Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 21 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Bizarro Earth

Latest Developments in Protest of Anti-Islam Film


The Associated Press
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 03:58 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/Khaled Desouki
Egyptian protesters burn a US flag during a demonstration against a film deemed offensive to Islam outside the US embassy in Cairo
Tunis, Tunisia - Here's a look at protests and events across the world on Thursday connected to an anti-Muslim film and caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan placed advertisements condemning an anti-Islam video on local television in an apparent attempt to dampen violent protests, in which at least 30 people in seven countries were killed, including the American ambassador to Libya.

Pakistan

A crowd of more than 2,000 people, including students affiliated with the Islamist hardline Jamaat-e-Islami party, tried to make their way to the U.S. Embassy inside a guarded enclave that houses embassies and government offices in the capital Islamabad. Riot police used tear gas and batons to keep stone-throwing demonstrators away from the enclave, and hundreds of shipping containers were lined up to cordon off the area.

Demonstrators also rallied in the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Chaman, Karachi and Peshawar, although those demonstrations were peaceful.

The protests have been fairly small by Pakistani standards, but are expected to grow Friday, the traditional Muslim day of prayer.

The Pakistani government has called a national holiday for Friday so that people could come out and demonstrate peacefully against the film.

Comment: Order Through Chaos: Who Wants to Set the World on Fire?

      Read More...
Dollar

The Rule of Money

Lewis Lapham
Tom Dispatch
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC
Romney, Obama
Here's what the latest census data tell us: in 2011, the middle class shrank to "an all-time low" (as the Washington Post headline had it), while the income of the wealthiest Americans continued to climb. The poverty rate leveled off at a still shuddering 15%, with more than one of every five Americans under eighteen living in poverty. The Gini Index, a measure of income inequality, rose by 1.6%, the "biggest one-year increase in almost two decades."

In a way, of course, this should be no news at all. Middle-class wealth has taken a staggering hit since the economic meltdown of 2007 (and African American and Hispanic wealth has gone through the floor). This disaster, linked to the Great Recession, has had a sideline effect. On the theory that what goes up must come down, money flooding out of American households and into the coffers of the incredibly wealthy and their corporate cronies has also been flowing back down in tidal amounts. It's been pouring biblically into this season's political campaign.

The news out of the dog days of August, for example, was that the Obama and Romney campaigns had raised a total of more than $225 million dollars that month alone. (In the 1984 presidential campaign between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, the two candidates raised a "mere" $202 million during that whole election season!) And, of course, those figures don't even include the dollars filling Super PACs to the bursting point and the "dark money" going into the 501(c)(4)s that don't have to disclose where their contributions even come from. (Eight of the top 10 Super PACs are "conservative," reports the Daily Beast, and 77% of all contributions this campaign season will come from "business interests," according to the invaluable Open Secrets website.)
      Read More...
Red Flag

9 Big Myths We're Being Peddled to Scare Us About Iran

Juan Cole
Alter Net
Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC
war with iran graphic
© n/a
The truth about Iran's nuclear designs is almost nowhere to be found in the corporate media.

1. Iran's civilian nuclear enrichment program is alleged by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to be a stealth nuclear weapons program. But there is no evidence at all for this allegation, and it was contradicted by Netanyahu's own Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who admitted that Iran has not decided to initiate a nuclear weapons program. Israel's chief of staff, Benny Gantz, has also admitted that Iran has not decided to build a bomb .

2. It is often argued that Iran does not need nuclear power. But it uses some petroleum for power generation, and Iranians are driving more and more. There is every prospect that what happened to Indonesia, which now uses all its own oil in addition to importing some, will happen to Iran. Iran's energy exports provide a crucial financial cushion, allowing the country to remain independent. Other oil giants, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are also building nuclear power plants. There is nothing illogical or unusual about Iran going in this direction.

