Regarding The Markets, DUMP IT ALL NOW!

By Gregory Mannarino

We Are All Palestinians Now - Anonymous

Morris: A succinct insightful summary of what is unfolding.

We're In The Middle Of A Global Awakening

LeeCamp2: This is the most positive Moment of Clarity episode yet. It's the reason it's worth it to keep fighting. This is what gives me hope. This episode was heavily inspired and informed by a post by Nick Margerrison.

The Spending Crunch Is Official: "We Are Confident There Is An Issue With The Consumer"

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Think the Walmart "disastrous" sales memo was a one-off event, which net of Walmart's damage should be completely ignored (something the market has been perfectly happy to oblige with)? Then listen to a separate perspective on the US consumer, this time from a very different angle: that of Town Sports International which operates such gyms as New York Sports Club, and specifically its CEO David Gallagher, who in last night's conference call just confirmed what everyone knows: "As we moved into January membership trends were tracking to expectations in the first half of the month, but fell off track and did not meet our expectations in the second half of the month. We believe the driver of this was the rapid decline in consumer sentiment that has been reported and is connected to the reduction in net pay consumers earn given the changes in tax rates that went into effect in January."

It goes on:

Based on how broad-based the slowdown has been quarter-to-date, we are confident there is an issue with the consumer. We were going to do everything in our power to make up for this January member shortfall, we continue to see softness and expect to net less than half the net member gain that was achieved in Q1 of 2012. Unfortunately, we are also seeing the softness in our ancillary revenue.

And on:

Horsemeat Economics - azizonomics

Aziz: The British (and now Europe-wide) scandal of corporations selling horse meat as beef is emblematic of many of the problems with big, unwieldy systems.
The similarity between horse meat and subprime has already been noted in a Financial Times editorial:

The food industry has long known that processed meat is susceptible to fraud. While it is relatively easy to verify whole cuts of meat taken from a carcass, this is not the case for the bits left behind. These are gathered up and shipped out to thousands of outlets for processing into lower-value products. In Britain, monitoring this industry is left to local authorities and the retailers themselves.
Yet this surveillance has become virtually impossible in the modern world of food production. Consumers want ever lower prices. But food margins are already wafer thin. The drive to cut costs has sent retailers scouting for cheaper suppliers in far-flung parts of the world. Supply chains have become vast and unwieldy. And internet tenders drive prices down even further.
This has brought big benefits to consumers who until recently enjoyed consistently falling prices. But in a disturbing parallel to the financial sector’s subprime crisis, the growing distance between supermarkets and their suppliers has also opened the door to fraud on a scale that as yet can only be guessed at. The meat used in these products now travels across multiple borders and through myriad companies. Regulators do not have the resources to keep up. Only those who buy the processed products and sell them under their own brands can apply the pressure that will limit chances for fraud.

MKultra and Manchurian Candidate Explained - Neil Sanders

Morris: The ingredients, methods, history and uses. Source

What Ferrari’s Glorious Results Tell Us About The World

By Wolf Richter: The announcement couldn’t have been more glorious in crisis-struck Italy: Ferrari booked records sales and profits in 2012. The report was dazzling in every aspect. Not a single cloud darkened the horizon. Except in Italy where sales collapsed. And in the rest of the world, where central-bank printer ink stained the records.
Worldwide revenues rose 8% from prior year, to €2.43 billion, exceeding the previous record set in 2008 before the financial crisis rattled the nerves of the rich. A total of 7,318 cars were delivered to dealers, up 4.5%. Price increases stuck. Net profit jumped 17.8% to €244 million. And the company sat on an industrial net cash position of over €1 billion.
“We are all enormously proud of ending the year with these kinds of results despite the unfavorable economic backdrop in many European nations, and the distinctly hostile one in Italy,” said Chairman Luca di Montezemolo. The distinctly hostile one in Italy: we’ll get to that.
He spread the praise. “The credit for this goes to the men and women in Ferrari, the strength of the brand....” Etc. etc. But he forgot to mention the most important factor in Ferrari’s glory: central banks. They printed trillions of dollars, euros, yuan, and other currencies and handed them to their cronies. It created side bubbles to the most gargantuan credit bubble ever, and some of it trickled down to luxury goods.

U.S. Air Force promotion video showcases frightening insect-sized killer drones

By Madison Ruppert: In a disturbing promotional video on Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, simulated images of insect-sized drones are shown performing everything from extended surveillance both indoors and outdoors to targeting of locations to lethal missions.
While we’ve reported on this type of drone technology before, including a video of the Air Force’s so-called “micro-aviary,” this is apparently the first time that a full promotional video has been released publicly showcasing the capabilities of these types of drones.
Other technological advances include the potential for perpetual flight, drone-based facial recognition technology, solar power, automated tracking technology, cameras capable of capturing over 30 square miles in a single shot, fully automated weapons systems, drone-borne EMP missiles, tiny drones already deployed in Afghanistan, silent drones and much more.
Combine all of that with the fact that drone use is rapidly expanding domestically with over 80 public entities authorized to fly drones, the military using drones and sharing data with law enforcement, at least one National Guard unit using drones, increasingly frequent police use of drones and colleges and universities offering more drone piloting programs to keep up with this surge and you have a disturbing picture.
In this particular video, we see a bird-like drone perched on a power line, drones the size of insects entering a home and, perhaps most disturbingly, a tiny drone carrying out a “direct attack mission.”

BBC in crisis amid union strikes, scandals

UK Banned Press TV: It was business as usual at British Brainwashing Corruption (BBC) offices but on Monday schedules were heavily disrupted after thousands of union-affiliated staff staged a walkout to fight against what they said were damaging cuts across the corporation. The BBC plan on axing 2000 posts over the next five years to cuts costs. A move staff say badly affects the quality of the organization's output. Obviously the awakened would prefer it was scrapped altogether. Source

Mali: the looking glass war that never was

By Richard Cottrell: I am not going to tire my readers with in-depth reports from the new struggle for civilization,  recently fought in the semi-desert wastes of a West African republic that few until recently could locate on a map.
Mali, it is called, and Mali is a truly horrible place. It is a left over remnant of the dog’s dinner known as French West Africa, devoid of almost everything including food and civilized refuge.
Word concerning the French Revolution has yet to reach this parched, impoverished landscape and given the enthusiasm for educating the local natives by the former colonial proprietors, this is hardly surprising.
Yet the world is/was at war in Mali, or so we are told. Forget it. We are watching a cleverly constructed, brilliantly enacted, perfectly designed optical illusion. The players are the usual gang: the media, shackled to their real owners, the proprietors of Corporate Global Solutions PLC; our gullible selves, ever ready to believe in the phantom myth of some new offshoot of Islamic terrorism; and not least the authors of what this war is really about, namely the international goldbugs.
Mali is a sideshow, but an important one, in the new Scramble for Africa now being waged by the Western powers. I will explain just why in a moment.
As for the grand illusion, we are offered exciting reports from the battlefront.

US and China accuse each other of cyber warfare

RT: Security experts in the United States claim that a 12-story office building outside of Shanghai is the headquarters of a sophisticated hacking unit within the Chinese military established to attack computer networks in America and elsewhere.
According to a report published Tuesday morning by a Northern Virginia-based information security company, an elusive squadron of Chinese cyberwarriors operating under the name Unit 61398 has engaged in countless battles with governments and entities around the globe for years under the umbrella of the People’s Liberation Army.
The group is accused of infiltrating the computers of some of the biggest businesses and agencies in the US, both public and private alike, and is assumed to still be at large.
Alexandria, Virginia’s Mandiant says they’ve been investigating PLA Unit 61398 for years now and has watched them compromise 141 companies across 20 major industries, infecting the computers at places like Coca-Cola and the Canadian arm of Telvent with malicious codes used to pilfer servers for privileged information and wreak havoc. In their report, the security experts say that they are all but certain that those attacks have originated out of an inconspicuous white office building on the outskirts of Shanghai that has been provided with a special fiber optic communications infrastructure from Chinese telecom providers in the name of national defense — but China maintains the claim that they have not engaged in any illegal hacks.
Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia begs to differ, and tells The New York Times that either those attacks are being waged by Unit 61398 out of the building in question, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Anonymous hacked US State Dept, investment firm in homage to Aaron Swartz, Lulzsec

RT: Anonymous has announced it gained access to the State Department’s website, captured a database, and published it online. It also entered the site of investment firm George K. Baum & Company – all in the name of Aaron Swartz and Lulzsec. The databases which they claimed to have obtained were posted on ZeroBin website. The data dump is part of “round five” of “Operation Last Resort” – Anonymous’ anti-US campaign which was launched shortly after the suicide of internet activist Aaron Swartz.
The group published the names and email addresses of State Department consular and careers staff members. In some cases, their phone numbers and date of birth were also revealed.
Anonymous also defaced the website of George K. Baum and Company, adding a page which linked to the firm’s client and user account credentials, passwords, phone numbers, and access to transaction information.
The group pointed out that the company is linked to Stratfor, a global intelligence firm whose systems were breached by Anonymous in December 2011.
The hacks appear to have been prompted by two things. First, they were to pay respect to Aaron Swartz – an internet activist who faced up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine for the alleged theft of online journals with the intent to post them online. Swartz hanged himself in his New York apartment last month, in the midst of his controversial case.
Secondly, the hacks appeared to be revenge for the arrests of members of the Lulzsec group – a hacking collective which has claimed responsibility for a number of high profile hacks, including Sony Pictures in 2011, SC Magazine reports.
"Our reasons for this attack are very simple. You've imprisoned or either censored our people.