Puppet Masters
When Iran's president accused the U.S. at the United Nations General Assembly last year of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, American diplomats were not caught flat-footed by the tirade.
Even before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finished his incendiary rant, U.S. diplomats marched out of the cavernous U.N. hall in protest and were ready with a written statement condemning his comments.
It was as if the U.S. knew exactly what Ahmadinejad intended to say.
The walkout hinted at one of the well-known but seldom spoken truths about the United Nations: The international organization, which was founded in the name of peace and security, is also a hotbed of spying and clandestine operations, where someone might very well be listening to your conversations and monitoring your emails - or perhaps reading your speeches in advance.
Appearing before the Joint Economic Committee in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to deliver his outlook for the U.S. economy, Bernanke said recent data on jobless claims and surveys of hiring plans suggest job growth will continue to be weak.
The Fed chief also said the economy is growing more slowly than the Fed had expected and that the most significant factor depressing consumer confidence is poor job growth.
"The recovery is close to faltering," Bernanke told lawmakers, adding that the Fed is prepared to take further steps to prop up the recovery. "We need to make sure that the recovery continues and doesn't drop back and that the unemployment rate continues to fall downward."
May your noses always be cold and wet.
Watch it happen in front of your eyes. The Occupy Wall Street phenom is going viral, diversifying like a stock portfolio and popping up all over the US and in other countries as well. Look at the media not covering it. Look at the media giving out false information concerning the motivation, even to the extent of saying the protestors are protesting against people making 40 to 50 thousand dollars a year, as well as global warming. Understand that the media is owned and operated by the same people who operate at and influence Wall Street. Look at the important names that are appearing in the mix and the American Marines showing up on behalf of the protest as well. In its genesis and presentations, it is about as authentic and threatening to go nova as it can get. This is the real deal.
The traders and bankers are celebrating their imagined invulnerability. In the delusion of their fevered hubris, they are drinking champagne and talking about pouring it on the protestors, in emulation of the bankers and traders at The City of London, who waved banknotes out of their windows as they jeered the protestors. Does this look like they may and should have their heads chopped off and put on display? Does this give you the impression that Hang a Banker Day might be coming to a neighborhood near you soon? This is not an argument in favor or against this. This is an observation of the anger of the vast majority coming up against the defiance, indifference and ridicule of the minority of those causing the conditions for the anger in the first place.
The leading financiers of the Tea Party movement were last night attempting to rebut claims that a portion of their wealth comes from secretly doing business with the most un-American trading partner imaginable: the hard-line government of Iran.
Charles and David Koch, the prominent billionaires who fund a string of influential conservative think-tanks, stand accused of selling tens of millions of dollars worth of petrochemicals to Tehran, despite a longstanding US trade embargo against the nation that the former President, George W Bush, dubbed a pillar of his "Axis of Evil".
It has been reported that Koch Industries used foreign subsidiaries to supply the products, in an apparent effort to stay within the letter - if not the spirit - of the law. It has been suggested that the company used dozens of lawyers to help find a way around the embargo, and was trading with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime as recently as 2007.
Jersey-based Heritage Oil said it had paid 19.5 million US dollars (£12.6 million) for a 51% controlling stake in Benghazi-based Sahara Oil Services, which runs onshore and offshore fields.
The announcement comes as ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi remains missing and bloodshed continues to rock the North African state.
Tony Buckingham, chief executive of London-listed Heritage, said his firm was "well placed to play a significant role in the future oil and gas industry in Libya".
Heritage, which operates in Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Mali, Tanzania, Malta, Pakistan and Russia, said the stake was bought through wholly-owned subsidiary Heritage Energy International.
Many of these Afghan mineral priority areas, including the rare-earth rich Khanneshin, are world-class resources that could lead to significant commercial development. This research comes from a 2009-2011 USGS study funded by the DOD Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO).
"The USGS is exceptionally pleased by the contribution we have been able to make to future development of Afghanistan's world-class mineral resources, made possible through the application of modern remote-sensing tools," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "There is always increased risk for commercial ventures investing in new mining facilities in frontier areas such as Afghanistan, but by making information on the locations and estimated quantities and grades of ores publicly available, we lower that risk, spurring progress."
The criticism comes after U.S. senators voted Monday to open a week of debate on the bill that would allow the government to impose additional duties on products from countries that subsidize exports by undervaluing their currencies.
How worried China is about the proposed law can be seen by the fact that the Foreign Ministry, the Commerce Ministry and central bank all issued statements denouncing it.
But the legislation faces considerable hurdles before it becomes law. The Obama White House, while agreeing that China's currency, the yuan, is undervalued, has been wary of unilateral sanctions against the Beijing government.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the Senate move "seriously violated WTO rules and seriously disturbed China-U.S. trade and economic relations."

Power of the community: A French woman who collaborated with German troops is scorned by neighbours in Chartres, 1944
But more betrayals were over petty family and neighbour disputes than accusations of being French Jews.
The findings were aired at the world's first international conference on French denunciation in the Second World War, in Caen.
They challenge some of the popular misconceptions about denunciation in wartime France.
Historians now say only a very small percentage related to Jews and a large proportion - around a quarter - of the letters were about French family dramas often involving husbands, wives, lovers and village rivals.
"Denunciation was a very easy way of getting rid of someone," said Laurent Joly, the historian who organised the conference.
I wish I could believe this Occupy Wall Street was still about (r)Evolution, but so far, all I am seeing is a painful rehash of how the government turned the pre-Presidential election tea party movement into the joke it is now. We were anarchists and ultra-libertarians, but above all we were peaceful. So, the media tried painting us as racists. But when that didn't work they tried to goad us into violence. When that failed, they killed our movement with money and false kindness from the theocratic arm of the Republican party. That killed our popular support.
I am sharing these observations, so you guys know what's going on and can prevent the media from succeeding in painting you as violent slacker hippies rebelling without a cause, or from having the movement be hijacked by a bunch of corporatists seeking to twist the movement's original intentions. If you think this can't happen, it happened to the Independence Party and the tea party movement. Don't let it happen to your movement as well.
Comment: What the author details comes right out of the Ponerization/Cointelpro playbook described in Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology.

PM's predicament: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (left) is fighting charges that he paid model and nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, known as Ruby, for sex when she was 17.
The same court, in a separate case, indicted three of Mr Berlusconi allies accused of having paid young girls to attend sex parties at the premier's villa in Arcore, near Milan.
They will stand trial from November 21.
Italy's head of state, who celebrated his 75th birthday last week amid a string of legal cases, was not present when his team asked for judgment to be postponed to February, pending a Constitutional Court ruling on the Milan court's competence in the case.
Mr Berlusconi is accused of having bought sex from Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, nicknamed "Ruby the Heart Stealer", when she was 17 - a crime punishable by three years in jail.











