Global warming: Reasons why it might not actually exist

Daily Telegraph
December 31, 2008

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved, according to the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker. Sceptics have long argued that there are other explanations for climate change other than man-made CO2 and here we look at some of the arguments put forward by those who believe that global warming is all a hoax.

Temperatures are falling, not rising

As Christopher Booker says in his review of 2008, temperatures have been dropping in a wholly unpredicted way over the past year. Last winter, the northern hemisphere saw its greatest snow cover since 1966, which in the northern US states and Canada was dubbed the "winter from hell". This winter looks set to be even worse.

The earth was hotter 1,000 years ago

Evidence from all over the world indicates that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today. Research shows that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s.

The earth’s surface temperature is not at record levels

According to Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis of surface air temperature measurements, the meteorological December 2007 to November 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. Their data has also shown that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s.

Ice is not disappearing

Arctic website Crysophere Today reported that Arctic ice volume was 500,000 sq km greater than this time last year. Additionally, Antarctic sea-ice this year reached its highest level since satellite records began in 1979. Polar bear numbers are also at record levels.

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Stock Market Forecast and Strategy for 2009

by Mike Swanson

Global Research, December 31, 2008

WallStreetWindow This is the time of year where everyone gives out stock market forecasts and this year in particular they are all over the map. David Bianco of UBS AG is calling for a 53% rally for the S&P 500 in 2009. He claims that the first "signs of a dawn of confidence" will cause a total surge in stock prices thanks to cheap valuations and Fed intervention. On the other hand regular CNBC talking head Vince Farrell thinks that "the stock market will take its time forming a bottom - at best. Damage like we have seen takes months to repair." I'm not going to go out on a limb here and make a guess of how high or how low the stock market is going to go. I just don't see that as a productive game and really know one can know that. I have a plan on how I plan to navigate the market this coming year and an assumption on exactly what the market is going to do is not a factor in my plan. The most important thing you need to do to make money in the stock market is simple - align yourself with the primary trend of the market. That means recognizing what the current trend of the market is, knowing when it changes, and then making the proper adjustments when it does change. It sounds easy, but if 2008 taught us anything it is that very few people do this. Not only did the public get crushed in a bear market they didn't foresee, but so did thousands of mutual fund and hedge fund managers. Most brokers and investment advisor sat like a deer in headlights as the market went lower too. The professionals turned out to be no better than the amateurs, and in some cases they turned out to be total crooks. The person who recognized the reality of the bear market for what it was and then took the appropriate investment stance was the rare bird. In fact most people actually tried to fight reality and come up with wild rationalizations to justify doing so. In the beginning of the year just about everyone thought Bernanke was going to save us, or simply couldn't believe anymore banks could go broke after Bear Stearns did. Those thinking that ignored the crime of Level III assets which meant that most banks were bankrupt. I know Level III isn't a crime but it should have been. Thank you SEC and the lobbyists who bought the politicians sitting on the banking committee. In the summer as the market rallied a popular theory held that the market would blast off once oil prices dropped. And then in the Fall many held on to the belief that Hank Paulson's bailout would save the market. After it passed the market crashed anyway. Now most people expect a big rally, because the market has simply fallen so much. In all of this talk we have seen in this past year what most of it consisted of was ignoring the big negative trend staring all of us in the face. The market was in a bear market and most people just sat on their hands as it ate their money away. They were too scared to sale, because they feared that if they sold the market would go up without them and make their neighbors rich. If they would have focused on the big trends of the charts they would not have made this mistake. In 2008 the stock market consistently made lower lows and lower highs as every single rally peaked at a lower level than the previous one and then led to a nasty correction. All of this of course happened with the major market averages below their long-term 150 and 200-day moving averages in a classic stage four bear market decline. If 2008 was the year of the bear market then 2007 marked a transition period out of the cyclical bull market that began in 2003 and into last year's bear market. Most sectors and stocks went into a bear market way before the broad market averages did in 2007. As you can see from the above chart the NYSE advance/decline line peaked out over six months ahead of the DOW and S&P 500 top in October 2007. The individual sectors themselves were actually even worse. Between October 2007 and December 2007 I wrote articles warning people that a full blown bear market was upon us and that they had to do whatever they needed to do to adjust to that reality. In December 2007 I said in an article, "the Worden Brothers TC2007 software breaks the market up into 239 sectors. Since January 1st until today, 110 out of 239 sectors are underperforming the market. Eighty-seven sectors are in the red, despite the S&P 500 still having a gain for the year. Most of these sectors are so far below their 150-day moving averages that those moving averages are already sloping down. In other words 36% of the stock market is already in a bear market." The transition from bull to bear had been completed. My point in this isn't to show how I was right in December of 2007, but to show that we are in a similar moment right now. It was clear a year ago that we were in a new bear market and to make money in 2008 would require a new set of tactics. Now it isn't clear that we are in a bull market now - hardly - but 2009 is going to be different than 2008 and will require new ideas and strategies that we didn't use in 2008 to make money. I see 2009 to be similar to what we saw in 2007 in the sense that it will be a period of transition. This time though we will see a stage one transition phase between a bear and bull market. In 2007 most stocks peaked out ahead of the market and went into bear markets before the market averages did. Right now it is obvious to everyone that we have had a brutal bear market. What happens after a bear market though isn't so obvious to those that obsess over mutual fund holdings, CNBC, or myopically focus on the market averages - which has actually been an important thing to do this year. A stage one transition phase can last anywhere from 3 to 12 months once it gets started. During the transition phase though most sectors firm up ahead of the broad market averages and a few actually enter bull markets of their own. This causes the NYSE advance/decline line to create a positive divergence from the broad market averages as the consolidation period nears its end. For instance after the 2002 bear market bottom the three major market averages entered a nine month stage one consolidation phase that paved the way for a new bull market. However, the NYSE advance/decline broke away from the averages to create a positive divergence about halfway through the phase. When you broke down the sectors many sectors had actually began their consolidation phases ahead of the averages and began bull markets of their own ahead of the market too. Just like when the sector action and advance/decline line warned that we were witnessing a transition period between bull and bear in 2007 the action said a bull market was ahead in 2002 and early 2003. I expect the same thing to happen again. For the past year I have really focused on the market averages, my best trades being taking short positions against them a few times in 2008. It will still be important to pay attention to them over the next few months, but the important thing to watch in 2009 will be the sector rotation and advance/decline line. I see 2009 to shake up to be a year of transition much like the nine month consolidation period in 2002. As this transition period ends there will be a few sectors that enter bull markets of their own ahead of the broad market. This is where the money will be made in 2009 - not by trying to guess the bottom of the S&P 500 and just throwing money at it - but by carefully looking at the individual sectors of the market and buying into them as they enter bull markets of their own. And when it comes to bull markets I prefer to buy individual stocks rather than just ETF's. The big money is being made by buying the best stocks that are in the best sectors just as they begin new bull markets. This is what we have to look forward to in 2009. However, right now it is not clear yet that we have actually seen the final bear market low. For one thing when I look at the sectors only a few have clearly gone through a quarter of their stage one consolidation phase. Most sectors made new lows in November and have simply rallied the past few weeks on low volume. They could simply have had another bear market rally. If they did bottom they have not based above that bottom enough in regards to time to be able to say with certainty that they are going through a stage one consolidation phase. There is only one sector that looks like it has the potential to go into a new bull market in the coming quarter and that is the airline sector. It is the ONLY sector that appears to be approaching the end of a stage one consolidation phase. I see only a few other sectors that appear to be halfway through their consolidation period - mainly regional banks and some construction related stocks - but as a whole it is not clear that most sectors have even begun their consolidation periods. Over half the sectors will be near the end of consolidation phases as we approach the beginning of the next bull market. There is only one in this position now. That means we are not about to start a new bull market - not yet. In other words the broad market has not even begun its stage one consolidation phase yet. That means that we must assume from a risk/reward stand point that the bear market is not over. Buying based on the assumption that it is the bottom, because it must be is not a good idea. Many people thought the bear market ended in March and July because it fell a lot then too and they were wrong. Lower prices is not enough to just assume the bear is over. At best the market is just beginning a stage one consolidation phase. At worse this is just another bear market rally like we saw in May and August that will lead to lower prices. There is no way to know for such which is the case. What we do know for sure is that this rally is not the start of a new bull market and that we are going to go through a period of transition before the next bull market begins - and we haven't even gone through that process yet. That means it is coming, and will almost certainly start in 2009. I am trying to boil down to you what we KNOW for sure about the market. Instead of giving you predictions and guesses on the market and speculations on what the economy is likely to do or what I think it should do I want you to KNOW what the trend of the market is and what you can expect. I want to stick with facts and make conclusions based on pure logic in this article. This is the key to making money - aligning yourself with the dominant market trend and then adjusting to changes in that trend when they occur. In 2008 that meant shorting rallies. Once the market goes into a transition phase new strategies will be needed. Towards the end of the transition phase you will want to buy the strongest stocks in the strongest sectors poised to go into new bull markets. Buy the right stocks at the right time and you will double your money. That's what you do towards the end of a consolidation phase. You buy and you buy big. We aren't at that point yet. Until we get to that point the market averages will have a down and then sideways bias. Once this rally ends the next move may be to new lows. Even if the consolidation period is beginning you can still get new lows. That is what happened in 2002. And in 2007 when the bull market was nearing an end even though most sectors were entering bear markets of their own ahead of the averages the averages had one last hurrah in October 2007. Everyone who didn't watch the sectors and just watched the averages got their head handed to them as a result. Now during transition phases the markets trade in a trading range, in which the market tends to top out at a defined resistance point and then trade down to form a new support level. If the market bottomed in November that topping point would most likely be in the 1,000 - 1,050 area of the S&P 500. For me the easiest way to make money in bear markets and in the first 1/2 of a stage one consolidation phase is to short the rallies when they come to an end. Going forward for 2009 then the best way I see to make money will be to short the market averages once/if the S&P 500 rallies above the 1,000 level. If this rally continues into the first week of January I'd expect it to come to an end by mid-February at the latest. If we get in on the short side then cover and take profits on a move back down near the November low. Then sit back and see how the sectors evolve. If they still don't perk up short the next rally. If more of them get into bullish configurations then do the research on individual stocks and companies with a plan to buy in big. If the bear market is over then on a retest we'll start to see some sectors stop falling with the market averages and a positive divergence begin to firm in the NYSE advance/decline line. That will be a sign that we need to shift our attention to buying individual stocks in the best sectors to prepare for a new bull market. What I am describing to you is a major shift in strategy - not to happen right at this exact moment, but at some point next year as it becomes clear we are in a transition phase. This is the best strategy I know to not only make a lot of money, but do so safely by buying at the right time, because it adjusts to a transition phase. Of course this philosophy means you will not buy on the exact bottom of the bear market. But I don't care about that. I want to buy into the best stocks in the best sectors and then watch them immediately enter bull markets and make me a lot of money. Who cares about trying to guess the exact bottom when I can double my money without much worry at all. I don't like to buy and pray. That's a game for mutual fund managers who obsess over index benchmarking and are more interested in making sure they stay in pace with benchmarks than they do in making a lot of money and the general public who don't know what they are doing. Neither of these groups of investors though adjust at all to changing market conditions. That's why they just sat there and got wiped out in 2008 and really won't fully take advantage of the opportunities that will come in 2009. Yes the bear market may have another leg to it once this rally ends. I know the economy is bad and is likely to get worse. Next year may turn out to be the worst year of our lives when it comes to the economy. But even if that is the case I still expect the stock market to begin this transition and that will mean some of the best opportunities to make money in the market are ahead of us in 2009. It will be an exciting year for us when it comes to the stock market. When a market has one of the worst bear markets ever there are great opportunities that line up. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter for more in depth analysis of the financial markets with a discussion of individual stocks. To subscribe click here.

Israel’s Lie Machine is Working Flat Out

by Stuart Littlewood

Global Research, December 31, 2008

Middle East Online

The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim, notes Stuart Littlewood.

While the murderous assault on Gaza continues, I notice there's a briefing document on the website of the Israeli Embassy in London which has a lie in every line. The West's mainstream media repeat them, and even the most senior TV and radio interviewers don’t bother to challenge them.

The document is a transcript of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's statement to the Israeli press dated 27 December 2008 – a day that will live in infamy. It is a perfect example of the falsehoods used to dupe not only us westerners but Israel’s own people. The statement shows how the regime's view of itself is constructed on a web of dishonesty and self-delusion.

For example:

- "Israeli citizens have been under the threat of daily attack from Gaza for years."

Palestinians have been under harsh Israeli occupation for 60 years.

- "Only this week hundreds of missiles and mortars shells were fired at Israeli civilian communities."

Only one in 500 Qassam rockets causes a fatality. How many thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, rockets, grenades and tank-shells have been blasted into the crowded city and towns of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s high-tech weaponry?

- "Until now we have shown restraint. But today there is no other option than a military operation."

The only legitimate option for Israel is to end the occupation and withdraw behind its 1967 border, as required under international law and UN resolution. Israel has been killing Palestinians at the rate of 8 to 1 since 2000, and children at the rate of nearly 12 to 1 (B’Tselem figures). This is somebody’s idea of restraint?

- "We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza."

Self defence is not a right exclusive to Israel. Palestinians have an equal right to protect their citizens from the terror tactics of Israel.

- "Israel left Gaza in order to create an opportunity for peace."

Israel never left Gaza. It still occupies Gaza's airspace and coastal waters and controls all entrances and exits.

- "In return, the Hamas terror organization took control of Gaza and is using its citizens as cover while it deliberately targets Israeli communities and denies any chance for peace."

Hamas was voted into power as the legitimate government of Palestine. Israel chose not to accept the people's choice, which amounted to a denial of their human rights, and immediately set about obliterating it.

- "We have tried everything to reach calm without using force. We agreed to a truce through Egypt that was violated by Hamas, which continued to target Israel, hold Gilad Shalit and build up its arms."

Try talking. The Israelis' ongoing siege and economic blockade, begun shortly after Hamas was elected early in 2006, was never going to generate calm. And why is Shalit considered more important than the 9,000 Palestinians abducted and held prisoner by Israel? As soon as a Hamas government was formed Israeli troops arrested 8 Hamas ministers and 20 other parliamentarians, making the work of government impossible.

- "Israel continues to act to prevent humanitarian crisis and to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians."

Every agency operating in Gaza has warned of the deepening humanitarian crisis and protested about the starvation and suffering, especially of children many of whom show evidence of stunted growth.

- "The responsibility for harm to civilians lies with Hamas."

Not according to the Fourth Geneva Convention.

- "Hamas is a terrorist organization, supported by Iran, that does not represent the legitimate national interests of the Palestinian people but a radical Islamist agenda that seeks to deny peace for the peoples of this region."

Hamas was the popular choice of Palestinians at the last election. It is entitled under international law to take up arms against an illegal occupier and invader. If it is supported by Iran, so what? Israel receives mega-support from the US. When it comes to terror, it is Israel's conduct which fits the US definition of terrorism so perfectly - see Bush's Executive Order 13224, Section 3 - http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.pdf

- "While confronting Hamas, Israel continues to believe in the two State solution and remains committed to negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the context of the peace process, launched at Annapolis."

Israel is busy establishing irreversible facts on the ground that make a viable Palestinian state impossible. As everyone knows, the regime has reneged on the peace process and carries on building illegal settlements and the illegal Wall, and demolishing Palestinian homes. Months ago Hamas accepted a Palestinian state based on internationally recognized (pre-1967) borders, in accordance with UN resolutions, with full sovereignty and its capital in Jerusalem, but this has been ignored. Hamas also offered a 10-year truce, also ignored. Earlier, Arafat and the PLO recognized the State of Israel in the Oslo agreement but what good did it do? Today’s US-backed, Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is not representative of the Palestinian people.

- "Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co existence to determine the agenda of this region."

Israel, next to the US, is the biggest purveyor of terror in the region and only advances its own interests. It may get the support of Israel lobby stooges in other western governments but is rapidly earning the contempt of everybody else.

