Michael D. Lemonick: Probing The Role of the Sun in an Era of Global Warming!

Though some skeptics have suggested that the real culprit behind rising temperatures is increased solar activity, a wide variety of data and experiments still provide no solid evidence to refute the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are the major reason why our planet is heating up. Anyone who has doubts that the sun has a profound impact on climate just hasn't been paying attention! A mere change in the sun angle from January to July means the difference between cold winters and hot summers in New Jersey. If the Earth were traveling through the darkness of space alone, we would not have a climate to begin with, and our planet would be frozen solid. One way or another, the Sun is the ultimate source of most of the energy on Earth. That being the case, critics of the idea that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases have suggested that the real culprit is a changing Sun. If they are right, the clamor to reduce emissions would be a waste of time and resources, and while climate scientists are reasonably certain that the problem really is greenhouse gases, they can't just ignore alternate explanations. To be sure, the greenhouse gas story doesn't just come out of nowhere. Scientists have had definitive laboratory proof since the 1800's that gases like CO2 trap heat. They know that greenhouse gases are implicated in episodes of climate change going back millions of years. They know that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels has been building up in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began. They've seen the temperature rising, glaciers melting, weather patterns changing. They don't know all the details, but the story seems to hang together fairly well, but that doesn't mean you aren't missing something. The late physicist Richard Feynman once said: "The first principle of science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

Nick Turse: A Secret War In 120 Countries

Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the US Military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. A new Pentagon "power elite" is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed. Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will most likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling, a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence, in about 60% of the world's nations, and far larger than previously acknowledged, provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite, waging a secret war in all corners of the world. Born od a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALS, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescue-men, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counter-terrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations. From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990's, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to about 60,000 about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion.

Shamus Cooke: We Have Been Screwed by Obama's Debt Crisis Plan

The hidden objective of the "Debt Crisis Plan" was to strike the first blows against our national social safety net, without encountering massive resistance. Mission half-accomplished so far! Half accomplished because only half of the $2.5 billion in cuts have been decided on! The other half will be sent to a bi-partisan committee, where, according to the White House Fact Sheet: "the committee will consider responsible entitlement (Social Security and Medicare) and tax reform (cuts to entitlement programs). This means putting all the priorities of both parties on the table, including both entitlement reform (Social Security and Medicare, as well as Medicaid), and revenue-raising tax reform. If the committee fails to agree on the cuts, they would be automatically triggered, and Medicare would be targeted: "any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side." This means that fewer doctors would accept medicare patients, or they would provide fewer services to Medicare beneficiaries. When it comes to cutting Social Security and Medicare, the Democrats are Republicans, only trying to get their foot in the door. Nevertheless, the potential cuts will have a massive impact on the millions of Americans who depend on these vital services, and if these cuts are allowed to happen unopposed, the possibility of future, more dramatic cuts is certain. Equally bad is that the budget deal makes the unemployment situation even worse. In writing about the effect the cuts would have on unemployment, a Moody's analyst predicted that: "The deal announced last night calls for a yearly average of $240 billion in cuts over the next decade. Very roughly, that suggests the new plan would cost around 1.6 million jobs per year during that time. This noxious level of contempt for working people was the product of a manufactured crisis, with Democrats and Republicans playing along. "There has to be a crisis. Now, in reality,there is no crisis at all. In reality, raising the debt ceiling has been done for a hundred years automatically. There is no connection between raising the debt ceiling and arguing over tax policy! All of a sudden, Mr. Obama is going along with the charade of saying,"Wait a minute, let's create a crisis!"

Congratulations: White House Staffers Got a Raise Last Year, AND YOU DID NOT!!!

You, The People Got screwed this year: The White House released its annual salary report last week, and somehow they forgot to include you in the festivities!! Who knows, if Obama is still alive next year, perhaps there will also be something in it for you!! Most staffers who were there for more than one year got a "salary bump". A much bigger one than you did! The last time we checked White House salaries, we found that an astonishing 75% of continuing staffers got raises from 2009 to 2010, a huge number, given the fact that, according to compensation experts, most companies had skipped routine raises that year, in reaction to the economic crisis that the White House was busy failing to solve. This time around, from 2010 to 2011, the ratio is a little less dramatic. Of the 270 White House staffers who have been there for more than a year, 146 or 54% received well-deserved raises. The average salary increase was a mere 8%, but for staffers who got raises, the average increase was twice that. Unless I am mistaken, and I was when my relatives voted for Obama, despite the fact that he screwed the NOBEL Prize Committee out of its undeserved prize, while ratcheting the war in Afghanistan up a few notches, just to hear the bastards scream. But I digress: The raises in his staff were much bigger than the average white collar workers got! According to a survey conducted last year by the human resources consulting firm Mercer, most firms were reporting a 3% increase in base pay for executives, but White House workers did nearly three times as well! Overall, it should be noted that the White House salary budget contracted slightly, from $38.8 million to $37.1 million. How can Obama's staff even survive on that???

