Twelfth Bough

Americans do not worry too much about a war with Iran because they assume that we and/or Israel will quickly snuff out any Iranian response. Even Admiral Fallon (today is his last day on the job, btw) said, “Get serious. These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.” (Read about it here .) Smug people everywhere think that starting another war is not that big a deal, but they are wrong. A few days ago I linked to this George Galloway audio explaining a few important points: 1) Iran has military targets spread all over it’s country, and these would require near simultaneous strikes to disarm; and 2) we should fully expect Iran to respond to an attack, and to respond hard, and to retaliate on sensitive Western interests (he named London, for example). Consider this scenario: Phase III is the Israeli air attack against the Iranian nuclear facilities using American supplied bunker buster bombs. The Iranians have said they will respond by firing 11,000 missiles and artillery...

Where could he have gone? Concentrate now. Here are some clues...names and logos from the Diveroli family businesses: Botach Defense/Botach Tactical and Kley Zion. But remember, it's rude to notice that any of this unfortunate scandal might have anything whatsoever to do with Israel. Therefore, your corporate media outlets will tread very gingerly around this story. They will dispose of the whole thing just as soon as possible. As I said a few days ago, this is a story about networking . As someone who really does not like to network and will do just about anything to avoid it, I understand that Efraim networks. More than that, he was born into an existing network of wealth and privilege. People with money already have a network, and people who want to make money network, and that's how AEY landed a $300M contract. Very occasionally a person will just get discovered, but usually that happens to people with some unusual talent. Efraim is no Charlotte Church -- he was taken care...

Good News: This writer has great analytical skills . Read all three articles. The reader is therefore asked to give this careful consideration because the eternal vigilance necessary to protect our liberty is better served by reasonable suspicion than by enduring trust or inattention. Amen. Bad News: These three articles together make a very compelling case for an imminent attack on Iran resulting in the declaration of a national emergency . When might Bush declare a national emergency under NSPD-51? My own guess would be Spring 2008, after Bush is “forced” to attack Iran , perhaps with nuclear weapons, and Iran then fails to cooperate, attacking US ships in the Gulf and Mediterranean instead of accepting our offers of assistance. Or this might come after a UN Security Council resolution authorizing boarding Iranian ships for inspection, thereby creating an opportunity for a casus belli the Bush administration has been transparently pressing to create. Even if Iran denied Bush his...

Oh crap. Russian Intelligence sees US military buildup on Iran border MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran’s borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday. “The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran,” the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched. He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran “that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.” He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is p...

Another short installment in my ongoing series: What the %^&$ is going on over there? I so appreciate American Goy explaining this: You’ve seen the reports on TV about the fighting going on in Basra and the surrounding area? You do realize that the fighting is between two groups of Shia? There is no background given on American TV on exactly who is fighting whom and for what… American Goy to the rescue! [go read it] So now, when the NATIONALIST al-Sadr is fighting the PRO-IRAN Hakim and Prime Minister Maliki , who does the United States military support with aircraft sorties and armored cars? Why, the pro-Iran Hakim and Maliki of course. Repeat that FACT: American soldiers are dying for Iranian interests in Iraq. This is horrifying to the rest of the Sunni Arab world, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan… Because they want to LIMIT Iran’s influence in the region, unlike the Americans, who fight now to expand it. So…do we hate Iran or do we love Iran? How does one reconcile the Bus...

Clearly Young Efraim's story will cause a bad case of heartburn for some people. The fact that Efraim & Co. have these Hebrew names naturally leads people to the conclusions that they are Jewish and perhaps even Israeli. But surely that has nothing do to with anything. So I don't really watch tv, but someone who doesn't read alternative news heard about AEY so it must be breaking through the media firewall. Major heartburn. Take another Zantac. I would imagine the pressure in the corporate media to bat this story down must be immense. A sampling of rebuttals picked up in the blogosphere include: Efraim got lucky landing those $300m government contracts. Nothing more to it than that. This family just got a little enthusiastic with their business-dealings. The AEY people didn't donate money to Republicans so therefore none of this is a political scandal that can possible affect Republicans. In fact, uncle once gave $1000 to Edwards so HA! It's the Democrats fault...

Young Efraim has certainly garnered some attention. He’s called to testify before Henry Waxman and the House Oversight Committee. (Not that necessarily means anything…but still.) Also called to testify on April 17th are David Packouz, VP and Levi Meyer, GM both aged 25 and both of AEY. Dear Condi and Robert Gates have been asked to send representatives “with knowledge of the Department’s contracts”. This should be interesting. Efraim has another website called AmmoWorks which specializes in reselling foreign ammo, a business filed with the State of Florida. The paperwork lists a Yeshaya Diveroli as secretary. The marketing style is…well, how shall I describe it…softcore porn? Ammoworks has produced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of firearms, ammo, and tactical gear among other things for our special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ammoworks is a huge supporter of our troops and does everything in its power to not only insure a quality product but a product that functions ext...

via What Really Happened , you won’t often see this admitted : “We know that some of the rockets launched against Israel are launched by Fatah militants. The objective is to push Israel to punish Hamas in Gaza” - Crisis Group interview, Hamas official in exile, November 2007, found at page 23 of ICG Report No. 73 .

Justin Raimondo weighs in on the mystery of Iran benefiting from the situation in Iraq, and how that perhaps happened. It’s along the same lines as my musings here but with the advantage of making much more sense and having lots of supporting links. Personally, I have no problem believing the Iranians could outfox US and Israeli intelligence. Heck, that’s probably one reason why the Israelis complain so bitterly about Iran hiding their supposed nuclear weapons program — the Iranians showed them up and they just can’t stand it. Now we have to listen to the Israelis and neocons whine nonstop about the sneaky Iranians. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. The original plan of the neocons was to install Ahmed Chalabi, their own personal Iraqi puppet, but that soon fell through – and Chalabi, it turned out, had strong links to Iranian intelligence agencies . Accused of divulging American secrets to Tehran, Chalabi had his Iraq headquarters raided by Iraqi and U.S. personnel. Unfort...

Remember when the Walter Reed story broke? I hope this munitions story has the same effect, as in exploding in the Bush Administration’s faces. People will understand this story. May it travel far and wide, and may it hang around George Bush’s and the Republican party’s necks like a bloody stone. AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy. But an examination of AEY’s background, through interviews in several countries, reviews of confidential government documents and the examination of some of the ammunition, suggests that Army contracting officials, under pressure to arm Afghan troops, allowed an immature company to enter the murky world of international...

Behold how our government takes care of the men and women who serve in the US Armed Forces . A lengthy investigation published Thursday reveals that the Pentagon gave an inexperienced 22-year-old a $300 million contract to provide ammunition to Afghanistan. The shady deal resulted in decades old, substandard munitions being delivered to US and Afghan troops fighting on the front lines of the war on terror. Look at this guy. Is this somebody who should be supplying $300 million worth of ammunition to US soldiers serving on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan? What is he, a Mossad reject? Does anyone do any oversight anymore, or is this some kind of sick joke? You know some psychopaths had a good laugh over this maroon sucking $300m of US taxpayer dollars to send eBay ammunition over to our soldiers, who are, by the way, fighting and dying in a cocked-up war that we were lied into on behalf of rich Americans and Israelis and in which over one million innocent people have been ki...

I’m telling you, the people running the world enjoy moving us around on their crazy chessboard. Regarding Iran, I have been following two trains of thought: 1) the murderous psychopaths in power want to attack Iran and will find a way to do it, and 2) the greedy psychopaths in power want to control Iran and will find a way to do it. I’m guessing they’re all murderous and greedy, but some must be more murderous and others must be more greedy. I tend to think the greedy ones will prevail in the end, but that’s just a hopeful guess. After all, the psychopaths know that they can engineer lots of innocent deaths without actually setting off nuclear weapons, fun though that might be for them. They have the age-old tools of grinding poverty along with many new ways to surreptitiously poison the earth and her inhabitants. So they can really have their cake and eat it too, whereas if they set off a nuclear conflagration they might leave some money on the table. You know? When I wrote this post...

A few months back I read this article over at Global Research: Behind the Drums of War with Iran: Nuclear Weapons or Compound Interest by Ellen Brown. My apologies for the long excerpts, but this article really explains a lot of what's happening right now. If you're really busy, the shorter is: We must bomb Iran because those smart bastards outwitted our diabolical debt trap. What bankers call the “miracle” of compound interest is called “usury” under Islamic law and is considered a crime...Modern Islamic thinkers are not averse to a profitable return on investment if it takes the form of “profit-sharing,” with investors taking some risk and sharing in business losses; but the usurer gets his interest no matter what. In fact he does better when the borrower fails. The borrower who cannot afford to pay off his loans sinks deeper and deeper into debt, as interest compounds annually to the lender. In The Coming First World Debt Crisis (2006), Ann Pettifor gives this modernized ...

