Iran Calls for UN Sanctions Against U.S.

Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili has urged the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on the U.S. for developing nuclear weapons.
“The Security Council must issue sanctions resolution against the U.S. which has a long record in proliferation and use of nuclear weapons,” Jalili told Japan's NHK television aired on Friday.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator accused the United States of violating international law by using nuclear weapons against Japan, building nuclear arsenals, and proliferating atomic arms.

“According to the Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which calls for nuclear disarmament, the United States must report to the International Atomic Energy Agency on how it has obeyed international law on nuclear arms,” Jalili stated.

“Today the U.S. does not have a good image in the world. The United States is the only country which has used this inhumane weapon against innocent people… the Japanese people will surely never forget the U.S. crimes.

More F.B.I. Privacy Breaches Reported

The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.

Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.

Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general.

The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.

Mueller, noting senators' concerns about Americans' civil and privacy rights, said the new report ''will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March.''

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Army Struggles with Rising Suicide

 All Spec. Travis Virgadamo ever wanted was to be a soldier.

But two years after his father signed papers for him to enlist at age 17, things went terribly wrong. Last August, three months after arriving in Iraq, he walked outside his barracks and killed himself with his rifle.

When the news crackled over the Bonecrusher Troop's radio, 1st Lt. Kyle Graham knew immediately that it was Virgadamo, the troubled soldier who had been on suicide watch since June, when he threatened to kill himself while on patrol.

"I feel like we all had some responsibility to make sure this didn't happen," Graham said shortly after the incident. "It's our responsibility to make sure we take care of our fellow soldiers."

Virgadamo, whose case has been cited on the Senate floor and in congressional hearings, is a symbol of a growing problem facing the military as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars face repeated and extended deployments.

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Machinations of the Matrix

Written by Andrew Winkler / The Rebel Media Group

The corporate scribblings from Washington to Jerusalem are in overdrive. Vanity Fair has done it again, we are being told. In its April 2008 edition, we read Condi Rice and George W. Bush have secretly plotted to destroy Hamas. [1]

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever. 

"Duhh!," replies the dissident media scene. "We knew that all along. But nice of Vanity Fair to finally tell the truth. This goes to prove that not all is lost in corporate media." Well… that’s what the Matrix wants us to believe.

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Colombia Is Flashpoint in Chávez’s Feud With U.S.

 In the four days since Colombian forces crossed into Ecuador and killed a guerrilla leader taking refuge there, tensions between Colombia — Washington’s top regional ally — and its leftist neighbors have erupted, highlighting the fact that Colombia and its policies are increasingly viewed here as American proxies.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called Colombia the “Israel of Latin America” saying both countries bombed and invaded neighbors by invoking “a supposed right to defense” that he said was ordered by the United States. He has sent troops to the border and expelled Colombia’s ambassador. His agriculture minister said Tuesday that the frontier with Colombia would be closed to stop commerce.

In turn, Colombia said it would file charges against Mr. Chávez with the International Criminal Court, accusing him of assisting Colombia’s largest rebel group.

Meanwhile, President Bush fiercely defended Colombia, which receives $600 million a year in American aid to fight the leftist rebels and drug trafficking. He used the diplomatic crisis to push Congress to approve a Colombia trade deal that has languished for more than a year because of concerns among senior Democrats over human rights abuses there.

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The Federal Reserve Has Become Irrelevant

By John Hoefle / Executive Intelligence Review

Could they really be that stupid? That is the question which comes to mind watching the recent spate of statements by government officials discussing what they see as the problems facing the economy, and what needs to be done to solve them. Rather than admitting the global financial system has failed, and must be put through bankruptcy, they blather on about whether or not we have entered into a recession, and about the need to protect asset values from the effects of what they prefer to call the "housing crisis."

Take the case of poor Ben Bernanke, who had the misfortune of taking over as chairman of the Federal Reserve just in time for the worst financial crash in six centuries. Bernanke has a reputation for being an expert on the Crash of 1929 and the banking problems which surrounded it, but judging from his public statements, he still believes we are in the midst of a housing crisis.

"Many of the challenges now facing our economy stem from the continuing contraction of the U.S. housing market," Bernanke told the House Committee on Financial Services in his Feb. 27, Semiannual Monetary Report to Congress.

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Taxpayers are Paying Billions of Dollars in Increased Costs

By Julie Creswell and Vikas Bajaj / NY Times

Does Wall Street underrate Main Street?

A growing number of states and cities say yes. If they are right, billions of taxpayers’ dollars — money that could be used to build schools, pave roads and repair bridges — are being siphoned off in the financial markets, where the recent tumult has driven up borrowing costs for many communities.

A complex system of credit ratings and insurance policies that Wall Street uses to set prices for municipal bonds makes borrowing needlessly expensive for many localities, some officials say. States and cities have begun to fight back, saying they can no longer afford the status quo given the slackening economy and recent market turmoil.

Municipal bonds, often considered among the safest investments, sank along with stocks last week, darkening the already grim mood in the markets. Several big hedge funds unloaded bonds as banks further tightened credit to contain the damage from mounting losses on home mortgages and other loans.

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MSNBC Reporter: "I hope there is a secret prison for all 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists"

By Steve Watson / Info wars

The corporate media has stepped up an ongoing smear campaign against anyone who dares to question the government's leaky and falsified account of the events of September 11th 2001.

We received reports this morning that MSNBC ran a piece on Morning Joe during which a reporter called for anyone questioning the official account to be placed in secret CIA prisons.

One emailer wrote:

MSNBC Reporter on Morning Joe Today said "I hope there a secret prison for all 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists in Eastern Europe somewhere"

So when is it official that we live in the New Soviet Union, the U.S.S.A.?

The piece was a response to events in Corpus Christi yesterday where police arrested and detained a 9/11 truth protester with a sign at a Bill Clinton rally.

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Doctors Interrogate Children as Informants for the Government

By David Gutierrez 

Encouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), pediatricians across the United States have begun questioning children about their parents' habits, in some cases even filing police reports based on this information, according to an opinion article published in the Boston Herald.

Article author Michael Graham recounts that his own children were asked by their doctor whether their parents used drugs and alcohol, owned guns, or were abusive. The doctor did not seek parental permission before asking the questions, nor did he inform them that they were being asked; Graham and his wife found out only after their children came home from the visits.

"The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it's too much," Graham reports his daughter saying. "She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house. The doctor wanted to know how we get along. And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable."

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Americans Give up on Sleep

Editor's Note: Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Americans are currently shackled to a system that has them torturing themselves! Sleep deprivation combined with fluoride and other NWO schemes(nanotechnology,GMO,mercury,DU,etc) help the "elite" control the sheeple.

By Jennifer Harper / Washington Times

The nation is in a state of unrest — literally. We're working longer and sleeping less, struggling with less than seven hours of sleep a night.

The drowsy majority — 84 percent — consider daytime sleepiness and fatigue a given in modern life and "just keep going," according to a survey of our shut-eye habits released yesterday by the Washington-based National Sleep Foundation (NSF).

Half the respondents said they wake up unrefreshed, while more than two-thirds report they have a problem falling asleep — or staying asleep — several nights a week. We sleep an average 6 hours and 55 minutes, then head in for a workday that lasts well more than nine hours.

The result: 50 million of us now have sleep-related problems with our careers, relationships and personal safety.

Twenty percent, for example, said they had lost interest in sex because they were too sleepy.

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Feds Warn States of ID Deadline

Homeland Security officials are pushing recalcitrant states to adopt stricter driver's license standards to end a standoff that could disrupt domestic air travel.

States have less than a month to send a letter to the Homeland Security Department seeking an extension to comply with the Real ID law passed following the 2001 terror attacks. Some states have resisted, saying it is costly, impractical and an invasion of privacy.

Four states — Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina — have yet to seek an extension.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argues that the law fixes a critical gap in security identified by the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks: the ease of obtaining government-issued ID. It will also hinder would-be con artists and illegal immigrants, he said.

Real ID-compliant driver's licenses would have several layers of new security features to prevent forgery. They would also be issued after a number of ID checks, including verification of birth certificates, Social Security numbers and immigration status. Officials acknowledge it will take years to phase in all the different security measures.

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Penalties in Clinton Health Care Plan Scare Voters Off

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both share a passion for health care reform. The main difference between the two is what experts call "the mandate."

Will the government compel everyone to purchase insurance? Mrs. Clinton answers yes. Her plan mandates that every American must have health insurance — through employers, the government or a private plan. Mr. Obama answers no. He only compels that parents insure their children. The Illinois senator believes the costs of insurance are too high, so why force people to buy something they can't afford?

The two Democratic campaigns clash regularly on the issue. The dispute erupted again quite recently when Mrs. Clinton complained about flyers sent out by the Obama campaign, charging the New York senator's health plan would impose new and expensive obligations on people without the means to pay for it.

Polling suggests Mr. Obama may be on to something. Universal health care coverage is one of those public-policy issues where it's easier to find consensus on the goal than the solution.

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The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008

By James Petras -- author of The Power of Israel in the U.S.

The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people.  Tel Aviv’s tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight.  The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state’s political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of ‘survival’ and ‘existential threats’.  The key postulate of Israeli Middle East policy is to destroy or intimidate the principle adversaries of its Zionization of Palestine and its expansionist Middle East policy.  In pursuit of that policy, it invaded southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, bombing neighborhoods and critical infrastructure in Beirut and other cities, bombed Syria as a provocation. 

Earlier the Israeli state played a major role in directing the ZPC in formulating US war policy toward destroying Iraq as a viable nation.  Recently Israel, through the ZPC in the US, has engaged in a comprehensive, intense and highly charged political, diplomatic, economic and military campaign to isolate and ultimately destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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Sunnis Make Merry on US's Dime

By Gareth Porter -- author of Perils of Dominance

For months, US President George W Bush and General David Petraeus have been touting the program of recruiting tens of thousands of Sunnis into US-financed "Awakening Councils" as a master stroke of Iraq strategy which has weakened al-Qaeda in Iraq and helped reduce sectarian conflict through "bottom-up reconciliation".

But the mainstream Sunni insurgents who have been fighting al-Qaeda appear to have outmaneuvered US strategists by using the councils to pursue their interests in weakening their most immediate enemy, reducing pressures from the US military and establishing new political bases, while continuing to mount attacks on US and Iraqi government forces.

The biggest question surrounding the strategy from the beginning was whether the Awakening Councils - called Sahwa in Arabic - would be a haven for Sunni insurgents.

High-ranking US officers issued public assurances last year that former insurgents would not be allowed to enter the program, but last month, Iraqi government officials, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, began raising the specter of "infiltration" of the Awakening groups by al-Qaeda or "Ba'athists".

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The Gaza Bombshell

The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.

It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.”

On January 26, 2007, abu Dan, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, had gone to a local cemetery with his father and five others to erect a headstone for his grandmother. When they arrived, however, they found themselves surrounded by 30 armed men from Hamas’s rival, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “They took us to a house in north Gaza,” abu Dan says. “They covered our eyes and took us to a room on the sixth floor.”

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Federal Immigration Policies Cripple U.S. Border Region

An in-depth assessment of the economic, political and social conditions of the 24 U.S. counties that border Mexico exposes the devastating impact that illegal immigration has had on those communities.

Failed federal immigration policies have crippled their justice system, allowed a record number of deadly diseases—tuberculosis and hepatitis among them--to infest their communities and made them number one nationally in serious crimes.

The crucial analysis was conducted by a nonpartisan coalition of elected officials from the 24 county governments located on the U.S.-Mexico border. The group (United States/Mexico Border Counties Coalition) is dedicated to addressing the huge challenges faced by U.S. municipalities located near the southern border.

Its latest report is the result of lengthy research conducted by scholars at two major universities, in the border states of California and Arizona. It reveals that the 24 counties studied spent well in excess of $1 billion in less than a decade to respond to the federal government’s failure to secure the nation’s borders and the figure includes more than $800 million annually to provide emergency health care to uninsured populations. The counties are located in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

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Expert: White House Derelict With E-Mail

For President Bush, who expresses disdain for e-mail, the White House system of electronic record-keeping is a good match.

Even if Bush used e-mail, it might get lost in the problem-plagued White House computer system.

"I don't want you reading my personal stuff," the president explained to newspaper editors three years ago on why he doesn't send electronic messages.

On Capitol Hill and in federal court, a congressional committee and two private groups are pushing for information on how the White House has handled its e-mail for the past six years and whether officials there complied with records-retention laws.

The picture emerging from testimony and court filings is one of disregard for fundamental principles that well-run private companies adhere to routinely. By one estimate, over 1,000 days of e-mail are missing from various White House offices.

"I would call this negligence," said Mark Epstein, director of technical services for Cataphora Inc., a California company that specializes in retrieval and analysis of electronic information.

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Federal Report: Preservative in Vaccine may be Linked to Disease

A vaccine preservative may have contributed to a case of autism, the federal government conceded after years of denying a link.

In its written concession statement, the government said the child had a pre-existing mitochondria disorder that was “aggravated” by her shots, resulting in an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell, converting oxygen and food into energy for every life function.

The news site Huffington Post at www.huffingtonpost.com reported in November that federal officials had confirmed the link to thimerosal Nov. 9.

The government then sealed records of its statement, the Web site reported.

“The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed [the child] to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy [brain disease] with features of ASD,” the concession obtained by Huffington Post states.

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The New Art of War

If there were any doubts that the United States is preparing for war in space and cyberspace, testimony before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee last week would have wiped them away.

According to Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, "our adversaries understand our dependence upon space-based capabilities, and we must be ready to detect, track, characterize, attribute, predict and respond to any threat to our space infrastructure."

Although space threats have received much attention in the past, it was the possibility of cyberspace warfare that was given new emphasis at the hearing.

Chilton described cyberspace as an "emerging war-fighting domain." He said that "potential adversaries recognize the U.S. reliance on . . . [its] use and constantly probe our networks seeking competitive advantage," providing the reasons for developing defensive and offensive systems in this area.

U.S. cyberspace, in Pentagon terms called the Global Information Grid, serves as "a conduit that links human activity and facilitates the exchange of information," Chilton said.

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Gold Beats Financial Assets on Growing Global Distrust of Central Bankers!

By Millie Munshi and Pham-Duy Nguyen / Bloomberg

Gold, silver, platinum and palladium may be the best-performing financial assets this year as inflation and slowing growth erode the value of the world's major currencies, bonds and stocks.

Precious metals have risen at least twice as fast as the euro and yen in 2008 and returned six to 20 times as much as U.S. Treasuries. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index and all other major gauges of equities are down. Gold for immediate delivery reached an all-time high of $984.95 an ounce today, while silver traded at $20.19, the most expensive since 1980.

Investors are using metals to preserve their buying power as the U.S. dollar falls to a record and inflation accelerates. Gold, platinum and palladium may gain at least 30 percent this year as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke prioritizes cutting interest rates over controlling consumer prices, said Ron Goodis, a trader at Equidex Brokerage Group Inc. in Closter, New Jersey, who has been buying and selling gold since 1978.

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