2008-12-02T13:00:27Z Signs of the Times tag:sott.net,2008-12-02:/:signsofthetimes tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170029 2008-12-02T18:00:03Z

Kamenica, Bosnia - Forensic experts said on Tuesday they have unearthed about 1,000 skeletal remains of Bosnian victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in a mass grave. Documents recovered from the grave in this village dubbed "Death Valley" showed the victims were from Srebrenica, forensic experts said. The eastern enclave was under United Nations protection when it was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces near the end of the 1992-95 war. "Almost 90 percent of all remains had traces of bullet shots and some victims were blindfolded with rope-tied hands," said Vedo Tuco, standing on the edge of a muddy grave where white-clad forensic pathologists marked and cleaned up bones. Experts had hoped to complete the exhumations on Wednesday but say the work which started two months ago will finish next week.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170028 2008-12-02T17:40:57Z

Many Indians have called the attacks in Mumbai "India's 9/11." As an American who lived in India, I can feel that country's anguish over these horrific and indiscriminate acts of terror. Most Indian observers, however, were critical in 2001 (and after) of how exactly the Bush administration (i.e. Dick Cheney) responded to September 11. They were right, and they would do well to remember their own critique at this fateful moment. What where the major mistakes of the United States government, and how might India avoid repeating them?

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170027 2008-12-02T17:04:47Z

The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists. "Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," states the report, obtained by The Associated Press. It is scheduled to be publicly released Wednesday. Click here for the report. The commission is also encouraging the new White House to appoint one official on the National Security Council to exclusively coordinate U.S. intelligence and foreign policy on combatting the spread of nuclear and biological weapons.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170026 2008-12-02T16:59:43Z

The president of Iceland has offered Russia the use of an abandoned NATO airbase. The Russians declined, partly because the president of Iceland does not have the authority to make such a deal. What is happening here is that, at the moment, Iceland is unhappy with their NATO allies. Partly this is the result of the global recession hitting Iceland particularly hard. That's because Iceland's economic boom was fueled largely by Icelandic banks making heavy use of risky derivatives. This was fine when the global economy was growing, but leverage works both ways, and GDP is expected to contract by at least 15 percent in the next year. The Icelandic currency has lost over half its value (against major foreign currencies.) Icelanders suddenly feel poor, although unemployment is still under four percent, that is high by local standards. But the real sting has come from the unwillingness of European nations to help bail out the Icelandic banks. This has caused bad feelings towards the NATO countries, which have provided for Icelandic defense for over half a century.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170025 2008-12-02T16:40:36Z

The Israeli military has launched an air strike into the southern Gaza Strip, killing at least two civilians and wounding 4 others. According to the local residents, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a group of people in east of Rafah city in southern territory on Tuesday. Medical sources identified the victims as two brothers named Khaled and Ramzi Duhaii, aged 15 and 17 respectively. The military has confirmed the attack, AFP reported.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170024 2008-12-02T16:37:33Z

On a day when the National Bureau of Economic Research says the current recession is both official and a full year old and the Federal Reserve Chairman says he's willing to cut interest rates from an already rock-bottom 1 percent, the contrarian in me expected to see at least a few folks start shouting "Buy!" That's because during most downturns, by the time a recession is officially announced, the damage has already been done in stocks. That, mixed with possible rate cuts that are "certainly feasible," according to Ben Bernanke, should theoretically be good news for battered shares. Not this time. Here's why:

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170023 2008-12-02T16:34:42Z

A vast reservoir of comets that is too far away to see might be detectable in maps of radiation left over from the big bang, a new study suggests. Comets that take longer than 200 years to orbit the Sun come from all directions in the sky. That has long led scientists to believe that they were nudged out of a diffuse halo of icy objects that surrounds the solar system - the Oort Cloud. The objects probably formed from the same disc of material that gave rise to the planets but were scattered outwards by Jupiter and Saturn a few hundred million years after their birth. The Oort Cloud is too dim to be seen by telescopes, but astronomers believe it has two components. Based on observations of long-period comets, an outer portion seems to extend from 20,000 to 200,000 astronomical units from the Sun (where 1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance).