From a statement dated 22 December 2008:

- "Hamas, backed by Iran, has regularly stated its desire to see the complete destruction of Israel."

Israel is itself a leading destroyer and currently engaged in trying to wipe out Hamas and the Gazans. Iran’s Ahmadinajad quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - fair comment considering Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, was designated an 'international city' under the UN Partition Plan. Israeli propaganda twisted the Iranian’s words to read “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Zionist sources and the manifestos of Israeli political parties have made it clear for a long time that Israel plans to wipe Palestine off the map, and every act and lie is directed towards that end.

- "Our fight is not with the people of Gaza; it is with the extremists of Hamas."

Then why does the Israeli navy harass and fire on peaceable Gazan fishermen who are well within their own territorial waters? Why does Israel prevent Palestinian students from taking up places at foreign universities and block hospital spares, medicines, foodstuffs and foreign medics from entering Gaza? Why has the Israeli navy just rammed a mercy vessel in international waters taking doctors and medicines to Gaza? Latest air-strikes have hit the Islamic University and the ministry of education. These are direct attacks on Gazan civil society and its infrastructure.

- "Hamas started this conflict, and it bears responsibility for any harm to civilians on either side."

The conflict, started by Jewish terrorists, has been going on for 60 years, decades before Hamas came into being.

- "Israel’s only responsibility is to protect Israeli citizens."

As the occupying power Israel has a duty to see that the people of the occupied territories come to no harm.

- "Just as Israel seeks to defend its civilian population, Hamas seeks to kill them."

This reads far better the other way round: “Just as Hamas seeks to defend its civilian population, Israel seeks to kill them.”

- "Rocket attacks have continued for years and are now a daily occurrence. How long does the international community expect Israel will wait before defending itself against them?"

The rocket attacks will end when Israel ends the occupation and stops terrorizing its neighbours.

- "In the south of Israel, Israeli citizens live with air raid sirens sounding every day - sometimes every hour. Their situation is intolerable."

Not half as intolerable as it is for the Gazans, who live in constant fear of air raids and re-invasion and are constantly under surveillance by armed drones which can fire missiles under computer control from an armchair in Israeli headquarters.

- "For years, the international community has turned a blind eye to this onslaught. Only when Israel seeks to stop the rockets do they take notice."

For years the international community has turned a blind eye to Israel's violations of international law and human rights, which is why the problem remains unsolved.

- "Hamas is not only the enemy of Israel - it is the enemy of every Palestinian who believes in peace."

Israelis just can’t come to terms with the Palestinians' democratic choice and are bent on obliterating it.

- "It is Hamas' attacks - not Israel's reactions - that destroy every opportunity we have for peace."

The world has managed to work out by now that Israel doesn't want peace until it has stolen all the land and water it needs to expand its racist state into a ‘Greater Israel’. It is well on the way to achieving this and won’t be thwarted.

- "Palestinian militants targeted by Israel are not just the enemies of the Israeli people; they are criminals under international law, and enemies of peace."

Israel is in no position to preach international law.

- "What is collective punishment? 'Collective punishment' is a city - schools, hospitals, homes - civilians being bombarded every single day by rockets and mortars."

Collective punishment is keeping a whole population bottled up under siege and blocking supplies and exports, smashing their infrastructure, wrecking their economy and starving their children. Trying to equate Sderot with what’s happening in the Gaza Strip is idiotic.

- "Today's Middle East is divided between extremists and pragmatists. Hamas, backed by Iran, belongs to the extremists, who must be defeated for the sake of the future of the Middle East.... Israel’s primary goal is peace."

Israel's primary goal is the expansion of Israel by making the occupation of the West Bank permanent and bringing the Gazans to their knees.

The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim. As the official statements (above) show, the strategy is to frame and define the situation in Israel’s own terms regardless of the truth. It uses advanced propaganda skills, and the elaborate Israel lobby network, to persuade western politicians and media to accept Israel’s version of events (and even use Israel’s biased language) and not question its motives.

In political PR terms it works wonderfully well. The loony leaders of my own government happily spread the poison and don’t seem interested in halting Israeli aggression and the vaporizing, dismembering and crushing of Gaza’s population. In human PR terms it is a disaster.

I have been listening to the BBC’s senior interviewers these last few days. None has had the gumption to ask Israeli spokesmen the only question that matters – the ‘killer’ question on which hangs the key to peace: WHEN IS ISRAEL GOING TO END ITS OCCUPATION AND RETURN TO THE PALESTINIANS THEIR LANDS AND FREEDOM?

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

Georgia: Renewed Military Buildup?

Global Research, December 30, 2008

Russia Today

Georgia is moving tanks and armoured vehicles closer to the border with South Ossetia, the republic’s government said on Monday.

"According to intelligence that is coming in, Georgia has moved 28 tanks into the city of Gori, where a tank battalion is deployed. Moreover, Cobra armoured personnel carriers have been detected in the village of Nikozi in the immediate vicinity of the Republic of South Ossetia’s borders," the press release said.

Provided the reports are true the situation resembles what one could witness in the days running up to August 7, when Georgia attacked South Ossetia in an attempt to regain control over the republic. South Ossetia, along with Abkhazia, broke away in the early 1990s. 

Meanwhile, the senior Georgian police official has denied allegations by the South Ossetian Defense Ministry that Georgia had reinforced a tank battalion allegedly deployed in Gori.

"This is untrue information as apartment blocks are being built currently on the deployment site of the former tank battalion in the city of Gori," says local police chief Vladimir Jugeli.

