Saturday, November 17, 2012

American Immorality Is At A Peak


November 13, 2012


When Chris Floyd is at his best, as he is below, he puts things in perspective for readers that they otherwise never confront. Obama has won reelection, and his supporters think that somehow things are going to be different. Fat chance.

While evil continues to envelop America, the public is focused on CIA director General Petraeus’ resignation. The FBI spied on him and found that he was having an affair with his biographer, a woman 20 years younger than his 60 years.

What is it with Americans and sex? Why is an illicit affair the ONLY reason for removing someone from political office? Why is it that government officials, presidents and vice presidents included, can violate US statutory law and torture people, spy on Americans without the necessary warrants, murder US citizens without due process, confine US citizens to dungeons for life without evidence and due process of law, start multi-trillion dollar wars on the basis of contrived allegations that have no basis in fact, murder civilians in seven countries, overthrow legitimate governments, and all of these massive crimes against humanity can be accepted as long as no one in Washington gets any sex out of it? Is this feminism’s contribution to American morality?

Has the United States, the hero of the cold war, become in its behavior and motivations the enemy it overcame? Why does Washington want hegemony over the world? Why does Washington want this hegemony so badly that Washington is willing to murder women, children, aid workers, husbands and fathers, village elders, anyone on earth including its own American heroes?

What is the evil that drives Washington?

How can the evil that drives Washington be contained, stamped out, prevented from destroying the human race?

What does the world do when it confronts unbridled evil, which is what Washington is?

The Reality of the “Lesser Evil”

Is This Child Dead Enough for You? ~ Chris Floyd

To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question:

Is this child dead enough for you?





This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house — maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal — when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/photos-pakistan-drone-war/?pid=999]

As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons — launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas — strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but “bad guys.” Indeed, the president’s top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians — that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States — who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed — in this one instance — to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were “bad guys” and then kill only them. Somehow — perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? — this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.

As Wired reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullah’s house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over — when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the Peace Laureate was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town.

This is where the picture of above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureate’s drone war. When the picture was taken, Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later. [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/photos-pakistan-drone-war/?pid=998]

He died.

Is he dead enough for you?

Dead enough not to disturb your victory dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor and compassion, will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history of the world?

Do you have children? Do they sit your house playing happily? Do they sleep sweetly scrunched up in their warm beds at night? Do they chatter and prattle like funny little birds as you eat with them at the family table? Do you love them? Do you treasure them? Do you consider them fully-fledged human beings, beloved souls of infinite worth?

How would you feel if you saw them ripped to shreds by flying shrapnel, in your own house? How would you feel as you rushed them to the hospital, praying every step of the way that another missile won’t hurl down on you from the sky? Your child was innocent, you had done nothing, were simply living your life in your own house — and someone thousands of miles away, in a country you had never seen, had no dealings with, had never harmed in any way, pushed a button and sent chunks of burning metal into your child’s body. How would you feel as you watched him die, watched all your hopes and dreams for him, all the hours and days and years you would have to love him, fade away into oblivion, lost forever?

What would you think about the one who did this to your child? Would you say: “What a noble man of integrity and decency! I’m sure he is acting for the best.”

Would you say: “Well, this is a bit unfortunate, but it’s perfectly understandable. The Chinese government (or Iran or al Qaeda or North Korea or Russia, etc. etc.) believed there was someone next door to me who might possibly at some point in time pose some kind of threat in some unspecified way to their people or their political agenda — or maybe it was just that my next-door neighbor behaved in a certain arbitrarily chosen way that indicated to people watching him on a computer screen thousands of miles away that he might possibly be the sort of person who might conceivably at some point in time pose some kind of unspecified threat to the Chinese (Iranians/Russians, etc.), even though they had no earthly idea who my neighbour is or what he does or believes or intends. I think the person in charge of such a program is a good, wise, decent man that any person would be proud to support. Why, I think I’ll ask him to come speak at my little boy’s funeral!”

Is that what you would say if shrapnel from a missile blew into your comfortable house and killed your own beloved little boy? You would not only accept, understand, forgive, shrug it off, move on — you would actively support the person who did it, you would cheer his personal triumphs and sneer at all those who questioned his moral worthiness and good intentions? Is that really what you would do?

Well, that is what you are doing when you shrug off the murder of little Naeemullah. You are saying he is not worth as much as your child. You are saying he is not a fully-fledged human being, a beloved soul of infinite worth. You are saying that you support his death, you are happy about it, and you want to see many more like it. You are saying it doesn’t matter if this child — or a hundred like him, or a thousand like him, or, as in the Iraqi sanctions of the old liberal lion, Bill Clinton, five hundred thousand children like Naeemullah — are killed in your name, by leaders you cheer and support. You are saying that the only thing that matters is that someone from your side is in charge of killing these children. This is the reality of “lesser evilism.” [http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/to-honor-value-of-single-life-first.html]

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Before the election, we heard a lot of talk about this notion of the “lesser evil.” From prominent dissidents and opponents of empire like Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky and Robert Parry to innumerable progressive blogs to personal conversations, one heard this basic argument: “Yes, the drone wars, the gutting of civil liberties, the White House death squads and all the rest are bad; but Romney would be worse. Therefore, with great reluctance, holding our noses and shaking our heads sadly, we must choose the lesser evil of Obama and vote accordingly.”

I understand that argument, I really do. I don’t agree with it, as I made plain here many times before the election. I think the argument is wrong, I think our system is so far gone that even a “lesser evil” is too evil to support in any way, that such support only perpetuates the system’s unconscionable evils. But I’m not a purist, not a puritan, not a commissar or dogmatist. I understand that people of good will can come to a different conclusion, and feel that they must reluctantly choose one imperial-militarist-corporate faction over the other, in the belief that this will mean some slight mitigation of the potential evil that the other side commit if it took power. I used to think that way myself, years ago. Again, I now disagree with this, and I think that the good people who believe this have not, for whatever reason or reasons, looked with sufficient clarity at the reality of our situation, of what is actually being done, in their name, by the political faction they support.

But of course, I am not the sole arbiter of reality, nor a judge of others; people see what they see, and they act (or refrain from acting) accordingly. I understand that. But here is what I don’t understand: the sense of triumph and exultation and glee on the part of so many progressives and liberals and ‘dissidents’ at the victory of this “lesser evil.” Where did the reluctance, the nose-holding, the sad head-shaking go? Should they not be mourning the fact that evil has triumphed in America, even if, by their lights, it is a “lesser” evil?

If you really believed that Obama was a lesser evil — 2 percent less evil, as I believe Digby once described the Democrats in 2008 — if you really did find the drone wars and the White House death squads and Wall Street bailouts and absolution for torturers and all the rest to be shameful and criminal, how can you be happy that all of this will continue? Happy — and continuing to scorn anyone who opposed the perpetuation of this system.

The triumph of a lesser evil is still a victory for evil. If your neighborhood is tyrannized by warring mafia factions, you might prefer that the faction which occasionally doles out a few free hams wins out over their more skinflint rivals; but would you be joyful about the fact that your neighborhood is still being tyrannized by murderous criminals? Would you not be sad, cast down, discouraged and disheartened to see the violence and murder and corruption go on? Would you not mourn the fact that your children will have to grow up in the midst of all this?

So where is the mourning for the fact that we, as a nation, have come to this: a choice between murderers, a choice between plunderers? Even if you believe that you had to participate and make the horrific choice that was being offered to us — “Do you want the Democrat to kill these children, or do you want the Republican to kill these children?” — shouldn’t this post-election period be a time of sorrow, not vaulting triumph and giddy glee and snarky put-downs of the “losers”?

If you really are a “lesser evilist” — if this was a genuine moral choice you reluctantly made, and not a rationalization for indulging in unexamined, primitive partisanship — then you will know that we are ALL the losers of this election. Even if you believe it could have been worse, it is still very bad. You yourself proclaimed that Obama was evil — just a bit “lesser” so than his opponent. (2 percent maybe.) And so the evil that you yourself saw and named and denounced will go on. Again I ask: where is the joy and glory and triumph in this? Even if you believe it was unavoidable, why celebrate it? And ask yourself, bethink yourself: what are you celebrating? This dead child, and a hundred like him? A thousand like him? Five hundred thousand like him? How far will you go? What won’t you celebrate?

And so step by step, holding the hand of the “lesser evil,” we descend deeper and deeper into the pit.

Chris Floyd is an American writer based in the UK. His blog, “Empire Burlesque,” can be found at http://www.chris-floyd.com.


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

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Come Out of Her My People - Bob Trefz


Published on May 2, 2011 by Michael Walston

No description available.

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Resident Evil: The Jesuit Threat to Humanity

 

by Mike Bellinger


When Martin Luther sparked the spiritual and social revolution in Europe we now know as the Reformation, he sent an arrow deep into the heart of the Vatican power base. As the Reformation spread and enlightenment became commonplace, the Dark Ages ended, didn't they? Apparently they did not. The Vatican, in its lust for power over all human life, soon spawned an advocate who was worthy of the devil himself. He went by the name of Ignatius Loyola. Loyola was a self-made man. He suffered many trials and defeats in his life, but persevered to become the head of what he named the "Society of Jesus" whose members later became better known under their assigned nickname: the Jesuits. 

Ignatius Loyola formed the Jesuits as a military order with the stated purpose of overthrowing the reformation started by Martin Luther and restoring the temporal (political) and religious domination of the Vatican in all walks of life. In other words, he wanted to bring back the Dark Ages. The domination of the Vatican and the Pope as Monarch over all Kings, Queens, secular leaders and the rest of humanity was (and still is) the avowed mission of the Society of Jesus. 

Loyola's mandate was that the end justified the means, and any means of restoring Vatican domination was acceptable. The mission of the Jesuits was the extermination of all heresy and all heretics. Protestants and all other non-Catholics must be converted or eliminated - either sooner or later. The saying among the Jesuits was that "It is no sin to kill a heretic". This murderous justification apparently became their creed. 

They demanded absolute, unquestioning obedience from their members. To achieve the fourth and highest vow of initiation, and thereby be initiated into the actively evil pyramidal top level, a Jesuit must be a loyal member for 35 years. This requirement ensured the smallest possibility of dissent or original thinking ever surviving in anyone reaching leadership role, or from ever altering their stated purpose or mission as set out by founder Ignatius Loyola. 

As a military order, they fought many open political wars with European Kings, Queens and statesmen. Their favored tool against such power was assassination. Because of their small numbers, they became experts on poisoning and all known methods of assassination. They were even connected to the Borgias, as in Lucretia Borgia. 

In those days most everyone had a confessor. The Jesuits deliberately sought these roles and came to dominate the confessor positions in European society. In that role they were able to use the intelligence they gathered from their political, social and business victims to gain advantage in politics, business and education. The confessor spies then used that information and position coupled with blackmail, bribery and intimidation to seek advantage for the Vatican in every endeavor. The Jesuit intelligence apparatus is unequaled on this planet. They were in place before we ever even dreamed of such an enterprise. Their missionaries carried this intelligence gathering on throughout the world when Columbus opened up the frontier, and no one has ever outdone them. This is one of the secrets of the Jesuit-Vatican control of much of the world. 

The other very successful and crucial tactic they employed was to infiltrate all of their enemies. Opposing religions, enemy political structures, business, media and education, both domestic and foreign, were infiltrated by Jesuit missionaries and the many unidentifiable junior Jesuits: those secular followers who were all too willing to accept Jesuit favors and position in exchange for selling their countries and their souls to the Vatican. 

What happened in Europe was that after 250 hundred years of bloody Jesuit-instigated massacres of Protestants, the bloody Jesuit Inquisitions (some estimates put the total Vatican and Jesuit death toll at 60 million human beings, making Hitler seem like an amateur) and resulting wars with European monarchs and statesmen, the Jesuits had been taking quite a beating themselves. Many had been executed outright, and as a group they were thrown out of almost every country in Europe at one time or another. Even several popes turned against them due to public outcries from some still loyal Catholic countries. But they always somehow managed to regroup and return. When they did, they always extracted bloody revenge on whatever country or ruler had expelled them. They killed the popes who banished them and took over the Vatican completely in the 1700's. This would prevent any further rear-guard actions against them in the future as they had suffered previously. This consolidation of Jesuit control over the Vatican itself marked a new phase in the ongoing battle against Protestantism and all the other non-Catholic "heretics" of the world at large. 

The lessons learned from open conflicts with the European powers led to the next and most sinister phase of the Jesuit takeover of world society. They realized that the most effective and efficient method of seizing control of a society was by their already useful tactic of infiltration, but this time in secret. The instruments of that infiltration would be the many secret societies which they targeted and assumed control of. The international nature of the Masonic brotherhood made them an ideal tool for using its membership to advance Jesuit goals. Publicly, the Vatican and the Masons were enemies; but F. Tupper Saussy found evidence linking them, and Jon Eric Phelps notes that Adam Wieshaupt, the founder of modern Bavarian Freemasonry was a Jesuit agent. 

The Knights of Malta (formerly Knights Templar) are the premiere secret society of the Vatican these days, but they are subservient to the Jesuit General. Many of America and the Western World's power elite are Knights of Malta. 

Once they spread their influence through the secret societies worldwide and coordinated with the English Roundtables to impose a worldwide network of control, the whole phenomena evolved into what we know of today as the New World Order (or what the elite-controlled press so disingenuously refers to as Globalism, as if that is something to be desired). The Globalists have many nicknames, but their agenda is one and the same. It is total control of this planet. They have many factions who compete with one another for position and advantage like a group of churlish relatives, but the ultimate goal is always unchanged. And the Jesuit overlords lurk in the background, pulling all the important strings. 

If you know anything about the history of the elite Brotherhood, then you will know that the Rothschild’s banking faction developed the art of financing wars from both sides of a conflict by utilizing the secrets of Central Banking with their ability to create enormous debt loads in the resident populations resulting from the issuance of government authorized fiat money. The incredible profits generated by war, reaped from both the winners and losers, led to a syndrome where induced wars became a way of life for the overlords because of the vast financial profits and additional benefits derived from it. 

In addition to massive financial profits, war results in many other '"benefits" for the overlords. Some of the most important to them are increased centralized control of the population by government, increased militarization, and the public fear of conflicts to come, leading them to let their "peace-loving" statesmen do all their thinking for them. 

But the Jesuits have a much darker rationale behind all the world conflicts they have overseen in the last 600 years. They have used all of these various wars as cover-ups for their mass exterminations of Protestants and all other non-Catholic peoples worldwide. This is the real horror of the Jesuits and the Vatican. They are the most prolific mass murders in all of human history. No one and nothing else in known human history compares to their record of calculated genocide. Now you know why we must stop this evil. The Vatican, as it is now, is the incarnation of hell itself. There can be no doubt of that. 

Here are some Jesuit/Vatican atrocities to mull over. 

The Crusades: Who knows how many died? And then the children’s crusades ... Good God. 

The Inquisitions: In “Vatican Assassins,” Eric Jon Phelps cites a source that estimates roughly 60 million people were murdered in the various stages of the Inquisitions. Think about that number for a minute. Most of these people were tortured to death. 

Catherine De Medici instigated the butchering of 75,000 French Protestant Huguenots on August 24, 1572. In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nates to protect them. By manipulating the rescinding of the protective Edict of Nantes in 1685 by the Jesuit confessor to King Louis XIV (using religious blackmail), another HALF MILLION FRENCH HUGUENOTS were butchered by the vile French Catholic Dragonades. In 1655 again, British Protestant hero Oliver Cromwell threatened to invade France and crush the French Crown for a new massacre being waged upon the French Vadois Protestants of valley of Piedmont by six Catholic Regiments by the Duke of Savoy. 

The massacre of the poor Irish protestants on October 23rd 1641 - the "Feast" of Ignatius Loyola. How fitting a day for a massacre by these bloodthirsty swine. It is estimated that 150,000 Irish Protestants were butchered in the streets and in their homes. This slaughter took place over an eight-year period. Finally, once again it was Oliver Cromwell who finally invaded Ireland and attacked the Jesuit base at Drogheda and in a rage exterminated the entire Catholic village of 2000. Only this invasion finally ended the massacre of the Protestants. The present day Irish Protestants are still at war with the fanatical Irish Catholic Jesuits, and this is why they need the continued protection of the British Army. 

End of Part 1

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Whirlwind Battle - Bob Trefz


Published on May 6, 2011 by Michael Walston

No description available..

Friday, November 16, 2012

Happy Sabbath

President Obama's silly, sexist defense of Susan Rice

By Kirsten Powers

Published November 15, 2012

FoxNews.com
Nov. 14, 2012: President Obama answers a question during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP)


Don't pick on the little lady.

Wednesday, President Obama bizarrely cast the U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, as some delicate flower the boys should stop picking on for her dissembling claims on five Sunday talk shows following the killing of 4 Americans in Benghazi. But, there is no damsel in distress and Obama's paternalistic bravado in defense of a top administration official is going to come back to haunt him.

"If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," Obama intoned to the stenographers worshipping at his feet. The media had gathered for a rare "press conference" where Fox News' Ed Henry and ABC's Jake Tapper are usually the only ones who ever seem to ask a question that elicits anything other than filibustering presidential pabulum. (One "journalist" actually congratulatedthe president on his win and gushed about how she has never seen him lose an election.) Group hug!

Obviously caught up in his own silly yarn about meanie Senators and helpless U.N. Ambassadors, the President complained, "When they go after the U.N. ambassador apparently because they think she's an easy target, then they've got a problem with me."

Imagine George Bush saying that people criticized John Bolton because he was an "easy target." He wouldn't.

It's absurd and chauvinistic for Obama to talk about the woman he thinks should be Secretary of State of the United States as if she needs the big strong man to come to her defense because a couple of Senators are criticizing her.

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It's absurd and chauvinistic for Obama to talk about the woman he thinks should be Secretary of State of the United States as if she needs the big strong man to come to her defense because a couple of Senators are criticizing her.

Believe it or not, Rice isn't the first potential Cabinet nominee to be opposed by members of Congress up on the Hill. Obama also left out the inconvenient detail that there is another senator who has Rice in the crosshairs: Sen. Kelly Ayotte. But perhaps a female Senator holding Rice accountable didn't sound menacing enough in the era of the "War on Women."

But it gets much worse.

As the president expressed outrage over the atrocity of members of Congress holding administration officials accountable, he said, "I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador? Who had nothing to do with Benghazi?"

Feast on those words for a second: The U.N. Ambassador had "nothing to do with Benghazi." At this point, the White House press corps should have flown into a frenzy, demanding to know why a person who had nothing to do with Benghazi was put on five Sunday talk shows as...the face of Benghazi!

This was an issue that had people scratching their heads the day of the Rice interviews, and plenty of questions were asked as to where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was, and why Rice was put out instead. The administration at the time acted as though there was nothing remarkable about it, even though there clearly was.

But now we know -- straight from the lips of the president of the United States -- that they sent out a person who knew "nothing" about Benghazi to explain an atrocious attack against the United States that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans serving their country abroad.

No temper tantrum from the White House on the insult of being questioned about a terror attack against the U.S. abroad would be complete without their perennial favorite: the straw man.

The conceit of Obama's argument is that people are picking on a helpless girl -- a lowly U.N. ambassador -- because they are afraid of the big bad president.

Oh, please.

President Obama, incredibly, claimed that he was "happy to have the discussion" about Benghazi.

Really?

Because every time anyone asks the president about Benghazi he claims he can't say anything because there is an investigation going on. The State Department actually said at one point that they would no longer take questions on the issue from reporters.

Senator Graham's response to the president's revelations and accusations at the press conference was exactly right: He said, "Mr. President, don't think for one minute I don't hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi."

The president says he is ready to talk about this? Great. We are all ears.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/15/president-obama-silly-sexist-defense-susan-rice/#ixzz2CPXc6wdN
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CIA Talking Points Changed, Petraeus Says

Petraeus: CIA talking points on Benghazi attack edited to play down al Qaeda links





Gen. Petraeus, Rep. King / AP


BY: Bill Gertz
November 16, 2012 12:00 pm

Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified at a closed hearing on Friday that the CIA’s original talking points on the Sept. 11 terror attack on Benghazi were edited to play down al Qaeda links to the attackers.

The latest revelation of the Obama administration’s mishandling of the terror attack that killed four Americans in Libya was made by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who said the disclosures by Petraeus were made during a closed-door House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing.

“He said it went through a long process involving many agencies including the Department of Justice, the State Department, and no one knows yet exactly who came up with the final version of the talking points, other than to say the original talking points that were prepared by the CIA were different from the ones finally put out,” King told reporters after a House Intelligence Committee closed-door hearing.

Petraeus met for 90 minutes with the House committee before moving to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

White House spokesmen did not return emails seeking comment on who changed the talking points.

King said Petraeus testified that “from the start” he told lawmakers on Sept. 14—three days after the attack—that “there was significant terrorist involvement” in the attack.

“That was not my recollection,” King said of Petraeus’ Sept. 14 comments.

