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Dollar

Best of the Web: Libya all about oil, or central banking?

Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank - this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:
I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.
Alex Newman wrote in the New American:
In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the "[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi."
Newman quoted CNBC senior editor John Carney, who asked, "Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era."
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An unofficial Libyan 'rebel' quote: "Well, we figured the rest of the world is having so much fun being shafted by banksters that our new Libya should join them too!"

House

Best of the Web: US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression

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© Getty Images
It's official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression.

Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data.

The news comes as the Federal Reserve considers whether the economy has regained enough strength to stand on its own and as unemployment remains at a still-elevated 9.1 percent, throwing into question whether the recovery is real.

"The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression," Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, wrote in research for clients.

Attention

Best of the Web: Prelude to Regime Change: Psy-Ops against Syria confirmed as US man admits to hoaxing Syrian 'Lesbian Activist Blogger'

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© facebookPsychopath: Tom MacMaster, 40, an American studying in Scotland, admits he made up a lesbian blogger to assist US propaganda against the Syrian government
The true identity of internationally renowned blogger 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' has been revealed as a 40-year-old American man.

Tom MacMaster, a student at the University of Edinburgh, wrote an apology on the blog today, confessing that the entire thing was a hoax.

His admission came after days of questioning and pressure by suspicious readers who did not buy the story that 'blogger' Amina Arraf, a lesbian Syrian-American living in Damascus, had been arrested.

In his post today MacMaster, writing from Istanbul in Turkey where he is on holiday with his wife Britta Froelicher, admitted his narrative was fictional.

But he insisted the blog, popular with thousands around the world, 'created an important voice for issues I feel strongly about'.

He claimed he had never expected so much attention.

Meteor

Best of the Web: Younger Dryas Impact theorist Allen West smeared by Dalton, former Nature writer

Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophe
© Firestone et al.
The writer formerly employed by Nature, Rex Dalton, recently implied in a Miller-McCune blog that Allen West is a criminal charlatan. That is untrue. I have spoke over the last month to Allen, as well as a number of his collaborators, and determined the true story to the satisfaction of the Tusk. I have also assembled and shared a number of primary documents linked below, not identified or referenced by Dalton, et. al.

The true story is consistent with my experience that Allen West is an honest-to-goodness, if imperfectly credentialed, key contributor to the hypothesis and the papers.

I am very biased in this matter. For instance, Allen is my most frequent (if only) house guest. My wife Pam and I have allowed Allen to stay with our young family on several occasions. The little guy has been a close friend for over five years. I know Allen West as well as anyone on the Younger Dryas team or its collaborators.

I suppose Allen West could appear to readers of Dalton's article to be a liar salting his samples at his own expense to get on TV. But I have reason to believe this is untrue.

For one, I have spoken regularly over the last decade with the laboratory techs, supervising scientists and co-authors dealing with the hundreds of samples from dozens of locations around the world and it would simply be impossible for Allen to direct from his "laboratory" in Arizona a fraud of this complexity, scale and nature.

House

Best of the Web: Walk away from your mortgage ?

Should you keep paying your mortgage on a home that's dwindling in value?

No way, say an increasing number of underwater homeowners who are voluntarily choosing to "walk away" from their home loans, a practice known as "strategic default."

Jon Maddux, CEO of YouWalkAway.com, reports 10% more clients this year to his company, which advises people how best to handle the walk away process.

Charles Gallagher, a real estate attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., has also seen an uptick.

Chess

Best of the Web: Why TSA, wars, state defined diets, seat-belt laws, the war on drugs, police brutality, and efforts to control the internet, are essential to the state

Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state, since it is based on the greatest accumulation of depotentiated social units.

~ Carl Jung
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© Unknown
The title of this article encompasses topics that arouse attention and criticism among persons of libertarian persuasion. The discussion of such matters usually treats each issue as though it were sui generis, independent of one another. Most of us respond as though the woman who is groped at the airport has no connection with the man who is tasered by a police officer; that the person serving time in prison for selling marijuana is unrelated to the men being held at Guantanamo. The belief that one person's maltreatment is isolated from the rest of us, is essential to the maintenance of state power.

Meteor

Best of the Web: Cosmic Propaganda Alert! Comet Elenin: Just Passing By - With SOTT Commentary

Earth Elenin
© J. Major
It starts out innocently enough: a small speck against a field of background stars, barely noticeable in the image data. But... it's a speck that wasn't there before. Subsequent images confirm its existence - there's something out there. Something bright, something large, and it's moving through our solar system very quickly. The faint blur indicates that it's a comet, an icy visitor from the outermost reaches of the solar system. And it's headed straight toward Earth.

Exhaustive calculations are run and re-run. Computer simulations are executed. All possibilities are taken into consideration, and yet there's no alternative to be found; our world will face a close encounter with a comet in mere months' time. Phone calls are made, a flurry of electronic messages fly between computer terminals across the world, consultations are held with top experts in the field. We are unprepared... what can we do? What does this mean for civilization as we know it? What will this speeding icy bullet from outer space do to our planet?

Comment: By all means read what NASA has to say about it. Then consider this...

NASA warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation
UK Daily Telegraph
Tuesday, 15 June 2010

Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm", Nasa has warned...

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes "from a deep slumber" sometime around 2013.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightning" and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. [...]
...and what McCanney wrote in Planet X, Comets and Earth Changes:
NASA is hiding data that would prove that there is another massive object inbound into the solar system with potential for devastating events for planet Earth. There is clear evidence that they fully intend to set the world's population up to be blindsided by this object. (McCanney, p.101)

The truth is that NASA, the NSA and other government agencies are prohibited by law from disclosing anything to the public that would cause a national panic. So too they will try to prevent dissemination of my theories about comets because it might cause a public to redirect its allegiance as a new and potentially dangerous comet comes into the solar system. While the government officials are using tax dollars to build safety caves for their "shadow government" in case of "major disaster", they are leaving the public out to dry with no forewarning or protection.
...before getting the real lowdown on Comet Elenin from these:

Comet Elenin is Coming!