"As for the Cobra police vehicles, it is true that such vehicles have been patrolling the vicinity of police posts in the region of Tskhinval, and all the conflict parties were notified about them a long time ago," Jugeli said.

It is not only South Ossetia’s government that has voiced its anxiety over the situation in the region. Last Friday the EU Monitoring Mission said it was concerned over the deployment by Georgia of armoured vehicles in areas close to the South Ossetian and Abkhazian borders.

Understanding the Crisis in Zimbabwe

Cynicism as a substitute for scholarship

by Stephen Gowans

Mahmood Mamdani’s largely sympathetic analysis of the Mugabe government, “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” published in the December 4, 2008 London Review of Books, has been met with a spate of replies from progressive scholars who are incensed at the Ugandan academic throwing out the rule book to present an argument based on rigor and analysis, rather than on the accustomed elaboration of comfortable slogans and prejudices that has marked much progressive scholarship on Zimbabwe.  Their criticism of Mamdani has been characterized by ad hominem assaults, arguments that either lack substance or sense, and the substitution of cynicism for scholarship.

At the heart of what might be called the anti-Mugabe ideology lays the idea that the Zimbabwean leadership clings to power through crude anti-imperialist rhetoric used to divert blame for problems of its own making.  This is an elaboration of elite theory -- the idea that a small group seeks power for power’s sake, and manipulates the public through lies and rhetoric to stay on top.  For example, one group of progressive scholars [1] complains about “Mugabe’s rhetoric of imperialist victimization,” while Horace Campbell argues that,

”The Zimbabwe government is very aware of the anti-imperialist and anti-racist sentiments among oppressed peoples and thus has deployed a range of propagandists inside and outside the country in a bid to link every problem in Zimbabwe to international sanctions by the EU and USA.” [2]

Contrary to the empty rhetoric school of thought, Mugabe’s anti-imperialist rhetoric is not unattended by anti-imperialist action, but in some extreme versions of anti-Mugabe thought, (for example, that put forward by Patrick Bond), Mugabe is an errand boy for Western capital. [3] The Zimbabwean leader’s anti-imperialist reputation is, according to this view, smoke and mirrors, an illusion conjured by a deft magician.

The Mugabe government’s anti-imperialist and anti-neo-colonial credentials rest on the following:

o    In the late 1990s, intervening militarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the side of the young government of Laurent Kabila, to counter an invasion by Rwandan and Ugandan forces backed by the US and Britain.

o    Rejecting a pro-foreign investment economic restructuring program established by the IMF as a condition for balance of payment support (after initially accepting it.)

o    Expropriating farms owned by settlers of European origin as part of a program of land redistribution aimed at benefiting the historically disadvantaged African population.

o    Establishing foreign investment controls and other measures to increase black Zimbabwean ownership of the country’s natural resources and enterprises.

(read full article)

Slaughter in Gaza: Another Chapter in the Global Elite Master Plan

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars 
Tuesday, Dec 30, 2008

Israel is using U.S. munitions against the Palestinians. From the Jerusalem Post:

The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.

The missile, called GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small-diameter bomb for low-cost, high-precision and low collateral damage strikes.

The claim that Israel is employing the bomb because it minimizes “collateral damage” is sadistically absurd, to say the least — the Gaza Strip is incontestably the most populated tract of land on earth and any munition, even a “smart” one, will undoubtedly cause “collateral damage.” The 1.3 million Palestinians living on the Gaza Strip are little more than fish in a barrel due to the fact Israel controls Gaza’s airspace, coast and most of its borders.

Israel received approval from Congress to purchase 1,000 units in September and defense officials said on Sunday that the first shipment had arrived earlier this month and was used successfully in penetrating underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza Strip during the heavy aerial bombardment of Hamas infrastructure on Saturday. It was also used in Sunday’s bombing of tunnels in Rafah.

Yaakov Katz, writing for the Jerusalem Post, fails to mention that the tunnels are also used to smuggle food and medicine, items the Israelis have blocked from entering Gaza. “Merchants invented the system,” writes Amira Hass. “The tunnels are not only for weapons and drugs, but for medicine, basic food commodities and cigarettes, at prices much more suitable for poverty-stricken Rafah. They are a way to break an economic siege. The weapons in the hands of the armed men of Rafah prove that the tunnels are not being used to smuggle sophisticated weapons. Nonetheless, the tunnels have turned into a scarecrow that justifies every strike at civilian lives and civilian property.”

On Sunday, head of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration Col. Moshe Levy was interviewed by several Arab news outlets during which he stressed that Israel was not against the Palestinian public in Gaza but was operating against Hamas.

It should be noted that Hamas claimed 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats in 2006, as the Washington Post reported at the time. Fatah won only 43 seats, mostly because many Palestinians realized the organization was heavily comprised, corrupt, and in league with Israeli intelligence and the CIA. Fatah’s relationship with the CIA became apparent last year when Fatah security compounds in Gaza were raided by Hamas — “they found huge supplies of American-made weaponry including 7,400 M-16 assault rifles, dozens of mounted machine guns, rocket launchers, seven armored military jeeps, 800,000 rounds of bullets and 18 US-made armored personnel carriers,” writes Mike Whitney, who cites Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily.

They also discovered something far more valuable — CIA files which purportedly contain “information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza.

