THE ARTIST TAXI DRIVER "STOP OR ELSE!"

Previously:

Euro crisis: US General Martin Dempsey warns of unrest

The top US military commander, Gen Martin Dempsey, says he is concerned about "the potential for civil unrest" as Europe's financial crisis unfolds.

Gen Dempsey said it was unclear the latest steps taken by EU leaders would be enough to hold the eurozone together, adding that a break-up could have consequences for the Pentagon.

Twenty-six of the 27 EU countries have agreed to forge a tighter fiscal union.

Only the UK refused to sign up to a new treaty, citing national interest.

Gen Dempsey, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an event hosted by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think-tank: "The eurozone is at great risk."

"I know that they've taken some measures here with the 17 members of the eurozone to try to better align... monetary and fiscal policy. But it's unclear, to me at least, that that will be the glue that actually holds it together." Full story/source

Ron Paul's Greatest Interview - Gold & Silver With Mike Maloney

Mike Maloney was lucky enough to interview Congressman Ron Paul, and share the session with his customers at GoldSilver.com. The full interview never made it to YouTube, so here it is for the first time. Enjoy! Check out the link at the end of this video - an epic presentation on gold and silver. Source

Russia trails U.S. to Syrian waters

Russia next week will dispatch a flotilla of warships, including its navy flagship, to Syria, where the U.S. has already deployed a naval force.

A battle group, consisting of three vessels led by the heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, Admiral Kuznetsov, will embark on a two-month voyage to the Mediterranean on December 6, a defence official told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday.

The news came shortly after the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush anchored off Syria, along with additional vessels. Moscow has denounced the U.S. move as destabilising.

“Such steps are creating additional tensions in a region that is already overheated and are not facilitating at all the search for political settlement,” said the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday.

The defence official in Moscow insisted that the Russian Navy mission has no connection with the ongoing crisis in the region and was planned long ago. He said the warships will conduct drills in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean far from Syrian shores and will return to their Northern Fleet base in early February. However, the ships will call on the Russian naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus to replenish supplies of food and fuel.

A former naval commander said Moscow was sending a message to the U.S. and European leaders.

“Having any military force other than NATO's is very useful for the region because it will prevent the outbreak of armed conflict,” former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, told a Russian daily.

Last week unconfirmed reports said three Russian warships had already anchored near Syrian shores, but Russian officials refused to confirm or deny the reports.

Russia is dispatching warships to Syria at a time of renewed tension in Russian-American relations. Source

Global currency war escalates over Euro

The Pentagon has undertaken war games on currency and finance as countries jostle for survival and position with the Euro in danger of collapse.

Press TV has talked with Max Keiser, financial analyst in Paris about the new economic treaty proposal between Germany and France to rescue the collapsing Euro and the impact this could have on other countries if approved. Source

Gold-for-Bonds & Debts-for-What?! Max Keiser

Central banks and governments 'saving the day' and hostage taking paper silver markets and gold for bonds in Japan. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Satyajit Das, author of Extreme Money, about the European debt crisis. Source

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Coming New International Climate Court

Damning look at the United Nation's climate talks in Durbin, which aims to put nations under carbon-based debt and commit genocidal policies against the poor. Alex is joined by Lord Christopher Monckton and Climate Depot's Mark Morano to discuss the latest attempt to build world government on a foundation of eco-fascism. Source

Europe's blithering idiots and their flim-flam treaty

What remarkable petulance and stupidity. The leaders of France and Germany have more or less bulldozed Britain out of the European Union for the sake of a treaty that offers absolutely no solution to the crisis at hand, or indeed any future crisis. It is EU institutional chair shuffling at its worst, with venom for good measure.

It is risky to reach instant conclusions on a fast-moving story but it looks as if the EU may soon be reduced to a shell, with a new union forming among the core.

Much has been said about whether David Cameron handled this well or badly. I leave that debate to my colleagues. What strikes me as a former EU correspondent is how threatening this is to the EU Project itself.

A country – and a large one – may start to disengage for the first time. The aura of historical inevitability that has swept Europe towards ever closer union for half a century has been punctured. Yes, Croatia will soon join, as Sarkozy chirped triumphantly, but that is not quite the same thing (no offence meant to the South Slavs).