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170022 2008-12-02T16:31:30Z

Undeterred by massive budget deficits from wars, a falling economy, and financial bailouts, the US government has managed to start a new cold war with Russia. Last Friday, the Russian military announced that it was developing a new generation of ballistic missiles in response to the US government's decision to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. The "peace dividend" that the Reagan-Gorbachev accord provided has been squandered by an arrogant American government seeking world hegemony. In 2002 the Bush regime unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the US government signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. This treaty stabilized the "assured mutual destruction" that prevented the two military superpowers from initiating war, thus averting a nuclear holocaust for 30 years. When the Soviet government released its Eastern European "captive nations," the US government promised not to recruit the Baltic and Eastern European countries for NATO membership. The US government pledged that NATO would not be brought to Russia's borders. There would be a neutral zone between the Western military alliance and Russia. The American government broke this promise as quickly as it could, bringing former constituent parts of the Russian empire into the American empire.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170021 2008-12-02T16:26:38Z

A judge in Raymondville, Texas has dropped indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Judge Manuel Banales, after surviving a motion to have him removed from the case, threw out eight of the indictments brought by Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra, including those against two special prosecutors, two district judges, and a district clerk. Judge Banales ruled the grand jury returned the indictments against Cheney and Gonzales unlawfully. Banales also tossed an indictment for corruption against State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., a Democrat.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170020 2008-12-02T16:24:35Z

Most likely, we'll never find out what really happened inside the CheneyBush Administration until after January 20, when ethically-motivated insiders feel they can spill some beans without violating their oaths of loyalty, but here's my surmising: I think key officials inside the Administration knew that the financial system was swirling inside the economic toilet bowl and would eventuate in a massive meltdown; after all, there were numerous economists, inside and outside the government, who more than a year ago were warning about the housing bubble getting ready to burst, with disastrous impact on the availability of credit. But, in this scenario, the CheneyBush higher-ups believed that, with luck, denial and a helluva lot of deficit financing, they could delay the inevitable collapse until after the election. The catastrophe would then happen on Obama's watch, making sure to cripple all his "liberal" plans and programs. Fixated on solving the economic crisis and unable to fulfill much of what he promised (and probably having to raise taxes for many), Obama and his Democratic majority in Congress would become highly unpopular and the Republicans would be poised for victory in the 2010 congressional elections and might well be able to take back the White House in 2012. The problem for the Republicans was that the financial house of cards collapsed in a surprise rush, a bit too early to help McCain. Indeed, the economic crisis (and McCain's inability to deal effectively with it) was the undoing of any hope that he could pull off a victory in 2008.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170019 2008-12-02T16:21:21Z

In a speech at the III Extraordinary Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) in Caracas on Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez proposed the creation of a regional monetary bloc with its own currency to break the hegemony of the U.S. dollar and U.S.-dominated international financial institutions. "We are going to create a proposal for a monetary zone of solidarity-based commercial exchange," said Chávez. "The hegemony of the dollar must end." The currency would start out as a virtual compensation system, and later become a hard currency, Chávez explained. It would make Latin American countries less susceptible to the effects of the world financial crisis, he said. Chávez suggested that the name of the currency be the Sucre, in honor of Antonio José de Sucre, a South American independence hero. SUCRE also stands for Unified Regional Compensation System, translated from Spanish.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170018 2008-12-02T16:19:47Z

Faint magnetic signals from brain activity in children with autism show that those children process sound and language differently from non-autistic children. Identifying and classifying these brain response patterns may allow researchers to more accurately diagnose autism and possibly aid in developing more effective treatments for the developmental disorder. Timing appears to be crucial. "Children with autism respond a fraction of a second more slowly than healthy children to vowel sounds and tones," said study leader Timothy Roberts, Ph.D., vice chair of radiology research and holder of the Oberkircher Family Endowed Chair in Pediatric Radiology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Roberts used a technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG), which detects magnetic fields in the brain, just as electroencephalography (EEG) detects electrical fields.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170017 2008-12-02T16:09:38Z