King said his “clear impression” of Petraeus’ original comments was that the overwhelming evidence was the events in Benghazi “arose out of a spontaneous demonstration.”

A State Department official told a congressional hearing a week later that it was a terrorist attack. That was the first contradiction in the administration’s false statements, King said.

The security scandal in Benghazi has called into question pre-election statements by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice who insisted the attack was a reaction to demonstrations against an anti-Muslim video posted to YouTube.

U.S. intelligence officials told the Washington Free Beacon in early October that intelligence of al Qaeda’s growing presence in Libya was covered up by the Obama administration because it contradicted Obama’s statements at the Democratic National Convention that al Qaeda was on the path to defeat.

Numerous classified reports also revealed direct Iranian support for jihadists throughout North Africa and the Middle East, as well as increasing al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi. The attack killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

“The Iranian strategy is two-fold,” one official said at the time. “Upping the ante for the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against Iran and perceived cyber operations against Iran’s nuclear weapons program by conducting terror attacks on soft U.S. targets and cyber attacks against U.S. financial interests.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a statement Sept. 28 that said: “In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo.”

“As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists,” the ODNI statement said. “It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda.”

Intelligence officials said the intelligence on a surge by al Qaeda in the region included information from both technical spying and human agents showing an alarming rise in clandestine al Qaeda activity months before the attack in Benghazi.

One official said the handling of Benghazi appeared to be a “disinformation campaign” about the attack that included the information given to Rice for her appearance on five Sunday talk shows when she said the raid was a “spontaneous” response.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney then repeated the false information from the White House pressroom. Then Clinton was provided a partial explanation that the intelligence showed only an al Qaeda surge in nearby Mali.

On the Petraeus testimony, King said the former CIA director told the committee that his affair with Paula Broadwell did not have any impact on his testimony about the Benghazi attack.

King said the original talking points done by the CIA were “much more specific about al Qaeda involvement.” However, the final talking points mentioned “indications of extremism” despite CIA’s original points that there was al Qaeda involvement.

The talking points from CIA went through a long vetting process and when the final statement was presented the al Qaeda reference was taken out, he said.

CBS News disclosed the final talking points on Thursday. They were:
“The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.
This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.
The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of US citizens.”

King said the House is continuing to investigate the events of Benghazi and whether “anyone at the White House changed the talking points.”

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Coast Guard Working Gulf Platform Explosion

Posted: Nov 16, 2012 9:37 AM by Ian Auzenne
Updated: Nov 16, 2012 10:07 AM



The United State Coast Guard confirms to KATC that it is working a platform explosion at this hour in West Cote Blanche. The explosion took place at 9:00 on a rig in West Delta Block 32. The Coast Guard could not confirm any other information at this time. Once we receive more information, we will pass it along.
Source
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16 Female Pastors Approved for Ordination

Story by Visitor Staff
Published 11/8/2012


Bill Miller (right), president of the Potomac Conference, presents Debbie Eisele, a pastor at Sligo church in Takoma Park, Md., with her ordination certificate.

Following the Columbia Union Conference Special Constituency’s historic July 29 decision to ordain pastors without regard to gender, the union executive committee voted to approve the ordination of 16 women pastors. The women include Allegheny East Conference’s Rosa Taylor Banks, Brenda Billingy, Paula Olivier and Lisa Smith-Reid; Ohio Conference’s Linda Farley, Lori Farr, Sandra Pappenfus and Carmen Seibold; and Potomac’s Karen L. Cress, Sharon Cress, Jennifer Deans, Debbie Eisele, Cherilyn O’Ffill and Sonia Perez. The vote included emeritus credentials for Chesapeake Conference’s Charlotte McClure and Josephine Benton, the first female pastor presented for ordination in 1973.

The ordination approvals took place just days before this year’s General Conference Annual Council, where a voted document regarded the actions of the Columbia Union (along with that of the Pacific and North German union conferences, whose constituents also approved inclusive ordination) “as serious mistakes.” The statement also said, “The world church does not recognize actions authorizing or implementing ministerial ordination without regard to gender.”

Shortly before the Annual Council discussion, the union’s three officers, Dave Weigley, president; Robert Vandeman, executive secretary; and Seth Bardu, treasurer, released a statement appealing for understanding stating, “We believe that God calls whom He chooses and our responsibility and privilege is to fully recognize His proven calls … While we in no way wish to force others to take this step, we believe it is necessary in our field and in the context of the culture in which we minister.”

Despite the world church’s response, Celeste Ryan Blyden, union spokeswoman, says union leaders are encouraged. “Thanks to the courage of the leaders and constituents in three unions, after 17 years, this topic is back on the agenda of the worldwide church,” she said. “It’s being studied, discussed, preached about, prayed about, and will be a priority for the leadership in 2014. That’s progress, that’s movement, and we are encouraged.”

The world church recently launched a study on the theology of ordination that is now expected to explore women’s ordination as well. Two union representatives—Stephen Richardson, Allegheny East Conference Ministerial secretary, and Pennsylvania pastor Tara VinCross—will participate in the North American Division’s study committee.

Source
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Thursday, November 15, 2012

Revolt of the Bishops? Statement on the Economy Voted Down


POSTED AT: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012 03:48:56 PM
AUTHOR: KEVIN CLARKE


Given the state of the economy and the mood of the nation, a letter of hope during economic dark times seemed like a good idea when the U.S. bishops voted by a wide margin to draft a message on work and the economy during their June meeting in Atlanta. But after the draft of that resulting document was discussed by the bishops during their fall meeting in Baltimore yesterday, it became quickly clear that the statement was unexpectedly in trouble. Today the document, titled "The Hope of the Gospel in Difficult Economic Times," was shot down, failing to achieve the two-thirds needed for passage. The vote was 134, yes, 84 no, with nine abstentions.

Written by a drafting committee headed by Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit, under some guidelines laid out by the bishops at their June meeting in Atlanta, the document had been challenged by Spokane's Blaise Cupich and retired Retired Archbishop and one-time conference president Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston. According to the USCCB twitter feed from the meeting yesterday, Archbishop Fiorenza quickly criticized the document following its introduction by Archbishop Vigneron. "Why don't we address the growing gulf between the haves and the have nots?" he asked.

Archbishop Fiorenza said, "I have very serious questions about this," adding he had only received the draft for review three days earlier. "I am very disappointed, and I fear that this draft, if not changed in a major way," will harm the U.S. bishops' record on Catholic social teaching. He observed that the subtitle is about work: "A pastoral message on work, poverty and the economy," yet he said the document includes just one short reference on the right of workers to unionize.

"One sentence," he added. "It's almost like it was an afterthought. But when you look at the compendium of the social teachings of the church, there are three long paragraphs on the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining, and the right to strike." He asked why "Hope of the Gospel" includes no reference, "not even a footnote," about the U.S. bishops' 1986 pastoral letter on the economy, "Economic Justice for All," which he noted was the product of several years of work.

Retired Auxiliary Bishop Peter A. Rosazza of Hartford, Conn., asked whether the drafting committee had consulted with an economist, which he said was one of the recommendations of the bishops in June.

