The farce that is the war in Afghanistan is coming apart at the seams. General Stanley McChrystal’s sharp comments about Obama, Biden, and the administration published by Rolling Stone are not so much about disrespect, as the script-reading corporate media talking heads would have it, but rather about a policy in disarray in Afghanistan.

Obama the wunderbar teleprompter reader (and little else) is instructed to push the completely untenable prospect that the United States can win the so-called war in Afghanistan, a country often referred to as the graveyard of empires. The British, the Russians, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan either fell to the Afghans or made painful concessions. The British suffered one of their greatest military defeats in the Khyber. 16,500 British soldiers and civilians, retreating after defeat in Kabul, were slaughtered by the Afghans. One person was spared to tell the story.

The establishment knows it cannot “win” in Afghanistan and the claim the U.S. military is there to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda is nothing but transparent propaganda.

Afghanistan is a black hole sucking up men and machinery for the sake of death merchant profiteers. It is valuable real estate to be held — not conquered — real estate where opium grows for the sake of CIA off-the-books operating capital funding covert wars against enemies of the global elite. The fantastic profits earned from opium also flood the coffers of the masters of the casino economy on Wall Street. As Catherine Austin Fiits has documented, without this influx of laundered underground and illicit money Wall Street would have collapsed long ago.

Read entire article

Investment demand for gold has risen on concerns that sovereign debt problems could spread Photo: EPA

By Garry White

London Telegraph

20 Jun 2010

Egyptian oil spill in the Red Sea has caused a new environmental catastrophe, prompting an outcry among activists that call for tighter offshore regulations.

Huge quantities of crude gushing from Egypt’s offshore platforms in the Red Sea have reached the coasts of Egyptian tourist hub Hurghada, AFP reported.

Hurghada attracts millions of tourists for diving and snorkeling, the report says.

Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Agency (HEPCA) says the leak started about 4-5 days ago but the companies in charge, covered up the “catastrophic” incident.

Officials have declined to reveal the name of the liable companies, the report said.

Read full artice

The Justice Department has told a federal appeals court there was more than enough untainted evidence to justify a trial for the five Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in the 2007 Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad. In court papers seeking to reinstate criminal charges that were dismissed last year, the Justice Department said the judge “unjustifiably drew the curtain on a meritorious prosecution.” This legal development comes amidst a report that Erik Prince, the owner and founder of the notorious private security firm, could be planning a move to the United Arab Emirates, a country that has no extradition treaty with the United States. We speak to independent journalist Jeremy Scahill.

Guest: Jeremy Scahill, independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

View the Interview

The North Carolina security contractor Blackwater Worldwide has changed its name to Xe, a company memo says. Company President Gary Jackson said in a memo that the company has been reorganizing for several months to “create unique brand identities for its products and services,”

An important demonstration is scheduled for June 21 in Washington, D.C., to help bring national attention to the Scott sisters’ case. Gladys and Jamie Scott have been unjustly imprisoned since October 1994 for the “crime” of stealing $11 from a store in Scott County, Mississippi.

The African-American sisters received life sentences following their convictions, which once again reflect the ongoing, heinous legacy of slavery in the U.S., especially in the South.  Neither sister had a prior criminal record nor did any violence occur in the December 1993 robbery. In fact, witnesses and even the alleged robbery victims stated during the trial that the sisters were not involved in the robbery. All their appeals proving their innocence have been denied, including by the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the Scott sisters were sent to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, they were both healthy women. However, over the many years of being exposed to inhumane living conditions in the prison as well as the total lack of healthy food, Jamie Scott has developed stage 5 kidney failure, which requires dialysis. The next stage is death. She has been rushed to the hospital numerous times as a result of the terrible prison medical care.

Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott

Nancy Lockhart, a paralegal who is a supporter of the Scott sisters, received a letter this May from Jamie Scott on life in prison where she stated: “I have witnessed many inmates die at the hands of this second-rate medical care. I do not want to be one of them.”

The June 21 daylong protest is being organized by the Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice to put pressure on the federal government to force Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to release the Scott sisters from prison immediately. A 10 a.m. fast will take place at the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, followed by a press conference in front of the White House at noon, with a formal appeal to President Obama. Then at Lafayette Square Park from 1 p.m. until 9 p.m., there will be a program of speakers and cultural performances.

