Obama’s Attempt To Use #OWS As A Diversionary Smoke Screen Fails Zero Hedge Tuesday, October 18, 2011 56% Believe Washington To Blame For Crisis And Recession Zero Hedge is the last to cut Wall Street, with its rampant criminality, conflicts of interest, and corruption, any slack – in fact we are often the first to expose it.That said, we have long found it surprising that popular anger is focused on this particular group of individuals, instead of targeting the just as, if not far more, culpable for the current economic collapse enabling focal point known as Washington D.C. As has been discussed previously, it is no surprise that none other than the president has been quick to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement and its offshoots as his own: after all it cleanly and efficiently deflects attention from his own near-3 year performance as president. Surely Obama is neither the first (nor last) to recognize that the scapegoating of a “minority” group (as the Wall Street “1%” clearly is) and use it as a catalyst for class warfare, is a historically very successful tactic. Well, while thousands of people may express their displeasure with their plight openly before the traditional symbols of Wall Street, it would appear that Obama is failing in his attempt at global diversion from the place where popular anger should truly lie: Congress, Senate, and of course, the White House, without whose (and by ‘whose’ here we clearly envision Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke) blessings Wall Street would not exist in its current form. Yet it does, and many have figured that out. According to a brand new poll byThe Hill, “in the minds of likely voters, Washington, not Wall Street, is primarily to blame for the financial crisis and the subsequent recession. The movement appears to have struck a chord with progressive voters, but it does not seem to represent the feelings of the wider public. The Hill poll found that only one in three likely voters blames Wall Street for the country’s financial troubles, whereas more than half — 56 percent — blame Washington. Moreover, when it comes to the political consequences of the protest, voters tend to believe that there are more perils than positives for Obama and the Democrats.” Sorry Obama, your attempt to demonize bankers (who richly deserve the public pariah status they have achieved, not least of due to the in vitro world they occupy, where anything less than $1 million is pocket change) has failed, and the people recognize that real social change, one that must and will
impact Wall Street, has to begin with the commodity most often purchased by Wall Street: politicians… such as yourself. From The Hill: A plurality believe that the Occupy Wall Street movement will hurt Democrats and Obama in the 2012 election. Even those whose sympathies lie on the left of center seem unsure about the likely political repercussions. Just half of all liberal likely voters — the group most likely to blame Wall Street for the recession — and fewer than half of all Democrats believe the protests will help their side next year. The split on the question of apportioning blame for the nation’s economic travails corresponds closely with voters’ political ideologies: More than 7 in 10 conservatives blamed Washington for the recession, while more than 5 in 10 liberals blamed Wall Street. But self-identified centrists, importantly, appear to be siding with the right on economic issues, with nearly half blaming Washington for the recession. The difference also reflected voters’ views of Obama: Among those who “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the president, most blamed Wall Street, while those who “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove of the president blamed Washington. Interestingly, those who described themselves as “not sure” about Obama nonetheless blamed Wall Street over Washington by a more than two-to-one margin, 55 percent to 23 percent. The poll was based on the responses of 1,000 people and has a +/-3% margin of error. The full poll results are below.
When Obama’s Numbers Start To Tank Here’s The Secret Weapon He’s Going To Rely On Glynnis MacNicol Business Insider October 18, 2011 Obama adviser David Axelrod and Joe Scarborough got into a fiery debate this morning over whether Obama was experienced enough to have been elected president. The result, was essentially a condensed version of the stump speech we can expect to hear from Obama sometime next year, once the GOP picks their nominee and the election slog gets serious. The last line is the kicker. If the going gets rough this will no doubt be Obama’s trump card in the form of an attack ad. AXELROD: Obama went and intervened, saved the financial system from collapsing. This controversial with some people but it was absolutely necessary. Intervened, saved the auto industry from collapsing. There are many people working who wouldn’t have been had he not done that. It wasn’t popular. It was the right thing to do. So he took a series of steps so we’ve had 19 months of job growth. Not nearly enough and we still have to address the bigger problem of wages and how we get housing back on track…. He said he was going to end the war in Iraq in a few months. we will have all our troops home from Iraq. He said he was going to up the ante and go after al Qaeda in a serious way. Osama bin Laden is gone. So when you say he wasn’t prepared, maybe you should go ask Osama bin Laden if he thought he was…not only would a lot of lives had been lost if it went bad. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.