They had not, Archbishop Vigneron told him. According to Vigneron, the document relied on encyclicals from popes JPII and Benedict XVI.

Retired Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan of Brooklyn, N.Y., said the document "doesn't address in any way the major shift in the American economy." He also said it ought to reference the 1986 document "to show the continuity of what we said then."

After a day of review, the statement took more hits during floor debate today from a number of other bishops who complained that it did not properly connect to past Catholic social teaching, particularly the aforementioned pastoral "Economic Justice," was not suitably critical of the forces that brought the country to its economic knees in 2008 and had nothing too little to say about the role of unions.

Bishop Rosazza complained that the document has "no sting, no bite" and doesn't address cuts to government programs that help the poor. Albany's Bishop Howard Hubbard said the statement did not adequately address causes of economic collapse, the role of government, the decline of labor and Catholic social teaching. The document doesn't offer comfort or hope to anyone, complained Bishop Cupich, it speaks of market forces but not deregulation and immoral behavior that created the financial crisis.

Galveston's Cadinal Daniel DiNardo defended the statement, arguing Archbishop Vigneron did what he was asked; the problem may be that bishops' expectations for the statement were unreasonably high.

Having failed to pass in the conference, the document was effectively D.O.A. but elements within it may appear in future statements.

Have moderates in the conference finally decided to push back against the conference's conservative drift? Hard to say, (especially when your "insight" is based on a twitter feed!) but as many of the objectors here appear to be retired, non-voting members, there does not appear to be too much cause for celebration among Catholic progressives.

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5 US generals in trouble rock military culture

Published: November 14, 2012 Updated 21 hours ago



FILE - This Oct. 1, 2008 file photo shows Army Gen. William E. "Kip" Ward, Commander of U.S. Africa Command, speaking at the Pentagon. A senior U.S. official says Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has demoted, Ward, the former head of U.S. Africa Command who was accused of spending thousands of dollars on lavish travel and other unauthorized expenses.
Haraz N. Ghanbari, File — AP Photo


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By LOLITA C. BALDOR and ROBERT BURNS — Associated Press


WASHINGTON — When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pointedly warned young troops last spring to mind their ways, he may have been lecturing the wrong audience.

The culture of military misconduct starts at the top.

At least five current and former U.S. generals at the rank of one-star or higher have been reprimanded or investigated for possible misconduct in the past two weeks - a startling run of embarrassment for a military whose stock among Americans rose so high during a decade of war that its leaders seemed almost untouchable.

From adultery and malfeasance to potentially inappropriate emails, the four-star foibles have rocked the military establishment and shocked the Obama administration even as it wrestles with a host of international challenges and a postelection redo of its national security team.

The missteps suggest the possibility that the senior officer corps - including many who led or sent thousands of troops into battle since 2001 - are troubled by the same strains that sent suicide, sexual assault and stress disorder rates soaring among the rest of the force.

At a deeper level, it may reflect the old adage about the military: Rank has its privileges. Do the generals suffer from arrogance and entitlement, borne from years in a military culture that endows them with unquestioned respect, even reverence? Are they so dazzled by their own standing that they become blind to their moral code?

These questions recall a 2007 essay by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, then an active-duty Army officer, who stunned his superiors by writing of a "crisis in American generalship" - a condemnation of their intellectual and moral failings. He cited an accountability double standard in the military.

"As matters stand now," he wrote, "a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."

In fact, protectionism among the military's high ranking officers has long been a complaint, as forces see young troops or lower-ranking officers lose rank, money or jobs over missteps that they believe would be overlooked if done by a three- or four-star.

Asked about the possible demotion of a fellow four-star general, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno noted that losing a star could cost someone $1 million over the life of their retirement. No private would have to pay such a high cost, he said. Army Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey recommended to Panetta that Gen. William 'Kip' Ward be spared the demotion for lavish, unauthorized spending.

Others, however, say the generals' stumbles are just a microcosm of people as a whole and not necessarily typical of the higher ranking military.

"You're not describing a general officer corps, you're describing a human condition," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Whenever people are in hierarchical structures they develop a sense of entitlement, and they do, on occasion, abuse it."

The generals on the hot seat in recent weeks include several top U.S. military commanders.

- CIA Director David Petraeus, the former four-star general and top commander in Afghanistan, resigned as spy chief after the FBI uncovered evidence that he was having an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus has acknowledged the affair.

- Ward, former head of U.S. Africa Command, was demoted and ordered to repay more than $82,000 for inappropriate and lavish spending on travel. A Ward spokesman said the general was not motivated by personal gain.

- Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair is facing multiple sexual misconduct charges, including forcible sodomy, involving five women, including female officers who served with him. The initial hearing is over, but there has not yet been a decision on whether to proceed to a court-martial.

- Gen. John Allen, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for potentially inappropriate communications with Florida socialite Jill Kelley, whose name surfaced during the Petraeus investigation. Allen says he has done nothing wrong.

- Adm. James Stavridis, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, was cautioned by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to exercise better oversight of his staff after an investigation into travel and expense questions, including a trip to a wine dinner in France. Stavridis was cleared of any misconduct.

Stephen Biddle, a military expert at George Washington University who has advised American commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, said it's hard to judge whether misconduct like adultery is more prevalent among American generals today than in decades past, or whether it has simply become more difficult for adulterers to keep their secret.

"It clearly was never zero," he said, noting the widespread belief that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had an extramarital affair while in the Army.

Today's military faces a troubling combination of misbehavior at both ends of the rank spectrum.

Concerns about troop behavior hit new heights after a series of widely publicized episodes in Afghanistan: the mistaken burning of Qurans, images of Marines urinating on insurgents' corpses and an alleged rampage by a soldier now on trial for the deaths of 16 Afghan civilians.

It was in that context that Panetta counseled troops last May to watch their step.

"These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline," Panetta told soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga. "And those headlines can impact the mission that we're engaged in, they can put your fellow service members at risk, they can hurt morale, they can damage our standing in the world and they can cost lives."

The warnings from Panetta and other top military leaders - including the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Amos - reflected a worry that the military has let its standards erode and its discipline falter, even as the burdens and sacrifices of war have begun to ease with the end of the Iraq war and a winding down in Afghanistan.

Some military analysts see a broader problem among American generals and the institutions that develop, promote and manage them.

In an essay adapted from his new book, "The Generals," author Thomas Ricks wrote in the November issue of The Atlantic magazine that mediocrity is pervasive among the ranks of today's military leaders.

"Ironically, our generals have grown worse as they have been lionized more and more by a society now reflexively deferential to the military," Ricks wrote.

---

Burns reported from Perth, Australia.

Follow Robert Burns on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP.

Follow Lolita C. Baldor on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lbaldor.

Source
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War on the Generals?


What's with the spontaneous scandals having to do with the Armed Forces?  

Why is there a war directed specifically at the GENERALS

Why is the government (powers that be) turning its back on its top warriors? 

As we observe with horror the relentless attack upon the upper echelon of the U.S. Armed Forces: we wonder why?  

Before our eyes we see the New World Order cannibalizing itself, discarding or moulting its skin.

What exactly is happening behind the scenes? What is really behind this military WITCH HUNT is the great question mark. ?

And, most puzzling of all:  Why this barrage of scandals roughly a week after the re-election?


Just asking!

These men were at the top of the heap?  They commanded the troops involved on the endless war on terror? 





Arsenio.

Related:


U. S. Navy Seals punished


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William Ward, Four Star General, Demoted For Lavish Spending, Ordered To Repay $82,000

By LOLITA C. BALDOR 11/13/12 10:56 PM ET EST





FOLLOW:
Video, 4 Star General, Africa Command, Power & Politics, Four Star General, General Africa,Politics News



WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has demoted the former head of U.S. Africa Command who was accused of spending thousands of dollars on lavish travel and other unauthorized expenses, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Panetta stripped Gen. William "Kip" Ward of a star, which means that he will now retire as a three-star lieutenant general. Ward also has been ordered to repay the government $82,000.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh concurred with Panetta's decision, Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement Tuesday.

The demotion came after retired Army Gen. David Petraeus resigned as CIA director because of an extramarital affair and Marine Gen. John Allen was being investigated for potentially improper communications with a woman.

"Secretary Panetta insists that leaders within the Department of Defense exemplify both professional excellence and sound judgment," Little said. "The secretary is committed to ensuring that any improprieties or misconduct by senior officers are dealt with swiftly and appropriately."

A spokesman for Ward said Tuesday that the general "has never been motivated by personal gain and fulfilled each and every mission assigned to him and served his country and the men and women assigned to his commands with distinction."

"While Gen. Ward is not perfect he has always been guided by his faith in God and the belief that there is no greater honor as a patriot than to lead those who choose to serve our nation in the armed forces," spokesman Chris Garrett said in a statement.

Retiring as a three-star general will cost Ward about $30,000 a year in retirement pay, giving him close to $208,802 a year rather than the $236,650 he would receive as a four-star general.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had urged Panetta to allow Ward to retire at his full four-star general rank, according to defense officials.


A report by the Defense Department inspector general found that Ward used military vehicles to shuttle his wife on shopping trips and to a spa and billed the government for a refueling stop overnight in Bermuda, where the couple stayed in a $750 suite. The report detailed lengthy stays at lavish hotels for Ward, his wife and his staff members, and the use of five-vehicle motorcades when he traveled to Washington.

The report also said Ward and his wife, Joyce, accepted dinner and Broadway show tickets from a government contractor during a trip during which he went backstage to meet actor Denzel Washington. The couple and several staff members also spent two nights at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

Other charges were that Ward often extended his overseas trips – particularly those to the U.S. – for personal reasons, resulting in "exponential" increases in costs.

Although the report included responses from Ward to a number of the allegations, investigators often found records and statements that contradicted his explanations. At one point, Ward defended the Bermuda layover, saying that it came up on short notice, which is why his security team had to stay there longer. The report found records showing that the layover had been planned for at least four days in advance.

A common theme running through the report was Ward's insistence that his wife travel with him at government cost, even though it was often not authorized and she performed few official duties. It said he also routinely stayed in high-priced suites in luxury hotels rather than in standard rooms or less expensive locales.

The allegations, coming after a 17-month investigation, delayed Ward's planned April 2011 retirement. And they were an embarrassing end note to his career, since he had claimed a place in history as the military's first commander of Africa Command.

Panetta's options regarding Ward were limited by complex laws and military guidelines. He had only one real choice: Allow Ward to retire as a four-star or demote him and force him to retire as a lieutenant general.

In order for Ward to be demoted to two-star rank, investigators would have to conclude that he also had problems before moving to Africa Command, and officials said that does not appear to be the case.

The investigation dragged on for so long that that Ward was temporarily dropped to two-star status. Under military guidelines, if a full general is not serving in a four-star command or office for more than 60 days, he or she is automatically reduced to two-star rank. Ward would not be able to recoup any back pay for the time at the two-star rank, even though he is being retired at the three-star level.

Major general, or two-star, is the highest rank to which an officer can be promoted by regular military action. Becoming a three-star – lieutenant general – or a four-star general requires a presidential nomination and confirmation by Congress. It, therefore, is not considered permanent and lasts only as long as the person is serving in a job of that rank.

That technical demotion is not uncommon as generals move from job to job and unexpected delays occur. It would not have affected Ward's ability to retire as a four-star, if he had been cleared of the charges.

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Good Government


When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.
Proverbs 29:2
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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Pros: Did the President Deliberately Snub Wall Street?



Published: Wednesday, 14 Nov 2012 | 3:12 PM ET

By: Lee Brodie
Producer


After meeting with top CEOs from almost every corner of the economy except banking, pro traders can’t help but wonder, does President Obama have a beef with Wall Street?

At a White House meeting of the nation’s most influential CEOs on Wednesday, not a single banking boss was among those in attendance.

GE [GE 20.01 -0.67 (-3.24%) ], Ford [F 10.67 -0.33 (-3%) ], Honeywell[HON 59.96 -1.28 (-2.09%) ], Pepsico [PEP 68.17 -0.41 (-0.6%) ] and many of the nation's other big companies were there. But not big banks.

The Wednesday meeting was one of a series of meetings with business, labor and civic leaders ahead of negotiations with Republicans to avert the fiscal cliff – that is the sharp tax hikes and deep spending cuts that loom at the end of the year.

--------------------------------------------------

What do you think? We want to know!


By not inviting bank CEOs to the White House, is President Obama sending a message to Wall Street?

Yes, he's going to come down hard on Wall Street.
No, he can't meet with everyone out of the gate.

Of all the businesses and industries in the nation, the fiscal cliff is by far the issue that matters most to markets and by proxy Wall Street. Yet they weren't invited.

What gives?

“It seems to me the President is setting up a divide right now,” said top trade Mike Murphy founder and managing partner at Rosecliff Capital. “Representative CEOs from every sector of every industry belonged in that meeting.”

Trader Stephen Weiss , managing partner at Short Hills Capital, also felt slighted.

”CEOs from technology, energy, industrials, consumer products, auto and other were in the room today. But not us.”

And Weiss doesn’t think the turn of events was simply poor planning.

“I think it’s payback for support during the election. This should have been a time to put partisanship aside. But clearly it's not - at least not at the White House.”

Jared Bernstein, former Chief Economist and Economic Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden thinks the criticism and ire are misguided.

“The question is this – is the President sending some kind of message and I’m convinced the answer is no.”

Bernstein went on to say that the President met with his supporters first as would be expected. (Largely Wall Street supported Mitt Romney.) "Of course he's going to meet with his base first," said Bernstein.

But “I guarantee you everyone is going to get their audience with the president.”



The traders weren’t easily convinced. “If the president was looking for a better relationship with Wall Street – he has a heck of a way of showing it,” said Murphy.

Source
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Wall Street drops on deficit, Middle East concerns


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3:58pm EST










By Rodrigo Campos

NEW YORK | Wed Nov 14, 2012 5:58pm EST

(Reuters) - Stocks slid on Wednesday with declines accelerating after President Barack Obama set up a drawn-out fight over the fiscal cliff when he stuck to his pledge to raise taxes on the wealthy, and as violence increased in the Middle East.

