Iran off the Table: A Higher Power Hath Spoken

Well it seems the NeoCon wet dream of invading/attacking Iran has been called out of order by a higher power: the Trilateral Commission.

The Strangelovians are being brought to heel, victims of their own overreaching. The military is in near mutiny and domestic politics is in disarray, with AG AG in the cross-hairs.

The lack of posts here reflects this period of overt calm. The agenda is stalled, though clearly enormous infighting has been going on behind the scenes.

Finally, apparently, the grown-ups are back in charge, for now. This may well be the effective end of the Bush cabal; everything from here on in will be a rearguard action, trying to slink out of office without the Hague staring them in the face.

Who Says Bush CheneyHas No Plan B for Iraq?

Plan B:

NY Times: Mourning in Amerika

Yet another long NY Times editorial eulogy for the Bill of Rights.

This past Sunday's plangent laundry list of rising fascism offers so many major bullet-pointed assaults on the Constitution that revising the "Patriot" Act and closing Gitmo appear at the end as an afterthought.

To wit:

Restore Habeas Corpus
Ban Torture, Really
Close the C.I.A. Prisons
Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’
Ban Extraordinary Rendition
Tighten the Definition of Combatant
Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively
Ban Tainted Evidence
Ban Secret Evidence
Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence
Respect the Right to Counsel

Land of the free. Yeah, right. Tell me another.

Putin's Had Enough:This Is Not Your Mother's Cold War

Three weeks ago at the Munich Security Conference, before the assembled heads of state of Western Europe and the US Secretary of Defense, Vladimir Putin let it all hang out. He's had more than enough and told the world in no uncertain terms that US aggression and military adventurism in the Caucaucus basin and the Middle East is provoking a new Cold War.

Sec'y Gates and other administration mouthpieces laughed off Putin's remarks, but it is simply extraordinary that this highly intelligent, ex-KGB head would give such a blunt warning in such a prominent setting. Putin knows something, and the US has pushed his hand.

So what's going on? What gave Putin the confidence to send such a major shot across the bow of the USS Cheney? Essentially, Russia's on the rise and the US is going down. Russia is now the world's number one producer of oil, and after nearly being dismantled with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country under Putin has quietly rebuilt and consolidated its power.

At the same time the US is spiraling out of control. Staggering debt and staggering balance of payments deficits are sinking the American economy. The unenviable pillars of our supposed prosperity are debt, debt & more debt; a rapidly deflating housing bubble; and an inflated stock market that is about to collapse. And our sources of oil are not secure. The US wars in the Middle East are an act of desperation, an oil grab--the US is securing for itself Iraq's oil and Afghanistan to build pipelines that would allow the US to bring the oil from the Caucaucus basin to Pakistan and the Arabian Sea. The US is also trying to dislodge the former Soviet republics--the crescent of unpronouncible -stans ringing Russia's southeastern borders--from Russian influence, eager to base missiles there pointed at Russia and to lock in their oil reserves as well.

Putin is speaking up now because of Iran. He's drawing a line in the sand. And he's in a surprisingly solid position on the global chessboard.

And here's why: the SS-N-25 Super Sunburn, a missile so potent the US Navy tried to purchase its predecessor from the Russians. A few vital stats: it flies at Mach 2.5+ with a cruising altitude of 45 feet and a range of over 150 miles.

Okay, Putin's got a cool missile; what's the big deal? This missile flies so low and so fast that it is undetectable by radar, and has such an impact velocity that, even mounted with a conventional warhead, it could easily sink a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Putin has quietly offered them to Iran and Syria. Not only are the US carrier groups in Persian Gulf at grave risk from the Sunburn, but Israel's major population centers as well.

This is obviously known to the Pentagon, witness the current strife between the career military and the administration over Iran, with even Joint Chiefs Chairman General Pace undercutting White House disinformation about Iran's supposedly supplying advanced IEDs to Iraqi insurgents.

Simply put, the Pentagon knows it will pay a staggering and unacceptable price for unleashing an attack on Iran. Those huge carriers are now obsolete, at least against Russia and its allies.

Global chess. Watch out, the Russians are the Grandmasters.

Exposed Marine Mantle & Deep Earth Ocean Beneath Asia

Now this is fascinating.

Two related reports, one from Livescience.com:

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.

and the other from Cardiff University:

Cardiff University scientists will shortly set sail (March 5) to investigate a startling discovery in the depths of the Atlantic.

Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth's crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface.

Geologists and earth scientists are making remarkable discoveries with new generations of seismograms and advances in computer-aided analysis of the resultant data.

Hollow-Earthers must be in ecstasy over this news, but it simply proves my contention that our universe is much more fascinating and rich than the dull template fed us by the Powers That Be.

Walter Reed: Karmic Payback

I hesitated to comment on the Walter Reed Veteran's Hospital scandal, as it is so obvious what this is all about.

