Signs of the Times News for Sat, 16 Oct 2010

SOTT Focus / Best of the Web

SOTT Focus: The War On Terror is a Fraud

Paul Craig Roberts
Sott.net
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:31 CDT

Does anyone remember the "cakewalk war" that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?

Are Americans aware that the same neoconservatives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington?

L. Wolfe
Veterans Today
Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:58 CDT

Some 12 years ago, this news service published a report on the 1930s fascist coup plot against the Franklin D. Roosevelt government, led by a Morgan-centered cabal of powerful financial interests; the coup would have replaced FDR with a puppet government whose policies would be controlled by a cabal of wealthy financial plutocrats. As the report made clear, the intention of the conspirators was to use the anarchy and chaos produced by the coup, to eliminate for all time the threat to their power represented by the U.S. Presidency and U.S. Constitution.

Today, we are faced with the same intention by the heirs of that cabal of fascist bankers, who now control most of the Executive branch of the U.S. government and who have, through their agents such as Felix Rohatyn, attempted to emasculate the Democratic opposition. They now seek to impose a fascist government that Democratic leader Lyndon LaRouche has warned would be "Schacht without Hitler" - a brutal austerity government without the overt "messy" characteristics of the Hitler regime.[1]

In the intervening dozen years, our research has more accurately located the Morgan coup plot as part of the broader push for a fascist world order, as promoted by the Nazi-supporting, Synarchist networks of this cabal. The destruction of the U.S. constitutional system was a critical feature of this push for fascism.

Their efforts came close to succeeding and might have, had it not been for the courage of America's then-most decorated officer, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, and the extraordinary political leadership of FDR himself. While Butler exposed the plot, FDR and his allies waged war against the power of the private investment banks that sponsored fascism at home and abroad, seeking to curb their power, and placing the sovereign power of the U.S. government and Constitution over them. In asserting that all economic policy must serve the constitutionally mandated principle of the General Welfare, FDR put the nation on a pathway out of the chaos and pessimism that served as the breeding grounds for fascist coup plotters. while laying the economic and moral foundation for the direct military battle with the bankers' fascist golem in Europe in World War II.

Best of the Web: How CNN was Taken Over by the Neocons and Zionists

Redacted News
Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:59 CDT

The demise of CNN and its hostile takeover by neo-conservatives who turned CNN News into an echo chamber for Israel supporters and neocons and Headline News into a tabloidish concoction of crap news was brought about by a concerted effort by Time Warner executives to embarrass CNN founder Ted Turner and force him out of the corporate leadership, according to informed sources in Atlanta who spoke to WMR.

Ted Turner made his professionally-fatal mistake of merging CNN with Time Warner in 1996. Turner resigned as vice chairman of the merged AOL Time Warner in 2003. Turner lost some $7 billion in stock after the merger in 1996 but his financial losses would soon grow larger.

In 1998, Time Warner, according to our Atlanta sources, convinced CNN to run a story about Operation Tailwind, a covert U.S. military and South Vietnamese Montagnard incursion into Laos from September 11 to 13, 1970, that was designed to put pressure on North Vietnamese troops during a Laotian Army offensive. CNN ran a "Newstand CNN & Time" story called "Valley of Death." The piece was narrated by CNN correspondent Peter Arnett with lead CNN producer being April Oliver. The investigation was conducted in cooperation with Time magazine. CNN reported that US forces used sarin gas in Laos between 9/11 and 9/13, 1970. CNN also reported that 100 Laotian villagers were killed by a US sarin gas attack.

SOTT Editors
Sott.net
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:26 CDT

Readers may have noticed the recent spike in references to UFO, extraterrestrial and exopolitical topics across the mainstream media. The rumour mill has been put into overdrive as fake 'events' whip up hysteria through newspaper articles and TV programs. Are the Powers That Be preparing people for 'disclosure'? Watch this BBC advertisement for a very thinly disguised message from our "space brothers":

Best of the Web: Chile's Ghosts Are Not Being Rescued

John Pilger
Truthout.org
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:50 CDT

The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a facade.

The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and is the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile's gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile's privatized mines. The San Jose mine, where the trapped men work, became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed - but not for long. On 30 July last, a labor department report warned again of "serious safety deficiencies," but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed.

For all the media circus at the rescue site, contemporary Chile is a country of the unspoken. At the Villa Grimaldi, in the suburbs of the capital Santiago, a sign says: "The forgotten past is full of memory." This was the torture center where hundreds of people were murdered and disappeared for opposing the fascism that General Pinochet and his business allies brought to Chile. Its ghostly presence is overseen by the beauty of the Andes, and the man who unlocks the gate used to live nearby and remembers the screams.

I was taken there one wintry morning in 2006 by Sara De Witt, who was imprisoned as a student activist and now lives in London. She was electrocuted and beaten, yet survived. Later, we drove to the home of Salvador Allende, the great democrat and reformer who perished when Pinochet seized power on 11 September 1973 - Latin America's own 9/11. His house is a silent white building without a sign or a plaque.

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"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

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"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

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