"NAFTA of the Pacific" and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Washington's Hidden Agenda is to Isolate and Subordinate China

Global Research
Dana Gabriel

At the recent APEC meetings, Canada and Mexico announced their interest in joining the U.S., along with other countries already engaged in negotiations to establish what has been referred to as the NAFTA of the Pacific.

The leaders of the nine countries that are part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hawaii and agreed on the broad outlines of a free trade agreement. The current members include the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Peru and Chile. The TPP has been hailed as a, “landmark, 21st-century trade agreement, setting a new standard for global trade and incorporating next-generation issues.” Key features of the TPP are that it would provide comprehensive market access and be a fully regional agreement designed to facilitate the development of production and supply chains. Various working groups have been discussing issues such as financial services, government procurement, intellectual property, investment, rules of origin, telecommunications and trade remedies. The next round of talks will take place in December and there are hopes of concluding negotiations before the end of 2012. Apart from Canada and Mexico, Japan has also expressed interest in being part of the TPP. The door is also open for other countries to join which is why many consider it to be a building block for an Asia-Pacific free trade zone.

Following the APEC forum, President Barack Obama held a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Originally, it was scheduled to be a North American Leaders Summit, but Mexican President Felipe Calderon could not attend due to the death of Interior Minister Francisco Blake Mora. According to a Readout by the Press Secretary, the leaders look forward to a rescheduled trilateral summit. During his meeting with Prime Minister Harper, President Obama, “noted the important progress being made on the Beyond the Border and Regulatory Cooperation initiatives.” He invited Harper to Washington in early December where an action plan that would work towards a North American security perimeter could finally be released. Both leaders also discussed the announcement by the State Department to seek additional information regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline project. A final ruling on the pipeline which would carry oil from western Canada to the gulf coast of Texas will not be made until after the November 2012 presidential election. The move has prompted Canada to further diversify its trade ties and shift its focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

The decision by Japan to begin consultations with TPP countries, followed by the news that Canada and Mexico are also seeking to join negotiations, has given the trade agreement a real boost. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk welcomed their interest and stated that, “Along with Japan’s similar announcement this week, the desire of these North American nations to consult with TPP partners demonstrates the broadening momentum and dynamism of this ambitious effort toward economic integration across the Pacific.” Minister of International Trade Ed Fast reaffirmed Canada’s commitment to advancing economic interests in the Asia-Pacific region. He acknowledged, “We recognize the TPP as a means to further strengthen those ties and contribute to what promises to become a broadly-based vehicle for economic integration in the region.” The report, Canada, China, and Rising Asia: A Strategic Proposal released in October, recommended joining the TPP as the most efficient way to deepen integration with other Asian economies, providing that the Canadian government reforms the supply management system.

Climategate 2.0 – Waiting for the Next Boot to Drop

How Can People Be So Stupid
Ed Troy

Like many scientists who are convinced that the whole anthropogenic global warming subject is nothing more than a political scam designed to transfer wealth from citizens of the world to governments and selected corporate entities and private individuals, I was overjoyed to see the original Climategate e-mail releases. They clearly showed that the whole thing was nothing more than a contrived invention of the United Nations and various private and corporate interests that conspired to convince the people of the world that living, working, moving about, and producing in the modern age was going to bring about cataclysmic changes to the earth’s ecosystem, thus leading to massive death, disease, migration, and destruction unless trillions of dollars were spent to “save the world”. And, they almost succeeded, largely due to their co-conspirators (knowing or unknowing) in the main stream media and the corporate and political elite, and the total lack of scientific literacy in the vast majority of the world’s population, even in the supposedly educated Western world.

I have written many times about how global warming, later re-branded climate change when the warming stopped in 1998, was a fraud and a scam. (See the bibliography at the end of this article.) The actual measurements simply did not fit the predictions of the computer models. And, the whole scam was based on the computer models and the reported warming since the 1800′s. But, since the mid 1800′s, we have been coming out of the “Little Ice Age“, so warming should have been expected.
Furthermore, it has been warmer in the past. Nobody, today, would give Greenland its name. But, 1000 or so years ago, it was green. And this is not speculation; there are plenty of archeological sites, as well as ice-core and other proxy data, to support the fact that Greenland was much warmer, even in the geologically recent past, let alone what it might have been tens of thousands, millions, or billions of years ago. One of the most often cited explanations for climate change (by skeptics) is the influence of the sun. Of course, the global warmingistas say that is impossible. The sun, they claim, has nothing to do with climate change. (That claim, alone, should start one wondering about their “science”.) I reported in early 2010 how an experiment at CERN was designed to shed light on the theory that the sun, by varying its output slightly and thus modulating the amount of cosmic rays that reached the earth, could explain much of climate change. The global warmingistas did everything they could to stop the funding for the project, but they failed, and the preliminary results were announced a few months ago. The results supported the theory, as reported in Nature Magazine. (More on the online supplement to the Nature article.)

The theory, in its simplest form, was that clouds are formed by nucleation of water droplets on small chemical particles that are formed when cosmic rays strike the earth’s atmosphere. The more cosmic rays, the more water droplet nuclei you have and thus the more clouds you get. The more clouds you get, the more sunlight is reflected back into space and the less sunlight reaches the earth. Both of these processes tend to cool the earth. (Just think about how much cooler you are when a cloud passes overhead and cools your skin. This same effect works on the whole earth.) Although actual levels of solar radiation do not vary greatly from year to year, decade to decade, or century to century (which is the reason the warmists state that the sun could not be the cause of climate change), these small differences in solar radiation do make enough change in the electromagnetic field surrounding the earth that the cosmic rays reaching the atmosphere are changed. And these changes are thought to increase or decrease clouds, thus modulating the temperature of the earth. Much more needs to be done on this theory, but, as I showed in an earlier article, there is tremendous correlation between cosmic rays and temperature, while there is no correlation between temperature and CO2, other than the fact that CO2 goes up after temperature goes up, and it goes down after temperature goes down. (Contrary to the central point of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” farce.)

But now, Climategate 2.0 has been released. Obviously timed to derail the Durban conference, which was doomed to failure before it started, this new e-mail release goes way beyond the tasty morsels revealed in Climategate 1.0. Personally, I never expected Climategate 2.0. I thought the initial release was all there was. And, I suspect the various guilty parties hoped that it was the end of the story. But, apparently, it was just the shot across the bow. The new e-mails show further collusion and scientific misbehavior (at best) or scientific fraud (more likely). They put to bed the argument that the released e-mails were just “taken out of context”, or misinterpreted, as in “hide the decline”, or “using a trick”.