The Cheney administration and Commander Codpiece couldn't give the time of day to the wounded and broken soldiers coming back from the Iraq/Afghanistan killing fields and are only interested in sending more to be killed and maimed in their insane global chess game.

Walter Reed Hospital, once a leading government facility, was privatized by the neocons and the contractors bled it for profit instead of carrying out even the most basic maintenance. The hospital is now, according to the WaPo, a "dank structure besieged by mold, leaks and rot."

There's a low-level war going on right now between the White House and the Pentagon, and I believe there's no coincidence that this story surfaced right now, in the run-up to the Iran war. This is sabotage, and I think the military was willing to take the hit on this one because they know the ultimate responsibility rests with the administration and they'd get tarred with the blame. Apparently there are still a lot of real patriots in our armed forces and they're making their stand now.

As for Cheney and his Cheerleader and the neocon court, they can fire all the Army Secretaries and scapegoat colonels they want, but that will not redeem their utter disregard for the most basic responsibility of government to care for sick and wounded soldiers--most barely beyond adolescence--that it has sent to fight and die for it.

The karmic payback: veterans groups are rightly outraged, weakening one of the few remaining pillars of popular support for the Bush regime.

Unconscionable.

NY Times: Loose Nukes Echo Chamber

The tempo of apocalyptic fear-mongering has kicked into overdrive: the MSM is literally awash with portentious articles of new terror attacks involving loose nukes.

Let's be very clear about this: the 9/11 drug is wearing off, the wheels are coming off that lie, and they're hustling "the next big thing" to market as fast as they can. These madmen are doubling down on terror, just as they're about to do the same with Iraq.

I can barely keep up with the sowing-the-ground articles, and I focus almost exclusively on the top tier NYT, WaPo & BBC--and THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.

The NY Times' second "we're-gonna-get-nuked-soon" article this week, via the Huffington Post, behind the NYT firewall:

"Frank Rich: Experts Warn Al Qaeda "To Detonate Nuclear Device" In US, But Bush Punts on Threat."

In an op-ed in the New York Times, columnist Frank Rich argues that
over five years after the events of September 11, 2001, President George
W. Bush is still ignoring serious terrorist threats to the United
States. Faced with warnings from terrorism experts and a White House
seemingly more focused on Iraq, Rich begs readers to ask, "Haven't we
been here before?"

Yes Frank, on the same pages just this past Sunday in fact. And that's what really scares the Hell out of me.

Jumping The Gun Big Time: BBC Reported WTC7 Had CollapsedWith Building Still Standing In Plain View

This is beyond outrageous.

A video has just been uncovered (ht to Alex Jones for spreading the word) of Jane Stanley, reporting live for BBC World and standing before the smoldering ruins of the WTC complex, as she announces on air that the Salomon Brothers Building, aka WTC Building 7, has just collapsed.

The only problem is that WTC7 can plainly be seen still standing behind her left shoulder. WTC7 wouldn't fall until nearly a half hour after she gave her report.

Google and YouTube scrubbed the video soon after it surfaced, the BBC claims it has somehow lost the original footage (and two backup copies), and the MSM refuses to report this astounding revelation.

This coming right on the heels of the BBC's hatchet job on the 9/11 truth movement. Karma's a real bitch sometimes...

The wheels are coming off 9/11. This lie is simply too big to keep in a box.

Here we go...

Dept. of In-Your-Face Symbolism:McClown Shows Presidency Is a Joke

From today's WaPo:

McCain Joins Race for 2008

On "Late Show With David Letterman," senator says he is seeking the nomination for president.

They are laughing in our faces.

This has been carefully considered. McCain is a messenger, by launching his campaign on a late-night comedy show, he is telling us what a joke the Presidency really is. But then after Reagan and two terms of W, no one but a fool would think differently.

9/11 Pentagram Mystery Solved, and It's Slick

Some clever guys have done some compelling footwork and I think they've finally figured out what really went down at the Pentagon on 9/11.

Their conclusion: AA Flight 77 came in nearly head-on to the Pentagon, pulled up, and flew on towards Arlington, while the actual jet or missile that struck the building came in simultaneously from another angle, clipping the light poles and striking the facade.

Very smart work.

Check out their site and the video; it's raw and has absolutely zero production values, but the eyewitnesses--among them two Pentagon cops, no less--are obviously telling the truth. The other eyewitnesses were all on the highway, at bad angles--these guys were stationary, with excellent reference points for what they saw.

Compelling. Give the traitors on the other side of the Pentagram credit, that is one slick operation.

Owl Gods Redux

In a prior post on 9/11 and secret societies, I mentioned Bohemian Grove and Molloch, the ancient Babylonian owl god worshipped there. Though none of what follows is particularly new information, I wanted to expand on that prior post here.

