In a move that has triggered outrage, Google has announced plans to bring all data collected from users’ separate accounts on its sites into a combined profile. Besides raising dubious questions about privacy, this offer is one you… cannot refuse.

The changes will take effect on March 1. Before that date, Google will notify its hundreds of millions of users about the new rules of the game. In preparation, the company is boosting its privacy policy and terms of service. Users will have to decide whether to agree with the new terms – or lose access to some of their favorite sites. There is no way of opting out of the changes.

Some say Google’s privacy announcement is frustrating and a little frightening.”Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out,” said Common Sense Media chief executive James Steyer, as cited by the Washington Post.

Google says the new policy reflects a “desire to create a simple product experience” that does what one needs, when one needs it. The changes, apparently, will also allow Google to offer more new services and other “cool things.”

Google is consolidating more than 60 separate legal notes into a single main Privacy Policy, which will make it easier for consumers to comprehend – or, at least, read – the terms of service in full.

But these changes come with an unprecedented boost to Google’s right to collect and combine your personal data in ways you could never have imagined when you were registering for Gmail or Picasa.

“Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in [to your Google account], we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services,” Google’s Director of Privacy Alma Whitten wrote in her official blog.

“In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” she said.

And it’s not like Google doesn’t already collect a lot of information about its customers. When you are using Android mobile phones, Google can access your contacts and location. If you are searching for something on the internet, Google remembers all the search terms. When you sign into your Google account, it can track the sites you visit.

The only Google projects which – for now – are not affected by this extensive data collecting operation are the Google Wallet, Google Books and Chrome internet browser.

Google claims it is committed to protecting your privacy, and that the only person it will share your personal information with, is you.

“Our recently launched personal search feature is a good example of the cool things Google can do when we combine information across products,” Google says.

But this personal search feature has already raised a lot of skepticism. Google is facing an anti-trust probe over the latest changes to its search engine. The Washington Post says the Federal Trade Commission is privately checking whether Google’s decision to promote its Google+ social network on the search result pages is an act of unfair competition.

Now, the new changes have opened up yet more debate about Google’s stance on privacy, and the protection of personal data.

Source.

Tensions in the Gulf could reach a breaking point as a senior Iranian official said Iran would “definitely” close the Strait of Hormuz if an EU oil embargo disrupted the export of crude oil, the semi-official Fars news agency reports.

The announcement came in response to a decision by the European Union on Monday to impose an oil embargo on Iran over the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

“The pressure of sanctions is designed to try and make sure that Iran takes seriously our request to come to the table,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

However, with Washington’s decision to deploy a second carrier strike group in the Gulf, the EU’s attempt to pressure Iran economically could greatly increase the likelihood of all-out war in the region.

The Strait of Hormuz is the vital link between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

It is also one of the most strategic chokepoints in the world when it comes to oil transit.

With world oil output estimated at some 88 million barrels per day in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that some 17 million of those barrels passed through the Strait.

If economic sanctions sufficiently pressure Iran to retaliate by closing down the Strait, nearly 20 per cent of worldwide oil trade would be impacted, resulting in a massive spike in global energy costs.

With over half a million regular forces and an additional 120,000 personnel in the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard,  analysts believe the consequences of a US-led war against Iran would dwarf recent Western-backed military incursions the Middle East.

Thus far, the US decision to maintain two carrier strike groups in the region has been described as “a routine activity”by Iran.

But the vast US military buildup in the region, which was bolstered when the Pentagon dispatched an additional 15,000 troops to the neighboring nation of Kuwait, was only the latest step in an obvious attempt by Washington to strengthen its military capabilities in the region.

However since 1988, when the United States managed to destroy some 25 per cent of Iran’s larger naval capability during Operation Praying Mantis, Iran has spent the last two decades preparing its Revolutionary Guard naval forces to exploit the vulnerabilities of the United States’ larger conventional forces.

According to Revolutionary Guard commander Brigadier General Jafaari, ”The enemy is far more advanced technologically than we are, we have been using what is called asymmetric warfare methods… our forces are now well prepared for it,” he said, as cited by Global Bearings.

Ultimately,  the latest round of brinkmanship between Iran and the West may force Iran to the negotiating table over its uranium enrichment program.

