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Ahmadinejad speaks about captured drone (I’ve included remarks for you)

Read here:

I will interpret for you:

(CNN) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that his country has “been able to control” the U.S. drone that Iran claims it recently brought down, Venezuelan state TV reported.

They have figured out how to turn it on.

“There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane,” Ahmadinejad told VTV. “Those who have been in control of this spy plane surely will analyze the plane’s system. Furthermore, the systems of Iran are so advanced also, like the system of this plane.”

This is the most complicated thing they have ever seen. It is blowing their collective mind.

Ahmadinejad did not elaborate or specify what precisely he meant when he referred to people “who have been able to control” the drone. He spoke in Farsi, which VTV translated into Spanish. The Farsi portion of the interview was not audible.

President Barack Obama said Monday that the United States has asked Iran to return the drone aircraft that Iran claims it recently brought down in Iranian territory.

“We’ve asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said.

Our president is a huge pussy.

Will Iran share stealth tech with China? Ahmadinejad’s comments to VTV seemed to suggest that Iran did not plan to return the aircraft.

“The North Americans at best have decided to give us this spy plane,” Ahmadinejad said. “In the unpiloted planes, we have had many advances, much progress and now we have this spy plane.”

Good luck with that.

More importantly, the Iranians should be very cautious about trying to steal technology they aren’t experienced with. A friend of mine once told me a story about a certain Soviet country that stole a certain pipeline pressure regulator from the U.S. during a certain Cold War.

What this country didn’t know was that the U.S. was very much aware of Soviet thievery, and intentionally planted a flawed plan, which the Soviets, in copying, then applied to their entire system.

Ka-BOOM!

I would love nothing less than for Iran to mass produce drones which the U.S. has the ability to seize control of at will. Let the tech games begin.

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MICHAEL SAVAGE OFFERS NEWT GINGRICH $1 MILLION TO DROP OUT OF PRESIDENTIAL RACE

(From Savage’s web site)

_____________________

 

SAVAGE OFFERS GINGRICH $1 MILLION TO DROP OUT OF THE RACE — WILL ANNOUNCE ON SHOW TODAY

 

(SUBJECT TO ALL THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS TO BE EXPRESSLY STATED BY DR. SAVAGE, INCLUDING GINGRICH DROPPING OUT WITHIN 72 HOURS OF TODAY)

THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL FIELD HAS COME DOWN TO TWO CANDIDATES WHO HAVE A REAL CHANCE OF GETTING THE NOMINATION: NEWT GINGRICH AND MITT ROMNEY. WHILE IT’S TRUE THAT ROMNEY IS NOT AS STRONG A CONSERVATIVE AS MANY WOULD LIKE HIM TO BE, THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE BEFORE AMERICA TODAY IS DEFEATING BARACK OBAMA. AND THAT IS SOMETHING NEWT GINGRICH CANNOT DO. FOR WEEKS ON MY SHOW, I HAVE ENUMERATED THE REASONS WHY GINGRICH CANNOT SUCCEED IN AN ELECTION AGAINST OBAMA:

  • ·        WHEN HE WAS SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, GINGRICH FAILED TO DELIVER ON HIS SO-CALLED CONTRACT WITH AMERICA.
  • ·        HE MADE ADS WITH NANCY PELOSI PROMOTING THE FALSE THEORY OF GLOBAL WARMING.
  • ·        HE’S IN FAVOR OF AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS.
  • ·        HE’S TAKEN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FROM FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC, TWO OF THE MOST CORRUPT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN HISTORY.
  • ·        HE’S CHEATED ON TWO WIVES AND LEFT BOTH OF THEM WHILE THEY WERE BOTH SERIOUSLY ILL, WHICH WILL DESTROY HIS CHANCES AMONG FEMALE VOTERS.
  • ·        HE CALLED THE REPUBLICAN PLAN TO REFORM MEDICARE “RIGHT WING SOCIAL ENGINEERING.”
  • ·        IN A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE AGAINST OBAMA, REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL HE DOES, ON TELEVISION, HE WILL COME OFF BADLY COMPARED TO OBAMA AND LOOK LIKE NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT HE IS: A FAT, OLD, WHITE MAN.

NEWT GINRICH IS UNELECTABLE. MITT ROMNEY IS THE ONLY CANDIDATE WITH A CHANCE OF DEFEATING BARACK OBAMA, AND THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT FOR FUTURE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THEREFORE, I AM OFFERING NEWT GINGRICH ONE MILLION DOLLARS TO DROP OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE FOR THE SAKE OF THE NATION.

IF NEWT GINGRICH REALLY LOVES THIS COUNTRY AS MUCH AS HE SAYS HE DOES, IF HE REALLY WANTS WHAT IS BEST FOR AMERICA, HE WILL SET HIS EGO ASIDE, CALL ME, AND ACCEPT MY OFFER. HIS CONTINUED CANDIDACY SPELLS NOTHING BUT RUIN FOR CONSERVATIVES, REPUBLICANS, AND ALL TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOTS. ONE MILLION DOLLARS IN EXCHANGE FOR PRESERVING THE NATION, NEWT. I SAY TAKE THE MONEY… AND DON’T RUN.

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OWS to try and block port activity later today

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As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to evolve, protestors have employed a myriad of ways to get their populist message across. There were the various occupations of public spaces, starting with Zuccotti Park; there was also Occupy Friday, a boycott of big retailers like Target (TGT), Sears (SHLD) and Macy’s (M) on Black Friday and a similar Occupy Christmas planned for later this month.

The latest method of protest that Occupy Wall Street activists have come up with is a plan West Coast port blockade. On Monday, protestors on the West Coast are planning to shut down all ports along the West Coast in an effort to disrupt the businesses of the big companies like EGT (of which Bunge Ltd (BG) is the largest partner), Goldman Sachs (GS), Walmart (WMT) and Maersk that do business at the ports. Blockades are planned in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Anchorage, among others.

According to the movement’s website, one key reason, besides the movement’s central message of fighting corporate power, behind this planned blockage, was to demonstrate solidarity with the workers at the port.

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Russian Protestors Turn Up the Heat on Scumbag Putin

ens of thousands of Russians turned out in central Moscow and across the country Saturday to protest what they believe were rigged parliamentary elections.

United Russia, the party of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, suffered big losses in the election, but retained its parliamentary majority. On Saturday, protesters chanted “Putin out,” according to a correspondent from state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

Between 20,000 and 25,000 protesters had gathered in the capital, Moscow, Ria Novosti said Saturday, citing police. There have been no reports of unrest and security has been tight.

READ THE REST HERE 

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TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Hill Staffers Gone Wild

Staffers of Rep. Rick Larsen boasted over Twitter that they were drinking and otherwise goofing off on the job, according to a story in the NW Daily Marker.

The website said the tweets gave off the impression of “a staffers-gone-wild bash” in the Washington Democrat’s office, including insults lobbed at the congressman himself.

“My coworker just took a shot of Jack crouching behind my desk,” one staffer tweeted, apparently referring to Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Later, the staffer tweeted that he “couldn’t pass a field sobriety test right now.”

Bryan Thomas, a spokesman for the congressman, said that the office became aware of the tweets at noon Thursday and that all three staffers involved were fired a little more than an hour later.

“Neither Congressman Larsen nor his other staff were aware of the actions by these three staff members before today,” Mr. Thomas said. “Congressman Larsen is disappointed by their actions and takes this very seriously. He has made it clear that he will not tolerate this kind of behavior.”

The three staffers were a legislative correspondent and two legislative assistants, according to NW Daily Marker.

In other messages, staffers called the congressman everything from “my idiot boss” to unprintable derogatory terms such as the one George W. Bush used to refer to a New York Times reporter in 2000.

SOURCE 

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Some more undeserved hope for OWS

Give it up, this pony has two legs and was born with its head in its ass.

Read here, if you even care to bother:

On paper and in terms of demographics, Lee Munson doesn’t fit the stereotype of an Occupy Wall Street enthusiast. Not only is the opposite true but the author of Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at its Own Game sees genius where others see chaos.

“Occupy Wall Street never had central leadership which is what was so brilliant about it,” says Munson. Or at least what was brilliant about the movement’s ability to grow so quickly and gain such widespread attention. If the group is able to evolve, it’s impact could be long-lasting.

“By 2013 they might turn into the greatest watchdog group that my generation has ever seen,” he states.

Since its first Manhattan protest on September 17th, OWS has established the fact that they are undeniably angry. And while many see the group as unfocused, Munson has a specific cause they should rail on. It’s not capitalism itself but rather a structural change over the last 30 years that has placed finance above all other aspects of the capitalist system.

“Finance rules capitalism and it needs to be the other way around,” says Munson. “If Occupy Wall Street can force that point I think we’ll have a better world.”

Now that he puts it that way, yes, we would have a better world. Finance is supposed to be the grease for the wheels of capitalism. Believe it or not, IPOs were once a mechanism for otherwise thriving companies to fund additional growth. The vast majority of modern IPOs seem to be driven by the desire to allow early stage investors to cash-out with brokers taking a cut by distributing the shares to institutional investors who promptly “flip” to the public for instant, riskless profit.

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Merkozy conclude talks to plan talks to talk about what they’ve already talked about

PARIS (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have sent a letter outlining their proposals to save the euro, including punishing countries that spend too much money.

The letter sent to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy on Wednesday sums up what the leaders outlined on Monday.

It says governments that allow their deficits to exceed 3 percent of their GDP should be automatically sanctioned and asked to lay out a plan for reducing spending. It also says that countries that continue to flout spending rules will face a series of increasingly strict sanctions.