But, what is even more tantalizing, to me, and probably terrifying to the guilty parties, is the fact that there are many, many more e-mails involved in the release than can currently be read. The FOIA 2001 file that was released contains not only thousands of full-text e-mails beyond what was released in Climategate 1.0, but many thousands of additional e-mails that can only be opened with the proper decryption pass phrase.  As described in an excellent post by thepointman, it looks like “Climategate 2 is a bomb with a dead man’s hand detonator attached to it and it may very well be cluster munition as well.” That is, if anyone tries to kill, discredit, or imprison the leaker, all he or she has to do is have the necessary pass phrase released and all of the Climategate e-mails will become public, including those that almost certainly go to the highest levels of government, politics and industry. It is not unlike the file that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released with an unknown pass phrase that he would release if harm came to him. That tactic kept harm from coming to him, so far. I suspect it will keep the leaker in the Climategate case safe, too. And, since Climategate involves the conspiracy to extort trillions of dollars from the people of the world, and the continuation of the fraud is necessary to support hundreds of billions of dollars in worthless “research” by corporations and universities, and WikiLeaks only involved the release of mostly embarrassing government screw-ups and intrigue, which all but the most naive people expect, I suspect the stakes are much higher for the leaker of the Climategate e-mails than they are for Julian Assange. It will be interesting  to see what happens next. I suspect many “climate scientists” will be deservedly added to the unemployment rolls.

Guardian
David Gow

OECD: euro collapse would have 'highly devastating outcomes' worldwide

OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan

The collapse of the euro could send the world's advanced economies into a severe recession, dragging emerging markets with them into the mire, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned on Monday.

The Paris-based thinktank slashed its forecast for growth among its 34 members from 2.3% half a year ago to 1.6%, with Europe dramatically downgraded from 2% to just 0.2% because of the unresolved sovereign debt crisis.

Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD chief economist, made plain in the body's latest six-monthly economic outlook that the greatest threat to global economic health comes from the eurozone rather than from the tax-and-spend gridlock in the US Congress.

In his introduction to the report he said: "Recent contagion to countries thought to have relatively solid public finances could massively escalate economic disruption if not addressed."

In a devastating critique of eurozone leaders' hesitancy and dilatoriness, he said: "The scenario so far is that Europe's leaders have been behind the curve. We believe this could be very serious."

His comments came amidst evidence that the 17 eurozone countries are even wider apart on the measures required to staunch the exit of global investors and prevent a credit crunch on an even worse scale than in 2008-09.

Padoan also made plain that the OECD's depressed economic forecasts could be downgraded even further if one or more countries default on their sovereign debt and EU leaders fail to agree on solutions to the crisis at their summit on December 8-9.

As IMF managing director Christine Lagarde insisted Italy had made no request for a reported €600bn bailout, Padoan warned that a "black swan" event in the euro area could bring "highly devastating outcomes."

In a prolonged, deepened recession, unemployment would soar and the US and Japan would see "marked declines in activity" and emerging markets would not be immune as global trade declined.
Noting that contagion is spreading from the weaker periphery of the eurozone to the once-stable core, the OECD is urging European leaders to give the main bailout fund, the EFSF, enough firepower to counter-act the sell-off in debt markets. But plans to boost this to €1tn or more appear to have collapsed.

Preparing the Chessboard for the "Clash of Civilizations": Divide, Conquer and Rule the "New Middle East"

Global Research

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The name "Arab Spring" is a catch phrase concocted in distant offices in Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels by individuals and groups who, other than having some superficial knowledge of the region, know very little about the Arabs. What is unfolding amongst the Arab peoples is naturally a mixed package. Insurgency is part of this package as is opportunism. Where there is revolution, there is always counter-revolution.

The upheavals in the Arab World are not an Arab "awakening" either; such a term implies that the Arabs have always been sleeping while dictatorship and injustice has been surrounding them. In reality the Arab World, which is part of the broader Turko-Arabo-Iranic World, has been filled with frequent revolts that have been put down by the Arab dictators in coordination with countries like the United States, Britain, and France. It has been the interference of these powers that has always acted as a counter-balance to democracy and it will continue to do so.

Divide and Conquer: How the First "Arab Spring" was Manipulated

The plans for reconfiguring the Middle East started several years before the First World War. It was during the First World War, however, that the manifestation of these colonial designs could visibly be seen with the "Great Arab Revolt" against the Ottoman Empire.

Despite the fact that the British, French, and Italians were colonial powers which had prevented the Arabs from enjoying any freedom in countries like Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan, these colonial powers managed to portray themselves as the friends and allies of Arab liberation.

During the "Great Arab Revolt" the British and the French actually used the Arabs as foot soldiers against the Ottomans to further their own geo-political schemes. The secret Sykes–Picot Agreement between London and Paris is a case in point. France and Britain merely managed to use and manipulate the Arabs by selling them the idea of Arab liberation from the so-called "repression" of the Ottomans.

On (Im)Balance and Credibility in America: Israel/Palestine

Richard Falk

            I could not begin to count the number of times friends, and adversaries, have give me the following general line of advice: your views on Israel/Palestine would gain a much wider hearing if they showed more sympathy for Israel’s position and concerns, that is, if they were more ‘balanced.’ Especially on this set of issues, I have always found such advice wildly off the mark for two main reasons.

            First, if the concern is balance, I am not the place to begin, but the absurd pro-Israeli balance that pervades the response to the conflict in Washington, in the Congress, at the White House and State Department, among Beltway think tanks, as well as in the mainstream media. There is a serious problem of balance, or I would say distortion, that undermines diplomatic credibility. Such a toxic imbalance here in the United States makes the American claim to mediate the conflict and provide neutral auspices futile, if not ridiculous, or at best a reliance on geopolitical ‘justice’ in place of legal justice (based on rights). When the Goldstone Report is rejected before it has been read or the World Court’s near unanimous Advisory Opinion (14-1) condemning as unlawful the separation wall constructed in occupied Palestinian territory is repudiated without offering a serious critical argument, it is clear that bias controls reason, making the resulting imbalance a willing partner in crime.

