The United States is assembling a series of secret drone bases in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula to launch an aggressive campaign against al-Qaida-linked groups in Somalia and Yemen, the Washingon Post reported Tuesday night.

The Post said the new bases are in Ethiopia, the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and on the Arabian Peninsula. The military has also flown drones out of Djibouti, at the conjunction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

In addition to using armed drones in Yemen and Somalia, the U.S. government has used them in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Libya is the most recent country where the U.S. has used drones. Unarmed Predator drones flew surveillance missions to support the NATO mission against Moammar Gadhafi, officials have said.

The Post said the expansion of the drone program in the Arabian Peninsula reflected U.S. alarm over al-Qaida affiliates in Yemen and Somalia.

Eye-witnesses are claiming police brutality accompanied three arrests in New York City's Zuccotti Park. NYPD sought to tear down tents and stop livestream.

Watched in real time by an international audience, New York's police officers moved in on Zuccotti Park. It was 7.20am, on September 20th 2011, and a light rain was falling over the 200-300 people camping out there. They had been there for four days, as part of the Occupy Wall Street protest. What began as a request from police, to remove tents and tarpaulin, ended in seven arrests. Onlookers claimed these were too violent.

The Global Revolution Livestream captured much of the incident, channeling the footage in real time to its 3000 plus viewers. In addition, some protesters were filming the arrests, then they uploaded their videos onto YouTube.

You may or may not have heard about the occupation of Wall Street by several thousand protestors. The event was organized by "OccupyWallStreet", with the intent of demonstrating to Wall Street (for the first time) that while our politicians and right-wing media may not object to what they've done to our country and its people, the people damn well object.

Wall Street is the biggest contributor to our politicians, so we can never expect our government to stand up to them. Wall Street has long ago been given a green light to rape the country and the citizens without fear of retribution. So it's up to the people to do something about it. But with all that power, the police is directed to violate the protestors civil rights.

Yahoo is getting in on the act of silencing the protestors. They started censoring email messages about the protestors. Just one more nail in the coffin of freedom here in America.

Here are two videos, the first of which is the police attacking and beating some of the protestors. The second is the police tearing down a tarp the protestors had set up to protect their camera equipment from the rain.

Ever wonder how Amazon keeps prices so low and ships your books and Blu-Ray discs so quickly? Certainly not by providing a living wage, health benefits, or a safe workplace to the people who pack them.

The Morning Call newspaper of Allentown, Penn., investigated working conditions at the online retail hegemon's Lehigh Valley warehouse, and the results were, well, quite a doozy. It seems a temp agency keeps the shop staffed with $11 and $12-an-hour workers, who endure a breakneck pace, constant threat of dismissal if they can't keep up, and Bikram yoga-like temperatures for a slim chance at a permanent job with Amazon.

Apparently when Amazon offers to bribe California with jobs to avoid paying sales taxes there, these are the sort of jobs it's talking about -- ones that require ambulances parked outside to cart away the casualties:

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

When I watched John Stossel on Fox Business, He had the man who done Candid Camera for years on and off. The host of Candid Camera tell the audience on all his spoofs on camera might be funny. He also exposes the reality of people will not question authority even doing the most absurd things. You be the judge and you tell me. Is it scary people will not question authority? Watch and enjoy.

The International Monetary Fund has slashed its outlook for the U.S. economy and global growth through 2012.

In its September 2011 World Economic Outlook, released Tuesday, the international lending organization said it now expects the U.S. economy to grow just 1.5 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2012, down from its June forecast of 2.5 percent in 2011 and 2.7 percent in 2012.


Overall, advanced economies are facing anemic growth of only 1.6 percent in 2011, the IMF said in its latest forecast, adding that the global economic recovery is slowing, with world growth projected at 4 percent in both 2011 and 2012, down from over 5 percent in 2010.

"The global economy is in a dangerous new phase," the IMF said. "Global activity has weakened and become more uneven, confidence has fallen sharply recently, and downside risks are growing."

I have been following the scientific research on psychopathy by Canada's Professor Robert Hare for some years given his seminal work on demonstrating that the common notions of psychopathy are grossly over-simplistic and one-dimensional. In their purest form Psychopaths literally are, as the title of one of Professor Hare's books suggests, "without conscience" but are not all like some Hannibal Lecter stereotype or likely to end up in prison or secure mental institution. Psychopaths are an aberrant minority or human sub-group that can be highly intelligent and able to assess and mimic normal human emotions and empathy so as to disguise their true nature from society, colleagues and even spouses. Intelligent psychopaths can in fact teach themselves to intellectually understand normal cooperative emotional human beings in considerable detail without sharing or feeling normal human emotions and sympathy - which are viewed by psychopaths as weaknesses and not the long-term communal human survival traits/strategies that they actually are.

Professor Hare pointed out that psychopaths thrive in the fields of big-business and politics and can create mayhem therein. Intelligent psychopaths can be very charming and charismatic and find their way into various positions of leadership because of such outward characteristics that are combined with single-minded and determined ruthlessness. Unfortunately, such charisma and decisiveness has beguiling broad appeal to non-psychopaths who do not have the either the time or inclination to undertake or audit various leadership responsibilities themselves. Psychopaths seek to be in positions of power, crave malign thrills and enjoy manipulating others and derive a sense of superiority from such pursuits.

Professor Hare coined the term "snakes in suits" to describe such individuals amongst the professional classes who are a major threat to wider humanity. Moreover, as Professor Hare postulated, there is increasing evidence of both a genetic predisposition and learned-behaviour component to psychopathy which is why it is often manifest within family dynasties and fostered by certain political, institutional and social regimes/environments. Researchers into criminal International Banking and Neo-Malthusian Eugenics will have little doubt that such psychopathy is a major factor within malign architects of of our rapidly assembling global 'New World Order'. Al Gore, whose pseudo-scientific claims on anthropogenic global warming were dismissed by the UK High Court, and Tony Blair, whose misrepresentations on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction led to war, have both for example been cited as exhibiting unrepentant psychopathic white-collar traits.

China could step in to help rescue Europe from its debt crisis after holding top-level talks with Italy's finance minister.

The Italian government confirmed on Tuesday that Giulio Tremonti had met the head of China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign wealth fund, in Rome last week. It is understood that Tremonti asked the Chinese delegation to consider buying Italy's sovereign debt and making strategic investments in Italian companies.

The Italian treasury declined to give details of the meeting, but traders were encouraged that Beijing might use its financial muscle to help the eurozone.

News of the talks came as Barack Obama warned that the world economy would suffer badly if Spain and Italy were sucked deeper into the European debt crisis.

As if having the U.S. lose its stellar credit rating wasn't enough, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether some hedge funds and specialized trading firms profited from the debt downgrade through alleged insider trading, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper, quoting people familiar with the matter, said the probe is focusing on firms that bet stocks would plummet (as they did) after Standard & Poor's slashed the U.S. debt rating a notch to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5.

The article didn't name specific companies. It said, however, that a person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that investigators were asking who at the firms had heard first about the debt downgrade, how they got that information and when they got it. The SEC declined to comment, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Israel Given Two Bites of the Apple

Almost all the factual findings, as well as the legal analysis and conclusions of the recently leaked UN Secretary General's Panel of Inquiry into the "Flotilla Incident" on May 31, 2010 (Palmer/Uribe Panel) directly contradict those of an earlier UN report of the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission (FFM, whose conclusion that Israel's blockade of Gaza, including the naval blockade is illegal, was just reaffirmed on September 13, 2011 by five independent UN rights Special Rapporteurs. In line with all statements Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon has made about Gaza, the Goldstone report, and statements by other international agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), these UN international law experts rejected the Palmer/Uribe conclusions and demanded that "[t]he Israeli blockade of Gaza must end immediately and the people of Gaza must be afforded protection in line with international law."

For this reason, until a dispositive ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is issued on the legality of Israel's closure of Gaza, including its naval blockade, and therefore on the lawfulness of Israel's attack on the Mavi Marmara and other flotilla vessels, the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Palmer/Uribe Panel deserve no deference. States need not heed its recommendation to "dissuade" their citizens from trying to break the blockade. The Free Gaza Movement and other civil society initiatives to challenge the blockade certainly do not intend to abandon our mission; our boats will sail again.