1. Better not happen – Kissinger on Obama:
“According to Kissinger, the rapidly unfolding economic depression and accompanying misery for billions of people “generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy” to usher in “a world financial order” and force sovereign nations “to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action,” that is to say through world government and a New World Order, a phrase Kissinger repeats several times in the article.
“An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled,” writes Kissinger. In other words, if nations do not embrace the “international order” in response to the bankster engineered global depression, they will be left to twist in the wind, sort of like Zimbabwe and other third world nations where absolute poverty and human misery are the rule of the day.
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Obama the manufactured messiah out of nowhere, Kissinger writes, is the answer. “The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order.”
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Prior to his International Herald Tribune article, Kissinger mounted the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” hosts Mark Haines and Erin Burnett that in essence Obama would be the man tapped to realize the one-world slave labor and control grid. Obama’s “task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”
In fact, it is a classic example of the problem-reaction-solution paradigm. The banksters engineered the current economic “problem” specifically to shove their “solution” down our throats — a New World Order of total control and global totalitarianism.”
http://truthseeker2473.blogspot.com/2009/01/other-news_12.html
2. The movie ‘Office Space’ come to life:
“Mysterious credit card charge may have hit millions of users
Several Internet complaint boards are filled with comments from credit card customers from coast to coast who have noticed a mysterious charge for about 25 cents on their statements.
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Former Massachusetts assistant attorney general Edgar Dworsky, who runs ConsumerWorld.org, said the scam reminded him of an old adage: “It’s easier to steal $1 from a million people than $1 million from one person,” he said.
Most people, Dworsky said, are likely to overlook or ignore the small charge. “Isn’t that the perfect scam, when the victim doesn’t even know something has been taken?” he said.”
http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/articles/2009/01/11/mysterious_credit_card_charge_may_have_hit_millions_of_users/?s_campaign=yahoo
3. So Israel DOES control US foreign policy:
“Israeli PM Ehud Olmert Claims to be Able to Order Bush Around
So outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was speaking in Ashkelon on Monday, and he said the most amazing thing. The USG Open Source Center translated the relevant passage from his speech, in which he claimed he had the ability to control US foreign policy and summarily over-rule the Secretary of State
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Why did Olmert spill the beans on his backroom maneuvering against Rice? It is a very damaging thing that he said. As Daniel Levy, who had been a Labor Party adviser on peace negotiations, told The Los Angeles Times’s Paul Richter:
‘ This is terrible for the United States . . . This confirms every assumption they have in the Arab world about the tail wagging the dog. . . . It’s a story you’re likely to hear quoted there for years to come.” Levy also accused Olmert of “unparalleled arrogance.”. . .”There are some things you don’t say, even in Ashkelon, even in Hebrew . . . “
Finally we come to the really big mystery. If the substance of what Olmert said is correct, even if he got some details wrong, then why in the world did Bush listen to him? Bush is outgoing and faces no new elections. His party cannot benefit or suffer with the Israel lobbies from a decision he took in relative secrecy since it won’t even face another election for 2 years, by which time this Gaza war will be completely forgotten.
Why in the world would Bush over-rule the US Secretary of State, for the sake of Olmert, in the midst of delicate negotiations with European and Arab allies? Here are the only possibilities I can think of:
1. Bush is as dumb as he looks and just agrees with the last person he spoke to.
2. Bush hates it when the roar of cannon dies down, and is a sadist who enjoys prolonging war far too much to ever actively back a ceasefire.
3. Olmert has something over Bush. I remember that Bush had taken on Sharon in September of 2001, calling for a Palestinian state and ordering Sharon to stop colonizing the West Bank. Sharon was so furious that he compared Israel’s situation to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when the rest of Europe let Hitler grab part of it. But by spring of 2002 Bush was bending over backward to please the Likud. What changed? Something did. There is a mystery to be explained here. I only point out that along with the previous two explanations, this one would make sense of otherwise baffling behavior on Bush’s part.
Precisely because his overly frank speech raises these sorts of questions, I expect Olmert to deny the entire address, and then it will be expunged from the public record and never spoken of again.