Finian Cunningham: The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant "President"

If there is one thing that the office of President Obama demonstrates, it is that democracy does not exist in the United States. For many people, the fact that the 44th president is the first black man to preside over the white house, with its American colonial style architecture, is a tribute to the triumph of US democracy, but many other telling facts indicate that Obama is merely a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites - commercial, financial, and military governs with the same core policies, regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the unelected elite. That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely in practice to dictatorship, NOT democracy: As Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown reveal in their analyses of the US budget debacle, Obama is pathetically doing the bidding of Wall Street, much like an errand boy. Brown writes: "The debt crisis was created, NOT by a social safety net, bought and paid for by the taxpayers, but by a banking system taken over by Wall Street gamblers. The gamblers lost their bets and were bailed out at the expense of the taxpayers, and if anyone should be held to account, it is these gamblers. "The debt ceiling crisis is a manufactured one, engineered to extort concessions that will lock the middle class in debt peonage for decades to come. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to issue the money it needs to pay its debts." Obama's servile toeing of Wall Street's line is NOT the behavior of a free leader boldly defending the interests of the people and the greater good. Rather, his behavior is that of one doing what he is told to do, and is doing it with grateful deference. In this way, of course, Obama is hardly different from his predecessors, but the difference is just how blatant the White House now appears to function as a mere tool of the rich and powerful elite.

Tomgram: Uncovering the Military's Secret Military

The "Abbottabad" raid was NOT DEVGRU's maiden venture into Pakistan. The team had surreptitiously entered the country on ten to twelve previous occasions, according to a special operations officer who is intensely familiar with the bin Laden raid. DEVRU is the acronym for the NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE DEVELOPMENT GROUP, better known as SEAL Team Six, the elite special operations outfit that supposedly killed Bin Laden, though others will tell you that bin Laden, who suffered from various illnesses, died in a mountain cave many miles from Pakistan, and that Obama ordered this fake raid to embellish this so-called raid to claim that HE had initiated this futile raid, just to look good on paper. His "alleged" assassination of bin Laden was never an objective, but was brought on by a blitz of media coverage, but who knew that the same SEAL team had been dropped into Pakistan to do who knows what 10 to 12 times before the alleged bin Laden mission happened? Not most Pakistanis,nor 99.99% of Americans. Keep in mind that this was only a team of 23 elite troops, plus a translator and a dog (the latter to add some reality to this fake mission). But there are now about 20,000 full-time special operations types, at least 13,000 of them deployed somewhere abroad, even at this moment. In other words, we simply don't know the half of it, or even the tenth of it, neither the breadth or number of their missions, nor the range of their targets. According to Schmidle again, on the day of the bin Laden raid, special operations forces in nearby Afghanistan conducted 12 other night raids. Almost 2,000 of them have been carried out in the last couple of years. These are staggering figures, and since we didn't know that US special operations forces were secretly conducting Pakistan missions in such numbers, it might be worth asking what else we don't know.

Pravda: New NATO War Crimes in Libya

As though our combined NATO terrorist attack against Libya could not get any better, NATO terrorist attacks have hit a water pipe factory in al-Brega, murdering six guards, and destroying the great man-made irrigation system which brings water to seventy percent of Libyan homes. The factory was hit after the water supply network was destroyed on Friday. By hitting the water source, and also the pipeline factory producing the pipes to repair it, NATO has sunk to a new low in protecting the civilians in Libya. NATO has committed yet another war crime, in attacking a civilian water supply network, which brings water to 70% of Libya's population, according to sources in Libya. The general manager of the "Man Made River Corporation" which controls the pipeline reports it was hit by a NATO strike on Friday! In another clear violation of the wars against humanity, a consignment from Italy of 19,000 AK-47's was caught in Ajdabiyah by the Libyan authorities, according to Libyan military sources. The international community has two choices: To turn a blind eye like cowards, and allow NATO to murder Libyan children, murder Libyan civilians and support terrorists with their strikes, while using "white phosphorous" against Libyan government positions, or sit back while NATO continues to engage in heinous war crimes, which were once only used by Adolf Hitler in my former country of Germany.

Finian Cunningham: The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant "President"

If there is one thing that the office of "President" Barack Obama demonstrates, it is that democracy does not exist in the United States. For many morons in our country, the fact that the 44th president is is the first black man to preside over the White House, with its colonial-style architecture, as a tribute to the triumph of US democracy, but many more telling facts indicate that Obama is but a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites, commercial, financial, and military governs with the same core policies regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the "unelected elite." That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely to in practice to dictatorship, not democracy. As Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown reveal in their analysis of the US budget debacle, Obama is pathetically doing the bidding of Wall Street, much like a lowly errand boy. Brown writes: "The debt crisis was created, not by a social safety net bought and paid for by the taxpayers, but by a banking system taken over by Wall Street gamblers. These gamblers lost their bets, and were bailed out at the expense of the taxpayers, and if anyone should be held to account, it is these gamblers. "The debt ceiling crisis is a manufactured one, engineered to extort concessions that will lock the middle class in debt peonage for decades to come. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to issue the money it needs to pay its debts."
Obama's servile toeing of Wall Street's line is NOT the behavior of a free leader boldly defending the interests of the people and the greater good. Rather, his behavior is that of one doing what he is told to do, and doing it with grateful deference. In this way, Obama is hardly different from his predecessors, but the difference is is just how blatant the White House is now appearing to function as a mere tool of the rich and powerful elite.
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Pravda: Gaddafi's Troops Booby Trap Installations in Brega Oil Port!

Moammar Gaddafi's troops have booby-trapped petroleum installations in the strategic oil port of Brega, so that they can be easily blown up, if his troops have to vacate that town. Mahmoud Jibril, who is with the "rebels" also indicated that Libya's leader has booby-trapped his oil fields. While Brega is a key oil processing and shipment hub, the fields that feed it lie far to the south in the Libyan desert. Almost a quarter of a century after his release from jail, for plotting a coup against Colonel Muammer Gaddafi, ex-Libyan air force officer Atia Omer Elmansouri has rebelled again. Wearing an outsize grey jacket that made his already small frame look shrunken, the 67 year-old former pilot styled himself a "wise man", who saw the Libyan leader's true nature soon after he took power in 1969, but I am sorry for others who co-operated with him, if they knew his reality or not, reflected Mr. Elmansouri. If they have done some corruption, they have to face the law, when we build our government and our democratic institutions. The effort to find more assets connected to Gaddafi's regime will continue, so that the opposition can try to claim that these assets belong to the Libyan people. Jibril's visit to Spain came a day after France's foreign minister suggested that a possible way out of Libya's civil war would be to allow Moammar Gaddafi to stay in the country, if he relinquishes power. Jiminez said that Spain's position is that it would be up to Libya's people to decide whether Gaddafi should stay or go, echoing comments issued a day earlier by White House spokesman Jay Carney. Gaddafi has insisted he will neither step down nor flee the country he has led for more than four decades.

Susan Lindauer: Horrors of US-NATO Butchery of Libya Revealed!

Susan Lindauer has witnessed the hideous barbarity of the so-called 'civilized' barbarity of the Zionist-controlled United States and its "City of London" allies at first hand! There is the bombing of the Libyan water project, the bombing of schools, hospitals and population centers, the blockade of the port of Tripoli to cut off all food delivery and medical supplies, all of them designed to starve and and kill the masses of Libyan humanity. Though the people of Libya are incredibly intelligent and strong, Libya is allowed to see their brave men, women, and children slaughtered like cattle in our slaughterhouses. When my family and I had to flee Breslau, (now Wroclaw, Poland), we had to watch from a nearby hill, only a few kilometers south of that beautiful city, while American and British bombers reduced that beautiful metropolis, and the friendly who had given us their food, to rubble. Libya is now hiring some of the most important lawyers in our world to file lawsuits against NATO. Last night, NATO bombed the Libyan Broadcasting company, killing three civilians and injuring fifteen others. Susan saw at least 400,000 to 500,000 people rally behind their country and the leader of their revolution. Some of the poorest people in Tripoli came with signs, and their children dressed in green. Written on their hands and bodies was: "We will give our soul for Ghadafi, we will all die before we let NATO and the crusaders kill our beloved leader!

Rethink Afghanistan: Afghan President Outlines Conditions for Future US Ties!

On Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai outlined conditions for future US ties. The new ambassador in Kabul, Ryan Crocker, has said that the US has no interest in permanent military bases in the country, and does not want to project its influence in the region by remaining in Afghanistan, but fears remain among many Afghans over any long-term American presence in the country, following the departure of all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014. Karzai said Afghanistan's conditions included foreign forces working within Afghan legal rules, US troops not taking prisoners or maintaining jails, and an end to controversial night raids by elite commandos. He gave no details how the demands would shape negotiations, as he addressed heads of the army, police and intelligence services in a speech marking the first phase of security transitions from foreign to local forces' control. "There are many other conditions on the economy and sovereignty, and all other aspects, and about respect to the Afghan constitution," Karzai said. "They also have their own conditions, but we haven't agreed to anything yet." Seven parts of the country were ceremonially handed over from foreign to Afghan forces last week, though NATO officials say it will be up to two years before each area will assume full control for security and governance. All Western combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014.

Daily Mail Reporter: Iraq is Now More Dangerous than last YEAR

After a surge in bombings, assassinations and violence by Sh'ite militias. The findings come during a summer of uncertainty in Baghdad, over whether American forces will stay past a year-end withdrawal deadline, and continue military aid for this now unstable nation. In his quarterly review to Congress, a top government adviser accused the US military of glossing over the issue, just months before soldiers are due to leave the country. These findings come during a 'summer of uncertainty' in Baghdad, over whether American forces will stay past a year-end withdrawal deadline and continue military aid for the unstable nation. The review follows the bloodiest month for the US military in two years, after 15 soldiers died in June. US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart W Bowen Jr, who wrote the report, concluded by saying: "Iraq remains an extraordinarily dangerous place to work." He added: "In my judgment, it is less safe than 12 months ago." Mr. Bowen cited the 15 soldiers who died last month, nearly all of whom were killed in attacks by Shi'ite militias, determined to force American troops out on time. He also noted an increase in rockets launched against the heavily fortified "Green Zone" in Baghdad, where government offices and foreign embassies are located, as well as constant assassination attempts against Iraqi political leaders, security forces, and judges. The report also called the north-eastern province of Diyala, which borders Iran, and has an often volatile mix of of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Kurds among its residents, "very unstable' with frequent bombings that bring double-digit death tolls.

Steve Lynch: The CIA and the Military's Mind Control Research

John Lennon made the world "Imagine" a household world, but that's not where I'm going with this post. Imagine a world where all privacy has been eliminated, where none of your personal thoughts can be protected, and where "Big Brother" (Obama?) can modify your thinking electronically without your realization. That nightmarish future would be much worse than the surveillance society described by George Orwell's book 1984. If this should become a reality, there would be no place to run, and also no place to hide. More than fifty years ago, the CIA started working on "covert mind technology". One of the earliest CIA secret behavioral control programs was known as "Project Artichoke", probably meaning that the CIA would choke you, if you don't become a bone fide, government controlled communist. According to The New York Times, on August 2, 1977, the scope of this project was summarized in a CIA memo dated January 25, 1952. The CIA wanted "the evaluation and development of any method by which we can get information from a person against their will, and without their knowledge." The memo also asked if they could get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will, and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation." On April 13, 1953, Project Artichoke grew into a super-secret project called MK-ULTRA, that was overseen by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, whom Counterpunch called "a pusher, assassin, pimp, and US official poisoner". In his well-known book: "The search for the Manchurian Candidate", author John Marks wrote, "The agency's brainwashing experts gravitated to to people more in the mold of the of the brilliant, and sometimes mad scientist, obsessed by the wonders of the brain." Gottlieb's boss at the CIA was the notorious Christian Zionist James Angleton.

Lee Rogers: The Current Debt Ceiling Debate is a COMPLETE FRAUD!