The question why Presidents, CEOs, media moguls and financiers secretly gather to worship huge stone owl effigies in Redwood forests is obviously an interesting one, and quite revealing.

The owl, of course, can see in the dark, and thus is the perfect symbol for the Illuminati, that most secret of societies, which sees behind and in large part plans the apparently random events that form our "current events": carefully planned accidents, false-flag terrorist attacks, financial and political machinations that pop up in our MSM long after the fact--if at all.

The owl then is a symbol of hubris, of condescension--there is even a tiny one perched on the upper right corner of the front of the one-dollar bill--which of course sports the Illuminati/freemasonry pyramid with its all-seeing eye of Isis/Osiris on the verso, just above its inscription dedicated to a Latinate "new world order." And there's another one drawn in the roads surrounding the Capitol, which sits in its belly--the belly of the beast.

Neat little package, the dollar bill--all the conspiracies in a nutshell--and even better, you carry it in your pocket every day, totally in the dark about all its hidden symbolism. The dollar bill is a talisman, and these secret-society nutjobs think that it generates positive auguries for their plans and projects.

The current half-dozen posts give you some idea of their current projects--provoking war with Iran and dismantling American civil rights being foremost on the agenda--and I think that 2007 will be a critical year in American history. We are heading for a crisis of their making, and they have gambled enormously and dug themselves so deep into their occult-feathered nest of unprecedented lies, crimes and manipulations that it can only lead to horrific confrontation. You know, enough is enough. This sh*t has got to stop.

So fasten your seat-belts and stock up on duct tape, it's going to be one Hell of a bumpy year.

Paging Dr. Freud...

From Dan Froomkin in today's WaPo:

Sometimes it's the softball questions that can get the most telling responses

Here's the transcript of Cheney's interview on Friday with Greg Sheridan of the Australian.

"Q What's the highlight for you personally of being Vice President, your time in office?

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: What's the highlight? I'm going to have to think about that when I get out of office and I have time to do it. Clearly, our administration has been dominated by the events of 9/11 and the aftermath. That has clearly become front and center in terms of our concerns and we spend our time, how we spend our resources. And I think in terms of accomplishments, the fact that we've defeated all attempts to strike the United States again for the last five years doesn't mean we won't be hit tomorrow. They're still out there trying hard, but it has been over five years now."

Ask Cheney for a highlight of his six-plus years as vice president, and the only thing that comes to mind is 9/11.

Well, what a surprise that Cheney finds 9/11 his biggest accomplishment. About as big a surprise as W saying it was that fish he caught on his dude ranch.

For once neither of them lied.

P.S. Froomkin's post is entitled "The Ominous Omnipotent Omnipresent Cheney" and sits below this headline, which made me laugh out loud:

However, I am filled with foreboding at Cheney's sudden, global ubiquity. It is deeply disturbing that, as the administration once again ramps up the war propaganda, he has popped out of his bunker like it's Groundhog Day.

"American Liberty at the Precipice"

No, that headline's not mine, or scrawled by some paranoid, left-wing conspiracy nut, but rather heads today's lead NY Times editorial.

Click on the link, read the whole piece. Yes, this is the old Grey Lady shrieking of the present danger--the most establishment of establishment media.

Wake up, America.

Even Barnum Would Blush: Jesus' Purported Ossuary Becomes PR Tool

James Cameron of Titanic fame and an Israeli documentary filmmaker claim to have solid proof that a burial chamber found in Jerusalem 26 years ago actually held the caskets of Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdelene, and Jesus' son. (Here's the NY Times blog on the story.)

The story starts in 1980 in Jerusalem’s Talpiyot neighborhood, with the discovery of a 2,000 year old cave containing ten coffins. Six of the ten coffins were carved with inscriptions reading the names: Jesua son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Matthew, Jofa (Joseph, identified as Jesus’ brother), Judah son of Jesua (Jesus’ son - the filmmakers claim).

The ossuaries claimed to have held Jesus' and the Virgin Mary's remains go on display in New York today, to coincide with the start of the marketing campaign for the documentary about the discovery.

Blessed are the filmmakers, for they will inherit the net receipts.

And of course the End-Timers are putting on their Sunday-Go-To-Rapture best and waiting by the door.

Iran: They'd Rather Walk

From Sunday's Times of London, a report that an order to strike Iran could lead to the mass resignation of senior military commanders. The Times' reporters have identified at least four to five generals and admirals who would resign their commissions rather than carry out such orders.

The money quote:

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them."

And the military's discontent goes all the way to the top:

General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said recently there was “zero chance” of a war with Iran. He played down claims by US intelligence that the Iranian government was responsible for supplying insurgents in Iraq, forcing Bush on the defensive...

Hillary Mann, the National Security Council’s main Iran expert until 2004, said Pace’s repudiation of the administration’s claims was a sign of grave discontent at the top.