“Fatah equals CIA is not a good selling point,” mused Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA operations officer. “Baer is right. The uncovering of the documents is ‘big trouble’ for Abbas who is already facing a loss of public confidence from his closeness to Israel and for his appointment of Salam Fayyad, the ex-World bank official who the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz calls ‘everyone’s favorite Palestinian,’” adds Whitney.

A “favorite Palestinian” for the globalists and banksters, not the Palestinian people.

The corporate media in the U.S. has bent over backwards to portray Hamas as the villain in the latest round of mass murder and carnage. In fact, Hamas has attempted to implement a ceasefire with Israel on numerous occasions. “Israel rejected a cease-fire offer from the Palestinian group Hamas as a humanitarian aid crisis erupting in the Gaza Strip threatened wider instability,” the Christian Science Monitor reported in April. “[The] Palestinian group offered to cease cross-border rocket attacks if Israel opens crossing points into Gaza and ends military incursions into the Palestinian territory,” Al Jazeera reported.

In fact, Israel is notorious for violating ceasefires. For instance, on June 19, 2008, Hamas and the Palestine Information Center accused the Israelis of violating an agreed upon ceasefirethree times on the first day of its implementation. “The Center reported that Israeli navy boats fired four shells at fishermen in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, while soldiers opened fire at farmers east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip,” the media center reported on its website. “Also, eyewitnesses reported that soldiers fired at farmers in Khuza’a town, near Khan Younis, and fired at a number of houses in AL Qarara town, east of the city.”

Israel fully exploited a Hamas declaration on December 19 to not renew the above ceasefire “because the Zionist enemy has failed to respect the conditions,” according to Joshua Lapide, reporting for Asia News. “The Israeli government blames Hamas for not stopping attacks often carried out by smaller Palestinian factions, while the Islamists claim Israel also broke the truce by failing to lift its blockade of the impoverished territory. Israel responded to a surge of violence in early November by tightening sanctions and closing crossing points with Gaza, halting deliveries of humanitarian aid and other supplies, basically transforming the Strip into one huge gulag.”

Jonathan Cook, writing for ZNet, details Israel’s brutal recruitment of Palestinian collaborators. “Recent reports in the Israeli media, for example, suggest that the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, far from reducing the opportunities for collaboration, may actually have increased them. The current siege of the Strip — in which Israel effectively governs all movement in and out of Gaza — has provided an ideal point of leverage for encouraging collusion… In the past 17 years alone, 150,000 Palestinians have been prosecuted by the military regime. According to the Israeli group Yesh Din, 95 per cent of these trials end in plea bargains, offering yet another chance to persuade a detainee to turn informant in return for a reduced sentence.”

Is it possible the above mentioned “smaller Palestinian factions” engaging in attacks are false flag groups unleashed to ensure an Israeli pretext – in fact, A New World Order pretext – for continued violence against the Palestinian people and make sure there is never an agreeable peace deal between the two?

In 2002, “Palestinian security forces … arrested a group of Palestinians for collaborating with Israel and posing as operatives of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported. “The arrests come two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon charged al-Qaeda militants were operating in Gaza and in Lebanon.” An anonymous Palestinian official told the newspaper the alleged collaborators sought to “discredit the Palestinian people, justify every Israeli crime and provide reasons to carry out a new (military) aggression in the Gaza Strip.”

As noted on December 22, the “less influential Islamic Jihad was behind most of the rocket attacks” on Israel, although Hamas has approved of such attacks.

Both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad were created by the Muslim Brotherhood, a documented CIA and British intelligence asset. “According to CIA agent Miles Copeland, the Americans began looking for a Muslim Billy Graham around 1955,” writes Said Aburish in his book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite. “When finding or creating a Muslim Billy Graham proved elusive, the CIA began to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim mass organization founded in Egypt but with followers throughout the Arab Middle East… This signaled the beginning of an alliance between the traditional regimes and mass Islamic movements against Nasser and other secular forces.”

It is also a documented fact that Israeli intelligence created Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO and Arab nationalism. Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO ,” Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, told UPI correspondent Richard Sale. “According to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928,” writes Sale (see Yossi Schwartz, Palestine: The origins of Hamas and its role today).

As Peter D. Goodgame details in The Globalists and the Islamists: Fomenting the “Clash of Civilizations” for a New World Order, the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and related manifestations are part of a larger plan on the part of the ruling elite to destabilize Muslim and Arab societies and thus curtail the “threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries,” as a leading Australian scientist suggested in a secret report to the Australian Defense Department in 1947.

Goodgame writes:

This explosion of violence throughout the Middle East in the late ’70s and early ’80s was referred to by Zbigniew Brzezinski as the “Arc of Crisis.” It was not something that occurred by chance, but was in fact the result of the deliberate plan developed by the Globalist strategists such as Dr. Alexander King, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and British operative Dr. Bernard Lewis. The Middle Eastern “Arc of Crisis” was not a spontaneous internal conflagration, it was something that came about as a result of Western policy in league with the Muslim Brotherhood. Without help from the West radical Islam would have remained the illegitimate, repressive minority movement that it has always been, and the Middle East would have remained stable and prosperous.

Israel undoubtedly has it own imperialistic and chauvinistic reasons for long brutalizing the Palestinians — as documented by Ralph Schoenman in his book The Hidden History of Zionism — but at the end of the day Israel is essentially a client state not so much under the control of the United States as the New World Order and the eugenicists of the global elite.

(On a side note: the ultimate creation of the state of Israel was a pet project of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Baron Edmond James (Avrahim Binyamin) de Rothschild (1845-1934) is the known as the “Father of the Settlement” (Avi ha-Yishuv). In 1982, Israel released a commemorative Independence Day coin bearing Rothschild’s likeness.)

