© opposingviews.com
Puppet Masters
© Lucas Jackson/REUTERS
Difficult days: a flag flies outside the New York Stock Exchange building in New York.
Difficult days: a flag flies outside the New York Stock Exchange building in New York.
Wall Street's stark message to President Barack Obama on Thursday was that failure to end the war between Democrats and Republicans over US debt would smash business confidence, cripple the economy and send financial markets plunging.
Chief executives of all the major banks wrote to the White House warning that a continued deadlock over raising the debt ceiling "would be very grave".
With the 2 August deadline rapidly approaching and a vote in the House of Representatives scheduled on Thursday night, the bankers said they wanted to see "meaningful and concrete steps to put our nation on a sound fiscal footing".
The warning from Wall Street came amid renewed concerns over the fate of the eurozone, with bond yields in Italy and Spain back to the levels seen before the debt package for struggling members of the single currency was agreed a week ago and Cyprus starting to look like the next country in need of a bailout.
Signed by Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, the letter said: "Our economic recovery remains very fragile. A default on our obligations, or a downgrade on America's credit rating, would be a tremendous blow to investor confidence - raising interest rates for everyone who borrows, undermining the value of the dollar and roiling stock and bond markets - and, therefore, dramatically worsening our nation's already difficult economic circumstances."
"There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises
© The Burning Platform
We'll take what's behind door #2 Johnny. The vested interests in Washington DC and Wall Street only care about power and wealth. They will never abandon credit expansion. It's their drug. They must have it. They are addicted to it. They will keep injecting it into our system until they overdose America.
© Unknown
Because I believe in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948, I support boycotting - and calling on others to boycott - all Israeli companies that help perpetuate these injustices.
But this new legal limit on free speech could bankrupt me.
Israeli officials will not throw me in jail for publicly supporting such boycotts, but settler groups can claim financial damages without even having to show any harm done. Furthermore, organizations supporting boycotts could be denied tax-deductible contributions and state funding. This week, I appealed the law to the high court.
Already, a member of the Knesset, our Parliament, Alex Miller, has threatened to sue me for my words - specifically my call, which I continue to make today, to boycott the illegal Jewish settlement of Ariel. Such a call would be unremarkable in a proper democracy with untrammeled free speech. The right to criticize a population that has dispossessed Palestinians and discriminated against us for decades should be protected speech.
© Nir Keidar
Norwegian ambassador Svein Sevje in Herzliya Pituah on Wednesday July 27, 2011.
Norwegian ambassador Svein Sevje in Herzliya Pituah on Wednesday July 27, 2011.
Israelis have shown an outpouring of sympathy regarding last weekend's horrific attacks in and near Oslo, Norwegian ambassador to Israel Svein Sevje told Anglo File on Wednesday.
Ambassador Sevje returned to Norway yesterday to see his family, but he told Haaretz before departing for Oslo that the embassy in Tel Aviv has received a "tremendous" stream of visitors wishing to convey their sympathies for the victims of the cruel killings. Sevje underscored that he received "lots of letters and mail from Israelis expressing their condolences and support and solidarity, which was quite touching."
At the same time, he says he is not ignorant of the anger expressed by some Israelis, who accuse the Norwegian government of insensitivity to the security concerns of Israelis, and even anti-Semitism, because it supports efforts to create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. "Maybe Israelis didn't understand how much compassion there was [in Norway] when you were attacked," says Sevje, referring to the wave of Palestinian bombings and shootings that Israelis faced in the 1990s.
© unknown
Nine out of a total of fourteen Quartzsite, Arizona police officers have been suspended, all of which just happened to be whistle blowers who exposed their corrupt police chief.
The Mayor, Ed Foster, was elected on the platform of investigating the corrupt goings-on in the Quartzsite city council. Therefore, it is not quite surprising that they would force out the man who intends to prove them to be criminals.
The city has now become a fascist authoritarian police state with the criminal police chief Jeff Gilbert at the helm.
Gilbert has been accused of violating federal medical privacy laws, intimidation of officers and members of the community with whom he disagrees, using police resources to find "dirt" on political candidates and citizens with whom he disagrees, favoritism to the point of not arresting friends who have warrants, targeting certain citizens for traffic stops and arrests due to their beliefs or political ideas, disciplining officers not on merit but "loyalty" to Gilbert and his illegal activity, publicly humiliating officers he decides are "unfit," and last but not least selectively promotes his friends in direct violation of police department regulations.
© Reuters/Paul Hanna
U.S. Actor Tom Cruise gives a speech at the inauguration of a Scientology church in Madrid Sepember 18, 2004.
U.S. Actor Tom Cruise gives a speech at the inauguration of a Scientology church in Madrid Sepember 18, 2004.
That's just one of the takeaways from Janet Reitman's controversial book about the world's most controversial and secretive religion. Inside Scientology chronicles L. Ron Hubbard's creation of Scientology six decades ago and traces its development into the faith of choice for movie stars such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise.
In an interview with TheWrap, Reitman, a Rolling Stone contributing editor, addressed blackmail rumors and talked about why Kabbalah may represent a bigger threat to it than any South Park parody.
© BBC
Isik Kosaner (right) was appointed armed forces chief of staff just under a year ago
Isik Kosaner (right) was appointed armed forces chief of staff just under a year ago
They were furious about the arrest of senior officers, accused of plotting, shortly before a round of military promotions.
A series of meetings between Gen Kosaner and PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed to resolve their differences.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul moved quickly to appoint General Necdet Ozel as the new army chief.
Gen Ozel is widely expected to be swiftly elevated to chief of the general staff in place of General Kosaner. Tradition dictates that only the head of the army can take over the top job.
In a rare interview with the National Geographic Channel, Bush reflects on what was going through his mind at the most dramatic moment of his presidency when he was informed that a second passenger jet had hit New York's World Trade Center.
Bush was visiting a Florida classroom and the incident, which was caught on TV film, and has often been used by critics to ridicule his apparently blank face.
"My first reaction was anger. Who the hell would do that to America? Then I immediately focused on the children, and the contrast between the attack and the innocence of children," Bush says in an excerpt of the interview shown to television writers on Thursday.
Comment: Unlike Schnall, we don't read anything "powerful" in Bush's sharing of his "feelings". Why? Not only because his personality traits can be found in Hare's psychopathy checklist, but also because for all the years of his presidency - and all his life - his actions and words showed a being deplete of real human feelings:
from waging illegal wars in sovereign countries and sending Americans to their deaths, to sanctioning torture, to poisoning Americans through tap water, to backing Big Pharma in drugging children with mind-altering drugs, to intentionally spreading terror in the hearts of the American populace, to mocking those who feel self-pity, to putting African women's lives in danger, to funding the genital mutilation of African men, to being an accomplice in the greatest terror attack in the country he was elected to protect. He might try to "sound" humane and hide behind a mask of sanity, but his actions will always speak of themselves to reveal his true nature.
Read also,
"A Legacy of Greatness": the Morality of a Psychopath
Textbook descriptions of George Bush reveal psychopathy, and much worse
Bush is a Psychopath
© Views and News
The US Embassy got in trouble last fall when it emerged that it had hired Norwegians to carry out questionable surveillance, much of it from the building at the far right of the photo, with the "Scandic" sign on it. Now the embassy has been cleared.
The US Embassy got in trouble last fall when it emerged that it had hired Norwegians to carry out questionable surveillance, much of it from the building at the far right of the photo, with the "Scandic" sign on it. Now the embassy has been cleared.
In a decision revealed while the vast majority of Norwegians are preoccupied by last Friday's attacks on their capital and a Labour Party summer camp, state prosecutor Jørn Maurud said that a police investigation indicated that embassy personnel conducting the surveillance hadn't done anything illegal. It was widely referred to as a "scandal" last fall, but Maurud sees no need to pursue the case.
"This group has operated a more passive observation service," Maurud told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). "We don't view it as punishable under law."
Comment: The false flag terror attacks were apparently successful: Oslo terror attacks: Zionism rears its ugly head again
Comment: