Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.

Mr Bukovsky paid a visit to the European Parliament on Thursday at the invitation of Fidesz, the Hungarian Civic Forum. Fidesz, a member of the European Christian Democrat group, had invited the former Soviet dissident over from England, where he lives, on the occasion of this year's 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. After his morning meeting with the Hungarians, Mr Bukovsky gave an afternoon speech in a Polish restaurant in the Trier straat, opposite the European Parliament, where he spoke at the invitation of the United Kingdom Independence Party, of which he is a patron.

In his speech Mr Bukovsky referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of a "conspiracy" to turn the European Union into a socialist organization. I attended the meeting and taped the speech. A transcript, as well as the audio fragment (approx. 15 minutes) can be found below. I also had a brief interview with Mr Bukovsky (4 minutes), a transcript and audio fragment of which can also be found below. The interview about the European Union had to be cut short because Mr Bukovsky had other engagements, but it brought back some memories to me, as I had interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky twenty years ago, in 1986, when the Soviet Union, the first monster that he so valiantly fought, was still alive and thriving.

Mr Bukovsky was one of the heroes of the 20th century. As a young man he exposed the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1917-1991) and spent a total of twelve years (1964-1976), from his 22nd to his 34th year, in Soviet jails, labour camps and psychiatric institutions. In 1976 the Soviets expelled him to the West. In 1992 he was invited by the Russian government to serve as an expert testifying at the trial conducted to determine whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony Mr Bukovsky was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet secret archives. He is one of the few people ever to have seen these documents because they are still classified. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, however, he managed to copy many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Soviet government.

Israel has sentenced a former soldier to four and a half years in prison for leaking classified documents to a journalist who used them to expose an alleged army policy to assassinate wanted Palestinian militants in violation of court rulings.

Anat Kam, 24, was convicted in February for copying 2,085 military documents on to a disc as she completed her mandatory army service and passing some of them to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter with the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.

She escaped the much more serious charges of harming state security after reaching a plea bargain.

Her case provoked a domestic uproar - in part because she was held for four months under secret house arrest with the Israeli media banned from reporting on it, but also because it was viewed as an assault on the freedom of the press. The Independent was the first newspaper to report on Ms Kam's arrest.

In passing sentence yesterday, the three-judge panel elected to send a clear message to other would-be whistleblowers. "If the army cannot trust the soldiers serving in various units and exposed to sensitive issues, then it cannot function as a regular army," the judges wrote. They said that Ms Kam's motive for taking the documents was "mainly ideological". Ms Kam has already served nearly two years of house arrest, which will not count towards her prison term, and she received a further 18-month suspended sentence.

A new book based on a series of interviews with the Navy SEALs involved in the mission to kill Osama bin Laden claims to directly contradict the Obama administration's depiction of the operation, The Washington Examinerreported Friday.

SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden, by former SEAL commander Chuck Pfarrer, claims to tell the true story of the successful raid to kill the terror chief on May 2.

According to a press release, the book takes "readers on the helicopter flight over the wall that leads deep into the terrorist lair and describing what it looked, sounded and smelled like as the bullets flew."

The book also takes issue with the Obama administration's characterization of the mission.

"In a hasty effort to claim victory and make political haste, administration aides changed their stories several times," the release said. "Their leaks made SEAL Team Six look ineffective and clumsy."

Gerald Celente visits Talk Radio Europe yesterday and has some poignant comments about the current trends of our world.


Excerpt:

"The game is rigged and you have a bunch of money junkies and power hungry freaks that call themselves politicians and Berlusconis running the show and running people's lives into the ground. So yeah, we have these Occupy movements: They're global. And there's no end in sight. It's only going to get worse because the psychopaths and sociopaths in power are going to make sure it gets worse."

A "gigantic bank run" is imminent, so says Nobel Prize winner .

In his Nov. 1 post, the economist every one enjoys making fun of believes the endgame for the euro lies in the breadbasket of the European sovereign debt market, Italy, leading to one of two lynchpin countries, France, to collapse next. Then, it's bedlam.

