Thursday, 13 October 2011

Anti-Semite gets called out at Occupy Wall St.

♪♫ Ghostpoet - Survive It (Later with Jools Holland)

Going to see him at my local next Thursday...

tom_watson tom_watson

Meanwhile back in London a complete tosser talks shite: bit.ly/pmj1Ml

Read the captions!!!

The “very scary” Iranian Terror plot

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011 about an alleged plot directed by elements of the Iranian government to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. (Credit: AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy.
To begin with, this episode continues the FBI’s record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular “plot” hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. “For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,” explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and “no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually ever in any danger.’”
But no matter. The U.S. Government and its mindless followers in the pundit and think-tank “expert” class have seized on this ludicrous plot with astonishing speed to all but turn it into a hysterical declaration of war against Evil, Hitlerian Iran. “The US attorney-general Eric Holder said Iran would be ‘held to account’ over what he described as a flagrant abuse of international law,” and “the US says military action remains on the table,” though “it is at present seeking instead to work through diplomatic and financial means to further isolate Iran.” Hillary Clinton thundered that this “crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.” The CIA’s spokesman at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, quoted an anonymous White House official as saying the plot “appeared to have been authorized by senior levels of the Quds Force.” Meanwhile, the State Department has issued a Travel Alert which warns American citizens that this plot “may indicate a more aggressive focus by the Iranian Government on terrorist activity against diplomats from certain countries, to include possible attacks in the United States.”
In case that’s not enough to frighten you — and, really, how could it not be? — some Very Serious Experts are very, very afraid and want you to know how Serious this all is. Within moments of Holder’s news conference, National Security Expert Robert Chesney – without a molecule of critical thought in his brain — announced that this “remarkable development” was “very scary.” Very, very scary. Chesney then printed large blocks of the DOJ’s Press Release to prove it. Self-proclaimed “counter-terrorism expert” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross tapped into his vast expertise to explain: ”Holder weighing in on the plot’s connection to Iran means the administration is deadly serious about it.” Progressive think-tank expert and Atlantic writer Steve Clemons decreed that if the DOJ’s accusations are true, then ”the US has reached a point where it must take action” and “this is time for a significant strategic response to the Iran challenge in the Middle East and globally,” which “could involve military.”
The ironies here are so self-evident it’s hard to work up the energy to point them out. Outside of Pentagon reporters, Washington Post Editorial Page Editors, and Brookings “scholars,” is there a person on the planet anywhere who can listen with a straight face as drone-addicted U.S. Government officials righteously condemn the evil, illegal act of entering another country to commit an assassination? Does anyone, for instance, have any interest in finding out who is responsible for the spate of serial murders aimed at Iran’s nuclear scientists? Wouldn’t people professing to be so outraged by the idea of entering another country to engage in assassination be eager to get to the bottom of that..?

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Glenn Greenwald @'Salon'

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters

I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.
But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.
Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.
That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year...

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Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'

rop_g Rop Gonggrijp

I swear kids the world over are doing soooo much better in school this week now that their Blackberries don't work

RIP NHS

JonathanHaynes Jonathan Haynes

Lord Owen's amendment has failed, by 262 to 330. NHS bill passes to its next stage bit.ly/qIkqWv

Wall Street protests swell in New York, Boston

A group of union-backed organizations joined the loosely defined Occupy Wall Street movement again Tuesday, leaving behind the confines of New York's financial district for the posh neighborhoods that dot Manhattan's Upper East Side, according to multiple group representatives.
Crowds also swelled in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, where demonstrators waved placards and chanted slogans attacking corporate greed and social inequality.
The union-organized march, meanwhile, took protesters past the homes of well-to-do residents like billionaire David Koch, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Organizations such as UnitedNY, the Strong Economy for All Coalition, the Working Families Party, and New York Communities for Change were accompanied by protesters typically based in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park in New York's financial district.
The Upper East Side march was "in support" of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but was not organized by it, said T.J. Helmstetter, a spokesman for Working Families Party, a coalition of New York community and labor groups.
Protesters hopped on the subway, emerging at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street near Central Park, where organizers held a press conference that addressed both New York-centric themes, such as state taxes, and the movement's broader concerns of social inequity.
"We are the 99%," the group chanted, a reference to their insistence that most Americans lack the influence in their country's political and financial affairs enjoyed by the elite 1%.
"I think it's time that these people realize that people are hurting in this country and it's time to reform what's going on in Washington," said New York resident Lenore Silverstein, who attended Tuesday's march...