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Bad Guys

Sarkozy tells Obama Netanyahu is a "liar"

Yann Le Guernigou
Reuters
Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:56 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/Chris Ratcliffe/Pool
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy gestures towards President Obama during the G20 Summit of major world economies in Cannes, November 3, 2011.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a liar" in a private conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama that was accidentally broadcast to journalists during last week's G20 summit in Cannes.

"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.

"You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied, according to the French interpreter.

The technical gaffe is likely to cause great embarrassment to all three leaders as they look to work together to intensify international pressure on Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
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Bad Guys

Israel's Barak plays down talk of war with Iran

Jeffrey Heller
Reuters
Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:43 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/Jeff Overs/BBC/Handout
Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak (R) talks to Jeremy Vine, presenting the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, in London November 4, 2011. The pre-recorded interview was broadcast on November 6, 2011.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak played down Tuesday speculation that Israel intends to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, saying no decision had been made on embarking on a military operation.

"War is not a picnic. We want a picnic. We don't want a war," Barak told Israel Radio before the release this week of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear activity.

"(Israel) has not yet decided to embark on any operation," he said, dismissing as "delusional" Israeli media speculation that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had chosen that course.

But he said Israel had to prepare for "uncomfortable situations" and ultimately bore responsibility for its own security.

All options to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions should remain open, Barak said, repeating the official line taken by Israel, which has termed a nuclear-armed Iran a threat to its existence.
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Attention

Russia Warns Against Israeli Air Strike on Iran

Alex Spillius
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 07:10 UTC
Image
© Rex
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavov
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavov has warned that a military strike on Iran would be a "very serious mistake" with "unpredictable consequences", after Israel's president Shimon Peres said that an attack was increasingly likely.

In comments published in the Israeli daily Hayom, Mr Peres said that "the possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option".

"We must stay calm and resist pressure so that we can consider every alternative," he added.

The drumbeat of war is expected to grow louder this week when United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, issues its most detailed report to date on nuclear research in Iran.

It will provide what Western officials and experts regard as irrefutable evidence that Tehran is compiling the capacity and skills to build a bomb. It will be used as leverage for a fifth round of sanctions at the UN, but could also provide Israel, with the tacit support of Washington, to finalise plans for an air strike.

Among its findings are that Tehran was helped by nuclear experts from two countries, believed to be Russia and Pakistan. The Washington Post reported that key assistance was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist, hired by Iran's Physics Research Centre.
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Dollar

Italy: Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Save?

Catherine Boyle
CNBC News
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:54 UTC
Silvio Berlusconi
© Agence France-Presse / Getty Images / Vincenzo Pinto
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
Italy's economic problems took center stage Monday as its government, led by increasingly threatened Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, faced yet another key vote.

The health of the euro zone's third-largest economy has come into focus despite Berlusconi accepting IMF monitoring and surviving several confidence votes in recent months.

Italy's size makes the potential consequences if it were to fail more wide-ranging than the much smaller Greece.

"Italy has much more systemic implications," Thanos Vamvakidis, Head of European G10 FX Strategy, BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, told CNBC Monday.

"It's too big to fail, too big to save."

The problems facing Italy include the euro zone's second-highest debt-to-GDP ratio, and the lack of a credible alternative to Berlusconi's government.
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People

Greek Leaders Struggle to Agree on New Premier

Lefteris Papadimas and Harry Papachristou
Reuters
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters/John Kolesidis
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou stands outside the Presidential Palace in Athens
Greek party leaders are struggling to agree on a new prime minister, despite EU demands that the political class commit itself fast to the nation's financial salvation and end the chaos threatening the entire euro project.

Monday came and went without any accord on who will lead a new national unity coalition, despite plenty of talk that a former vice president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos, would get the job.

The cabinet was due to hold an emergency session Tuesday and officials said negotiations were under way on the "100-day coalition" which must win parliamentary approval for a euro zone bailout and save the country from bankruptcy.

But after an early burst of compromise as the EU turned the screws on both sides, the drive by the socialist and conservative parties to create a government which will rule only until February appeared to be losing momentum.

Frustration was apparent in Brussels where officials said the new government had to show it was serious about implementing promises Athens has made to its EU and IMF lenders in return for the 130 billion-euro bailout.
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Eye 2

VIDEO: Economic Dictatorship. The European Stability Mechanism (ESM)

Rudo de Ruijter and Jozeph Muntenbergh
Court Fool Info
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:13 UTC
ESM, the new European dictator!


Transcript (subtitles):

Is the EU and the euro in crisis?

The EU is planning a new fundamental law, the Treaty for the establishment of the so called European Stability Mechanism. (ESM), the Debt Union. The draft for the ESM is now to be examined by the representatives in Parliament.

Art. 8 The founding capital is 700 billion euros.

Where does this amount come from? Who has calculated it and on which basis?

Art. 9.3 ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them ... to be paid within 7 days of receipt.

When the ESM calls, then things must go fast. Indeed, seven days, that means that with the usual delays in bank transfers we must fill in the check within four days. That is feasible. Just, maybe, what means unconditional and irrevocable? When a new parliament is elected that would not want these fund transfers anymore? They can't decide that anymore?

Art. 10.1 The Board of Governors may decide to change the authorised capital stock and amend Article 8 .... accordingly.

The 700 billion are just the start? So, the ESM can demand more when they wish. Illimitably. And we are then obliged to pay -according to article 9 - irrevocably and unconditionally?
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War Whore

Attack on Iran: Hitlerian Act of Aggression

Tony Cartalucci
The Activist Post
Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Image

"Which Path to Persia?" Brookings Institution 2009
As the rhetoric for war with Iran begins to mount, first with the staged DEA-Saudi bomb plot, and now with an upcoming IAEA report supposedly "exposing" Iran's nuclear arms ambitions, it is important to re-read through the signed confessions by the corporate-fascist interests behind this drive for war where it is admitted that:

1. Iran poses no threat to US national security -- even if they acquired nuclear arms -- rather Iran threatens US interests throughout the Middle East, half-way across the planet.

2. Iran desperately wants to avoid armed conflict with both Israel and the West and would use nuclear weapons merely as a defensive deterrence.

3. The US and Israel are actively looking to provoke Iran into war with a combination of covert support for destabilization within Iran, supporting listed terrorist organizations, and limited unilateral military first strikes to provoke an Iranian response needed to justify a wider military confrontation.

All of this is shockingly spelled out in extreme detail within the pages of the corporate-financier funded Brooking Institution report, "Which Path to Persia?" It is essential that every American, European, and Israeli read just how malicious, callus and eager the globalist elite are to trigger a catastrophic war with the Islamic Republic for the sole purpose of protecting Wall Street and London's hegemony throughout the Middle East.
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Attention

Iran will Release 100 Documents Implicating U.S. in Terrorist Acts


Tehran Times
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:02 UTC
Image
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said that Iran has one hundred indisputable documents that prove the United States' involvement in terrorist actions and assassination plots in Iran and the region and will release them to the public.

The Leader made the remarks during a meeting with thousands of students in Tehran on Wednesday, ahead of the 13th of Aban.

The 13th of Aban in the Iranian calendar, which corresponds to November 4, is Iran's national day of struggle against the global arrogance (imperialist powers) and the anniversary of the university students' seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, which was called the Den of Spies, in 1979. It is also the anniversary of the exile of the late Imam Khomeini, the Founder of the Islamic Republic, in 1964.

"We have one hundred indisputable documents that show the role of the United States in directing assassinations and terrorists in Iran and the region. We will discredit the U.S. and the self-proclaimed supporters of human rights and the campaign against terrorism before the world," Ayatollah Khamenei said.
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Black Cat

Americans fabricating documents, says Iran

Atul Aneja
The Hindu
Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© phibetaiota.net
As their war of words heats up, Iran has accused the United States and its allies of adopting tactics including fabrication of documents to build a case against Tehran as they had done during the run-up to the Iraq war.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, a former head of the country's atomic energy establishment, said at a Saturday press conference in Tehran the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which functions under the aegis of the United Nations, was succumbing to U.S. pressure. Mr. Salehi was responding to reports attributed to unnamed diplomats that the IAEA, next week, would release documents that would raise suspicions that Iran was actively pursuing atomic weapons, a charge that Tehran has staunchly and consistently denied.

Mr. Salehi signalled that the West was habituated to using fabricated documents, and referred specifically to the accusation ahead of the 2003-war against Iraq that it had sourced uranium from Niger to run a weapon-oriented nuclear programme. "The Americans raised documents like this in the past" he said pointing to the "Niger scandal," when forged documents were "used as a pretext to invade Iraq". "After killing tens of thousands of innocent people, it was discovered that it was a forged document," Mr. Salehi observed.
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Wall Street

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

George Monbiot
George Monbiot's Blog
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:18 UTC
1% psychopaths occupy wall street
© Daniel Pudles
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality. Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves - that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive - are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves1. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers, across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.
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