Citigroup sentences Europe to Lost Decade

Citigroup and all other banks should be broken up under Anti-Trust Laws, assets seized and redistributed to Americans as huge, delinquent repayment for "seizure" loans from American People

Telegraph
By Ambrose Evans Pritchard
11/29/2011

Citgroup's guru Willem Buiter has more or less condemned the eurozone to death by asphyxiation (if it doesn't die of a heart attack first).

    In his global forecast for generalized Götterdämmerung in 2012, the Dutch Meister said Euroland will remain in recession for the next two years, contracting by 1.2pc next year and again by 0.2pc in 2013.

    Heaven knows what that will do to the South. Dr Buiter said the chance of a euro break-up is low (of course, of course). He assumes that the ECB will blink, acting at the 11th hour as lender-of-last-resort.
Well, it had better blink fast.

    If his figures are correct, I find it it very hard to see how the eurozone can hold together. Club Med will be in even deeper depression. The debt trajectory will be even worse.

    Be that as it may, the Meister and his team said the eurozone will not regain its 2008 level of output until 2016. The overall picture for both EMU-land and Britain will be "similar to, or below" Japan's Lost
Decade in the 1990s (though with much higher unemployment than in Japan).

    So there we have it. The Japanese handled their mess rather well in retrospect.

    Just for the notebook:

    "Real GDP per head in 2011 is about 8pc below its pre-recession trend in the Euro Area, 10pc below in the US, and 15pc below in the UK," it said. Sounds right to me. Britain's starting position after the Brown debacle was catastrophic.

    Oddly enough, Citigroup thinks France and Austria will lose their AAAs and the US and Japan will be downgraded again, but that Britain will somehow scrape by.

    I wish I could believe it. Like my colleague Jeremy Warner, I think Britain has managed to buy time over the last year with a remarkable conjuring trick but the luck can't last. Our private debt to GDP ratios are ghastly.




Although UK exports are holding up a little better than some, thanks to a weak pound.



    This is a trade-off. Devaluation has cut living standards faster in the UK, but also makes recovery less impossible than for fellow boom-busters (ie Spain) in the eurozone.

    It all depends on your priorities: do you want higher living standards for incumbents with jobs, to the detriment of the unemployed; or lower spending power for incumbents, with lower job wastage and social devastation for those excluded from the system.

    I know which side I am on in this debate. And you, dear reader?

    Here are some hard figures on those nasty debt auctions.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels. He is now International Business Editor in London.

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Max Kaiser: Keiser Report: Kleptocrats Go for Gold (E216)

Max Kaiser:  Fearless

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30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison

Approximately half of prisoners not guilty

Pakalert
11/29/2011

The American Dream

If you live in the United States of America, you live in a giant prison where liberty and freedom are slowly being strangled to death. In this country, the control freaks that run things are obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do. Nothing is private anymore. Everything that you do on the Internet is being monitored. All of your phone calls are being monitored. In fact, if law enforcement authorities suspect that you have done something wrong, they will use your cell phone microphone to listen to you even when you think your cell phone is turned off. In many areas of the country, when you get into your car automated license plate readers track you wherever you go, and in many major cities when you are walking on the streets a vast network of security cameras and “smart street lights” are constantly watching you and listening to whatever you say. The TSA is setting up “internal checkpoints” all over the nation, Homeland Security is encouraging all of us to report any “suspicious activity” that our neighbors are involved in and the federal government is rapidly developing “pre-crime” technology that will flag us as “potential terrorists” if we display any signs of nervousness. If you are flagged as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military can arrest you and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything. Yes, the United States of America is rapidly being turned into a “Big Brother” prison grid, and most Americans are happily going along with it.

Cell at Alcatraz

The sad thing is that this used to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.

So what in the world happened?

A fundamental shift in our culture has taken place. The American people have eagerly given up huge chunks of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security.

Our country is now run by total control freaks and paranoia has become standard operating procedure.

We were told that the terrorists hate our liberties and our freedoms, and that we needed to fight the terrorists so that we could keep our liberties and our freedoms.

But instead, the government keeps taking away all of our liberties and our freedoms.

How in the world does that make any sense?

Have the terrorists won?

As a country, we have moved so far in the direction of communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany that it is almost impossible to believe.

Yes, turning the United States of America into a giant prison may make us all slightly safer, but what kind of life is this?

Do we want to be dead while we are still alive?

Is this the price that we want to pay in order to feel slightly safer?

Where are the millions of Americans that still yearn to breathe free air?

America is supposed to be a land teeming with people thirsting for independence. For example, “Live Free or Die” is supposedly the official motto of the state of New Hampshire.

But instead, the motto of most Americans seems to be “live scared and die cowering”.