THE (DIS)INFORMATION WAR GETS UGLY US officials peddle false intel By Gareth Porter WASHINGTON - Officials of the Barack Obama administration have aggressively leaked information supposedly based on classified intelligence in recent days to bolster its allegation that two higher-ranking officials from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were involved in a plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington. The media stories generated by the leaks helped divert press attention from the fact that there is no verifiable evidence of any official Iranian involvement in the alleged assassination plan, contrary to the broad claim being made by the administration. But the information about the two Iranian officials leaked to NBC
News, the Washington Post and Reuters was unambiguously false and misleading, as confirmed by official documents in one case and a former senior intelligence and counter-terrorism official in the other. The main target of the official leaks was Abdul Reza Shahlai, who was identified publicly by the Obama administration as a "deputy commander in the Qods force" of the IRGC. Shahlai had long been regarded by US officials as a key figure in the Qods force's relationship to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq. The primary objective of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation involving Iranian-American Manssor Arabsiar and a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant that was started last June now appears to have been to use Arabsiar to implicate Shahlai in a terror plot. United States officials had learned from the DEA informant that Arabsiar claimed that Shahlai was his cousin. In September 2008, the Treasury Department designated Shahlai as an individual "providing financial, material and technical support for acts of violence that threaten the peace and stability of Iraq" and thus subject to specific financial sanctions. The announcement said Shahlai had provided "material support" to the Mahdi Army in 2006 and that he had "planned the January 20, 2007, attack" by Mahdi Army "Special Groups" on US troops at the Provincial Coordination Center in Karbala, Iraq.
Arabsiar's confession claims that Shahlai approached him in early spring 2011 and asked him to find "someone in the narcotics business" to kidnap the Saudi ambassador to the United States, according to the FBI account. Arabsiar implicates Shahlai in providing him with thousands of dollars for his expenses. But Arabsiar's charge against Shahlai was self-interested. Arabsiar had become the cornerstone of the administration's case against Shahlai in order to obtain leniency on charges against him. There is no indication in the FBI account of the investigation that there is any independent evidence to support Arabsiar's claim of Shahlai's involvement in a plan to kill the ambassador. The Obama administration planted stories suggesting that Shahlai had a terrorist past, and that it was therefore credible that he could be part of an assassination plot. Laying the foundation for press stories on the theme, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that it was sanctioning Shahlai, along with Arabsiar and three other Qods force officials, including the head of the organization, Major General Qasem Soleimani, for being "connected to" the assassination plot. But Michael Isikoff of NBC News reported the same day that Shahlai "had previously been accused of plotting a highly sophisticated attack that killed five US soldiers in Iraq, according to US government officials and documents made public Tuesday afternoon". Isikoff, who is called "National Investigative Correspondent" at NBC News, reported that the Treasury Department had designated Shahlai as a "terrorist" in 2008, despite the fact that the Treasury announcement of the designation had not used the term "terrorist". On Saturday, the Washington Post published a report closely paralleling the Isikoff story but going even further in claiming documentary proof of Shahlai's responsibility for the January 2007 attack in Karbala. Post reporter Peter Finn wrote that Shahlai "was known as the guiding hand behind an elite militia of the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr", which had carried out an attack on US troops in Karbala in January 2007. Finn cited the fact that the Treasury Department named Shahlai as the "final approving and coordinating authority" for training Sadr's militiamen in Iran. That fact would not in itself be evidence of involvement in a specific attack on US forces. On the contrary, it would suggest that he was not involved in operational aspects of the Mahdi Army in Iraq. Finn then referred to a "22-page memo that detailed preparations for the operation and tied it to
the Qods force ..." But he didn't refer to any evidence that Shahlai personally had anything to do with the operation. In fact, US officials acknowledged in the months after the Karbala attack that they had found no evidence of any Iranian involvement in the operation. Talking with reporters about the memo on April 26, 2007, several weeks after it had been captured, General David Petraeus conceded that it did not show that any Iranian official was linked to the planning of the Karbala operation. When a journalist asked him whether there was evidence of Iranian involvement in the Karbala operation, Petraeus responded, "No. No. No. [W]e do not have a direct link to Iran involvement in that particular case." In a news briefing in Baghdad on July 2, 2007, General Kevin Bergner confirmed that the attack in Karbala had been authorized by the Iraqi chief of the militia in question, Kais Khazali, not by any Iranian official. Colonel Michael X Garrett, who had been commander of the US Fourth Brigade combat team in Karbala, confirmed to this writer in December 2008 that the Karbala attack "was definitely an inside job". Major General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Qods force, is on the list of those Iranian officials "linked" to the alleged terror plot, because he "oversees the IRGC-QF officers who were involved in this plot", as the Treasury Department announcement explained. But a Reuters story on Friday reported a claim of US intelligence that two wire transfers totaling US$100,000 at the behest of Arabsiar to a bank account controlled by the FBI implicates Soleimani in the assassination plot. "While details are still classified," wrote Mark Hosenball and Caren Bohan, "one official said the wire transfers apparently had some kind of hallmark indicating they were personally approved" by Soleimani. But the suggestion that forensic examination of the wire transfers could somehow show who had approved them is misleading. The wire transfers were from two separate non-Iranian banks in a foreign country, according to the FBI's account. It would be impossible to deduce who approved the transfer by looking at the documents. "I have no idea what such a 'hallmark' could be," said Paul Pillar, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Counter-Terrorism Center who was also national intelligence officer for the Middle East until his retirement in 2005. Pillar told Inter Press Service that the "hallmark" notion "pops up frequently in commentary after actual terrorist attacks", but the concept is usually invoked "along the lines of 'the method used in this attack had the hallmark of group such and such'." That "hallmark" idea "assumes exclusive ownership of a method of attack which does not really
exist," said Pillar. "I expect the same could be said of methods of transferring money." Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006. (Inter Press Service)
Obama totes his Iranian smoking gun (Oct 17, '11) Raging US pulls no punches (Oct 17, '11) FBI account of 'terror plot' suggests sting (Oct 14, '11)
1. Obama, the king of Africa 2. Obama totes his Iranian smoking gun 3. Raging US pulls no punches on Iran 4. Royal wedding stirs change in Bhutan 5. Are the generals stealing Egypt? 6. Faltering China carries global risk 7. India burnishes its Myanmar ties 8. Taiwan rues West's fixation on PLA toys 9. Language imperialism - 'democracy' in China 10. Is China drinking its own Kool-Aid? (24 hours to 11:59pm ET, Oct 17, 2011)
FEMA Communication Takeover Test Scheduled for November 9 Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com October 18, 2011 FEMA, the FCC, and Homeland Security plan to commandeer the airwaves next month. The Emergency Alert System (EAS) will be tested at 1 PM EST on November 9. EAS alerts are transmitted over radio and television broadcast stations, cable television and other media services. Local and state EAS components are tested weekly and monthly, but this will be the first national test of the system. It is significant that FEMA will conduct the mandatory test. FEMA was created by executive fiat. EO 12148 was signed into law by a stroke of Jimmy Carter’s pen on July 20, 1979. FEMA is described as a federal agency designed to coordinate government response to natural disasters that overwhelm the resources of local and state authorities. In fact, the federal agency was established as part of a martial law mechanism.Under Reagan, FEMA was headed by Louis O. Giuffrida, the former national guard general who contributed to the Garden Plot and Cable Splicer, two sub programs under REX 84, a plan to establish concentration camps in America. Operation Cable Splicer is described as “the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government.” For more information on these martial law programs, see Mary Louise, Stalag 17, American Style Plans For Civilian Internment (& Worst). Giuffrida, a counterinsurgency enthusiast, focused the agency’s resources on the “civil disturbance” aspect of its charter and worked to undermine Posse Comitatus. In 1982, Reagan formally militarized FEMA with National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 26). The result was a series of national training exercises led by the military. Under REX 82, civilian police from around the country received what FEMA euphemistically referred to as “military police methods” for quelling domestic political unrest. Under Reagan, with Giuffrida at the helm, FEMA mutated “civil defense planning into a
military/police version of civil society,” a plan on a collision course with Posse Comitatus.“Hidden behind FEMA’s benevolent face as the body whose chief responsibility is disaster relief, another FEMA exists,” Ritt Goldstein wrote in 2002, referring to Bush’s effort to turn the agency into a counter-terrorism and “enemy combatant” detention outfit under the newly established Department of Homeland Security. “At present, the final contents and disposition of the Reagan security initiatives, part of a national crisis plan, remains beyond public knowledge,” Goldstein writes. “But given the ‘War On Terror’s’ scope, even if a formal crisis is not declared, speculation exists that a de facto drift into an effective deployment of FEMA’s crisis powers could occur.” Next month’s EAS test represents the public notification aspect of that national crisis plan. It is significant that EAS will be tested nationally. Natural disasters are usually regional affairs and do not require a nationwide response. The new national EAS system is designed for a more significant event that conforms to the implementation of martial law as envisioned under Garden Plot and Cable Splicer, a plan that was nearly revealed when Representative Jack Brooks of Texas grilled Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 (see the video above). Oliver North Questioned - Rex 84 Exposed During Iran Contra http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ug0IL7k3elQ Camp FEMA: American Lockdown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOAK7iOlVk Police State 4: The Rise of FEMA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klqv9t1zVww