Utter confusion will ensue over the legal structures of the EU. For whom will the European Commission work? For whom the European Court? It will be chaos for a while. This is the nightmare that fonctionnaires have always feared.

And what for? All this upheaval for a mess of pottage, a flim-flam treaty? The deal is not a "lousy compromise", said Angela Merkel. Well, actually that is exactly what it is for eurozone politicians searching for a breakthrough.

It tarts up the old Stability Pact without changing the substance (although there will be prior vetting of budgets). This "fiscal compact" is not going to make to make the slightest impression on global markets, and they are the judges who matter in this trial by fire.

Yes, there is more discipline for fiscal sinners, but without any transforming help. Even the old "Marshall Plan" of the July summit has bitten the dust.

There is no shared debt issuance, no fiscal transfers, no move to an EU Treasury, no banking licence for the ESM rescue fund, and no change in the mandate of the European Central Bank.

In short, there is no breakthrough of any kind that will convince Asian investors that this monetary union has viable governance or even a future.

Germany has kept the focus exclusively on fiscal deficits even though everybody must understand by now that this crisis was not caused by fiscal deficits (except in the case of Greece). Spain and Ireland were in surplus, and Italy had a primary surplus.

As Sir Mervyn King said last week, the disaster was caused by current account imbalances (Spain's deficit, and Germany's surplus), and by capital flows setting off private sector credit booms.

The Treaty proposals evade the core issue.

Did France and Germany really have to cause this rift by throwing in an assault on the City that has precious little do with the EMU crisis? Yes, I suppose they did.

Given that Merkozy cannot bring themselves to accept that Europe's debacle stems from the euro itself, from a 30pc currency misalignment between from North and South, and from an over-leveraged €23 trillion banking bubble that German, French, Dutch, Belgian regulators allowed to happen… given that, yes, I suppose they have to find a scapegoat.

They have to whip up a witchhunt against somebody, so why not Anglo-Saxon bankers? Nasty reflexes are at work. German and French politicians in particular should be very careful about inciting populist hatred against a group that makes such easy prey. We have been there before.

No doubt these dramatic events will be uncomfortable for Britain, but this will all be swept away by bigger events before long. The Europols have not begun to work out a viable solution to their deformed and unworkable currency union, and perhaps no such solution exists. The system will lurch from crisis to crisis until it blows up in acrimony.

By then, a separate cluster will have emerged (not the 10 "outs" against the 17 "ins", always a ludicrous concept), but rather a loose Anglo-Nordic-Swiss grouping that may not do so badly on the fringes and may begin to solidify into a seductively comfortable outer tier.

The mere existence of such a constellation might change the calculus of isolation for Spain should it finally tire of Franco-German dictates and depression, or should the Portuguese at last conclude that enough is enough.

Does France, for that matter, really want to be locked into a clammy embrace with an ever stronger Germany? The whole purpose of monetary union for Paris was to tie down a reunited Germany with silken cords. France now finds its own hands tied because of EMU, reduced to a humiliating side-kick.

But the vain and hysterical little man now in the Elysée will soon be gone. A leader will emerge once more with a "certaine idée de la France".

As for Britain, let us seize the moment of liberation, and enjoy it. 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Source

Occupy Suspects: UK Police Brand Campers a Terror Threat

Narco-terrorists, suicidal jihadists, and Occupy London? While few would see any connection between peaceful British activists protesting economic inequality and the world's most notorious terrorist groups, London police beg to differ. Source

Yakutian Hachiko in bitter vigil for dead mate

A stray dog in Russia’s Far East stood on guard beside his dead mate in biting cold for over two weeks. The “Yakutian Hachiko” tried to warm her up with his own body.

The two stray dogs had been guarding local garages until one of them was allegedly poisoned. The other refused to leave his dead pal’s side even when the temperature dropped to -50 degrees Celsius.

He was nicknamed the "Yakutian Hachiko" after a Japanese dog remembered for his remarkable loyalty to his dead owner, waiting for him at a train station for seven years.

