'CIA, MI6 'journos' in Tripoli Rixos hotel, outside NATO loses ground'

S&P And The BilderBergers: All Part of The Plan?

Ellen Brown writes in Web of Debt:

In an illuminating expose posted on Firedoglake on August 5, Jane Hamsher concluded:

It’s becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor’s has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P’s insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt. . . .

It’s time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves.

Who Drove the S&P Agenda?

Jason Schwarz shed light on this question in an article on Seeking Alpha titled “The Rise of Financial Terrorism”. He wrote:

[A]fter the market close on Friday August 5th, we received word that S&P CEO Deven Sharma had taken control of the ratings agency and personally led the push for a U.S. downgrade. There is a lot of evidence that he has deliberately tried to trash the U.S. economy. Even after discovering that the S&P debt calculations were off by $2 trillion, Sharma made the decision to go ahead with the unethical downgrade. This is a guy who was a key contributor at the 2009 Bilderberg Summit that organized 120 of the world's richest men and women to push for an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency.

[T]hrough his writings on “competitive strategy” S&P CEO Sharma considers the United States the PROBLEM in today’s world, operating with what he implies is an unfair and reckless advantage. The brutal reality is that for "globalization" to succeed the United States must be torn asunder . . .

Also named by Schwarz as a suspect in the market manipulations was Michel Barnier, head of European Regulation. Barnier triggered an alarming 513-point drop in the Dow on August 4, when he blocked the plan of Hans Hoogervorst, newly appointed Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, to save Europe by adopting a new rule called IFRS 9. The rule would have eliminated mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from European bank balance sheets. Schwarz writes:

We all should be experts on the dangers of mark-to-market accounting after observing the U.S. banking crisis of 2008/2009 and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Mark-to-market was repealed at 8:45 a.m on April 2, 2009, which finally put a stop to the short term liquidity crisis and at the same time ushered in a stock market recovery. Banks no longer had to raise capital as long term stability was brought back to the system. The exact same scenario would have happened in 2011 Europe under Hoogervorst's plan. Without the threat of failure by those banks who hold high amounts of euro sovereign debt, investors would be free to move on from the European crisis and the stock market could resume its fundamental course.

Schwarz notes that Barnier, like Sharma, was a confirmed attendee at past Bilderberger conferences. What, then, is the agenda of the Bilderbergers?

~ more... ~

Knowledge and belief: the immorality of capitalism -- Professor Bob Brecher Part 1

It's important in everyday life to be able to tell the difference between what we merely believe, or what we think we know, and what we really know. Otherwise we might, for instance, miss the train, be late for an appointment or get a terrible shock after we die.

The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Capitalism Stole My Virginity


'Libyan gold was globalist game all along'


NATO Loots Libyan Gold As Tripoli Falls
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com: Precisely as we predicted last month, NATO forces and their Al-Qaeda backed rebels launched a massive assault on Tripoli in order to wrap up the looting and conquest of Libya in time for crucial talks at the UN on Palestinian statehood set to begin in less than two weeks.

Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds
Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in a brutal insurgency.

Anarchist/Antifascist Prisoner Thomas Blak Writes From Wormwood Scrubs
"From Athens, our inspiration, to London, it’s time to stand up and stand united, with passion and determination."

Passive revolution: are the rich starting to get scared?
It was a week of opposites. As stock markets around the world continued tonosedive into financial meltdown, the world’s third wealthiest man told US Congress to stop coddling the super-rich; Forbes, the ultimate magazine of the rich and famous, warned about the “coming global class war“; and Nouriel Roubini, one of the world’s leading economists, told the Wall Street Journal that Karl Marx was actually right in saying that capitalism is doomed.

The Pain In Spain – Analysis
As the sun rose on August 2, Spanish authorities destroyed the tent-village that had come to symbolize what some participants have called the Spanish Revolution.

House Committee Approves Bill Mandating That Internet Companies Spy on Their Users
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/house-committee-approves-bill-mandating-internet
Despite serious privacy concerns being voiced by both Democratic and Republican leaders and by thousands of digital rights activists using EFF's Action Center, this afternoon the House Judiciary Committee voted 19 to 10 to recommend passage of H.R. 1981.

Native Ohlone of San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area Resist the Destruction of Sacred Site
Who were the inhabitants of what we now call San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Monterey, and of the little open land left around these cities? They are the Ohlone.

Save the cows by making meat out of women
PETA CONFIRMS PORN SITE PLANS  -  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has confirmed, to HuffPo, that the animal advocacy organization will launch a porn site at peta.XXX.

RetroBites: Hunter S. Thompson & Hell's Angels (1967)

Hunter S.Thompson defends his book against an irate Hell's Angels biker.

