Alex welcomes back to the show former Minnesota governor, retired professional wrestler and color commentator, Navy UDT veteran, actor, and former radio and television talk show host, Jesse Ventura. Jesse is the host of a new television series on TruTV, Conspiracy Theory. The program is scheduled to debut on December 2, 2009.

China said on Wednesday it will consider major currencies in guiding the yuan, suggesting a departure from an effective dollar peg that has been in place since the middle of last year.

The reference to a new set of benchmarks for determining the value of the yuan holds out the possibility of a departure from recent practice, which has seen the currency held steady since mid-2008 around 6.83 per dollar.

“Following the principles of initiative, controllability and gradualism, with reference to international capital flows and changes in major currencies, we will improve the yuan exchange rate formation mechanism,” the central bank said in a 46-page monetary policy report.

It was the first time since the landmark revaluation and launching of forex reforms in July 2005 that the People’s Bank of China has strayed from the language of keeping the yuan “basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level” when discussing future forex reforms in such quarterly reports.

Full article here

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

 

The US Senate will complete the framework of climate change legislation before next month’s high-stakes summit in Copenhagen, Senator John Kerry promised UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday.

“We are engaged in the process that will hopefully put us in a position to go to Copenhagen with a sort of framework, or outline, or where the Senate will be heading in its legislation,” Kerry told reporters after meeting Ban at the US Capitol.

The Senate has not followed the House of Representatives in finalizing the first-ever US federal caps on carbon emissions, raising fears that the December 7-18 talks in the Danish capital will flop without the world’s biggest economy.

Kerry, a former presidential candidate who authored climate change legislation introduced into the Senate, said he told Ban that senators were “engaged in a very intensive process.

Full article here

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

 

Two commanders of the Czech rapid reaction brigade are facing disciplinary actions after reports surfaced that they had Nazi symbols on their helmets during their deployment in Afghanistan.

The news, which caused quite a stir among the country’s armed forces, came from the Mlada fronta Dnes daily.

According to the paper, soldiers Hynek Matonoha and Jan Cermak wore the symbols of the 9th SS panzer division Hohenstaufen and the SS Dirlewanger brigade respectively, which were probably the most infamous SS combat units of World War Two.

Cermak said he used the SS symbol simply because it consists of a sword and an “H”, the first letter of his name Honza, which is the colloquial form of Jan.

“It was just a joke and I am very sorry about it,” Cermak told MfD, adding that he didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol.

But specialist in extremism, Michal Mazel, doesn’t believe such an excuse.

“He is an elite troop who graduated from university, he is no teenager. The SS symbols on their helmets show a totally perverse view of the world of the NATO military’s elite troops,” Mazel said.

Meanwhile, Matonoha failed to offer any excuse for his actions.

Unaware of the men’s helmets, Czech Defense Minister Martin Bartak and chief-of-staff Vlastimil Picek decorated them for bravery on Friday after their return from Afghanistan.

However, the story was made public after Czech police serving in Afghanistan reported the case.

Both soldiers were immediately suspended. Defense Minister Bartak said the soldiers’ alleged actions were “unacceptable”. Officials say the soldiers’ commander was also suspended for reportedly trying to hush up the case.

Petr Prochazka, the commander of the Czech contingent in Logar, Afghanistan, ordered that the controversial covers of the helmets, as well as any photographs showing them, be burnt, but failed to punish the perpetrators.

The case with the soldiers is nothing new for the Czech Republic, said Ivona Novomestska, a spokesperson for the anti-violence movement.

“There were several attacks on Roma and other communities in recent years, and these problems in our army of course shocked all Czech people,” she said.

It is the second recent scandal involving the Czech military.
Last week it turned out that a professional Czech soldier, Lukas Sedlacek, is a member of a neo-Nazi group that was planning to attack and kidnap high-ranking officials of Jewish origin. When the information surfaced, the man was immediately removed from the army.

Former member of the European parliament Giulietto Chiesa, says attempts to rehabilitate the Nazis are worrying:

“The main question I’m worried about is that this kind of sentiment is growing, and in some places in Europe these kinds of ideas are very much encouraged by the government,” he told RT.

Meanwhile, German government consultant Christopher Hoersel believes the soldiers were protesting government policies they felt forced them to commit crimes similar to those made by Hitler’s soldiers during World War II.

