Puppet Masters
To those brainwashed by America's Zionist corporate media, the question sounds like paranoid fantasy. But the truth is that powerful geopolitical actors do sometimes attempt to intimidate each other through "plausibly deniable" threats. And the Zionists, masters of hardball realpolitik, are said to do such things with some regularity, not to mention chutzpah.
Item: Obama leaves his microphone on to tell the world that Netanyahu is a liar. Zionist flack Dennis Ross is ejected from the White House. It looks like Obama isn't going to obey Netanyahu's orders to attack Iran.
Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it's time for the law to change.
We're raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management.
Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world's major banks are tangled up.
Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius' guess of 10 times the world's annual GDP. "Are the derivatives regulated?" asks Mobius. "No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes."
In other words, something along the lines of securitized mortgages is lurking out there, ready to trigger another crisis as in 2007-08.
Near the end of the 15th century, the Catholic monarchy in Spain established a tribunal court, whose purpose was ostensibly to ferret out and prosecute Protestants, Muslims, and Jews. Townspeople were encouraged to turn in their neighbors in exchange for leniency. The operating presumption was that the accused were guilty, and had to prove their innocence.
That concept of guilty until proven innocent is exactly the sort of principle that America's polticians are looking to embrace with pending legislation. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is currently in the process of debating the Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA]. The full text is available here [PDF].
Five Republican congressmen who visited Israel last week disclosed the bill.
The bill states an "expression of support for Israel's right to defend its sovereignty and to protect the lives and safety of its citizens and use all necessary means to confront and eliminate the nuclear threat that emerges from the Islamic Republic of Iran, including use military force in the absence of other diplomatic means available in the near future. "
Dozens of Kuwaiti protesters stormed parliament late on Wednesday, as hundreds more demonstrated outside.
Eyewitnesses said they were demanding that Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah step down.
Hundreds of people, including opposition lawmakers, have been protesting weekly outside parliament over alleged corruption.
Some reports said riot police had beaten demonstrators using batons as they gathered outside parliament.
AFP news agency reports that at least five protesters were injured.
"Now, we have entered the house of the people," said Mussallam al-Barrak, who was among those who led the protest against Sheikh Nasser, a nephew of the emir.
A bipartisan group of senators is poised to force through dramatic changes to how the US government handles suspected terrorists - over the objections of the White House and Senate Democratic leadership.
Legislative language that emerged from the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday afternoon would mandate the automatic, indefinite military detention of noncitizens apprehended in the United States who are suspected members of Al Qaeda or associated groups. The wording, which is part of a must-pass bill to fund the military, also appears to allow the indefinite military detention of citizens and legal permanent residents. The bill would also extend restrictions on transfers of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, though only for one year.
Obama administration officials fear that the mandatory detention provisions could force the FBI to interrupt ongoing investigations in order to hand suspected terrorists over to the military. They also worry that the new rules could interfere with the prosecution of suspected terrorists in federal courts. At a homeland security and counterterrorism conference in September, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan warned that "this approach would impose unprecedented restrictions on the ability of experienced professionals to combat terrorism." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held up the defense funding bill in mid-October on the basis of the those objections. The latest changes to the bill appear to address some of the administration's concerns by claiming that designating an individual a terrorist "does not require the interruption of ongoing surveillance or intelligence gathering activities." But civil liberties advocates are disappointed.
Wonkette reports that Homeland Security likely organized the crack downs:
Remember when people were freaking out over the Patriot Act and Homeland Security and all this other conveniently ready-to-go post-9/11 police state stuff, because it would obviously be just a matter of time before the whole apparatus was turned against non-Muslim Americans when they started getting complain-y about the social injustice and economic injustice and income inequality and endless recession and permanent unemployment? That day is now, and has been for some time. But it's also now confirmed that it's now, as some Justice Department official screwed up and admitted that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated the riot-cop raids on a dozen major #Occupy Wall Street demonstration camps nationwide yesterday and today. (Oh, and tonight, too: Seattle is being busted up by the riot cops right now, so be careful out there.)
Rove asked, "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" Chants of "We are the 99 percent!" broke out and Rove responded, "No you're not! You wanna keep jumping up and yelling that you're the 99 percent? How presumptuous and arrogant can you think you are!"
Here's the video:
Apparently Rove forgot about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights like he did during the Bush Administration. Americans have the right to protest and have freedom of speech. Those rights were given to us by the Founding generation. Rove is petulant child who has no business calling himself an American if he can't even remember that. He basically inferred that the protesters have no rights as Americans. You have to applaud the protesters. They certainly got under Rove's skin.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview:
Press TV: Mr. Morris, the US has waged two wars in the name of fighting against terrorism and it has killed many people in the course of these wars, including thousands of American soldiers who have lost their lives, but at the same time it is promoting and engaging in terror activities. How do you explain this contradiction?
Morris: Well, first of all thank you for having me back on Press TV. To your question you are talking about the Neo- conservatives in the American government- actually in America that have a lot of influence not only on the Republicans in the US congress but also in the executive branch.











Comment: As has been said in the past, "the days of freedom on the internet are numbered". There is currently nothing you can do on the net that cannot be tracked.
in every possible way who would annihilate knowledge
and reason and mind, and yet ventures to speak
confidently about everything."
Plato, Phaedo