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Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
May 5, 2011
The US government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. Indeed, the new story put out on Tuesday by White House press secretary Jay Carney bears little resemblance to the original Sunday evening story. The fierce firefight did not occur. Osama bin Laden did not hide behind a woman. Indeed, bin Laden, Carney said, “was not armed.”
The firefight story was instantly suspicious as not a single SEAL got a scratch, despite being up against al Qaeda, described by former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld as “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.”
Every original story detail has been changed. It wasn’t bin Laden’s wife who was murdered by the Navy SEALs, but the wife of an aide. It wasn’t bin Laden’s son, Khalid, who was murdered by the Navy SEALs, but son Hamza.
Carney blamed the changed story on “the fog of war.” But there was no firefight, so where did the “fog of war” come from?
The White House has also had to abandon the story that President Obama and his national security team watched tensely as events unfolded in real time (despite the White House having released photos of the team watching tensely), with the operation conveyed into the White House by cameras on the SEALs helmets. If Obama was watching the event as it happened, he would have noticed, one would hope, that there was no firefight and, thus, would not have told the public that bin Laden was killed in a firefight. Another reason the story had to be abandoned is that if the event was captured on video, every news service in the world would be asking for the video, but if the event was orchestrated theater, there would be no video.
No explanation has been provided for why an unarmed bin Laden, in the absence of a firefight, was murdered by the SEALs with a shot to the head. For those who believe the government’s story that “we got bin Laden,” the operation can only appear as the most botched operation in history. What kind of incompetence does it require to senselessly and needlessly kill the most valuable intelligence asset on the planet?
According to the US government, the terrorist movements of the world operated through bin Laden, “the mastermind.” Thanks to a trigger-happy stupid SEAL, a bullet destroyed the most valuable terrorist information on the planet. Perhaps the SEAL was thinking that he could put a notch on his gun and brag for the rest of his life about being the macho tough guy who killed Osama bin Laden, the most dangerous man on the planet, who outwitted the US and its European and Israeli allies and inflicted humiliation on the “world’s only superpower” on 9/11.
When such a foundational story as the demise of bin Laden cannot last 48 hours without acknowledged “discrepancies” that require fundamental alternations to the story, there are grounds for suspicion in addition to the suspicions arising from the absence of a dead body, from the absence of any evidence that bin Laden was killed in the raid or that a raid even took place. The entire episode could just be another event like the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin event that never happened but succeeded in launching open warfare against North Vietnam at a huge cost to Americans and Vietnamese and enormous profits to the military/security complex.
There is no doubt that the US is sufficiently incompetent to have needlessly killed bin Laden instead of capturing him. But who can believe that the US would quickly dispose of the evidence that bin Laden had been terminated? The government’s story is not believable that the government dumped the proof of its success into the ocean, but has some photos that might be released, someday.
As one reader put it in an email to me: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of their ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”
  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Governments have known from the beginning of time that they can always deceive citizens and subjects by playing the patriot card. “Remember the Maine,” the “Gulf of Tonkin,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “the Reichstag fire” – the staged events and bogus evidence are endless. If Americans knew any history, they would not be so gullible.
The real question before us is: What agenda or agendas is the “death of bin Laden” designed to further?
There are many answers to this question. Many have noticed that Obama was facing re-election with poor approval ratings. Is anyone surprised that the New York Times/CBS Poll finds a strong rise in Obama’s poll numbers after the bin Laden raid? As the New York Times reported, “the glow of national pride” rose “above partisan politics, as support for the president rose significantly among both Republicans and independents. In all, 57 percent said they now approved of the president’s job performance, up from 46 percent.”
In Washington-think, a 24% rise in approval rating justifies a staged event.
Another possibility is that Obama realized that the the budget deficit and the dollar’s rescue from collapse require the end of the expensive Afghan war and occupation and spillover war into Pakistan. As the purpose of the war was to get bin Laden, success in this objective allows the US to withdraw without loss of face, thus making it possible to reduce the US budget deficit by several hundred billion dollars annually – an easy way to have a major spending cut.
If this is the agenda, then more power to it. However, if this was Obama’s agenda, the military/security complex has quickly moved against it. CIA director Leon Panetta opened the door to false flag attacks to keep the war going by declaring that al Qaeda would avenge bin Laden’s killing. Secretary of State Clinton declared that success in killing bin Laden justified more war and more success. Homeland Security declared that the killing of bin Laden would motivate “homegrown violent extremists” into making terrorist attacks. “Homegrown violent extremists” is an undefined term, but this newly created bogyman seems to include environmentalists and war protesters. Like “suspect,” the term will include anyone the government wants to pick up.
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Various parts of the government quickly seized on the success in killing bin Laden to defend and advance their own agendas, such as torture. Americans were told that bin Laden was found as a result of information gleaned from torturing detainees held in Eastern European CIA secret prisons years ago.
This listing of possible agendas and add-on agendas is far from complete, but for those capable of skepticism and independent thought, it can serve as a starting point. The agendas behind the theater will reveal themselves as time goes on. All you have to do is to pay attention and to realize that most of what you hear from the mainstream media is designed to advance the agendas.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

