Engdahl: 'No Question of US backing for Russian Opposition'

Source: RT

Saturday was a day for demonstrations in Russia. Over two hundred thousand people gathered across the country to voice their political views ahead of next month's presidential election. Two of the largest rallies took place in the capital with supporters and opponents of the current leadership braving the bitter cold to have their say. It was the third, and biggest, opposition gathering after the Parliamentary vote two months ago which protesters claimed was rigged. Now their main demand is for a fair presidential vote in March. Author and researcher F. William Engdahl says the West is funding the Russian opposition to minimise the country's influence on the world stage during a critical time.

Democide Mass-Murder and the New World Order

Source: Activist Post
Paul Adams, J.D.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. -- Joseph Stalin

In earlier times it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today it is infinitely easier to kill a million people then to control a million people. --  Zbigniew Brzezinski

Many people believe that governments are too bureaucratic, incompetent and lazy to accomplish anything substantial.  However, history has demonstrated that powerful elites have used governments to do one thing extremely efficiently: Democide.

According to Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii, Democide is the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.  Democide does not include soldiers killed in battle.  During the 20th Century (1900s) alone, Rummel calculates that government power was used to murder approximately 262,000,000 people.

Soviet Union
Approximately 61,911,000 people, 54,769,000 of them citizens, were murdered by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1987. Rummel writes:

Part of this mass killing was genocide, as in the wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of Don Cossacks in 1919, the intentional starving of about 5,000,000 Ukrainian peasants to death in 1932-33,² or the deportation to mass death of 50,000 to 60,000 Estonians in 1949.³ Part was mass murder, as of the wholesale extermination of perhaps 6,500,000 "kulaks" (in effect, the better off peasants and those resisting collectivization) from 1930 to 1937, the execution of perhaps a million Party members in the Great Terror of 1937-38, and the massacre of all Trotskyites in the forced labor camps.

Most people are unaware that all that death resulting from the Bolshevik Revolution would not have been possible absent the support of wealthy financiers in London and New York. Lenin and Trotsky were on the closest of terms with these moneyed interests both before and after the Revolution.  Additionally, it was President Woodrow Wilson that provided Trotsky with a passport to return to Russia to "carry forward" the revolution. 

Obama: Israel Undecided On Attacking Iran!?

Source: GreeneWave

Demonstrations in over 80 cities and 6 countries say: NO WAR, NO SANCTIONS, NO INTERVENTION, NO ASSASSINATIONS ON IRAN!

Source: Global Research
Sara Flounders

Anti-war organizations from across the United States and 6 other countries came together on Saturday, Feb. 4, to protest the rising crescendo of threats against Iran. In more than 30 states and 80 cities, large and small, groups joined forces to raise four key demands.

"No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations!" was the slogan on the lead banner of the New York demonstration, which was sponsored by an ad hoc committee of several groups. Many placards and hand-made signs also pointed to Wall Street and the banks as the real danger, not Iran.

The corporate media have been reporting for weeks that the Israeli regime is weighing an attack on Iran aimed at dismantling its nuclear program. Yet even former U.S. intelligence officers point out that Iran's nuclear development is entirely peaceful; it is not building any nuclear weapons. (See "Divining the Truth About Iran" by Ray McGovern, published by commondreams.org.) Yet totally unsubstantiated claims to the contrary form the basis on which Israel, which itself has a large nuclear arsenal and has been armed and financed by the U.S., is now publicly claiming its right to launch a military attack on Iran.

The process has already begun in the major corporate media to give credibility to Israel's charges and soften up public opinion to accept such a criminal act, which would unleash yet another devastating war in this oil-rich region so coveted by imperialism. A large crowd marched in New York from Times Square to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and then to the Israeli Consulate. The French press agency AFP estimated the protest at 500. Groups participating included the International Action Center, No War on Iran, American Iranian Friendship Committee, United National Anti-War Committee and Answer.

Ron Paul Warns of Federal Reserve Power Grab

Source: Prison Planet
Kurt Nimmo

Not only was Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray to the misnamed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unconstitutional, but the newly minted federal leviathan itself is in direct violation of Constitution, specifically the Tenth Amendment.

In January, Obama thumbed his nose at Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution. It states that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint” officers to the government.

But as Ron Paul notes in the above video, the new agency – founded under the Federal Reserve dominated Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act – is itself an unconstitutional monster that will further degrade the financial health of the country.

Cordray will act as a czar answerable not to the American people, but his masters at the Federal Reserve. Like an EU or Soviet era committee, the CFPB will be run by unelected commissars who will exercise extraordinary power. The agency is part of the Federal Reserve and its budget is not subject to congressional control or oversight.

Profit Driven Prison Industrial Complex: The Economics of Incarceration in the USA

Source: NileBowie

For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally challenge the underpinning moral infrastructure of American society and the values it claims to uphold. Under the conceptual illusion of liberty, few things are more sobering than the amount of Americans who will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated correctional facility – ostensibly, being corrected. The United States of America has long held the highest incarceration rate in the world, far surpassing any other nation. For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. Presently, the prison population in America consists of more than six million people, a number exceeding the amount of prisoners held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history.

While miserable statistics illustrate some measure of the ongoing ethical calamity occurring in the detainment centers inside the land of the free, only a partial picture of the broader situation is painted. While the country faces an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, business is booming in other fields – namely, the private prison industry. Like any other business, these institutions are run for the purpose of turning a profit. State and federal prisons are contracted out to private companies who are paid a fixed amount to house each prisoner per day. Their profits result from spending the minimum amount of state or federal funds on each inmate, only to pocket the remaining capital. For the corrections conglomerates of America, prosperity depends on housing the maximum numbers of inmates for the longest potential time - as inexpensively as possible.

By allowing a profit-driven capitalist-enterprise model to operate over institutions that should rightfully be focused on rehabilitation, America has enthusiastically embraced a prison industrial complex. Under the promise of maintaining correctional facilities at a lower cost due to market competition, state and federal governments contract privately run companies to manage and staff prisons, even allowing the groups to design and construct facilities. The private prison industry is primarily led by two morally deficient entities, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corporation).  These companies amassed a combined revenue of over $2.9 billion in 2010, not without situating themselves in the center of political influence.

The Noose is Tightened Around Iran

Source: Global Research
Ilya Kharlamov

The US [says it] is against the strike and believes that the current sanctions are more than sufficient.

However, these statements are at odds with the growing US and NATO presence in the Persian Gulf. Their troops and military hardware have already been moved to bases in Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The campaign could also affect innocent bystanders like China, which is the biggest consumer of Iranian oil. Thus, Beijing is actively calling for a resumption of a dialogue on Iran’s nuclear program. Russia also strongly opposes violence.
   
Israel could strike Iran this spring, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated in an interview with The Washington Post. According to the official, the Israeli government seems to have already made a decision on this.

Panetta believes that Israel can strike Iran after the latter crosses into the so-called “zone of immunity” and starts building a nuclear bomb.

Earlier, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated that his country would consider launching a military operation if the sanctions fail to stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear program.

The US [says it] is against the strike and believes that the current sanctions are more than sufficient.

However, these statements are at odds with the growing US and NATO presence in the Persian Gulf. Their troops and military hardware have already been moved to bases in Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.