Bush and Obama have deferred to this ongoing plan to victimize the Palestinians. Earlier today, the Bush administration placed the blame for Israelis bombing of the densely populated Gaza Strip — apparently including the use of GBU-39 missiles provided by the United States — squarely on Hamas (see the above video).

“Mr. Obama’s election has raised expectations, among allies and enemies alike, that new American policies are forthcoming, putting more pressure on him to signal more quickly what he intends to do. In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, Mr. Obama has not suggested he has any better ideas than President Bush had to resolve the existential conflict between the Israelis and Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza,” reports the New York Times.

Indeed, Obama has not “suggested he has any better ideas than President Bush” because both take orders from the global elite and do not actually formulate policies of their own. As for the “existential conflict” in the Occupied Territories, it is part of a larger Malthusian plan on the part of our eugenicist rulers, a plan spelled out well in advance by the United Nations, the Club of Rome, the Tavistock and Aspen Institutes.

NIST Report on WTC7 debunked and exposed

Youtube
Tuesday, Dec 30, 2008

9/11 Truth responds to NIST with HARD FACTS & Evidence!

Top 2008 Predictions! Ask an Analyst! You Get This!

The Coming Depression 
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008

Here are some of the worst predictions that were made about 2008. Savor them—a crop like this doesn’t come along every year. You wonder why so many have lost their savings? Keep listening to these people for future predictions and you will be in the soup lines. Unless you realize what is actually coming (A DEPRESSION) the sooner you will prepare for it and SURVIVE!

1. “A very powerful and durable rally is in the works. But it may need another couple of days to lift off. Hold the fort and keep the faith!” —Richard Band, editor, Profitable Investing Letter, Mar. 27, 2008

At the time of the prediction, the Dow Jones industrial average was at 12,300. By late December it was at 8,500.

2. AIG (AIG) “could have huge gains in the second quarter.” —Bijan Moazami, analyst, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, May 9, 2008

AIG wound up losing $5 billion in that quarter and $25 billion in the next. It was taken over in September by the U.S. government, which will spend or lend $150 billion to keep it afloat.

3. “I think this is a case where Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM) are fundamentally sound. They’re not in danger of going under…I think they are in good shape going forward.” —Barney Frank (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Committee chairman, July 14, 2008

Two months later, the government forced the mortgage giants into conservatorships and pledged to invest up to $100 billion in each.

4. “I’m not an economist but I do believe that we’re growing.” —President George W. Bush, in a July 15, 2008 press conference

Nope. Gross domestic product shrank at a 0.5% annual rate in the July-September quarter. On Dec. 1, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that a recession had begun in December 2007.

5. “I think Bob Steel’s the one guy I trust to turn this bank around, which is why I’ve told you on weakness to buy Wachovia.” —Jim Cramer, CNBC commentator, Mar. 11, 2008

Two weeks later, Wachovia came within hours of failure as depositors fled. Steel eventually agreed to a takeover by Wells Fargo. Wachovia shares lost half their value from Sept. 15 to Dec. 29.
6. “Existing-Home Sales to Trend Up in 2008″ —Headline of a National Association of Realtors press release, Dec. 9, 2007

On Dec. 23, 2008, the group said November sales were running at an annual rate of 4.5 million—down 11% from a year earlier—in the worst housing slump since the Depression.

7. “I think you’ll see [oil prices at] $150 a barrel by the end of the year” —T. Boone Pickens, June 20, 2008

Oil was then around $135 a barrel. By late December it was below $40.

8. “I expect there will be some failures. … I don’t anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.” —Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, Feb. 28, 2008

In September, Washington Mutual became the largest financial institution in U.S. history to fail. Citigroup (C) needed an even bigger rescue in November.

9. “In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules.” —Bernard Madoff, money manager, Oct. 20, 2007

About a year later, Madoff—who once headed the Nasdaq Stock Market—told investigators he had cost his investors $50 billion in an alleged Ponzi scheme.

10. “There’s growing evidence that parts of the debt markets…are coming back to life.” —Peter Coy and Mara Der Hovanesian, BusinessWeek, Oct. 1, 2007.

Oops.

Cynthia McKinney on CNN via YouTube - Speaks about USS Liberty

Youtube
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008

Mckinney tried to bring medical supplies to gaza.
The boat was in international waters as it got rammed by an israeli patrol boat.

Corporate Media Notices War College Report on Economic Crisis

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008

It took a while for them to come around, but the corporate media has finally taken note of the U.S. Army War College report predicting civil unrest due to the private bank engineered economic crisis now gearing up and threatening to kick into Mad Max mode.

From the El Paso Times:

A U.S. Army War College report warns an economic crisis in the United States could lead to massive civil unrest and the need to call on the military to restore order.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Nathan Freir wrote the report “Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development,” which the Army think tank in Carlisle, Pa., recently released.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities … to defend basic domestic order and human security,” the report said, in case of “unforeseen economic collapse,” “pervasive public health emergencies,” and “catastrophic natural and human disasters,” among other possible crises.

The report also suggests the new (Barack Obama) administration could face a “strategic shock” within the first eight months in office.

Read the rest of the story at the El Paso Times.

And there is Motley Fool CAPS, the website supposedly designed to help the little guy beat the market. Motley does a follow-up on the original corporate media story published by the Phoenix Business Journal and little covered beyond the blogosphere and alternative news websites like Infowars and Prison Planet. Raw Story and Newsmax also covered the story.

