On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.
They include full transcripts of extraordinarily frank classified interviews in which British Army commanders vent their frustration and anger with ministers and Whitehall… Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on January 1, 2010 at 3:52pm —
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January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in the Greater Middle East.
Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on Afghanistan, American combat operations abroad have not ceased for a year, a month, a week or a day in the 21st century.
The Afghan war, the U.S.'s first air and ground conflict in Asia since the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the… Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on January 1, 2010 at 1:14pm —
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Υemen:
The Pentagon has poured nearly $70 million in military aid to Yemen this year.
"In the end it's probably counterproductive," said Johnsen, adding that video and photos of women and children killed by the blast could create "a recruiting field day for al-Qaida."
According to the report, Washington inked arms deals valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global weapons market, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion… Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on December 28, 2009 at 7:09pm —
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In the year 500 B.C., a Chinese Warrior and philosopher by the name of Sun Tsu wrote a small treatise entitled The Art of War, in which he said:
If a man knows himself and knows his opponent, he need not fear a hundred battles. If he knows himself but not his opponent, for every victory, he will suffer a defeat. If he knows neither himself nor his opponet, he will suffer defeat in every battle.
On Christmas Day, 2009, I received the following email from Donald Engel, from Iowa.
In one of your recent replies to a reader's comment [in Unfiltered News], you mentioned ever so briefly that a social credit system in the Western World is unworkable and has some fundamental flaws. It would seem to me that this system would be a great improvement over our present debt based monetary system. What do you…
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Alan Watt on Bayer - Dec 22 2009 A bit of history: Bayer became part of IG Farben, a conglomerate of German chemical industries which formed the financial core of the Nazi regime. IG Farben owned 42.5% of the company that manufactured Zyklon B, a chemical used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. During World War II the company extensively used slave labour in factories…Continue
We are determined to break the siege.
We all will continue to do whatever we can to make it happen.
Using the pretext of escalating tensions on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry informed us yesterday that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks, into January. We responded that there is always tension at… Continue
Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) – While Congress has voted to raise the national debt ceiling to $12.4 trillion, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported that the federal government’s unfunded liabilities – the costs of promised benefits through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and several other programs – total $62.9 trillion in today’s dollars.
Criminal charges of ‘domestic terrorism’ have been filed in the US First Circuit Appeals Court, case no. 09-2619, against this year’s Peace Prize Recipient, United States President Barack Obama.
The charges stem from President Obama’s leading role in an extensive seditious conspiracy operating with… Continue
The millions of people who are following the twists and turns of the unfolding climategate scandal online are increasingly asking themselves the same question: if a scientific theory falls in the forest and there's no reporter willing to cover it, does it make a sound? CONTINUES BELOW ...
There are today on the plains of India and China men and women, plague-ridden and hungry, living lives little better, to outward appearance, than those of the cattle that toil with them by day and share their places of sleep at night. Such Asiatic standards, and such unmechanized horrors, are the lot of those who increase their numbers without passing through an industrial revolution. - T.S. Ashton,…Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on December 13, 2009 at 2:13am —
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Council on Foreign Relations December 4, 2009, Washington D.C. Transcript
Speakers: Stewart M. Patrick, Senior Fellow And Director, International Institutions On Global Governance Program, Council On Foreign Relations
Steven G. Kull, Director, Program On International Policy Attitudes, Worldpublicopinion.org
I’m inclined to think of George Orwell and F. A. Hayek at the same time. Both showed great courage in writing the truth, undaunted by the consequences awaiting them. Both valued freedom, though they understood it differently.
Orwell, a man of the “left,” could not remain silent in the face of the horrors of Stalinism. Twice — during the Spanish Civil War and again at the dawn of the Cold War — he refused to permit his comrades to blind themselves to where their collectivism… Continue
Quotes of the day
"They promised us transparency and they kept their promise. We can see right through them!" ~ Carole Bending
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." ~ George Orwell Ah! . . . the dream. The American Dream. Sadly it's much more of a… Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on December 5, 2009 at 11:50pm —
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If passed as it is, the financial reform bill winding its way through Congress will create a "permanent bailout mechanism," and will give complete control over future bailouts to the White House, says columnist Matt Taibbi.
In a video preview of an upcoming Rolling Stone article, Taibbi explained how the Obama administration started selling out to Wall Street interests almost as soon as the 2008 election was over.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott a year-long protest in Montgomery, Alabama, that galvanized the American Civil Rights Movement and led to a 1956 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States declaring segregated seating on buses unconstitutional.
In December 1955, 42,000 black residents of Montgomery began a year-long boycott of city buses ( Montgomery Bus Boycott ) to protest racially segregated seating. After 381 days of taking taxis, carpooling, and walking the… Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on December 4, 2009 at 5:44pm —
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For over a decade I have sought after the latest and most factual economic indicators in order to choose my investments. I refer to myself as a macro-economic investor because I believe macro-economics is the best route to wealth for the average person. Looking at the big picture and knowing where the tide is inevitably going to go is like betting on a fixed fight. It’s not a matter of if your going to win, but what round its official. Right now there are two macro economic forces I am betting… Continue
Added by Anti Oligarch on December 4, 2009 at 4:43pm —
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From the unreleased EP "Deliverance", which was assembled by a sound designer who intended for its posthumous release on the one-year anniversary of Prince's...