Syrian Girl: Obama Directly Backing Al-Qaeda in Public Statement

Alex talks with Syrian Girl about the latest developments in Syria and who stands to gain from this illegal proxy war, pre-invasion by design.

Smart house technology is not as futuristic as we think

By Brent Daggett: In 1999, Disney released the film “Smart House,” which was roughly based on Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt.”
Smart House was about 13-year-old Ben, who won a competition for a computerized home run by a cyborg named PAT, played by Katey Sagal.
Throughout the film, Pats behavior drastically changes and eventually traps the family inside since she believes the outside world is too dangerous.
Toward the end, Sagal appears as a holographic image and Ben says something to the effect that she is not real and never will be human.
After that, PAT unlocks the house.

US planned atomic war on Russia, China: Released docement

Press TV: A newly revealed top secret document indicates that the US once instituted a military plan by which it would launch an instantaneous “full nuclear attack” against both China and Russia, if attacked by one of the two, even accidentally or by conventional arms.

The document, published Wednesday by the Washington-based National Security Archives, shows that until 1968, the US had a protocol in place by which it would engage in a full-blown nuclear attack against the two powers at the time regardless of the fact that which one initiated the attack on the United States and without consideration as to whether only conventional arms were used or if it came as the result of a mere accident.

The reckless policy, codenamed ‘Furtherance,’ remained in effect towards the end of 1960’s, when the administration of then President Lyndon Johnson ordered a review of the policy, geared towards a more measured reaction, in a bid to avert a disastrous atomic confrontation during the Cold War era.

Sales of perfume named after M75 rocket soar in Gaza

Press TV: A local cosmetics company in Gaza has named a citrus-scented perfume after the rockets that Palestinians fired on the Israeli cities during the eight-day offensive.

Rajaey Odwan, director of Gaza's Continental Style perfume company said on Wednesday that the sales of “M-75” perfume have soared since it was named in honor of the rocket that for the first time landed in Tel Aviv.

Odwan added that he thought he would give customers a chance to smell victory and "turn it into a perfume,” adding, "Sales have gone through the roof."

He further said that “the fragrance is pleasant and attractive, like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance.”

Ahmed Hassan, a customer from neighboring Egypt, who bought M-75 from a shop in Gaza as a souvenir, said that, "I hope the smell is strong enough for them to whiff in Tel Aviv and remind the Jews of the Palestinian victory."

Syria: For Russia The Time To Act Is Now + Most Russians Think Homosexuality Is Perversion - Soviet Bear

Morris: Russia can leave Syria - or reinforce its military presence but it cannot sit on the fence while the West bolsters its military muscle and tears up previous agreements with Russia regarding Syria.

Fed Officials Forecast Main Rate to Stay Near Zero Until 2015/16

Bloomberg: A majority of Federal Reserve officials don’t expect to raise the main interest rate until 2015, when they forecast the jobless rate will fall to between 6 percent and 6.6 percent.

Federal Open Market Committee participants forecast today that gross domestic product will expand 2.3 percent to 3 percent next year, compared with 2.5 percent to 3 percent in September. Estimates for 2014 are from 3 percent to 3.5 percent, versus 3 percent to 3.8 percent in the previous projection, according to the central tendency forecasts, which exclude the three highest and three lowest of 19 projections.
The FOMC earlier today voted to supplement their $40 billion a month of mortgage-bond purchases with $45 billion in monthly Treasury purchases once their Operation Twist program expires at the end of the month. The Fed said interest rates will stay low “at least as long” as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5 percent and if inflation “between one and two years ahead” is projected to be no more than 2.5 percent.
The jobless rate probably will average 7.4 percent to 7.7 percent in the final three months of next year, officials said, versus 7.6 percent to 7.9 percent in September.

Five of 19 officials said the first interest-rate increase since 2006 would be warranted in 2014 or sooner, while 13 said it would occur in 2015. One called for an increase in 2016.

"What's wrong with this picture?" High Ranking US Major General Exposes September 11

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: "America is Going to Crash Big Time"

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts thinks there is "an impending collapse of the exchange value," and the U.S. dollar could unexpectedly plunge in buying power. Dr. Roberts contends, "All of a sudden, people walk into Walmart, as usual, and they think they've walked into Neiman Marcus." Dr. Roberts says there are no quick fixes to the bulging debt because "there's no way to close this deficit when corporations are moving the tax base off-shore." Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. Source

Mozilla rallies for opposition against secret Internet treaty

Add another name to the list of critics concerned with attempts to rewrite the International Telecommunication Union to give governments control of the Internet: Silicon Valley’s Mozilla now officially opposes the ITU.

RT: Mozilla, the makers of the highly successful Firefox Web browser for Macs, PCs and smart phones, have come out to condemn a top-secret meeting in Dubai this week that could lead to changes with how the world is wired to the Internet.
The details of the closed-door discussions being held between members of the United Nation’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) this week in the United Arab Emirates remains a secret, and that’s exactly why Mozilla is speaking up. In a plea posted on Mozilla.org, the developers write, “The issue isn't whether our governments, the UN or even the ITU should play a role in shaping the Web. The problem is that they are trying to do it behind closed doors, in secret, without us.”
“The Web lets us speak out, share and connect around the things that matter. It creates new opportunities, holds governments to account, breaks through barriers and makes cats famous. This isn't a coincidence. It's because the Web belongs to all of us,” insists Mozilla. “We all get a say in how it's built.”

Small Business Apocalypse Or Political Vendetta?

By Wolf Richter: The National Federation of Independent Business tried to shock the world with its report that small-business owner optimism plunged 5.6 points to 87.5%—below the 87.8% of the apocalyptic post-Lehman November 2008. A huge setback; small businesses are the job creating machine of the economy. “Something bad happened, and it wasn’t Sandy,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. “It was the election.”
Small-business Optimism took a nasty hit during the financial crisis—and hasn’t recovered yet. When NFIB started the monthly surveys in 1986, it set the level at 100. Optimism would drop into the 90s then bounce back above 100. From late 2003 through 2004, peaks approached 110. But in 2005, Optimism faded. It dipped below 90 for the first time in March, 2008, as Bear Stearns blew up. By September, it was back at 92.9, the high for the year. Despite Lehman’s collapse.
Small-business owners apparently liked that Wall Street got clobbered. As markets nosedived, however, optimism followed. In October 2008, it dropped 5.4 points to 87.8, rose a smidgen in November, then descended to its low of 81.0 in March, 2009.
Recovery of small-business Optimism was only slight, unlike the markets that were goosed by the trillions that the Fed handed to its cronies. Small businesses got no more than crumbs. By April 2010, Optimism ventured above 90, then dropped again. In February, 2011, it reached a post-crisis high of 94.5, dropped again, hit that high once more in April, 2012, then dropped and finally hit 87.5% in November. A tough slog.
The most significant factor in November’s plunge?  “The expectation that future business conditions will be worse than current ones,”

Superhumans, supercities and supercomputers: US intelligence's vision of 2030

RT: Things are about to get a little weird. This according to the National Intelligence Council, at least, a US-based coalition of spy agencies that has just released its predictions for what’s in store for the Earth in 2030.
The NIC released on Monday “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” an 140-page report that brings together the best brains within the intelligence sector to find out what we might expect a few decades down the road. Given the current rate of growth in technology and medicine, the marvels considered in the NIC report shouldn’t come as all too surprising. Only 18 years down the road, however, the ideas being pitched by the people behind the report might not be as much science fiction as soon-to-be-reality. It also might very well be predictive policy making.
“We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures,” Council Chairman Christopher Kojm writes in the report.
With the next few years ripe for experiment, the future is “malleable,” Kojm suggests, making no time like the present to start perfecting space-age advances once thought to be out of this world. On the contrary, though, the NIC seems to think cyborg civilians and instant super-cities are thing of the not-so-distant future.
“Our effort is to encourage decision-makers, whether in government or outside, to think and plan for the long term so that negative futures do not occur and positive ones have a better chance of unfolding,”

The world's low-growth, economic disaster zone - Nigel Farage

• European Parliament, Strasbourg, 11 December 2012
• Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Co-President of the 'Europe of Freedom and Democracy' (EFD) Group in the European Parliament Source