Latest on Global Research Latest on Dandelion Salad Latest on Black Agenda Report Latest on Stop NATO Latest on John PilgerIn no particular order
6 May 2013 — williambowles.info
Listen: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange
Truthdig
In these audio excerpts from their extended conversation in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Chris Hedges asks Julian Assange about legal strategy and the WikiLeaks founder’s thoughts on Pfc. Bradley Manning. For much more, including an in-depth …
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/listen_chris_hedges_interviews_julian_assange_20130505/
4 May 2013 — williambowles.info
Government-operated spyware on the rise around the world – report
RT
More and more regimes across the world are using Western-made ‘lawful intercept’ software to spy on their own citizens, a brand new report has revealed. Citizen Lab, a digital research unit at the University of Toronto, says that servers running …
http://rt.com/news/citizen-lab-finfisher-wikileaks-spyware-788/
3 May 2013 — williambowles.info
‘We Steal Secrets’: WikiLeaks and the US intelligence-industrial complex
The Seattle Times (blog)
Into this stew marched WikiLeaks and Assange in 2010. Despite antipathy for Assange himself, I admire his vision and skill at piercing the shadow world of government secrecy. As the film notes, WikiLeak’s first big expose – a military video showing a …
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2013/05/02/wikileaks-we-steal-secrets/
1 May 2013 — williambowles.info
Pirate Party gains three seats in Iceland’s parliament
CBS News
Physically isolated near the Arctic Circle, it is one of the world’s most wired countries and has been a hub for the online secret-spilling group WikiLeaks. Jonsdottir has worked with WikiLeaks in the past. In 2011 the country announced it would crowd …
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57582088/pirate-party-gains-three-seats-in-icelands-parliament/
29 April 2013 — williambowles.info
WikiLeaks to release more records – The Frontier Post
Frontier Post
LONDON: Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks was on Monday to publish more than 1.7 million US diplomatic and intelligence documents from the 1970s, founder Julian Assange revealed. The website has collated a variety of records including cables, …
http://www.thefrontierpost.com/article/4152/
4 March 2013 — Global Research News
February 1st 2013 the entire parliamentary group of The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament, the Pirates of the EU; representatives from the Swedish Pirate Party, the former Secretary of State in Tunisia for Sport & Youth nominated Private Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize.
1 FEbruary 2013 — williambowles.info
Iceland Kicked Out FBI Agents Who Flew in Unannounced to Investigate …
Cleveland Leader
According to the RUV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, FBI agents landed in Reykjavík in August 2011 without prior notification in an attempt to investigate WikiLeaks operations within the country. However, their plan was interupted when …
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/20013
27 January 2013 – Truthout / Buzzflash
With New Constitution, Post-Collapse Iceland Inches Toward Direct Democracy
Sam Knight, Truthout: When the global financial system crumbled over four years ago, Iceland played host to one of the most dramatic economic collapses in modern history. Now, its is making headlines for more positive reasons.
30 September 2012 — Return of the Public
Yesterday’s main news bulletin on BBC 1 somehow managed to miss another large demonstration against austerity in Lisbon, where tens of thousands gathered in the capital‘s Praca de Comercio square. The bulletin also didn’t find time for yet more protests in Madrid.
18 February 2012 — Information Clearing House
Another March to War?
By Matt Taibbi
You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30576.htm
14 September 2011 — Daily Kos
An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.
10 April 2011 — Global Research
See also: ‘The Economic Crisis in Iceland: “IMF Medicine” is not the Solution‘
About 75% of Iceland’s voters turned out on Saturday to reject the Social Democratic-Green government’s proposal to pay $5.2 billion to the British and Dutch bank insurance agencies for the Landsbanki-Icesave collapse. Every one of Iceland’s six electoral districts voted in the ‘No’ column – by a national margin of 60% (down from 93% in January 2010).
8 April, 2011 — Global Research
[Ed. As we know, the Icelandic people voted no to committing financial suicide.]
Will Iceland Vote “No” on April 9, or commit financial suicide?
A year ago, in March 2010, Iceland’s economy was so small that it did not warrant much attention when 93% of its voters rejected the Social Democratic-Green government’s surrender to Gordon Brown and the Dutch, the European Union (EU) bureaucracy and IMF demands that it impose austerity as penance for believing the neoliberal fairy tales about how bank deregulation and “free markets” would make it the richest, happiest country in the world. Indeed it seemed to be, according to United Nations data. But the dream was dashed after the Icesave electronic Internet bank branches abroad were emptied out by their proprietors.
9 April, 2011 — Information Clearing House
To Libya With God On Our Side
By Saul Landau and Nelson Valdes
Grabbing other people’s land and interfering in their affairs became as American as apple pie before the annexation of Texas, and “Manifest Destiny” as the engine of U.S. foreign policy.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27853.htm
7 October, 2010 — Global Research
As proceedings begin against Iceland’s former Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, for the banking crisis of 2008, at least two thousand Icelanders took to the streets in two days of protest this weekend.
Iceland joins over a dozen other nations protesting economic measures taken out on the public while banks and large corporations receive bailouts. Class war is on, and it’s gone global.
Mass protests were also held in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Serbia, Romania, Poland, and the U.S., according to reports from several sources. Folks around the world reject corrupt banking practices and bailouts, while social services are cut and tens of millions have been forced into joblessness and homelessness.
Dori Sigurdsson, an Icelandic blogger, reports that when Parliament returned from recess on October 1st, they were met by a loud, angry crowd who tossed eggs, bread, dairy products and keys at them. People slept outside the Parliament building the night before its return session. He’s posted videos and several images.
Dori notes, “because of the lack of help from the Government for the public, many are now losing their houses and cars.” In a nation of only 317,000, 12 percent (or 40,000) have lost or are about to lose their homes, he says. Icelanders condemn the injustice of large companies and their CEOs having had their debts forgiven by government, while theirs are not.
Three other officials were charged with “misconduct in the lead up to, during and following the banking crisis,” reports Ice News. Parliament voted to prosecute only Haarde for negligence, under a 100-year-old law that has never before been used.
Icelanders are also angry that only the former PM is being charged. One commenter on the Ice News article noted, “Is this not a total betrayal of the people?” And criminal, to reasonable minds.
Eggs hit Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, who rode into power as most beloved political leader with a 75% approval rating. She was installed in January 2009 after a coalition of Social Democrats and Left-Greens formed to replace the Independence Party-led coalition government, headed by Haarde, which was terminated. Should other nations terminate their corrupt governments?
The Guardian notes widespread protest across Europe “amid growing fury at austerity measures being imposed… Disruption in more than a dozen countries this week included a national strike in Spain and a cement truck driven into the Irish parliament’s gates.” Press TV also reported on protests planned in several nations last week. (See cement truck video here.)
Even in the US, thousands recently protested in Washington , D.C. for jobs instead of wars. ANSWER Coalition’s Brian Becker told reporters that the US spends a billion dollars every two days for its military invasions. That’s much lower than the trillion dollars a year that Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculates. We do know that Congress spends 58 percent of its discretionary budget on the military.
Many economists note that unemployment in the US is two to three times higher than what the Labor Dept. reports. In July, economists put the number at 28 percent, compared to the 9.5 percent rate reported by the feds. For September, the Christian Science Monitor showed unemployment at 16.7 percent, while the feds reported 9.6 percent.
In the US where 95% of the public rejected both Wall Street bailouts (under Bush and under Obama), we learned that banksters then rewarded themselves with million dollar bonuses. The boldness of their depravity is sure to have its rebound effect. Is it time to terminate this government, too?
The Guardian also reported that a “UN agency has warned of growing social unrest because of a long ‘labour market recession’ that could last until 2015.” 2015!
Thank goodness mortgage squatters are growing in number in the US. This is even before it was discovered that “foreclosure mills” fabricated documents to seize peoples’ homes. Some of those mills do not even hold legal title, Ellen Brown reports
In Iceland, the Guardian noted, “Birgitta Jónsdóttir, one of three MPs to join the protesters, said: ‘There is a realisation that the IMF is going to wipe out our middle classes.’” That’s true of every nation sucked into the greed of banksters, the US included.
Protesters are out again right now, Monday night, Dori told me (6 pm Eastern, 10 pm Iceland time).
“The protest is still on, and it is peaceful – but with lots of noise that can be heard in the Parliament building.”
11 May, 2010 — Information Clearing House – http://www.michael-hudson.com
The wealthy won’t pay their taxes, so labor must do so.
Riddle: How are the Greek rioters like America’s Tea Party movement?
Answer: Both reject government being taken over by the financial oligarchy to shift the tax burden onto labor.
The difference is that the Tea Partiers have lost faith in government. This is just what the financial oligarchy wants, of course. Giving up hope of gaining electoral control to pursue a fair fiscal agenda, the Tea Partiers have abandoned the centuries-long fight for reform to make governments better by giving them the power to check predatory finance and wealth. Sliding to the right wing of the political spectrum and acting mainly out of frustration, they have succumbed to a utopian desire simply to shrink a government that they see acting adversely to their interests.
Financial lobbyists are using the Greek crisis as an object lesson to warn about the need to cut back public spending on Social Security and Medicare. This is the opposite of what the Greek demonstrators are demanding: to reverse the global tax shift off property and finance onto labor, and to give labor’s financial claims for retirement pensions priority over claims by the banks to get fully paid on hundreds of billions of dollars of recklessly bad loans recently reduced to junk status.
28 March, 2010 — RawStory – URUK Net
Whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks is planning to release a video that reveals what it’s calling a Pentagon “cover-up” of an incident in which numerous civilians and journalists were murdered in an airstrike, according to a recent media advisory.
The video will be released on April 5 at the National Press Club, the group said.
They also noted their members have recently been tailed by individuals under State Department diplomatic immunity, and that “one related person was detained for 22 hours” while authorities seized computer equipment.
In a video released Friday, a Russia Today broadcast discusses the pending release of the video WikiLeaks first announced in a tweet on Feb. 20, 2010, which read: “Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs.”
A follow-up on March 22 announced their reveal date.
“Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations,” founder Julian Assange writes. “We’ve become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest. But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive.”
On Tuesday evening, followers of the WikiLeaks Twitter feed were startled to read, “WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation.” This was followed a few minutes later by “If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible.” A succeeding message warned, “We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don’t think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks.”
The site also recently published a document by a CIA think tank that proposes how European public opinion on the Afghan war could be manipulated.
“The need for independent leaks and whistle-blowing exposures is particularly acute now because, at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated,” Glenn Greenwald wrote in a recent piece about how the United States and other governments plot to destroy WikiLeaks. ” This is exemplified by the type of public opinion management campaign detailed by the above-referenced CIA Report, the Pentagon’s TV propaganda program exposed in 2008, and the ways in which private interests covertly pay and control supposedly “independent political commentators” to participate in our public debates and shape public opinion.”
Rag Radio
Greenwashgold.org
Unfortunately, once you’ve read one of Mr Hudson’s articles, you’ve read them all! Essentially, he makes only one argument: no matter what issue he’s discussing, it’s always the fault of the EU and the euro! All the world’s problems will be solved if only that dastardly EU and its upstart currency could be destroyed! Very flattering to the EU, of course, that it is seen as such a threat to the American Empire that Mr Hudson feels the need to attack it in the frantic, almost hysterical, way he does! Yet another elderly American ranter (1939!) that time has left behind! In his next article, I understand, he will explain how the Icelandic Government’s unwise decision to apply for EU membership caused the volcano to erupt.