EU apparatchiks issued a “sharp rebuke” on Monday

Kurt Nimmo - February 10, 2014

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has threatened the Ukrainian government, stating there will be consequences if it continues to resist the Soros-NED-USAID protests in Kiev.

Lubomir Zaoralek, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, added that the European Union must impose economic sanctions on the Ukraine if resistance continues.

“It’s something totally unacceptable, this violence and the role of the authorities in intimidation. It’s something that is very close to our experience in the socialist past,” Zaoralek told Reuters. “I am absolutely convinced that if there is an escalation of violence, I see no chance to avoid sanctions. The EU must use all tools at our disposal.”

Zaoralek failed to mention the violent tactics of the demonstrators.

“What we are hearing from the US and from the EU is of course the most cynical hypocrisy. After the last few years of the brutal police repressions of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US and the anti-neo-liberal austerity dictates that have been instituted around the EU, which brought literally tens of millions of protesters out onto the streets,” Mark Sleboda, professor of international relations at the Moscow State University, told RT in January.

“They are calling against the violence in Ukraine where the majority of the injuries for the past few days have been from the police who suffered injuries from Molotov cocktails, firebombs, knife stabbings, clubbings with morning stars, wizard shots from trebuchets constructed in the Maidan and bows and the arrows. We are frequently seeing a level of medieval violence from the protesters. That’s where the real violence in these protests is coming from.”

Bildt, Zaoralek, and the ministers and bureaucrats of the EU are stepping up the pressure on Ukraine because the confrontational Euromaidan protests designed by the Russophobe George Soros and neocons in the State Department (most notably and verbally Victoria Nuland) to topple the government are stalling out and losing momentum.

EU apparatchiks issued a “sharp rebuke” on Monday stating they are “alarmed by the human rights situation, including violence, cases of missing persons, torture and intimidation” as part of a response to the ongoing protests. They said the EU is ready to “assist” Ukraine if the present government capitulates and a new regime is installed. Only then can Ukraine “pursue economic and political reforms,” in other words take orders from Brussels and submit to the austerity and serfdom regimen imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The “banker-led federation of austerity and poverty,” as Wayne Madsen aptly characterizes the EU, is determined to break the will of the Ukrainian government because it stands as a symbol of resistance to a corporatist and bankster dominated Fourth Reich, as the EU ultimately became as the infamous Red House Report predicted.

Related – Soros Supported Protests Turn Violent in Ukraine

Global Destabilization: Directed Discontent in Egypt and Beyond

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A EU Coup - at least in the western area of the Ukraine?

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When democracy granted democratic methods for us in the times of opposition, this was bound to happen in a democratic system. However, we National Socialists never asserted that we represented a democratic point of view, but we have declared openly that we used democratic methods only in order to gain the power and that, after assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries without consideration the means which were granted to us in the times of opposition. – Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda

The wolf in sheeps clothing – The U.N. replaced the U.S. Bill of Rights with a Declaration of Human Rights after WWII. Human rights are not the same as individual liberty, just as the freemason phrase “liberty, equality, fraternity” is not the same as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Fabian and freemason propaganda both twist things to sound almost the same, but after a brief investigation anyone with eyes can see there are major differences. The power of propaganda is in teaching phony phrases and slogans and turning it into familiar repetitions. (too many Americans say, “I got my human rights and they can never take that away.”)

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Unlike Marx’s open and violent revolutionary agenda, the Fabian’s agenda was to
quietly infiltrate and re-direct established governments. The Fabians were
instrumental in creating the Peace Movement, which is the perfect antithesis to
violent expansionism. Fabians also helped establish the International Court at the Hague. The Fabians designed the first League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations). Fabian influence on the creation of the U.N. is no secret, either. While many
Marxist revolutions followed the prescription for violence (Russia, China, Cuba,
etc.) others, like the U.S., were infiltrated under the Fabian model for “universal brotherhood and peace.”

Today the Fabian socialist model dominates in all global political movements.

Like the imperial goal, the ultimate goal of communism and socialism was to control world trade. Source

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The Fabian Society can claim credit for…public healthcare, income taxation, public schooling, degradation of the institution of marriage, reducing the power of the family, promoting international communism, and free trade – with a friendlier face. Overall aims -  International and Imperialistic - New World Order.

By Staff Writer // September 24, 2013

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has decided to move its media offices to London, following a Cairo court decision to proscribe the Islamist entity’s activities and any subsidiary institution related to it.