Obama, in his first press conference since re-election, held to his position that marginal tax rates will have to rise to tackle the nation's deficits.

With talks over solving the U.S. "fiscal cliff" in early stages, investors are reacting to the uncertainty by shedding positions.

"I think we will have a last-minute cliffhanger solution," said Michael Cheah, portfolio manager at SunAmerica Asset Management in Jersey City, New Jersey, about a deal to avoid the so-called cliff.

"In the meantime, the market is going to get punched every day."

Without a deal, a series of mandated tax hikes and spending cuts will start to take effect early next year that could push the U.S. economy into a recession.

Taxes on capital gains and dividends could rise as part of the negotiations, pushing investors to sell this year and pay lower taxes on their gains.

Adding to the selling pressure, Israel launched a major offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing the military commander of Hamas in an air strike and threatening an invasion of the enclave. Egypt said it recalled its ambassador from Israel in response.

"We know Europe's in trouble, China's slowing down ... and now you've got the Middle East flaring up again. It's all hitting at once, and obviously, the market is taking a 'sell first, ask questions later' approach," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.

Industrial shares led the decline, dragged lower in part by a 1 percent spike in crude prices after the Israeli offensive on Gaza. The S&P industrial sector index .GSPI fell 2.5 percent.

Wall Street had opened higher after Dow component Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) reported first-quarter earnings and revenue late Tuesday that beat expectations, driving its stock up 4.8 percent to $17.66. But the positive momentum was short-lived.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 185.23 points, or 1.45 percent, to 12,570.95 at the close. The S&P 500 .SPX dropped 19.04 points, or 1.39 percent, to 1,355.49. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 37.08 points, or 1.29 percent, to 2,846.81.

Both the Dow industrials and the Nasdaq ended at their lowest levels since late June.

The S&P 500 has fallen 5.1 percent in the six sessions since election night. Wednesday marked the benchmark index's lowest close since July 25.

The Russell 2000 .RUT tumbled 2 percent. The Dow Jones Transportation average .DJT slid 2.6 percent. FedEx Corp (FDX.N) shares dropped 3.7 percent to $87.12. Bank of America (BAC.N) shares lost 3.6 percent to $8.99.

In contrast, Facebook (FB.O) shares jumped 12.6 percent to $22.36 as investors were relieved that expiring trading restrictions on a huge block of shares did not trigger an immediate wave of insider selling.

Teen clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co (ANF.N) jumped 34.4 percent to $41.92 after the company reported unexpectedly improved third-quarter results and a full-year outlook that exceeded Wall Street's forecasts.

About 7.53 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, more than the daily average so far this year of about 6.51 billion shares.

On the NYSE, decliners outnumbered advancers by a ratio of almost 9 to 1. On the Nasdaq, about four stocks fell for every one that rose.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Steven C. Johnson and Leah Schnurr; Editing by Jan Paschal)


.

Watchdog group asks IRS to probe Catholic bishops


By David Gibson| Religion News Service, Published: November 6


A public watchdog group is charging the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with openly politicking on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and it wants the Internal Revenue Service to explore revoking the hierarchy’s tax-exempt status.

“In completely unqualified terms, the IRS should immediately tell the Conference of Catholic Bishops that the conduct of its members is beyond the pale,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

“If the Catholic bishops would like to continue receiving the tremendous tax benefits on which they rely, they should follow U.S. law and stay out of American politics,” Sloan added in a statement last Friday (Nov. 2) announcing the complaint.

Sloan argued that last-minute appeals by numerous bishops had crossed the line into electioneering. She named several prelates, including Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill., a fierce critic of President Barack Obama, who ordered his priests to read a letter at all Masses on Sunday that sharply criticized Democratic policies and warned that Catholics who voted for those policies would endanger their eternal salvation.

Though the complaint targets the bishops’ conference, the conference itself has no control over what individual bishops do or do not say. While the USCCB has been waging a fierce political battle with the Obama White House over a contraception mandate, it has been careful not to endorse either candidate.

The bishops under scrutiny deny they are being partisan, and say they are only stating Catholic teaching and pointing out that Democratic policies violate those teachings.

Complaints to the IRS about the Catholic Church are relatively infrequent; church-state watchdogs have generally targeted evangelical churches and other groups associated with the Christian right for violating laws on politicking from the pulpit.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a secularist group based in Madison, Wis., on Monday announced that it had filed a report with the IRS charging evangelist Billy Graham’s ministry with campaigning on behalf of Romney.

The aging Graham, who turns 94 the day after the election, surprised many observers last month by pledging to “do all I can to help” Romney. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association subsequently took out full-page newspaper ads in which Graham strongly urges believers “to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and woman, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms.”

“The context of the ads and publications by BGEA evidence its intent to endorse candidate Mitt Romney,” FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in an Oct. 31 letter to the IRS.

The complaints may be moot, however. The Associated Press reported last week that a senior IRS official said the agency has not investigated any houses of worship over political complaints in three years, an assertion supported by many experts in the field.

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DARPA Sponsors Surveillance Technology to Predict Future Behavior

Saturday, 10 November 2012 17:30

Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.




The dizzying speed of the growth of the surveillance state and the increasing sophistication of the tools used to build it are paid for in large measure by funds doled out by the Army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

At The New American we have chronicled the various projects sponsored by the über-secret research and development arm of the military. One of the newest technologies being pursued by DARPA will not only widen the field of vision of government’s never-blinking eye, but it purports to predict the behavior of those being watched.

Forbes reports that DARPA has contracted with scientists at Carnegie Mellon University to develop “an artificial intelligence system that can watch and predict what a person will ‘likely’ do in the future using specially programmed software designed to analyze various real-time video surveillance feeds. The system can automatically identify and notify officials if it recognized that an action is not permitted, detecting what is described as anomalous behaviors.”

Deployment of the devices is anticipated at “airports and bus stations,” but there is little doubt that should these predictive monitors prove successful, they will be installed right there next to the red light cameras already mounted at nearly every intersection in America.

Forbes also reports that “Carnegie Mellon is one of 15 research teams and commercial integrators that is participating in a five-year program, started in 2010, to develop smart video software.”

Several aspects of this "Minority Report" come-to-life sound substantially similar to another contest of sorts being concurrently sponsored by DARPA at a secret campus near George Mason University in Virginia.

In a statement announcing the progress of the research, DARPA spokesmen Mark Geertsen said the goal of the project was “to invent new approaches to the identification of people, places, things and activities from still or moving defense and open-source imagery.”

In the statement, DARPA described several concepts being worked on by six teams of researchers chosen to live and labor in the “DARPA Innovation House,” outside George Mason University.

While the descriptions of the projects provided by DARPA spokesman Mike Geertsen were brief, greater detail of the technologies were discovered by The New American.

The first of the projects reportedly being cooked up in the DARPA test kitchens is called PetaVision. The DARPA statement describes PetaVision as one of the “Multi-Modal Approaches to Real-Time Video Analysis. Biologically-inspired, hierarchical neural networks to detect objects of interest in streaming video by combining texture/color, shape and motion/depth cues.”

While that summary is admittedly vague, a website maintained by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) provides a bit more information not only on the technology, but why the federal government might find it useful in its quest to place every American under constant surveillance and to identify potential “domestic terrorists.”

We seek to understand and implement the computational principles that enable high-level sensory processing and other forms of cognition in the human brain. To achieve these goals, we are creating synthetic cognition systems that emulate the functional architecture of the primate visual cortex. By using petascale computational resources, combined with our growing knowledge of the structure and function of biological neural systems, we can match, for the first time, the size and functional complexity necessary to reproduce the information processing capabilities of cortical circuits. The arrival of next generation supercomputers may allow us to close the performance gap between state of the art computer vision approaches by bringing these systems to the scale of the human brain.

Admittedly, the potential uses for PetaVision are obscured behind the scientific jargon used in its description. However, empowering the federal government with any technology that can simulate the human brain’s ability to see and process information for the purpose of “detect[ing] objects of interest” in streaming video is terrifying.

As the reports on TrapWire have demonstrated, it is very likely that the video feed from many of the traffic cameras, stoplight cameras, and similar devices may be monitored by agents of the federal government. If the ability of those agents to locate and follow a target increases, the ability of that target to evade detection logically decreases proportionally.

That is to say, once a person has been identified by the federal government as a potential threat, that person will be unable to seek refuge anywhere as emerging technology such as PetaVision will put every spot on the planet within the field of vision of the all-seeing, never-blinking eye of government.

Another tool being hammered out on the DARPA anvils is called Videovor. While no specific information on a technology with that name was found, a website offering scholarly journals covering the topic of visualization of video information was discovered.

On that website an abstract of an article written by scholars at the University of Wales, Swansea (U.K.) makes immediately apparent the attraction such work has for the domestic spying agencies of the federal government:

Video data, generated by the entertainment industry, security and traffic cameras, video conferencing systems, video emails, and so on, is perhaps most time-consuming to process by human beings. In this paper, we present a novel methodology for "summarizing" video sequences using volume visualization techniques. We outline a system pipeline for capturing videos, extracting features, volume rendering video and feature data, and creating video visualization. We discuss a collection of image comparison metrics, including the linear dependence detector, for constructing "relative" and "absolute" difference volumes that represent the magnitude of variation between video frames. We describe the use of a few volume visualization techniques, including volume scene graphs and spatial transfer functions, for creating video visualization. In particular, we present a stream-based technique for processing and directly rendering video data in real time. With the aid of several examples, we demonstrate the effectiveness of using video visualization to convey meaningful information contained in video sequences.

Among the noteworthy revelations in this abstract is the fact that this technology will be used to render “video data in real time” and that the source of that video feed is to be provided by “security and traffic cameras, video conferencing systems, video emails, and so on.”

It is foreseeable that such immensely powerful video summarizing technologies could be very valuable to the National Security Agency (NSA) employees who will soon be monitoring, recording, and storing the electronic communications of every American using the supercomputers housed at the NSA’s sprawling complex under construction near Salt Lake City, Utah.

Reading the description of the next item on DARPA’s list makes it easy to see why the spy apparatus of the federal government would spend millions supporting the work of scientists who can provide powerful new weapons in the war on privacy. The next weapon: geospatial oriented structure extraction.

As hinted at by the DARPA status report, geospatial oriented structure extraction is designed to deliver “automatic construction of a 3D wireframe of an object using as few images as possible from a variety of angles.”

Again, not much to go on, but a search of the Internet provides a little more color. And the source of the additional information may be another piece of evidence of the dangerous liaison growing between the federal government and local law enforcement.

Nlets is a non-profit organization owned and operated by the states that maintains the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems. This system is an electronic messaging service that facilitates the exchange of information among state and local law enforcement.

An Nlets website under the heading “International Justice and Public Safety” describes a project called “Geospatial Service Oriented Architecture for Public Safety (GeoSOAPS). GeoSOAPS, the website says is co-sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Again, this is the sort of collaboration the Constitution could do without.

In a frightening admission against interest, the website proudly boasts that “Nlets and its member community offer the ideal proving ground for this nationally focused project.”

And just who are the members of the Nlets community? According to its website, every state police force in the United States, the Secret Service, the FBI, the DHS, the Federal Aviation Administration, TSA, the State Department, and Interpol, among others. That is a coalition of such immense power, reach, and resources that no one can escape it, neither in the real world nor the virtual world of cyberspace.

From predictive surveillance to Petavision, once these tools for warrantless domestic surveillance — in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment — are delivered to DARPA, the vast network of federal spies and local and federal law enforcement will be able to instantly share the data collected from video feeds captured by traffic and stop light cameras located in thousands of street corners in nearly every town in every country around the world and arrest an individual for acts those machines predict the target might make based solely on the software’s predictions.

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New Google Transparency Report Says Government Surveillance and Censorship is on the Rise



By JG Vibes
theintelhub.com
November 14, 2012

It should come as no surprise to anyone who uses the internet that government surveillance and censorship has been increasing in intensity by the day.

This week everyone’s suspicions have been confirmed by Google’s new transparency report.

Twice a year Google releases a report which shows how many take down requests they receive from government agencies or organizations worldwide. The report also gives details on government surveillance through their networks.

The numbers that they give in the new transparency reports are alarming, but even Google admits that they only represent a small portion of what is taking place, because they only know about the government spying that is going on through their networks, with their knowledge.

According to the report:


“This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise. As you can see from the graph below, government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.”



The report continues:


“The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011. But it’s spiked in this reporting period. In the first half of 2012, there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content.”



The report concludes that:


“You can see the country-by-country trends for requests to hand over user data and to remove content from our services in the Transparency Report itself, but in aggregate around the world, the numbers continue to go up…….

The information we disclose is only an isolated sliver showing how governments interact with the Internet, since for the most part we don’t know what requests are made of other technology or telecommunications companies. But we’re heartened that in the past year, more companies likeDropbox, LinkedIn, Sonic.net and Twitter have begun to share their statistics too. Our hope is that over time, more data will bolster public debate about how we can best keep the Internet free and open.”


For people who are concerned about privacy on the internet it may be a good idea to start learning encryption. There are many encryption programs that you can download for free so you can have private conversations and a private space on your computer.

Programs like Cryptocat can allow you to instant message privately, while a program like truecrypt can encrypt files on your computer. If you want to encrypt your emails, do a Google search for “gpg4win” and you will find a free program that will allow you to do that.

There is also now a smartphone app called Silent Circle, which allows people to encrypt all of their phone calls and text messages for a very reasonable monthly fee (roughly 20$).

So it is always important to remember that if you are online you are probably being watched, so be careful! With increased surveillance and crack downs on file sharers it is likely that projects like the TOR Browser will become more popular and more user friendly.

TOR is an anonymous browser that allows users to browse a deeper interface of the internet completely anonymously and as of right now that is one of the only options for totally anonymous surfing, but it does not allow you to surf the whole internet.

For a certain level of anonymity while surfing the general web, Proxy Servers and anonymous search engines like startpage.com are good to use.

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Read more articles by this author HERE.

J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio.

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