In any case, this slippage of the veil over the way US foreign policy is being dictated by a foreign country reinforces the need for a Peace PAC or ‘For America’ PAC to counter-act the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is obviously way too powerful for Israel’s own good. J-Street and Brit Tzedik Ve Shalom and Tikkun and other liberal Jewish-American organizations are trying to do the right thing here. Whereas AIPAC gets plenty of help from the evangelicals, the rest of us are letting down the majority of the Jewish community that supports the peace process by not helping it lobby on this issue.
That resolution Olmert tried to spike means that his government’s continued war on Gaza (he ordered 60 airstrikes on Monday through early Tuesday) is even more illegal than the whole enterprise was to begin with.”
http://www.juancole.com/
4. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11770
“Concerns about Israel’s use of non-conventional and experimental weapons in the Gaza Strip are growing, with evasive comments from spokesmen and reluctance to allow independent journalists inside the tiny enclave only fuelling speculation.
The most prominent controversy is over the use of shells containing white phosphorus, which causes horrific burns when it comes into contact with skin. Under international law, phosphorus is allowed as a smokescreen to protect soldiers but treated as a chemical weapon when used against civilians.
The Israeli army maintains that it is using only weapons authorised in international law, though human rights groups have severely criticised Israel for firing phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza.
But there might be other unconventional weapons Israel is using out of sight of the watching world.
One such munition may be Dime, or dense inert metal explosive, a weapon recently developed by the US army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.
The munition is supposed to still be in the development stage and is not yet regulated. There are fears, however, that Israel may have received a green light from the US military to treat Gaza as a testing ground.
“We have seen Gaza used as a laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell,” said David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist who has visited Gaza on several occasions to investigate unusual injuries suffered by Gazans.
“I fear the thinking in Israel is that it is in its interests to create as much mutilation as possible to terrorise the civilian population in the hope they will turn against Hamas.”
Gaza’s doctors, including one of the few foreigners there, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian specialist in emergency medicine working at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, report that many of the injuries they see are consistent with the use of Dime.
Wounds from the weapon are said to be distinctive. Those exposed to the blast have severed or melted limbs, or internal ruptures, especially to soft tissue such as the abdomen, that often lead to death.
There is said to be no shrapnel apart from a fine “dusting” of minute metal particles on damaged organs visible when autopsies are carried out. Survivors of a Dime blast are at increased risk of developing cancer, according to research carried out in the United States.
Traditional munitions, by contrast, cause large wounds wherever shrapnel penetrates the body.
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The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has recorded numerous occasions when the Israeli army has fired flechette shells, both in Lebanon and Gaza. The shell releases thousands of tiny metal darts that cause horrible injuries to anyone out in the open.
A Reuters cameraman, Fadel Shana, filmed the firing of such a shell from an Israeli tank in Gaza in April, moments before its flechettes killed him.
There are also suspicions that Israel may have used uranium-based warheads. A subsequent inquiry by a British newspaper found elevated levels of radiation at two Israeli missile craters. “
5. “Right this moment, there are enormous pressures being exerted on Obama not to make significant changes in the areas of civil liberties, intelligence policy and foreign affairs. That pressure is being exerted by the intelligence community, by the permanent Pentagon structures, by status-quo-loving leaders of both political parties, by authority-worshipping Beltway “journalists” and pundits (such as the ones who wrote the wretched though illustrative “What Would Dick Do?” cover story for this week’s Newsweek).
If those who want fundamental reform in these areas adopt the view that they will not criticize Barack Obama because to do so is to “help Republicans,” or because he deserves more time, or because criticisms are unnecessary because we can trust in him to do the right thing, or because criticizing him is to “tear him down” or “create a circular firing squad” or “be a Naderite purist” or any of those other empty platitudes, then they are ceding the field to the very powerful factions who are going to fight vehemently against any changes. Do you think that those who want the CIA to retain “robust” interrogation powers and who want the federal surveillance state maintained, or want a hard-line towards Iran and a continuation of our Middle East policies, or who want to maintain corporate-lobbyist-domination of Washington, are sitting back saying: ”it’s not right to pressure Obama too much right now; give him some time”?
It’s critical that Obama — and the rest of the political establishment — hear loud objections, not reverential silence, when he flirts with ideas like the ones he suggested on Sunday. This dynamic prevails with all political issues. Where political pressure comes only from one side, that is the side that wins — period.
