Puppet Masters
The Irish government plans to institute a tax on private pensions to drive jobs growth, according to its jobs program strategy, delivered today.
Without the ability sell debt due to soaring interest rates, and with severe spending rules in place due to its EU-IMF bailout, Ireland has few ways of spending to stimulate the economy. Today's jobs program includes specific tax increases, including the tax on pensions, aimed at keeping government jobs spending from adding to the national debt.
The tax on private pensions will be 0.6%, and last for four years, according to the report.

Religious reaction: The Archbishop of Canterbury said the killing of Osama Bin Laden while he was not armed has left him with 'a very uncomfortable feeling'
- What happened to post-9/11 solidarity as Europe asks questions over legality and morality of killing unarmed man?
- Blogger calls Europeans: 'Arrogant, smug, thoughtless and thankless'
- Archbishop of Canterbury says killing of unarmed Bin Laden left him with 'a very uncomfortable feeling'
While thousands of Americans took to the streets to celebrate the killing, the reaction in Europe was much more muted.
Many have questioned not only the manner of the killing of an unarmed man, but also the taste and dignity of the American public who celebrated the act by chanting 'USA' in the streets, mocking up T-shirts and generally revelling in the moment.
One of those expressing these sentiments is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who said: 'I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done.'
'In those circumstances, I think it's also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help.'
However, he went on: 'But I do believe that in such circumstances when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal in terms of the atrocities inflicted it is important that justice is seen to be served.'
When Bin Laden's men flew airliners into New York's World Trade Center ten years ago, it sparked an outpouring of solidarity from Europe, best captured by a French newspaper headline 'We are all Americans now'.
But that solidarity seemingly hasn't lasted.
The White House's 'death of bin Laden' story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama's Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?
So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the Seals killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.
Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.

Fabiola Farabollini, a staff member of the U.S. Embassy in Italy, holds a book about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the U.S. Secretary of State's visit at the Ambassador's Residence in Rome, on Friday, May 6, 2011.
Clinton told a meeting of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization that urgent steps are needed to hold down costs and boost agricultural production as food prices continue to rise.
Although the situation is not yet as dire as it was four years ago, she said the consequences of inaction would be "grave."
"We must act now, effectively and cooperatively, to blunt the negative impact of rising food prices and protect people and communities," she said at the FAO's headquarters in Rome.
In Hollywood, it's called rewrite. In politics, it's lying, a Washington bipartisan specialty, notably on issues mattering most.
Also at issue is conducting lawless operations for any purpose. More on that below.
Two previous articles discussed the staged May Day hokum: here and here
That data includes transcripts of phone calls and in-house discussions, video and audio surveillance, and a massive amount of photography. "The volume of data they're pulling in is huge," said John V. Parachini, director of the Intelligence Policy Center at RAND. "One criticism we might make of our [intelligence] community is that we're collection-obsessed - we pull in everything - and we don't spend enough time or money to try and understand what do we have and how can we act upon it."
"When you pay attention to it, communicators are often evading questions that are asked," said Todd Rogers, a political psychologist and executive director of the Analyst Institute, a group focused on understanding voter communication. "Unless you are asked to pay attention to it, they can get away with it."
To determine how they get away with it, Rogers showed participants video clips of a simulated debate. The "candidate" was asked about universal health care or a similar question about the war on drugs. The actor answered both questions with a statement about universal health care.
Only 40 percent of the listeners could remember the original "war on drugs" question, compared with 88 percent of those who heard the "health care" question. If the listeners couldn't remember the question correctly, the speaker was determined to have successfully dodged that question, satisfying viewers with an alternate, though similar, answer.
The network of 156 caves is located in Damadola in the semi autonomous Bajaur tribal region. Pakistani Maj. Gen. Tariq Kahn said the arrival of his forces marks the first time Pakistan's flag has flown over the village since Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, the newspaper says.
The newspaper says Iman Bin Laden called her brother, Abdullah, in Syria to say they have been held by Iranian authorities since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001.