An hour at the zoo is enough to convince most people that apes and monkeys are close kin to humankind. Some say that an hour watching proceedings in any parliament is enough to show that humans are close kin to monkeys. Either way, we know that the primate family is an intimate one, with the great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orang-utans and humans - particularly closely related. It did not take genetics to tell us this, however, nor comparative anatomy. We now know that we share many of our genes with insects too, and the anatomies of all mammals are just resized and repositioned versions of one another. The key to understanding the true closeness of apes, ourselves included, is ethology. When Jane Goodall first sat in the Gombe rainforest, giving with fortuitous naivety anthropomorphic interpretations of the chimpanzee behaviour she witnessed, she was initiating a rethink: about apes, about humanity's relationship with them, and ultimately about humanity itself.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170016 2008-12-02T15:52:55Z

Website owners can cast aside their crystal balls - now there are reliable ways of predicting which news stories, blogs or video clips will prove popular in the long term, allowing them to allocate extra bandwidth if they need to. Although the number of hits an online item receives when first published should give some indication of future popularity, such forecasts tend to be inaccurate as daily and weekly fluctuations in overall website traffic will skew the results. Now Bernardo Huberman and Gabor Szabo from HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, say they can account for such effects. They focus not on the actual number of hits but on the rate at which an item picks up views when first put online - suitably adjusted so that views when traffic to a site is low are given more significance than when it is busy. Using this measure, they found they could predict the subsequent popularity of 90 per cent of the content on the video-sharing site YouTube.com and the news aggregator Digg.com.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170015 2008-12-02T15:48:03Z

Remember your first kiss? Experiments in mice suggest that patterns of chemical "caps" on our DNA may be responsible for preserving such memories. To remember a particular event, a specific sequence of neurons must fire at just the right time. For this to happen, neurons must be connected in a certain way by chemical junctions called synapses. But how they last over decades, given that proteins in the brain, including those that form synapses, are destroyed and replaced constantly, is a mystery. Now Courtney Miller and David Sweatt of the University of Alabama in Birmingham say that long-term memories may be preserved by a process called DNA methylation - the addition of chemical caps called methyl groups onto our DNA.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170014 2008-12-02T14:06:23Z

Since many months before the November election, Truth to Power has been researching and informing readers regarding the fundamental underpinnings of Barack Obama's agenda and his likely appointments in the areas of economic, foreign policy, and energy issues. Not only have I written several pieces on the topic, so have a variety of other researchers. In reviewing our reporting, what has remained consistent and therefore validates it, is Obama's adherence to neoliberal, globalist policies couched in the rhetoric of "change" but offering no substantial departure from the ultimate strategies of imperialism, corporate capitalist supremacy, and almost total ignorance (or ignore-ance) of the energy and environmental suicide perpetuated by endless growth.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170013 2008-12-02T13:34:24Z

Briton accused of biggest hack in US military history wins delay in judicial review The British man accused of hacking into US military computers will have his final showdown in the UK courts next month. After almost four years of fighting extradition to the US as a result of what prosecutors have called "the biggest military computer hack of all time", Londoner Gary McKinnon will face a judicial review conducted by the high court on January 20. McKinnon - who used the online name Solo - is accused of hacking into computers belonging to the Pentagon, Nasa and US armed forces in raids conducted between 2001 and 2002. Prosecutors say he shut down thousands of machines and caused up to $700,000 worth of damage, while the 42-year-old claims he was searching for evidence of UFOs.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170012 2008-12-02T12:29:17Z

The U.S. general commanding NATO forces in Afghanistan has ordered a merger of the office that releases news with "Psy Ops," which deals with propaganda, a move that goes against the alliance's policy, three officials said.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169996 2008-12-02T11:47:06Z

As the world falls asleep under the spell of Obama's supposed change, the Zionists sneak onto his staff roster and take the opportunity to siege Gaza. With astoundingly accurate timing, India gets its own shocking 9/11 and the fingers are pointed at Pakistan. More blood is expected to run, as we keep seeing signs of war and hearing predictions of catastrophic terrorism. As this happens, Mother Nature takes notice of the human madness and gives the world a very cold shoulder. As above, so below: the cosmic weather responds with fireballs and other mysteries.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170011 2008-12-02T11:27:22Z