Dick Gregory, long-time civil rights activist and comedian, has given public support to the June 21 action. In a June 3 press release, Gregory stated, “This is one of the worst cases I have ever heard of in my life. My jaw dropped when I read that these women have been in prison for almost 16 years and aren’t even charged with laying a hand on anyone! This country should be embarrassed to have such a blatant travesty of justice exist while wagging our finger at people abroad for human rights abuses. What we have going on here is the epitome of cruel and unusual punishment and is outrageous, even for Mississippi!”

Read entire article

Pentagon investigators are reportedly still searching for Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who helped release a classified US military video showing a US helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. The US military recently arrested Army Specialist Bradley Manning, who may have passed on the video to Wikileaks. Manning’s arrest and the hunt for Assange have put the spotlight on the Obama administration’s campaign against whistleblowers and leakers of classified information. We speak to Daniel Ellsberg, who’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers has made him perhaps the nation’s most famous whistleblower; Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament who has collaborated with Wikileaks and drafted a new Icelandic law protecting investigative journalists; and Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com.

Read entire article

US Might ‘Assassinate’ Wikileaks Founder

Definition of a Police State:

The term police state describes a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.

The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.

An Electronic Police State is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.

George Orwell‘s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes Britain under a socialist totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and helps to create) a perpetual war. This perpetual war is used as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance and invasive police searches. The state destroys not only the literal freedom after action and thought meant by expressions like “freedom of thought”, but also literal freedom of thought.

Related Articles:

The Wikileaks video: Collateral Murder

The Obama administration and its pundit-defenders

October 27, 2007 — George Galloway blasts a caller about ‘strategic strikes’ on Iran. The best part is at the end. You can hear the full episode of the show from http://georgegalloway.com (October 27 2007).

According to Wikipedia- George Galloway- (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author and broadcaster, activist who was a Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2010. He’s known for his anti-war positions and He was formerly a Labour MP, first for Glasgow Hillhead, and later for Glasgow Kelvin, before his expulsion from the party in October 2003, and subsequently becoming a founding member of the Respect Party.

This is part 1 of 2 of George Galloway. The next article will be “The Best of George Galloway” which will feature numerous interviews and debates with the fiery Activist/Politician.

Scott Ritter

According to Wikipedia:

William Scott Ritter, Jr. (born July 15, 1961, Gainesville, Florida) is noted for his role as a chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, and later for his criticism of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter publicly argued that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). He became a popular anti-war figure and talk show commentator as a result of his stance.

All in all it’s the same arguments to NOT make the mistake. So many people thought that when Obama came to office these arguments would be null and void. There would be no worries about invading Iran, there would be no worries about the same kinds of collusion with big business and the milking of our economy. The war-footing would be drawn back because Obama will be a force of change. Well, reality hits people on different levels, and sometimes they hit us hard. Nothing has changed and actually they are being continued and turned up a notch. It’s time to wake up, and recognize the rhetoric that was change was actually political election slogans and catch phrases. Follow the money- forewarned is forearmed.

You MUST watch this video:

By Henrik Palmgren | redicecreations.com

What is this? – Coincidence, Conspiracy or Synchronicity? Is this the initial chain of events that leads up to the massive destructive solar eruption depicted in the film Knowing? I couldn’t help thinking this way while posting the article about the strange behavior of the Sun right now. Is it the quiet before the solar storms in 2012?

Is the clip from Knowing simply “predictive programming” or is this entertainment programming our subconscious, and is it our collective subconscious that ultimately creates reality?

The nuke plans that have been discussed lately in reference to “remedy” to the oil spill in the Gulf reminds me of events in the TV series Lost when they “tap” into an energy source deep down under the island. In the series they also thought they could make the problem go away by nuking it. Not so!

The recent dire predictions and horrific details from Lindsey Williams about Hydrogen Sulfide, Benzene, Methylene Chloride, and other toxic gases being leaked out with the oil makes all of this seem like a really bad nightmare. Maybe we’re already dead …just like in the series. One thing is certain …we’re definitely lost!

Update:
Someone just sent me information about the 1859 Carrington Event, this is known as the “Solar Superstorm”, the most powerful solar storm in recorded history. It’s EXACTLY 100 years after the time capsule dedication takes place in the movie Knowing.

Read original article

Related Articles:

May Levels of Toxic Gases in Gulf Back Up Claim Made by Lindsey Williams
Will the Gulf Oil Disaster Lead to an Explosion of the Seabed? Poisonous Gas Cloud and Tsunami Worst Case Scenario
BP Admits That – If It Tries to Cap the Leak – the Whole Well May Blow (Videos)
The Short Film BP Doesn’t Want You to See
Obama: Gulf spill ’echoes 9/11’
Scenes from the Gulf of Mexico
Toxic Corexit dispersant chemicals remained secret as feds colluded with Big Business
“The Rig’s on Fire! I Told You This Was Gonna Happen!”

Cerberus: Guarding the Gates of Hell – Dynecorp, Pegasus, BP, Goldman Sachs – Gulf Oil Disaster Planned?
Goldman Sachs Sold 44% Of BP Stock 3 Weeks Before Blowout
Director James Cameron: ‘Morons’ at BP turned me down
Why is “Humanity” Still Using Oil? (Photos)
Physics professor: Oil leak could last for years
Energy expert: Nuking oil leak ?only thing we can do?
Amateur Video Of Gulf Oil Slick – Worse Than BP Admits
Obama was top recipient of BP-related dollars in 2008

There can now be no doubt whatsoever that the BP oil spill was purposefully contrived, either through deliberate negligence or outright sabotage, and is now being used to further the Obama administration’s political agenda. Criminal investigations into the government and BP’s role in the disaster need to be launched by state authorities in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi immediately, while local authorities also need to call emergency legislative sessions in order to take over emergency response efforts from the feds before the crisis gets much worse.

While BP CEO Tony Hayward is busy watching yacht races, Barack Obama, who took two vacations immediately after the oil spill, spends his time playing golf. If this disaster is on a par 9/11 as Obama claims then why is he fiddling while Rome burns? Every effort to find a solution to this crisis while cleaning up the mess has been lackluster and half-hearted. The federal government’s hyped rhetoric about how bad the consequences of this spill will be has not been matched with the appropriate action to combat the problem.

In hindsight, it’s becoming clear that the government has deliberately botched the response and prevented local authorities from doing their jobs, just as FEMA deliberately sabotaged the state response to Hurricane Katrina in order to make the crisis worse and create the pretext for a police state response, gun confiscation and ultimately more federal power.

Numerous reports have surfaced of locals and state authorities being prevented by BP contractors and the U.S. Coast Guard from helping to address the devastation the spill has created in the region.

“(Louisiana) Governor Bobby Jindal had ordered the state’s fleet of sixteen vacuum barges to clean up oil in the Louisiana marshes. On Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted the barges and ordered them to stop the cleanup. Ostensibly, the Coast Guard wanted to “inspect” the barges — but then it didn’t inspect them. It just ordered them back to dock and then did nothing,” reports Fort Liberty.

Just as happened with Katrina, BP in alliance with the feds have erected an ‘information blockade’ around the oil spill. Reporters have been harassed, threatened with arrest and prevented from accessing the affected areas. Oil spill clean up workers have been gagged from talking about their experiences. Foreign ships have been prevented from helping in the clean up process. Every effort has been made to stop the truth about the oil spill from being uncovered – almost everything we learn about the situation comes directly from BP or the federal government. This strictly enforced cover-up shows that authorities are more concerned about protecting their information lock down than actually cleaning up the spill.

This is part of what the Pentagon calls “psychological information warfare” and it is intended to deceive and confuse the enemy (the American people) so that they don’t uncover the truth.

The Jones Act, which forbids foreign ships from operating between U.S. ports, can be waived in in cases of national emergencies or in cases of strategic interest. Belgian company DEME contends that it has the specialist vessels to fix the oil leak within two to four months, technology the U.S. does not have. By taking bids on a contract to fix the oil leak from international companies, Obama could have the problem solved within a matter of weeks, but he immediately refused the help of “thirteen entities that had offered the U.S. oil spill assistance within about two weeks of the Horizon rig explosion.” This is another clear example of the government’s motivation to allow the crisis to drag on indefinitely until they can use it to ram through their environmental agenda, which we shall cover shortly.

Every indication points to the oil spill having been deliberately caused, either by negligence or sabotage, by a combination of BP executives and those who hold the reigns of power in the Obama administration. This goes beyond Obama himself, who is merely there to read the teleprompter and employ his fine acting skills in selling the agenda that the globalists hope to enforce on the back of this contrived crisis.

On May 27, the New York Times reported on how just days before the explosion, BP chose to use a salt-water solution to seal the cement around the casing pipe which was known to be a far riskier option that the stronger heavy drilling fluid.

The choice of using a weaker salt-water solution, in light of the safety concerns surrounding the oil well in the weeks and months before the explosion, prompted heated arguments between a BP official and crew members employed by Transocean, the rig’s owner, on the morning of the blast, according to Douglas H. Brown, the chief mechanic for the Deepwater Horizon.

“Workers from the rig and company officials have said that hours before the explosion, gases were leaking through the cement, which had been set in place by the oil services contractor, Halliburton. Investigators have said these leaks were the likely cause of the explosion,” reported the Times.

Halliburton is named in the majority of some two dozen lawsuits filed since the explosion by Gulf Coast people and businesses who claim that the company is to blame for the disaster.

Halliburton’s role in improperly sealing the well with a riskier option, and the consternation this caused amongst workers on the rig, is shocking given the fact that just 11 days before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, surprised some by acquiring Boots & Coots, a relatively small but vastly experienced oil well control company, for the sum of $240 million dollars.

Halliburton is profiting from the oil spill it helped cause because Boots & Coots is now “under contract to BP – to help stop the Gulf oil spill,” reports the Christian Science Monitor.

“Could Halliburton have known that an oil disaster was on the horizon, and planned in advance to profit from it? News reports indicate they could have,” reports Raw Story.

“The New York Times reported in May that BP was concerned about the rig’s well casing — which Halliburton worked on — as early as June of 2009. The Times also reported that a Halliburton employee warned BP three weeks before the explosion that BP’s use of cement for the well casing was “against [Halliburton's] best practices.”

Given that it was in the process of acquiring a company that would receive millions of dollars in oil spill clean up contracts, was Halliburton’s overriding motivation to properly fix the well or to ensure it remained unstable?

BP itself was aware of cracks appearing in the Macondo well as far back as February, right around the time Goldman Sachs and BP Chairman Tony Hayward were busy dumping their stocks in the company on the eve of the explosion that led to the oil spill, according to information uncovered by congressional investigators.

The Mining and Mineral Services agency released documents to Bloomberg indicating that BP “was trying to seal cracks in the well about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast,” according to the report.

The fissures, which BP began to attempt to fix on February 13, could have played a role in the disaster, though this is a question still being explored by investigators. Improperly sealed, the cracks cause explosive natural gas to rush up the shaft.

“The company attempted a “cement squeeze,” which involves pumping cement to seal the fissures, according to a well activity report. Over the following week the company made repeated attempts to plug cracks that were draining expensive drilling fluid, known as “mud,” into the surrounding rocks,” states the report.

As we previously highlighted, eyewitness evidence indicates that Deepwater Horizon managers knew that the BP oil rig had major problems before its explosion on April 20. A crew member who rescued burning workers on the rig told Houston attorney Tony Buzbee of a conversation between Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell and someone in Houston. According to the witness, Harrell was screaming, “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.”

The fact that BP managers were aware of problems with the rig and were seemingly unconcerned about fixing them, in addition to Halliburton’s clear financial motivation in improperly sealing the cap, only lends more weight to the already startling indications of some having foreknowledge of the disaster.

On page 37 of British Petroleum’s own investigative report into the oil spill, it is stated that the Hydraulic Control System on equipment designed to automatically seal the well in an emergency was modified without BP’s knowledge sometime before the explosion.

Highly suspicious stock and share trades by people connected to BP before the explosion indicate some extent of foreknowledge.

Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter of 2010 – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million. The current chairman of Goldman Sachs is Bilderberg luminary Peter Sutherland, who is also the former chairman of British Petroleum.

Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the current BP CEO sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill.

So we have clear evidence of foreknowledge, allied with brazen financial motivation on behalf of several directly connected parties to sabotage the oil well, or in the very least ensure that negligent safety procedures increased the likelihood of an explosion, allied with the fact that the well was indeed improperly sealed by these same parties, much to the anger of the people working on the rig.

