Man On Fire: 02/04/13

4 Feb 2013

The City's Great Financial Scandals: Panel Discussion

GreshamCollege: The litany of great financial scandals is long, and sadly unending. (skip to 27:50 mark . . . “I watch Keiser Report…”)

The paranoia of the superrich and superpowerful - Noam Chomsky

From Pakistan to Mali, Washington's drones and special ops are blindly pushing the process of destabilisation forward.

"At the end of the Second World War, the US was absolutely at the peak of its power; it had half the world's wealth and every one of its competitors was seriously damaged or destroyed," says Chomsky [Reuters]

[This piece is adapted from "Uprisings", a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire, Noam Chomsky's new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian's, the answers Chomsky's.]
Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had?
The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the Western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab Spring is limited, but it's not insignificant. The Western-controlled dictatorial system is eroding. In fact, it's been eroding for some time. So, for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources - the main concern of US planners - have been mostly nationalised. There are constantly attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.
Take the US invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love of democracy but because it's maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil in the world

Hacker in chief: Obama "The Baby Bomber" given right to launch 'preemptive' cyberattacks

RT: A secret review has concluded that US President Obama has the authority to launch a preemptive cyber attack on any country on the basis that they are considered a ‘cyber threat’ – even if there is no concrete evidence of this threat.

It may not be long before the US conducts crippling attacks on foreign soil with little more than a mouse click, thereby sparing itself the effort of sending its military oversees or declaring war.
The Obama administration is currently drawing up a set of rules about how the US military can defend against or conduct cyberattacks, the New York Times reports. The Obama administration is also allowing intelligence agencies to declare potential threats. But even if these threats are nothing more than a suspicion without evidence, the military now has the authority to attack foreign nations, regardless of whether or not the US is involved in a conflict with them.
This would not only spare the US from sending its own troops overseas, but it would also allow the administration to make decisions without the deliberation that usually (does not) occurs before sending Americans into a conflict zone.

New UK killer drones

UK banned Press TV: Hunter killing machine fantasies are a step closer to reality as Britain has spent more than £2 billion over the last five years, developing its latest autonomous assassination drones. Economy: Businesses in Belfast are counting the cost of a wave of riots they fear could undermine a fledgling tourist boom and scare foreign investors away from a city desperate top shake off its reputation for violence. Monarchy: the constitutional convention is, that the Queen will act only and always on ministerial or prime ministerial advice, but there were the Queen not to act on advice and there have been plenty of instances in the 20th century when that was the situation. Source

The World is Going to War-Gerald Celente

By Greg Hunter: Top trends researcher Gerald Celente pulls no punches when he predicts, “The world is going to war.” Celente says what is happening today happened before, prior to World War II. Celente says the pattern is the same as the one that started in 1929, “crash . . . depression, currency wars, trade wars, and world war.” Celente says, “When you follow the time lines, we are now in the late 1930’s.” But unlike the 30’s, today’s money is not backed by gold or anything else for that matter. So, Celente says, “The banks are forcing . . . governments to keep funding them by flooding money into the system.” Celente predicts, “What’s going to happen when this thing starts collapsing? People are going to be going into gold.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with the founder and creator of The Trends Journal. Source

The European Union & Soviet Union similarities - 2013

ukipmedia: Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky , now UKIP member, is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Russia - Writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist, he now lives in Cambridge. Credit to Chabbyvids for this video.

‘Dead children’ spied for UK police for decades - report

RT: For over four decades British police have been stealing the identities of dead children and using them as aliases for their undercover operations, some of which lasted for as long as ten years.

It is estimated that around 80 identities have been adopted by the Metropolitan police with passports, national insurance cards and driving licenses issued for the stolen identity, the Guardian investigation has revealed.
The probe alleges that the Metropolitan police secretly authorized such activities back in the 1960’s to infiltrate protest groups. They did so without informing the parents of the dead children.
The police explained to the newspaper that the practice was not "currently" authorized but said that it will investigate the claims made by the Guardian into “past arrangements for undercover identities used by SDS [Special Demonstration Squad] officers.”
The Guardian based its story primarily on the testimony of two former officers of the SDS, who claimed they had lived under the false identity of dead children and were issued with identity records, such as driving licences and national insurance documents.