            But what of the imbalance that sides with the evidence, with the law, with the ‘facts on the ground’ to arrive at its findings and conclusions? What of the continuous expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the denial of Palestinian refugee rights of return, of the apartheid legal structure of occupation, of discrimination against the Palestinian minority living as Israeli citizens, of the appropriation of scarce Palestinian water reserves, of the abuse of prisoners and children, of the long siege imposed on the people of Gaza as a sustained collective punishment? What of the continuous defiance of international law by Israeli reliance on excessive and disproportionate uses of force in the name of security? In light of this record, is not such imbalance, particularly in the inflamed American atmosphere, the only possible way for truth to speak to power?  Or stated more strongly, is not a circumstance of imbalance written into the fabric of the conflict, and exhibited in the daily suffering and thralldom of the Palestinian people whether living under occupation, in refugee camps in neighboring countries, in exile, and as a subjugated minority?

             Finally, the idea of balance and symmetry should also ‘see’ the structures of life that describe the contrasting conditions of the two peoples: Israelis living in conditions of near normalcy, Palestinians enduring for an incredible period that stretches over six decades a variety of daily hardships and abuses that is cumulatively experiences as acute human insecurity. To be structurally blindfolded and blind is to adopt a common, yet deforming, appearance of ‘balance’ that perpetuates an unjust ‘imbalance’ between oppressor and oppressed.

             In relation to self-determination for Palestinians and Israelis I favor a stance of ‘constructive imbalance,’ which I believe is the only truthful manner of depicting this reality. Truth and accuracy is my litmus test of objectivity, and as such, knowingly defies that sinister god who encourages the substitution of balance for truth!

The Cover of Time Magazine, December 5th, 2011

Portland 9/11 Truth Meetup Group and the Smell of Bacon

J.T. Waldron


While I lack the meticulous, accurate recollections that Jeffrey Strahl wielded while taking down the avid 9/11 apologists of "Screw Loose Change',  I did discover that Portland 9/11Truth's Meetup moderator might as well be working for Homeland Security.  

Some peripheral exchanges might be missing from this discussion. Once observing member Brad's removal from the email forum, curiosity took over.  Would this Meetup leader ban people for arguing on behalf of the best science behind 9/11 truth?  If you have the intestinal fortitude to sit through another inane thread, watch what happens in the name of "keeping the conversation civil". 

The Trapping of Screw Loose Change

November 3, 2011
by Jeffrey Strahl
911truth.org

Dear Readers,

Please submit your comments on this article at the link at Amazon, here, as provided below by Mr. Strahl.

911Truth.org published this article; the author is not available to be reached through email to this site. We look forward to reading your comments there. – Ed.

In mid-October 2011, I posted a review of David Ray Griffin's new book, 9/11 Ten Years Later -- When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed at Amazon, here.

[Related Info: David Ray Griffin's Fake Phone Calls from the 9/11 Planes Theory Debunked Again]

This review drew comments from James B, one of the two top people at Screw Loose Change, a leading "debunking" website used as a reference by many an internet opponent of 9/11 truth. The result was a major debunking of Screw Loose Change. This piece is intended to help those who in the future will go up against the likes of Screw Loose Change, since the trap's nature is both the content of the SLC argument as well as its form. The focus of our exchange was the evidence regarding events at the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11, where three steel frame high-rises were destroyed. This is the part of my review which is relevant to the debate:

Being someone with an engineering degree, it's no surprise that I find the strongest part to be Chapters 2 through 4, which deal with the three steel hi-rises which came down on 9/11. Chapter 2 has been posted previously on the web as an article, a challenge to left-leaning despisers of 9/11 truth to explain nine apparent miracles required to explain how the official story could be made congruent with the physical evidence. It is quite telling that none of the prominent left commentators mentioned have responded to this challenge. Not even the web "debunkers" such as Screw Loose Change have been able to explain how heat caused sudden onset failure, something which is impossible, given the nature of heat as heightened molecular activity which can only lead to gradual failure preceded by softening and sagging, in contrast to extreme cold (e.g. liquid nitrogen application) which sucks out energy from molecular activity, or of course demolition. None of them have been able to explain the presence of molten molybdenum and vaporized lead and steel, or even to make a coherent argument as to the presence of molten iron, even though NIST's own investigators failed to find steel samples subjected to fires which were heated to the point at which structural steel loses 50% of its strength, 1112 deg F, let alone melt structural steel. In fact, hardly any of the samples even made it to 500 deg F. And there has been little response to WTC7 falling at free fall acceleration for at least 2.5 seconds, something NIST said was impossible, or the horizontal ejections of large steel beams, or any of the other key bits of evidence.

In Chapter 3, Griffin takes on Bill Moyers and Robert Parry and their complete failure to deal with the WTC evidence. In Chapter 4, he discusses the Building What campaign to publicize the facts behind WTC7. Debunkers should be challenged to explain all this material.

A bit of background regarding the presence of molten iron and molybdenum, and vaporized lead and steel in the WTC dust and debris: A steel beam recovered from WTC7, the third tower which was destroyed on 9/11, though not hit by a plane nor subject to a serious fire, was examined by a team of engineering professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which identified the beam as being clearly from WTC7 due to the type of steel used. They found evidence of a eutectic reaction, i.e., the penetration of the beam's steel by sulfur, which resulted in such severe erosion of the beam that the steel had holes in it. The presence of sulfur is itself a mystery, but so is the fact that this reaction required a temperature of 1,000 deg C (1,832 deg F), far in excess of what even NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), the government agency which carried out the official investigation of the WTC, stated was present. By the way, NIST stated air temperatures during the fires as if they were metal temperatures, when in fact it takes a long time for a fire of a certain temperature to heat steel to the same level, given the high thermal conductivity of steel. In addition, the steel was partially vaporized, a phenomenon which requires a temperature of 2,861 deg C (5,182 deg F). The report on this beam was included in the 2002 FEMA report on the WTC, the initial government investigation. But NIST's 2008 report on WTC7, which noted the FEMA report and incorporated much of it, left out the part on the WPI investigation, and indeed stated that no steel was recovered from WTC7.

Joshua Blakeney Explains the Likudnik Origins of the Global War on Terror on Local TV on Vancouver Island

Exclusive Video: Protesters in Cairo Fight Back

Editor's Note:  U.S. military crackdown on the occupy movement sends a message to Cairo.  We should hear the message of Cairo's citizens through their reaction to Egypt's military crackdown.



CAIRO, Egypt — Once again, this country is in flames. The protests started on Friday when Egyptians from across the political spectrum rejected the Supreme Council of Armed Forces’ proposed supra-constitutional powers that would deny power from any future elected government. Now, the body count here is at least 31 with reports of more coming in every hour.

In the first half of the clip you can see the Egyptian government’s Central Security Force troops trying to clear protesters from Mohamed Mahmoud Street. This is three blocks east of Tahrir Square, where thousands of Egyptian protesters are sitting in. I shot it on Monday the 21st around 2 p.m.

About half way through the clip you can see several Egyptian protesters throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at the policemen. In the background you can hear the report of gas guns ( 37-mm grenade launchers) and 12-gauge shotguns. As the tear gas smoke thickens, protesters are forced to momentarily retreat down Falaki street.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to begin Monday, Nov. 28. How many more gas grenades and Molotov cocktails will be launched before then is anyone’s guess.

Pakistani soldiers who survived Nato attack say it was unprovoked attack

Refreshing News

Pakistani soldiers who survived a Nato air strike on two military border posts that killed 24 of their colleagues insisted on Sunday that they had not opened fire across the Afghan border and were the victims of an unprovoked attack by American aircraft.

Pakistani soldiers carry the coffins of their comrades who were killed in a NATO strike during a funeral ceremony in Peshawar

Nato has so far stopped short of apologising for Saturday's early morning raid but has expressed regret for what it termed "a tragic unintended incident", that has taken relations between Islamabad and Washington to the brink of collapse, and prompted furious protests in Pakistani cities.

It is understood that the attack, on two posts near the Afghan-Pakistani border, was carried out during a US and Afghan special forces operation to clear alleged Taliban training camps inside Afghanistan.

Afghan officials on Sunday claimed their forces had called in an air strike after coming under attack from the Pakistani side of the border.

Amirzeb Khan, 23, said the area around the checkpoints, about two miles from the border, had been cleared of militants and the night had been quiet.

The attack, he said, came at about 2am. They counted four helicopters.

"Initially, we thought that the attackers were Taliban and we took positions to retaliate but then saw that at least four helicopters were shelling from above," he said from his bed at the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar, where he was being treated for shrapnel injuries to his abdomen.

Hameedullah Wazir described a scene of chaos as an apparently indiscriminate rain of rockets exploded around the checkpoint, waking sleeping troops. He said the survivors simply ran.

"We didn't find time to respond as everything took place so quickly that we were unable to fight back," he said.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato Secretary General, said the attack was "unacceptable and deplorable".

"I offer my deepest condolences and sympathy to the families of the Pakistani officers and soldiers who lost their lives or were injured, and to the government and people of Pakistan, following the regrettable incident along the Afghan-Pakistani border," he said.

American helicopters have conducted multiple attacks in Pakistan while in "hot pursuit" of Taliban and Haqqani network militants, who use the country's mountainous tribal areas as safe havens after launching cross-border raids.

Yesterday, a local Afghan official accused the Pakistani troops at the border outpost of helping the Taliban.

Leaked Emails Raise Questions About NYT’s ClimateGate Coverage

Commentary
Alana Goodman

A new batch of stolen emails from the East Anglia climate research center was released last week. Anthony Watts and JunkScience are doing some of the best up-to-the-minute blog coverage, and if you feel like digging through the 5,000+ emails, EcoWho has compiled them into a handy search engine.

The most striking take-away from the emails is how obsessed the climatologists seemed to be with media coverage – almost as if they were public relations associates as opposed to scientists. The extent of cooperation between the climate researchers and some friendly news outlets is also fascinating. (David Rose has an excellent article exploring the connections between East Anglia and the BBC.)

One New York Times writer, Andy Revkin, pops up numerous times in the emails. During the time the conversations took place, Revkin was a supposedly objective reporter on the environmental beat for the Times. He became an opinion blogger for the paper after leaving the news section at the end of 2009, which seems to be a better fit after reading some of his emails.

In one 2006 exchange between Revkin and the scientists, the reporter makes his disdain for Sen. James Inhofe – and “a big chunk” of the American public – clear, while promoting his book on the Arctic:

[Sen. Inhofe] still speaks to and for a big chunk of America — people whose understanding of science and engagement with such issues is so slight that they happily sit in pre-conceived positions. [T]hat might be one reason he doesn’t like [my] book, which is devoid of easily-attacked spin and scare tactics and lets the science point the way itself. [I]‘m just trying to be sure that folks like all of you take an extra couple seconds to use Inhofe against himself and forward the blog/book link to a few people who might not be aware of this book — the first on Arctic and global climate change for all readers 10 and up — and of Inhofe’s moves.

At the time, Inhofe had been critical of Revkin’s book, which promoted the theory of human-caused climate change, and said it undermined his objectivity as a reporter. Revkin responded to the senator publicly, though in a much less condescending manner. But the snideness in this private email isn’t nearly as bad as the fact that Revkin – at the time, an allegedly objective, neutral environmental reporter for the New York Times – seemed to be asking his highly ideological sources to back him up in this fight against Inhofe and other skeptics.

In another email, Revkin and climate scientist Michael Schlesinger appear to muse about how much better the world would be if only Al Gore had won the 2000 election.

“[H]ad the 5-to-4 ‘hanging-chad’ decision of the U.S. Supreme Court swung the other way, the U.S. would have confronted the challenges of human-induced climate change these past 6 years, rather than deny and avoid them,” Schlessinger wrote to Revkin in the 2007 email. “And, we would not now be mired in Iraq.”

“[A] very very very poignant and true point, [M]ichael,” responded Revkin. “[I] have a song called “a very fine line” that explores all those facets of life like that.” (In addition to his journalistic talents, Revkin is also a musician.)

In other emails, Revkin is dismissive of climate change skeptics, people who probably should have been an integral part of his beat. “[W]hat’s amusing, in a way, is how the ‘skeptics’ jump on a cold patch as evidence of global cooling but attack enviros for highlighting warming trends,” he wrote in February 2008.

UK builds new nukes, IAEA ignores

PressTV

Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is spending £2bn on new nuclear weapons plants as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has turned a blind eye on nuclear disarmament issues.

