Female politicians call for action to counteract wave of machismo sweeping through French politics

It's raining machismo in France. Chucking it down, in fact.

From parliament to local councils, via national media and regional newspapers, storms have erupted as French men indulge in misogynist outbursts that could have come from the cave age.

Now, thanks to the name-and-shame tactics of social media networks, France's long-suffering women, who might previously have shrugged off such attacks as everyday sexism and machismo, are hitting back.

The backlash came after a banal enough event: a male member of the UMP opposition in the Assemblée Nationale humiliated a female opponent by making clucking noises as she spoke during a late-night debate on the Socialist government's controversial pension reforms.

Four separate US drone attacks have claimed the lives of nearly two dozen people in different regions of the war-ravaged Afghanistan over the past 48 hours, local security sources say.

According to local Afghan officials, at least ten people were killed as two airstrikes ripped through the eastern Kunar Province near the border with Pakistan.

Also on Friday, two people lost their lives in a similar attack in Nuristan Province.

Russian police have detained hundreds of immigrants in the capital Moscow as part of a widespread crackdown on illegal immigration which aims to appease nationalist protests over the stabbing death of an ethnic Russian by a migrant worker.

Authorities announced that 675 people from Central Asia were rounded up in the Friday operation, and the detainees were fingerprinted and their details taken down.

Police further noted that they had registered 159 cases of immigration law violation, including 105 offenses punishable by deportation, as well as 11 cases into forged documents and illegal entrepreneurial activity.

Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin said security forces will continue to carry out weekly operations to round up more illegal immigrants.

Barack Obama has nominated Jeh Johnson to head the Department of Homeland Security. Johnson is actually a perfect choice for the Washington DC war criminals considering his prior track record. Since 2009 he has worked in the Department of Defense as their general counsel. In this role he has provided the legal justification for the Obama regime's foreign military interventions including drone strikes that have killed numerous civilians.

Johnson has also claimed that the Obama regime has the legal authority to kill American citizens if they take up arms with Al-Qaeda. Through these and other ridiculous legal assertions, Johnson has proven that he himself is a terrorist war criminal. Considering that the American economy is edging closer and closer to a total collapse they will need someone in charge of Homeland Security who is not afraid to give orders to kill Americans. Johnson as a terrorist war criminal will fit very nicely into this role.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Johnson was responsible for the prior legal review and approval of all military operations executed by the Obama regime. This makes Johnson an incredibly evil man. The Obama regime has been responsible for a number of war crimes including the authorization of drone strikes that have killed many civilians. Even women and children have been killed by some of these strikes.

It is also worth noting that the Obama regime launched an unprovoked attack against the sovereign nation of Libya which by the standards set after World War II is a war crime. Of course they almost did the same thing in Syria until it became clear that such an operation had no real support domestically or amongst the international community. It is hard to believe that anyone could possibly find an appropriate legal justification for such horrible atrocities but apparently if you are a criminal like Johnson this comes easy.

Former US vice president Dick Cheney has described disabling the wireless function of his heart defibrillator over fears terrorists would hack into it to cause a heart attack.

Mr Cheney, who served as vice president from 2001 to 2009, had the defibrillator fitted after suffering from long term cardiovascular disease and surviving five heart attacks.

Mr Cheney underwent a heart transplant two years ago, aged 70.

In 2007, while he was serving as vice president under George Bush, the device was disabled by his cardiologist Jonathan Reiner to prevent terrorists from giving his heart a potentially fatal shock.

Mr Cheney was working with Mr Bush on his response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and helping to coordinate the War on Terror.

Popular Showtime series Homeland features a plot in which a soldier helps to hack a device fitted to the fictional US vice president to administer a deadly shock, a plot that Mr Cheney said he found credible.

"I was aware of the danger that existed... I found it credible. I know from the experience we had, and the necessity for adjusting my own device, that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible,'' he explained.

An Italian court has ruled that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was found guilty of tax evasion, should be barred from holding public office for two years.

The Milan court issued the verdict on Saturday for the scandal-tainted former prime minister as part of a tax fraud ruling.

However, since the billionaire tycoon is a senator, the decision will have no immediate effect.

Berlusconi's expulsion from the Senate will depend on a separate vote in the upper house of parliament, which is expected to take place in November.

Italy's Supreme Court convicted Berlusconi on August 1 of tax evasion in a final ruling, and sentenced him to one year of community service or house arrest, making it the first definitive conviction against him after dozens of trials in almost 20 years of political career.

On October 2, Berlusconi was forced to abandon his bid to topple Prime Minister Enrico Letta after more than 40 of his lawmakers said they would defy him and instead vote in support of the coalition government.

Debit card fees on the rise: Bank of America to charge $5 for debit card usage. Other banks may follow suit.

In early 2012, Bank of America customers with basic accounts will be charged a $5 monthly fee for shopping with their debit cards. The fee will be charged whether customers choose 'debit' or 'credit' at the point of sale.

ATM usage fees will remain the same, and those customers who do not shop with their debit card will notincur the $5 monthly fee.

Why is Bank of America making this move? It certainly fits a trend: ATM fees have been rising, bounced check fees have been going up, and free checking accounts are fast becoming a thing of the past.

New Intel-Based PC's Permanently Hackable

So you think no one can access your data because your computer is turned off. Heck it's more than turned off, you even took the main hard drive out, and only the backup disk is inside. There is no operating system installed at all. So you KNOW you are safe.

Frank from across the street is an alternative operating systems hobbyist, and he has tons of computers. He has Free BSD on a couple, his own compilation of Linux on another, a Mac for the wife, and even has Solaris on yet another. Frank knows systems security, so he cannot be hacked . . . or so he thinks.

The government does not like Frank much, because they LOVE to look at everything. Privacy is a crime don't you know, and it looks like Frank's luck with privacy is about to run out.

The new Intel Core vPro processors contain a new remote access feature which allows 100 percent remote access to a PC 100 percent of the time, even if the computer is turned off. Core vPro processors contain a second physical processor embedded within the main processor which has it's own operating system embedded on the chip itself. As long as the power supply is available and and in working condition, it can be woken up by the Core vPro processor, which runs on the system's phantom power and is able to quietly turn individual hardware components on and access anything on them.

New research shows many so-called experts who appeared on television making the case for U.S. strikes on Syria had undisclosed ties to military contractors. A new report by the Public Accountability Initiative identifies 22 commentators with industry ties. While they appeared on television or were quoted as experts 111 times, their links to military firms were disclosed only 13 of those times. The report focuses largely on Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser to President George W. Bush. During the debate on Syria, he appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. None of these stations informed viewers that Hadley currently serves as a director of the weapons manufacturer Raytheon that makes Tomahawk cruise missiles widely touted as the weapon of choice for bombing Syria. He also owns over 11,000 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate. We speak to Kevin Connor of the Public Accountability Initiative, a co-author of the report.

It's one of those times when history accelerates. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations on the shutdown and debt ceiling, October 2013 is one of them. It's the deadlock too far which has opened the eyes of those who still support the United States. A leader is followed when he is believed, not when he is ridiculous.

"Building a de-Americanised world": this statement would have raised a smile a few years ago. At most it would have passed for provocation by Hugo Chavez. But when we are seeing the United States' bankruptcy in real-time and it's an official Chinese press agency that says so (1), the impact isn't the same. In reality, it's describing out loud a process which is already well underway: simply, it's now allowed to speak about it in public. At least US government deadlock has the merit of loosening tongues (2). Let there be no mistake, this analysis hasn't appeared in the Chinese media by chance, and it reflects Beijing's hardening tone.

In fact, if the whole world is holding its breath before this pathetic game of the US elite; it's not out of compassion, it's to avoid being swept away in the fall of the world's first power. Everyone is trying to free itself from American influence and let go of a United States permanently discredited by recent events over Syria, tapering, shutdown and now the debt ceiling. The legendary US power is now no more than a nuisance and the world has understood that it's time to de-Americanise.