Connecting the Dots: The War on People, Obama's No-Change and the Hardening of Right-Wing Israel

SOTT editors
SOTT.net
Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:30 UTC


© International Pub Co. 1911In the context of the global economic crisis, we are witnessing an important shift in the rhetoric of the media and the elite. Their warnings of riots and social upheaval seem to be implying that harder measures of control will be required; this way, the 'War on Terror' has served its purpose as a template for a 'War on People'.

Contrary to the expectations of its population, the new government of the United States is not moving away from the path set by the Bush administration; the changes so far have only been a matter of appearance.

The right-wing climate is also growing even stronger in Israel with Netanyahu's electoral victory. There are signs that Israel's aggressions towards its neighbors in Palestine and/or Iran will continue after the pause required by the formation of the new government.

All the political and economic turmoil takes place on a planet already experiencing bizarre climatic and cosmic phenomena.

Making it worse

It is now common knowledge that the global economy - including that of the United States - is in a sorry state. We hear about it in both the mainstream and alternative media. You have probably been reading our economic analyses too. However, the difference is that in many of the mainstream and alternative sources we find much alarmism, confusion and disinformation, and few attempts to analyze responsibly and objectively - which is what we humbly try to achieve here. We suspect that the dark tone of the reports in the media is a significant fact in itself, and here is why:

The media is not just a descriptor of events. It is also a powerful tool of manipulation. It is in fact, so powerful, that it can have a decisive role in the creation of explanations of reality that people rely on for their daily lives. The media is constantly used to shape our assumptions and to direct our focus of attention. People in power know it. If politicians find themselves in hot water because of revelations that harm their image they may try to create a larger issue out of a non-event in order to shift the spotlight elsewhere (see the movie Wag the Dog for an amusing caricature of how it works). Likewise, populist leaders and their allies in the media will seek to spread out the news about governmental deeds or policies that make them look honest, patriotic, strong, smart or capable. This is the general rule.


© Mr. FishTherefore, if a certain issue is a matter of concern and the language of the media and the elite tends to stress the negativity, we must ask why. Perhaps the question is even more important for economic issues, given that our capitalist model largely depends on the confidence of consumers, investors and financial speculators. What is said about the economy is a significant fact in itself, quite apart from the economic reality on the ground. If people in power were in agreement to bring the economy back to its pre-collapse state, we would be getting constant reassurances that even if things are a bit tough for the moment, the way back to prosperity is just around the corner thanks to the medicine that has been so well administered by our wise leaders.

In general that is not the message we are getting. So we need to ask where the alarmist and pessimistic atmosphere is leading us, and why.

Where? It is clear that it is leading us into a state of despair and confusion that will accelerate the economic dive.

Why? From what we have seen so far, we can think of two reasons: for the time being, to justify the bailouts that will save the pockets of the elite; and to hystericize the global society about the possibility of riots, looting, the collapse of the social fabric itself and even civil war.

The only sort of responses we have seen so far to the crisis are the infamous bailouts, which in short are hand-outs of cash to those most directly guilty of this mess (banks are the usual beneficiaries) and not to the people who need it most desperately. As an example, consider Barack Obama's plan to rescue homeowners.
Barack Obama turned his attention today to the origin of the economic collapse in the US and round the world; America's unstable housing market; and unveiled a plan to help millions of struggling homeowners.

Obama described the collapse of the housing market as "a crisis unlike any we've ever known" and proposed throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into a pot to help an estimated 9 million homeowners.

The cost to the federal government would be about $275bn (£193 bn), but could rise.
It sounds reasonable, does it not? But it is in fact not about helping the people themselves, but about helping the mortgage lenders - allegedly so that they will, in turn, be kinder to their customers.
His solution to the housing market collapse is to offer incentives and subsidies to mortgage companies to ease up on homeowners.
We suspect that if Obama actually tried to hand that money directly to the millions of homeowners in trouble while forcing mortgage companies to relax their terms he would be met with accusations of being a 'socialist' (as if the word automatically implied evil).

These multimillionaire bailouts have been ongoing to an obscene degree. Apart from them we have heard about irresponsible bankers being 'punished' by not receiving their usual handsome bonuses (poor chaps; will they make it through the year without that yacht?). But it is obvious that any apparent justice in the measures taken has been cosmetic. As Simon Davies and Don Hunt write, this "ritualized bashing of banker's bonuses" has been a distraction of the real issue: the systemic corruption of the predatory capitalist system. The bottom line of the governmental reaction to the crisis is the concentration of "even greater wealth in even fewer hands", to borrow Davies' and Hunt's words.

But why is it that we have been hearing more and more about riots and civil unrest lately? Why is the official discourse starting to sound like We the People are the Enemy?

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Remember those riots in Greece a couple of months ago. Remember that at the time the U.S. Army War College issued a report warning that "economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S." The report became public as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the director of the IMF, warned "of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets" if the financial crisis was not addressed adequately.


© Wikipedia
December 2008, Greece - Clockwise, from top left: riot police face protesters; police move in to contain rioting civilians; a protester defies police; burned-out vans; an abandoned barricade; and protesters retreat from tear gasAt the time we wondered if the Greek riots were not manipulated, to some extent, by agents provocateurs. Allow us to wonder again as we witness the beginning of revolts in Iceland, Latvia, South Korea, Greece, Paris and Guadeloupe. We are not saying that all of these demonstrations are fabricated; people do have genuine reasons to be angry, after all, and it is natural that they react. But the fact that the elite seems to be so well prepared - even eager - for that scenario, plus a few curious details here and there, give us pause to think. When we speak of 'details' we mean, for example, the deterioration of peaceful demonstrations into more violent forms of protest, which would justify tougher interventions by police.