The other day I posted a clip of George Galloway manhandling a radio caller who thought attacking Iran is a good idea. If you haven’t listened to it, you’re missing a real treat and a 7-minute education . Galloway reminds the caller that Iran will respond if attacked. Iran is not some rinky-dink backward little country without resources. It might retaliate against London even, or other European cities. How would we like them apples? We are talking about setting off WW III here, and any people who blithely consider that an attack on Iran will be just another fun little military adventure for our boys needs to remove their heads from their asses. The groundwork has been laid for things to escalate very quickly. This February 2006 article by Michel Chossudovsky explains how the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons has been purposefully blurred, as has the chain-of-command decision making process to use the weapons. Essentially, for purposes of military planning nuclear...

Obama comes under pressure from the Republican Jewish Coalition to fire one of his advisers, Gen. Merrill 'Tony' McPeak. "By choosing to have a military advisor and national campaign co-chairman like General McPeak, serious questions and doubts are once again being raised about Senator Obama's positions and judgment on Middle East issues," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks. In a 2003 interview with the Oregonian, Gen. McPeak resorted to old stereotypes and unfortunate language by blaming the lack of progress with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on the undue political influence of American Jewry . The problem, said McPeak is "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote -- vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it." "Rather than putting the blame where it belongs -- on the Palestinian leadership and their continued reliance on terror, General McPeak finds it more convenient to blame American Jewry and their...

The Winter Soldier hearings have come and gone and the videos percolate through the blogosphere. As they must, since the corporate media dutifully ignored the entire phenomenon. Why is that? Do soldiers telling the truth about Iraq pose a problem? Why yes, yes they do. Americans must not find out how some of our soldiers behave when the embedded journalists aren't around. They'd fall right onto the fainting couch. For the forces unleashed in 2003 by Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez have whipped through Iraq many times now, reverberating through each hollowed out human being forced by circumstances to survive there for a time. Officially 4,000 soldiers have died, never to tell their stories. Many others survive as shadows of their former selves. But of those who come back more or less whole, a few seem really quite angry. Some of those angry soldiers spoke at the Winter Soldier hearings . The so-called Winter Soldier gathering organised by Iraq Vete...

"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously." - Dick Cheney answering Martha Raddatz's question about what affect 4,000 dead American soldiers has on the country. Yes, I keep posting this picture because I find it so illustrative. He's doing a lighthearted little jig. Obviously , he's suffering under some tremendous personal burden.

Dick Cheney visits the Middle East, declaring his undying support for Israel among other things (like firming up the next steps). Fallon leaves his post March 31st. Meanwhile, an American nuclear submarine has joined other US ships in the Persian Gulf. American deaths in Iraq have reached the bloody milestone of 4,000. Osama bin Laden has risen from the dead (again, and pretty much in sync with Jesus!, wow good timing), and along with AQ#2 al-Zawahri calls for a war against Israel and the US. The 40-day mourning period for Imad Mughniyeh ends today , putting Lebanon on pins and needles. The US economy bravely dangles over the abyss with one sweaty palm holding onto the ladder swinging under Ben Bernanke’s confetti-dispensing helicopter. Let’s see…what else? Well, you get the picture. It could soon be time for a false flag that will bring the world to it’s knees. For much more pants-crapping fun, go read Winter Patriot . Shiny happy people.

Russell Tice, the (Republican, Bush supporting) NSA whistleblower who some of the right think is a paranoid, embittered loon, said this back in January 2006 : In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things. Whatever he’s talking about there (and it sounds pretty horrifying), it’s not fusion centers . Russell Tice refers to something much worse that remains a mystery. Fusion centers, on the other hand, proudly operate in full view as part of the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine that somewhere close to your local community there exists a secret computer center. Equipped with powerful mainframe computers and the database integrating powers of XML, this government-funded facility gathers data from thousands of sources including local, state and federal law enforcement, social welfare ag...

Here’s a small collection, by no means comprehensive, of recent incidents where people in authority have over-reached their power. The question to keep in mind when reviewing this data is not, “What would I do if I were a person in authority?” but rather, “How would I feel if I, my parent, my child, my spouse, or my friend was treated this way?” Why focus on that question? Because the vast majority of people are not in positions of authority. Most people aren’t going to be able to drop a name or have some inside connection to deliver them from whatever humiliations the authorities have in store. The very need to cultivate, nourish and protect such connections exposes the rot at the center of our democracy. It simply shouldn’t be necessary to “know people” in order to remain safe from abuse. That’s the kind of crap that flourishes in totalitarian states and banana republics. Innocent Icelandic Woman Chained, Held, Tortured by Homeland Security at Airport Sheriff apologizes to man dump...

Speak of the devil… Just the other day I wrote about the escalating game of acceptable police tactics to catch criminals. Here’s a sad story to illustrate how things can go tragically wrong and what happens when they do. To recap: a 28 year old Virginia man’s house had been broken into and rifled through, but nothing was stolen. A few days later he was in bed when he heard someone trying to break into his house again. In a matter of seconds he shot through the door and killed a police officer. He has been charged with first degree murder. An open and shut case? Not at all. Let’s replay it. A police informant breaks into a man’s home (his crime overlooked) and generates a ‘tip’ about marijuana. The police do not trouble to corroborate the tip (why bother?) but simply go to the man’s home a few nights later with a warrant. The man has no criminal record or history of violence. Instead of ringing the bell and asking to speak with him, they start banging down the door (excessive force...

My heart is broken from all the suffering in the world, so much of it caused by our country and our 'friends' like Israel. It's so sad, and yet we have to look. People in this country desperately need to grasp the reality that our leaders have engineered across the globe. Please take five minutes of your life to watch this video of little boys in Iraq . I spoke to someone the other day who still supports and likes Bush. This person does not think a war with Iran will happen. This person has not heard any Winter Soldier stories or seen any distressing YouTube videos from Iraq. This person chooses to believe only the best about our leaders and our military. Only the best. Anything less than that is definitely not patriotic. That is how this person chooses to see the world, and this person insists there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, this person considers that I am being negative, and negativity is unAmerican. Americans are positive. We are upbe...

I recently attended an information night about internet safety for children. A couple of detectives ran the meeting and did a good job. They gave us a lot of information, much of which horrified me. For example, they described how a 75 year old man owned a computer. His grandson used the computer to download some files (illegally) from a file-sharing site. But apparently this young man didn’t sign off when he was done ’sharing’, and while he went off to do whatever he had to do for a few hours, thousands and thousands of other people somehow were able to ’share’ files through his connection, or something like that (they weren’t very specific). The old man, since it was his house and his computer, ended up being slapped with a lawsuit for $75k because those files were stolen. The moral of the story: you can be sued if something goes wrong, even if you don’t know or understand a damn thing about what happened. Another story…some people buy these tiny jump drives to store illegal things l...

A site I rely on heavily, Crimes and Corruptions of the New World Order News, went down yesterday. It looks like someone hacked it. Makes you wonder... If you don't check this site, he carries a lot of great news from around the world. Good alternative news. He's got it back up and running here in case you are looking for it. NWO Newswire

According to a top Clinton aide, Ann Lewis: “The role of the presidents of the United States is to support decisions made by the people of Israel.” The blogosphere discusses this , and rightfully so. Look around. I’m not going to explain the role of POT US . That hardly seems necessary. Obviously people like Ann Lewis have been too long in the corridors of power. Are there fun house mirrors all over that corridor or something, because the Israeli interest seem much, much bigger in Washington, DC than it does to me out here in the United States of America. I’m glad she made this obnoxious comment. Maybe people will start to open their eyes to the symbiotic parasitic relationship we have with Israel.

Back in August I spoke with a guy who sold us a few financial products. He insisted, insisted , that this sub-prime thing was not a big deal. I took some of my money out of the market, a decision he really advised against. He thought the economy was doing great. People like me are just too damned negative. I distinctly remember telling him the economy is a ‘house of cards’. This morning one of the networks ran a graphic of a house of cards collapsing, eliciting a hearty snort from me. I have used Herculean restraint not to email some snarky remark to him, especially since his company sends me a monthly pdf letter from their Kool-ade drinker-in-chief. The last letter wryly admitted that things weren’t going so swell but then hunkered down into the team huddle. This is what we’re gonna do…. Yeah sure whatever. In any case, I have no financial expertise to offer anyone. All I can tell you is this: when network tv shows a graphic of a house of cards collapsing to describe what ‘might ...