3. It is alleged that Iran has threatened to annihilate Israel. It has done no such thing. Iran has a 'no first strike' policy, repeatedly enunciated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has expressed the hope that the 'Zionist regime over Jerusalem" would 'vanish from the page of time.' But he didn't threaten to roll tanks or missiles against Israel, and compared his hopes for the collapse of Zionism to the collapse of Communism in Russia. Iran has not launched a conventional war of aggression against another state in all of modern history. Israel aggressively invaded Egypt in 1956 and 1967 and Lebanon in 1982 and 2006. The list of aggressive wars fought by the US, including the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, is too long to detail. So why is Iran being configured as the aggressor?
      Read More...
MIB

NYPD Deployed Mysterious Surveillance Truck at OWS Anniversary


RT.com
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:55 UTC
Image
© privacysos.org
It's no secret that the NYPD regularly tracks movement across Manhattan using thousands of surveillance cameras installed on the island, but protesters at last week's Occupy Wall Street anniversary were in the presence of a whole new spy system.

Researchers with the blog spotted an unusual get-up attached to a New York Police Department vehicle during the recent September 17 actions that commemorated Occupy's one-year anniversary. More than a week later, little remains known about unusual equipment assumed to be state-of-the-art surveillance technology previously used during presidential motorcades.

According to the post published Wednesday to PrivacySOS, increased surveillance was evident in Lower Manhattan during the OWS anniversary in the form of watch towers and cameras affixed to poles atop unmarked police cars. At least one unmarked law enforcement vehicle was also equipped with a series of spooky gadgets and gizmos connected through heavy duty cables, resembling some sort of makeshift mobile surveillance station.
      Read More...
Blackbox

No Surprise: The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last week has led to dueling versions of what unfolded that night

Dina Temple-Raston
National Public Radio
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:16 UTC
Image
© Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters /Landov
The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was in flames during an attack on Sept. 11. There are competing narratives on whether the attack was premeditated.
The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last week has led to dueling versions of what unfolded that night in Benghazi. To hear the Obama administration tell it, the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was spontaneous - and staged by local extremists who saw an opportunity to hijack peaceful demonstrations against an offensive film.

The Libyans have a different view. They say it was a premeditated strike, launched by foreign fighters with ties to al-Qaida.

The divergence in accounts was at the center of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. For the first time, a high-ranking intelligence official described the Benghazi attack as "terrorism" and provided an on-the-record account of what the U.S. knows and doesn't know about what took place over a number of hours on Sept. 11. Also, he allowed that al-Qaida might have had some hand in what happened. This is the first official U.S. confirmation of the group's possible role.

Was It Planned?

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., for his part, got right to the point. "Do we have reason to believe at this point that that terrorist attack was preplanned for Sept. 11, or did the terrorists seize the moment?" he asked Matthew Olsen, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center.


Comment: Sure, it was planned...but not by who they'd like you to think:
Order Through Chaos: Who Wants to Set the World on Fire?

      Read More...
Blackbox

"CIA-ber" Terrorists? Bank Internet Security Advisory Group Issues Attack Warning


electronista.com
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:03 UTC
The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center warned banks to be on heightened alert after Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase experienced unexplained outages of public-facing websites on Wednesday. The warning cited "recent credible intelligence" as the justification for raising the threat level similar to that of the Department for Homeland Security scale from "elevated" to "high."

JPMorgan Chase spokesman Patrick Linehan said that the bank was "experiencing intermittent issues with Chase.com. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working to restore full connectivity."

Bank of America spokesman Mark Pipitone reported no continuing problems on Wednesday after seeing issues on Tuesday. "Our online banking services have been, and are, up and running. The vast majority of our customers have not experienced any issues."

Electronista spoke with an official at Verizon who confirmed some aspects of the report: "we're seeing attack-related traffic across portions of our network related to financial services." The official declined to provide specific information on the volume or source of the attacks.
      Read More...
No Entry

France to Close 20 Embassies in Fear of Cartoon Backlash


France 24
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC

France announced Wednesday it will close 20 embassies across the Muslim world on Friday after French weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed naked, amid growing unrest over an anti-Islamic film that has left dozens dead.

The French foreign ministry announced Wednesday that France will close 20 of its embassies in Muslim countries this Friday following the publication of controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoons by satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Major protests in the Muslim world generally take place after Friday prayers.