13-Year-Old Makes A Solar Breakthrough With Fibonacci Sequence
One would be excused for suspecting that Aidan Dwyer, said to be 13, is in fact a small, very young-looking, 37-year-old college-educated con-man of the highest order. Such is not the case though for what the young Long Island lad has accomplished in a feat typically associated with much older individuals. 

Banned Books: Slaughterhouse 5

The Republic School District in Missouri has banned Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5." The Vonnegut Library will send a free copy to any student in that school district. Go to www.vonnegutlibrary.org for more information. Or go to your local book store. Created at http://goanimate.com/

Banned Books Week 2011, by Mooresville Public Library

Mooresville Public Library (Mooresville, Indiana) and Cauli Le Chat Videos present a promo trailer featuring the American Library Association's Banned Books Week, which is September 24 through October 1, 2011.

BTW, there's a band named Banned Books. They sound like...

Banned Books - Dream Castle

Filmed by The Paradigm Case.

@TheParadigmCase
@bnndbks

Banned Books - Anti-Anthem ( Rx Remix )

Banned Books - Anti-Anthem ( Rx Remix ). Album: Mission Creep. Released: September 2009.

It's time to ban censors!

F*ck Me Ray Bradbury

'The “criminality” of the insurrectionists vs. the real criminality of the elites'

From: The Insurrection of the English Underclass
By Takis Fotopoulos
Homepage: http://inclusivedemocracy.org

The insurrection of the British underclass was seen by the entire British establishment and their followers – the bourgeois class and, particularly, the petty bourgeoisie – as a case of ‘pure criminality’. In other words, the real criminals of the political, economic and cultural elites have condemned the victims of their own criminality and have been both demanding and taking the worst kind of revenge on them for revolting against a system which has been destroying their lives since the day they were born. Of course, this is not surprising considering that, throughout History, the ruling elites and the privileged social groups have labelled the people who have revolted against them as criminals, from the French and Russian revolutions to the Spanish and Greek civil wars. Thus:

· the entire British political system, i.e. the war criminals of the Labour Party who did not hesitate to destroy the people of Iraq,[6] among others, or the corresponding criminals of the Tory party, who were similarly keen to destroy the people of Libya[7] -- the aim being, in both cases, fully to integrate the respective oil-rich countries into the internationalised market economy— played a leading role in creating tremendous hysteria against the underclass, presumably because they ought to have been content with their lot! This despite the fact that, under today’s parody of democracy called representative “democracy”, the underclass have no effective way of expressing their discontent, given that both main parties succeeding one another in power implement exactly the same sort of policies (with minor variations) – i.e. those that neoliberal globalisation requires; · the real economic criminals (bankers, financiers, etc.) who created the 2007-8 financial crisis, as well as the present recession[8] under which the states intervened to save private banking at the expense of social spending and the remnants of the welfare states (while the profits of the economic elites and the bonuses of the bankers et. al. have continued to increase), now turn against the petty thieves who have been stealing in order to meet the needs that the system itself has created. The present-day “Misérables” are called “criminal” and are consequently awarded long prison sentences by an economic system which does not give every citizen the means to meet the needs that it creates but which, instead, privileges some and condemns others to a life of mere survival and anomie through no fault of their own or of their parents;

· the systemic mass media (which have already been conquered by huge financial conglomerates[9]), whose role in promoting the criminal wars of the political elites and the need for “austerity” measures hitting the lower income groups particularly hard – supposedly in order to “save the economy” – is well known. It is no wonder that, today, all the systemic media massively promote the argument that the insurrections represent ‘pure criminality’, while their real systemic causes are not even mentioned, and even the most liberal media only stress the consequences of neoliberal globalisation (in terms of the cuts in social spending, or in police numbers!) and never neoliberal globalisation itself!

So, no surprises there, although the despicable stand of the Labour party does show how far this ex-social-democratic party has moved towards social fascism.[10] Not surprisingly, even a liberal newspaper like the Independent needed to stress in a leading article that:
Less predictable, perhaps, was the near-unanimity on parade in Parliament on Thursday, where MPs from all parties vied to identify a malaise that stemmed, as they saw it, from a destructive moral laxity pervading Britain. From parenting to education to policing, a cross-party consensus called for discipline, toughness and the re-establishment and enforcement of boundaries. ...


An Open Letter to Those Who Condemn Looting (In Two Parts)
By Evan Calder Williams

Co-publishing this spirited excoriation of backlash in all its forms. Originally published here: http://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/

An open letter to those who condemn looting (Part one)

Dear you all,

I fear we have nothing to say to each other.

What follows may therefore represent one half of a dialogue in the way that yelling at a jukebox made of ice does.  Perhaps the sheer exertion of speaking - a certain quantity of hot air - will soften the surface a bit, but it's a pretty one-sided discussion. And it doesn't mean you can or will stop repeating the records you have been given to play, those looping phrases and evasions.
After all, we've heard what you have to say.  We too know the words by heart.  We find it, at best, deeply unconvincing, and, at worst, bilious, evasive, racist, average, murderous pap not fit for mouths or ears.  And there is very little that is best these days.

I expect you would say the same about our position, albeit with a different set of adjectives. Juvenile, destructive, unreasonable, and naive come to mind, if your previous history of accusations gives any indication.  Unfortunately, given the structure of the media and the flow of information, we cannot but hear what you say while you can very easily continue to ignore what we do.  Until lots of angry people are burning your city, at which point you might, in a fit of weakness, concede to listen to those who have some opinions on the matter.  Unlikely, though.  

We live in noisy times.

It is too bad, though, because we actually agree on a few things.  For you say of these riots, and this looting, that they are opportunistic.  That they are unreasonable and stupid.  That "this isn't a protest, this is a riot."  That they are "not political."  That "this is about individuals using the excuse of what happened the first two nights to make sure what happens the third night is worse".  That this is "havoc."  That this is "criminality pure and simple."  That they do not "have the right" to do this.  That "no benefit will come in the long term," from "looting a local shop," "setting a bus on fire," or "nicking a mobile phone."  Above all, as you, Home Secretary put it, "There is no excuse for violence.  There is no excuse for looting."  (For a further litany and bestiary of speech, see here.)

And we agree.

There are some points of difference, it's true.  We don't think "these people" are "apes," rats," "dogs".  But we believe that you truly see them that way, and that what happens now is not the reason for your belief: it is merely a confirmation of how you've always thought of those who are definitely more poor and often more brown than you.  As for the claim that your error lay in that "we should have helped the IPCC come closer to the Mark Duggan's family more quickly," it seems that you have already helped the police come plenty close to his family, in the worst way possible.  One can't really say that it was the delay of the IPCC's approach to the family that is the problem here, can we?  Doesn't it have more  to do with the fact that he did not shoot at the police who murdered him?

Lastly, we disagree that  "what we're witnessing now has absolutely nothing to do with" that shooting.  And that is the real difference, the tiny crack between us that widens into a yawning gulf, a division that  cannot be squared.

For we want to understand the world in its historical particularity, how and why it has gotten to be the way that it is, and why that is insupportable.  You, however, simply want to make sure that it goes on as long as possible.  Regardless of the quality, regardless of the consequences, regardless of anything other than your collected capacity to declare that it's a nasty world out there, but at least we have our decency.  At least we sit high enough to look out over the killing fields.  At least we got here by legal measures.  And how dare they.  How dare they. ...


Monki - They Cried Out! (Voice of the Unheard Mix)



Shoplifters of the World Unite

Slavoj Žižek on the meaning of the riots

Repetition, according to Hegel, plays a crucial role in history: when something happens just once, it may be dismissed as an accident, something that might have been avoided if the situation had been handled differently; but when the same event repeats itself, it is a sign that a deeper historical process is unfolding. When Napoleon lost at Leipzig in 1813, it looked like bad luck; when he lost again at Waterloo, it was clear that his time was over. The same holds for the continuing financial crisis. In September 2008, it was presented by some as an anomaly that could be corrected through better regulations etc; now that signs of a repeated financial meltdown are gathering it is clear that we are dealing with a structural phenomenon.

We are told again and again that we are living through a debt crisis, and that we all have to share the burden and tighten our belts. All, that is, except the (very) rich. The idea of taxing them more is taboo: if we did, the argument runs, the rich would have no incentive to invest, fewer jobs would be created and we would all suffer. The only way to save ourselves from hard times is for the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer. What should the poor do? What can they do?
Although the riots in the UK were triggered by the suspicious shooting of Mark Duggan, everyone agrees that they express a deeper unease – but of what kind? As with the car burnings in the Paris banlieues in 2005, the UK rioters had no message to deliver. (There is a clear contrast with the massive student demonstrations in November 2010, which also turned to violence. The students were making clear that they rejected the proposed reforms to higher education.) This is why it is difficult to conceive of the UK rioters in Marxist terms, as an instance of the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the ‘rabble’, those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through ‘irrational’ outbursts of destructive violence – what Hegel called ‘abstract negativity’.
There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he pushes in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards find nothing; it is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves. The guards were missing the obvious truth, just as the commentators on the riots have done. We are told that the disintegration of the Communist regimes in the early 1990s signalled the end of ideology: the time of large-scale ideological projects culminating in totalitarian catastrophe was over; we had entered a new era of rational, pragmatic politics. If the commonplace that we live in a post-ideological era is true in any sense, it can be seen in this recent outburst of violence. This was zero-degree protest, a violent action demanding nothing. In their desperate attempt to find meaning in the riots, the sociologists and editorial-writers obfuscated the enigma the riots presented.

The protesters, though underprivileged and de facto socially excluded, weren’t living on the edge of starvation. People in much worse material straits, let alone conditions of physical and ideological oppression, have been able to organise themselves into political forces with clear agendas. The fact that the rioters have no programme is therefore itself a fact to be interpreted: it tells us a great deal about our ideological-political predicament and about the kind of society we inhabit, a society which celebrates choice but in which the only available alternative to enforced democratic consensus is a blind acting out. Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst. What is the point of our celebrated freedom of choice when the only choice is between playing by the rules and (self-)destructive violence? ...


Stop the Belo Monte Monster Dam
The Brazilian government is moving ahead "at any cost" with plans to build the third-largest dam in the world and one of the Amazon's most controversial development projects – the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River in the state of Pará. The Belo Monte dam complex dates back to Brazil's military dictatorship and the government has attempted to build it through various series of national investment programs including Brasil em Ação and the Program to Accelerate Growth. Original plans to dam the Xingu have been greenwashed through multiple public relations programs over the course of two decades in the face of intense national and international protest.


Belo Monte Dam Threatens Brazilian Amazon (PHOTOS)

It is a bitter loss. The wild river that along its lengthy journey gives life to so much and so many will be tamed forever. Where I stand on the shores of the Xingu River, just a few miles from the city of Altamira, I can see the markers where the main wall of the Belo Monte dam will be built. Across the main waterway of the Xingu, 14 meters (or 46 feet) high, the dam will muzzle the flow of the river and will create a gigantic lake almost 600 square kilometers in size. When the city of New Orleans, which is roughly that size, was flooded after hurricane Katrina, the entire world shrieked in horror. As an equivalent area of Amazonian rainforest is scheduled to be flooded, barely anybody outside this area is paying attention. For over 20 years, the ploy to dam the tributaries of the Amazon has been bounced around and finally the idea of damming the Amazon's tributaries as a solution to Brazil's energy challenges has won. The walls will go up and the character of this vital ecosystem will be changed forever.

All photos and captions courtesy of Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier.



March to Brussels: the city welcomes you all. "Real Democracy Now"

The citizens of Brussels welcome "Real Democracy Now" in their city.

Around 3.000 are expected in the capital of Europe to manifest the need for a change.

More informations coming soon...


Reality Check-Israeli new settlements-08-20-2011

http://www.presstv.com/Program/195004.html

Israel announced plans for the construction of thousands of new settlements in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) on Thursday, on the heels of a Palestinian plan to seek UN membership at next month's General Assembly.

And on Monday another a few hundred were announced amount largest in a single settlement since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came into office.



http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/08/22/understanding-calls-to-a-caliphate/
Understanding Calls to a Caliphate
by Dr. Reza Pankhurst
A recent piece in the Economist entitled “Dreaming of a Caliphate” investigates how some thinkers are struggling with the concept of Islamic rule in the “modern” age where it appears the only acceptable polity is that of a Western imposed self-styled “liberal Democracy”.


Mankini, retweet among new words in Oxford English Dictionary
Mankini is now officially part of our language after appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The name of the revealing male bathing costume made famous by Sacha Baron Cohen in his Borat film is joined by other new words from modern technology.

They include retweet (sharing a Twitter message), sexting (sending saucy texts), and cyberbullying (bullying online or by text). ...


Rainbow Musical Portugal 2011

Musical produced and performed at the European Rainbow Gathering 2011 in northern Portugal on Rainbow gathering peculiarities created by Tom Thumb (tomthumb.org)


Can You Speak Venusian?

Excerpt of guy speaking Venusian on One Pair Of Eyes with Patrick Moore from 1969.

Musical Innerlube: Wingnut Dishwashers Union - Compost Yuppie Scum

The last song Pat the Bunny recorded before he entered rehab.

Yuppie scum. Apparently a loathsome concept many musicians love to revile. Some evidence of that is apparent in this small sampling:

Tom Robinson - Yuppie Scum

Living In A Boom Time (1992).

Kilbourn - Die Yuppie Scum

Power/Thrash Metal from USA Originally released in 1992, reissued by Retrospect Records in 2007.

Die Yuppy Scum Song

These are the guys who sit on the steps right across the street from the millionaire's condos at Union Square and spend their whole day bitching about them and singing songs at 'em. And my guess is that they're nearly all deadbeat-dads.

Amazing Strangers
normalbobsmith.com

Truth - Kill The Yuppie Scum, Live @Oz, 2007-03-18


DOA - Yuppie Scum Mantra

Another Deaf Pedestrians music video by 'Last Son of Zion'. It's from their self titled cd.