However, the EU strategy of averting “chaos in the Middle East” by tightening the economic noose around Iran could spark the very conflagration it was ostensibly trying to avert.

Source.

A shocking report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Prime Minister Putin on the just completed meeting between China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger states that the Chinese were told that former Florida Governor John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, brother to the former US President and son of another, will be elected as the next American leader despite his currently not even being on the ballot.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping met with Jeb Bush [photo top left] yesterday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing where both pledged to advance cooperation between their two countries and, this report says, agreed that once Bush had taken office a ‘new era’ would begin in US-China relations.

According to this report, Kissinger told Keqiang that the Republican Party election process to select their nominee to run against President Obama was“completely manipulated” to ensure that their 2012 Convention would be “deadlocked” thus allowing for Jeb Bush to be nominated as a “consensus candidate” and thus his parties leader.

The path to a deadlocked convention, this report says Kissinger told the Chinese, lies in neither current Republican frontrunners Governor Mitt Romney or Congressman Ron Paul having enough delegates to ensure their nomination on the first ballot after which their supporters will be free to nominate anyone they so choose.

In order to ensure a deadlocked convention, this report continues, Kissinger noted that Romney will obtain his delegates from what are called Primary States while Paul will receive his from those holding caucuses and “open” primaries, with neither of them receiving enough votes to secure their nominations.

Political analysis on the US election do, indeed, note that Paul’s path to the Republican nomination lies in the caucus and open primary States which shows what is called his “secret path to victory.”

To the most shocking aspects of this report are the comments attributed to Kissinger that claim the entire American electoral system is under the control of their National Security Agency (NSA) which controls the computers used in their elections and whose outcome is determined by their elites, not the citizens themselves.

In a dire move bolstering Kissinger’s claim of a rigged US election was yesterdays news that the giant global election firm SCYTL, which describes itself as the ‎worldwide leader in secure electronic voting and electoral modernization, had purchased the United States most dominant election results reporting company thus insuring these people would never have true or total access as to who would actually win any of their elections.

Even worse, this report continues, the purchase by SCYTL of the private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.Com and controls the election results in over 525 US jurisdictions, was its being financed by the global investment giant Carlyle Group that was founded by the Bush and Bin Laden families nearly 25 years ago.

When queried by Chinese officials as to why Obama was allowed to be elected instead of Jeb Bush in the last US election, this report continues, Kissinger replied that the American public was not prepared for a continuation of the Bush-Clinton Dynasties that have, in fact, ruled the United States since the 1981 coup d’état staged against President Ronald Regan after he was nearly assassinated by the son of the then Vice President George H.W. Bush’s main business partner.

Kissinger further stated to the Chinese, this report says, that Obama was a “safe choice” to be an “interim leader” as besides his being a member of the Bush family (Obama is former President George W. Bush’s cousin by blood) his mother, Ann Dunham/Soetoro, was a “prized” CIA asset who was dispatched from Hawaii to Indonesia in 1967, along with seven year-old Barack Obama, to infiltrate villages in Java to carry out a CIA survey of political leanings among the Javanese population and whose “handler” was George H.W. Bush who a few years later became Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Kissinger added, this report says, that by putting Obama in office they were, also, able to secure the passing of draconian new laws in the United States that otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed to pass due to the overwhelming objections of American liberals and progressives, but who now are all but silent as the last vestiges of the US Constitution are being swept away.

Being ignored by these American liberals and progressives, however, are that the laws being passed by the Obama regime are intended to be used against them and include the power of the US President to designate anyone he so chooses as a “terrorist,” kill them without charges or trial, hold American citizens in prison, also without charges or trial, and, under a new law being pushed through the US Congress, would give the US government the power to strip Americans of their citizenship without being convicted of being “hostile” against the United States.

Though the claims made by Kissinger to China detailing how the election process in the United States has now been completely destroyed are beyond appalling, it does not, on the other hand, come as surprising from a “war criminal” who once boasted “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.”

To the American people themselves it remains to be seen if they will ever awaken to what is true…one can only hope they will, before all is lost…forever.

January 18, 2012 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

As 2011 draws to a close, an award-winning US magazine has handpicked a dozen of the most monstrous lies that Washington has delivered to the world over the past year.

“I live in Washington where lying is an art form,” David J. Rothkopf wrote on the Foreign Policy website.

Before enumerating the most egregious US lies of 2011, Rothkopf divides the fallacious statements uttered by Washington into three categories.

Some, he says, are known for their “subtlety”, like President Barack Obama wanting to get special interests out of American politics. They “almost” feel true, Rothkopf says.

Others stand out for their “audacity”, like Newt Gingrich bringing down communism.

And last but not least are those which capture our attention for being offered with a “straight face,” like Mitt Romney saying he has deeply held political convictions.

Rothkopf, however, says among the plethora of US mendacious claims there are some which are most outstanding.

“They are the big lies that have defined our times,” he says, proceeding to catalogue those fibs.

1. “The war in Iraq is finally over after nine years.”

Rothkopf notes the US has been militarily engaged in Iraq since the early 1990 and this will likely be just the end of another installment in the long running series of US warmongering policies in the region.

2. “America’s mission in Iraq was a success.”

He expresses astonishment at such a claim while Iraq is divided, undemocratic, corrupt, and the US invasion has cost USD1 trillion, thousands of US lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and its national reputation. US war in Iraq bears greater semblance to a full-scale “fiasco”, he says.

3. “We are winning in Afghanistan.”

Rothkopf describes this one as a hot from the oven “howler” by the US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Washington has strengthened the region’s extremists and the threat of instability in nuclear Pakistan is now actually higher than it was when US went in, he says.

4. Tie: “Pakistan is America’s ally” and “Afghanistan is America’s partner.”

Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan can by any “credible definition” be called a US ally. This is attested to by the animosity of Islamabad towards Washington and Kabul’s belittling of the US on the world stage, Rothkopf says.

5. “America is unthreatened by China’s growth.”

A “prayer” by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rothkopf says. “It should be true. But it’s not,” he adds.

6. Tie: “Republicans are the problem” and “Democrats are the problem.”

Rothkopf dubs this one as “the great lie of American politics.” He says the problem with US politics is not the parties, but the money. “The system is so resolutely corrupt that recent scandals have only resulted in more money flowing into the system and past reforms being undone,” he notes.

7. “Cutting the taxes of millionaires helps create US jobs.”

There is not even one single solitary shred of evidence to support this “idiotic” suggestion, Rothkopf notes.

8. “This next summit of European leaders will be decisive …”

Rothkopf says despite the fact that this claim has been made every few weeks for the past months, the “supposedly sophisticated financial markets” of the United States continue to fall for it.

9. “The Obama administration is committed to serious financial services reform.”

The US financial system is still plagued by all the threats that instigated the 2008 recession. “Not an inch of progress,” Rothkopf says.

10. “Only nine percent of Americans approve of Congress.”

“This can’t possibly be true. There can’t possibly be that many,” Rothkopf says in a stinging sarcastic tone.

11. “The operation in Libya will be over in a matter of days or weeks.”

Rothkopf says the operation was wrong to begin with, “and then wrong and then wrong again for months.”

12. “I love Israel.”

Even though everyone in US politics makes such an assertion, nobody really means it, Rothkopf notes. What the politicians really mean, however, is that “I want American Jews to think I love Israel enough to vote for me and give me money,” he says.

“Those are just a few of a bumper year for duplicity, mendacity, and craven misstatements,” Rothkopf concludes.

Source.

Ever dream of leaving it all behind and heading out of America? You’re not the only one. A new study shows that more US citizens than ever before are living outside of the country.

According to statistics from the US State Department, around 6.4 million Americans are either working or studying overseas, which Gallup says is the largest number ever for such statistic.

The polling organization came across the number after conducting surveys in 135 outside nations and the information behind the numbers reveal that this isn’t exactly a longtime coming either — numbers have skyrocketed only in recent years. In the 24 months before polling began, the number of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 living abroad managed to surge from barely 1 percent to over 5.1 percent. For those under the age span wishing to move overseas, the percentage has jumped in the same amount of time from 15 percent to 40.

