source: Raw Story

by Allen McDuffee

For those who thought the end of the Bush Administration spelled doomsday for the neoconservative movement, think again.

According to a May report (pdf) from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC think tank, neoconservatives associated with prominent figures like former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and pundit Richard Perle are still broadly active, despite policy failures associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Brookings Institution senior fellow Justin Vaisse, author of Neoconservatism: A Biography of a Movement, argues that because neocons never had the degree of influence that opponents credited them with, and also because of a general unawareness of their history, observers don’t fully understand the trajectory of the neoconservative movement that began long before the Iraq invasion and one continues today.

“Neoconservatism remains, to this day, a distinct and very significant voice of the Washington establishment,” Vaisse insists. In May he published the report Why Neoconservativism Still Matters.

Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, says that the most obvious place the neocons are still influential is in U.S. policy toward Iran, where the Obama administration is “continuing the Bush administration’s basic approach, albeit with a ‘kinder, gentler’ face.”

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source: The Asia Pacific Journal

by Peter Dale Scott

In July 1987, during the Iran-Contra Hearings grilling of Oliver North, the American public got a glimpse of “highly sensitive” emergency planning North had been involved in. Ostensibly these were emergency plans to suspend the American constitution in the event of a nuclear attack (a legitimate concern). But press accounts alleged that the planning was for a more generalized suspension of the constitution.

As part of its routine Iran-contra coverage, the following exchange was printed in the New York Times, but without journalistic comment or follow-up:

[Congressman Jack] Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Both North’s attorney and Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the Committee, responded in a way that showed they were aware of the issue:

Brendan Sullivan [North's counsel, agitatedly]: Mr. Chairman?

[Senator Daniel] Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?

Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I’m certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.¹

But we have never heard if there was or was not an executive session, or if the rest of Congress was ever aware of the matter. According to James Bamford, “The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed.”² (Key individuals in Congress were almost certainly aware.)

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source: GlobalResearch.ca

Worldwide Corporate Media is nowhere to be found; Blair shows his cowardice

by Michel Chossudovsky

While on a speaking engagement in Malaysia organized by “Success Resources Company”, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the object of an articulate protest movement demanding his indictment for war crimes.

This was no ordinary protest. Tony Blair has been accused of war crimes in a legal initiative led by the country’s former Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

A War Crimes Tribunal as well as a War Crimes Commission were set up integrated by renowned jurists. Documentary evidence of war crimes committed by Blair and Bush has been carefully compiled and collected since 2006. The prosecution is led by several of Malaysia’s most prominent lawyers.

Dr Mahathir in a public statement “expressed disgust at the companies that had sponsored Blair’s visit here. ‘How can you sponsor and get advice from a liar? Do you also intend to lie in carrying out your business?’ he asked.” (Thousands Of Slippers To ‘Greet’ Tony Blair In Malaysia, April 24, 2010)

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source: Counterpunch

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

by Paul Craig Roberts

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

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source: 911blogger.com

by Kevin Ryan

Careful investigation leads one to notice that a number of intriguing groups of people and organizations converged on the events of September 11th, 2001. An example is the group of men who were members of Cornell University’s Quill & Dagger society. This included Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Advisors Sandy Berger and Stephen Hadley, Marsh & McLennan executive Stephen Friedman, and the founder of Kroll Associates, Jules Kroll. Another interconnected group of organizations is linked to these Cornell comrades, and is even more interesting in terms of its members being integral to the events of 9/11, and having benefited from those events.

After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC), a company called Stratesec (or Securacom) was responsible for the overall integration of the new security system designed by Kroll Asoociates. Stratesec had a small board of directors that included retired Air Force General James Abrahamson, Marvin Bush (the brother of George W. Bush) and Wirt Walker III, a cousin of the Bush brothers. Other directors included Charles Archer, former Assistant Director in charge of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, and Yousef Saud Al Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.[1]

Yousef Saud Al Sabah was also chairman of the Kuwait-American Corporation (KuwAm), which between 1993 and 1999 held a controlling share of Stratesec. The other owners of Stratesec were Walker and an entity controlled by Walker and Al Sabah, called Special Situation Investment Holdings (SSIH).[2] SSIH was said to form a group with KuwAm, and the group owned several other companies, including Commander Aircraft and Aviation General. In any case, the Kuwaiti royal family can be said to have benefited from 9/11 due to “The War on Terror” that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Of course, that was the second consecutive US war that Kuwait benefited from, the first being the 1991 Gulf War led by President George H.W. Bush.

Stratesec director James Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft from 1989 to 1992, when Prescott Bush Jr. was helping Hughes lobby Bush’s brother, the US President, to lift sanctions on the Chinese government. Abrahamson became a director of Stratesec in December 1997.[3] He also co-founded a company called Crescent Investment Management (Crescent) with the Pakistani-American, Mansoor Ijaz. Crescent’s board of advisors included James Woolsey, the CIA Director for President Clinton who became a PNAC signatory and Booz Allen Hamilton executive.[4]

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source: Raw Story

by Daniel Tencer

China should step up to the plate as the leader of a new global economic order, and the US shouldn’t fear the establishment of a global currency because it would help the economy, billionaire investor George Soros says.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Soros said that China hasn’t been pulling its weight in reorganizing the global economy after last year’s economic collapse, and the way to convince China to lead is to allow it to “own” the reorganization of the global financial system that is underway.

