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France invades Mali for second time in a year

Sam Ball
France 24
Thu, 31 Oct 2013 22:16 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo/Frederic Lafargue
French soldiers man their positions while clashes erupt in the city of Gao on February 21, 2013
French, Malian and UN troops have begun a "large-scale" military operation aimed at preventing a resurgence of Islamist organisations in Mali, the French military said Thursday, following a recent upswing in violence in the West African country.

A "large-scale" military operation against jihadist forces in Mali has been launched by French, Malian and UN troops, a spokesman for the French armed forces said Thursday.

The operation aims to "avoid [a] resurgence" of "terrorist organisations" in the country, Colonel Gilles Jaron told reporters.

He said "several hundred" French soldiers were involved in the operation alongside Malian soldiers and members of the UN's MINUSMA mission, adding: "It is the first time we have seen forces of significant size working together."

France launched a military intervention in its former colony in January this year after Islamist forces exploited a rebellion by Tuareg separatists to seize control of the north of the country.

Comment: There are no 'Islamic extremists' in Mali. There are, however, U.S./French agents and special forces stirring up trouble so that France, on behalf of its corporate owners, can send in troops to keep the natives away from 'her' uranium and gold mines.

The War in Mali and AFRICOM's Agenda: Target China

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Sheriff

Alabama deputies beat, arrest corruption-fighting reporter

Andrew Kreig
Justice Integrity Project
Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:30 UTC
Image
The prominent investigative blogger Roger Shuler was arrested and beaten by Shelby County sheriff's deputies in his Alabama garage upon returning home the evening of Oct. 23.

Shuler faces charges stemming from his refusal to obey a judge's order to stop writing about an alleged affair involving Robert Riley Jr., an attorney who is part of Alabama's most prominent political family.

Shuler is at right in a jail mug shot showing his swollen face after his beating and attack with MACE in his garage. Authorities in his county south of Birmingham held him on two contempt of court charges and one for resisting arrest. A judge refused to set bond on the contempt charges, thereby enabling authorities to hold Shuler for an undetermined period that could be many months at the judge's discretion. His bond was $1,000 for the resisting arrest charge.

Update Oct. 31, PM: As of this writing, Shuler remained in jail, and his wife was barricaded in their home, fearing every knock on the door might be authorities trying to arrest her for her husband's writing and refusal to remove it from his website. A news blackout remained through virtually all of the mainstream media. The first major Alabama news coverage appeared on a web blog at 6 p.m. Oct. 29 under the headline, Truth-teller or bomb-thrower? OpEdNews editor Joan Brunwasser earlier published an interview with me: Andrew Kreig: Alabama Journalist Roger Shuler Beaten and Arrested! A sympathetic reader of these reports dropped off enough food to last for several days, and another prevented a utility shut-off. Also, more than $1,000 has been contributed to a fund for potential legal expenses, including $200 from our Justice Integrity Project.
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Bad Guys

Chris Powell: Gold price suppression -- why, how, and how long?

Chris Powell
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
Most financial journalism and academic teaching maintains that gold is at best a quaint antique. I'm here to argue that gold not only remains money but may again be the best and most important money -- to argue that, even more than this, gold is in fact the secret knowledge of the financial universe.

Gold already is so important that Western central banks -- particularly the U.S. Treasury and its Exchange Stabilization Fund, the Federal Reserve, and allied central banks -- rig the gold market every day, even hour by hour, to control and usually suppress gold's price.


Comment: Not to mention that central banks have been net buyers of physical gold recently (not silver).


Why do Western central banks rig the gold market?

It's because gold is a powerful competitive international currency that, if allowed to function in a free market, will determine thevalue of other currencies, the level of interest rates, and the value of government bonds. Gold's performance is usually the opposite of the performance of government currencies and bonds. Hence central banks fight gold to defend their currencies and bonds.

The problem is that central bank tactics in this fight affect more than gold; they affect markets generally and eventually destroy markets generally. This destruction of markets now has a name, a name used even by former members of the Federal Reserve Board. That name is "financial repression."


Comment: Financial Repression: A term that describes measures by which governments channel funds to themselves as a form of debt reduction:

Caps or ceilings on interest rates
Government ownership or control of domestic banks and financial institutions
Creation or maintenance of a captive domestic market for government debt
Restrictions on entry to the financial industry
Directing credit to certain industries

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V

Dean: Frightful times in America

Warren L. Dean Jr.
The Washington Times
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:01 UTC
In 1984, Ronald Reagan reminded the country why it should give him a second term in office. His campaign ran an ad with the simple message: "It's morning in America again." The president, so criticized by the left for embracing the good old days of America's heritage, brought the country a period of peace, prosperity, stability and dignity that Americans can only dream about today. In short, the ad was right on.

Things have changed. If an ad agency had to sum up the mood of the country, and be honest about it, it might come up with this pitch: "It's Halloween in America today." Washington has made this one of the scariest times in history, especially for younger generations of Americans.

Dean's Halloween
© Linas Garsys for The Washington Times
Dean's Halloween

Comment: Indeed, Freedom is not serving your government, being told what to do and being forced to comply with laws enacted by pathological politicians. This is actually a slavery and this is the gift we leave to our children and future generations, who will have to deal with it sooner or later. Happy Halloween!

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Eye 1

Web giants threaten end to cookie tracking

Elizabeth Dwoskin
The Wall Street Journal
Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:50 UTC
The end could be near for cookies, the tiny pieces of code that marketers deploy on Web browsers to track people's online movements, serve targeted advertising and amass valuable user profiles. In the past month, Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. have said they are developing systems to plug into and control this river of data in ways that bypass the more than a thousand software companies that place cookies on websites.

How cookies trak
© The Wall Street Journal
How cookies track
The moves could radically shift the balance of power in the $120 billion global digital advertising industry - and have ad technology companies scrambling to figure out their next play. "There is a Battle Royal brewing," says Scott Meyer, chief executive of Evidon Inc., a company that helps businesses keep track of the cookies on their websites. "Whoever controls access to all that data can charge rent for it - and has a tremendous advantage going forward."

The Silicon Valley trio, which produce browsers, email services and operating systems used by billions across many devices, are positioned to potentially learn far more about people's activities than cookies ever could. Today, a diverse ecosystem of companies places cookies on websites to track people through browsers; now the giants see an opportunity to get into tracking themselves.

Comment: Say goodbye to the good old cookies and welcome to the world of pervasive invigilation, where your EVERY virtual or physical move is tracked and recorded by the giant Internet corporations and sold for profit to advertisers.

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Nuke

Ken O'Keefe: United States poses the biggest nuclear threat to the world


Press TV
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 05:45 UTC

The United States poses the biggest nuclear threat to the world, former US Marine Ken O'Keefe tells Press TV in an interview.

"There is clearly no bigger threat to the safety and security of this world than the United States of America," O'Keefe said on Wednesday.He said the threat came from the US "unaccounted" nuclear weapons, adding, "The first nation that needs to disarm is the United States, but they're not going to do so willingly."
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Nuke

Moscow conducts large-scale nuclear attack drill

Bill Gertz
FreeBeacon
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:12 UTC
SS18 Rocket
© Associated Press
Russian SS-18 rocket.
Russian strategic forces carried out a large-scale surprise military drill on Wednesday, launching four nuclear missiles that were closely monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies, U.S. officials said.

The drill began around 9:00 am ET and included the test launch of two land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and two submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

The test firings were unusual because of the number of missiles fired at one time, said officials who discussed some details of the drill on condition of anonymity.

State Department spokeswoman Alexandra F. Bell confirmed the tests and said the long-range missile firings were "conducted consistent with the requirements of the New START Treaty."

At the Pentagon, spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said: "With regard to Russia's recent testing of its strategic forces missiles, the United States received the proper notifications prior to the launches."

Other officials said the tests were notified in advance to the U.S. government as required by a 1988 U.S.-Soviet agreement requiring advance notification of ICBM and SLBM launches. The agreement requires notifying the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, run by the Pentagon, of the impending launches within four days of their launch.
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Network

NSA 'hacked Google and Yahoo's data centre links', Snowden documents say

Barton Gellman , Ashkan Soltani
The Independent
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:17 UTC
Documents reveal vast scale of security agency's ability to get around strict legal procedures

google data center
© AP
A Google data center in Hamina, Finland
The US National Security Agency (NSA), in collaboration with the UK government's listening station GCHQ, has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world, according to interviews with knowledgeable officials and documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

By tapping those links, the agency can collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret document dated 9 January 2013, NSA's acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency's Fort Meade headquarters. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records, ranging from "metadata", which indicates who sent or received emails and when, to content such as text, audio and video.

Comment: Anyone still surprised that this is happening? No? Perhaps that is the idea: to push us to a point in which the Big Brother Society is normalized and internalized.

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MIB

Fresh report into 2003 EU spy scandal points to Israeli secret services

Andrew Rettman
EUobserver.com
Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:45 UTC
Image
© consilium.europa.au
The Council at work: the Justus Lipsius building is the venue for the EU's most sensitive internal debates, on, among other topics, foreign policy
Brussels - Belgium's Standing Intelligence Agencies Review Committee has in a fresh report out on Tuesday (11 January) revealed details of a 2003 EU bugging scandal and named Israeli secret services as a potential culprit.

The report, completed in late 2010, is available on the committee's website in Flemish and French. Committee member Peter de Smet on Tuesday told EUobserver the report says that two people suspected of planting listening devices in the EU member states' headquarters, the Justus Lipsius building, when it was constructed back in the mid-1990s had been trained by the Israeli telecommunications company Comverse, which has known links to the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

The report does not name any country other than Israel as the potential guilty party in its findings.

"There is no hard evidence [that the Mossad carried out the operation]," Mr De Smet explained. "But it was really state-of-the-art listening equipment that was placed back in 1993 or 1994 and there were not many countries that had the means at this time. It could be Israel, it could be Russia, it could be England or it could be the US - there you have really the four countries possible, but it will never blow up who did these things. It will remain a game inside the intelligence services."
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Wolf

Bill O'Reilly pretends to hassle Dick Cheney over the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, 'What did we get out of it?'

Brent McCluskey
Before It's News
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:06 UTC
Bill O'Reilly
© Guns.com
O’Reilly wanted to know if the trillions of dollars in debts and tens of thousands of American lives lost was really worth the cost.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney sat down with Bill O'Reilly to discuss whether the trillions of dollars of debt and tens of thousands of causalities amongst the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were really worth the cost.

In the completely amiable segment, the two men faced off. Cheney insisted the Bush administration had a clear and precise plan for their successors, but that the Obama administration just wasn't adhering to them, Mediate reported.

It seemed the point O'Reilly was truly concerned about though was whether the extreme cost, both of life and monetarily, of the two wars could really justify the end result, if that could even be quantified.

Comment: Don't know whether it's worth it, Dick? If you were equipped with a conscience like a normal human being there wouldn't be a single doubt in your mind. Too bad for the rest of the world that you don't.

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