We don’t have to live like this.

Yes, bad things are always going to happen. No amount of security is ever going to be able to keep us 100% safe.

We need to remember that a very high price was paid for our liberty and we should not give it up so easily.

As one very famous American once said, when we give up liberty for security we deserve neither.

The following are 30 signs that the United States of America is being turned into a giant prison….

#1 A new bill that is going through the U.S. Senate would allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trial. This new law was recently discussed in an article posted on the website of the New American….

In what may be a tale too bizarre to be believed by millions of Americans, the U.S. Senate appears ready to pass a bill that will designate the entire earth, including the United States and its territories, one all-encompassing “battlefield” in the global “war on terror” and authorize the detention of Americans suspected of terrorist ties indefinitely and without trial or even charges being filed that would necessitate a trial.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is a big supporter of the bill, and he says that it would “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield”.

According to the PPJ Gazette, the following are three things that this new law would do….

1) Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

(2) Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and

(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.

#2 U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is asking Google to install a “terrorist button” on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers can easily flag “terrorist content” for authorities.

#3 Most Americans have no idea how sophisticated the “Big Brother” prison grid has become. For example, in Washington D.C. the movements of every single car are tracked using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The following comes from a recent Washington Post article….

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

#4 In some American schools, RFID chips are now being used to monitor the attendance and movements of children while they are at school. The following is how one article recently described a program that has just been instituted at a preschool in California….


Upon arriving in the morning, according to the Associated Press, each student at the CCC-George Miller preschool will don a jersey with a stitched in RFID chip. As the kids go about the business of learning, sensors in the school will record their movements, collecting attendance for both classes and meals. Officials from the school have claimed they’re only recording information they’re required to provide while receiving federal funds for their Headstart program.

#5 Increasingly, incidents of misbehavior at many U.S. schools are being treated as very serious crimes. For example, when a little girl kissed a little boy at one Florida elementary school recently, it was considered to be a “possible sex crime” and the police were called out.

#6 But what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California earlier this year was even worse….

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

#7 In the United States today, police are trained to respond to even the smallest crimes with extreme physical force. For example, one grandfather in Arizona was recently filmed laying unconscious in a pool of his own blood after police rammed his head into the flood inside a Wal-Mart on Black Friday night. It was thought that he was shoplifting, but it turns out that he says that he was just trying to tuck a video game away so other crazed shoppers would not grab it out of his hands.

#8 Did you know that the government actually sets up fake cell phone towers that can intercept your cell phone calls? The following is how a recent Wired article described these “stingrays”….

You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier’s cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.

So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.

The government maintains that the stingrays don’t violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don’t have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower.

#9 U.S. border agents are allowed by law to search any laptop being brought into the United States without even needing any reason to do so.

#10 In the United States of America, everyone is a “potential terrorist”. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, “homegrown terrorists” represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.

#11 Most Americans are not that concerned about the Patriot Act, but that might change if they understood that the federal government has a “secret interpretation” of what the Patriot Act really means. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden says that the U.S. government interprets the Patriot Act much more “broadly” than the general public does….

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”

#12 The FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com….

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.

The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.

The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.

#13 The federal government has decided that what you and I share with one another on Facebook and on Twitter could be a threat to national security. According to a recent Associated Press article, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be “gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes”.

#14 What you say on your cell phone is never private. The truth is that that the FBI can demand to see your cell phone data whenever it wants. In addition, according to CNET News the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cell phone and listen to whatever you are saying….

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

#15 In some areas of the country, law enforcement authorities are pulling data out of cell phones for no reason whatsoever. According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are now using “extraction devices” to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

#16 The federal government has become so paranoid that they have been putting GPS tracking devices on the vehicles of thousands of people that have not even been charged with committing any crimes. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Wired magazine article about this issue….

The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.

Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.

The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.

The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.

#17 New high-tech street lights that are being funded by the federal government and that are being installed all over the nation can also be used as surveillance cameras, can be used by the DHS to make “security announcements” and can even be used to record personal conversations. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com….

Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.

#18 If you choose to protest in the streets of America today, there is a good chance that you will be brutalized. All over the United States law enforcement authorities have been spraying pepper spray directly into the faces of unarmed protesters in recent weeks.

#19 In many areas of the United States today, you will be arrested if you do not produce proper identification for the police. In the old days, “your papers please” was a phrase that was used to use to mock the tyranny of Nazi Germany. But now all of us are being required to be able to produce “our papers” for law enforcement authorities at any time. For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.

#20 According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate “in monthly anti-terrorism drills”. The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends….

Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.

So who in the world ever decided that it would be a good idea for 1st grade students to endure “lockdown” and “active shooter” drills?