On Constitutional Concerns

Ron Paul
Infowars.com
May 5, 2011
Last week the media focused on President Obama’s basic eligibility to be president while ignoring the unconstitutional manner in which he governs. For example, his recent use of a signing statement to affect a line-item veto on a bill he signed into law as president. The recent continuing resolution to fund the government through September had an amendment that defunded four of his czar positions as a cost-cutting measure. These “czars” are administration appointees who exercise influence on policy matters, yet because they are classified as “advisors” and not cabinet officials, the President is able to avoid the Senate confirmation process.
President Obama agreed to defund the czar positions before passage as part of some very tough negotiations, and then afterwards “clarified” his position with a signing statement saying that he would ignore that portion of the law. Many battles have been fought in the past over whether or not the president should have line-item veto power. That debate is essentially settled. The president does not have that power, as that gives the executive too much legislative power. This administration just over-rode all of those debates with a single signing statement and assumed the power that no one would willingly give him.
This comes on the heels of this so-called peace candidate, who hasn’t ended a single war, taking us into yet another war without a declaration from Congress. The military commanders don’t seem to have batted an eyelash at obeying unconstitutional orders despite their oaths of office. The bombings continue without a second thought. So here we have an executive who illegally legislates and single-handedly takes the nation to war. Obviously there are bigger constitutional issues here than the form of his birth certificate.
The release of the birth certificate unfortunately trumped media coverage of the historic first-ever press conference held by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Usually he testifies before congressional hearings and I, as a congressman ask him questions, but on Wednesday, he spoke before the press and took questions from reporters. Other central banks do this kind of thing all the time, but for the Fed, this was a first and a sign that they are feeling pushback from the people about what they are doing to our money. Of course, nothing of any real substance was said, so it was a hollow, if interesting gesture on the part of the Fed.
The Fed will never voluntarily give up the information we need to know about what they’ve been doing. The Fed spent the money – so what happened to it? We need to keep the pressure on and demand a full audit of the Federal Reserve.
The above article reposted from Ron Paul’s House website.

Pentagon Dinner Guest al-Awlaki Slated to Replace Osama

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 5, 2011
Yemen-based Anwar al-Awlaki is scheduled to replace the late Osama bin Laden, according to news reports.


As Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann notes above, al-Awlaki is the new face of terror in a war designed to last forever.
“Anwar al-Awlaki, affiliated with a Yemen-based faction of al-Qaida, is being mentioned in national media reports as a potential successor to Osama bin Laden, who was killed last week in Pakistan,” reports a Carlsbad, New Mexico newspaper. The Muslim cleric was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Following the unverified murder of Osama bin Laden, the corporate media has buzzed with speculation on who will replace the Saudi. Ayman al-Zawahiri is not charismatic enough for American audiences, NBC News notes. “We could see Anwar al-Awlaki move in, or Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani militant,” a nameless senior government official told the news organization.





CNN propaganda piece on the threat of al-Awlaki, the new Osama.
Ilyas Kashmiri, said to be the leader of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, is in the running because his group is based in Pakistan. As the Osama death story developed, Pakistan was blamed for sheltering the terrorist. Murmurings of war against the Muslim nation are all the rage in Washington and the corporate media.
In Britain, the media has christen al-Awlaki the “new Osama” and claims he is plotting a Mumbai-style massacre in the country. “The options that you have for operations could be pipe bombs, assassinations or using a firearm at a location crowded with enemies,” al-Awlaki supposedly instructed in an email sent to The Sun.
  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Anwar is said to be behind the the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt. He preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers. He is said to be internet savvy, unlike his predecessor, making him the perfect villain for the 21st century.
He also dined at the Pentagon, according to documents obtained by Fox News. “The Pentagon has offered no explanation of how a man, now on the CIA kills or capture list, ended up at a special lunch for Muslim outreach,” a flummoxed Fox News reported.
“Awlaki was vetted before he was invited to attend a luncheon at the Pentagon in the secretary of the Army’s Office of Government Counsel. His appearance at the meeting was deliberately engineered despite Awlaki’s ties to three of the alleged 9/11 hijackers – Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Hani Hanjour – who were identified as the suicide pilots that slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote on October 21, 2010.
“Given the fact that Awlaki is a double operative, claiming to be an Al-Qaeda leader yet in fact working for U.S. intelligence, it’s hardly surprising that he made an appearance at the Pentagon.”
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It is also hardly surprising that he was selected to replace Osama bin Laden, who died nearly a decade ago. The promotion of Anwar al-Awlaki to master terrorist signals a new chapter in the never-ending war against manufactured enemies of the state. It is no mistake an American born and breed Muslim was selected to replace Osama.

Osama’s dead, baby. Osama’s dead

Infowars.com
May 5, 2011
Do you think he could find Pakistan on a map?