“He is a very serious and a very loyal soldier,” she said. “It is extraordinary for him to have made these comments publicly, and it suggests there are serious problems between the White House, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.

The Cheney administration is destroying and dividing the US military. The generals are not about to walk the plank with these madmen. Apparently Duty, Honor, Country is still alive in our armed forces, and for this we must all be deeply thankful.

To think it has come to this.

You Have Been Warned: Loose Nukes & Dirty Bombs

From today's NY Times Magazine:

Former Senator Sam Nunn's nightmare scenario for our future. The lede:

By now we can too readily imagine the horror of terrorists exploding a nuclear weapon in a major American city: the gutted skyscrapers, the melted cars, the charred bodies.

Ok, you've got my attention, but I've read this sort of long, sober, but utterly hair-raising Sunday Times Mag "they"-could-nuke-NYC-or-Washington article just once too often. Here comes another, just at the moment we have three full carrier task forces within striking distance of Tehran.

Again, the operative word is terror.

Secret Is As Secret Does

An editorial from Monday's NY Times:

Monday 19 February 2007

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration's behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president's use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.

The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any "other condition."

Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nation's governors.

There is a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and backed unanimously by the nation's governors, that would repeal the stealthy revisions. Congress should pass it. If changes of this kind are proposed in the future, they must get a full and open debate.

No further comment needed, other than to note that that bipartisan bill has a snowball's chance in Hell of being enacted.

Just For Laughs

The lede of an article entitled "Is Cheney Next?" at ABC News:

Could a guilty verdict for a former aide bring further criminal scrutiny of Vice President Dick Cheney?

The "further" is what gets me ROTFL.

Imperium Americanum: History Repeating

Here we are deep in the last third of Gibbon.

Almost 45 years ago, Ceasar died in Dallas, the long knives replaced by a hail of bullets, with the devolution of honor being such that the conspirators hid behind contract killers bought from the mafia rather than looking their prince in the eye as they betrayed him and murdered their republic.

Wars and foreign intrigues followed, as the conspirators, now the rulers of empire, fed at the trough of money and power. In Rome, uneasy parents, witness to the unspeakable, soon enough gave way to sons and daughters who reveled in wealth and decadence.

The rich were never richer, the poor never more despised. The outward forms and structures were maintained, from familiarity and convenience, but all Romans knew that democracy had been supplanted by dictatorship, that Rome had sacrificed its soul to grasp at the delirious prize of world domination.

The pathetic spectacle of the current Senate's inability to pass a non-binding resolution censuring the conduct of the Iraq war should have been played out in togas.

The craven politics, posturing and rank hypocrisy of the past weeks' maneuverings have reached new lows even for Congress--a profoundly saddening and shameless display that reveals an institution that is impotent, dysfunctional and frankly irrelevant. The stink of rotten decadence hangs over the farce: Congress is defunct as a viable, let alone co-equal, branch of government.

Enter Nero, playing air guitar.

Awake at First Light

I've been sick these past days with a fever and cough, which has kept me awake at odd hours. Yesterday, nose clogged and lacking Afrin, I lay in bed staring at the proverbial ceiling as first light rose. It has been near-freezing recently, with damp accentuating the cold.

My fever had subsided in the night, leaving me fatigued but perfectly lucid, and I believe I was simply debating with myself whether to attempt to get out of bed to drink some juice and use the bathroom when something subtle but quite remarkable occurred.

My building, a five-story a brick-and-masonry apartment house from the thirties, suddenly crackled alive with small movements--near-infinitesmal shifts of joist and floor and wall--that were barely audible yet could be heard throughout the structure, as if the world's finest earthquake, of an intensity of 0.000009 on the Richter Scale, had just occurred, though the building had not even twitched, let alone trembled.

Absolutely concurrently, the pigeons that roost in the courtyard outside stirred awake and began to flutter and coo, and the city outside sprang instantaneously to life.

It was a minor miracle, as if the earth itself awoke with a start from its own sleep, some twenty minutes before official dawn, and I considered what had just occurred. I knew sunlight could not have caused the phenomenon, since it was rising so weakly and imperceptibly, and I concluded it must be due to the sun's electromagnetic radiation, which must have just slipped over its own horizon, slightly refracted by the earth's own gravity so that it arrived before dawn, to jolt my building, the pigeons, and the surrounding city to life in a minor, beautifully orchestrated genesis.

I also thought that this must be a phenomenon that appears in folk wisdom, the likes of which you'd find in a farmer's almanac, when "almanack" was still spelled with a "k." Then I also considered that my building's near-flimsy construction--it was built in the depression years and has shockingly thin walls and resonates sound unfortunately well, and it is also mercilessly heated by a central boiler, giving the brick-and-mortar shell a crisp brittleness--made it a rare and perfect instrument to capture the waking tremor of the new day.