While the United States of America was at one point (and largely still is) a magnet for foreigners in search of work, the statistics makes it clear that an opposite trend is quickly picking up steam.

“There’s a feeling among more entrepreneurial Americans that if you really want to get anything done, you have to get out of country and away from the depressing atmosphere,” Bob Adams of America Wave tells Reuters. “There’s a sense of lost direction, so more people are looking for locations that offer more hope about the future.”

Many of those leaving the US have job skills that would transfer quite well in the American market. Instead, however, they chose to bring those out of the States, attracted instead to opportunities elsewhere.

While America offers some employment opportunities unmatched outside of the United States, the country has also seen dire economic statistics since the dawn of the Obama administration, with jobless benefit claims soaring in recent months, and only last week did the Department of Labor reveal an unemployment statistic below 9 percent. On the contrary, the number of Americans that want full-time work and have given up on finding it or unable to locate it is closer to double that figure, while at the same time many of America’s largest employers have outsourced positions across the globe. Banking giant Goldman Sachs announced earlier this year that in the wake of a recession, they would finally be creating 1,000 new positions, yet making them available only to workers in Singapore. Other industries, significantly American, have been relocated as well; the ending of NASA’s space shuttle program this year left many intelligent US citizens with little choice but to continue in their field outside of the States.

“We’ve pretty much outsourced everything else,” aerospace technician Giovanni Pinzon tells RT. He was left scrambling for a job after years working in America’s space program.

America Wave’s Adams adds to Reuters that the statistics prove surprising to him, but noted that it doesn’t exactly make sense to think that it is a fluke.

“They’re looking for work because of the sluggish economy, and they’ve lost confidence that the U.S. is going anywhere,” says Adams.

Source.

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.

“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.

“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Here’s the clincher in what he wrote:

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?”

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

There you have it. A concise summary of what’s wrong with present corporately driven education change: Decisions are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.

Those decisions are shaped not by knowledge or understanding of educating, but by ideology, politics, hubris, greed, ignorance, the conventional wisdom, and various combinations thereof. And then they’re sold to the public by the rich and powerful.

All that without so much as a pilot program to see if their simplistic, worn-out ideas work, and without a single procedure in place that imposes on them what they demand of teachers: accountability.

But maybe there’s hope. As I write, a New York Times story by Michael Winerip makes my day. The stupidity of the current test-based thrust of reform has triggered the first revolt of school principals.

Winerip writes: “As of last night, 658 principals around the state (New York) had signed a letter — 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began — protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.”

One of those school principals, Winerip says, is Bernard Kaplan. Kaplan runs one of the highest-achieving schools in the state, but is required to attend 10 training sessions.

“It’s education by humiliation,” Kaplan said. “I’ve never seen teachers and principals so degraded.”

Carol Burris, named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, has to attend those 10 training sessions.

Katie Zahedi, another principal, said the session she attended was “two days of total nonsense. I have a Ph.D., I’m in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations.”

A fourth principal, Mario Fernandez, called the evaluation process a product of “ludicrous, shallow thinking. They’re expecting a tornado to go through a junkyard and have a brand new Mercedes pop up.”

My school board member-friend concluded his email with this: “I can’t escape the conclusion that those of us who are expected to follow through on decisions that have been made for us are doing something ethically questionable.”

He’s wrong. What they’re being made to do isn’t ethically questionable. It’s ethically unacceptable. Ethically reprehensible. Ethically indefensible.

How many of the approximately 100,000 school principals in the U.S. would join the revolt if their ethical principles trumped their fears of retribution? Why haven’t they been asked?

Source.

Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.

Imagine!: speech written & given by Ron Paul
should you be a US citizen in support of Ron Paul: http://revolutionpac.com/defense

Americans denied their First and Third amendment rights…

by Devon DB

Many in America still believe that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that politicians, both Republican and Democrat alike, still hold that view and ensure that any and all legislation passed does not violate it. However, in today’s America, the Constitution is effectively a null and void document, nothing more than a symbol politicians pay lip service to.

The destruction of the Constitution began soon after 9/11 when the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress. In the heat of the moment it seemed as if the legislation was meant to protect us from terrorism, however it was later revealed that certain provisions blatantly violated the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments. [1] Interestingly enough, however, this didn’t stop the Senate from to extending the Patriot Act earlier this year [2]. In doing this, the government revealed just how much they respect the Constitution.

The next unconstitutional act to take place was under President Obama. Despite his “hope and change” rhetoric during the campaign, the only thing Obama changed was to further erode the Constitution and the power of checks and balances in government. Obama argued that the UN mandate gave him the right to bombard Libya, however the mandate has nothing to do with the fact that such an action was unconstitutional [3] as the power to declare war in held solely by Congress, not to mention the fact that it violated the War Powers Act. In carrying out this action, Obama did even more to expand the imperial presidency and showed his blatant hypocrisy as in 2007 he clearly stated that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” [4] (emphasis added) However, in later months he would take this disregard of the Constitution to the extreme.

Just two months ago, Obama authorized the assassination of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. While al-Awlaki was a member of Al Qaeda, he was still a US citizen at the time of his death [5] and thus he still had rights as a citizen, specifically the right due process. This never occurred with al-Awlaki. Due to al-Awlaki’s assassination, it sets a legal precedent which allows the current and future Presidents to assassinate US citizens and withhold damning evidence- if there even is any- from the public under the guise of “national security.”

Today, we see due to the brutal crackdown of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Oakland, New York, and most recently Los Angeles, that Americans are being denied their First and Third amendment rights. Mayors are sending the message that if one decides to pose a serious challenge to the status quo, they will be violently crushed.

The Constitution is dead and with it the beliefs and ideals America was founded on have also passed away. The most terrifying occurrence, however, is that Americans are seeing their freedoms eroded are still in denial that a police state is slowly, but surely on its way.

Notes

1: http://www.scn.org/ccapa/pa-vs-const.html
2: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/25/senate-moves-patriot-act-extension/
3: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/24/obama_s_unconstitutional_war?page=full
4: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/
5: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/30/was_anwar_al_awlaki_still_a_us_citizen

Source.

Following the latest report that the Iranian military has shot down a US drone in eastern Iran, radio host Stephen Lendman told RT such US reconnaissance missions point towards greater ambitions for domination, which might lead to all-out war.

With diplomatic tensions reaching a boiling point between Iran and the West, Lendman believes such spying operations are part and parcel of a greater war that the United States has been waging against Iran for decades.  

“Since the 1970s America has had a running on-and-off war with Iran, basically wanting to change the regime, to make it subservient to US interests, and Iran has the crazy notion that it believes it has the right to its own sovereignty, to run its own government, to conduct its own affairs, it doesn’t have to answer to Washington. Washington disagrees, and therein lies the conflict,” he said.

Lendman also claims US Special Forces are already operating within Iran, as he believes the build-up for an attack is becoming imminent.  According to Lendman, recent events in Libya, Syria, and now Iran, point towards a greater drive to rein in everyone who might be opposed to unrestrained US power.  

“America has had for some years, especially since the Bush years, what they call the greater Middle East project. The project is total dominance over the region, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, to Russia’s borders. Russia of course is being surrounded with US military bases, China as well. This is part of America’s game. They’re trying to eliminate countries that are not in America’s orbit. So there was a war on Libya and Syria is being targeted. The Libyan model is being replicated in Syria, so far short of NATO bombing. If Syria is delinked from Iran, Iran is next.  “There could be an insurgency in Iran, the same as in Libya, the same as in Syria, very possibly conflict follows.” 

Following a November 8 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report which claimed Iran had been actively developing nuclear weapons, Lendman counters that no country has been more transparent with the IAEA than Iran.

However, Lendman believes that if the allegations regarding nuclear weapons are used to justify war, Iran, unlike Libya, is a big country with a powerful military, and any unjustified strike by Israel or the US could prove disastrous.

“Iran has been very bluntly saying, if it is attacked by Israel, by America, it will respond, it will fire back. It can attack Israeli cities, it can attack US bases. We’re talking about something very serious, we’re talking about the possibility of general war, dare I say it, World War III.”

Source.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) is reporting today that the “secret letter” sent to Prime Minister Putin by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda contains a warning that United States President Barack Obama has issued an executive-level “kill order” against US Congressman Ron Paul over fears this charismatic politician, who many believe could capture the Republican Presidential 2012 nomination, is about to expose to all Americans what can only be described as the largest mass theft in human history.