Pointless “will he, won’t he” debates ignore the fact that Obama has already deployed 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009

Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama has decided to send close to 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan over the course of 2010, according to insiders.

“Informed sources tell CBS news he intends to give General McCrystal most, if not all, the additional troops he is asking for,” the network reported Monday night.

According to the report, Obama has decided to send four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops, bringing the total of new troops to be deployed close to 40,000.

The first troops will arrive in early 2010, and it would take until the end of 2010 before all the additional troops were in position.

The build up is expected to last four years, meaning there would be 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2012 when Obama has completed his first term.

According to CBS, Obama will announce the decision the week before Thanksgiving, just in time to fly over to Oslo, Norway in December to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize.

The White House has denied that any decision has been made, calling the reports, “absolutely false”.

Watch the CBS report:

Of course, this news is not surprising. While the mainstream media is still pointlessly debating “will he, won’t he”, the decision to deploy thousands more troops was made back in February with the announcement that 17,000 rising to 30,000 troops would be sent into the country.

At the same time, Obama demand a total of around $800 billion in war funds and subsidiary costs.

“According to the U.S. defense officials, Obama needs USD 75.5 billion for 2009 to cover the cost of the additional troops deployed in to Afghanistan this year and an another USD 130 billion for the rest of fiscal 2009,” reports from nine months ago highlighted.

In addition, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, has made it clear that the Pentagon will request supplemental war-fighting funds sometime next year, over and above the $130 billion appropriated by Congress last month.

The combined number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has now reached a higher level under Obama than existed under the Bush administration at any point between 2003 and 2008.

At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, a total of 186,000.

According to DoD figures cited by The Washington Post last month, there are now around 189,000 and rising deployed in total. There are now 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, over double the amount deployed there when Bush left office.

As the Post points out, these figures are also misleadingly low because the number of support troops, at least 13,000, has simply not been announced or noted, despite their authorization and deployment by the Pentagon.

“The deployment of the support troops to Afghanistan brings the total increase approved by Obama to 34,000.” The Post noted. “McChrystal’s request, which the administration is considering, would be in addition to the troops Obama has approved.” the article continues.

These numbers will no doubt go even higher given that McChrystal’s top end request for additional troops to Afghanistan stands at 80,000. Even more young Americans are to be pushed through the meat grinder.

Shall we continue to debate whether or not Obama the peace laureate will increase the troops levels in Afghanistan?

In addition, it has become clear that as in Iraq, Obama intends for U.S. forces to stay in Afghanistan permanently. One need only look at the recent headlines regarding construction and infrastructure contracts to recognise this fact.

As Walter Pincus of the Washington Post notes, the Pentagon has spent “roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years” in that country and, “if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation.”

Just as in Iraq, the Pentagon is setting about building hundreds of huge permanent military bases, expanding the sprawling network of well over 700 bases worldwide. Read journalist Nick Turse’s in-depth report for more analysis.

Just as in Iraq, tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan as a residual (read “occupying”) force in perpetuity.

Let us not forget that the justification for escalating the war in Afghanistan is to fight “Al Qaeda” insurgents and prevent another 9/11, a notion that has no basis in reality given that, even if you believe the official story of 9/11, no Afghans were involved in the attacks which were planned by Saudi nationals in Europe.

Furthermore, high ranking U.S. security and military officials have openly stated that Afghanistan is not in danger of falling, and that there that there are less than 100 Al Qaeda affiliated fighters currently in the country, presenting no threat to any nation.

Should 40,000 additional troops enter the country, there will be 1,000 or more U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan for every Al Qaeda fighter.

The real reason for military escalation is to dominate the geopolitical region, reap the financial profits from the plentiful supplies of energy and narcotics and suppress the people of Afghanistan in the process.

Barack Obama’s election promise to bring “change” to Washington and reverse the juggernaut of rampant militarism, endless wars and occupations has proven to be nothing more than a cruel hoax.

The perpetuation of the illegal occupation of Iraq, the expansion of the fallacy based war in Afghanistan, as well as increased faceless attacks in Pakistan, heightened belligerence towards Iran and refusal to address a strategy to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sum up Obama’s foreign policy during his first twelve months in office.

How in anyone’s mind can such behavior constitute a move towards peace?

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Doctors in Britain are effectively being bribed by health authorities to push the swine flu vaccine on a reluctant public after suspicions over the safety of the shot resulted in huge numbers of people refusing to take it.

The government originally intended for the entire population of the UK to receive the H1N1 vaccine but less than half have indicated that they will take the shot.

Multiple opinion polls have revealed that half of GPs in Britain have severe reservations and doubts over the safety of the shot.

A much larger Nursing Times magazine poll in August also found that 30% of all frontline nurses said they would refuse to be immunized, with another 33% saying they were unsure over the vaccine.

50% of pregnant women in the UK have also said they will refuse the vaccine.

This resistance has prompted health authorities to bribe doctors to push the vaccine on the public in the form of new bonuses for each and every shot they give, on top of those already in place.

“NHS managers in Birmingham have told family doctors they will be able to get extra payments – on top of the £5.25 they already get per jab – if they meet targets on vaccination rates,” reports the Daily Mail.

“If they vaccinate more than 90 per cent of those deemed at risk of the disease in their area, they will get 50 per cent more per jab, meaning they will be paid £7.88 for every person they vaccinate.”

Doctors who achieve a 40 per cent uptake will receive an extra 10 per cent bonus. In total, the bonuses are potentially worth thousands of pounds per practice.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Critics expressed outrage that doctors were effectively being bribed to become drug pushers for the government.

Jackie Fletcher, of vaccination support group Jabs, said: ‘There are huge questions about the integrity of vaccine decisions if doctors are paid to give them.

‘All vaccines carry a risk of side effects. Can we be confident GPs will tell patients about these risks if they are being paid extra to ensure a high uptake?

‘Rather than paying bonuses, the Department of Health should be investigating possible side effects.’

As we highlighted last week, mass resistance to the vaccine has prompted elitists to devise deceptive schemes in an attempt to get more people to take the shot. During a recent Council on Foreign Relations meeting, Andrew Jack, Pharmaceutical Correspondent for the Financial Times, conceded that “the anti-vaccine movement is having a field day on the internet” and that the CFR, via its many members which occupy prominent positions in the establishment media, should conspire to counter negative information about the swine flu vaccine.

At around the same time, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer in England, described people who express doubts about the swine flu vaccine as “extremists”.

During another part of the discussion on whether or not the vaccine should be made mandatory for health workers and school children, Lone Simonsen, Research Professor and Research Director at the Department of Global Health, George Washington University, suggests creating an artificial scarcity in order to ramp up demand for the vaccine.

“I think what would work better would be to say that there was a shortage and people tend to buy more of something that’s in demand. (Laughter.) We saw that — there was one season where, really, people lined up all night to get a flu shot.” Simonsen says, much to the amusement of the other attendees at the symposium.

But this is exactly the scam being run by the corporate media. Endless stories about shortages in supply, allied with footage of members of the public queuing for hours to receive the vaccine, have created a contrived sense of scarcity, similar to how toy companies manufacture a stampede for a particular item before Christmas by floating stories about something being low in stock.

Watch a clip from the CFR meeting below.

AP: The footage will no doubt be used by insurgent propagandists to promote their “victory” over the Americans and encourage their supporters.

Declan McCullagh reports for CBS News that the Department of Justice sent a formal request to Indymedia ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. A grand jury subpoena required the independent news website “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department. The subpoena and gag order represent a new level of government intrusion into the operation of a free press in this country.

The DOJ subpoena demands IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information, including email addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and other information on users of the website.

The subpoena issued by U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demands a transcript of  “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” on June 25, 2008. It required website administrator Kristina Clair of the Philadelphia-based Indymedia website to “include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information,” including email addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and other information on users of the website.

Clair told McCullagh and CBS: “I didn’t think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention.” She called the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco and the organization agreed to represent her.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has noted a number of problems with the government subpoena, including that it was not personally served, and that a court order is required for the server logs. Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based EFF, noted the Indymedia does not store its server logs.

Indymedia, short for Independent Media Center, is a global participatory network of journalists that report on political and social issues. It originated during the anti-WTO protests worldwide in 1999 and remains closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticizes neo-liberalism, and its associated institutions. Indymedia uses an open publishing and democratic media process that allows anybody to contribute, according to  Wikipedia.

“If you get a subpoena and you’re a journalist, they can’t gag you,” Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press, told McCullagh. “I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter’s privilege says, ‘Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general’s office’… I’m willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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The government does not consider Indymedia — or the alternative news media as a whole (including Infowars and Prison Planet) — as legitimate news organizations. The corporate media does not accept the notion of “citizen journalists” and has consistently criticized bloggers.

In 2004, the DOJ sent a grand jury subpoena demanding information about who posted lists of Republican delegates to the GOP convention in New York. An Indymedia hosting service in Texas received a subpoena demanding server logs in relation to an investigation of an attempted murder in Italy.

Obama promised “change” during the election. However, as the latest effrontery to the First Amendment by the Department of Justice reveals, nothing has changed and the Obama administration intends to continue the unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration.

A new UK-based report warns that the world’s carbon trading markets could spark another “sub-prime” style financial crisis that could again destabilize global economies.

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Fall Of The Republic – Buy the DVD here

 

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A career Neo-Con hack with intimate ties to the CIA has shamefully exploited the tragic massacre at Fort Hood last week to smear anyone who questions the official 9/11 story as a gun-toting terrorist intent on mass murder on a par with crazed killer Nidal Malik Hasan.

In an opinion piece, UPI editor at large Arnaud De Borchgrave disgracefully claims that, “There are tens of thousands of Hasans all over the Western world — from Brussels to Berlin and from Burgos, Spain, to Birmingham, U.K.,” before making the case that anyone who dares doubt the government’s version of events on 9/11 is an extremist hell-bent on metering out “jihadi violence” like Hasan did when he gunned down scores of his colleagues.

“For them, Sept. 11, 2001, was a conspiracy cooked up by the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence service,” writes Borchgrave.

Borchgrave’s bellicose hit piece harks back to the November 2007 hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee’s “Terrorism and the Internet,” which was broadcast on C-Span and chaired by California democrat Jane Harman, sponsor of the infamous HR 1955, “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.” During the hearing, a powerpoint demonstration from Mark Weitzman of the Simon Weisenthal Center ludicrously equated Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization consisting of professionals who are investigating the collapse of WTC 7 and the twin towers, with violent Islamic terrorists.

Borchgrave outlines his argument with the usual turd-load of ad hominem drivel and half-baked strawman claims. At no point whatsoever does he present any evidence that Hasan embraced 9/11 conspiracies, which would totally contradict seperate reports that Hasan is linked with members of Al-Qaeda.

“Even though al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden and his No. 2 Ajman Al-Zawahiri have both taken credit for Sept. 11, countless millions are convinced they had nothing to do with the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon,” he writes.

If Borchgrave had bothered to do one iota of research before spewing his vitriol, he would have discovered that on numerous occasions immediately after the attacks, Bin Laden explicitly denied responsibility for 9/11.

In a statement released to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera and reported on by CNN on September 17, 2001, Bin Laden said, “I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons. I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders’ rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations.”

Asked if he carried out 9/11 by the Pakistani newspaper Ummat on September 28, 2001, Bin Laden responded, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.”

The only person to “take credit” for the attacks was a dubiously fat Bin Laden lookalike who appeared on a videotape that was broadcast on December 13, 2001. Freedom Of Information Act requests attempting to validate the tape’s authenticity filed with the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and CENTCOM were met with a refusal to release any records. The FBI’s Most Wanted page still fails to list 9/11 on Bin Laden’s rap sheet because “the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11,” according to FBI agent Rex Tomb.

The tape was allegedly found in a house in Jalalabad after anti-Taliban forces moved in. It featured a fat Osama laughing and joking about how he’d carried out 9/11. The video was also mistranslated in order to manipulate viewer opinion and featured “Bin Laden” praising two of the hijackers, only he got their names wrong.

This Osama also uses the wrong hand to write with and wears gold rings, a practice considered abhorrent to the Muslim faith.

A German TV Channel One investigation found that the White House’s translation of the video was inaccurate and “manipulative”. One of the experts employed by the program to study the video concluded that the translation was “Very problematic – at the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of Bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic.”

“Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg sums it up: “The American translators who listened to the tapes and transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of things in that they wanted to hear but that cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it.”

