from Alt-Market

Think SOPA and PIPA have been buried?  Think again.  The federal government is NOT going to give up until they get full congressional approval on internet censorship measures and open legal license to enforce those measures.  For now, they have relegated their attacks to a relatively small number of sites, mostly dealing in downloadable media.  However, as SOPA went down the tubes due to mass civil fury, the feds have come back more quietly with the ACTA, an international treaty which would actually create an unelected unaccountable regulating body like the WTO to govern the spread of “copyrighted material”.  This is nonsense of course.  The true goal of SOPA, PIPA, and now the ACTA, is to destroy the creative commons known as the internet and replace it with a bureaucratically controlled facsimile.  The issue of copyright infringement is a civil affair, not a federal one, and should have nothing to do with the federal government, but they have latched onto creative piracy as a false rationalization for web regulation.  This cannot be allowed to stand.  Once this kind of control is given strong enough precedence, things will never be the same.  The internet and the alternative media is all we have left to fight the information war, and it must be protected at all costs.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilitantLibertarian/~3/1qwgre5eWXA/

from The Intel Hub

A clandestine Washington visit by Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo, in which he privately met with multiple Senators and other top officials, was revealed in testimony  during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence attended by CIA director David Petraeus and Intel Chief James Clapper.

Apparently Pardo and the Senators who secretly met with him believe it imperative to met in secret to discuss Americas backing of an Israeli strike on Iran regardless of the opinion of the American people.

Israeli mainstream media giant Haaretz recently reported on these startling revelations:

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo held secret talks with top U.S. officials in recent days, cursory comments made during a public Senate hearing indicated on Tuesday.

The clandestine Washington visit was exposed during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was participated by CIA Director David Petraeus, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate panel.

During the meeting, Feinstein asked Clapper whether or not Israel intended to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the top U.S. intelligence official answering that he would rather discuss the issue behind closed doors.

Feinstein then indicated that she had met Mossad chief Pardo earlier in the week in Washington, with Petraeus adding that he too met Pardo and cited what he called Israel’s growing concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

During the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, US Intel Chief James Clapper also attempted to change the terrorism narrative, shifting the blame from al Qaeda to Iran.

In an article published by Kurt Nimmo for Infowars.com, this fact was outlined in detail as well as completely debunked:

“We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas. Iran’s willingness to sponsor future attacks in the United States or against our interests abroad probably will be shaped by Tehran’s evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders’ perceptions of U.S. threats against the regime,” Clapper testified.

Other alleged terrorist threats were sidelined during the hearing, including discussion of al-Qaeda, which officials claim “has been badly degraded.”

It is clear that the war drums have intensified and the probability of an attack on Iran by US and Israeli forces has increased exponentially.

Consider this – Right now a nuclear submarine is heading to the Persian Gulf and at least 100,000 US troops are ready to take part in a ground attack on Iran at any moment.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilitantLibertarian/~3/2jaCtqsxPys/

by Glenn Greenwald, Salon

CBS News‘ Scott Pelley appears to be one of the very few American journalists bothered by, or even interested in, the fact that President Obama has asserted and exercised the power to target U.S. citizens for execution-by-CIA without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield. It was Pelley who deftly interrogated the GOP presidential candidates at a November debate about the propriety of due-process-free assassinations, prompting Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann to applaud President Obama for assassinating U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki (just as Rick Perry, Dick and Liz Cheney, and Bill Kristol had done). Last night, Pelley did the same when he interviewed Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Leon Panetta on 60 Minutes. It’s well worth watching this three-minute clip because, although Panetta doesn’t say much that is new (he simply asserts the standard slogans and unproven assertions that Obama defenders on this topic always assert), watching a top Obama official, under decent questioning, defend the power to target U.S. citizens for assassination viscerally conveys the rigidly authoritarian mindset driving all of this:

Read the rest at this link.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilitantLibertarian/~3/amR8pWOhr3Y/

 from NPR

Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.

Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.

No evidence has emerged that these decisions were coordinated. The company is a key gatekeeper for home loans but says its traders are “walled off” from the officials who have restricted homeowners from taking advantage of historically low interest rates by imposing higher fees and new rules.

Freddie’s charter calls for the company to make home loans more accessible. Its chief executive, Charles Haldeman Jr., recently told Congress that his company is “helping financially strapped families reduce their mortgage costs through refinancing their mortgages.”

But the trades, uncovered for the first time in an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, give Freddie a powerful incentive to do the opposite, highlighting a conflict of interest at the heart of the company. In addition to being an instrument of government policy dedicated to making home loans more accessible, Freddie also has giant investment portfolios and could lose substantial amounts of money if too many borrowers refinance.

“We were actually shocked they did this,” says Scott Simon, who as the head of the giant bond fund PIMCO’s mortgage-backed securities team is one of the world’s biggest mortgage bond traders. “It seemed so out of line with their mission.”

Read More…

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilitantLibertarian/~3/JH1KwPejiRk/

from The Sun

Two pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about “destroying America” were picked up by the country’s anti-terror cops.

US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan’s messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

Leigh, who also quipped about “digging up Marilyn Monroe” on Twitter, said they were treated like terrorists on arrival at a Los Angeles International Airport. The pair were held by armed guards and quizzed for five hours before being handcuffed, put in a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.

They spent 12 hours in separate holding cells and were then put on a flight home.

Leigh, 26, was kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers. The Department of Homeland Security flagged up Leigh as a potential threat when he posted a Twitter message to his pals ahead of his trip to Hollywood.

It read: “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America”.

Despite telling officials at LAX airport the term “destroy” was British slang for partying, the pair were held on suspicion of planning to “commit crimes”.

Read More…

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilitantLibertarian/~3/_hR9VeEx1DQ/