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Greek Premier Says Default Would Lead to 'Chaos'

Nicholas Paphitis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Greek Police
© Reuters/Yiorgos Karahalis
A petrol bomb explodes near riot police during protests against planned reforms by Greece's coalition government in Athens, February 10, 2012.
Greece's future in the eurozone came under renewed threat Friday as popular protests again turned violent and dissent grew among its lawmakers after European leaders demanded deeper spending cuts.

The country's beleaguered coalition government promised to push through the tough new austerity measures and rescue a crucial €130 billion ($170 billion) bailout deal after six members of the Cabinet resigned.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos promised to "do everything necessary" to ensure parliament passes the new austerity measures that would slap Greeks with a minimum wage cut during a fifth year of recession. He also promised to replace any other Cabinet members who did not fully back his efforts.

"It is absolutely necessary to complete the effort that began almost two years to consolidate public finances, restore competitiveness and economic recovery," Papademos told an emergency Cabinet meeting.

Draft legislation for the new austerity measures was submitted to parliament after the five-hour meeting ended.
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Cell Phone

Interpol Accused After Journalist Arrested Over Muhammad Tweet

Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, UK
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:21 UTC
Image
© Ahmad Yusni/EPA
Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari was detained at the airport following a request by Interpol on behalf of the Saudi authorities.
Saudi Arabia used Interpol's system to get journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter

Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation's red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport "following a request made to us by Interpol" the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet on the prophet's birthday that sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. The posting, which was later deleted, read: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you ... I will not pray for you."

More than 13,000 people joined a Facebook page titled "The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari".
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Laptop

Anonymous Knocks CIA Website Offline


Agence France-Presse
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
anonymous graphic
© n/a
The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

"CIA Tango down," a member of Anonymous said on @YourAnonNews, a Twitter feed used by the group. "Tango down" is an expression used by the US Special Forces when they have eliminated an enemy.

Attempts to access the CIA website at cia.gov were unsuccessful.

More than two hours after the initial attack on the site attempts by AFP to reach cia.gov were met with a message saying the Web page was not available.

Asked about the apparent website outage, a CIA spokeswoman said: "We are looking into these reports."
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Dollar

Sierra Club took millions from natural gas fracking supporter

James Bruggers
curiier-journal.com
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:21 UTC
natural gas

US Department of Energy

Well, well. So the Sierra Club's campaign to end coal was substantially supported by a natural gas company CEO involved in the controversial practice called fracking. The club's Beyond Coal campaign is very active in Kentucky.

Bryan Walsh of TIME has the report, here, in what's as an exclusive. The report says the organization has since stopped taking the money:
TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy - one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking - to help fund the Club's Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010 - and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations - the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club's independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It's also sure to anger ordinary members who've been uneasy about the Club's relationship with corporations. "The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy," Michael Brune, the Sierra Club's executive director since 2010, told me. "The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldn't take money from industries and companies you're trying to change."
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Question

The Pope Will Die Within a Year?

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:32 UTC
Pope Benedict
© Broc/Wikimedia Commons.
Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Benedict XVI will die within a year, according to a top-secret document published on Friday by the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Dismissed by the Vatican as "nonsense not to be taken seriously," the anonymous report is dated Dec 30, 2011.

Like a Dan Brown-style thriller, the leaked document reveals a power struggle within the Vatican. The paper predicts the Pope's death by November 2012 and details the measures that are already being taken to prepare his successor.

According to the Italian daily, the letter was delivered in early January to the Vatican secretary of state and the pope's private secretary by Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos of Colombia.

Written in German and labelled "strictly confidential for the Holy Father," the "mordkomplott" begins by describing the conversations that Cardinal Paolo Romeo, the archbishop of Palermo, allegedly had last November with Italian businessmen during a trip to Beijing, China.

"During his talks in China, Cardinal Romeo predicted the death of Pope Benedict XVI within the next 12 months. His remarks were expressed with such resolution that his interlocutors thought, with a sense of alarm, that an attack on the Pope's life was being plotted," the document says.
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Take 2

Lizzie Phelan: Western Media Fabricated Mass Killings of Syrian Peaceful Demonstrators


Syrian Youths English
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:55 UTC
British journalist Lizzie Phelan describes experiences on the ground in Syria, among other things.

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People

Anonymous Vows Crusade Against Israel

Gavriel Queenann
Arutz Sheva
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:11 UTC
The International hacker group Anonymous threatened to launch a crusade against Israel's government on Thursday.

The group released a video on YouTube overnight accusing Israel of "crimes against humanity", amid an escalating Internet war between Israeli and Arab hackers.

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USA

US: Four Wisconsin Republican Lawmakers Challenge Recall Signatures

Brendan O'Brien
Reuters
Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Scott Fitzgerald
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Republican Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald
Four Wisconsin lawmakers targeted for possible recall later this year filed challenges on Thursday to the validity of thousands of signatures gathered to force the special elections, the state's Government Accountability Board said.

Organizers of the drive to recall the four Republican state senators submitted more than 18,000 pages of signed petitions with the board last month. Thursday was the deadline for the four lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, to lodge objections with the board.

In a statement, Fitzgerald cited "a wide range of irregularities, errors and outright falsehoods" in the petitions submitted to force him to defend his seat. He said he planned to challenge 4,300 of the signatures, which could be enough to derail the effort to unseat him.

All four Republicans supported the controversial curbs on public-sector union collective bargaining powers that were enacted in Wisconsin last year.

The measure, which greatly reduces the power of most public-sector unions in the state, triggered nine recall elections of state senators last summer. Two Republican senators were recalled.
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Star of David

U.S. officials tell NBC News: 'Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists'

Richard Engel
MSNBC.com
Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:50 UTC

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran's leaders.

The group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980.

The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars.

The Iranians have no doubt who is responsible - Israel and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, known by various acronyms, including MEK, MKO and PMI.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describes what Iranian leaders believe is a close relationship between Israel's secret service, the Mossad, and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

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Bacon

Syria's Bloody CIA Revolution - A Distraction?

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:48 UTC
Image

Hundreds of thousands of people have been repeatedly taking to the streets of Damascus to show their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photo taken October 12, 2011
While the mainstream media is going to great lengths to convince the world that events in Syria are the result of yet another 'people's revolution', the facts point clearly to yet another US government-sponsored bloody 'regime change'. Given that the US has been a de facto global empire for at least 60 years, with all of the power, infrastructure and influence that entails, how difficult do we think it would be for agents of the empire to manufacture a 'revolution' in any given country? The answer, surprisingly, is 'not so easily'. But it is doable, as long as the empire is willing to murder innocent civilians to create the impression of a brutal regime in need of removal. And the USA has never balked at murdering a few hundred, a few thousand, or even a few million civilians to ensure it gets its geo-political way, to the delight of psychopaths in power everywhere.
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