The entire debt ceiling debate that had been covered religiously by the "corporate media",was nothing more than a fraud, surrounded by false ideologies on both sides of the phony political spectrum. The problem was very simple to solve, and defied logic that not even a single person in the corporate controlled media or in government appeared willing to discuss a legitimate solution. Instead, the politicians and the corporate controlled media propagandists preferred to offer fake solutions that keep the current debt, based monetary system in place. The argument primarily focused around Democrats demanding so-called revenue increases with spending cuts, while the Republicans were demanding no tax increases, combined with slightly more aggressive spending cuts. Although it was true that government spending was wildly out of control, and should have been drastically cut, neither of these proposals came anywhere close to offering real reform. They were merely proposals designed to keep the current system in place, while the system itself was the REAL problem! Currently, many sovereign countries have found themselves in an enormous amount of debt: The myriads of central banking systems which operate in conjunction with various nations operate with the concept that that all money is debt. In the case of the United States, whenever the government needs deficit spending, they borrow it from the Federal Reserve at interest. The Federal Reserve provides the United States Treasury Federal Reserve Notes that are created from nothing, in exchange for bonds or debt. When these Federal Reserve Notes circulate in our economy, and are stored in our banks, these banks can lend many times the amount of money that they have on hand. For many years, banks could lend ten times the amount of cash on hand. In other words, these banks could simply create additional Federal Reserve Notes out of nothing, and force the borrower to pay interest on it, based on the amount of reserves at their disposal. In our system, all money is debt, and the people are taxed so that the government can pay back interest on the debt that originated from the funds that the Federal Reserve simply created out of nothing.
Hey, I learned this shit while getting my MBA from "The University of Texas at Arlington in May 1976!!" NUFF SAID!

USA to destroy IRAN with SMART BOMBS from Diego Garcia

Iran has recently conducted military drills with ballistic missiles to demonstrate its power. The missiles are capable of causing considerable damage to a possible enemy in the region! US and British bases located in the Chagos Archepelago in the Indian Ocean play the central role in the possible attack against the Islamic Republic. The US bases on these islands are geared to accept sea vessels of all classes. In addition, there are arms systems, military hardware and commando troops deployed on the archipelago, which can be immediately dispatched, if necessary. The archipelago is also used as a secret prison of the CIA. The US and British air base, one of the largest in the world, capable of accepting and servicing aircraft of all types, including B-52 and B-2 strategic bombers. The latter were deployed last year for a military operation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though attacking Iran does not require the use of long-range stealth aircraft, these bombers can be employed for the destruction of important military and industrial targets. The B-2 is one of the most technologically advanced and expensive planes of our US Air Force. NATO's bases on Diego Garcia, called "an aircraft carrier" by American pilots, have been used to defend US interests in our far-flung regions, including bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no doubt that the base to attack Iran. One indication is the strengthening of our position on that base, which has a very important strategic mission. The fly-time toward the Persian Gulf is almost negligible, so even Indian officials believe that the base creates a huge threat against peace in the Indian Ocean, but many of Iran's important targets are now hidden underground, and are no longer easy to destroy. Nearly 400 powerful bombs were sent to Diego Garcia in March 2010, capable of destroying large objects underground.

Obama Considers Becoming a Slumlord for Foreclosed Homes

One proposal winning support among some federal officials would sell thousands of foreclosed federal properties to private investors who agree to rent them. Investors would rehab homes, run the leasing process, and contract with national property management firms to handle day-to-day tenant demands. The housing market has been struck by a troubling phenomenon: Shock: Obama admits US headed for a mega depression. Canadian real estate taking drastic downturn. Obama's mortgage loan effort caused more harm than good. Utah considers return to Gold and silver coins, amid failure of the US dollar. Irish EU bailout spooks bank holders, banks lose 17 percent deposits amid bank run!

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: Divide and Conquer: A Project to Create THREE Libya'sE

The division of Libya into three separate countries is part of the US-NATO imperial design, a project shared by the US, Britain, Italy, and France. Before my family and I left Germany, these same "victorious allies" decided they could divide Germany also into as many parts, but they recanted when it seemed certain that they needed our foolish citizens to help fight the wars among the "Victors". The NATO war launched against Libya in March 2011 was similarly designed to break up that country into three separate entities. After all, it's FUN to play GOD, isn't it? The mainstream media, as usual, kowtowing to their masters, has been a major force in this war. They have endorsed and fabricated the news, and justified an illegal and criminal war against an entire population (deja-vu?). Passing through the neighborhood of Fashloom in Tripoli, it is apparent that no jets attacked it, as Al Jazeera and the BBC falsely claimed. Now, the same media networks, newspapers, and wire services claim on a daily basis that Tripoli is about to fall, and that the Transitional Council is making new advances to various cities. The mainstream media reporting from Tripoli have consistently produced false reports, including information from "secure internet services", which describe embassy and intelligence communication media.