The illustrations, which show the Prophet Mohammed naked and refer to the incendiary US-made film which has been fueling deadly unrest among Muslim communities for over a week, hit newsstands across France on Wednesday.

The magazine's editor, Stephane Charbonnier, told reporters that the pictures, which are printed on the back page, will "shock those who will want to be shocked."
      Read More...
Pistol

'Fast and Furious' Probe Clears Holder, Faults ATF and Justice

Pierre Thomas, Jack Cloherty and Jason Ryan
ABC News
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC
Eric Holder
© Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images
Attorney General Eric Holder
Operation "Fast and Furious," the controversial undercover operation that allowed U.S. guns to be walked into Mexico, was a "risky strategy" that did not "adequately take into account the significant danger to public safety that it created."

That was the conclusion today from the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice, after an investigation that spanned more than a year and a half.

The OIG investigation found that Attorney General Eric Holder was not aware of the strategy and tactics used in "Fast and Furious," and turned up no evidence that Holder tried to cover up the operation, or mislead Congress about it. Holder was held in contempt of Congress earlier this year for allegedly withholding documents about DOJ's "Fast and Furious" investigation from congressional investigators.

In a statement today, Holder said, "It is unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless accusations before they possessed the facts about these operations -- accusations that turned out to be without foundation and that have caused a great deal of unnecessary harm and confusion."

The IG report did find that a misleading letter that the DOJ sent to Congress was "troubling" because senior officials who were involved in drafting it knew, or should have known, that reckless behavior had occurred.

Comment: Latin American High Weirdness: 'Hand of Death' Satanic CIA Cult Network

      Read More...
Heart - Black

FBI Asked to Keep Data on Anti-Sikh Hate Crimes

Larry Margasak
KHOU.com
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 05:01 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Evan Vucci
Photographs of the victims of the attack that left six Sikh worshipers dead in Oak Creek, Wis., line the walls during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012 in Washington.
Washington - The son of a massacre victim at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin asked the Obama administration on Wednesday to begin collecting statistics on hate crimes against Sikhs.

Harpreet Sing Saini, 18, told a Senate hearing he wanted to give his late mother "the dignity of being a statistic."

Saini's mother, Paramjit Kaur Saini, was among six people killed and four wounded by a gunman on Aug. 5 before a service was to begin at the temple in Oak Creek, Wis. The shooter, Wade Michael Page, was shot during a firefight with police and died after he shot himself in the head.

More than 400 people, many of them wearing the traditional Sikh turbans, attended the hearing - a crowd so large that an overflow room had to be used.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee, said he supported Saini's request and told a Justice Department witness that the government was moving too slowly on requests for the data collection. He noted that Sikh communities have been asking for these statistics for two years.

Roy Austin Jr., an official of the department's civil rights division, said the agency will bring together a wide array of religious groups in October and make recommendations to the FBI on whether the data collection should be expanded to include hate crimes against Sikhs.
      Read More...
Footprints

Probe of Secret Service Prostitution Scandal May Cite White House Advance Staff Involvement

Jana Winter
Fox News
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC
Hotel El Caribe, Cartagena
© The Associated Press
April 14, 2012: People walk past Hotel El Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia.
Federal law enforcement personnel and a congressional committee are anxiously awaiting an overdue inspector general's report that they believe may reveal the involvement of two White House advance team members in the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia earlier this year.

While much of the attention in the case has focused on the actions of Secret Service personnel, multiple law enforcement and congressional sources tell FoxNews.com that investigators also discovered two White House advance team members checked in prostitutes as overnight guests at a Cartagena hotel in the days before President Obama's April 13 visit.

"Three U.S. delegation members that stayed at the Hilton brought prostitutes back as overnight guests. One of them was ours (Secret Service) and the other two were White House staffers," a high-ranking Secret Service official told FoxNews.com. "We knew very early that White House staffers were involved."

Twelve of the 13 agents investigated for alleged misconduct in Cartagena stayed at another hotel, the El Caribe. Only one of those charged with misconduct had a room at the Hilton, where President Obama and the White House advance team also stayed.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in April, just days after Obama's visit, that there was no indication any White House advance team members were involved in the prostitution scandal.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts