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Coming soon to a front door near you...
Coming soon to a front door near you...
Puppet Masters
It is necessary to call things by their right names. The obscene regularity of police murders in the United States has reached the point where it is appropriate to speak of the police as an occupying army, whose daily violence and brutality can best be described as a war against the country's poor and working people.
Practically every day brings a new outrage. The death toll mounts relentlessly, against the backdrop of harassment and beatings that are daily facts of life in much of the country. The government does not publish figures on police killings; however, according to statistics compiled from media reports, some 1,000 people lose their lives as a result of police violence every year in the United States. That averages out to almost three fatalities a day.
© RIA Novosti / Grigory Vasilenko
Sergey Arbuzov.
Sergey Arbuzov.
None of the options proposed by the IMF would improve the economy, said Arbuzov to Izvestia, adding that the biggest mistake made by the government was working with the IMF instead of working with the economy.
"Ukraine had all the reasons to talk with the IMF and international creditors not about the loan, but about debt relief and the restructuring of the remaining debt in long-term securities with low profitability," he said. "I do not see the reasons for the allies to refuse to make concession to the war-torn country that has experienced the Maidan. Instead, we've come up with an involuntary servitude variant, even without trying to negotiate."
Comment: More of the same from the IMF. The money is only for banks, not for economies and regular working people. How much longer can the world endure the banks sucking all the life out of everyone?
© Reuters / Ammar Awad
On Tuesday, the Israeli government demolished an EU settlement on Mount Scopus in northeast Jerusalem. The city's municipality said it undertook the measures because the structure was constructed on land, which had been designated for a national park.
According to the EU it was not even a building, but a temporary shelter, which the pan-European organization has continued to fund to help displaced people.
"We condemn today's demolition of temporary shelters funded by the European Union... as part of its response to the needs of the affected communities," an EU statement said, according AFP.
Comment: The Israeli settlements continue unabated as the world does nothing concrete to stop it.
© Jorge Silva / Reuters
Opposition students next to national guards during a march against President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 12, 2015.
Opposition students next to national guards during a march against President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 12, 2015.
It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation's chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?
Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.
Comment: This world really is a "theater of the absurd".
19th century anti-Russian propaganda. Plus ça change...
CrossTalking with Charles Bausman, Ben Aris, and Alexander Mercouris.
© Theglobalpanorama
The week after the leftwing Syriza candidate Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister, the ECB announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debts as collateral for central bank loans to Greek banks. The banks were reduced to getting their central bank liquidity through "Emergency Liquidity Assistance" (ELA), which is at high interest rates and can also be terminated by the ECB at will.
In an interview reported in the German magazine Der Spiegel on March 6th, Alexis Tsipras said that the ECB was "holding a noose around Greece's neck." If the ECB continued its hardball tactics, he warned, "it will be back to the thriller we saw before February" (referring to the market turmoil accompanying negotiations before a four-month bailout extension was finally agreed to).
The noose around Greece's neck is this: the ECB will not accept Greek bonds as collateral for the central bank liquidity all banks need, until the new Syriza government accepts the very stringent austerity program imposed by the troika (the EU Commission, ECB and IMF). That means selling off public assets (including ports, airports, electric and petroleum companies), slashing salaries and pensions, drastically increasing taxes and dismantling social services, while creating special funds to save the banking system.
These are the mafia-like extortion tactics by which entire economies are yoked into paying off debts to foreign banks - debts that must be paid with the labor, assets and patrimony of people who had nothing to do with incurring them.
© Dnaindia.com
The hacking collective, dubbed "Equation Group," must have been sponsored by a nation-state with vast resources in order to operate, Kaspersky analysts assert.
The strongest evidence connecting the NSA to Equation Group is the string "BACKSNARF_AB25," which was embedded in a sample of the Equation Group cyberespionage platform known as "EquationDrug."
"BACKSNARF," according to page 19 of an undated NSA presentation that was obtained by Ars Technica, was the name of a project tied to the NSA's Tailored Access Operations.
"While the presence of the 'BACKSNARF' artifact isn't conclusive proof it was part of the NSA project by that name, the chances that there were two unrelated projects with nation-state funding seems infinitesimally small," Dan Gooding of Ars Technica points out.
A new report published Wednesday by Kaspersky notes that timestamps stored inside the Equation Group malware showed that hackers almost exclusively worked Monday through Friday. Assuming they worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., employees likely were working in the eastern part of the US.
It is unlikely the timestamps were intentionally manipulated, the report states, since the years listed in various executable files match the availability of computer platforms the files ran on.
© Flickr
"It is a very tight race. Nothing is guaranteed because there is a huge, worldwide effort to topple the Likud government," Netanyahu said in comments to party sympathizers on Monday that the Israeli Army Radio broadcast the following day.
Army Radio said Netanyahu's comments were referring to money from overseas donors to fund advocacy groups in Israel that support a change in government.
Comment: It's 'cause the world has had enough of you, Bibi! It's past time you just took your ball and went home, or better yet, past time that you were dragged before an international court, tried with war crimes, and locked away for the rest of your life.
But seriously, this 'opposition' to Netanyahu is a joke. Just like American politics, Israel is not in a condition in which electoral procedures will lead to any lasting or meaningful change in major policies. Whoever is (s)elected, the occupation will continue.
"The war has been provoked to destroy the Russian World, to draw Europe into it, and to surround Russia with hostile countries. Unleashing this world war, America is trying to deal with its own internal problems." - Sergei Glazyev, Advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin
The fabrications of NATO's top commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, have driven a wedge between Germany and the United States that could lead to a collapse of the Atlantic Alliance. According to the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, Breedlove has repeatedly sabotaged Chancellor Angela Merkel's attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine by spreading "dangerous propaganda" that is misleading the public about Russian "troop advances on the border, (and) the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks." But while the unusually critical article singles out Breedlove for his hyperbolic exaggerations of so-called Russian aggression, the real purpose of the Spiegel piece is to warn Washington that EU leaders will not support a policy of military confrontation with Moscow.
© www.spiegel.de
Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany.
Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany.
Comment: The banks and the US industrial complex run the show..."its about the economy, stupid"...dang, there's that phrase again! And, because it is not really about war (although war has a habit of thinning out populations and making economies better), there is a giant Israeli elephant in Washington that is becoming increasingly visible. Just how many more destabilized sovereign countries will it take to permanently disguise the problem? Syria, Iran, Russia...? How'd that work out so far for Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya? Is the EU content to remain a pawn on the geopolitical chess board or a hostage in an imperial power play? The EU should remember that "The Biggest Threat" always has the least to lose! The EU should remember who runs the US banks and the IC.
© RIA Novosti / Maksim Blinov
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak
"We are supplying [East Ukraine - Ed.] under the [2009] contract. Gazprom doesn't ship for free. Bills, invoices are being prepared," Novak said Wednesday quoted by Reuters. He added that no clarification has been made over the further payments of gas supplies to Donbass.
Ukraine's Naftogaz owes Gazprom $2.4 billion for deliveries, including $200 million in penalties, according to the minister's earlier estimates.
The so-called 'winter package' terms for gas supply to Ukraine expires on March 31, along with a $100 discount per 1,000 cubic meters of gas and a suspension of a take-or-pay agreement that requires payment for gas no matter if Ukraine needs it by that date or not.
Novak said Russia is open to extend those concessions even without signing a new deal after the 'winter package' expires.
Comment: Kiev insists Donetsk and Lugansk are a part of Ukraine, and not independent. Well, if that's the case, they'd better pay the gas bill! Can't have it both ways...
Comment: There are several non-lethal ways to deal with civilians, especially when they are committing minor infractions. A loaded gun should never be the first option. We are traveling a dark and deadly road if we allow the murdering of civilians by militarized police forces as an acceptable form of societal control. Life matters, or have we forgotten that. Apparently so. Where is the outrage? Where, indeed, are the constraints? Uncorrected, the ramifications speak to a nefarious agenda and are nothing less than "deadly." We are literally in a one-sided war within our own country and it ain't gettin' better anytime soon.