While the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) requires that NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states are obliged to downgrade their nuclear capacity when they renew their systems, the British government has given the green light to the MoD to expand the country's stockpile of nuclear weapons.

On 27 November, the Guardian revealed the breakdown of MoD's investments including “a £734m facility called Mensa for dismantling and assembling of warheads, a risky but essential maintenance process; a £634m highly enriched uranium plant called Pegasus; and a £231m high explosives factory called Circinus.”

Furthermore, the newspaper revealed that the MoD has launched a comprehensive plan to develop the Atomic Weapons Establishment sites by building new facilities and plants by the end of 2015.

The MoD's decision comes as the IAEA has launched a propaganda campaign against Iran's nuclear program by releasing an “unbalanced, unprofessional, and politically motivated” report making baseless allegations against Iran's peaceful nuclear activities.

Moreover, the IAEA has turned a blind eye on nuclear disarmament issues as the latest revelations about Britain's nuclear activities show the British government intends to increase the number of its nuclear weapons instead of reducing them.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the MoD's secret plans to build new nuclear weapons plants have infuriated British MPs, as they were to decide whether to replace Trident warheads.

“The fact that the MoD signed off on these costs before a decision has even been made on replacing the Trident warhead makes a complete mockery of the democratic process,” said the Green MP Caroline Lucas. 

Pakistan says NATO ignored its pleas during attack

San Fransisco Examiner
Chris Brummitt

The NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers lasted almost two hours and continued even after commanders at the bases pleaded with coalition forces to stop, Pakistan's military claimed Monday, charges that could further inflame anger in Pakistan.

NATO has described the incident as "tragic and unintended" and has promised a full investigation.

Unnamed Afghan officials have said that Afghan commandos and U.S. special forces were conducting a mission on the Afghan side of the border and took incoming fire from the direction of the Pakistani posts. They responded with airstrikes.

Ties between Pakistan and the United States have sunk to new lows since the deadly attack, delivering a major setback to American hopes of enlisting Islamabad's help in negotiating an end to the 10-year-old Afghan war.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the Pakistani troops at two border posts were the victims of unprovoked aggression. He said the attack lasted almost two hours and that commanders had contacted NATO counterparts while it was going on, asking that "they get this fire to cease, but somehow it continued."

The Pakistan army has previously said its soldiers retaliated "with all weapons available" to the attack.

The poorly defined, mountainous border has been a constant source of tension between Pakistan and the United States. NATO officials have complained that insurgents fire from across the frontier, often from positions close to Pakistani soldiers who have been accused of tolerating or supporting the militants. NATO and Afghan forces are not allowed to cross over into Pakistan in pursuit of militants.


Saturday's strikes added to popular anger in Pakistan against the U.S.-led coalition presence in Afghanistan. Many in the army, parliament, general population and media already believed that the U.S. and NATO are hostile to Pakistan and that the Afghan Taliban are not the enemy.

Western nations 'used bullying tactics' at climate talks

Guardian
John Vidal

World Development Movement report accuses developed countries of threatening behaviour at climate change summits

Leading figures in western governments have been accused of using bullying tactics with developing countries during climate change summits.

The criticisms will cast a shadow over the climate conference in Durban, South Africa, which begins tomorrow, in the latest attempt to stabilise greenhouse gas levels around the world.

A new report, published by the World Development Movement, contains previously unpublished testimonies from insiders at both the Copenhagen and Cancún climate summits in 2009 and 2010. Officials of developing countries complain of divide-and-rule tactics and threats to withhold vital funds unless agreements are signed.

In one section the report criticises threats by richer countries to withdraw funds to help poorer nations cope with climate change if they failed to sign up to the accord. It says: "The US and the UK openly stated that climate finance would be limited to those that signed up to [it]. Ed Miliband, the UK minister, was blunt about linking the funding of developing countries with accepting the accord. The concerns he raised must be duly noted, he said, 'otherwise we won't operationalise the funds'."

The authors add: "The US said they would deny climate finance to Bolivia and Ecuador because they had objected to the Copenhagen accord proposal. The EU's Connie Hedegaard had also suggested that the small island-state countries "could be 'our best allies because they need finance'."

Target Iran: Washington's Countdown to War

Global Research
Tom Burghardt

Antifascist Calling...

The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.

As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953's CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the "crime" of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have "saved" Iran from a nonexistent "Red Menace," but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial "safe hands"--those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Similarly today, a nonexistent "nuclear threat" is the pretext being used by Washington to install a "friendly" regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby "securing" the country's vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals.

As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon "has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch 'offensive cyber operations' in response to hostile acts," according to The Washington Post.

Citing "a long-overdue report to Congress released late Monday," we're informed that "hostile acts may include 'significant cyber attacks directed against the U.S. economy, government or military'," unnamed Defense Department officials stated.

However, Air Force General Robert Kehler, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) told Reuters, "I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind."

The Pentagon report, which is still not publicly available, asserts: "We reserve the right to use all necessary means--diplomatic, informational, military and economic--to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests."

Washington's "interests," which first and foremost include "securing its hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia" as the World Socialist Web Site observed, may lead the crisis-ridden U.S. Empire "to take another irresponsible gamble to shore up its interests in the Middle East ... as a means of diverting attention from the social devastation produced by its austerity agenda."

Recent media reports suggest however, that offensive cyber operations are only part of Washington's multipronged strategy to soften-up the Islamic Republic's defenses as a prelude to "regime change."

Terrorist Proxies

For the better part of six decades, terrorist proxies have done America's dirty work. Hardly relics of the Cold War past, U.S. and allied secret state agencies are using such forces to carry out attacks inside Iran today.

Asia Times Online reported that "deadly explosions at a military base about 60 kilometers southwest of Tehran, coinciding with the suspicious death of the son of a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have triggered speculation in Iran on whether or not these are connected to recent United States threats to resort to extrajudicial executions of IRGC leaders."

And Time Magazine, a frequent outlet for sanctioned leaks from the Pentagon, reported that the blast at the Iranian missile base west of Tehran, which killed upwards of 40 people according to the latest estimates, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program, was described as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad."

An unnamed "Western intelligence source" told reporter Karl Vick: "'Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident,' adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. 'There are more bullets in the magazine,' the official says."

Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial

PrisonPlanet
Paul Joseph Watson

The Senate is set to vote on a bill next week that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor Monday, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech last week. One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.”

This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.

“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.

The ACLU is urging citizens to call their Senator and demand that the Udall Amendment be added to the bill, a change that would at least act as a check to prevent Americans being snatched off the streets without some form of Congressional oversight.

We have been warning for over a decade that Americans would become the target of laws supposedly aimed at terrorists and enemy combatants. Alex Jones personally documented how U.S. troops were being trained to arrest U.S. citizens in the event of martial law during urban warfare training drills back in the 90′s. Under the the National Defense Authorization Act bill, no declaration of martial law is necessary since Americans would now be subject to the same treatment as suspected insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you thought that the executive assassination of American citizens abroad was bad enough, now similar powers will be extended to the “homeland,” in other words, your town, your community, your back yard.

Climategate II Emails Show US/British Govs Colluded W/Scientists to Suppress Anti-Warming Data

The Lid

This past Tuesday more than 5,000 emails were leaked online as  follow-up to the first set Climategate emails released two years ago. These emails go even further than the first set in showing a systemic suppression of evidence, and even reports being published that the scientists knew were  based on bogus approaches, but since the findings were pro-global warming the papers were blessed by the University of East Anglia and the rest of the ruling members of the climate change Cosa Nostra.  This time not only are the scientists implicated but so are members of the British and US governments

For example there was this message from the British Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra):

One message appeared to show a member of Defra staff telling colleagues working on climate science to give the government a ‘strong message’.

The emails paint a clear picture of scientists selectively using data, and colluding with politicians to misuse scientific information.

‘Humphrey’, said to work at Defra, writes: ‘I cannot overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the government can give on climate change to help them tell their story.

'They want their story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.’

They were assured by the head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (the now infamous Professor Phil Jones) that the findings would stand up.

Yet one of the newly released emails, written by Prof. Jones - who is working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - said: 'Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.

And who was a party to suppressing that data?

'I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.

In another email Professor Jones happily reported

 'I’ve been told that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is above national Freedom of Information Acts.

'One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.

Not all scientists were happy with this approach but some seemed happy to being a party to concealing and destroying evidence.

The lead author of one of the reports, Jonathan Overpeck, wrote, 'The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out.'

 This time even the "science world" is coming down hard on the climate scientists.

Andrew Orlwowski, UK science site The Register's science correspondent comments on one email that says, 'What if climate change turns out to be a natural fluctuation? They'll kill us all'

'The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.'

Clive Crook, a commentator for the Atlantic, who described the earlier inquiries into the Climategate emails as 'ineffectual' and 'mealy mouthed', reportedly said, 'The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me.

The climatologists in the climate change Cosa Nostra, are claiming the release of these emails is despicable, they are not (as of this writing) claiming the emails are bogus. Which based on the evidence shows that we have been lied to not only by members of the scientific community but by the
Department of Energy of the United States Government. Hopefully congress will investigate why the DOE is supressing information.

The Under-Examined Story of Fallujah

AntiWar
Hannah Gurman

 Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined.

On November 8, 2004, U.S. military forces launched Operation Phantom Fury 50 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people known for its opposition to the Saddam regime.

The United States did not expect to encounter resistance in Fallujah, nor did it initially face any in the early days of the war. The first sign of serious hostility appeared in April 2003, after U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne division fired into a crowd of protesters demonstrating against the occupation and the closure of their local school building, killing 17 civilians and injuring 70. The following February, amid mounting tensions, a local militia beheaded four Blackwater employees and strung their bodies from a bridge across the Euphrates River. U.S. forces temporarily withdrew from Fallujah and planned for a full onslaught.

Following the evacuation of civilians, Marines cordoned off the city, even as some residents scrambled to escape. Thirty to fifty thousand people were still inside the city when the U.S. military launched a series of airstrikes, dropping incendiary bombs on suspected insurgent hideouts. Ground forces then combed through targeted neighborhoods house by house. Ross Caputi, who served as a first private Marine during the siege, has said that his squad and others employed "reconnaissance by fire," firing into dwellings before entering to make sure nobody inside was still alive. Caputi later co-founded the group Justice for Fallujah, which dedicated the week of November 14 to a public awareness campaign about the impact of the war on the city’s people.

By the end of the campaign, Fallujah was a ghost town. Though the military did not tally civilian casualties, independent reports put the number somewhere between 800 and 6,000. As The Washington Post reported in April 2005, more than half of Fallujah’s 39,000 homes were damaged, of which 10,000 were no longer habitable. Five months after the campaign, only 90,000 of the city’s evacuated residents had returned. The majority still lacked electricity, and the city’s sewage and water systems, badly damaged in the campaign, were not functional. A mounting unemployment crisis — exacerbated by security checkpoints, which blocked the flow of people and goods into and out of the city — left young residents of Fallujah especially vulnerable to recruitment by the resistance.

The Official Success Story

Although the initial picture of the devastated city looked grim, by 2007 Fallujah had become a key part of the emerging narrative of successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. At a press conference in April of that year, Marine Colonel Richard Simcock declared that progress was "phenomenal" and that Fallujah was an "economically strong and flourishing city." According to the official narrative that has since crystallized, the second siege of Fallujah turned out to be a major turning point in the war. "By taking down Fallujah, the Marines denied a sanctuary for the insurgents," said Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division during Phantom Fury, in an oral history published by the Marines in 2009. In contrast to the insurgents who relied on "brutal tactics," he explained, the Marines were able to win over the good will of the people. This contributed to the larger "Awakening" in Anbar province, the linchpin of counterinsurgency’s "success" in Iraq.

Official "progress" narratives of war rarely tell the whole story, especially when it comes to the war’s long-term effects on the civilian population. Seven years after the second siege of Fallujah, despite lucrative U.S.-funded contracts to rebuild infrastructure, much of the city is still in ruins, and unemployment remains high. As terrorist attacks in Anbar and across the country have risen in the past year, security is increasingly tenuous. In August, a car bomb exploded at a police station near Fallujah, killing five officers and wounding six more.

Of the current problems in Fallujah, the most alarming is a mounting public health crisis. In the years since the invasion, doctors in Fallujah have reported drastic increases in the number of premature births, infant mortality, and birth defects — babies born without skulls, missing organs, or with stumps for arms and legs. Fallujah General Hospital reported that, out of 170 babies born in September 2009, 24 percent died within the first seven days, of which 75 percent were deformed — as compared to August 2002, when there were 530 babies born, only six deaths, and one deformity. As the years go by, the problem seems to be getting worse, and doctors are increasingly warning women not to have children.

Many residents have suspected a link between the drastic rise in birth defects and the weapons deployed by U.S. military during the war. The United States has admitted to using white phosphorus in Fallujah, a toxin in incendiary bombs that causes severe burns. But it denies targeting civilians or employing a class of armor-piercing weapons that contain depleted uranium, a byproduct of nuclear weapons used in the production of munitions and armory and known to cause mutagenic illnesses.

The Science and Its Critics

Two recent studies led by Dr. Christopher Busby, a chemistry professor at the University of Ulster who specializes in environmental toxicology, have attempted to document and explain Fallujah’s health crisis. The first was an epidemiological study conducted by a team of 11 researchers who visited 711 households in Fallujah. Published in the December 2010 issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, it found that congenital birth defects, including neural tube, cardiac, and skeletal malformations, were 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to their highest levels in 2010. The study also found a seven-to-38-fold increase in several site-specific cancers, as well as a drastic shift in the ratio of female-to-male births, with 15 percent fewer boys born in the study period.

9/11 Truth Versus The BBC

Scootle Royale

Climatologists Trade Tips on Destroying Evidence, Evangelizing Warming

Daily Tech
Jason Mick

Penn State researcher and his CRU/IPCC colleague treated AGW like a religious "cause" despite warnings from peers

Anthropogenic global warming is a fascinating hypothesis that mankind may be able to systematically increase the Earth's temperature in the long term by burning deposits of hydrocarbon fuels.  But the key thing to note is that despite the intriguing premise, little definitive information has been determined in this field even as politicization runs rife.  In fact, researchers are still struggling to explain why warming has stalled in the last decade even as levels of carbon dioxide -- supposedly the most important greenhouse gas have rose.

I. Climatologists "Pull an Enron", Shred the Evidence

The recent University of California, Berkley "BEST" study -- perhaps the most comprehensive climate change investigation to date -- was blasted by AGW proponents.  They were upset that the study -- funded in part by the charity of a major oil entrepreneur -- highlighted the fact that temperatures had flat lined over the past decade, and were more upset still that the study suggested that other factors like sea currents could have driven the warming that occurred in the 1960s-1990s.

But newly reportedly leaked emails reveal that accusations of bias are perhaps a bit of projection.  The new emails include discussions that sound as shocking or more so as the infamous "Climategate" emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The new emails revisit embattled climate researcher-cum-AGW evangelist Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In one email Professor Jones explains to researchers how to best hide their work to prevent anyone from being able to replicate it and find errors:

I've been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.  Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.  I've discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.

Of course Phil Jones and his supporters will likely claim that the emails were taken out of context of some larger more appropriate discussion.  But as a researcher it's pretty damning to make comments that even would seem to imply that you were engaging in trying to suppress peer review of questionable data -- academic fraud.

Particularly trouble is the phrase "cover yourself", which suggest a conspiratorial, political undertone to what is supposed to be a transparent field of research.

The emails contain outright requests for the destruction of professional communications regarding research in an effort to cover up public scrutiny of public flaws.  The leaks add yet another humiliating scandal to Pennsylvania State University as they implicate prominent Penn State climatologist Michael Mann even more directly than the last release.

Writes the Professor Jones to Professor Mann:

Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?  Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Michael Mann (left) and Phil Jones (right) appear to share tips on
how to best destroy damaging climate evidence.

Some professors and experts even tried to reach out to Professor Mann, warning him of the danger of turning science into religion by purposefully ignoring evidence. Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office writes:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary. I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

Even Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research who was implicated in the first CRU email scandal for suggesting the removal of an editor who allowed peer-reviewed skeptical studies to be published, seemed to agree on this extreme instance:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.

The IPCC did eventually change the draft somewhat -- perhaps due to this feedback -- but critics say it still did far too much cherry picking of its sources.

II. Forget Science: You're Either For the Cause, Or You're Against It

In a later email, Professor Mann implies AGW advocacy is a political/pseudo-religious "cause" and that those who question it on scientific merits are enemies of the "cause". He writes, "I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause."

Ironically, Professor Curry appears to be the only one behaving like a true scientist. The emails neglect the forgotten truth that the distinguished Georgia Institute of Technology began as a believed in man-made global warming, publishing a notable 2005 study published in the prestigious Science journal investigating the potential correlation between hurricanes and man-made temperature increases.

The study earned scathing criticism from warming skeptics, but rather than treat her work as religious dogma, she carefully considered the criticism. Supported by her co-author, she personally met with some prominent critics and considered their claims. After all, she recalls in a Scientific American interview, "We were generally aware of these problems when we wrote the paper, but the critics argued that these issues were much more significant than we had acknowledged."

Soon she began to blog for AGW a skeptical blog run by Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, and Climate Audit, run by statistician Steve McIntyre. She began blogging hoping to convince skeptics of the merits of AGW theory via an open discussion. But in time she found herself increasingly troubled by the lack of transparency and conclusive evidence on such an important topic. She singles out the IPCC as a particularly guilty party, accusing it of outright "corruption."

Given the released emails it's hard to argue with that assessment. Writes Jonathan Overpeck, lead coordinating author of the IPCC's most recent climate assessment:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.

America's Middle East War and the "Right to Protect": The all-out Hypocrisy of the Arab League & the US-NATO Alliance

Global Research
Kourosh Ziabari

After the Arab League hypocritically suspended the membership of Syria amid the mounting pressures of NATO and the United States, the resurgence of violence in Egypt and the increasing use of excessive force in Bahrain and Yemen and the unrelenting massacre of innocent civilians by the barbaric regime of Al Khalifa and Ali Abdullah Saleh once again attracted the attention of conscientious observers in the international community.

Arab League

According to official figures released by the "Bahrain Center for Human Rights" website, so far 44 Bahraini citizens were killed at the hands of the mercenaries of Al Khalifa regime. The Bahraini martyrs include the 6-year-old Mohammed Farhan, 14-year-old Ali Jawad Alshaikh and 15-year-old Sayed Ahmad Saeed Shams. The Bahraini organization has reported that many of these martyrs were killed while in custody. The Center has also published documents indicating that more than 1,500 Bahrainis including about 100 women were incarcerated since the eruption of turmoil in the Persian Gulf country on February 14, 2011 and that more that 90 journalists face life threat.

It's also said that the Bahraini government has blocked the citizens' access to more than 1000 opposition websites which are mainly used to organize and plan protests and mass demonstrations.

The Bahraini regime commits all of these aggressive and brutal actions with the direct involvement of the Saudi Arabia and the implicit support and backing of NATO and the United States. The author of the "Hidden Harmonies China" blog in a March 14, 2011 post referred to the abuses of human rights in Bahrain with the flagrant, duplicitous support of the White House: "the Entry of Saudi security forces to crack down on the protesters with deadly force is a complication for U.S. policies, to say the least, since U.S. is reluctant to criticize its oil ally dictators in the region."

He also called Bahrain the "Las Vegas" of the Middle East, host to the U.S. 5th Fleet and a haunt for the rich Saudis who are forbidden by Islamic laws at home from indulging in alcohol and other immoral enjoyments, "but who often vacation in Bahrain for these reasons."

Bahraini citizens have uploaded several video files on the internet, showing the cruel and ruthless torturing and persecuting of the protesters by the Al Khalifa lackeys. These videos depict the Bahraini forces using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters and killing many of them straight away. Some of these videos also show the Saudi and Bahraini cars nonchalantly running over Bahraini children and women, killing them at once.

The U.S.-Saudi project of crackdown on the Bahraini people was also empowered by many of the European cronies of Washington. In July 2011, Germany sold a set of 200 62-ton Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia which sparked a huge controversy among the German parliamentarians and anti-war activists. According to the Daily Telegraph, Wolfgang Gerhardt, former leader of the Free Democrats, the junior collation member to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said it was "unacceptable" the deal went through without the knowledge of his party's MPs. However, the agreement which was worth around USD 1,252 million was concluded and the Saudi government dispatched many of these newly-bought tanks to Bahrain to accelerate and facilitate the bloody clampdown on the protesters.

Global warning: New Climategate leaks

Russia Today

The Climategate scandal is back, as more emails between leading climate scientists are posted online. The latest leak from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has re-ignited the wrangle around manmade climate change.

Much like the scandal of 2009, Tuesday’s leak comes just days before UN climate talks, set to kick off in Durban, South Africa on 28 November.

Critics who have long accused climate scientists of cherry-picking their data to prove that manmade climate change exists, might feel vindicated by some messages.  One email from a climate researcher identified as Overpeck reads: “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.”

Another scientist expressed his fears regarding potential data manipulation:  “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others.”  The scientist went on to stress a “need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.” 

It appears that various government bodies have put pressure on climate scientists to justify their own policy initiatives, ranging from restrictive environmental taxes and regulations, switching from fossil fuels to alternative sources of energy, to re-appropriating farm land for profitable biofuel schemes. 

Speaking of the governmental influence on climate change policy, one scientist said:
 “I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”

Based on the government-led drive, one email demonstrated the need to spin the climate change debate for public consumption:

“Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions – bad politics – to one about the value of a stable climate – much better politics. […] the most valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as possible.”

U.S. Arms Persian Gulf Allies For Conflict With Iran

Global Research
Rick Rozoff

Stop NATO 

Rumors and reports of, speculation over and scenarios for attacks against Iran’s civilian nuclear power facilities and military sites by the United States, Israel or both have flared up periodically over the past several years, especially since early 2005.

However, recent statements by among others the president and defense minister of Israel and a leading candidate for the American presidency in next year’s election – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Mitt Romney respectively – before and after the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program manifest a more stark and menacing tone that has been heard in a long time. Standing U.S. head of state Barack Obama recently stated, “We are not taking any options off the table.”

The above threats and others of the same tenor have been noted in the capitals of countries around the world.

Last week the Global Times, a publication of the Communist Party of China, featured an unsigned editorial entitled “Winds of war start blowing toward Iran,” which contained these excerpts:

“The financial crisis is showing cracks in the Western lifestyle, making people anxious and irritable. History teaches us that war can quickly raise its ugly head at such times. There are always those who think wars can be a catalyst to move past a crisis.”

“While the US and other Western countries are struggling economically, their military power reigns supreme. This contrast is inevitably tempting in their strategic thinking but would have a profoundly negative impact on world peace.”

“Military rhetoric is usually heard from Western mouths. Where will the next war happen? War first exists in the minds of those obsessed with military might. If war is treated as a tool to solve problems, new excuses for it can easily be found.”

“The last few days have seen tensions over Iran take a sharp turn for the worse. Some feel that the US and Israel should combine to strike at Iranian nuclear facilities. This is reminiscent of those who encouraged NATO to hit Syria a few weeks ago.” [1]

On November 14 former Cuban president Fidel Castro warned that “a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran would inevitably unleash a bloody war,” adding that because of the country’s size and comparative military strength “an attack on Iran is not like the previous Israeli military adventures in Iraq and Syria.” In fact, with a population as high as 75-77 million, Iran is larger in that regard than the last four nations attacked by the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies combined: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
Four days earlier Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian Duma Committee for International Affairs, in casting grave doubts on the accuracy and purpose of the recent IAEA report on Iran, said:

“A military operation against Iran could have grave consequences. And Russia should make every effort to control emotions, bring negotiations back into the field of political and expert discussion, and not allow any such action against Iran.” [2]

The following day it was announced that Iran was pursuing full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose members are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Iran’s fellow observers in the group are India, Pakistan and Mongolia), with the Supreme National Security Council’s Secretary Assistant Ali Bageri stating, “We have already submitted a relevant application.” [3]

Slightly over two years ago the U.S, and Israel held the world’s largest-ever live-fire anti-ballistic missile drills in the second country, Juniper Cobra 10. [4]

Over a thousand U.S. and an equal amount of Israeli troops participated in the war games which included three of the four tiers of rapidly the evolving American global interceptor missile network: The Patriot Advanced Capability-3, Standard Missile-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems.

Early next year Juniper Cobra 12 will be held in Israel with the involvement of over 5,000 U.S. and Israeli troops, the largest joint military exercise ever conducted by the two nations.

Last summer the Jerusalem Post ran a feature with the title “Israel, US to hold massive missile defense drill next year,” which stated: