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Iran a 'Grave Threat,' Netanyahu Tells Canada, but Harper Talks Peace Over Pre-Emptive Strikes


National Post
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:36 UTC
Stephen Harper,Netanyahu
© Reuters/Chris Wattie
Prime Minister Stephen Harper walks down the Hall of Honour with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Parliament Hill in Ottawa Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his meeting with Stephen Harper in Ottawa on Friday with a public declaration that Iran poses a "grave threat" to global security - adding that Israel is prepared to "defend" itself if necessary.

"The warnings that I and others have been giving over the years will materialize unless Iran is stopped. And that's why I say the international community must do everything it can to stop it. And the danger is not only to Israel - it is obviously a danger to Israel - but I think it's a danger to the whole world," Mr. Netanyahu said.

The Israeli Prime Minister arrived in Canada against a backdrop of growing fears that Israel could unilaterally strike suspect Iranian nuclear facilities to delay or destroy that country's nuclear capabilities.

"They hang gays, they stone women. This what they're doing today without nuclear weapons and imagine what a regime like this would do if they had atomic weapons," Mr. Netanyahu said.
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Mr. Potato

Santorum: 'People 20 years ago couldn't conceive of a cell phone'

David Edwards
The Raw Story
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:33 UTC
Rick Santorum in Chillicothe, Ohio
© CNN
Rick Santorum in Chillicothe, Ohio
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that 20 years ago people couldn't even imagine cell phones, but now they are commonplace because Americans "recognize the rights God has given every person."

Speaking to supporters in Chillicothe, Ohio on Friday, the former Pennsylvania senator explained that the U.S. had "transformed the world" with the a new form of government.

"In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change," he said. "And then America came around and said, 'No, no more dictators, no more kings, no more classes, no more nobility.' We believe in limited government, not an all-powerful state. We believe that if we liberate people, we recognize the rights that God has given every person then the world will change."
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House

The Foreclosure-to-Rental Boondoggle

Mike Whitney
Counterpunch
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:39 UTC
Image
"The national housing market took a hit in the latter half of 2011, falling to new lows not seen since the housing crisis began six years ago, according to data out Tuesday by S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices......The index is down 33.6 percent from its peak in mid-2006."

- Washington Post

The reason that housing prices have dipped only 33.6 percent in the United States instead of 60 percent as they have in Ireland, is because the big banks have been keeping inventory off the market. If the millions of homes - that are presently headed for foreclosure - were suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would plunge and the biggest banks in the country would be declared insolvent. That's why the banks have slowed the flow of foreclosures. According to Amherst Securities Group's Laurie Goodman, "....2.8 million borrowers haven't made a payment in over a year. Add that to the over 450,000 real estate owned (REO) units and you have approximately 3.2 million that are in the shadows. We are liquidating about 90,000 homes a month. That's about 36 months of overhang; a really shocking number." (See the whole interview here.)

Indeed, it is shocking, but what's more shocking is that the banks are allowed to game the system this way and get away with it. New home buyers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would be if the banks were not manipulating inventory, so there are real victims in this scam. . And is it really conceivable that Fed doesn't know that nearly 3 million people are living in their homes for free? Of course, they know; they're in on it too. The bankers even have a name for this arrangement; they call it "squatters rent" and they estimate it costs them an extra $60 billion per year. They would rather pay that hefty sum then foreclose quickly and have to write down the losses which would leave them broke.
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Family

Mansion servant enslaved by psychopathic New York family for nearly six years

Eric Pfeiffer
SideShow
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:09 UTC
Image
© thesmokinggun
An aerial view of Llenroc mansion
A wealthy New York woman is facing criminal charges after being accused of keeping an illegal immigrant as an indentured servant and forcing her to live in a closet for nearly six years.

Documents posted on the Smoking Gun allege that Annie George, 39, and her now-deceased husband, Mathai Kolath George, hired an illegal immigrant from the Indian state of Kerala. The immigrant, identified only as "V.M.," was promised about $1,000 a month in wages to live in the family's 34-room, 30,000-square-foot home, known as Llenroc mansion, which houses a helicopter pad, 15 fireplaces, marble flooring, 24-karat gold gilded ceilings and a glass elevator. V.M. was tasked with taking care of the Georges' four young children, along with performing household duties in the mansion located about 20 miles north of Albany.

New York's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Even if V.M. had been allowed to leave the residence at the end of a regular 40-hour workweek, she would have been entitled to a minimum, pretax income of $290 per week, or $1,160 per month.
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Document

Step closer to political union: EU fiscal compact treaty signed by 25 member states


BBC
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:49 UTC
Image
All but two of the EU's 27 leaders have signed a new treaty to enforce budget discipline within the bloc.

The "fiscal compact" aims to prevent the 17 eurozone states running up huge debts like those which sparked the Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts.

To take effect, the pact must be ratified by 12 eurozone states.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who with the Czechs refused to sign, said the summit had accepted his ideas for cutting red tape and boosting growth.

On Thursday he had complained that his ideas, contained in a joint letter signed by 12 EU leaders, were being ignored.