In his hit piece, Borchgrave recycles a number of strawman issues that aren’t even embraced by the majority of the 9/11 truth movement in a pathetic effort to equate questioning 9/11 with Holocaust denial, which routinely serves as the last refuge of those who are losing the argument and have to resort to intimidation in an attempt to demonize the target of their attack.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Borchgrave’s motivation for smearing people who question the official version of 9/11 as crazed killers would be something of a mystery if not for the fact that, as a result of his dutiful lifelong propaganda in service of the U.S. military-industrial complex, he was tapped for recruitment by the CIA on two separate occasions and has remained in close contact with the Agency throughout his career as a journalist.

Borchgrave considered his “key, best sources of information” in the world the heads of “intelligence services in Washington, London, Tel Aviv, and Pretoria, each of which I stay in close contact with.”

Borchgrave was also affiliated with CAUSA, an “educational organization” created in New York City in 1980 by members of the Unification Church at the suggestion of Rev. Sun Myung Moon (owner of Borchgrave’s primary employers, UPI and the Washington Times), that sought to propagandize in favor of the Contra leadership during the time when they were being armed and funded by the CIA during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Borchgrave dispensed with any of the tenets of a true journalist more than 30 years ago by acting as an apologist for government deception and disinformation. In 1978, he told the Covert Action Information Bulletin that it was acceptable for authorities to oversee “management of the news” in order to “put the best face possible face” on what they were doing.

Borchgrave infamously peddled a hoax story in a crude attempt to generate support for the war in Iraq in 2003. According to SourceWatch, “Borchgrave was instrumental in laundering a story about a recanting peace-activist who “saw the light” in Iraq before the war. Although Joseph went to Iraq to protest against the impending war in 2003, while in Baghdad, he changed his mind, and now favored the war. It transpires that this was a hoax, there was no “Kenneth Joseph”, and the details can be read here.”

Borchgrave’s TV appearances are handled by Benador Associates, a public relations firm that provided enthusiastic Neo-Con cheerleaders for the war on Iraq during the now exposed Bush-Pentagon military propaganda program.

In May 2006, Benador were disgraced when it emerged that they had planted a fake story that later appeared in the National Post of Canada claiming that “Iran’s government had passed a law requiring Jewish residents to wear a yellow insignia — reminiscent of the policies of Germany’s Nazi regime.” The story was planted with the aid of Iranian exile Amir Taheri, who was later brought to the White House to consult with George W. Bush as an “expert” on the situation in Iraq.

According to the PR group’s founder Eleana Benador, planting fake stories in the media is a noble pursuit. “As much as being accurate is important, in the end it’s important to side with what’s right. What’s wrong is siding with the terrorists,” she told the Nation, who exposed the PR firm in an article entitled “Bunkum From Benador”.

As a result of his doting fealty to the U.S. war machine, some commentators have accused Borchgrave of being an outright disinformation agent, peddling his own brand of bunkum on a regular basis.

Again from SourceWatch, “William Preston and Ellen Ray wrote a history of disinformation in the U.S., and observed: “The greatest assistance in disinformation – especially during the current Administration – is always forthcoming from the Reader’s Digest. In 1977 the Times exposed Digest editor John Barron as having worked hand in glove with the CIA on a book about the KGB. Other fraudulent journalists like Robert Moss, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Daniel James, Claire Sterling, and Michael Ledeen, among others, seem to pick up disinformation themes almost automatically. In fact, coordination between the development of propaganda and disinformation themes by the covert media assets, the overt propaganda machine, and the bevy of puppet journalists is quite calculated. A theme which is floated on one level – a feature item on VOA about Cuba for example – will appear within record time as a lead article in Reader’s Digest, or a feature in a Heritage Foundation report, or a series of “exposes” by Moss and de Borchgrave or Daniel James in some reactionary tabloid like Human Events or the Washington Times or Inquirer. Then they will be called to testify by Senator Denton’s Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, repeating one another’s allegations as “expert witnesses”.

“After that they are given credibility by the “respectable” Cold War publications like the National Review, Commentary, and the New Republic. And finally, since they have repeated the theme so many times it must be true, they are given the opportunity to write Op Ed pieces for the New York Times or the Washington Post.”

The fact that the truth movement is being attacked and equated with terrorists for suggesting high-level government involvement in 9/11 by a man who has more spook connections than James Bond and less journalistic integrity than the average National Inquirer hack should serve as a badge of honor.

Borchgrave’s inane rantings have provided us with the perfect opportunity to expose him and his ilk for exactly what they are – intellectual prostitutes for the establishment with no credibility, no facts, and an agenda completely focused around lies, deception and bias.