We just witnessed the results of that dynamic with the ugly spectacle last week of a virtually unanimous Congress approving a completely one-sided Israel/Gaza Resolution. That Middle East war is an issue which, whatever else one might want to say about it, generates intense controversy, division and passion around the world. But not in the U.S. Congress. There, virtually the entire Congress (510 of the 535 members) — from the furthest left precincts of the Democratic Party to the furthest right-wing of the Republican Party, from all four corners of the U.S. and everywhere in between — looked at this war and just-so-happened to reach the same exact conclusion: not only is Israel 100% in the right, but the U.S. should involve itself publicly and squarely on Israel’s side.
Does anyone actually believe that, in the absence of extremely effective political pressure, 510 ideologically diverse members of Congress — at exactly the moment when worldwide opposition to the Israeli assault is growing in response to documented civilian horrors — would all have jointly decided that Israel was right to bomb and invade Gaza and that it is in America’s interests to insinuate itself on Israel’s side? Even Governors, such as Democrat Martin O’Malley of Maryland, ludicrously popped up to follow the pro-Israel script.
That happens for one clear reason: because one side of the debate (the AIPAC faction) is strong and aggressive in its criticisms and pressure tactics and the other side (the faction wanting an even-handed U.S. approach) is not.
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Just as Congressional Democrats have known for the last eight years, Obama will know that there is only a price to pay when he acts contrary to the Republican and Beltway “centrist” agenda, but no price to pay when he acts contrary to the agenda of his most ardent supporters (because they won’t criticize him, because to do is to “tear him down,” “help Republicans,” act like a Naderite purist, etc. etc. etc.). That meek and deferential attitude — aside from being a wildly inappropriate and even dangerous way to treat a political leader — also ensures that one is irrelevant and taken for granted and one’s views easily ignored.
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Like all politicians, Obama is not intrinsically good. Good things don’t happen by virtue of the mere existence of his presidency. His presidency will be good only and exactly to the extent that he does good things. Pressure and criticisms make his doing those good things more likely (there is a quote from FDR, which I cannot find but am certain commenters will quickly cite, where FDR privately instructed his supporters to publicly criticize him for not doing X so that he would be able to do X more easily).
Obama is about to become one of the world’s most powerful political leaders, if not the single most powerful. He begins with sky-high approval ratings, his political party in control of Congress by a large margin, and enjoys reverence so intense from certain quarters that such a loyal following hasn’t been seen since the imperial glow around George Bush circa 2002. He’s not going to crumble or melt away like the Wicked Witch if he’s pressured or criticized. The far more substantial danger is that he won’t be pressured or criticized enough by those who are eager to see meaningful changes in Washington, and then — either by desire or necessity — those are the voices he will ignore most easily.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
6. Now you’re talking:
“Teachers who agree to be systematically ignored by the progeny of the underclass in Britain’s worst schools are to be offered £10,000 a year extra in a carefully-worded bribe to be outlined by Gordon Brown today. The deal, to be officially termed as a “Pre-emptive injury settlement” hopes to entice teaching professionals to abandon what little hope they had for enriching young minds in exchange for a fat wad of cash.
“This deal is in recognition of all the difficult work education-givers do in our most troubled schools” said junior Education Minister Chips Ebbsfleet. “If teachers want tearful scenes of appreciation that they’ve proven massively influential in a teenager’s education, then I suggest they buy a copy of ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ and shut the fuck up.”
The payment is to be offered to teachers working in worst-performing schools in the country. NUT person Hoop Knutsford stated “I will be recommending this scheme to all NUT members on the basis that teaching fuck-all to a bunch of subhuman scrotes in exchange for an extra ten large is a no-brainer, even for somebody with such a lack of employment opportunities that they end up being a teacher. We still get all those holidays and the chance to look up the skirts of the sixth-formers, right?”
Applications for teaching posts in schools serving sink estates have trebled following the news. One education recruitment consultant stated “We’re getting hundreds of CVs from aggressive borderline psychopaths with poor pass marks in their PGCE. Many of them realise that ten grand buys a lot of the illegal tasers and brass knucks necessary for the role. And coping with the stress isn’t going to be an issue as they’ll be confiscating enough narcotics from the pupils to bring Keith Moon back to life.”
http://pushjelly.blogspot.com/2009/01/teachers-offered-golden-stab-vests.html