Overspending and ballooning government debt is at the heart of Europe’s crisis. Sarkozy and Merkel want their proposals to form the basis of a meeting Friday to tackle the crisis.

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Steal from the rich, give to bureaucra…i mean poor

Read up on this cliche here:

They call it the Robin Hood tax — a tiny levy on trades in the financial markets that would take money from the banks and give it to the world’s poor.

And like the mythical hero of Sherwood Forest, it is beginning to capture the public’s imagination.

Driven by populist anger at bankers as well as government needs for more revenue, the idea of a tax on trades of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments has attracted an array of influential champions, including the leaders of France and Germany, the billionaire philanthropists Bill Gates and George Soros, former Vice President Al Gore, the consumer activist Ralph Nader, Pope Benedict XVI and the archbishop of Canterbury.

“We all agree that a financial transaction tax would be the right signal to show that we have understood that financial markets have to contribute their share to the recovery of economies,” the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, told her Parliament recently.

On Sunday, Mario Monti, the new prime minister of Italy, announced plans to impose a tax on certain financial transactions as part of a far-reaching plan to fix his country’s budgetary problems, and he endorsed the idea of a Europewide transactions tax.

So far, the broader debt crisis engulfing the euro zone nations has pushed discussion of the tax into the background. But if European leaders can agree on a plan that calms the financial markets, they would be in a stronger position to enact a levy, analysts said.

“There is some momentum behind this,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform in London. “If they keep the show on the road, they probably will attempt to run with this.”

The Robin Hood tax has also become a rallying point for labor unions, nongovernmental organizations and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which view it as a way to claw back money from the top 1 percent to help the other 99 percent. Last month, thousands of demonstrators, including hundreds in Robin Hood outfits with bright green caps and bows and arrows, flooded into southern France to urge the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to do more to help the poor, including passing a financial transactions tax.

Enacting such a tax still faces many hurdles, however — most notably, skepticism from leaders in the United States and Britain, home to some of the world’s most important financial exchanges.

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FLASH: RUN ON THE GREEK BANKS

Anxious Greeks Emptying Their Bank Accounts

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. “In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale,” he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament.

 

With disarming honesty, the central banker explained to the lawmakers why the Greek economy isn’t managing to recover from a recession that has gone on for three years now: “Our banking system lacks the scope to finance growth.”

 

He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion — by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October — the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.

The raid on bank accounts stems from deep uncertainty in Greek households which culminated in early November during the political turmoil that followed the announcement by then-Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou of a referendum on the second Greek bailout package.

Papandreou withdrew the plan and stepped down following an outcry among other European leaders against the referendum, and a new government was formed on Nov. 11 under former central banker Loukas Papademos. That appears to have slowed the drop in bank savings, at least for the time being.

Bank Withdrawals Worsening Crisis

Nevertheless, the Greeks today only have €170 billion in savings — almost 30 percent less than at the start of 2010.

The hemorrhaging of bank savings has had a disastrous impact on the economy. Many companies have had to tap into their reserves during the recession because banks have become more reluctant to lend. More Greek families are now living off their savings because they have lost their jobs or have had their salaries or pensions cut.

In August, unemployment reached 18.4 percent. Many Greeks now hoard their savings in their homes because they are worried the banking system may collapse.

Those who can are trying to shift their funds abroad. The Greek central bank estimates that around a fifth of the deposits withdrawn have been moved out of the country. “There is a lot of uncertainty,” says Panagiotis Nikoloudis, president of the National Agency for Combating Money Laundering.

The banks are exploiting that insecurity. “They are asking their customers whether they wouldn’t rather invest their money in Liechtenstein, Switzerland or Germany.”

Nikoloudis has detected a further trend. At first, it was just a few people trying to withdraw large sums of money. Now it’s large numbers of people moving small sums. Ypatia K., a 55-year-old bank worker from Athens, can confirm that. “The customers, especially small savers, have recently been withdrawing sums of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000. That was panic,” she said.

Marina S., a 74-year-old widow from Athens, said she has to be extra careful with money these days. “I have no choice but to withdraw money from my savings,” she said.

Bad Loans

The shrinking Greek bank deposits compare with bank loans totalling €253 million. Analysts say the share of bad loans could rise to 20 percent next year, or €50 billion, as a result of the recession. This in turn will worsen the already pressing liquidity problems faced by Greek banks.

Nikos B., a doctor in the Greek military, has had enough of the never-ending crisis his country is going through. While the 31-year-old has a secure job, repeated salary cuts have made it increasingly hard for him to make ends meet.

He needs most of his money to make loan repayments for a small car. “How can I clear my account? There’s hardly anything in it,” he says. He started learning German two months ago and wants to leave Greece. “As soon as possible!”

Nikos pauses and looks down. He quietly utters words that must be painful for a proud Greek. “It would be best to change nationality.”

SOURCE 

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