To get an idea of what these kinds of drills are like, just check out this video.

#21 With all of the other problems that we are having all over the nation, you would think that authorities would not be too concerned about little kids that are trying to sell cups of lemonade. But sadly, over the past year police have been sent in to shut down lemonade stands run by children all over the United States.

#22 The federal government has decided to invest a significant amount of time, money and energy raiding organic farms. The following example comes from Natural News….

It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special “farm to fork” picnic dinner put on for guests — and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach.

#23 It is an absolute disgrace that all of us (including grandmothers and young children) must either go through body scanners that reveal the intimate details of our naked bodies or endure “enhanced pat-downs” during which our genitals will be touched before we are allowed to get on an airplane.

It is also an absolute disgrace that the American people are putting up with this.

#24 Invasive TSA security techniques are not just for airports anymore. Now, TSA “VIPR teams” are actively conducting random inspections at bus stations and on interstate highways all over the United States. For example, the following comes from a local news report down in Tennessee….

You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

“Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,” said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

TSA “VIPR teams” now conduct approximately 8,000 “unannounced security screenings” a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.

#25 More than a million hotel television sets all over America are now broadcasting propaganda messages from the Department of Homeland Security promoting the “See Something, Say Something” campaign. In essence, the federal government wants all of us to become “informants” and to start spying on one another constantly. The following comes from an article posted by USA Today….

Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.

#26 Certain “types” of American citizens are being labeled as potential threats in official U.S. government documents. An unclassified Department of Homeland Security report published a couple years ago entitled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” claims that a belief in Bible prophecy “could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition and weapons.” The report goes on to state that such people are potentially dangerous.

#27 Back on February 20, 2009, the State of Missouri issued a report entitled “MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement“. That report warned that the following types of people may be potential terrorists….

*anti-abortion activists

*those that are against illegal immigration

*those that consider “the New World Order” to be a threat

*those that have a negative view of the United Nations

#28 As I have written about previously, a very disturbing document that Oath Keepers has obtained shows that the FBI is now instructing store owners to report many new forms of “suspicious activity” to them. According to the document, “suspicious activity” now includes the following….

*paying with cash

*missing a hand or fingers

*”strange odors”

*making “extreme religious statements”

*”radical theology”

*purchasing weatherproofed ammunition or match containers

*purchasing meals ready to eat

*purchasing night vision devices, night flashlights or gas masks

Do any of those “signs of suspicious activity” apply to you?

#29 Soon you may get labeled as a “potential terrorist” if you are just feeling a little nervous. A new “pre-crime” technology system that is currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will soon be in use all over the nation. It is called “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST), and it is very frightening. The following description of this new program comes from an article in the London Telegraph….

Using cameras and sensors the “pre-crime” system measures and tracks changes in a person’s body movements, the pitch of their voice and the rhythm of their speech.

It also monitors breathing patterns, eye movements, blink rate and alterations in body heat, which are used to assess an individual’s likelihood to commit a crime.

The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) programme is already being tested on a group of government employees who volunteered to act as guinea pigs.

#30 The truth is that nobody puts more people into prison than America does. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.

To read about some of the crazy things that the control freaks running things have planned for the future, just check out this article by Natural News: “10 outlandish things the ‘scientific’ controllers have in mind for you in the near future“.

Once again, despite all of this outrageous “security”, it is inevitable that a lot of really bad things are going to happen in the United States in the years ahead.

When there are incidents of violence, it is also inevitable that there will be calls for even more “Big Brother” security measures.

We are going to be caught in a never ending spiral of tyranny where the “solution” is always even tighter security.

Eventually, we will have lost all of our liberties and freedoms, and we will probably be even less safe than we are today.

Do not be deceived. We could put a soldier on every corner, a video camera in every room of every home and an RFID chip in every citizen but that would not make us “safe”.

Every single lawmaker that is backing these laws which strip our liberties and freedoms away deserves to be voted out of office.

If you love the United States of America, please stand up and say something while you still can.

Please use this article and other articles like it as tools. Share them with your friends and your family. If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn the direction of this country around.

Will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be mentioned in the same breath as communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany, or will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be the greatest chapters of all?

The choice, America, is up to you.

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Released from hospital, injured ‘Occupy Oakland’ Marine calls for justice, peace

Cops are already on notice; line has been drawn in sand, Marines will retaliate in future if injuries, gassing, of civilians do not cease immedialy


RAW
By Stephen C. Webster
11/20/2011

Now out of the hospital after a painful injury dealt by the business end of an Oakland police projectile, Marine veteran Scott Olsen, 24, has begun his road to recovery — but he’s still waiting to hear if justice is served to the officer who cracked his skull.

United States Marine Scott Olsen

After his injury on Oct. 25 during a raid on “Occupy Oakland,” Olsen was reportedly rendered unable to speak due to minor brain damage. Friends and supporters will be glad to know that’s not the case anymore, although he still appears to suffer from some minor speech impediments.

“It was a very frustrating process,” he explained in his first on-camera since the injury, speaking to a cameraman with East Bay Indymedia. “Initially, I couldn’t form any words. I couldn’t make any words.

    Initially, my brain was all pretty much there, I’d have brain farts more often than everyone does. Mentally I was there, I just couldn’t spit these things out of my mouth. They worked hard with me to get me better. I am doing much better than when I look at myself a month ago, two days after the attack, I was not doing good. I’m doing a lot better from them.” 

 

    Though he still wears a neck brace, Olsen said he expects to fully recover in the coming months. As for the officer who so severely injured him, he or she has not been identified and an investigation is ongoing.

    “You would think something like this wouldn’t take too long to find out, who was responsible, but it’s been over a month,” he said. “How long does it take to see who fired this at me?”

    His final advice to supporters of the 99 Percent movement: “Stay peaceful, because that’s what this is about. It’s about working with one another and it’s about being open with each other, and that’s how we can solve our problems.”

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Grayson: Fed played ‘Russian roulette’ with U.S. money

Americans show amazing apathy over theft; will be reason Obama, administration start wars to distract from looting of Treasury

Agencies
11/28/2011

Former U.S. congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) appeared on Countdown Monday evening to discuss how an audit of the Federal Reserve revealed the private bank giving $26 trillion to U.S and foreign banks without Congress’ authorization.

U.S. congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL)

“For the first time in history, I’m talking the 100 year history of the Federal Reserve, they played favorites,” Grayson told host Keith Olbermann. “They said we’ll give a hundred billion to this institution, another hundred billion to this institution, and so on down the line, when you and I couldn’t even come close to accessing that kind of money of those terms.”

    Grayson mentioned the leniency the Fed had with giving money to the banks.

    “They lend out this money at 0.01 percent interest,” he said. “Go try to get a loan like that from your bank. 

    It was corporate welfare, pure and simple, and what they were doing is they were playing around with the value of the money in your pocket, and the money in my pocket.”

    “They were taking the U.S dollars and playing Russian Roulette with it, giving it out in enormous staggering sums in the hope that they might get it back. They did get most of it back, but what about next time.”

   He added: “The regional banks of the Fed are actually populated and controlled by the local banks. And all of these bailouts were actually administered by the Federal Reserve bank of New York, which has on its board many Wall Street executives. I’m talking about current Wall Street executives. Not the Tim Geithers of the world, the people who used to be or in the future will work for Wall Street, but the current Wall St. executives on the board making decisions on who would get what themselves.”

    The Government Accountability Office revealed that the Fed gave out over $16 trillion to U.S. and international financial institutions between 2007 and 2010 without revealing to Congress. Another $10 trillion was given out to foreign institutions in currency swaps.

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Iranian students attack British Embassy

Attack not helping Iran in World opinion; showing no change since U.S. Embassy seizure and hostage taking

UPI
11/29/2011

TEHRAN,  (UPI) --

Iranian university students attacked the British Embassy in Tehran Tuesday, looting buildings, throwing firebombs and briefly seizing six embassy workers.

    Sky News reported protesters rushed into the embassy compound, reportedly removing and burning a British flag and replacing it with an Iranian flag.

Students chanted "Down with Britain," "Down with America," "Down with Israel" and "Students are Awake and Hate Britain," Iran's semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.

The students also were shown on Iranian state television throwing stones at embassy windows.

    Fars said Iranian police secured the release of six embassy workers who had been seized by students.

    "News of the utterly deplorable assault today on the British Embassy in Tehran is deeply concerning," said Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, The Daily Telegraph reported.

  "The backdrop to these violent events are the recent worrying scenes witnessed in the Iranian Parliament," Alexander said. "Our efforts to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons must continue notwithstanding these appalling scenes."

Iranian students tear up British Embassy in Tehran

The U.K. Foreign Office released a statement saying, "Senior officials have spoken to the Iranian charge in London to urge the Iranian authorities to act with urgency to ensure the situation is brought under control and to protect our diplomatic compound, as they are obliged to do under international law."

    The protests came after Tehran decided to reduce ties with Britain after London imposed more sanctions on Iran.

    Iranian lawmakers Sunday approved downgrading ambassadorial ties with Britain to the charge d'affaires level and were preparing to expel Dominick Chilcott, the British ambassador to Iran, Fars said.

    The demonstration occurred as Iran commemorated the first anniversary of the death of nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari in a bombing the Iranian government accused Israel and the West of orchestrating.

     The White House issued a statement condemning the attack "in the strongest terms the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran. Iran has a responsibility to protect the diplomatic missions present in its country and the personnel stationed at them. We urge Iran to fully respect its international obligations, to condemn the incident, to prosecute the offenders, and to ensure that no further such incidents take place either at the British Embassy or any other mission in Iran. Our State Department is in close contact with the British government and we stand ready to support our allies at this difficult time."

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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150,000 Iran missiles awaiting Israel

Responsibility falls on Israeli and American People to stop these madmen while they still can

Press TV
11/27/2011

Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi says Iran will teach Israel a good lesson if the entity tries to attack the Islamic Republic. 

Iran-Iraq war chemical casualties

Vahidi said on Sunday that Israel will not have a minimal chance of survival after venturing a military attack against Iran, as Iranian armed forces will pound all of Israel with thousands of missiles, Fars News Agency reported.

“The enemy must answer this question, if it attacks Iran, for how long a battle and losing how many of its warships and vessels has it prepared itself?”

  “Why is the Zionist regime making threats (against Iran)? How many missiles have they prepared themselves for? 10,000? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000? 150,000 or more?" the Iranian defense minister asked.

    He advised the US and its allies to realize Iran's incredible might and know that in the event of a war the Islamic Republic will teach the Americans what war really is and what soldiers are supposed to be like. 

 

Another group of madmen, throwing dice on WWIII

Vahidi said Iranian armed forces will not hesitate to defend the country's sovereignty, adding that if the Zionist regime decides to carry out its threats against Iran, Basij forces will take out revenge [on the entity] for years of [the entity] bullying oppressed nations.”

   The United States and Israel have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the "option" of a military strike, based on the allegation that Iran's nuclear work may consist of a covert military agenda.

    Iran has refuted the allegations, saying that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

    While Israel refuses to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities or to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty based on its policy of nuclear ambiguity, Iran has been subjected to snap International Atomic Energy Agency inspections due to its policy of nuclear transparency.

    Israel recently test fired a new long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

     This three-stage Jericho-3 missile, which is capable of delivering a 750-kilo warhead to a distance, is estimated to have a range of up to 10,000 kilometers. Paradoxically, Israel's new nuke-capable missile, which can target many parts of the globe, is not considered a threat in the eyes of the West.

MP/PKH/HGH

 

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US-made crisis: countdown to Iran war?

War caused by criminal madmen Obama, Netanyahu will plunge World into WWIII, destroy what is left of America; are Americans prepared for martial law, camps, draft of their children?

Press TV
11/28/2011

An American analyst believes belligerent US rhetoric and regional military moves targeting Syria and Iran indicate that imperialism's manufactured "nuclear crisis" is a cynical pretext for war. 

In an article published on the Global Research website on Monday, Tom Burghardt explained about US hostile measures in its three-decade covert war against Iran, mentioning the recent report by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano as an excuse to justify possible military action against Tehran.

    He said despite the fact that the "agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at [Iran's] nuclear facilities," Amano still claims that the IAEA "is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”

   The analyst added that far from being an independent nuclear watchdog, the IAEA under Amano's stewardship has been transformed into "highly-politicized and pliable organization" eager to do Washington's bidding.

    Burghardt pointed to a 2009 State Department cable released by Wikileaks, according to which, Yukiya Amano thanked the US for having supported his candidacy and took pains to emphasize his support for the strategic US objectives for the agency.

    The IAEA report, according to Burghardt, was followed by a new wave of sanctions imposed by the US and its European allies against Iran's financial and oil sectors to further strangle the country's economy.

    “Despite, or possibly because no credible evidence exists that Iran is building a nuclear bomb as a hedge against regime change, belligerent rhetoric and regional military moves targeting Syria and Iran simultaneously are danger signs that imperialism's manufactured 'nuclear crisis' is a cynical pretext for war,” he concluded.

    Burghardt noted that there are indications that Washington might envisage the option of an initial (US-backed) attack by Israel rather than an outright US-led military operation directed against Iran.

    "The Israeli attack…would be presented to public opinion as a unilateral decision by Tel Aviv. It would then be used by Washington to justify, in the eyes of world opinion a military intervention of the US and NATO with a view to 'defending Israel', rather than attacking Iran,” he said.

SS/HGH

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US Rep calls for bombing Iran refineries

Yet another nutcase caught with his hand in the till, willing to do anything to avoid prosecution for looting U.S. Treasury; Obama, CIA have guns to "representatives" heads

Press TV
11/28/2011

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has called for a military strike against Iran's refineries to stop the country's peaceful nuclear program. 

Corrupt madman, thief, liar, coward, pederast:  Neuter Gingrich

The US should bomb Iran's refineries "as a last recourse," Gingrich said earlier in a 2012 presidential debate in Washington.

The former House speaker opined that the US could break Iran within a year with "cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have."

    His hawkish comments came as Washington and its allies are putting pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program, imposing unilateral sanctions on the country following the November 8 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

   In an earlier presidential debate earlier this month, Gingrich advocated increased covert terrorism against Iran.

    He suggested employing “maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.” 

Obama, CIA, Gingrich, crooked senate, no match for Ahmadinejad

The calls for assassination and terrorist acts come as Iran has lost a number of its scientists to terrorism in recent years. Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Masoud Ali-Mohammadi were killed in separate bombing attacks last year.

    Western countries have used the allegation that Tehran is pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program as a pretext to impose sanctions on the country as well as to call for an attack.

    Iran says that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

    Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country.

    Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has said that Iranian armed forces will pound all of Israel with thousands of missiles following threats by officials in Tel Aviv.

AGB/HGH

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Syrian troops 'murdered children'

Here we go again:  does this ludicrous scenario sound familiar?  Obama desperate to find any war to distract from his, congress looting of U.S. Treasury

Belfast Telegraph
11/28/2011

The UN has accused Syria of a series of crimes against humanity in its crackdown on anti-government protests.

    An inquiry said that among other atrocities Syrian troops killed hundreds of children.

 

A panel of independent experts says at least 256 children were killed by government forces as of early November, with some boys sexually tortured and a two-year-old girl shot dead just to prevent her from growing up to be a demonstrator.

 

    The panel's report to the UN Human Rights Council said government forces have used excessive force to "shot indiscriminately at unarmed protesters" while snipers targeted others in the upper body and head.

    The report said Syrian security forces along with militias were given "shoot to kill" orders to crush demonstrations.

   Meanwhile Syria has attacked the Arab League's newly approved sanctions against it as "economic war."

    Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem's remarks came a day after the Arab League approved sweeping sanctions targeting Syria for its crackdown on the eight-month-old uprising in which more than 3,500 people have been killed.

    The sanctions by Syria's Arab neighbours are expected to squeeze an ailing economy that already is under sanctions by the US and the European Union.

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ALL OUT WAR? If Israel fires single missile at Iran... Tehran Threatens Retaliation against Israel in the Case of an Attack

Israel will be Middle East's newest mega parking lot

Press TV
11/27/2011

A senior military commander says if Israel fires even a single missile at Iranian nuclear facilities, every inch of the entity will be the target of Iran's missiles.
 

    Referring to recent anti-Iran rhetoric by the US and Israel, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani said on Saturday that Iran will not just repel enemy attacks and is capable of countering hostile attempts within enemy territory. 

Iranian ballistic missile

“If Israel fires a missile towards our nuclear or critical facilities, it should know that every inch of Israel including its nuclear centers are a target for our missiles [to hit] and we have this capability today,” the Iranian general said.

“Today, our enemies have reached a dead-end which they cannot escape from and this is why they say things without noticing [they are making] contradictory statements,” ISNA quoted Javani as saying.

    “They threaten with military attack which they are incapable of [launching it]… if an entity repeatedly threatens with attack but does not have the capability to carry it out, its threats will be rendered inert,” he added.

    The United States and Israel have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the "option" of a military strike, based on the allegation that Iran's nuclear work may consist of a covert military agenda.

    On November 6, Israeli President Shimon Peres threatened that an attack against the Islamic Republic was becoming 'more and more likely.'

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Military Affairs Ehud Barak have also reportedly been lobbying the Israeli cabinet to approve of a military strike on Iran.
 

   Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.

   Earlier in November, Brigadier General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, who is senior military adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, dismissed Israeli threats saying any act of aggression would receive a response from Iran, Lebanon and Hamas. 

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Four triggers for CIA spy scares in Iran, Hizballah

Free World applauds CIA's disastrous blow in Iran as MOIS rolls up, interrogates, kills 12 CIA agents

DEBKA
11/29/2011

First, Hizballah reported the unmasking of a CIA network in Lebanon. Then, Wednesday, Nov. 23, an Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, claimed the capture of 12 CIA spies targeting Iran's military and its nuclear program with the Mossad and regional agencies. Beirut and Tehran had clearly joined forces, debkafile's intelligence sources report, to prove they were on top of their security and had smashed dangerous US intelligence networks operating inside their armed forces.

Iran and Hizballah were driven into action by four pressing circumstances:

1. Tehran needed urgently to erase the bad impression left by the explosion which wiped out Iran's entire missile command, including Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, at the secret Revolutionary Guards base in Aghadir near Tehran on Oct. 12.