Jobless Claims in U.S. Unexpectedly Jump


Jobless Claims in U.S. Unexpectedly Jump
A job seeker fills out an application at the JobLink Career Expo in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photographer: Jim R. Bounds/Bloomberg
Jobless Claims in U.S. Unexpectedly Jump
Job seeker Joyce Bennett, right, speaks with Cyndi Holzhauser, a consultant from Kelly Service Business Development, at the JobLink Career Expo in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photographer: Jim R. Bounds/Bloomberg


The number of claims for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, pushed up by auto-plant shutdowns and other unusual events that seasonal variations failed to take into account, the Labor Department said.
Applications for jobless benefits jumped by 43,000 to 474,000 in the week ended April 30, the most since August, Labor Department figures showed today. A spring break holiday in New York, a new emergency benefits program in Oregon and auto shutdowns caused by the disaster in Japan were the main reasons for the surge, a Labor Department spokesman said as the data was released to the press.
Even before last week, claims had drifted up, raising concern the improvement in the labor market has stalled. Employers added 185,000 workers to payrolls in April, fewer than in the prior month, and the unemployment rate held at 8.8 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show tomorrow.
“We’re seeing so many distortions in the claims numbers week to week that it’s hard to say, but I’m willing to be patient and wait and see,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. “Other reports show an improvement in the labor market. It’s going to take a while to dig out of the hole we have in relation to the jobs the economy lost during the recession.”

Futures Fall

Stock-index futures dropped after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in June fell 0.6 percent to 1,334.8 at 8:58 a.m. in New York. Treasury securities rose, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year note down to 3.18 percent from 3.22 percent late yesterday.
Economists forecast 410,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Forecasts ranged from 395,000 to 450,000 in the survey of 46 economists. The Labor Department revised the prior week’s figure up to 431,000 from an initially reported 429,000.
A spring break holiday at schools in the state of New York prompted workers to file claims, which the seasonal adjustment factors didn’t expect last week, the Labor Department official said. In addition, Oregon began a new emergency benefits program for the long-term unemployed that also pulled in some new claimants, he said. Finally, auto plant shutdowns due to parts shortages caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan also contributed to the increase, the official said.
The spokesman also said that any claims filed by workers throughout the South that lost their jobs due to the storms that spawned tornados would probably be reflected in a different set of data rather than in the initial claims figures.

Productivity Cools

The productivity of U.S. workers slowed in the first quarter and labor costs rose as a growing economy prompted companies to boost employment, another report from the Labor Department showed today.
The measure of employee output per hour increased at a 1.6 percent annual rate, after a 2.9 percent gain in the prior three months. Expenses per employee climbed at a 1 percent rate after dropping 1 percent.
The four-week moving average for jobless claims, a less- volatile measure, rose to 431,250 from 409,000.
The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits rose by 74,000 in the week ended April 23 to 3.73 million. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

Extended Benefits

Those who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting emergency and extended payments decreased by about 42,900 to 4.12 million in the week ended April 16.
The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits, which tends to track the jobless rate, rose to 3 percent in the week ended April 23 from 2.9 percent, today’s report showed. Twenty states and territories reported an increase in claims, while 33 had a decrease.
Initial jobless claims reflect weekly firings and tend to fall as job growth -- measured by the monthly non-farm payrolls report -- accelerates. These data are reported with a one-week lag.
Employers announced fewer job cuts in April than the same month last year, Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said yesterday. Planned firings decreased 4.8 percent to 36,490 last month from April 2010.

‘Signs of Improvement’

“Employment has begun to show signs of improvement,” Scott Davis, chief executive officer of United Parcel Service Inc., said during an April 26 call with analysts. “In the U.S., unemployment dipped below 9 percent for the first time in almost two years, further evidence that the recovery continues.”
While payrolls have grown each month since October, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said on April 27 that central bankers would like to see more strength in the U.S. labor market, noting that a recovery has been “quite slow.”
“The labor market is improving gradually,” Bernanke said to reporters during the first-ever press conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting. “We would like to make sure that that is sustainable. The longer it goes on, the more confident we are.”
Another report yesterday showed employment at U.S. companies increased 179,000 in April, the smallest gain in five months, according to ADP Employer Services.

Stimulus Necessary

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren yesterday said record stimulus is necessary to spur the “anemic” economy and that raising interest rates to combat increasing food and fuel prices would impede growth.
“With significant slack in labor markets, stable inflation expectations, and core inflation well below our longer run target, there is currently no reason to slow the economy down with tighter monetary policy,” Rosengren said during a speech in Boston.
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), the largest maker of computer- networking equipment, is among companies trying to cut costs. The San Jose, California-based company last week said it is offering early-retirement packages to some employees in the U.S. and Canada. The company didn’t specify how many workers it expected to take the packages or how much would be saved.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alexander Kowalski in Washington at akowalski13@bloomberg.net; Shobhana Chandra in Washington at schandra1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net