“You really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, a financial world order,” Soros told FT. “They are kind of reluctant members of the IMF. They play along, but they don’t make much of a contribution because it’s not their institution. … They have to own it the same way as, let’s say, the United States owns the Washington consensus, the current order, and I think this would be a more stable one where you would have co-ordinated policies. I think the makings of it are already there because the G20, in agreeing to peer reviews, effectively is moving in that direction.”

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source: Salon
dateline: July 25, 2009

by David Sirota

Here’s a truism: The wealthiest 1 percent have never had it so good.

According to government figures, 1-percenters’ share of America’s total income is the highest it’s been since 1929, and their tax rates are the lowest they’ve faced in two decades. Through bonuses, many 1-percenters will profit from the $23 trillion in bailout largesse the Treasury Department now says could be headed to financial firms. And most of them benefit from IRS decisions to reduce millionaire audits and collect zero taxes from the majority of major corporations.

But what really makes the ultra-wealthy so fortunate, what truly separates this moment from a run-of-the-mill Gilded Age, is the unprecedented protection the 1-percenters have bought for themselves on the most pressing issues.

To review: With 22,000 Americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, Congress is considering universal healthcare legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000 — that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so minuscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year — or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.

Nonetheless, the 1-percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative before it makes progress.

The foot soldiers are the Land Rover Liberals. These Democratic lawmakers secure their lefty labels by wearing pink-ribbon lapel pins and supporting good causes like abortion rights. However, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, they routinely drive their luxury cars over middle-class economic interests. Hence, this week’s letter from Democratic dot-com tycoon Rep. Jared Polis, of Boulder, Colo., and other Land Rover Liberals calling for the surtax’s death.

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source: Bloomberg
dateline: June 6, 2009

IMF Says New Reserve Currency to Replace Dollar Is Possible

By Alexander Nicholson

June 6 (Bloomberg) — The International Monetary Fund said it’s possible to take the “revolutionary” step of creating a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar over time.

The IMF’s so-called special drawing rights could be used as the basis for a new currency, First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky told a panel discussing reserve currencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today.

“There are many, many attractions in the long run to such an outcome,” Lipsky told a panel discussing reserve currencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today. “But this is not a quick, short or easy decision,” he said, adding that it would be “quite revolutionary.”

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I guess Pappa Bush gets what he wants? This is just a small snapshot from this week where the media is literally koo-koo-for-Coco-Puffs about the NWO. A Google search for “New World Order” today will give you hundreds of news articles with these very words in the title, and thousands more that discuss it. I guess it’s not just for “conspiracy theorists” anymore. But, you would never know it when you read a story like this one from a normally half-way sane, progressive news outlet.
- Ford

From Time Magazine and CNN to news outlets around the world, the corporate media goes wild for the use of the term “New World Order”:

Time Magazine:
Barack Obama’s New World Order

BBC
New World Order Emerges from Chaos

Bloomberg
G-20 Shapes New World Order With Lesser Role for U.S., Markets

CNN International
Analysis: Crisis may lead to new world order

Straits Times
Push for New World Order

France 24
A New World Order… for some

Telegraph UK
G20: A New World Order is Simple Fantasy

The Press Association
New world order hailed after rescue

Christian Today
G20: A New World Order?

American Chronicle
NEW WORLD ORDER CHANGES GLOBAL COMMUNITY ET INFO PRIOR TO 2012

and my personal favorite …

The Motley Fool
The New World Order — and How to Profit From It

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source: Times Online
picked up: Raw Story

by John Harlow

LAW enforcement agencies are seeking scientists to develop an artificial nose that can detect the smell of fear as terrorists pass through security at airports.

The US Department of Homeland Security is advertising for specialists to devise airport scanners that will sniff out “deceptive individuals”.

The technology builds on recent breakthroughs in finding human scent-prints which, many researchers believe, may be as unique to individuals as fingerprints.

Body odours also change perceptibly according to mood. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have already produced a gel that acts like the smell receptors in the human nose. Now they are trying to create a version that can isolate the tangy smell of adrenaline, the stress hormone, so that nervous passengers or those with a guilty conscience can be singled out.

Homeland Security wants a device that automatically compares odours with scents collected from crime scenes and held in a “smell bank” which, like DNA or fingerprints, could be used in court.

Last week officials said they only wanted to explore the possibilities but scientists are already predicting that it is only a matter of time before police will be able to sniff out crime artificially.

Professor Kenneth Furton, who is assembling a smell bank at Florida International University in Miami, said the technology could identify bank robbers by matching scent molecules collected from crime scenes on swabs.

He said chemists could already identify human smells by race, age and environment. Scientists will be able to tell police whether a thief is white, black or Asian, whether they are a teenager or older, and maybe even their last meal.

Furton, who taught chemistry at the University of Wales, Swansea, before moving to Miami, is also seeking body odours which mark people out as depressed. Other chemists are looking for the signature smells of cancers, asthma and other diseases.

Such advances could also be an additional tool in paternity cases, as family members give off a similar scent. Twins can smell as identical as they look.

One barrier to better security through sniffing is perfume. Detectors will have to be adapted to screen out more complicated molecules in bestselling scents such as Jennifer Lopez’s Glow range and Chanel No 5 which mask natural smells and confuse detector dogs.

Natural scents can be boosted by stress, which releases hormones from armpits and hands. The odour can then spread in 20ft clouds to cling to clothes, furniture and walls.

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