempt shown for President Bush in Pravda:

• “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians

• “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia’s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq.

• “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone.

• “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to “Get back inside” and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties?

• “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen?

  • Woooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives?
• Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion?

• “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is ‘magnificent foreign intelligenc’ such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being ‘driven around the country in vehicles’? Suppose Russia declares for instance that ‘Saakashvili stiffed the world’ and it is ‘time for regime change’?

   

  Nice and simple, isn’t it, President Bush?
• “So, why don’t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green.”
• The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold.
• It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
• jim
    August 14,2008
• This is a great story, particularly the excerpt from Pravda. However, King George is not as stupid as you may think, because the job of the Zionist controlled Bush and Clinton crime families was to destroy the US.
• They have succeeded wildly at that.
• It is a fact that before any nukes are dropped upon the US that Bush, Clinton, and cronies will be air lifted somewhere safe and secure.
• While the rest of us will be praying to God, that Lucifer worshipping piece of shit will be laughing his ass off. These assholes are not the idiots, the voting citizens of the US are!
• Luke
    August 14,2008  

   

   

  “President Bush,

   

  Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen?
• LOL, I must confess that this is indeed also my first reaction. Every time that I have the misfortune to see that swaggering monkey on the television I flip him the bird and then change channels. I can´t stand to watch that hypocrite, lying a-hole any more.

97 more annotations...

• Russia: US missiles in Poland won't go unpunished
• Aug 15, 5:44 AM (ET)
• MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian general says a deal for the United States to put a missile defense battery in Poland "cannot go unpunished."
• Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, did not give specifics on who was to be punished or how. But Russia has previously said it could aim missiles at any sites where elements of the U.S. missile defense system are deployed in Europe.
• Poland and the United States struck a deal on Thursday that will see a missile defense battery in the ex-communist state and deepen military ties.
• Nogovitsyn told reporters Friday that the U.S. is exacerbating relations with Russia that are already tense because of fighting between Georgian and Russian forces.

4 more annotations...

• The Pentagon’s alarming project: Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine
• by F. William Engdahl
• Global Research, August 14, 2008
• There is alarming evidence accumulated by serious scientific sources that the US Government is about to or already has ‘weaponized’ Avian Flu.

  • If this report is true (and at this point in time, I can almost believe anything), the U.S. Government is prepared to make war, not just against offending armies of foreign foes but entire populations of nations around the world; including it's own!!! If so..this is truly evil and an Evil the world would be justified in correcting. I hardly recognize the government in Washington DC anymore and barely can identify my America from even a few decades ago. Surely something monstrous and evil has taken it's place within the borders of the United States. It's government is prepared to kill millions...even billions, so it appears.
• If the reports are accurate, this could unleash a new pandemic on the planet that could be more devastating than the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic which killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide before it eventually died out.
• Pentagon and NIH experiments with remains in frozen state of the 1918 virus are the height of scientific folly.
• Is the United States about to unleash a new racially selective pandemic through the process of mandatory vaccination with an alleged vaccine "against" Avian Flu?

  • Population reduction; culling the herd as the NWO/Illuminati Elite have been advocating for?
• There is reason to believe that sections of the international pharmaceutical industry cartel are acting in concert with the US Government to develop a genetically modified H5N1 virus substance that could unleash a man-made pandemic, perhaps more deadly than the 1918 ‘Spanish Influenza’ pandemic claiming up to 30 million lives.1
• Rima E. Laibow, MD, head of the Natural Solutions Foundation, a citizen watchdog group monitoring the pharmaceutical industry states, "Our best intelligence estimate is that pandemic Avian Flu has already been created through genetic engineering in the United States,
• fusing the deadly genome of the 1918 Pandemic, misnamed the ‘Spanish Flu’, with the DNA of the innocuous H5N1 virus in a growth medium of human kidney cells, according to the National Institutes of Health and the vaccine’s manufacturer.
• Some virologists believe that this would insure that the man-made mutant virus recognizes human cells and knows how to invade them." 2

  • A weapon specifically targeting human beings and human populations...Not enemy militaries or armies necessarily but whole swaths of innocent civilians. Is this not a demonic scheme? Not "who" but "what" has taken over our government?!!!!!!!!
• If true, as Laibow points out, "A basic virological fact that the public has not been told is that it is impossible to make a vaccine against a virus that does not yet exist.

  • NOTE: #1
• Public relations efforts to the contrary, IF a vaccine is being made against the Avian Flu virus in its pandemic form, that means that the pandemic virus must already exist, period, end of discussion."3

  • NOTE: #2
• The genome of the 1918 pandemic, the so-called "Spanish Flu", was recently intentionally resurrected by the United States government from a frozen corpse that died of the flu in 1918 in Alaska.
• Because of that resurrection, both the Avian Flu, and its "vaccine" are now a significant threat to public health.
• The Spanish Flu, which was not Spanish at all, was created in the US through an early bioweapons program and injected into healthy young men (i.e., ’soldiers’) as the first mandatory vaccination in the military during World War I.
• The "Spanish Flu", which originated in Kansas on US Military bases, was one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history.
• It was also one of the most successful biological weapons ever created, until now.
• To date, there have only been around 385 human cases of Avian Flu identified worldwide (assuming those identifications are trustworthy, of course), with 243 deaths.
• To put the absurdity of this effort into perspective, Laibow points out, Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD), which researchers believe is heavily associated with aspartame consumption, is a leading cause of death which, according to the CDC, for example, killed 460,000 Americans in 1999 and the numbers keep rising (www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5106a3.htm.)
• Interesting as a footnote on Aspartame, G.D. Searle, the Chicago drugs company that held the patent on Aspartame was in danger of losing its license from the US Government Food & Drug Administration in the 1980’s until Donald Rumsfeld, out of Government, was named President of Searle.

  • Aspartame responsible for SCD..
• But, aspartame is not under criticism.
• Rumsfeld used his contacts in Washington to get the FDA to approve Aspartame despite known tests showing serious health effects on rats.

  • Maybe there are after all such a thing as "Reptilians" masquerading as humans!
• As I document in detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, the same Don Rumsfeld went on to become chairman and principal stockholder of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences Inc., which developed and patented Tamiflu in 1996, first as a drug for AIDS, later as a vaccine for H5N1 Avian Flu.
• In 1997 Donald H. Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary.
• As Secretary he refused to sell his stock at the time he came under conflict of interest allegations when he ordered $1 billion worth of Tamiflu be bought to injected into the US military personnel as a "precaution."
• It was later proven that Tamiflu was in no antidote for H5N1 and its side effects were sometimes very severe.
• Laibow adds, "Given the shockingly obvious lack of any threat from an un-weaponized H5N1 virus, how can we explain the Bush Administration spending billions of dollars preparing each of the 50 States, for what it calls the ‘inevitable Bird Flu pandemic,’ which they say could kill half or more of all Americans and similar numbers of people around the globe?"4
• Ominously, on June 3, Associated Press reported, "Tyson Foods Inc. has begun killing and burying the carcasses of 15,000 hens from a flock that tested positive for exposure to a strain of the bird flu in northwest Arkansas, state officials said Tuesday."

  • Tyson Foods
• Tyson Foods is the largest industrialized producer of chickens in the world and has been repeatedly under attack for its unsanitary conditions of breeding and slaughtering.
• In January 2005, a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to the US Senate, "Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry," concluded that US meat and poultry processing plants had "one of the highest rates of injury and illness of any industry."
• They cited exposure to "dangerous chemicals, blood, faecal matter, exacerbated by poor ventilation and often extreme temperatures. Workers typically faced hazardous conditions, loud noise, must work in narrow confines with sharp tools and dangerous machinery."
• The industrialization of chicken-raising and slaughtering in the USA has progressed to the point that by 2003 when the first cases of H5N1 Avian Flu virus were reported from Asia, five giant multinational agribusiness companies dominated the production and processing of chicken meat in the United States.
• The five companies were Tyson Foods, the largest in the world; Gold Kist Inc; Pilgrim’s Pride; ConAgra Poultry; and Perdue Farms.5 Most outbreaks of Avian Flu in Asia have been traced back to such mass chicken industrial factory centers.6
• In May this year, The Canadian Press reported from Toronto, "An experiment mating H5N1 avian flu viruses and a strain of human flu in a laboratory produced a surprising number of hybrid viruses that were biologically fit, a new study reveals.
• And while none of the offspring viruses was as virulent as the original H5N1, about one in five were lethal to mice at low doses, showing they retained at least a portion of the power of their dangerous parent." 7
• The Toronto article went on, "The work suggests that under the right circumstances - and no one is clear what all of those are - the two types of flu viruses could swap genes in a way that might allow the H5N1 virus to acquire the capacity to trigger a pandemic.
• That process is called reassortment.
• ‘This study is just showing exactly that: There is a risk this virus can successfully reassort with a human virus,’ said Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization's collaborating centre for influenza research at St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee." 8
• Pentagon Bioweapon research
• Prof. Mathew Meselson, a professor of molecular biology at Harvard, and well-respected scientist in the area of chemical and biological warfare, confirms that the United States government has extensively researched and developed biological weapons in the past.
• Meselson described an American facility, north of Terre Haute, Indiana, built in 1944 that would have produced 500,000 four pound anthrax bombs monthly once in full operation.
• Meselson was part of a team that proved the accidental release of anthrax at a Soviet facility in 1979, disproved charges of biological warfare in Laos and Cambodia in the late 1970s, and was a driving force behind popularizing the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1994.
• Since coming in office, the Bush-Cheney Administration has done much to weaken that Chemical Weapons Convention as well as ones on biological weapons.

  • And Evangelical Christians voted for..TWICE!!!...and still support (though in smaller numbers than before) this Monster!!!!!!!!!!!!
• One of George W. Bush’s first acts as President in early 2001 was to oppose a proposed international Biological and Toxic Weapons Protocol, without explanation, leading to the death of the talks.
• In a 2004 study, the British Medical Association warned that the world was perhaps only a few years away from "terrifying biological weapons capable of killing only people of specific ethnic groups," citing advances in genetic weapons technology. 9
• The US Department of Homeland Security has ominously enough announced it is ordering production and stockpiling of a pandemic influenza vaccine: "The U.S. Government is taking steps to minimize the need to make vaccine allocation decisions by supporting efforts to increase domestic influenza vaccine production capacity.

• Significant funding is being

   

  provided to develop new vaccine technologies that allow production of enough pandemic influenza vaccine for any person in the United States who wants to be vaccinated within six months of a pandemic declaration."
• The US Government has been financing the development of a vaccine against H5N1 on a "fast track" basis since 2004.
• Sanofi Pasteur in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of the giant French pharmaceutical firm, the third largest in the world, manufactured an inactivated vaccine made from an H5N1 virus isolated in Southeast Asia in 2004.
• Sanofi Pasteur, part of the French-based Sanofi Aventis Group, was awarded a contract by the US Government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIAID to manufacture the H5N1 vaccine in May 2004.11
• In April 2007 the FDA approved the Sanofi Pasteur vaccine for H5N1 even though one year before the FDA cited Sanofi Pasteur for producing contaminated Fluzone vaccines.12
• The FDA approved H5N1 vaccine is itself apparently not really effective in event of a human-to-human outbreak of Avian Flu.
• On announcing its approval, the FDA stated, "two injections given 28 days apart may provide ‘limited’ protection if a pandemic occurs. About 45% of people who got the vaccine in a study developed an immune response to the virus."13
• Until now H5N1 has not mutated into a form that can easily spread from person to person.
• Is that what the researchers at Sanofi Pasteur and various labs under contract to the US Government are engaged in? If so it would be classified Top Secret, clearly.
• The respected British magazine, New Scientist, commented, "If H5N1 does mutate, it is unclear if vaccines developed now would still work against a pandemic strain. Manufacturers could tailor a new vaccine to that strain, but current production methods take months."14
• The magazine noted that research on the Sanofi vaccine was conducted by the National Institutes of Health as part of the US Government's efforts to prepare for a flu pandemic.
• The salient question is whether they prepare "for a flu pandemic" or whether they prepare a flu pandemic.

  • Good question..
• Why is the US Government spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to stockpile this H5N1 vaccine which likely would not work against such a pandemic outbreak?
• On July 2, 2008, the London Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, "Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus." 15

  • Poland and the US Government are real tight right now...thick as thieves, as the old saying goes.
• The report added that the medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, were being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.
• Authorities claim that the alleged victims received €3 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug.
• The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight.
• The Polish report did not specify if it was the vaccine being developed under contract to the US Government Department of Homeland Security by Sanofi-Pasteur. However, it is known that Sanofi-Pasteur has been producing large quantities of such a vaccine at a factory they have in China.
• Dr. Laibow reports that the "Pandemic Avian Flu Vaccine" was scheduled to be delivered to the United States this month by the French vaccine maker, Sanofi Pasteur, from a facility they own in China, where it is being produced. The US Government issued its "Vaccine" allocation plan in July.
• Laibow fears that a most sinister scenario of a deliberate release of Avian Flu pathogens on the population that could activate martial law and forced vaccination with resulting deaths in the millions could be imminent.

  • A decade or more ago there were those few who were warning the rest of us about sinister, evil things the U.S. Government was up too. They were called conspiracy nuts, conspiracy theorists, kooks and every name in the book; as well as being laughed at. Their ranks have grown down through the years; though many of the original "patriot" bell ringers have died or been terrorized off line by "you know who." Nevertheless, it isn't as difficult as it once was to convince many Americans that Uncle Sam is actually a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; with more Hyde than Jekyll.
• Spanish Flu virus revived by Pentagon
• According to a report at the time by the watchdog group, The Sunshine Project, which monitors biological and chemical weapons research of the United States Government issued a statement that "The 'Spanish Flu' influenza virus that killed 20-40 million people in 1918 is currently under reconstruction.

  • No government would seek actively and purposefully to revive and activate this deadly virus if it was not totally and abjectly a nexus for evil.
• In 2003 US Army scientists created ‘Spanish Flu’ virus in the laboratory.
• Several genes of the extraordinarily lethal 1918 flu virus have been isolated and introduced into contemporary flu strains. These proved to be lethal for mice, while virus constructs with genes from a current flu virus types had hardly any effect.
• These experiments may easily be abused for military purposes, but provide little benefit from a medical or public health point of view."
• They continued, "The 1918 Spanish Flu was highly infectious and – in comparison to contemporary flu viruses – killed a very high percentage of those infected, including many younger people.
• The Spanish Flu alone caused the medium life expectancy in the US in 1918 to drop by 10 years. Hence, flu viruses are perceived today as a serious biological warfare threat.
• Just two weeks ago, a 15 million dollar research grant was awarded in the US to develop protective measures especially against a bioterrorist attack with flu viruses."
• The statement added, "Despite the very dangerous nature of the 1918 virus, efforts to reconstruct it started in the mid 1990s, when Dr Jeffrey Taubenberger from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC succeeded in recovering and sequencing fragments of the viral RNA from preserved tissues of 1918 victims.
• In the current issue of the scientific journal Emerging Infectious Diseases new genetic details of the 1918 flu virus will be published."
• Most ominously, they report, "But after (partially) unravelling the genetic sequence of the virus, the scientists went a step further and began bringing the Spanish flu back to life.
• Unnoticed by the public, they succeeded in creating a live virus containing two 1918 genes that proved to be very lethal in animal experiments. This experiment is only one genetic step away from taking the 1918 demon entirely out of the bottle." 16
• They conclude, "A resuscitation of the Spanish flu is neither necessary nor warranted from a public health point of view.
• Allegedly, the recent experiments sought to test the efficacy of existing antiviral drugs on the 1918 construct. But there is little need for antiviral drugs against the 1918 strain if the 1918 strain had not been recreated in the first place.
• ‘It simply does not make any scientific sense to create a new threat just to develop new countermeasures against it.’ says Jan van Aken, biologist with the Sunshine Project, ‘Genetic characterization of influenza strains has important biomedical applications.

  • No..they mean to do something else with it..
• But it is not justifiable to recreate this particularly dangerous eradicated strain that could wreak havoc if released, deliberately or accidentally.’"17
• Let us sincerely hope not, but as Prof. Stephen Block, Stanford University biophysicist with years of experience in classified Pentagon and US Government biological research remarked in another context, "We’re tempted to say that nobody in their right mind would ever use these things." Block added, "But not everybody is in their right mind…" 18Sanofi Pasteur delivers H5N1 vaccine

  • Not so much insane as they are demonized to the point they are actively cooperating with some very sinister and malignant forces. Think not? SEE: Tom Horn of "Raiders New Network", his book "Ahriman Gate" and also Google "Lynn Marzulli."
• On April 28 of this year in an official Press Release from Sanofi Pasteur US headquarters in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania and Lyon, France, the company stated, "Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis Group, announced today that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has accepted H5N1 bulk vaccine antigen to produce approximately 38.5 million doses of vaccine to protect against a new strain of avian influenza.
• Sanofi Pasteur has a multi-year contract with HHS as part of its pandemic program, and will receive a payment of $192.5 million booked in the second quarter of 2008 for acceptance of the bulk vaccine lot."19
• Then, on June 16 of this year, Sanofi Pasteur issued the following release announcing that it will, "donate 60 million doses of H5N1 vaccine to the World Health Organization (WHO) over 3 years for the establishment of an H5N1 vaccine global stockpile."
• The President and CEO of Sanofi Pasteur, Wayne Pisano, said in the release, "The H5N1 virus is currently circulating in some of the poorest regions of the world and an outbreak of pandemic influenza would most likely hit populations living in areas with limited access to vaccines. This donation of H5N1 vaccine aims to address the needs of those most vulnerable populations.
• In addition to supporting the efforts of governments," Pisano added, "it is essential that industry collaborates with international organizations such as WHO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other global health players. This is the best way to build a stockpile of vaccines for developing nations, ready to be deployed on the ground in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak."20
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in addition to being a financial supporter of the so-called Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic, has dedicated its foundation billions to support population control especially inAfrica.

  • Just two members of the murderous "Elite." It was Prince Philip of Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth II's consort who stated he would like to come back in the next life as a "killer virus."
• Among other projects they, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, are financing The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, whose head is former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. 21
• As the world's leading influenza vaccine manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur produces approximately half of the influenza vaccine distributed worldwide.
• In the US it produced more than 40 percent of the influenza vaccine distributed for the 2007-2008 influenza season.
• The fact that the US Government has revived the 1918 Spanish Flu virus to make "tests" indicates that anything is possible.
• There are in this world some people not in their "right mind." God forbid if it is so in this instance.
• F. William Engdahl is author of Seeds of Destruction: the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
  He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. (see details on William engdahl's book below)
• Notes
• 1Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp.207-8.
• Crosby described its effects: "a disease that turned people the color of wet ashes and drowned them in the fluids of their own bodies and inspired names like the ‘purple death.’
• The Spanish Influenza was unusual in that it struck infants as well as elderly.
• 2 Rima E. Laibow, M.D., Weaponized Avian Flu Intelligence Report, in http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=742
• 6 GRAIN, Fowl Play: The Poultry Industry’s Central Role in the Bird Flu Crisis, http://www.grain.org/go/birdflu , February 2006.
• In their report they note, "The transformation of poultry production in Asia in recent decades is staggering. In the Southeast Asian countries where most of the bird flu outbreaks are concentrated—Thailand, Indonesia, and Viet Nam—production jumped eightfold in just 30 years, from around 300,000 metric tonnes (mt) of chicken meat in 1971 to 2,440,000 mt in 2001. China’s production of chicken tripled during the 1990s to over 9 million metric tons per year." (Cited in Engdahl, Op. Cit., p. 288.).
• 7 As well, a report by a Canadian organization, Beyond Factory Farming, described the transmission likely pathways from the giant industrialized chicken centers: ‘In Thailand, China and Vietnam there is a highly developed industrial poultry industry which has expanded dramatically in the past decade. The large poultry companies raise millions of birds, hatch chicks to supply other intensive poultry operations, export live birds and eggs to countries such as Nigeria (where the first Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreak in Africa was recently reported) and produce and export feed which often includes "litter" (i.e., manure) in the ingredients.

  • Is someone using birds/fowl as a vector for transmitting the virus???
• ‘Manure that may contain live virus is spread on surrounding farmland, or exported as fertilizer, and through run-off may end up in surface waters where wild birds feed and rest. Chicken manure is even found in fish farm feed formulations where it is introduced directly into the aquatic environment.

• Wild birds and poultry that

   

  have fallen victim to HPAI in Asia, Turkey and Nigeria appear to have been directly exposed to HPAI virus originating in the factory farm system.
• In Asia, a flock of wild ducks died from HPAI—after having come into contact with the disease at a remote lake where a fish farm used feed pellets made from poultry litter from a factory farm.
• In Turkey a massive cull of backyard flocks—and the deaths of three children—took place after a nearby factory farm sold sick and dying birds to local peasants at cut rate prices.
• Nigeria has a large and poorly regulated factory poultry production sector which is supplied with chicks from factory farms in China.’ (Engdahl, Op. Cit., p. 289)
• 8 Study shows hybrids of bird flu and human flu viruses fit well, could occur, The Canadian Press, Toronto, undated. May 2008.
• 15 Matthew Day, Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland, Daily Telegraph, July 2, 2008, accessed in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/2235676/Homeless-people-die-after-bird-flu-vaccine-trial-in-Poland.html.
• 16 The Sunshine Project, Lethal Virus from 1918 Genetically Reconstructed: US Army scientists create ‘Spanish Flu’ virus in laboratory - medical benefit questionable, 9 October 2003, accessed at http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr091003.html.

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• By Mark John and Francois Murphy
• The statement did not explicitly refer to a U.S. demand to suspend contacts within the six-year-old NATO-Russia Council (NRC), but NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said it was clear such contacts could not take place at present.
• "As long as Russian forces are basically occupying a large part of Georgia I cannot see a NATO-Russia Council convening at whatever level," he told a news conference.
• "But I should add that we certainly do not have the intention to close all doors in our communication with Russia," he said, after several European allies including Britain and Germany expressed doubts about cutting off links with Moscow.
• The NATO statement drew sharp condemnation from Moscow, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the alliance of bias and wanting to support a "criminal regime" in Tbilisi.
• "Certainly there will be a lot of changes in our cooperation with NATO and we will have changes in the volume, the quality and the timeframe in our consultations and meetings," Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said in Brussels.

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• Are You Ready For
    Nuclear War?
• By Paul Craig Roberts 

  8-19-8
• Pervez Musharraf, the puppet installed by the US to rule  Pakistan in the interest of US hegemony, resigned August 18 to avoid impeachment.
• Karl Rove and the Diebold electronic voting machines were unable to control  the result of the last election in Pakistan, the result of which gave Pakistanis  a bigger voice in their government than America's.
• It was obvious to anyone with any sense -- which excludes  the entire Bush Regime and almost all of the "foreign policy community  -- that the illegal and gratuitous US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,  and Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon civilians with US blessing, would  result in the overthrow of America's Pakistani puppet.
• The imbecilic Bush Regime ensured Musharraf's overthrow  by pressuring their puppet to conduct military operations against tribesmen  in Pakistani border areas, whose loyalties were to fellow Muslims and not  to American hegemony.
• When Musharraf's military operations didn't produce  the desired result, the idiotic Americans began conducting their own military  operations within Pakistan with bombs and missiles. This finished off  Musharraf.
• When the Bush Regime began its wars in the Middle East,  I predicted, correctly, that Musharraf would be one victim. The American  puppets in Egypt and Jordan may be the next to go.
• Back during the Nixon years, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman,  Warren Nutter, was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security  Affairs.
• One day in his Pentagon office I asked him how the US government  got foreign governments to do what the US wanted. "Money," he  replied. 

    

  "You mean foreign aid?" I asked. 

    

  "No," he replied, "we just buy the leaders  with money."
• It wasn't a policy he had implemented. He inherited  it and, although the policy rankled with him, he could do nothing about  it. Nutter believed in persuasion and that if you could not persuade people,  you did not have a policy.
• Nutter did not mean merely third world potentates were  bought. He meant the leaders of England, France, Germany, Italy, all the  allies everywhere were bought and paid for.
• Consider Tony  Blair. Blair's own head of British intelligence told him that the Americans  were fabricating the evidence to justify their already planned attack on  Iraq. This was fine with Blair, and you can see why, with his multi-million  dollar payoff once he was out of office.
• They were allies because they were paid.
• The American-educated thug, Saakashkvili the War Criminal,  who is president of Georgia, was installed by the US taxpayer funded National  Endowment for Democracy, a neocon operation whose purpose is to ring Russia  with US military bases, so that America can exert hegemony over Russia.
• Every agreement that President Reagan made with Mikhail  Gorbachev has been broken by Reagan's successors.

  • The Reagan years # 1
• Reagan's was the last  American government whose foreign policy was not made by the Israeli-allied  neoconservatives.
• During the Reagan years, the neocons made several runs  at it, but each ended in disaster for Reagan, and he eventually drove them  from his government.

  • The Reagan years # 2
• Even the anti-Soviet Committee on the Present Danger  regarded the neocons as dangerous lunatics.

  • The Neocons are not true Conservatives anyway. They are from the old Democratic Left..of the Trotsky persuasion.
• I remember the meeting when  a member tried to bring 

  the neocons into the committee, and old line American  establishment representatives, such as former Treasury Secretary Douglas  Dillon, hit the roof.
• The Committee on the Present Danger regarded the neocons  as crazy people who would get America into a nuclear war with the Soviet  Union.
• The neocons hated President Reagan, because he ended the cold war  with diplomacy, when they desired 

  a military victory over the Soviet Union.

  • Reagan's Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush
• Deprived of this, the neocons now want victory over Russia.
• Today, Reagan is gone. The Republican Establishment  is gone. There are no conservative power centers, only neoconservative  power centers closely allied with Israel, which uses the billions of dollars  funneled into Israeli coffers by US taxpayers to influence US elections  and foreign policy.
• The Republican candidate for president is a warmonger.
• There are no checks remaining in the Republican Party on the neocons'  proclivity for war.
• What Republican constituencies oppose war? Can anyone  name one?
• The Democrats are not much better, but they have some  constituencies that are not enamored of war in order to establish US world  hegemony.
• The Rapture Evangelicals, who fervently desire Armageddon, are  not Democrats; nor are the brainwashed Brownshirts desperate to vent their  frustrations by striking at someone, somewhere, anywhere.
• I get emails from these Brownshirts and attest that their  hate-filled ignorance is extraordinary.
• They are all Republicans, and yet  they think they are conservatives. They have no idea who I am, but since  I criticize the Bush Regime and America's belligerent foreign policy, they  think I am a "liberal commie pinko."
• The only literate sentence this legion of fools has ever  managed is: "If you hate America so much, why don't you move to Cuba!"
• Such is the current state of a Reagan political appointee  in today's Republican Party. He is a "liberal commie pinko"  who should move to Cuba.
• McCain is preaching war for 100 years. For these warmongers,  it is like cheering for your home team. Win at all costs.
• The Republicans will get us into more wars. Indeed,  they live for war.
• They get a vicarious  pleasure out of war. If the US has to tell lies in order to attack countries,  what's wrong with that? "If we don't kill them over there, they will  kill us over here."
• The mindlessness is total.
• Nothing real issues from the American press, which is  about demonizing Russia and Iran, about the vice presidential choices as  if it matters, about whether Obama being on vacation let McCain score too  many points.
• The mindlessness of the news reflects the mindlessness  of the government, for which it is a spokesperson.
• The American media do not serve American democracy or  American interests. They serve the few people who exercise power.
• When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US and Israel made  a run at controlling Russia and the former constituent parts of its empire.  For awhile the US and Israel succeeded, but Putin put a stop to it.
• Recognizing that the US had no intention of keeping any  of the agreements it had made with Gorbachev, Putin directed the Russian  military budget to upgrading the Russian nuclear deterrent.
• Consequently,  the Russian army and air force lack the smart weapons and electronics of  the US military.
• When the Russian army went into Georgia to rescue the  Russians in South Ossetia from the destruction being inflicted upon them  by the American puppet Saakashvili, the Russians made it clear that if  they were opposed by American troops with smart weapons, they would deal  with the threat with tactical nuclear weapons.
• The Americans were the first to announce preemptive nuclear  attack as their permissible war doctrine. Now the Russians have announced  the tactical use of nuclear weapons as their response to American smart  weapons.
• It is obvious that American foreign policy, with its  goal of ringing Russia with US military bases, is leading directly to nuclear  war. Every American needs to realize this fact.
• The US government's insane  hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet.
• Russia has made no threats against America. The post-Soviet  Russian government has sought to cooperate with the US and Europe. Russia  has made it clear over and over that it is prepared to obey international  law and treaties. It is the Americans who have thrown international law  and treaties into the trash can, not the Russians.
• In order to keep the billions of dollars in profits flowing  to its contributors in the US military-security complex, the Bush Regime  has rekindled the cold war.
• As American living standards decline and the  prospects for university graduates deteriorate, "our" leaders  in Washington commit us to a hundred years of war.
• If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized  in a nuclear war, vote Republican.
• Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury  in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street  Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is  coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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• Georgian Crisis Is a Trap for U.S. Leadership
• 21 August 2008By Fyodor Lukyanov
• The fighting between Georgia and Russia has resulted in a serious political crisis in U.S.-Russian relations. It seems as if both sides have gone back to the sharp Cold War rhetoric of the early 1980s.
• But apart from the combative tone, the current conflict has nothing in common with the Cold War standoffs because the ideological element is absent in both Russian and U.S. foreign policies today.
• This may sound strange, since most people consider U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy to be extremely ideological.
• After all, the global advancement of democracy has been his principal credo for nearly eight years. In practice, however, exporting democracy is less an ideology than it is realpolitik at its core --
• an instrument for attaining geopolitical dominance around the globe.

  • And this is not always or necessarily in the best interests of the American people.
• The United States had to immediately adjust to the burden of global leadership after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when it declared itself the victor in the Cold War -- a victory that it was not entirely ready for.
• In the course of a decade, from the Soviet collapse to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. foreign policy ideology was transformed into an overly ambitious plan to reshape global affairs with Washington sitting in the driver's seat.
• The United States was transformed into a truly international superpower, sincerely convinced of its own global responsibility as a guarantor of peace and democracy.
• After Sept. 11, 2001, the fact that U.S. territory could be threatened from remote regions of the world forced a reassessment of Washington's security policy. As a result, the entire planet became a sphere of vital U.S. interests.
• Since the United States considers democracy to be the most effective, progressive and nonaggressive form of governance, it feels that it can guarantee its own security by advancing democracy everywhere.
• As Bush has said repeatedly, "Democracies don't fight other democracies." The main problem with this simplistic formula is that building new democracies from scratch is a long and difficult process.
• Creating a stable democracy is only possible in countries that are already developed both politically and economically.

  • True
• The era when a holistic outlook on global leadership was formed in the United States, a period when Washington could act without taking the interests of others into account, is over.
• And the attempt to implement this established policy led to a series of failures and to a new level of global fragmentation. It also demonstrated the limitations of the United States' ability to influence global affairs unilaterally.
• At that moment, Russia, after recovering from the geopolitical and economic crises of the 1990s, tried to win back what had been lost during the first post-Soviet decade. Moscow's quest to regain its sphere of influence was understood in Washington.
• Russia is irritated the most when the United States interferes in those areas that Moscow believes Washington has no strategic interests.

  • Of itself...no: America has no strategic interest. However, the Neocons, American and European "elite" and their international "Bankster" underwriters do have an interest...and those interests work ultimately against the welfare of the "serfs" and "culottes" of America, Russia and every other nation's masses.
• And the United States exacerbates this irritation when it opposes any issue that strengthens Russia's position in any way. Moreover, Washington is not prepared to impose limitations on itself, squeezing everyone else wherever it can.
• The traditional rule of realpolitik -- taking into account the interests of others to the extent that they do not contravene one's own interests -- is being violated.
• Moscow possesses well-defined levers in different parts of the world -- from Latin America to Africa, from the Middle East to the Far East.
• Russia is a global power with regional ambitions and interests.
• With the help of these instruments, Russia will pursue its strategic interests in Europe and Asia.
• Alliances in Syria and Venezuela are needed in order to gain bargaining chips in the game against rivals. This helps counterbalance U.S. expansion in countries that used to be Soviet republics. Yet Moscow does not rule out the exchange of minor ambitions for major ones.
• The United States is a global power with global ambitions and interests. From the U.S. point of view, it has no interests that it would be willing to sacrifice.
• And here we come to the conceptual reason for the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations.
• Regions that Moscow sees as secondary to U.S. interests have become necessary components of the complex U.S. structure known as American leadership.
• The Bush administration was not in a position to back up the implied promises and guarantees that it had given to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
  
• With the Russia-Georgia military conflict, the United States clearly fell into a dangerous trap.
• The United States has supported pro-U.S. regimes all along Russia's borders.
• It hoped that its expansion in Russia's backyard would go smoothly and not be very costly from a geopolitical point of view.
• But the United States did not seriously consider the consequences of defending these new allies -- both politically and militarily. And it turned out that at the critical moment, the United States was not in a position to give substantive support to its ally Georgia. It was even unable to prevent Georgia from making fatal mistakes.
• Indeed, the result the Georgia conflict may not simply be the decline of U.S. influence in that country (which in and of itself is not a catastrophe), but that other young, emerging democracies will be skeptical about the dependability of U.S. promises of support.
• The position of global leader is dangerous in that it won't allow for even the most minor defeats.
• To stop a domino effect in which nations en masse start losing faith in U.S. leadership, it won't be enough if Washington adopts an even tougher stance toward Moscow. It's possible that it will try once again to give direct guarantees for the security of countries like Georgia or Ukraine -- especially since NATO's ability to act is now in doubt.
• And relatively new NATO members, such as Poland, are doubting NATO's credibility.
• Western Europe will probably halt its expansion into the former Soviet republics.
• If these countries earlier thought that NATO and the United States were virtually one and the same, this is no longer the case. Indeed, Poland has approached the United States directly, bypassing NATO, for security guarantees to protect it against what it perceives to be a threat from Russia.
• This has increased U.S.-Russian tensions even more.
• Moscow considers direct U.S. military guarantees to Kiev and Tbilisi as an even greater provocation than NATO membership in and of itself.
• But, as the Georgian and South Ossetian conflict clearly demonstrated, it is doubtful that Washington has the ability to back up these guarantees.
• Because of its weakened position, the United States will be forced to rethink its fundamental role as a global leader. The United States and Russia both need to fully understand whether their strategic goals are realistically achievable or not.
• Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.

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• Twilight Of The Psychopaths
• By Dr. Kevin Barrett 

  8-21-8
• "Our society is run by insane people  for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal  ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that.  That's what's insane about it." ­ John Lennon, before his murder  by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman
• When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization  he said it would be a good idea.
• But that oft-cited quote, is misleading,  assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.
• Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively  with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the  leisure to develop arts and sciences.
• And while that would be a good   idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called  advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years.
• Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation  of psychopaths.

  • And what is at the root of this mental disorder? Man's fallen nature that at the core does not really wish to get along with neighbors as much as mankind, collectively and individually, wants to dominate rather than cooperate.
• All civilizations, our own included, have been based on  slavery and "warfare." Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism  for mass murder.
• The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple: 

    

  1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled,  systematic mass murderers; 

    

  2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e.  seize control of their labour power and its fruits); 

    

  3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing  process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and  PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.
• Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the  development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill,  injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without  feeling any remorse.

  • "You are the sons of your father, the Devil. He was a murderer from the beginning..."...Jesus: The Gospels
• The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain  who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers- was  almost certainly a genetic psychopath.

  • Nimrod...
• Since that momentous discovery,  psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non- psychopaths  in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military  hierarchies.
• Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic  killers.
• The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing  their fellow human beings make the best soldiers.
• And the 95% who are  extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers -
• unless they are   brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them  (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.

  • With a horrendous personal toll afterward...
• In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written  military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that  military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming  the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species.
• The  true "Revolution in Military Affairs" was not Donald Rumsfeld's  move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall's discovery  in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line  of fire would use their weapons:
• "Those (80-85%) who did not fire  did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger  to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply  would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated  waves of banzai charges" (Grossman, p. 4).
• Marshall's discovery and subsequent research, proved  that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers - the 5% who are  natural- born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators-did  almost all the killing.
• Normal men just went through the motions and,  if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even  if that meant giving up their own.
• The implication: Wars are ritualized  mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for  humanity's genetic endowment!)
• Marshall's work, brought a Copernican revolution to military  science.
• In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill  for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight  was a (cowardly) aberration.
• The truth, as it turned out, was that the  normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane  majority, would rather die than fight.
• The implication, too frightening for even the likes of  Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers'  behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths.
• That meant that psychopaths  were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that  psychopaths were in control of society's perception of military affairs.
• Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly  sane, normal society.
• How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski  explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non- violent  competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies.
• Because they can  lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that  is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever  is necessary to get what they want.
• In court, for example, psychopaths  can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane  opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within  hailing distance of the truth.
• Too often, the judge or jury imagines that  the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that  benefit the psychopath.
• As with judges and juries, so too with those   charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote  in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that  all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths.

  • True..I have seen this in operation.
• So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve  the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that  secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers,  Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history,  doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world.
• As a  leading "conspiracy theorist" according to Wikipedia, I feel  eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like  the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate  than the prevailing wisdom:
• The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy  of the psychopaths against the rest of us.

  • This does not prove there is not a conspiracy of a group seeking to rule the world at the expense of the majority. It does reinforce these conspiracy theories in that: to band together in order to subvert the freedoms, welfare and well being of one's fellows, requires a psychopathic mind.
• Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history,  is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate  power.
• And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths   grow ever-more-desperate.

  • Bush and Putin; Russia and USA as two examples
• We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld-the  criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary  society and law just as the underworld lurks below it.
• In 9/11 and the  9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or "endgame"  (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers;
• money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and  otherwise;
• corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate  predators and their political enablers;
• brainwashers and mind-rapists  euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists-
• in short,  the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so- called civilization.

  • The Bible states that as human history rushes toward that sunset horizon, "evil men will grow worse and worse..."
• And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that  they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting  temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public.
• Because  it is threatened by the spread of knowledge.
• Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control?
• As George H. W. Bush said to journalist  Sarah McClendon, December 1992, "If the people knew what we had done,  they would chase us down the street and lynch us."
• The greatest fear of any  psychopath is of being found out.
• Given that Bush  is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were  sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement  to McClendon should be taken seriously.
• Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely  different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of  empathy, while carefully studying others' emotions so as to mimic normalcy  while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.
• Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are  on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization  of, by and for the normal human being -
• a civilization without war, a  civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather  than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power.

  • I do not share in this vision. Things are going to have to get a lot worse before mankind is ready to change it's ways.
• We already  have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and  keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the  institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish - militaries, intelligence  agencies, large corporations, and secret societies.
• We simply need to  disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.
• Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths  co-opt and corrupt normal human beings.
• One way they do this, is by manipulating  shame and denial - emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced  among normals.
• Consider how gangs and secret societies (psychopaths'  guilds in disguise) recruit new members.
• Some criminal gangs and satanist  covens demand that candidates for admission commit a murder to "earn  their stripes."
• Skull and Bones, the Yale-based secret society that  supplies the CIA with drug-runners, mind-rapists, child abusers and professional  killers, requires neophytes to lie naked in a coffin and masturbate in  front of older members while reciting the candidate's entire sexual history.
• By forcing the neophyte to engage in ritualized behaviour that would be  horrendously shameful in normal society, the psychopaths' guild destroys  the candidate's normal personality, assuming he had one in the first place,  and turns the individual into a co-opted, corrupt, degraded shadow of  his former self - a manufactured psychopath or psychopath's apprentice.
• This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making  psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society.
• Despite  easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused  to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked  in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission  to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld.
• Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements  of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers  of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone,  Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic  leaders.
• They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people  around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust.
• They refuse  to see the evidence that the psychopaths' guilds running America's most  powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse  imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then  use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes,  Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys.
• And of course they  refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that  their own psychopath- dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind  almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades.
• All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the  social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so  they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing  their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view.
• If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens' wilful  blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench.
• But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere  are waking up.
• The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential  candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either  party with significant grassroots support.
• If "love" is embedded in the Revolution Ron  Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul - a kindly, soft-spoken physician  who has delivered more than 4,000 babies - implicitly recognizes that  government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must  be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks  and balances, lest the psychopath's tools, fear and hatred, replace love  as the glue that binds society together.
• The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced  countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the  people's growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering  force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating  gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation  since the dawn of so-called civilization).
• Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy  is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism - ritualized  mass slaughter - is increasingly unavailable.
• And if war was the great  human tragedy, the pathocrats' pathetic attempt at a war- substitute -  the transparently phoney "war on terror" - is repeating it as  sheerest farce.
• Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths.

  • I must dissagree. I think we have seen only the beginning.
• Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain  of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to  see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision  in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating.
• About the writer: 

    

  Dr. Kevin Barrett, co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish  Alliance for 9/11 Truth, LINK, has taught English, French, Arabic, American  Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at   colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison,  Wisconsin.
• Barrett became a 9/11 truth activist in 2004 after reading  David Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor and conducting follow-up research  that convinced him Griffin had accurately summarized evidence indicating  9/11 was an inside job.
• In the summer of 2006, Republican state legislators and  Fox newscasters demanded that Barrett be fired from his job teaching an  introductory Islam class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but   the University refused to buckle, and Barrett got high marks from his   students.
• He has appeared in several documentary films, lectures widely  on 9/11 and hosts three radio programs on three different patriot networks.

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• US lawmakers raise concern about FBI powers
• WASHINGTON (AFP) — US lawmakers on Thursday expressed concern about a Justice Department plan to set new guidelines for FBI investigations that would widen powers to investigate people without basis for suspicion.
• "We are particularly concerned that the draft guidelines might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities," said the letter addressed to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

  • Where were the concerns of these professional/career politicians the past 7 years when they and their colleagues were rubber-stamping everything that Chimpy Bush wanted to do to the American people and their Bill of Rights? Notice how politicians always remember "us" when elections come up?
• In it, the four Democratic senators -- Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Ted Kennedy (Massachusetts), Richard Durbin (Illinois) and Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) -- urged the Justice Department to wait until experts and legislators could provide input on the proposed changes.
• "We understand that you intend to finalize and sign next week the draft Attorney General Guidelines intended to govern FBI criminal, national security and foreign intelligence investigations," it said.
• "We have a number of questions and concerns about the guidelines, and urge you not to sign them until members of Congress, experts in the relevant fields, and affected communities have had a full opportunity to provide detailed input."
• The senators also accused Mukasey of avoiding "meaningful and robust debate" by making the draft available "to congressional staff for only a few hours at a time, over the course of a week and a half during the August ... recess when many staff and members are out of town."

  • "Reichsfurhrer" Mukasey...
• The proposed guidelines would "permit the FBI to use a variety of intrusive investigative techniques to conduct 'assessments' of possible criminal activity, national security threats or foreign intelligence collection -- without any initial factual predication," the senators wrote.
• "We are concerned about the extent to which such authority might, for example, permit the FBI to conduct long-term physical surveillance of an innocent American citizen; interview such an individual's neighbors and professional colleagues, including based on a 'pretext' or misrepresentation ... all without any basis for suspicion."
• President George W. Bush's administration has sought to enact a series of changes to intelligence gathering in its final months in order to protect increased post-September 11 security and counter-terror measures.

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• Who Is Randy Scheunemann?
• And None Dare Call It Treason
• By Patrick J. Buchanan
    8-22-8
• Who is Randy Scheunemann?
• He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain  and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national  security adviser to the president of the United States.
• But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.
• He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment  is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client  regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.
• From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign  paid Scheunemann $70,000 ­ pocket change compared to the $290,000 his  Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime  of Mikheil Saakashvili.
• Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed  to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.
• What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man  in Washington?
• Scheunemann came close to succeeding.
• Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho  and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying  to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night  of Aug. 7.
• That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American  lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American  democracy.
• U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces  is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce.
• But why should Americans  fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of  a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own  future in free elections?
• Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy  on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have sought for  45 years to stay out of a shooting war with Russia and we are not going  to get into one now. President Bush assured us there will be no U.S. military  response to the Russian move into Georgia.
• That is a recognition of, and a bowing to, reality ­  namely, that Russia's control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and occupation  of a strip of Georgia cannot be a casus belli for the United States. We  may deplore it, but it cannot justify war with Russia.
• If that be true, and it transparently is, what are McCain,  Barack Obama, Bush, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel doing committing  the United States and Germany to bringing Georgia into NATO?
• For that would  commit us to war for a cause we have already conceded, by our paralysis,  does not justify a war.
• Not only did Scheunemann's two-man lobbying firm receive  $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by  Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded.
• Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic annexed by Joseph Stalin  in June 1940 during his pact with Adolf Hitler, was set free at the end  of the Cold War.
• Yet hundreds of thousands of Russians had been moved into  Latvia by Stalin, and as Riga served as a base of the Baltic Sea fleet,  many Russian naval officers retired there.
• The children and grandchildren of these Russians are  Latvian citizens. They are a cause of constant tension with ethnic Letts  and of strife with Moscow, which has assumed the role of protector of Russians  left behind in the "near abroad" when the Soviet Union broke  apart.
• Thanks to the lobbying of Scheunemann and friends, Latvia  has been brought into NATO and given a U.S. war guarantee.
• If Russia intervenes  to halt some nasty ethnic violence in Riga, the United States is committed  to come in and drive the Russians out.
• This is the situation in which the interventionists have  placed our country: committed to go to war for countries and causes that  do not justify war, against a Russia that is re-emerging as a great power  only to find NATO squatting on her doorstep.
• He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President  Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9/11.
• Scheunemann's resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy.
• He signed the PNAC  ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9/11, threatening him with political  reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq.
• He was executive director  of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," a propaganda front  for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war.
• Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain's  camp.
• The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing  for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.
• Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?
• Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the  same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George  Bush?
• "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence  ... a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned  in his Farewell Address.
• Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy  Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans  into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.
• Copyright Creators Syndicate   

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• As federal agency declares 'new phenomenon' downed WTC 7, activists cry foul
• Stephen C. Webster
  Published: Thursday August 21, 2008
• According to a federal agency report released Thursday, a "new phenomenon" known as thermal expansion was directly responsible for the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center 7 on Sept. 11, 2001.
• This study, posed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- a federal scientific agency which promotes technical industrial standards -- marks the first 'official' government theory on the collapse.
• The building's demise occurred some seven hours after the twin towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, and has been the source of numerous conspiracy theories key to the "9/11 Truth" movement, most of which argue that the symmetrical, seven-second collapse was brought about by a controlled demolition.
• Dr. Shyam Sunder, director of Institute's building and fire research laboratory, oversaw the government's three-year research efforts. The report aims to disprove the controlled demolition argument.
• However, Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and a member of the American Institute of Architects, doesn't believe a word of the theory.
   
   His group, which has swelled to over 400 architectural and engineering professionals, immediately responded to the Institute's claim in a press conference.
• "Tons of [molten metal] was found 21 days after the attack," said Gage in an interview with a Vancouver, Canada television station. "Steel doesn't begin to melt until 2,700 degrees, which is much hotter than what these fires could have caused."
• "There are holes in this story that you can drive a truck through," Gage added during the press conference.
• His group asserts that thermite, a steel cutting agent, was used to bring the building down.
• Dr. Sunder disagreed.
   
   "We conducted the study without bias, without interference from anyone," said Dr. Sunder.

  • Yes..and you know what you are "supposed to do."
• "We have only one single-minded goal in this effort."

  • And a lot of us know what that goal is..
• While the Institute said it considered the possibility of a controlled demolition taking place at WTC 7, the notion was dismissed due to the absence of any recordings of an explosion sound.
• Thermite, however, does not make an explosion sound.
• And while this was raised to Dr. Sunder in the media's Q&A session, he dismissed it as impossible.
• "FEMA found it," said Gage. "Dr. Steven Jones found it, in the dust that landed in the entire area of lower Manhattan. And he finds it in the chunks of previously molten metal [from the towers]."

• Specifically, in Appendix C of its World Trade Center Building Performance Study, FEMA claimed:
   

  Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure. A liquid eutectic mixture containing primarily iron, oxygen, and sulfur formed during this hot corrosion attack on the steel... The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified.
• Yet, no study of the mysterious sulfur or melted steel was included in the NIST report.
• After New York City officials cut off the water main to the tower Sept. 11, 2001, the building's sprinkler system was unable to function, Dr. Sunder said. This allowed fires across 10 floors to burn uncontrolled for nearly seven hours.
• The Institute asserts that due to the lack of water supply, an “extraordinary event” occurred, and for the first time ever, steel expanding due to heat from the flames caused columns to separate from structural concrete. Column 79 was the first to fail, according to the report, which brought about a quick succession of failures in adjoining columns.
• "Thermal expansion of long-span floor systems" was a critical element in the collapse, said Dr. Sunder. The "kink" seen in the building's penthouse portion in video of the collapse was in-line with the columns which failed first.
• "If water had been available, it is likely that sprinklers would have operated and the building may still be here today," he said.
• "It looks like they want to wrap-up this investigation and blame [the collapse] on normal office fires," said Gage during counter-conference.
• WTC 7's structural system is in "widespread use" in other buildings, he added, insisting that such effects may also be present elsewhere. The Institute's report also includes recommendations for the strengthening of building codes to avoid future thermal expansion-driven collapses.
   
   The collapse of WTC 7 is "no longer a mystery," Dr. Sunder claimed.
• Further details from the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth press conference are forthcoming.

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• Hannah Billups, Evidence Surfaces
• Posted by The Watchman on July 25th, 2006 filed in A)Watchman Declares, Other News
• I have been covering Hannah’s story for some time. I did research on some aspects of the story. There was only her word for what happened and that of her husband.
• From the outset, let me say, I did and still believe that Hannah did experience what she said.
• I do, however, want to say, in research, proof is needed. That is what was missing.
• I visited the site today and saw the proof. While it is not conclusive at any means. It does provide more of a framework for the incident.
• There is no doubt that there are secret covert agencies working in the government and private sector. These agencies work totally out of the mainstream. They are not governed by laws. They are directed by men who are powerful, secretive, and smart enough to do all they want under the radar of the masses.

  • SEE: Tom Horn of "Raiders News Network"
• Now as to who did the kidnapping and why? There is proof that the program Stargate did exist.
• There is also proof that the success of the program was marred by the mismanagement of the program.
• I believe it was shut down for one reason. To make people and the government think it no longer exists.
• This led it to be shut down in 1995.
• I believe It now operates freely under the radar with covert funding.
• I also believe it is more successful than it ever has been. I believe it is a program like Stargate and related that abducted Hannah.
• I have no proof. On my part, this is speculation, which is worthless in these situations. I say these things, because abduction of people is wrong.
• I believe the first place to look for this is in Cheyenne Mountain…

  • This is also an area and site that has something to do with NORAD; North American missile defense and I have heard also with the post-9-11 military's North America Command...the Posse Comitatus breaking creation of the Neocons.
• Another word here, to find the place Hannah was, look to the sky. They are the ones who are now directing the program. I am ambiguous now for a reason..

  • UFOs? Supernatural entities as in the Biblical term...i.e. fallen angelic beings on mission for Satan?..Or a combo of both?
• People losing homes and property to government officials who want it for more lucrative schemes.
• Moreover, we see this intrusion by the government all the time. 
• We also see the government intruding in family lives and situations to the point of taking children away from parents for mediocre reasons.
• The freedoms we take for granted are melting away. Even Congressmen who value the USA and its freedoms will not be able to stop this when it occurs.
• That is the full scale stoppage of our freedoms we enjoy.
• We do need to get to the bottom of the situation with Hannah. We need more than photo’s, implants, and star marks.
• Something happened. Someone did it..
• We don’t know who or where they are? Silence and timidity will cause it to happen again.
• We should not be afraid. We should move forward in fierce opposition to the garbage that happens to innocent people like Hannah.
• Lives are at stake. I have heard the words said “other lives are at stake”.
• I admantly reject the alien life form debate. If such things appear, they are demonic and part and parcel of the  “Materializing of Evil”.

  • Precisely....part of the End Time's phenomena

• We, through Jesus Christ have the top authority on the matter. No matter whether we face demons, the devil, or 10 foot aliens… The Lord is over all powers, principalities, and kingdoms.

   

  …The Watchman…