Probably the most significant single piece of information of the month was the testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee of Washington's new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who warned that the economic crisis posed perhaps the gravest threat to stability and national security (fictitious al-Qaeda is no longer No. 1 on the charts, for a change!). He said that the situation could trigger a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s.
Adm. Blair warned the Senate that "roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown." He noted that the "bulk of anti-state demonstrations" internationally have been seen in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States. He told the senators that the collapse of the global financial system is "likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging market nations over the next year." He added that "much of Latin America, former Soviet Union states and sub-Saharan Africa lack sufficient cash reserves, access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanism."

"When those growth rates go down, my gut tells me that there are going to be problems coming out of that, and we're looking for that," he said. He referred to "statistical modeling" showing that "economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period."
Equally disturbing are the words of the head of the UK's Metropolitan police's public order branch, superintendent David Hartshorn, who told the Guardian that there are preparations under way for a "summer of rage" in the UK as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions. With a similar tone, Harvard author and financial crisis guru Niall Ferguson predicted in an interview to the Canadian media:
"There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable.
Add to the promotion of hysteria the broadcast of a recent bizarre Fox News show in which a panel that included former CIA and Army officers discussed the possibility of a "civil war" led by American "Bubba" militias against a "Marxist, Terrorist-sympathizing" and pro-welfare and illegal-immigration Obama. (No wonder people are confused!)







Ultimately, at least some of the above warnings and predictions appear to be meant as self-fulfilling prophecies. As Simon Davies eloquently stated recently:
[...] It seems to us that the immense confusion surrounding the economic crisis is a key to perceiving the Matrix. It seems to us that those that run the world, the Managers, are relying on this confusion to ensure that we take a particular path which is to their advantage. We think that the path they are sending us down is one of near total economic collapse resulting in the breakdown of the existing social order and the imposition of overt military dictatorship. That is the obvious end result of what they are doing and thus is their intent.

[...] It is obvious that in the US and the UK those that control the military, police and intelligence apparatus are seeking widespread conflict. They are simply preparing the popular mind for the violence that they themselves plan to unleash upon us. This violence will be used to justify dictatorship, civil repression, mass arrests and incarceration without trial.
It is a setup perpetrated against the entire planet's population.

Phase One consisted of a 'war on terror' discursively aimed against the Arab and Muslim worlds. It served the purpose of murdering masses of people in the Middle East and softening Western populations to accept totalitarian and draconian laws and policies.

Phase Two has begun with the global economic collapse. It serves the purpose of discursively targeting anyone who has been negatively affected by the crisis - that is 99% of the world population.

It is very convenient that they happened to get those instruments of repression and surveillance in place just in time for Phase Three, due in a "one to two year period", according to Dennis Blair. Gee, you would almost think they saw it coming.

In one sentence, we may be witnessing the shift from the War on Terror to the War on People.

Notice that this is either a most extraordinary coincidence of unfortunate events (we think not), or that everything has been carefully planned by skilled people in the higher echelons of the elite. Just prior to the US elections we wrote:
It cannot be stressed enough how significant it is that the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division (three to four thousand soldiers) has been deployed in the US this October - and just in time for the elections. This army unit was the first to storm Baghdad, by the way, so they know how to subdue crowds thanks to their experience with angry Iraqis.
It turned out that the deployment of U.S. troops was not related to the elections. Now it is becoming apparent that it was in preparation for the riots to come. Is it not interesting that this move was taking place at the same time as the economic collapse became official? If no one knew at the time how deep and hard the economy had been hit, how did they know that they would be requiring troops for crowd control in the near future? Oh yes, we forget. It is all an (un)fortunate coincidence, and when they finally ask us to move into a prison camp they will be very sorry.

Rob Kall is reporting the following:
I just spoke to a friend who knows someone who is trying to get out of the military because they are training returning troops for riot control to take over US cities and he doesn't want to be a soldier dealing with US citizens. On top of that, these returning Iraq vets are burned out and "fried" with PTSD and exhaustion. And he doesn't want to pick up arms against his own country.

This same source says the military is setting up a separate communication system. In the military, securing or taking out communications is one of the first steps. If you are an invader, you need to bring your own communication system because you have to assume that the existing system will be destroyed or compromised.
We do not have confirmation of the specific preparations of the military, but the information we have collected above makes Kall's remarks more than just a mere possibility.

Consider that if the events of the last eight years were planned, or more or less directed from above, this implies that the powers of finance, banking, the military and intelligence all converge at the top of the pyramid. What we usually recognize as political power is only the PR department, which explains why Obama is breaking hearts here and there - and not because of his looks.

Sorry, no change


© Mr. FishIt has been a month now. We are sorry to say that the more we get to know Obama, the more disillusioned we become. While he does seem concerned about keeping a good appearance, a closer look at his policies leaves much to be desired. Lets examine a few items.

Timothy Geithner, Obama's new Treasury Secretary, has been described by professor of political science David Michael Green as "a tax cheat and [a] fool [who] is a protégé of both Henry Kissinger and Robert Rubin. In addition to being part of the brain trust that blew the Lehman Brothers rescue decision, he also presided over the original TARP mass looting of the already stinking corpse of the federal treasury." Geithner is the man who helped Bush's treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, engineer the $700 billion dollar rip-off of the US taxpayer. He is behind the $2 trillion bank rescue plan which consists, in short, of having "the US taxpayer bear the burden of almost incalculable losses from worthless assets all the while urging austerity and sacrifice for all but the elite including the further decimation of the last threads of America's social fabric." Capitalist right-wingers have nothing to fear from this 'socialist' then.

Not much can be added about Geithner's plan since it was remarkable only for lacking in detail. Should we interpret that as incompetence, arrogance or both?

But enough of the economy. Let's see if Obama has done anything good for the rights of the people.

Do you remember how good we all felt when we first heard that Obama was signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp? Well, scratch that; his administration has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan. Is that a misunderstanding or a mistake? Neither; the War of Terror is alive and well:
In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.'s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team's arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the "state secrets" doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government "for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information."
Indeed, Obama's Department of Justice is trying to keep Bush's NSA warrantless spying program shielded from judicial review, by invoking Bush's State Secrets argument. Furthermore, the DOJ quietly sought dismissal of missing White House emails lawsuit.

Moving on. What about Obama's promise of getting out of Iraq? He has announced that US troops are to leave Iraq by August 2010. We are sorry, but there is not much reason to be optimistic about that either, given that one of the objectives is to free resources for Afghanistan (see below). It looks like the Obama administration gives with one hand and takes with the other. Plus, there is the detail that after the so-called "pullout" from Iraq, as many as 50,000 troops will remain on the ground, some of which will continue to "conduct combat operations." Iraq will still be considered a war zone.

This is consistent with the fact that Obama has gathered a flock of hawks to oversee US foreign policy. No surprise then that he is sending 17,500 troops to Afghanistan. He is also seeking more than $200 billion for war spending (is he bailing out the Army now?).

Borderline Insanity

Far from providing any change from the Bush doctrine, Obama has already made clear his intention to escalate the Afghan war with a new approach that would "put more emphasis on waging war than on development" according to a New York Times report.

Obama has been busy setting the stage for his Afghan 'surge', bringing further bloodshed and destruction to the region and pushing the conflict on into Pakistan - a country already singled out for false flag attacks, demonization, and media spin as a safe haven for terrorists. Indeed the propaganda wheels were busily turning to justify the Obama surge, warning that "with the reduction of violence in Iraq, foreign militants were now flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban insurgents battling Afghan and international troops".



Pakistani tribesmen offer funeral prayers for the victims of a missile strike attack in the main town of Miranshah on February 15Obama's 'no change' message was delivered in person to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India by Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to the region. Following closely in his wake was an alleged Taliban attack on the Afghan capital, perfectly timed to coincide with Holbrooke's visit and serve as a reminder of why they need the U.S. to escalate it's war. It also provided another opportunity to smear Pakistan, accused of having links to the attack.

The evidence for the 'no change' policy is clear, with ongoing missile strikes killing 130 civilians despite the protests of Pakistan's government, backed up by agitprop pieces on CIA drone missions being flown from inside Pakistan and the U.S. military secretly training and advising in the country. All of this seems aimed more at destabilizing the Zadari government, generating public anger and provoking more attacks by militants opposed to U.S. intervention in the region. So while Pakistan's government is trying to find political solutions with a ceasefire agreement in the Swat valley (hysterically reacted to by Obama officials quoted in the Washington Post as "a surrender disguised as a truce"), Team Obama is busy creating chaos and instability that will justify expanding the war from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

As the CIA's new director, Leon Panetta, said himself: "Nothing has changed our efforts to go after terrorists, and nothing will change those efforts. We are continuing at a level of action that is on a par with the challenges we are confronting. None of that has diminished, and none of it will." Or, to put it another way, "nothing has changed in our efforts to fabricate the threat of terrorism in our pursuit of regional dominance".

We knew something was wrong with this guy Obama from the moment he refused to raise his voice against the Gaza bloodbath. Noam Chomsky declared in an interview that an Israeli source revealed to him that the recent invasion of the Gaza Strip was completely premeditated (no surprise there), and that Obama's lack of comment was part of the plan. The idea was to deliver the maximum blow to Gaza before the new US president took office, so that he could put these matters behind him. Well, we have news for Mr. Change. His hands, already tainted in blood because of his unjustifiable silence will be tainted again. Does he really think that he will be able to put these things behind him? Ask Netanyahu.

Turn right and right again

The underlying wrong assumption about the Israeli elections is that there was a choice between 'center' and 'right'. For purposes of foreign policy (and foreign policy is what ultimately defines Israeli identity, as it has always been a matter of 'us vs them') Israel has always been a hard right-wing state. On this election, Tzipi Livni, an ex-Mossad officer and daughter of a Jewish terrorist faced one of the most outspoken nationalist Israeli politicians ever. See our report-profile on Netanyahu.

Stephen Lendman writes:
On January 15, a Haaretz-Dialog poll showed widespread support for the Gaza war with less than 10% of Israelis calling it a "failure." Despite mass slaughter, destruction, and human suffering, 82% of respondents believed the IDF hadn't "gone too far."

It played out strongly in the February elections with center to far right parties winning decisively - 104 of the 120 seats or 86.6% of the Knesset. In spite of mass global condemnation, Israelis stood firm on hard-line militarism, candidates favoring conflict over conciliation, and continued occupation of Palestine in lieu of peace.

Negotiations continue for a new government, but policy is clear whoever becomes prime minister. Under Tzipi Livni or Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza's siege will continue. So will West Bank oppression, conflict over peace, leaders affirming it in rhetoric and policy, and international community support will back them. Grim times persist for Palestinians, isolated and on their own after decades of occupation and abuse.
If there has been a truce with Gaza (or pseudo-truce, given the occasional military aggressions and the ongoing blockade of the region) it is only because the Israeli pathocrats were busy fighting for power. The new ultra-right wing Netanyahu government has six weeks to make alliances and appoint his cabinet, so we can expect another month of relative quiet before they resume their blood fest. Remember that Avigdor Lieberman, who has been offered a place in Netanyahu's government, is a pathological hawk with murderous aspirations who wants to give the Gazans the same treatment that the Japanese received in WWII. We don't need to explain what that means.


© aljazeera.netBear in mind as well that Netanyahu, speaking as the invading conqueror he wishes to be, has argued against inter-Palestinian reconciliation. No doubt that we will see Israel's Mossad make use of a few dirty tricks "by way of deception" to keep Hamas and Fatah at each other's neck.

Yaakov Katz, leader of the right-wing National Union party, joyfully declared after a meeting with members of Netanyahu's Likud party that Israel's next government will be "more Jewish and more Zionist". The political climate is ready for war, indeed.

The bully's usual pick

The propaganda against Iran is up again. There have been quite a number of examples, from Israel, the US and Britain.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's former UN representative told Australian media that Israel is ready to launch a military offensive against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. There was obviously a coordinated effort within diplomatic Israeli staff, as the ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem, 'accidentally' declared in front of a recording camera that the Gaza offensive was a "preintroduction" to tackling the military threat posed by a nuclear-equipped Iran. He then proceeded to tell the operator to turn off his camera and added that he expected Iran to stockpile enough uranium over the next 14 months to "be at the point of no return". Camera on or off, the fact is that he got his message through and we doubt it was by mere chance.

An annual defense work plan presented to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi for the year 2009 describes Iran as "the No.1 threat the IDF is now preparing for." Barak's words confirm this: "we're running out of time to address the Iranian threat."

The rhetoric from the U.S. is no different. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that Iran 'continues to renege' on its international obligations and called the nation an "urgent problem that has to be addressed." Never mind that the IAEA conceded that it was almost certainly a "technical mistake," and that Iran has continued to enrich uranium only to the low levels needed for its soon-to-be-operational nuclear power plant, not to the levels required for nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, declared that her country "will seek an end to Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism". She speaks as if it was common knowledge that Iran is doing something illicit and supporting terrorism, when in fact it is not. Given the evidence we have seen so far, these are baseless accusations.

It is interesting to note that the IAEA's report has been widely distorted in the alarmist commentaries of the Western media. It reminds us of the way Ahmadijenad's words were mistranslated and twisted a few years ago in order to make us believe that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map". Such is the power of the media that this misconception is still alive today.

In spite of a U.S. intelligence report concluding that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, Obama sided again with his paymasters and declared in a press conference that he believed that Tehran is seeking the bomb. Similarly, General David Petraeus accused Iran of helping Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. No details were offered - much less any sort of proof. None are needed when you are solely invested in creating your own reality.

Another propaganda move came from Sir John Sawers, Britain's ambassador to the UN, who made a (dubious, given the source) revelation to the BBC. He assured viewers that Iran offered to stop attacking troops in Iraq if the West dropped opposition to its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, Tehran and Moscow are to review ways to enhance military cooperation. This little but important fact makes more interesting Livni's accusations against Iran for violating international treaties through 'smuggling weapons' into the region.

Infamous intel agency strikes again

Recall that last month we pointed out how some countries - such as Pakistan or Mexico - are being singled out for collapse. The signs suggest that Turkey is also in line for a radical makeover. The boldness displayed by the Turkish government towards Israel's belligerence possibly portends a country marked for 'regime change.' Israel's obliging responses were indicative of its strategic dependency on Turkey. However, a moderate Islamic government is probably deemed an unsuitable longterm partner for a country with designs on "Greater Israel."

Prime Minister Erdogan followed up his condemnation of the Gaza Massacre in January with a call to kick Israel out of the UN and pursue an investigation into Israel's war crimes...
"How is such a country, which does not implement resolutions of the UN Security Council, allowed to enter through the gates of the UN (headquarters)?"
...while the military brass in Turkey reacted furiously after General Mizrahi of the IDF berated Turkey's hypocrisy, warning that relations between Jerusalem and Ankara would compromise both countries' interests. Israel backed down forcing Mizrahi to apologise as Israel was keen to avert any further diplomatic row.

A very public spat with Israel is not something the Zionists naturally pass over. So why would Israel roll over like this?

Israel leans heavily on Turkey for access to US arms and nuclear technologies and state secrets, which are easier for Turkey to procure because its a member of the NATO club. Israel finds it harder to extract these concessions from the US following successive espionage scandals.

One such scandal broke when Sibel Edmonds blew the whistle on the American Turkish Council and its pivotal role in channeling nuclear technologies through Turkey to the nuclear black market. Its membership reads like a who's who of Neocons and spokesmen for Israel. In fact, according to Edmonds; "AIPAC helped form the American Turkish Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it is the same operation."

Besides being a veritable "international weapons bazaar", Turkey's strategic importance to the US and Israel centers around the need for a friendly corridor through which to attack Iran. Turkish daily Hurriyet quoted Neocon spokesman Charles Krauthammer as saying: "The Israelis would not attack (Iran) over Iraq. The way to go is through Turkey...When Israel attacked the reactor in Syria, it went up the Mediterranean and through Turkish air space."

For all their bluster over Gaza, Turkey went ahead with the purchase of drones from Israel, with further orders in the pipeline. And what to make of the proposal to open a sea route between illegally-occupied Cyprus and Israel?

While Israel's overtures towards the Turkish government present the image of a solid alliance, there are other ways to get a message across between 'friends':

US Jewish Groups Warn Turkey Against "Anti-Semitism"
A group of U.S. Jewish organizations has urged Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to halt what it called a rise in anti-semitism in the wake of the Gaza conflict
Israel suspends flights to Antalya over CIA notice
Israel has suspended its flights to Antalya over a coded message sent to Israeli and Turkish officials by the CIA about preparations by an al-Qaeda terrorist in Turkey to launch a bloody attack against Israeli passengers.
Occasionally the curtain is drawn permitting a glimpse at the underworld behind the outward events we see. Turkish and other Middle East media have been reporting for months now that Mossad was instrumental in directing, perhaps even forming, a right-wing criminal and intelligence network known as Ergenekon, accused of attempting to overthrow the democratically-elected Justice and Development (AKP) Party of Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gul.

© AP / Murad Sezer
Protesters burn a makeshift Israeli flag at a demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza
Named after a mythical valley celebrated by ancient Turks, Ergenekon is a neo-nationalist organization whose membership spans a broad cross-section of Turkish society. The evidence generated by a year-long investigation into hundreds of its members reveals a shadow government comprising army officers, police officers, politicians, journalists, writers, government employees and members of the Turkish business community.

Jason Burke describes the situation last year:
Crimes being blamed on Ergenekon include a series of murderous bomb blasts, a grenade attack on a newspaper, the murder of an Italian bishop and the killing last year of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink - all aimed, investigators believe, at creating a climate of terror and chaos propitious to a military coup that would depose Turkey's moderate Islamist government.

The stakes involved are high: the stability of one of the world's most strategically important countries. This highly charged political reality is splitting Turkey.
Its roots go back to Counter-Guerilla, the Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, a joint NATO-CIA operation in which secret armies would infiltrate left-leaning political movements and instigate violent terrorist attacks or even commit outright false flag attacks. As reported in Der Spiegel, this is precisely what Ergenekon has been doing; continuing the NATO Strategy of Tension with the goal of ushering in a far-right military dictatorship that knows exactly what its Zionist masters expect from it:
It is a state of affairs known in Turkey as the "deep state" and it existed long before the Ergenekon investigation, which began two years ago after the discovery of a weapons cache. There have always been paramilitary organizations that took it upon themselves to protect modern Turkey from alleged enemies both outside and inside the country -- against Greeks and Armenians, then Leftists, and now against Islamists.

The idea, as prosecutors see it, was for Turkey to sink into fear and chaos before being rescued by an army coup that would reinstate peace and order. The armed forces, after all, see themselves as protectors of the nation they inherited from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern-day Turkey.
Turkey is no stranger then to military takeover by pathological extremists.

These investigations will amount to naught of course; instead they will be diverted towards exploiting Turkey's societal fault lines. Psychologists working with the trial of the key Mossad suspect have assessed that he is a 'probable sociopath', and thus a totally unreliable witness who may have been inserted into the investigations early on to confuse and mislead investigators. The result is a lot of allegations, some of them unfounded, often leading to the wrong people being targeted and further dividing and hystericizing Turkey:
"There are too many inconsistencies," says television commentator Mehmet Ali Birand. "There are too many accused sitting for eight or nine months in prison without knowing why."

Should the investigation continue to be conducted in the same vein, there is a chance that it will lose all credibility and fail to yield any concrete results at all -- providing Turkey with yet one more reason to feel as though there are dark powers afoot.
This background helps explain Turkey's contradictory behaviour in the past month; on the same day that an attorney of the Turkish government announced that Israel might be prosecuted for war crimes, the military signaled its commitment to "uphold bilateral agreements" with Israel by sending its navy to the Gulf. Also on the same day Turkey bombed Kurdish PKK bases in northern Iraq. Israel, with the help of Christian Zionists from the US, just happens to be making inroads there. So many cross purposes at work. One thing is clear from other theaters of conflict; any and all 'terrorist' or 'resistance' groups can be infiltrated and redirected - provided they weren't purposely founded in the first place - by the Mossad and CIA.

Its hands already full, the Turkish government is asking its people whether to EU or not to EU, and whether it's a nation embracing its Muslim heritage or seeking to annihilate it in favour of expanding nationalist secular dreams of regional hegemony. It looks like the Turkish government is trying to play many games at the same time; all the while being played by agents foreign and domestic.

The IMF vultures are circling overhead, delivering distinctly less veiled warnings to the Turkish government regarding the financial health of Turkey's teetering economy.
For months investors have been counting on Turkey securing at least $20bn (€15.6bn, £13.6bn) in IMF funding. Many now wonder if Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, who said on Monday Turkey could manage with or without the IMF, will commit to a deal requiring unpopular fiscal tightening.

"The government's credit is running out," said Ahmet Akarli, economist at Goldman Sachs. "People are not in panic but everyone is watching this much more closely than two months ago."

The IMF accepts that Turkey's public debt will rise this year, when it forecasts a 1.5 per cent contraction in GDP. But it wants a tougher fiscal rule and controls on municipality spending to restore the budget balance in later years.

Mr Erdogan is understandably reluctant to announce such a depressing growth outlook and difficult remedy just before local elections in March.
The Greeks have a word for an event that symbolically foretells a much larger one to come: Prooikonomia. Symbolic perhaps of Turkey's collapse in a possible future, a Turkish Airlines plane crash-landed this month in a field outside Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, and broke into three sections, killing nine.

Bumper cars and fireworks

The media reported that two satellites collided over Siberia; American and Russian. It is unlikely that it was an accident, as we were told, considering the small chance of a satellite collision.

A few days later two submarines collided, British and French. It seems to us that this too was an unlikely accident, as we find it hard to imagine that the 'highways' underwater are full of traffic.

A week after the satellite incident, Texas was bombarded by fireballs, some of which were caught on video. At first it was suggested that it was debris from the satellites (unlikely again, as the satellites crashed over Siberia), but this was later denied. In fact, an amateur astronomer found the site of the impact and the remains of the meteorite.







Other fireballs were reported around the world:

Argentina: Another Fireball Over Patagonia
Argentina: More Fireballs Reported
Meteors Light Up Kentucky's Skies
India: Meteorite hits Akhnoor
Canada: An Okanagan Bolide
England: Fireball over Reading, Berkshire
US: Fireball Lights Up Hawaii Sky and Causes Jaws to Drop
US: Fireball spotted streaking across sky in Summerville, South Carolina
US: Brilliant Blue Flash Spotted Over Indiana
Maryville, Tennessee residents report unexplained explosions
US: Sonic booms have Islanders jumping
Loud Boom Rocks Southern Kentucky
Mystery explosions in Australia.

So apart from the possible symbolism of world powers colliding, what is really going on in our atmosphere? We have been looking for data to confirm our hypothesis of cyclic cometary bombardment, as explained by Victor Clube. Remember that a few months ago it was reported that noctilucent clouds were related to an increase in micrometeors - which means more matter floating around our area of space.

There is something additional worth mentioning. On 17th of February, a brick-sized piece of metal crashed through a Jersey City, New Jersey roof. Apparently after only a few hours the mystery was solved, and the fallen metal turned out to be a tooth from a trailer-sized grinder. Well, this is where the story ends, or at least it could if another piece of metal didn't fall through a roof, this time on 24th of February in Southeast Oak Cliff, Texas. Are we dealing with another human error, or perhaps it is one step closer to a point where our authorities eventually will run out of satellites, rockets or trailer-sized grinders to conceal a grave and cosmic danger?

And speaking of crashes, a plane crash caught our attention, both for the mysterious and incomprehensible circumstances surrounding it, but also for its symbolic meaning, which lead us to suspect that there might be something sinister in the works here. On February 12, the Continental flight 3407 crashed into a house outside of Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person in the house. Among those who took this fateful flight was Beverly Eckert, a 911 widow who met with Obama in the white House a week before the crash with other 911 victims' families, and has been described as the kind of person with a "can-do attitude about everything" that "never gives up". This attitude is much apparent in regards to finding the truth about 911, and it seems she would go all the way to make sure her questions are answered and those responsible be brought to trial.

Interestingly, on the doomed plane was another woman with the same vigour and determination to speak the truth: Alison Des Forges, a top expert of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Des Forges
had testified as an expert witness at 11 genocide trials at the tribunal[...] She also wrote a key study of the Rwanda genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story, and was a senior adviser to US advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

[...]

Ms Des Forges was returning to her home in Buffalo after briefing European diplomats on the situation in Rwanda and Africa's Great Lakes region.
So, we have two women who fight the difficult battle to uncover and share the truth so justice can reign, and are killed in this weird plane crash over Buffalo. Is this merely a tragic coincidence? Can we interpret it as a message from the 'Matrix', a warning against the feminine inquisitive and truth-loving energies? The silencing of those who cannot see injustice and then not speak out?

Talk about the weather

This winter was one of the coldest for many years with freezing temperatures being witnessed around the world. There has recently been the revelation that disappearing Arctic ice , often reported to support global warming, was in fact greatly exaggerated. This has lead to damage control exercises by governments, Gore's 2,340 climate lobbyists and sympathetic media propagandists. They are trying desperately to maintain the illusion that global warming is real and humans are to blame. This month has seen respected authorities waking up and publicly announcing the truth that humans are not responsible for climate change:

Australian MP: Humans not causing climate change
Japanese scientists: Global warming isn't man-made
Global warming is not our fault ... it's nature
Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

To counteract these claims and continue the distractions and political agendas, the lobbyists and media are using vicious rhetoric to discredit anyone who points out the scientific facts highlighting the global warming hoax. Examples include:

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Nazi Style Silencing of Global Warming Skeptics - Strip Them of Their Credentials
Life Is Convenient When You Define 'Truth'
As Predicted: Global Warming Skeptics Linked With Holocaust Denial
CBS 'Global Warming Special' Host Likened Warming Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers
Witch Hunt: Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist

Sott.net has written extensive commentary on this phenomenon. For instance, the article: The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science is typical in it's distortion and ignorance of the truth. We commented on the media's reporting:
This is just the political machine going into action to try and control the damage caused by bad science. The promotion of bad science by those who have the power to direct the minds of the public in concert with global media are directly responsible for the hystericization of society and the collapse of anything that can vaguely be called climate policy.

The first problem is that the science is bad. The models that global warming are based on do not sufficiently take into account things like El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, solar radiation cycles, volcanism and even cosmic forces as related in other scientific disciplines such as impact science (comets and asteroids). Why are these things continually ignored and hidden in favor of CO2 as the critical tripwire to runaway climate catastrophe? These other forces have much better data correlating them to climatic warming and cooling cycles and even climate catastrophe.

The mind signal continuously sent out by the global enforcement machine kept pounding away until it created its own personal little army of fascists, comparing skeptics to holocaust deniers if they did not believe in and worship the signal of the global influencers. Fascists calling for career climate researchers and career meteorologists to lose their jobs and certification because they are not in confluence with the global signal that is being broadcast. Fascists calling for scientists not toeing the line to be brought up on charges of crimes against humanity.
The article Global warming is not our fault ... it's nature reports that the former chief executive of the oil and gas firm Talisman Dr. Jim Buckee (a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford) says he feels like a heretic, persecuted for his views and treated like an outcast. His crime? Being a climate change sceptic. In our comment we presented essential facts that are being ignored completely by the media and hysterical global warming brigade:
There are many theories and vast amounts of data that indicate the "man caused global warming" theory is a sham. The implication of the author here to paint the "solar explanation" as one shared by many sceptics is deceptive. The "solar explanation" also covers many researchers work on solar variability and lack of sunspots tied to global cooling (Link1) (Link2) (Link3). Even NASA has developed a theory on a quiet sun with low ultra-violet output causing a decreasing ozone layer, leading to negative ocean oscillators and global cooling as was seen in the Maunder minimum.

There are also solar theories correlating to volcanism and its effects on climate. And sunspot data correlating to cooling and warming cycles is vast (Link1) (Link2) (Link3).
The fact of the matter is, it is the Media credibility, not ice caps, that is in meltdown.

Rattle and Boom

Considering everything that transpires on the socio-political level and the cosmic plane, it is no wonder that Mother Earth herself is continuing to react. Towards the end of January two reports made it into the media bringing to our awareness the dangers of volcanic explosions. Agence France-Presse reported that Vesuvius volcano in Naples Italy, is still a threat to the surrounding populated areas, with a "27 percent chance of an explosive eruption in the next 100 years". Another threat comes from Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano, as reported by CNN, an explosion "that could occur at any time". Both volcanoes, we are informed, are closely observed.

What we observed few days later was the eruption of Mt.Asama in central Japan on February 2nd, which send ash as far as 90 miles away. On the same day, Alaska's Mount Redoubt "groaned and steamed". Feb. 20th, Chile's Chaiten volcano "spewed a vast cloud of ash as well as gas and molten rock" resulting in the evacuation of 160 people. The next day, Feb. 21st, Galeras volcano in southern Colombia erupted for the second time in less than a week, causing an ash rain.

Some unusual swarms of earthquakes were also recorded this month. Following the alarming number of earthquakes below Yellowstone Park in the northern U.S., which as reported by scientists is one of the largest "ever recorded in the park [and] took place in the last week of 2008 into early 2009, with 813 quakes in 11 days." The report reached the media and it must have been alarming to more than just us, because soon reassurances followed to calm nerves. New Jersey was also shaken 3 times in 3 weeks by small earthquakes, an activity that puzzled geologists, with one of them admitting that "the cause of these earthquakes is really a big mystery because they really don't fit in with the geologist image of plate tectonics". In Canada, 11 small earthquakes occurred in Northern Ontario in the last 30 days. Here's a sample of February's quakes:

Feb. 1: 4.4, California, US.
Feb. 2: 5.5, off coast of Central Peru.
Feb. 3: 4.5, Mindoro island, Philippines; 6.0 earthquake, Southern Peru.
Feb. 9: 6.1 - Off coast of Northern Peru; 3.7, Mexicali, Mexico.
Feb. 10: 5.4, Eastern Indonesia.
Feb. 11: 5.9, Fiji Islands.
Feb. 12: 7.0, near Sulawesi, Indonesia; 5.1, Colombia-Venezuela border.
Feb. 15: 6.0, Northern Japan; 6.2, off coast of northern Peru.
Feb. 18: 7.0, Kermadec Islands, South Pacific; 3.5, Nevada, US; 2.2, Alabama, US.
Feb. 20: 5.2, Northwest China, which was followed by 207 aftershocks.
Feb. 22: 5.5, Manokwari, Indonesia.
Feb. 23: 5.8, between Indonesia and Philippines.
Feb. 26: 3.3, Oklahoma, US; 4.1, Southwest Oregon, US; 4.8, Surigao del Sur, Philippines.
Feb. 28: 5.4, Northern Japan.

From the Bizarre Desk

The run of the unusual, the strange, the maybe-if we-ignore-it-it-will-go-away events continues apace on our Big Blue Marble. UFO sightings are, again, up all around the world, with many reports now accompanied by good quality photos and videos to back them up.
UK: UFO filmed above Somerset coastline by holidaymakers



Caravaners were left baffled when the mysterious cylinder hovered over a busy campsite in Brean, Somerset.

They claimed the unidentified black metal object stands out clearly against the blue sky, where it can be seen darting up and down for more than 10 minutes.
Or this Valentine's Day clip from Florida
UFO filmed over Miami, Florida, on February 14th:






Some more of the many sightings this month on Our Haunted Planet:

US: UFO witnesses report from six states
US: Triangular UFOs low flying over three states
Italy: Air Force Head says UFOs possibly ET craft
South Africa: UFO dazzles commuters
Canada: Prince Rupert, British Columbia - Bright Light Hovers then Moves Off
US: Borough Park Section of Brooklyn, New York - UFOs Moving in Various Formation
Russia: Giant UFO Seen by Entire Siberian City

Nor has high strangeness been confined to the skies. Lately, England has played host to a spate of "big cat" sightings. Speculation about the creature (possibly plural) has run to a panther or puma released by a pet owner who could not handle it. But a photo of a paw print taken by a witness doesn't seem to match either animal.

© Unknown
The paw print seen at the golf courseUK: Could this be mystery panther paw print?
England: New panther sightings in north Norfolk
England: Man sees fabled beast - not for the first time
England: 'Large black cat' sighting in Stone
England: Did we come face-to-face with elusive beast on our own doorstep?
North Essex: You are not alone - we've seen the Beast of Essex too

Not just mammals!


© Unknown'Nabau' Snake, More than 100 Feet Long, Reported in Borneo
People who have studied the photograph of the shape taken from the air have dismissed suggestions that it's a log.

As one writer asked: 'A log can't be that winding, can it?' Others have suggested it's a speedboat, but this has been dismissed because of the twisting wake.

The most common accusation is that the photo has simply been manipulated on a computer, while others complain that the river is a different colour to the real Baleh river which is a murky brown.

But villagers who insist the snake exists say that photos of the creature being taken in different parts of the river prove it is swimming about.
Nor (possibly) even terrestrial!


© UnknownVideo: Strange Alien-Like Being Captured In Santa Rosa de Quives, Peru

As science probes deeper into the fabric of existence, possible answers to the questions raised by such stories may be eventually found:
In his book Investigating the Unexplained (Prentice-Hall, 1972), zoologist Ivan Sanderson presents a cogent explanation for the question "how can these things be?". After stressing the fact that many so-called "intangible" creatures present clearly "tangible" aspects, he propounds the existence of an entirely new set (or sets) of dimensions separated from what we understand to be our normal space/time, but "so close to ours in either respect that bits and pieces fall through from one to the other, and then possibly back again..." Perhaps more important is the great researcher's assertion that we are increasingly surrounded by measurable evidence of these other dimensions in touch with our own, inhabited by denizens of unsuspected natures, ranging from "abysmal idiots to godlike entities."

Sanderson ends his exposition on the matter by postulating a number of concepts: that there are other universes intertwined with our own, that the number of these may be infinite, that intelligent life may be common in some of them, and more importantly, that some of these intelligences figured out how to make round-trip sorties from their home universes.
Common sense would argue that the sheer number of reports coming in around the world begs for serious research, but that doesn't seem likely for now. The public is still being fed the usual tripe of Venus, swamp gas, flares, and the latest favourite, chinese lanterns.

Conclusion: Disinforama

If there is one thing that all of the above topics have in common is disinformation. This is the primary weapon of the pathocrats from which all other manipulation is empowered. Relentless bombardment with propaganda laced with finely tuned psychological manipulation techniques, are used to undermine the people's ability to think, to control their perception of reality, and by extension, control reality itself.

As a senior advisor to President Bush told journalist Ron Suskind in 2002 that:
"guys like me we're 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality... We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
George Orwell explores the potential power of propaganda to put a barbed wire fence around the perimeter of 'allowable' reality, in his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The twin concepts of 'doublethink' and 'newsspeak' can easily be seen at work in today's Pathocracy. According to the novel, doublethink is:
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."
The parallels with current propaganda can be clearly seen, for example in the hugely contradictory coverage of the the Middle East situation.

From Wikipedia:
Though Nineteen Eighty-Four is most famous for the Party's pervasive surveillance of everyday life, reality control means that the population of Oceania - all of it, including the ruling élite - could be controlled and manipulated merely through the alteration of everyday thought and language. Newspeak is the method for controlling thought through language; doublethink is the method of directly controlling thought.

Newspeak incorporated doublethink, as it contains many words that create assumed associations, between contradictory meanings, especially true of fundamentally important words, such as good and evil; right and wrong; truth and falsehood; justice and injustice.

Doublethink is a form of trained, willful intellectual blindness to contradictions in a belief system. Doublethink differs from ordinary hypocrisy in that the "doublethinking" person deliberately had to forget the contradiction between his two opposing beliefs - and then deliberately forget that he had forgotten the contradiction. He then had to forget the forgetting of the forgetting, and so on; this intentional forgetting, once begun, continues indefinitely. In the novel's notes, Orwell describes it as "controlled insanity".
We see many examples of 'newsspeak', in which the raw ingredients of our language are poisoned, and the meanings of words become corroded. Rational discussion of important subjects become impossible, as the very vocabulary we use to structure our thoughts about them becomes both impoverished of richer meaning, and also made more clumsy through contradictions, ambiguity, and a tangle of misleading associations.

Newly popular words such as 'rendition', 'collateral damage', 'detainment' appear, and are used to wrap up some most disturbing realities with a sugar coating. Existing words such as 'freedom', 'liberty', 'equality', 'self defense' become dangerous and take on a hysterical edge.

However, lies can only be effective if they are believed, and so the antidote must be to educate ourselves, about the real situation behind the lies; about why our leaders are lying to us; and about the finely tuned methods they use that are so effective.

Andrew Lobaczewski, in his book Political Ponerology describes the scientific basis of how a population is made vulnerable to these audacious lies and insinuations. One manoeuvre that is seen repeated throughout history, is the hijacking of a popular ideology, changing the underlying fundamental content of that ideology, but doing so 'on the sly', in order to continue to use its adherents to further a warped agenda which they do not understand:
It should be noted that a great ideology with mesmerising values can easily deprive people of the capacity for self-critical control over their behaviour. The adherents of such ideas tend to lose sight of the fact that the means used, not just the end, will be decisive for the results of their activities. Whenever they reach for overly radical methods of action, still convinced that they are serving their idea, they are not aware that their goal has already changed. The principle "the end justifies the means" opens the door to a different kind of person for whom a great idea is useful for purposes of liberating themselves from the uncomfortable pressure of normal human custom. Every great ideology thus contains danger, especially for small minds. Therefore, every great social movement and its ideology can become a host upon which some pathocracy initiates its parasitic life.
There are many standard psychological moves used, two of which are the paramoralism and the reversive blockade

Of course such manipulation of reality would be more difficult if free public discourse was allowed. It is not, and the complete clampdown of free speech is a jealously guarded secret, in which maintaining the illusion of free speech is essential. From the 'Protocols':
The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification. I beg you to note that among those making attacks upon us will also be organs established by us, but they will attack exclusively points that we have pre-determined to alter.

Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.
Important subjects for discussion become 'out of bounds', and dissent becomes treason.
Freedom itself no longer exists, and is replaced by something else which superficially seems the same, but is designed to keep us content but shackled:
The word 'freedom', which can be interpreted in different ways, is defined by us as follows:

Freedom is the right to do that which the law allows. This interpretation of the word will at the proper time be of service to us because all freedom will be in our hands, since the laws will abolish or create only that which is desirable for us [the pathocracy] according to the aforesaid programme.
By these means, they drive the population into a state of denial and repression, and ultimately a state of collective nervous breakdown - 'Shock and Awe' tactics once again:
What we want is that from the first moment of its promulgation, while the peoples of the world are still stunned by the accomplished fact of the revolution, still in a condition of terror and uncertainty, they should recognise once and for all that we are so strong, so inexpugnable, so superabundantly filled with power that in no case shall we take any account of them, and so far from paying any attention to their opinions or wishes we are ready and able to crush with irresistible power all expression or manifestation thereof at every moment and in every place, that we have seized at once everything we wanted and shall in no case divide our power with them... Then in fear and trembling they will close their eyes to everything, and be content to await what will be the end of it all.
Naomi Klein has detailed in The Shock Doctrine how these same psychological invasion tactics have been used repeatedly to beat the nations into submission.

In the words of the fictional prime minister Adam Sutler in the movie 'V for Vendetta':
"Mr. Dascombe, what we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every Newspaper, heard on every Radio, seen on every Television. This message must resound throughout the ENTIRE interlink!!! I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion.

I want every man woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I want EVERYONE to remember why they need us!"