But after the talks he said "our letter really did become the agenda for this meeting... We now have a plan that we must stick to in the months ahead".
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Vader

Planned Regime Change in Syria

Stephen Lendman
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 06:54 UTC
Image
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria had peace and calm until Washington intervened belligerently.

Strategies and tactics vary. Objectives are consistent. They involve replacing independent regimes with pro-Western ones by any means, including war.

Three unwinnable ones rage. Nonetheless, Obama plans more. Syria's target one. For the past year, US-instigated violence ravaged parts of the country. Thousands have been killed, many others injured.

Syria's gripped by fear. Heavily armed killer gangs rage out of control, and direct foreign intervention looms. More on that below.

Assad's wrongly blamed. The blame game targets victims, not villains. As a result, ongoing conflict continues.

Comment: In the above photo we see one of America's al Qaeda unit in Syria. In reality, of course, these ragtag bands hastily drawn from the ranks of Western intelligence databases on Muslim informants aren't the ones carrying out the more sophisticated attacks. Sniper attacks from rooftops in cities against protesters, enormous bomb attacks against government targets, pipeline and other infrastructural sabotage, shelling government buildings with tanks... all these are being carried out by - or under the very close guidance of - Western agents (Mossad, CIA, MI6 and DGSE in particular) who have been directing events in Syria since the propaganda war began in earnest against Syria this time last year.


Western intelligence supplying arms to mercenaries in Syria

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Star of David

Israeli officials: Starve Iranians to stop nukes

Attila Somfalvi
ynetnews
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:22 UTC
Image
© Raheb Homavandi/Reuters
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at a ceremony marking the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, in Tehran's Azadi square on Saturday, stating Iran would not discuss its nuclear program with the UN as long as 'enemies behave arrogantly.'
West should adopt North Korean model vis-à-vis Tehran, hunger in Iran could prompt regime to 'consider whether nuclear adventure is worthwhile', Jerusalem official says

Iran's citizens should be starved in order to curb Tehran's nuclear program, officials in Jerusalem said Wednesday ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming trip to Washington.

"North Korea is halting its nuclear program in order to receive aid in food, and this is what should be done with Iran as well," one unnamed official said.

"Suffocating sanctions could lead to a grave economic situation in Iran and to a shortage of food," the source said. "This would force the regime to consider whether the nuclear adventure is worthwhile, while the Persian people have nothing to eat and may rise up as was the case in Syria, Tunisia and other Arab states."

"The Western world led by the United States must implement stifling sanctions at this time already, rather than wait or hesitate," the official said. "In order to suffocate Iran economically and diplomatically and lead the regime there to a hopeless situation, this must be done now, without delay."
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Rocket

Another bogus argument for war with Iran

Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:53 UTC
Image
© unk
You know a case for war is weak when its advocates have to marshal blatant untruths in order to convince people that their advice should be followed. Exhibit A is today's alarmist op-ed in the New York Times, in which former IDF general Amos Yadlin argues for a preventive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

He recites the by-now familiar arguments for an attack, and makes it clear that he thinks Obama should make an "ironclad" pledge to do it if Iran doesn't cease its nuclear activities. But the big historical howler comes in the middle of the piece, where he attempts to deal with the counter-argument that an attack would only delay an Iranian program, and probably not for all that long. He writes:

"After the Osirak attack and the destruction of the Syrian reactor in 2007, the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs were never fully resumed."
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Cut

Not Surprising: Mossad agent 'brought down Egypt's internet'

Samer al-Atrush and Adrian Blomfield
The Telegraph
Tue, 28 Dec 2010 04:46 UTC
Image
© Mossad
Mossad is Israel's foreign intelligence agency
An Egyptian national accused of spying for Mossad has allegedly told his interrogators that Israeli sabotage brought down the country's internet network two years ago.

The purported confessions of Tareq Abdul Razzaq Hassan, a businessman, represent the latest evidence of growing public tensions between Israel and Egypt.

Severe disruptions to Egypt's internet service in December 2008 were blamed at the time on damage to underwater data cables caused by a ship's anchor.

But Hassan told police that the incident was, in fact, the work of Israel's foreign intelligence agency, according to interrogation records leaked to an independent Egyptian newspaper.

It is not the first time that Israel has been linked to politically motivated cyber attacks, with a number of experts suggesting that Mossad was the most likely culprit behind Stuxnet, a powerful computer worm that caused serious damage to Iran's nuclear programme.

Few details about the alleged Israeli sabotage operation on Egypt have been disclosed.
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Attention

Ex-Senators Say Saudi Arabia May Be Linked to 9/11

Rym Momtaz and Trevor J. Ladd
ABC News
Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© ABC News
Two former Senators who led inquiries into the 9/11 attacks have issued sworn statements that they believe the government of Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the fight on terrorism, may have played a role in the terror attacks ten years ago.

"I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia," said former Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. Graham led a 2002 Congressional probe of the attacks.

Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who served on the 9/11 Commission, said in a separate affidavit that "significant questions remain unanswered" about the role of Saudi institutions. "Evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued."

Families of the 9/11 victims released a statement praising Kerrey and Graham for their affidavits, which were filed in a New York federal court Friday to rebut claims by the Saudi government in recent court papers that the 9//11 Commission had "exonerated" it of any connection to 9/11.
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