The Brotherhood already maintains a London presence through which it was previously running the administrative affairs of the organisation. The London headquarters is a “research centre” headed by Ibrahim Mounir, former member of the Guidance Bureau and former Secretary General of the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood has also used the London headquarters to communicate with the West, publishing a weekly journal entitled “The Brotherhood Message”, a which explains the organisation’s stances on the current events and its vision on reform.

Brotherhood leaders have also made appearances on satellite channels broadcast from their media office, which was fully transferred to London after recent prosecutions in Egypt.

The office published a statement today in which it remarked that the recent decisions in Egypt would not persuade them to abandon their ideas but would instead give them faith to further adhere to the principles they preach.

The courts ruling to dissolve the organisation was not surprising, according to the statement, but rather expected, especially after the claims that more than 15,000 leading members were arrested, including Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie.

The Islamist outfit described the verdict to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood as exclusionary and revengeful.

“It will remain with God’s help, not by the orders by the judiciary of al-Sisi,” he told al-Jazeera Mubashir Misr TV, referring to the head of the armed forces Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

http://www.trendingcentral.com/muslim-brotherhood-moves-office-london/

Egypt is throwing them out, London is providing a safe haven, Obama has over a hundred (at least) in his administration yet not long ago the MB were on the terrorist watch list. Today we only have ”freedom fighters” and the only terrorists left is the Tea Party, and the NRA – both Constitutional advocates. And the times they are a changin…

by Lauren Enriquez | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 2/11/14

A video that has recently gone viral on Facebook with over 195,000 shares that depicts a pre-born baby inside of its amniotic sac. The video has sparked massive discussion on social media about the humanity of the unborn, legality of abortion, and reality of what life in the womb looks like.

Some commenters on these social media outlets have speculated that the baby was delivered as the result of an auto accident, although we could not confirm this.

Estimating based on data available from the Endowment for Human Development, the baby looks as if his gestational age may have been around four months.

Abortion at this stage of development is available on-demand in the United States.

If you’d like to join the discussions on Facebook or YouTube, this resource may prove valuable in setting the record straight in the face of the many misconceptions about abortion in the United States which are circling.

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/02/11/viral-video-of-baby-in-amniotic-sac-questions-abortion-shows-humanity-of-unborn-babies/

An ultrasound image of a 4 month-old-foetus – just one of the many fruits of modern mathmatics. Photo: ALMANY

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7935124/The-maths-behind-medical-science-credit-where-its-due.html

by Wesley J. Smith | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 2/10/14

This is the pro suicide culture we are becoming. A UK married couple committed joint suicide to the support of their son and the coroner.

From the Daily Mail story:

The son of a couple who died after making a suicide pact kissed them both goodbye and gave them his blessing. Tai Altman said he knew his parents Raphael, 69, and Tamar, 72, who had been married for 46 years, were going to kill themselves…

They were both supporters of Dignity in Dying, and had marked October 3, 2013 in their diary with the single word – ‘depart’.

Raphael was dying of cancer. Tamar killed herself, in part, because she didn’t want to move:

Tai Altman said the family spent two days saying goodbye, before he gave his parents – who were both in poor health – his blessing.

’I told her she could move here and be with us and her grandchildren but she was not without her own physical ailments. She wasn’t about to relocate 500 miles. I didn’t argue about it.’

Of course not.

And get this from the coroner!

Assistant coroner Peter Clark said the couple had made a careful decision to end their lives in a ‘dignified’ way. Recording verdicts of suicide, he said: ‘It is clear they intended to die together as they lived together.’

You either get why this is so very wrong, or you don’t. I am out of words.

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/02/10/pro-death-culture-now-promoting-assisted-suicides-of-older-married-couples/

The rhetoric surrounding abortion focuses primarily on the question of when life begins — is the fetus a baby at six weeks? 12? 20? — and whether women have the right to make choices about their pregnant bodies. In our case, abortion was a parenting decision — the most important and powerful one I have yet to make. This might not be comfortable or convenient for the pro-choice narrative, but it’s the truth. Some aspects of abortion might rightfully be best considered in the context of when life begins, but in situations like ours, the most salient fact was how and when life should end.

During a second trimester ultrasound when the baby was 19-weeks, some potentially extensive medical complications were found. With her medical knowledge, the mother knew the news was not good:

We ask: What kind of suffering is this baby experiencing? What kind of quality of life will he or she have? But what we don’t talk about much in medical school, or anywhere else for that matter, is the idea of end-of-life care before independent life has even begun.

Because of my familiarity with what many of the different therapeutic and palliative care options entailed—medically, ethically, personally — it was clear to me that what we were dealing with was choosing an end-of-life care plan for our son. And because my husband and I believe more in evidence than in miracles, we knew that the appropriate time to implement that plan was now.