According to this report, Prime Minister Noda first became aware of this “kill order” after a private meeting with Obama at last weeks ASEAN Summit meeting in Indonesia when the American President expressed his “unconstrained joy” over the toppling of the Greek and Italian governments in bloodless coups by EU banksters who installed to run these countries unelected former Goldman Sachs executives.

Not known to many Americans is that the giant global investment firm Goldman Sachs put Obama into office by being its top donor and after winning the Presidency put so many of its former executives into the US government it is known as the “Wall Street Cabinet.”

The reason for Goldman Sachs, and other top American and European banksters, putting Obama into office, this report continues, was to loot the Americans taxpayers of an estimated $100 Trillion…nearly $30 Trillion of which went directly into the pockets of international banksters around the world and another $70 Trillion in lost home values, stock portfolios and pensions funds.

The main conduit of this massive theft was the US Federal Reserve System which during the 2008 Financial Crisis secretly doled out, without the American peoples knowledge, over $16 Trillion to European banks and companies and another nearly $8 Trillion in “secret loans” to the largest banks in the United States.

Causing Obama and his bankster allies to fear Ron Paul, this report continues, is the Congressman’s ability to hold US Congressional hearings on the $8 Trillion in secret loans to the largest banks in American without the public’s knowledge exposing this largest theft in human history and laying bare for all to see the total criminality of their entire elite political, financial and corporate class.

Though the US mainstream media has virtually ignored Ron Paul’s candidacy the American people themselves appear to have broken through this deliberate government ordered blackout of his Presidential run as evidenced by his rise in the polls in the first campaign States of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which should he win them all would assure him the Republican nomination.

The fears Ron Paul is causing among Americas elite classes appear to be justified as he recently likened the US Federal Reserve System to “drug addiction” warning that the deception it has foisted upon the public will lead to the destruction of the United States.

Ron Paul further warned the American people this year that their nation was becoming a “police state,” called for the impeachment of Obama for ordering the assassination of an American citizen without charges or trial, and stated that Obama had violated the War Powers Act over his actions against Libya.

Ron Paul’s fears of a police state America being ruled by a dictatorial tyrant were confirmed yesterday when the US Senate, in a 61-37 vote gave, for the first time in history, the power to the US Military to hold citizens without charges or trial indefinitely by passing a bill that was written in secret and never openly debated.

So frightening is this new law that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the days prior to its passing warned, “The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

Most ominous in this FSB report is its stating that the “assassination regime” ordered against Ron Paul by Obama may already be underway as one of theUS foreclosure fraud whistleblowers subpoenaed by Ron Paul to testify before the US Congress named Tracey Lawrence was found “suicided” yesterday inLas Vegas.

The destruction of anyone found opposing the Obama regime and its bankster backers was, also, brought into sharp relief this week by the smearing by mental illness allegations of one of America’s top heroes US Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer, who in September received the Congressional Medal of Honor from Obama (who called him one of the most “down-to-earth guys that you will ever meet”) for saving the lives of 36 of his comrades, but after he alerted the press that his employer defense contractor BAE Systems was selling high-tech sniper rifles to Pakistan that are being used to kill America Soldiers was labeled as a “drunk and mentally ill.”

So concerned has the Kremlin become about the growing American fascist police state it caused General Nikolai Makarov, Russia’s top military commander, to issue a warning to the West last week that the Motherland was fully prepared for a nuclear World War III and which prompted the Obama regime to state that it would immediately cease observing their arms treaty with Russia.

To if the American people will be able to rally around Ron Paul before he is assassinated by the Obama regime it is not in our knowing, other than to note that in a country where every public demonstration – however peaceful and orderly it might be – is ordered by their authorities to be treated as the equivalent of a prison riot, where the former police chief of Seattle blamed the militarization of local US police forces on Obama’s Homeland Security Department, and where the media is described as being nothing more than a “lapdog” for Obama and his bankster allies, the likelihood of these people escaping the worst horrors to come do, indeed, seem inescapable.

November 30, 2011 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.