1. “Mark Gerzon, a pioneer in the movement, candidly admitted that the Stimulus Bill (which President Obama publicly signed into law February 18th, 2009, in Denver), was a result of bipartisan thinking and give and take, creating ammunition for future arguments and battles between Republicans and Democrats. A genuine effort to rationally examine measurable effects of past efforts to improve the lives of individuals, communities, and regions–to meet people’s needs and ameliorate economic conditions–was thwarted by Congress.
The Stimulus Bill is basically window dressing that does not begin to tackle the deeper systemic problems or the most urgent immediate needs of the people at a time of uncertainty and crisis; it is window dressing that promotes the “idea” that the government is “trying to do something” and is on top of the situation–which is an illusion, like the bubble wealth creation of the financial sector that has burst. Throwing money at the speculators’ black hole of astronomical debt will only reward and enrich the banksters and transfer an unpayable debt from them onto the shoulders of taxpayers. Rescuing banks has never served or helped the plight of populations who have seen their homes, savings, and businesses stolen from them by predators who already have the most wealth.
With so many systems failing, prescribing “more of the same medicine” does not inspire confidence. Pronouncements from the World Economic Forum and the White House try to convince us that the government and corporate structures that have dominated the past several decades are going to offer genuine solutions. These government and corporate structures are a large part of what has created the problem in the first place. The current policies might maintain the veneer of structural integrity, but beneath the surface explosives are going off, destroying huge swaths of infrastructure–key columns, as happened in the controlled demolition of World Trade Center 7. The fall time is predicted by the laws of physics, so that those in the know can exit and profit as they watch from a distance–and calculate how to profit even more from the insurance money that they’ll use to build the next bubble economy.“
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19466
2. “This still doesn’t explain why Cato, staunchly anti-interventionist on virtually every other issue, has it in for Russia. Here’s a theory. Cato’s Russophobia manifested itself only after Cato sponsored a joint conference with the Russians at which several top government officials and advisers were invited to speak. Cato President and founder Edward H. Crane III met with Putin [.pdf], in the company of a bevy of free-market types, and the group proffered advice to the Russian leader, which boiled down to: free up the system. Crane cited Putin as saying that he, Putin, wanted to make Russia “the center of liberal debate in Europe,” and Crane, for his part, wrote: “he may well mean it.” When Crane began to suspect he didn’t mean it, and Putin blocked Western investment in Russia’s vast oil and natural gas reserves, a business that Koch Industries, for years the chief source of Cato’s lavish funding, has definite interests in, Cato turned against its former ally big-time. Go figure.”
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14307
3. “Elliott Abrams just confirmed that he will be official mouthpiece of Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud Party at the Council on Foreign Relations and on the pages of The Weekly Standard (and probably in the Wall Street Journal, too).
In reading the article, ironically entitled “The Path of Realism or the Path to Failure: Laying a Foundation for Peace in Palestine,” what can’t help but be struck by the coincidence in views between Abrams and the Likud leader on virtually every single issue regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from reviving the notion of a Jordanian option to seeing the conflict as “part of a broader struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power.” Also noteworthy is the clarity with which he expresses his total opposition to his former boss’s (President George W. Bush) stated policy, particularly with respect to the Annapolis process (although it apparently didn’t occur to him to offer his resignation under the circumstances) and his explicit embrace of Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (”reliable and trustworthy”) and the PA’s U.S.-tutored security forces who “acted in parallel, and sometimes in concert, with Israeli forces” during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. I’m sure both Fayyad and the PA’s security forces appreciate such a fulsome endorsement from Netanyahu’s alter ego.
With friends like Abrams, who seems to think that democratic reform — remember, he was in charge of global democracy promotion, as well as the Middle East, in Bush’s National Security Council — consists mainly of building Palestinian security forces that can maintain Israel’s occupation indefinitely and fails to mention the word “settlements” in a 3,200-page essay on “realism” and laying a foundation for peace in Palestine, who needs enemies?“
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/02/23/abrams-confirms-his-new-role/
4. “Sandia National Laboratories Test Exonerates Ivins
While government apologists are still trying to pretend there is a case that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer, tests by Sandia National Laboratories have exonerated him.
As the publisher of the prestigious scientific journal Nature writes:
At a biodefence meeting on 24 February, Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of three letters sent to the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin, says Michael. Bacteria from Ivins’ RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements.
Two cultures of the same anthrax strain grown using similar processes — one from Ivins’ lab, the other from a US Army facility in Utah — showed the silicon-oxygen signature but did not contain tin or iron. Michael presented the analyses at the American Society for Microbiology’s Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
It had previously been known that the killer anthrax contained silicon – an agent for weaponizing anthrax. But I have never previously read that the killer samples also contained iron and tin.
As the world’s top anthrax experts have pointed out, Ivins did not possess either the know-how or the equipment to weaponize the anthrax. See this and this.
In addition, as Nature points out:
Ravel also sequenced the genome of a Bacillus subtilis strain that was found in one of the letters. That sample did not match a B. subtilis strain found in Ivins’ lab, says Bannan, but the bacterial contamination still could have come from somewhere else in Ivins’ institution.
There is simply no credible evidence incriminating Ivins“
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/sandia-national-laboratories-test.html
5. A great article describing the one math formula that the global financial collapse:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12447