After the story was posted online, Yakutian animal lovers started bringing food to the dog.Later, they decided to take him to a shelter until new owners could be found, fearing he might die of cold.

However, after only a few hours, “Hachiko” broke free, pulling out a metal net barrier complete with nails. He was later found at the same very spot, beside his frozen mate, far from his temporary shelter.

Local residents then abandoned attempts to re-home the dog and built a warm kennel at the site. And buried his husky pal.

Soon afterwards, the dog started a slow recovery. He is now eating normally and plays eagerly with local puppies.

War-torn Libya last resort for jobless Gazans

Israel’s blockade of Gaza has left thousands jobless with two in three locals living in poverty. The situation is so desperate that even Libya, fresh from a bloody civil war, is being seen as a land of opportunity by over 5,000 Palestinians.

Thousands of desperate and unemployed Gazans hope that war-torn Libya can offer them respite from the hardships of war on their doorstep.

“We don’t have any source of income. Prisoners are in better conditions than us. That’s why people want to run away from here,” Sami Ed, an unemployed Gazan, told RT’s Paula Slier. 

Queues to get into the battered North African country are long, but full of hope – more than 5,000 people have already signed up for work in Libya.

“I am happy to do any type of work there, it doesn’t make a difference, just to get some income so my children can survive,” another jobless Gazan, Yasser Salman, explained to RT. 

The United Nations puts unemployment in Gaza at 45 per cent. Two in three Gazans live in poverty, and every year, the Ministry of Labor says another 30,000 people join the ranks of the jobless.

Ever since Israel imposed a siege on Gaza nearly five years ago, the private sector has all but ground to a halt.

“The economy in Gaza is dependent on Israel. It’s the way Israel set it up,” Saker Abu Hein, Hamas’ Assistant Minister for Labor, explained to RT. “All the materials we need for industry and construction have to come from Israel, through Israeli ports and airports. We have no direct relationship with the outside world.”

Before the Palestinian uprising in 2000, tens of thousands of Gazans worked in Israel. The largest border crossing between Israel and Gaza once saw lots of people flowing through, but now only a handful of trickle out each day. 

Nael al Keishawy was a painter and once earned about US $30 a day – enough for his family to survive on. 

But has hasn’t been able to cross the border for seven years, and with no work this side, his children often go to bed hungry.

He was one of the first to sign up when a call went out for people interested in going to Libya.  

“I don’t care if it’s Libya or not. I’m ready to go to Mars for the sake of getting food for my children. I can’t give them more than 20 cents a day to survive on.  Can you imagine that?” he asks.

Hamas says Israel promised to lift the blockade on Gaza as part of a recent prisoner exchange that freed Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for five years. 

But Israel says it made no such promise.

“Israel still controls the trade, sea, air. People in Gaza are not allowed to go or to trade freely with the outside world. Israel is the main cause for the siege in Gaza. Israel’s government did not deny that,” economic analyst Omar Shaban told RT.  

Israel says the siege is for security reasons and is afraid that materials like cement and steel could be used to build weapons and military fortifications.
RT’s Paula Slier says the recent flare-up of violence between Israel and Gaza has done little to ease the situation.  On the contrary, many now fear that, far from lifting the siege, Israel will tighten it. 

And as long as the blockade remains in place, there is little hope for an improvement in the lives of Gazans and the flood of economic migrants seeking work in Libya – and elsewhere – is likely to continue.

Biggest Split in the EU in 50 Years!

Nigel Farage. "What we saw in the early hours of this morning was the biggest split in the EU in 50 Years!" Source

'Don Jon' Corzine Pays Alex Jones A Visit!

EARTH OF MORON

Nigel Farage Says Time Now For UK European Referendum +

UKIP leader Nigel Farage says it is now time for the British people to have a referendum on being in Europe, as the Europeans try to isolate the UK after rejecting a treaty for closer political integration and control of economy. Source

Today in Brussels, 27 countries met to discuss possible solutions for the Eurozone debt crisis. Many critics are still confused on what came of the meeting, and claim the get-together was to agree on the fact that new agreements are needed. So have Europe's leaders put us on a course for global recession? Joe Weisenthal, deputy editor from Business Insider, joins us with his insight. Source