Puppet MastersS


Dollar

Italy pushes through austerity law

Barry Moody & George Georgiopoulos
Reuters
Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:40 UTC
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© Reuters/Stefano RellandiniThe Senate is seen during a voting session in Rome November 11, 2011.
Italy's parliament began rushing through austerity measures demanded by the European Union to avert a euro zone meltdown, after U.S. President Barack Obama ratcheted up pressure for more dramatic action from the currency bloc.

Italy's Senate approved a new budget law, clearing the way for approval of the package in the lower house on Saturday and the formation of an emergency government to replace that of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

In Athens, former European Central Bank policymaker Lucas Papademos was sworn in as Greek prime minister after days of political wrangling, tasked with meeting the terms of a bailout plan to avert bankruptcy.

Obama spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy late on Thursday and also called Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

A German government official said there had been an "exchange of opinions" between Merkel and Obama, while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner demanded fast action from Europe.

"The crisis in Europe remains the central challenge to global growth. It is crucial that Europe move quickly to put in place a strong plan to restore financial stability," Geithner said in a statement following a meeting with finance ministers from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation countries.

Comment: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - A. Einstein

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Star of David

America's Deadly Dynamics With Iran

David E. Sanger
New York Times
Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:49 UTC
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© Tavis Coburn
Commuting to work in Tehran is never easy, but it is particularly nerve-racking these days for the scientists of Shahid Beheshti University. It was a little less than a year ago when one of them, Majid Shahriari, and his wife were stuck in traffic at 7:40 a.m. and a motorcycle pulled up alongside the car. There was a faint "click" as a magnet attached to the driver's side door. The huge explosion came a few seconds later, killing him and injuring his wife.

On the other side of town, 20 minutes later, a nearly identical attack played out against Mr. Shahriari's colleague Fereydoon Abbasi, a nuclear scientist and longtime member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Perhaps because of his military training, Mr. Abbasi recognized what was happening, and pulled himself and his wife out the door just before his car turned into a fireball. Iran has charged that Israel was behind the attacks - and many outsiders believe the "sticky bombs" are the hallmarks of a Mossad hit.

Perhaps to make a point, Mr. Abbasi, now recovered from his injuries, has been made the director of Iran's atomic energy program. He travels the world offering assurances that Iran's interest in nuclear weapons is peaceful.

Even for the Iranian scientists who get to work safely, life isn't a lot easier. A confidential study circulating through America's national laboratories estimates that the Stuxnet computer worm - the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed against another country's infrastructure - slowed Iran's nuclear progress by one to two years. Now it has run its course. But there is no reason to believe the attacks are over.
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Top Secret

US Republican candidate Perry Can't Remember Agency He Wants to Cut


National Journal
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:44 UTC
At Wednesday's CNBC debate in Michigan, Texas Gov. Rick Perry had a major gaffe in which he could not remember a federal agency he wanted to cut. (For the record, that agency was the Department of Energy.)


Comment: See also: Twilight of the Puppets: Rick Perry's Crazy Speech & The Mental Collapse of U.S. Politicians

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Bell

Best of the Web: The Cost of the Iraq War

Pat Williams
Flathead Beacon
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:16 UTC
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© Trussell & Trussell
The President has ordered our troops home from Iraq by year's end, but it was President George W. Bush who first announced this withdrawal date of Dec. 31, 2011. President Barack Obama is enforcing that timetable despite the opposition from some.

Bush is the person who ordered us into the war in Iraq and now we need to consider the benefits and costs of that fateful decision.

First, Americans remember that we were led to war by falsehoods. Again and again President Bush and his top officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld misled the American people about Iraq's supposed possession of "weapons of mass destruction." Why and how we got into this misbegotten war is critical and we must not forget the lies told from on high, which continue to eat away at our nation's body politic.

It is also important to remember the costs and casualties. As of the beginning of this year, the U.S. has spent and approved $900 billion on the Iraq War. Few can fathom that amount; so think about it this way: at the height of spending in Iraq, we were going through $5,000 each second. Yes, taxpayers' money.

According to our government's Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen, $6.5 billion for reconstruction of Iraq's buildings and infrastructure was reported stolen. Bowen calls it, "the largest theft of funds in national history." Certainly the money was stolen by people and companies in the private sector as well as by Iraqi officials.
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Star of David

How did Israel get its stranglehold on the entire world?


Desert Peace
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:05 UTC
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© Bendib
The revelation this week of what some world leaders think of Netanyahu was not a surprise to most of us. What remains a mystery, however, is why do these same world leaders kiss up to Israel and support them financially and militarily?

From Haaretz
... The Anti-Defamation League said it was "deeply disappointed" by the private exchange between French President Nicholas Sarkozy and U.S. President Barack Obama in which the two leaders were overheard making critical remarks about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I too was deeply disappointed that the exchange was 'off the record' and not part of a global condemnation of Israel's leadership and their policies.

But the question remains, how did Israel get its stranglehold on the entire world? One reader suggested in a comment yesterday that; I think that Israel blackmails nations - that if nations do not do its bidding, they threaten another 911, or something similar. Once I heard Dennis Kucinich say that paying billions a year to Israel is the necessary price we pay for keeping them from lighting the match. It is high time that the politicians come out in public - perhaps today's EAS test would have been a good time to do it - and spill the beans to the world. If we all knew what Israel holds over us, Israel would NOT be able to get away with what it does. Our leaders need to stop being cowards and stand up to the bully.
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Dollar

Experts Suggest the CIA, Not Kim Jong-il, is Counterfeiting Dollars

Klaus W. Bender
Koea Is One
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:01 UTC
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© Unknown
"Sources allege that the CIA prints the falsified 'Supernotes' at a secret facility near Washington to fund covert operations without Congressional oversight."

The American secret service, the CIA, could be responsible for manufacturing the nearly-perfect counterfeit 50 and 100-dollar-notes that Washington pins on the terror regime of North Korea. The charge comes after an extensive investigation in Europe and Asia by the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung of Frankfurt, and after interviews with counterfeit money experts and leading representatives of the high-security publishing industry.

The U.S.-dollar forgeries designated "Supernotes," which are so good that even specialists are unable to distinguish them from genuine notes, have circulated for almost two decades without a reliable identification of the culprits. Because of their extraordinary quality, experts assume that some country must be behind the enterprise.
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Bell

Perfect Storm of Internet Censorship

James Corbett
The Corbett Report
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:57 UTC
In recent weeks the governments of Britain, Israel, the US, Japan, India and China have reported alleged cyber attacks by foreign militaries, hackers, and malicious software like Duqu, a virus similar to the Stuxnet cyber weapon constructed by Israel and the US for use against Iran's nuclear program. Although the nature and origin of the attacks or even whether they took place at all cannot be independently confirmed, the supposed threats are being used to propose punishing new legislation aimed at stifling internet freedoms and are igniting new rivalries in what many see as the battlefield of the 21st century: cyberspace.

In the US, a report to congress by the National Counterintelligence Executive is touting cyber-espionage as a major threat to the American economy. In a section entitled "Pervasive Threat from Adversaries and Partners" the report reads:

"Chinese actors are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage" and "Russia's intelligence services are conducting a range of activities to collect economic information and technology from US targets."

In the wake of the report, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency tasked with maintaining the US military's technological advantage, has asked for a 73% funding increase in fiscal 2012, from $120 million to $208 million. Meanwhile, China has lashed out at the report, calling such allegations "irresponsible."

Now, governments around the world are using fears over cyber attacks as an excuse to crack down on the internet freedoms of their own populations.

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Black Cat

US Former Navy Seal tells different story of Bin Laden's death


MSNBC / Associated Press
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:09 UTC

Comment: Be sure to check out Joe Quinn's article Bin Laden Is Dead... Long Live Bin Laden!

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Top Secret

US: Secret Watergate testimony unsealed

Calvin Woodward, Nanacy Benac
Associated Press
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:55 UTC
Washington - Richard Nixon's grand jury testimony about the Watergate scandal that destroyed his presidency is finally coming to light.
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© The Washington Post

Four months after a judge ordered the June 1975 records unsealed, the government's Nixon Presidential Library was making them available online Thursday. Historians hoped that the testimony would form Nixon's most truthful and thorough account of the circumstances that led to his extraordinary resignation 10 months earlier under threat of impeachment.

"This is Nixon unplugged," said historian Stanley Kutler, a principal figure in the lawsuit that pried open the records. Still, he said, "I have no illusions. Richard Nixon knew how to dodge questions with the best of them. I am sure that he danced, skipped, around a number of things."

Nixon was interviewed near his California home for 11 hours over two days, when a pardon granted by his successor, Gerald Ford, protected him from prosecution for any past crimes. Despite that shield, he risked consequences for perjury if he lied under oath.

It was the first time an ex-president had testified before a grand jury and it is rare for any grand jury testimony to be made public. Historians won public access to the transcript over the objections of the Obama administration, which argued in part that too many officials from that era are still alive for secret testimony involving them to be made public.
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Blackbox

Banker Papademos named new Greek prime minister


Associated Press
Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:00 UTC
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© Associated PressIn this May 4 2005 file photo, Lucas Papademos, former European Central Bank (ECB) Vice President attends a news conference about the results of the ECB-meeting in Berlin.
Former European banker Papademos named prime minister, to head interim government

Athens, Greece - Senior banker Lucas Papademos has been officially named as Greece's new prime minister, after four days of intense talks to form a coalition government.

The interim government aims to approve a new €130 billion ($177 billion) financial aid deal and cement the debt-strapped country's position in the 17-nation eurozone.

The 64-year-old former vice president of the European Central Bank was named Thursday to head a coalition backed by the governing Socialists and the opposition conservatives that is expected to operate until early elections in February.

Papademos will replace outgoing Prime Minister George Papandreou, midway through the Socialists' four-year term.

Comment: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein

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