But the motivation for allowing the well to blow and prolonging the crisis isn’t merely financial, it’s political too. The motto for the people who pull the strings inside the Obama administration, people like Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton is to ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ – and Obama himself has certainly taken that to heart over the course of the last two months.

The elite are still desperate to impose a consumption tax on Americans as part of the move towards a “post-industrial revolution” and the kind of nightmare “green economy” that has left Spain with a 20 per cent unemployment rate. In a so-called green economy, over 2.2 jobs are lost for every “green job” created.

The Obama administration has aggressively exploited the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to manufacture an artificial urgency in an effort to speed the passage of cap and trade in pursuit of a “green economy,” an agenda firmly supported by the transnational oil corporations Obama is claiming to be reigning in. British Petroleum is one of the founding members of the cap and trade lobby, and has consistently “lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.”

Indeed, BP has been a faithful supporter of John Kerry’s climate legislation because the company has “explicitly backed” a “higher gas tax”. If Obama is able to exploit the oil spill to ram through his cap and trade program, BP stands to profit to the tune of billions. Allowing the crisis to worsen in pursuit of this goal is mutually beneficial to both the Obama administration and British Petroleum.

Obama’s “Agenda is to exaggerate the significance of the oil spill crisis to massive proportions, for two reasons,” writes the Telegraph’s Gerald Warner. “The first is that, the more Americans can be persuaded to regard the accident as a monumental, historic disaster, the less his patent impotence in the face of it will appear blameworthy. His second reason is that, in accordance with the Emanuel doctrine (never let a good crisis go to waste), he sees this as an opportunity to breathe new life into his moribund Cap-and-Trade climate change legislation.”

Obama has now indicated that he will push for cap and trade to be added to a weaker energy bill after the mid-term elections in November. Every week that the oil spill crisis drags on, Obama’s political capital for the purpose of pushing a carbon tax increases in the name of ‘reducing dependence on oil’. The government has every interest in seeing the crisis worsen, not merely to justify cap and trade but also to mothball plans for new exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic, something to which the administration had never wanted to fully commit. . As a result of the oil spill, which every action of the federal government has made worse, that drilling has now been postponed.

Another benefit of the oil spill is that it serves as a convenient distraction and a cover for a number of other stories, primarily the gearing up for a military attack on Iran, which now seems likely as we learn that more than twelve U.S. and Israeli warships, including an aircraft carrier, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday and are headed for the Red Sea.

The underwater oil field still holds as much as 97 per cent of its oil, 2 billion gallons of oil, meaning that this disaster could be prolonged for anything up to four years. Even worse, if studies into the abiotic nature of oil in the Gulf region hold true, the crisis could be never-ending.

Given the multitude of alarming examples of foreknowledge, motivation for sabotage, and clear evidence of deliberate malfeasance and negligence, state authorities in Florida, Louisiana and

Mississippi needs to immediately launch a mammoth criminal investigation into the role of BP, Halliburton and the federal government in causing the oil spill disaster, as well as their continuing cover-up of the true nature of the crisis, in addition to their efforts to block local authorities as well as foreign companies from helping to both stop the oil leak and clean up the devastation it has caused.

————————————————————

We encourage readers to contact the office of the Governor in these three states, as well as local legislative offices, in order to bring attention to this urgent matter and create momentum behind a criminal investigation into the disaster. Please be polite in your communications and invite local authorities to look into the evidence presented in this article.

Office of Governor Charlie Crist

State of Florida

The Capitol

400 S. Monroe St.

Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

Email the Governor: Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

Email the Lt. Governor: Jeff.Kottkamp@MyFlorida.com

Telephone:

Citizen Services Hotline: (850) 488-4441

Executive Office of the Governor Switchboard: (850) 488-7146

[Office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time]

Fax: (850) 487-0801

————————————————————

Email Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

Mailing address:

PO Box 94004

Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9004

Main line: 225-342-7015 or Toll Free at 866-366-1121

————————————————————

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour

Telephone: 1-877-405-0733 or 601-359-3150

Mail: P.O. Box 139, Jackson, Mississippi 39205

Email: governor@governor.state.ms.us.

Originally reported by PrisonPlanet.com