A CAPS blogger attempts to make a funny out of the situation, although it is no laughing matter:

This likely has been posted before…..sorry if you are reading it again. But with this being the Holidays and all, with some of us busy lighting candles, or partying with Santa, or whatever…..a few may have missed it.

I am not saying any of the above will happen…..simply the Pentagon now thinks it is a possibility and is making preparations for civil unrest. If the Pentagon thinks economic collapse is a relevant issue….should we at CAPs?????

Should we red thumb or green thumb in the event of an economic collapse??? Which symbols would you red and which would you green??? Just like the Pentagon, Alstry plays to win….regardless what comes our way.

CAUTION!!!!!!….for those of you that actually like the Constitution and its implications….contemplating the above can have serious adverse consequences on your mental well being and potentially your physical health. For immediate relief of emotional symptoms, my suggestion is try some prosecco with fresh pomegranete sprinkled thoughout….the bubbles causing the seeds to dance will make you smile…..drinking them will make you feel more relaxed….in moderation of course……you don’t want the cure to be worse than the disease…..otherwise you might be just like the Fed:)

Read the Motley Fool CAPS article.

Alex Jones has talked about martial law and a military dictatorship on his radio show and in his films for years. It now appears, with the release of the in-your-face War College report, at least a few corporate media outlets are beginning to pay attention, although Motley Fool and the El Paso Times are hardly the Washington Post or the New York Times.

But then it is the role of the corporate Mockingbird media to ignore the obvious and when confronted with the facts denounce those who speak the truth as nutty conspiracy theorists.

EPA ‘Cow Tax’ Could Charge $175 per Dairy Cow to Curb Greenhouse Gases

Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008

Call this one of the newest and innovative the ways your government has come up with to battle greenhouse gas emissions.

Indirectly it could be considered a cheeseburger tax, but one of the suggestions offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is to levy a tax on livestock.

The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas for not only greenhouse gas from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also “stationary” sources which would include livestock.

The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month.

“The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog,” the release said. “Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.”

Kate Galbraith, correspondent for The New York Times, noted on the Times’ “Green Inc.” blog that such a “proposal is far from being enacted” and that the “hysteria may be premature.”

But Rick Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, warned it’s certainly feasible – especially based on the rhetoric of President-elect Barack Obama and the use of the EPA to combat global warming. Such action by an Obama administration would take an act of Congress for livestock to be exempt.

“The new president has been on record as saying that he really supports regulating greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act,” Krause said to the Business & Media Institute. “So, we really have to keep an eye on it. Legislation would really be the only way to exempt it at this point – the cow tax.”

Krause said it is difficult to quantify the cost that might be passed directly to the consumer by farmers from the legislation, but predicted it would mean higher costs for dairy production.

“It’s hard to figure what it would do to consumer prices since farmers, unlike other industries, really can’t pass their cost along directly like utilities and things do,” “About the only thing we could realistically come up, in terms of any of this stuff – it would add between 7 and 8 cents per gallon of milk costs to farmers. So it would cost them 7 or 8 cents more to produce a gallon of milk.”

Even the Department of Agriculture warned the EPA that smaller farms and ranches would have difficulty with limits as much as 100 tons annually on emissions:

“If GHG emissions from agricultural sources are regulated under the CAA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of GHG emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.”

CIA, Mossad Infiltrated Muslim Organizations

Pakistan Daily
December 30, 2008

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israeli intelligence - Mossad - have infiltrated Muslim organizations like Hamas in Palestine, Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Indonesia, says an Indonesian intelligence expert.

“It is clear that the CIA and the Mossad have infiltrated such organizations and have done much more than that,” Sayed Abdullah, who operates an intelligence services firm in the Indonesian island of Maluku’s, told IslamOnline.net.

He asserted that the spy agencies “demonstrated their capacity to control these organizations with the murdering of two Hamas leaders in a month and that is enough to understand what they are up to.”

Abdelaziz Rantissi, Hamas new leader in the Gaza Strip, was assassinated late Saturday, April 17, in an Israeli air strike.

This came less than a month after an Israeli strike helicopter fired three missiles at 67-year-old wheelchair-bound Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin after performing the dawn prayers in a mosque near his home, killing him and at least eight others.

“It is obvious the CIA and the Mossad, assisted by the Australian Special Action Police (SAP) and the M15 of England, are all working towards undermining Muslim organizations in an attempt to weaken the Muslims globally,” he charged.

Sayed said that the assassination of Rantissi was planned and done with the intent to hurt the Palestinian resistance movement and the Palestinians.
He asserted that the Israelis would not have carried out such an act if they were not certain of the aftermath of this attack.

“They know, for a certain reason, that they have control of the Hamas now and they are now forcing the organization underground which will eventually make it difficult for the Hamas to press on with Intifada.

“The Hamas leaders must come to accept the fact that however sophisticated the weaponry, the enemy needs moles, spies from within the organization to undermine it and they can also rest assured that the enemy knows who the Hamas leader in Gaza is at this moment,” he said.
Several Hamas leaders have vehemently repudiated claims that the resistance movement has been successfully penetrated by the Israeli enemy.

They admitted, however, that Israeli moles remain a cancer eating away at the Palestinian body.
“It is difficult to believe but this is how it works for the enemies of the Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere. Their intelligence is working day and night to break down any resistance groups around the world, including those in Palestine and indeed in other Muslim countries too,” opined the Indonesian expert.

(Read full article)