Despite the supreme effort the authorities made to persuade the public that the calamity was caused by a technical malfunction, it brought back memories of former assassinations of top Iranian nuclear scientists, for which Tehran blamed the CIA and the Mossad.

2. The growing inability of Iran's leading ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, to put down the uprising against his rule is in itself a sorry reflection on Tehran's choice of allies, especially this week when the anti-regime Free Syrian Army raised its head and struck strategic targets in Syria and outside the country, singling out Lebanon.

Furthermore, debkafile's intelligence and military sources report, the unexplained explosion at the illegal Hizballah arms dump in the southern Lebanese town of Siddiqin Wednesday, Nov. 23 was the work of the Syrian rebels' military arm, the FSA. It struck a target representing Assad's ally which is moreover Tehran's Lebanese surrogate.

Graffiti left at the scene of the blast said it was revenge for Hizballah's aide to the Assad regime's crackdown in Syrian cities and promised more.

The Siddiqin explosion was a shock to high authority in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut.

While CIA deaths welcomed, Obama responsible

The Iranian Supreme Ruler's military adviser, Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, had earlier warned that if Iran were attacked, it would not need to launch ballistic missiles at Israel "because all the Zionist cities are within the range of our ally Hizballah's Katyushas."

The weapons store explosion at Siddiqin has placed a large question mark over that threat. Tehran will have to take into account that the Syrian rebels can identify Hizballah's rocket hideouts and launching pads, in which Iran has invested huge sums, and may sabotage them before they can go into action.

Since the destroyed arms depot was lodged in a well-protected Hizballah stronghold, officials in Beirut and Tehran must assume that the saboteurs, who slipped in an out of the site undetected, had local aid.

3. Both Iran and Hizballah are gearing up for war. Under cover of a military exercise, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their Basij militia units last week began organizing in battle array in the various theaters assigned them in the country.

Hizballah's leader Hassan Nasrallah has been inspecting Hizballah units. In his briefings to their commanders and men, he is warning them that war with Israel, and perhaps other Western armed forces too, is very near and they must be ready.

The difference between victory and defeat, he is saying, may hinge on their ability to detect double agents working in their midst for the Americans and Israelis. Even willingness for sacrifice and superior weaponry are no match for the peril posed from within by these spies.

This was Nasrallah's first implicit admission of the inability of his and Iran's security arms to root out US and Israeli penetrations of their forces, and their need to turn to ordinary soldiers for help.

4. The alleged spy affairs Iran and Lebanon exposed this week are part of their response to US and Western pressure of the past fortnight to halt Iran's nuclear progress. They are also payback for Washington's allegation of an Iranian-led conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US.
 

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Treason From Within: The Road towards Police State in America; Defense Authorization bill allows military detentions of American citizens in U.S.

The death/enslavement of the sleeping sheep looms; there is no such thing as a conspiracy theory, it is a Bush/Cheney creation  to discredit Independent Media

Global Research
By Dr. Andrew Bosworth
11/28/2011

Preparing for the Final Takedown?

There is a shocking piece of legislation working its way through Congress. A Defense Authorization bill for 2012 allows for military detentions of American citizens on American soil. These can be indefinite detentions, with no trial.

   The American Civil Liberties Union statement (more of an alert) on November 23, 2011 deserves special attention:

“The U.S. Senate is considering the unthinkable: changing detention laws to imprison people — including Americans living in the United States itself — indefinitely and without charge.”

“The Defense Authorization bill — a “must-pass” piece of legislation — is headed to the Senate floor with troubling provisions that would give the President — and all future presidents — the authority to indefinitely imprison people, without charge or trial, both abroad and inside the United States.”

“If enacted, sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA would:

(1)  Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

     (2)   Mandate military detention of some civilians.

(3)  Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.”

“The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.”

  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the nation’s oldest organization of its kind, emerging from the American Union Against Militarism, which opposed the US entry into World War I in 1917.

   Without endorsing everything the ACLU has done, it is possible to recognize this organization as careful.

It is not prone to wild exaggeration.

Fortunately, there is some resistance to the NDAA for 2012 bill, to this Department of Defense power grab, including by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif), the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

    In fact, Sen. Feinstein appeared quite alarmed:

“I will stop reading here, but again, I want to emphasize this point. We are talking about the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. We have not done this at least since World War II when we incarcerated Japanese Americans. This is a very serious thing we are doing. People should understand its impact.”

   The White House is not enthusiastic about the present wording of the two controversial sections of the bill.

  In a Statement of Administration Policy (November 17, 2011), the administration objected to two main items:

    1) that the bill mandates the military detention of covered persons (restraining the Justice Department’s hand) and

      2) that the detention provisions can cover American citizens within the United States.

    Obviously, if the President is put in the position of having to sign a bill with such a provision (indefinite detention for Americans), it would spark bottomless outrage from from both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

Live Free or Die.  Do NOT let them take you alive, you will regret it

Even mainstream, apolitical Americans would be concerned about such a provision that, on its face, is unconstitutional. 

Ordinary Americans are already waking up to the specter of tyranny, and the NDAA for 2012 would accelerate that process.

    So the administration released this statement in an effort to trim the most offensive sections from the bill:

    “Moreover, applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the United States, as some Members of Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”

    Senators Levin’s response to the administration is troubling on two counts.

   First, Sen. Levin’s response suggests that the administration changed its position midway through this process or, possibly, that there is a split between the White House on the one hand and the Pentagon or CIA on the other:

   Sen. Levin’s states that it was the administration all along that assisted with the wording:

“Section 1031 was written by Administration officials for the purpose of codifying existing authority.” Then Sen. Levin complains that:

“The Administration itself asked that we delete language in section 1031 that would have excluded the detention of U.S. citizens or lawful resident aliens based on conduct taking place within the United States.”

   Senator Levin insists that there is nothing in those sections that breaks with established law, and that the committee accepted the administration’s proposed changes to retain the civilian – rather than the military – option for detainment.

    This is how Sen. Levin tried to put at ease the concerns:

“Nothing is automatic. The administration would have the discretion to waive military detention and hold a detainee in civilian custody if it decided to do so.”

  Sen. Levin then proceeds to misinterpret the Supreme Court case that he himself cited: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004).  As Sen. Levin claims:

“The Supreme Court held in the Hamdi case that existing law authorizes the detention of American citizens under the law of war in the limited circumstances spelled out here, so this is nothing new.”

  But the circumstances in Sen. Levin’s bill are not “limited” at all, since they involve indefinite detention without trial.

   Besides, the Supreme Court actually decided – in the Hamdi case in fact – that detainees who are U.S. citizens must have the ability to challenge their enemy combatant status before an impartial judge.  This precludes indefinite detention without a trial.  (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld had addressed the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen being detained indefinitely as an “illegal enemy combatant.”)

   As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the opinion:

“… it would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process.”

    Eight of the nine justices of the Court agreed that the government does not have the power to hold indefinitely a U.S. citizen without basic due process protections enforceable through judicial review.

    Clearly, this upcoming defense bill – especially Sections 1031 and 1032 – is plagued by confusion. Some of this confusion appears to be deliberate.

The future of Americans that waited too long to revolt

The ACLU is supporting the Udall Amendment advanced by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). The ACLU claims that it will delete the harmful provisions and “make sure that the bill matches up with American values.”

It is time, however, to raise a more fundamental question about the NDAA for 2012 and Sections 1031 and 1032.

What sinister forces are behind the crafting of this legislation, behind closed doors? Most likely, officials in the defense and intelligence communities penned the legislation, then used Senators Carl Levin and John McCain to advance it.

    Sen. Carl Levin makes periodic sense, but he has spent much of his 32 years in the Senate helping to bloat the military-industrial and police-state apparatus. Meatime, across his tenure, the economy of his home state Michigan has imploded.

    And Sen. Levin appears to take seriously the latest absurd accusation: that there was an Iranian-Zeta plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in a restaurant. This plot bears all the hallmarks of previous unlawful entrapment cases. For more details on recent unlawful entrapment: http://multipolarfuture.com/?p=462

    Sen. John McCain also makes periodic sense, but he has become a knee-jerk neo-con, unable to find a war (or a long-term occupation) that he cannot support.

    Sen. John McCain would do well to remove his name from such a draconian bill, lest he add more fuel to the rumor that, as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he was transformed into some kind of Manchurian candidate with a time-release program to destroy American democracy from within.

    As many Americans know, for over a decade there have been dozens of pieces of legislation and executive orders that have chipped away at the US Constitution, specifically at its Bill of Rights.

    The “war on terror” was originally to be waged against foreigners in far-away lands, but Rep. Ron Paul was right, the anti-terror infrastructure is swinging around to be used against American citizens.

    This was the design all along.

  The intention was always to immobilize the American public with a police-state control grid, now backed by the regular military, so that the process of economic extraction and political subjection could be completed.

  The NDAA for 2012 represents a significant step, on the part of the government, towards a “final takedown.”

    The bill’s provision for the indefinite detention of American citizens, without charge or trial, represents nothing short of an declaration of war by the federal government on the American people.

  Hopefully, more sensible Senators and Representatives will squash this diabolical legislation.

Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D./multipolarfuture.com

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