Not wanting to risk the unknown of delivering a baby who might experience suffering, they chose to abort — what they called “a peaceful death:”

[W]e chose to give our baby what we felt was the most humane, comfortable, and loving end-of-life experience we felt we could facilitate.

Aborting my son was not about when life begins, but how to end it humanely.

As the left so often does, they demonstrate their propensity to corrupt language to blur the lines of right and wrong. truthrevolt.org

The baby boy they decided to murder endured one or more knife stabs in the neck/spinal area. These “potential” parents will never forgive themselves no matter the justification. And they’ll never know for sure if his ”potential” problems would have resolved in the womb.

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What if their next baby develops a “potential” similar or other medical problem in the womb will they keep killing their babies? Or how about ”potential” medical problem(s) one or two years after birth?

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And so the culling continues…where’s the difference in Hitler and his admin. making the same decision for his ”Master Race”? Ok, ok, so (for the time being) the “potential” parents now get to make the choice and not Hitler. But ”potentially” the decision could end at a government table, perhaps due to the cost in medical care – since they’ve already commandeered the “suffering” “compassionate” element. Will the real aim, depopulation or population control, ever be disclosed…

Ordinarily we would ignore the news of another banker’s death – after all these sad events happen all the time – if it wasn’t for several contextual aspects of this most recent passage.

• First, the death in question, as reported by the Stamford Daily Voice is that of Ryan Henry Crane, a Harvard graduate, who is survived by his wife, son and parents at the very young age of 37.

May he RIP.

• Second, Ryan Henry Crane was formerly employed by JPMorgan – a bank which was featured prominently in the news as recently as two weeks ago when another of its London-based employees committed suicide by jumping from the top floor of its Canary Wharf building.
• Third: Crane was an Executive Director in JPM’s Global Program Trading desk, founded in 1999 by an ex-DE Shaw‘er, a function of the firm which is instrumental to preserving JPM’s impeccable and (so far in 2013) flawless trading record of zero trading losses.

There was little detail surrounding the death:

 Ryan Henry Crane of Stamford died Monday, Feb. 3. He was 37.

Crane was born Jan. 8, 1977, and grew up in Long Valley, N.J. He graduated from The Delbarton School in Morristown in 1995. He graduated from Harvard University in 1999, after which he spent the next 14 years at J.P. Morgan in New York. He was an executive director in the Global Equities Group.

Crane is survived by his wife, Lauren (nee Pizzotti); son, Harry; parents Mary Jo and Lex of Long Valley, N.J.; brother, Lex of Denver, Colo.; sister, Allison; brother-in-law, John Archard of Arvada, Colo.; parents-in-law, Steve and Carol Pizzotti of Reading, Mass.; brothers- and sisters-in-law, David and Heather Pizzotti of Upper Arlington, Ohio, Stephen and Kristin Pizzotti and Chris and Felicia Pizzotti of Reading, Mass.; five nephews, three nieces; aunts, uncles; and cousins.

Calling hours are Sunday, Feb. 9 from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Leo P. Gallagher Funeral Home, 31 Arch St., Greenwich. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, Feb. 10 at St. Catherine of Siena Church, Riverside. Interment will be held at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11 at Puritan Lawn Memorial Park in Peabody, Mass.

Crane’s LinkedIn profile confirming his senior position at one of JPM’s most important market-facing verticals:

Below is his Finra BrokerCheck profile. Aside from having a license to trade virtually anything and anywhere as someone with his skillset would be expected to, his history was spotless:

The circumstances surrounding his death are scarce, but what is most notable is that not only is Crane the second very young JPMorgan banker to pass in recent days, but is also the fourth banker death in under a month. We can only hope this disturbing chain of deaths within the financial industry – one of which involved a nail-gun induced suicide - is purely accidental.

h/t SGT Report

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-12/another-jpmorgan-banker-dies-37-year-old-executive-director-program-trading

Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old senior manager at JP Morgan’s European headquarters, jumped 500ft from the top of the bank’s headquarters in central London on January 27, landing on an adjacent 9 story roof.

A few days later, Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Russell Investments, fell down a 50 foot embankment in what police described as a suicide. Dueker was reported missing on January 29 by friends, who said he had been “having problems at work.”

On January 26, former Deutsche Bank executive Broeksmit was found dead at his South Kensington home after police responded to reports of a man found hanging at a house. According to reports, Broeksmit had “close ties to co-chief executive Anshu Jain.”

Richard Talley, 57, founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was also found dead last week after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.

Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, although the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.

