A member of the Iranian parliament's National Security Committee
said on Monday that the military was set to practice its ability to
close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most
important oil transit channel in the world, but there was no official
confirmation.
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The easiest way to deal with a debt spiral is to let it keep going and going.
WITHIN mere minutes of spotting a car travelling on a dusty track
in the United States’ south-western desert, the Republic of Singapore
Air Force’s (RSAF) latest and most lethal “smart” bomb found and hit its
target.
Martial Law Comes To Your Cellphone...
WOW
From A-Z, the Arab Spring is Fake.
An online piracy bill in the House would "criminalize linking and
the fundamental structure of the Internet itself," according to Google
Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Seventy-six percent of those surveyed said most representatives do
not deserve to be reelected, the highest number in the 19 years Gallup
has asked the question and six points higher than in August, just after
the contentious debate over raising the debt ceiling.
Latvia's largest bank scrambled Monday to head off a run among
depositors who were gripped by rumours of the bank's imminent ruin.
Heralding a New Level of the Police State
Billionaire market speculator and philanthropist George Soros bought
about $2 billion worth of European bonds from now-bankrupt MF Global —
the same debt that pushed the firm to collapse, according to The Wall
Street Journal.
A largely overlooked exchange from Thursday’s House Judiciary
Committee hearing includes what appears to be an admission from Attorney
General Eric Holder that emails to and from him about Operation Fast
and Furious may exist, and that he’s refusing to provide them to
Congress.
After months of negotiations, the U.S. and Canada have unveiled new
trade, regulatory and security initiatives to speed up the flow of
goods and people across the border. The joint action plans provide a
framework that goes beyond NAFTA and continues where the Security and
Prosperity Partnership (SPP) left off. This will take U.S.-Canada
integration to the next level and is the pretext for a North American
Homeland Security perimeter.
United Nations climate envoys have proposed the creation of a
global “climate court” that would be responsible for enforcing a
sprawling set of rules requiring developed countries to cut emissions
while compensating poorer countries in order to pay off a “historical
climate debt.” The proposals are contained in a draft document pieced
together for the climate conference in Durban, South Africa.
Representatives at the conference are struggling to come up with a
compromise that negotiators from 194 nations can agree on.
Farmageddon, The Unseen War on American Family Farms, vividly conveys the stories of numerous farmers who found themselves on the wrong side of government food policy.
According to first-hand accounts and reports provided to Boiling
Frogs Post by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours
foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to
spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of “Al-Mafraq”, which
is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border.
The prospect of European heavyweights like Italy or Spain turning
to the IMF for rescue loans is worrying the United States and other
nations that fear they could suffer losses on funds they have extended
to the IMF.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning,
sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects
and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known
arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that
has helped revolutionize modern warfare.
Interesting Prospect...
An agreement reached by European countries for deeper economic
integration was a step in the right direction but not a complete
solution for the euro zone’s debt crisis, International Monetary Fund
(IMF) chief economist Olivier Blanchard said on Sunday.
As the evidence begins to mount pointing the accusing finger at the
increasingly illegitimate corporate-financier occupiers of the West’s
governments as having built up Russian opposition movements and being
behind the current unrest filling Russia’s streets, the corporate media
has already started to rewrite events as they unfold.
Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks
broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran’s airspace by
the US drone was a “hostile act” and warned of a “bigger” response. He
did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.
The man who shot dead a campus police officer at Virginia Tech on
Thursday before killing himself was a student at a nearby university who
had stolen an SUV at gunpoint the day before, officials said.
This will be a weekly post, of weekend wrap ups, notables, and other editor musings.
Germany’s state and federal interior ministers have agreed to make a
second legal attempt at banning the far-right National Party of Germany
(NPD).
Ignoring ranks of riot police with unmuzzled dogs, gusting snow,
and accusations by Vladimir Putin that protesters are dupes of the
United States tens of thousands of Muscovites poured into Bolotnaya
Square, across the river from the Kremlin, to vent their anger at
alleged fraud and vote-rigging on behalf of the ruling United Russia(UR)
party in last weekend’s parliamentary elections
There is compelling evidence that the United Nations collaborated
in the forced sterilization of poor, rural women in Peru from 1995 to
1997. The controversy revolves around Peru’s National Program for Family
Planning, which received funding from both the United Nations
Population Fund and U.S. Agency for International Development. The
Program included a campaign entitled Voluntary Surgical
Contraception—that is, sterilization. An estimated 100,000 to 300,000
people, mostly women, were sterilized.Doctors and hospitals were
pressured to meet sterilization quotas. It’s not surprising that reports
and testimonials of forced sterilizations abound.
Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the debt of BNP Paribas
(BNPP.PA), Societe Generale (SOGN.PA), and Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA) on
Friday, citing deteriorating liquidity and funding conditions.
Large-scale strikes have hit China in recent weeks, as workers
resentful about low salaries or lay-offs face off with employers
juggling high costs and exports hit by lower demand from the
debt-burdened West.
Barely two weeks after a NATO helicopter disaster killed 24
Pakistani troops, the skies above the Afghanistan-Pakistan border may
get even more dangerous. The State Department’s Islamabad embassy is
hiring a contractor to coordinate air operations along the border to
stop the flow of drugs and insurgents. Just what a tense situation calls for.
The agreement European leaders reached Thursday night was taken by
some as a sign that the eurozone would avoid breakup. Not so fast.
Economists, political leaders and other observers caution that the new
pact does not go far enough to address the immediate liquidity crisis
threatening European banks and governments.
TOP US military officer General Martin Dempsey has admitted he is
“extraordinarily concerned” about the euro’s survival, pointing to
potential civil unrest and the breakup of the European Union.
In an interview with Steven Weiss of The Jewish Channel following
the Republican Jewish Coalition forum earlier this week Newt Gingrich
said the Palestinians are an “invented people.”
Wall Street's poorly hidden, poorly coordinated agenda in Russia. Who is behind it?
SPP by stealth...
Employers who pay their workers cash under the table to avoid
payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance and other government
mandates are costing California about $7 billion annually in lost tax
revenue and undercutting companies that play by the rules, state
officials say.
It's a battle of the Congressional antipiracy acronyms. In one
corner are SOPA and PROTECT IP, the House and Senate bills that would
bring site blocking, search engine de-listing, and more to the US in an
effort to stop "rogue" sites. In the other corner, today's challenger:
the Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, called the
"OPEN" Act (PDF).
An Oregon judge has ruled that a Montana blogger is not eligible
for the legal protections afforded to journalists, letting stand a $2.5
million defamation verdict.
Google made its first foray into the growing field of social facial
recognition technologies on Thursday, introducing Find My Face, a
tagging suggestion tool for its Google+ social network.
The battle has pitted huge content generators like Disney and the
motion picture industry against their online competitors, with each side
reportedly spending some $90 million on lobbying efforts.
President Barack Obama promised that "No options off the table means I'm considering all options."
It seems that Monsanto may be having a rough week.
Who thought violent reprisals by “the people” are only contained to Greece.
The chance of a military strike on Iran has roughly tripled in the
past year, the senior geopolitical risk analyst at Barclays Capital said
on Thursday.
Soon after Virginia Tech officials at a hearing defended actions
taken to notify the campus as a 2007 shooting rampage unfolded, the
university on Thursday issued a series of warnings about gunfire on its
campus five hours away.
The grim face of totalitarianism is emerging in the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA) now before Congress.
Going after criminal cases targeting fraud has come down to what’s easier to prosecute for the Obama administration.
