Twelfth Bough

UPDATED again: unconfirmed: " Turkish sources and media revealed a document which shows that a death list had been prepared in advance by the Israelis, showing names and pictures of people on board of the ships to be murdered, who, according to Israel, were “involved in the International humanitarian aid for Gaza”. According to the Turkish sources, hundreds of Israeli soldiers stormed the blue Turkish ship “Marmara” flotilla and they had copies of the death list. The list included the names of civilians on the fleet who should be killed”. The document was apparently recovered after one of the Israeli soldiers lost it during the piracy act." via Kawther Salam , also cited by Damian Lataan UPDATE: See video of Israelis celebrating attack on Turkish Aid Ship - infront of Turkish Embassy,Tel Aviv. CLOSE [X] Un-flipping-believable. How does one say this is an accident or a mistake when people are celebrating it like a victory? Insane. Oh wait! Now that they ...

Like many people, I used to believe in Peak Oil. The theory appeals to what we know about greed and scarcity. In a way it conflates greed and scarcity, because we know greed is real. Therefore scarcity must be real too. Scarcity therefore explains greed. Greed follows from scarcity. At least we humans can understand that. We may not approve but we can at least understand that people are weak and selfish. But if oil is actually not scarce, then what explains the greed? I mean it's still greed, right? It's just that it's now outside of the normal human imagination to think that people would make up a story about oil being scarce to justify killing people all over the world, when we could be living in peace. WTF? Well exactly. Evil beyond imagining. I mean, Peak Oil itself is a limited hangout. It admits that yes, we will start wars to fight over resources, rather than admitting that yes, we will kill just for the pure joy of it. But we are talking about the death cult...

One favorite way TPTB manipulate us is by arranging events so that the options narrow inexorably until we have "no choice" but to do the thing they wanted to do in the first place. From the beginning of this Gulf disaster, the nuclear option has been kicking around in the background. It is now coming to the foreground, as predicted. Why? Because the accident was allowed to happen due to insufficient oversight and corruption, if not being an act of terrorism / sabotage. Because after the accident happened the situation festered while our government refused to take control. Because inexplicably, viable solutions were not used to divert, capture and clean up the oil. Because our corporate media looked the other way for at least three weeks. We have a disaster of biblical proportions. But let's not lose sight that it could have been avoided or mitigated all along the way. And now we hear from Matt Simmons that this whole BP operation has been a massive effort at the...

The history of BP starts in Iran: The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded in 1908, following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran . It was the first company using the oil reserves of the Middle East. APOC was renamed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935, and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954, as one root of the BP Company today. For half a century, profit from the company flowed into European hands. Not only did the British government own a majority share but revenue that Iran did receive was used to re-pay debts owed to European creditors, which earlier shahs had incurred. Other cheap concessions in Iran were also obtained by Europeans, to their benefit and Iran's cost. The company, too, reneged on agreements to train Iranian technicians and engineers . It paid Iranians considerably less than foreigners and accommodated Iranian workers in sub-standard housing. The 1953 Iranian coup d'état ,...

A damning collection of news items for your grim appreciation. Remember when we used to hear about National Security all the time? Haven't heard that one lately. 1. Signs of trouble evident hour before oil rig explosion "Witnesses reported the well was spurting liquid and pressure tests indicated "a very large abnormality" was occurring aboard the rig, according to a memo released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday afternoon." "And the report found that other events aboard the rig "require further inquiry," including an unexpected loss of drilling fluid five hours before the explosion that suggested a leak in the blowout preventer -- a critical piece of equipment that has failed to shut down the well. " 2. IG report: Meth, porn used by drilling agency staff "While no specifics were included in the report, "we discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange — both go...

BAE Systems is a huge defense contracting company registered in the UK and serving seven home markets: Australia, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, UK and the US. BAE Systems, Inc. is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland and handles relationships with the DoD. BAE Systems trains and employs people for the US Army's Human Terrain System (HTS) out of Leavenworth, Kansas. HTS provides Human Terrain Teams (HTT) and Human Terrain Analysis Teams (HTAT) to augment deployed combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea is to embed social scientists into combat brigades, and these anthropologists will help the military get on better with the local populations. Theoretically a good idea if, say, we really were in Iraq and Afghanistan to help the local populations. Otherwise, total mind-fucking and completely unethical. So much so that actual anthropologists want nothing to do with HTT. John Allison, an actual anthropologist who entered and resigned from the program wrote t...