Pole Shift in March? Not Likely!

Comet Elenin: Harbinger of What?

Comet Elenin Update!


Magic Hat

Best of the Web: Propaganda alert! 'Syrian Blogger Amina Arraf' is a stolen identity

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The Amina Arraf Campaign, brought to you by The Secret Team: Thousands of people have joined a Facebook group calling for the release of Amina Arraf
  • London woman says photo of U.S. lesbian blogger 'kidnapped in Syria' is actually her
  • Jelena Lecic said: 'I don't know how this happened, I've never met her. This has put me in danger'
  • Blogger's 'girlfriend' admits she's never met her
  • Story of alleged kidnap was reported across the globe
The reported kidnap of a U.S. lesbian blogger in Syria has come into question after a woman in Britain claimed that photos being used to call for her release are actually her.

Thousands of campaigners joined protest groups after media outlets across the world reported that Amina Arraf, a blogger known for her frank posts about her sexuality and her open criticism of President Bashar Assad had been detained.

But a woman in London came forward today claiming the photos being circulated were actually her, raising questions about the existence of the blogger.

Jelena Lecic found out that pictures of her were being used by the blogger when she saw her photo used next to an article in a British newspaper.

Comment: It would seem that recent "poster child" of this revolution and her story of woe, which western media has been so happy to promote, doesn't actually exist. As to the numbers of people killed by Syrian troops in recent months, if the psy-ops campaign against Libya in the run up to Operation Odyssey Dawn is anything to go by, then the numbers are probably inflated and don't take into account that Syrian authorities are dealing with an armed insurrection led by 'previously unknown terror groups'.

Just like the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter crying before Congress about Saddam's troops throwing babies out of hospital incubators in Kuwait in the run-up to the Gulf War...

Just like the wrong image of Neda Soltani was strobe-flashed across the world after someone (among many others) was murdered under mysterious circumstances during the orchestrated riots that followed Iran's presidential election in 2009...

Just like Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian activist supposedly stoned to death by 'them brutal Iranians', accompanied feature articles about her that were carried by mainstream media outlets the world over. SOTT.net found out that this story was first leaked by Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a CIA propaganda mill, in conjunction with The Media Line, a Zionist propaganda mill. This Jerusalem Post article broached the story of the non-stoning to the mainstream media on June 30, 2010...

Just like the Libyan 'rebels' telling us that "Gaddafi's army will kill half a million", when in all probability the 'rebels' are actually a clandestine unit of the Secret Team.

How can anyone have faith in ANY Western media story that paints Iran or Libya or Syria in a negative light when the psychopaths in Washington and Tel Aviv have been openly stating that they want to invade these countries as they did Iraq and slaughter millions more. If you fall for this one and agree with British Foreign Secretary William Hague that it's time to carpet-bomb Syria, then you've fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the pity ploy psy-ops. How many times do you want to played for a fool?


Bacon

Best of the Web: The Vegetarian Myth

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© Unknown
Before I get into a discussion of the absolutely phenomenal book you see pictured at the right, I've got a few disclosures to make. First, I'm not much of a believer in the notion of man-made global warming or climate change (as they now call it since temperatures have been constantly falling instead of rising). I'm a denier, in the pejorative term used by those who are believers.

Second, I'm not particularly pro-feminist. And I certainly don't hang around with any self-proclaimed radical feminists. I have a wife who is smarter than I am, who is more talented than I am, and who, pound for pound, is probably a better athlete than I am, and I'm not bad. (In my defense, I can read much, much faster than she, but, she has better comprehension.) I long ago gave up the idea (if I ever really considered it seriously) that men are superior to women in any ways other than brute strength. Having said that, however, I do believe that men are better suited to certain endeavors than woman and vice verse, but that doesn't mean either men or women should be denied the opportunity to give whatever it is they want to do a whirl just because of their sex. I guess I consider myself an egalitarian. But from what I've seen of radical feminists, I'm not sure that I would count myself a big fan.

Given the above, you wouldn't think I would enjoy and recommend a book written by a self-proclaimed radical feminist who is obviously a believer in global warming and the impending end of the earth as we know it. I wouldn't think so, either. Not my cup of tea even when it is sort of preaching to the choir.

But I can tell you that Lierre Keith's book is beyond fantastic. It is easily the best book I've read since Mistakes Were Made, maybe even better. Everyone should read this book, vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike. If you're a radical feminist, you should read this book; if you're a male chauvinist, you should read this book; if you have children, especially female children, you should read this book; if you are a young woman (or man) you should read this book; if you love animals, you should read this book; if you hate vegetarians, you should read this book; if you are contemplating the vegetarian way of life, you should definitely read this book; if you have a vegetarian friend or family member, you should read this book and so should your friend. As MD said after she read it, "everyone who eats should read this book."

Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: US Police State: Memory card in mouth saves police shooting video

A police shooting of a man in Miami Beach on Memorial Day was terrifying, but when it was over, officers turned their attention to a man filming the violent scene with his cellphone. They demanded the device, smashed it and probably thought that was that; no video anymore. It was not: Narces Benoit had had the presence of mind to pull the phone's memory card with the video on it from his cellphone and put the card in his mouth.


That action saved the video you see above, showing the police shooting dead a suspect at the end of a chase, and some of what happened to Benoit. It was after the shooting ended that police turned their sights on Benoit, who had been darting behind trees and stop signs, filming with his HTC Evo phone.

At about 1:38 into the video, we see and hear a police officer turn to Benoit and shout: "Gimme the phone now!"