World stock indexes rebounded strongly last week. The Dow and the Hang Seng were up nearly 10%, the FTSE and DAX were up 13% and the Brazilian Bovespa was up a whopping 17%. Gold pushed passed $800. In the U.S. retailers reported a better than feared "Black Friday," with sales rising 3% compared to the previous year, although discounts were deep and profit margins low. Black Friday refers to the Friday after the Thanksgiving holiday. It is both the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season and the day that retailers start to make their profits for the year. In recent years it has become a bigger and bigger thing, with families waiting in line outside big box stores and malls the night before waiting to get let in at five in the morning, lured by steep discounts on a few big ticket items. This year with the bad economy it got completely out of hand as a Walmart employee was trampled to death in Long Island when the crowds were let in.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170010 2008-12-02T10:36:06Z

A man stabbed a city bus driver to death over being denied a free ride, then escaped on foot Monday in the first killing of an on-duty New York City bus driver in more than a quarter-century, authorities said. The man got on the bus in Brooklyn shortly after noon, swiped an invalid fare card, sat down and asked for a free card to change routes.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170009 2008-12-02T10:32:41Z

A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim. The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe. Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170008 2008-12-02T10:26:40Z

Bangkok, Thailand - A court dissolved Thailand's top three ruling parties for electoral fraud Tuesday and temporarily banned the prime minister from politics, bringing down a government that has faced months of strident protests seeking its ouster. The Constitutional Court ruling set the stage for thousands of protesters to end their weeklong siege of the country's two main airports, but also raised fears of retaliatory violence by a pro-government group that could sink the country deeper into crisis and cripple its economy.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170007 2008-12-02T10:06:49Z

An article in today's Washington Post, Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop reports that in many parts of America, the acorns are gone and squirrells are acting as though they are starving. The article starts, The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head. Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170005 2008-12-02T09:55:39Z

Thirteen countries with troops currently stationed in Iraq will remove their soldiers by the end of the year from the war-torn country. President Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair had scrambled the 'coalition of the willing' together in the build-up of the 2003 Iraqi invasion, in a bid to legitimize what was always an unpopular war in world public opinion.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170004 2008-12-02T09:51:58Z

Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday he would bring down U.S. planes bombing villages if he could, in a sign of growing tension between Afghanistan and its Western backers as the Taliban insurgency grows in strength. As Western dissatisfaction with Karzai has grown over his failure to crack down on corruption and govern effectively, the Afghan president, facing elections next year, has hit back over the killing of dozens of civilians in foreign air strikes. In recent weeks, Karzai has repeatedly blamed the West for the worsening security in Afghanistan, saying NATO failed to target Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and calling for the war to be taken out of Afghan villages.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170003 2008-12-02T09:39:09Z

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, on Friday said sex spelt fleeting satisfaction and trouble later, while chastity offered a better life and "more freedom." "Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication," the Dalai Lama told reporters in a Lagos hotel, speaking in English without a translator. He said conjugal life caused "too much ups and downs.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170002 2008-12-02T06:29:28Z

Children with autism spectrum disorder process sounds a fraction of a second slower than other children, an abnormality that offers insight into listening and language issues linked to the condition, a new study says.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170001 2008-12-02T06:25:59Z

This weekend, news reports were full of finger-wagging over the death by trampling of a temporary worker, Jdimytai Damour, at a Wal-Mart store in Long Island on Friday. His death, the coverage suggested, was a symbol of a broken culture of consumerism in which people would do anything for a bargain.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/170000 2008-12-02T06:20:05Z

Thailand's constitutional court has dissolved the governing People Power Party (PPP) saying there had been vote fraud during the last election.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169999 2008-12-02T06:17:31Z

A grenade attack killed an anti-government protester at a besieged Bangkok airport Tuesday, as further unrest forced a key hearing on the possible dissolution of the ruling party to move.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169998 2008-12-02T06:14:14Z

India picked up intelligence in recent months that Pakistan-based terrorists were plotting attacks against Mumbai targets, an official said Tuesday, as the government demanded that Pakistan take "strong action" against those behind the deadly rampage.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169997 2008-12-02T06:08:27Z

Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169995 2008-12-02T06:03:22Z

Gazing at the Soviet-era factory that looms over his northern Vietnamese commune, Quang Van Vinh remembers what the farmland here looked like before it became known as a "cancer village." "This used to be a vast garden of bamboo, banana, jackfruit and longan trees," says the 62-year-old, visiting his long-abandoned childhood home, now a muddy wasteland of brick kilns. "It's sad that there's almost no sign of life anymore." Vinh says things changed quickly in the Red River village in 1962 after the Lam Thao fertiliser plant was built and started pumping wastewater into streams and rice fields, and black smoke into the sky.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169994 2008-12-02T02:25:22Z

As the world community meets in Poland this week to find solutions to the climate crisis, the George W. Bush White House is chaining the United States' tiller to prevent a change of course by President-elect Barack Obama by passing new anti-environmental rules and regulations at a furious pace.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169993 2008-12-02T02:01:35Z

A lake of asphalt and toxic fumes bedevil Curaçao. But who will pay to clean it up?

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169992 2008-12-02T01:37:50Z

Financial crisis may worsen food crunch it eclipsed

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169991 2008-12-02T01:11:27Z

Rare artefacts from the late Stone Age have been uncovered in Russia.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169990 2008-12-02T01:01:23Z

Hundreds of thousands of Somalians face a major famine because of violence and a drought that is ravaging the centre and south of the country, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Friday. "We are seeing a major deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Somalia," said Pascal Mauchle, head of the organisation's delegation for the country. "Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the fighting and drought. External factors, such as the global food crisis and the skyrocketing prices resulting from it, have made the economic situation even worse. The chronic nature of the crisis has completely exhausted people's coping abilities."

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169989 2008-12-02T00:53:38Z

Protesters in Iceland's capital Reykjavik have clashed with police during a demonstration over the handling of the financial crisis. Several hundred protesters gathered outside the city's main police station to demand the release of a man jailed in a previous demonstration. Five people were injured when police used pepper spray to disperse the group after some tried to storm the building. Iceland faces a sharply contracting economy over the financial collapse. The group outside the police station broke away from a much larger group of several thousand people who had gathered outside parliament to demand the government's resignation. Some in the group tried to storm the police building.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169988 2008-12-02T00:38:09Z

Piles of sand and mud began popping up in front of houses in Rafah last week. The traditional signs of home renovations or construction, the neighborhood wondered about the reasons behind these piles, since no construction materials have come into Gaza for months. On closer inspection it becomes obvious that the piles cannot be construction materials, since the sand is not the same color of the sand from Gaza's abandoned settlements, from where most material has been salvaged. The sand, in fact, is the same color as the sand beneath the homes of the southern area of the Gaza Strip. The sand excavated from the hundreds of tunnels snaking beneath the Gaza-Egypt border is being given a second life. The latest construction projects in Gaza are mud and sand stoves powered by firewood.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169987 2008-12-02T00:28:13Z

With an injection of up to £5.5bn of taxpayer funds you'd think Lloyds TSB would be far more transparent and accountable, but that's not the case. The bank's increasingly anti-democratic activities took an alarming turn last week when, without warning or prior consultation, it delivered an abrupt notification to the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB) to cease all dealings with British charity Interpal by December 8 2008 (the date was subsequently revised to 30 January 2009) or "all transactions into or out of Interpal accounts will be blocked and IBB will be at further risk of all its customer payments being suspended". Interpal is one of the few remaining sources of humanitarian assistance in an increasingly beleaguered occupied Gaza.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169986 2008-12-02T00:19:33Z

The use of torture and ill-treatment by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians is nothing but a systematic and comprehensive process, states a human rights report issued today. The Coalition against Torture says that Israel is either unwilling or unable to fulfill its obligations under the Convention against Torture. The group of 14 Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations writes in its annual report for 2008 that it has recorded evidence of an act, complicity or omission of fact or duty on the part of state officials at all levels. The guilty parties include members of the army, intelligence, police, judiciary and other government branches. The coalition said that the situation is unlikely to improve in the cultural of impunity and immunity that prevails in Israel.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169985 2008-12-02T00:13:57Z

Suicide bombings in Baghdad and Mosul took the lives of at least 32 Iraqis on Monday in carnage that recalled the levels of violence before the American troop buildup last year. The Baghdad bombing occurred at a police training academy on the eastern side of the Tigris just as students were leaving their lectures for lunch. As they streamed out the gate, a car dropped off a young man - most witnesses say he looked to be 16 or 17 - who walked into the crowd and detonated his suicide vest, according to witnesses. Moments later the car he had arrived in, which had been parked down the road, exploded. At least 15 people were killed in the explosions, the Iraqi Interior Ministry reported.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-02:/articles/show/169984 2008-12-02T00:06:36Z

The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) was the largest American Muslim charity until the Bush administration falsely declared it an enemy of the state and shut it down. On December 4, 2001, the Treasury Department declared HLF a terrorist group, froze its assets, and falsely claimed they were being used to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas. HLF appealed at the time but in court was denied. On January 25, 1995, Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12947 - Prohibiting Transactions With Terrorists Who Threaten To Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process. The same year Hamas was declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). It's still one today, so any individual or group charged with providing it material support (true or false) becomes a convenient target for prosecution. Post-9/11, many have been, and HLF is one. For the Department of Justice (DOJ), a big one because of their prominent charitable activities. Shut it down and chill out all others while at the same time providing open-ended billions for Israeli state terrorism as a partner in its commission.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-01:/articles/show/169983 2008-12-01T22:50:37Z

I write to you from a US federal prison. It is far from a country club or even a regimental health spa. I work quite hard but fulfillingly, teaching English and the history of the United States to some of my co-residents. There is practically unlimited access to e-mails and the media and plenty of time for visitors.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-01:/articles/show/165468 2008-12-01T21:54:05Z

Editor's note: This review is of the revised second edition of Laura Knight-Jadczyk's High Strangeness. It includes new material, a new foreword, and is now available from QFGPublishing.com, RedPillPress.com, and RedPillPress.co.uk! It's sad but true that most people don't like inconvenient realities to upset their pleasant illusions and prejudices. I see this all the time in my own daily interactions with people. Once someone reaches a point in his or her life when they feel they "understand" the world well enough - often around the age of thirty - they spend the rest of their life filling in the blanks of what they think they already know. It's a tendency that usually becomes more extreme over time. Ideas and worldviews seem to harden in tandem with the arteries. The friends people make, television shows they watch, the internet sites they visit - the very world they create for themselves - all of these usually support the circumscribed worldview they themselves have adopted. Obviously, it's the same with books. It's a rare book that has the ability to truly change one's mind about the world. Rarest of all are those gems with the ability to change one's life. Laura Knight-Jadczyk's The High Strangeness of Dimensions, Densities, and the Process of Alien Abduction is such a book.

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-01:/articles/show/169982 2008-12-01T19:08:44Z

The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said. The credit card is the second key source of consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted. "In other words, we expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent."

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-01:/articles/show/169981 2008-12-01T18:55:39Z

We continue our look at mainstream coverage of the Mumbai attacks: Michael Evans of the Times: The group that claimed to be behind last night's attacks on Bombay -- the Deccan Mujahideen - has not hitherto been heard of in India, let alone in the outside world. Boston Globe: An e-mail message to Indian media outlets taking responsibility for the attacks said the militants were from a group called Deccan Mujahedeen. The word "Deccan" refers to a plateau in southern India, and "Mujahedeen" refers to holy warriors. Almost universally, analysts and intelligence officials said that name was unknown. Deccan is a neighborhood of the Indian city of Hyderabad. The word also describes the middle and south of India, which is dominated by the Deccan Plateau. But the combination of the two words, said Gohel, is a "front name. This group is nonexistent." "It's even unclear whether it's a real group or not," said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the author of the book "Inside Terrorism."

tag:www.sott.net,2008-12-01:/articles/show/169980 2008-12-01T18:55:02Z

Coordinated Terror Attacks Here are some brief snippets from more-or-less randomly selected mainstream news reports pertaining to the Mumbai attacks. I have added the emphasis. New York Times: Coordinated terrorist attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India's commercial capital, on Wednesday night, killing dozens in machine-gun and grenade assaults on at least two five-star hotels, the city's largest train station, a Jewish center, a movie theater and a hospital. The NYT has a map showing where the attacks took place -- 13 locations in all. Who Was Caught By Surprise? Michael Evans of the [UK] Times: British security and intelligence sources said there had been increasing concern, particularly in the United States, that a "terrorist spectacular" was on the cards. [...] The Americans have been expecting an atrocity partly because of the recent CIA success in eliminating figures in al-Qaeda, using Predator unmanned drones, firing Hellfire missiles at hideouts in the tribal regions of Pakistan. About a dozen al-Qaeda figures have been killed this year.