"The question I'm trying to answer right now is how the final act will be played," Krugman writes. "At this point I'd guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France."

Krugman states the obvious, of course, but he offers no recommendation for Europeans to protect themselves from the all-but-certain currency devaluations as a result of a broken euro - not that he is expected to do so. But it's times like these, one would think that this quack of economics had a suggestion for Europeans to protect themselves from a currency collapse. Or maybe the collapse of euro is how Treasury will be able to fund its upcoming $628 billion offering in the coming five months without going to war in another part of the world, as he had once suggested. But in a previous post of Sept. 6, Krugman attempted to formulate a response to the "Glenn Beck" gold crowd - a response that Ben Bernanke could have used in response to Rep. Ron Paul's queries regarding gold.

The report, citing a senior Israeli official, said Mr Netanyahu was working with Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to win support from sceptical members of the cabinet who oppose attacking Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israel test-fired a ballistic missile from a military base in central Israel on Wednesday, Israel Radio said.

The report said the launch was carried out from the Palmachim facility. It quoted a Defence Ministry statement as saying the launch was aimed at testing the missile's propulsion system. Israel has Jericho missiles widely believed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The reports of Mr Netanyahu pushing for a military strike on Iran came after days of renewed public discussion among Israeli commentators about the possibility that the Jewish state would take unilateral military action against Iran.

Haaretz said that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Barak had already scored a significant win by convincing Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to throw his support behind a strike.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will hold emergency talks Wednesday with European leaders in a last-ditch bid to salvage his Group of 20 meeting of world leaders this week after the shock decision by Greece's prime minister to put his country's financial rescue to a popular vote.

Sarkozy's summit in the sun on the Cote d'Azur now will see the French president end his year as leader of the world's main industrial and developing nations in the reduced position of trying to convince counterparts from the U.S., China, Brazil and elsewhere that Europe hasn't lost the plot when it comes to resolving its two-year old sovereign debt crisis.

Sarkozy will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and top European Union officials as well as the head of the International Monetary Fund Wednesday evening before dinner with Chinese president Hu Jintao. Afterwards, the Europeans will hold another meeting, this time bringing in Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. Greece is not part of the G-20.

A British company said on Wednesday that it caused earthquakes in April and May by using hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas from shale rock.

Cuadrilla Resources said in a report that the 1.9 and 2.8 Richter scale tremors were due to an unusual combination of geology and operations and were unlikely to happen again.

"Cuadrilla's water injection operations take place very far below the earth's surface which significantly reduces the likelihood of a seismic event of less than 3 on the Richter scale having any impact at all on the surface," the company said.

Cuadrilla is the only company currently extracting shale gas using hydraulic fracturing. This method is a controversial technique by which a mix of water, sand and chemicals are pumped inside underground rock formations to free the gas.

Fracturing operations were suspended after the May 27 earthquake found just outside of Blackpool, which is the same area being used for the drilling.

The use of fracturing has increased in recent years, and residents and environmental activists have raised concerns about the impact the method has on water quality.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with working hard and making a lot of money, but there is something wrong with being completely arrogant and smug about it. Today, many among the elite are savagely mocking the poor, and that is a huge mistake. You shouldn't kick people when they are down. There are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply frustrated about losing their homes, losing their jobs or barely being able to survive in this economy. These frustrations have been one of the primary reasons for the rise of the Tea Party movement and the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

What these movements have in common is that people in both movements are sick and tired of the status quo and they want something to be done about our broken system. There are huge numbers of families out there right now that have just about reached the end of their ropes. Instead of showing compassion, many of the ultra-wealthy have decided that it is funny to mock the poor and those that are suffering.

So how are all of these protesters going to respond to the "let them eat cake" attitude of the Wall Street elite? The protesters are being told that nothing that they can do will change anything and that they should be grateful for what Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy have done for them. They are essentially being told that they should just shut up and go home. So will we see these protest movements become discouraged and die down, or will the patronizing attitudes of so many among the elite just inflame them even further?