4th Financial Services Executive Found Dead … – mediachecker – 02/07/2014

Third Banker Commits Suicide Within a Week | mediachecker - Jan 31, 2014

Two top ranking American bankers working in … – mediachecker - Jan 29, 2014

Connection(s): Ryan Crane- JPM – access to international trading systems - head of the program trading desk where he over-saw all the program trades and was familiar with all the software – trade platforms, where these trades were done. This job works closely with the London desk where the most recent suicide happened – Gabriel Magee – JPM – access to the international trading systems – his job was head of IT and international trade platforms where he had access to information from which Ryan Crane was also privy. What if there was sabotage or neglect to the IT system perhaps used as a cover for something more sinister.

The Royal Bank of Scotland apparently had massive problems with their IT system which they claimed was neglect. One must also remember that the fallout of AIG and Enron originated in London.

Note: The only viable money left in the US, what the government haven’t gotten their hands on, are the 401ks and IRAs of the American people. Obama’s State of the Union address touched on a plan for Americans to have a retirement account with the government – this will be used as a step for the government to later make a grab for American’s 401ks and IRAs. What they will try to do is trade our investments for US government debt so Moochelle can wear $12,000 dresses. Anyway, beware of the “I’m from the government and here to help you” spin.

by Michael Snyder • January 28, 2014

Republicans need to begin work now on taking her down – and there is a bounty of ammo for the job

Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com February 12, 2014

The Washington Wire column over at the Wall Street Journal posted the results of a McClatchy-Marist poll today. In a match-up between Hillary Clinton and any of her prospective Republican challengers for the 2016 presidential race, voters said they preferred Clinton. The only challenger was Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. Everybody else landed nearly 20 or more points behind Clinton with the exception of Ryan and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Polls, of course, are funny things. They often do not reflect reality. But Clinton’s early lead, despite her not having declared her intention to run, may show mass delusional thinking on the part of voters. It is not clear what they see exactly in Clinton beyond the fact that she is a woman. Due the establishment’s insistence on gender and race specifics over policy and philosophical substance, and the corporate media’s non-stop mirroring of smoke screen political correctness, we can expect this sort of strict PCism to rule in 2016. Democrats love to excoriate their political opponents with the charge of racism. On the day Clinton announces, the charge of sexism will be heard in response to her detractors.

Rand Paul seems to be on the right track. Probably the only way to effectively defeat Clinton is to resurrect her past sins, most notably Whitewater, the scandal few remember.

Whitewater, above and beyond the Mona Lewinsky affair, reveals the intensely sleazy character of the Clintons. Whitewater was a fraudulent real estate deal cooked up by Hillary and associate Jim McDougal when Hillary worked for the Rose Law firm. Both McDougal and fellow Rose Law firm partner Vince Foster turned up dead. Foster, who was Deputy White House Counsel during the first few months of the first Clinton administration, was a material witness for Ken Starr, the independent counsel conducting the Whitewater criminal investigation.

There are other Clinton “gates,” including Travelgate, Filegate, and Chinagate. For more on these gates, see Larry Klayman’s “Proof Hillary isn’t fit to be president.”

Then there is Hillary Clinton’s performance during the Benghazi hearings when she yelled at members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the murder of her subordinate, Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens, was not worth investigating. Prior to this, many observers accused her of faking a concussion to avoid testifying about the Benghazi attack.

Clinton’s behavior at the hearing and especially her involvement in Whitewater and other gates are all fair game. Her potential contenders during the presidential race should certainly take advantage of numerous scandals, most conveniently swept under the rug back in the 1990s.

But they shouldn’t stop there. Republicans should not hesitate to also crank up the wayback machine and scrutinize Hillary behavior during the original gate, Watergate. Clinton’s former boss, Democrat Jerry Zeifman who was a counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, fired her for unethical behavior as a staffer on the committee. He felt so strongly about Clinton’s character, he refused to give her a letter of recommendation.

Why did Zeifman fire the 27-year old staffer? “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman told journalist Daniel Calabrese. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

All of this damning information should be more than enough to scuttle any Clinton presidential bid – that is if Republicans stick to their guns. Of course, the Democrat friendly corporate media will do its best to sabotage the effort. Establishment Republicans may also cry foul despite the fact, so far, few of their candidates are up to the task of taking on the Iron Maiden. Source

A conservative underdog in San Diego just won despite the odds and lack of money –  perhaps a glimpse at the shape of things to come.

Note: We’ve got over 300 million people in this county yet we continue to get recycled bankster-gangster families looking to become president - enough already. So it’s a woman who’ll take us to the cleaners this time around - big whoopie! No more Clintons or Bushs please!

Disclosure documents show Tim Kaine and Alan Lowenthal are invested in Keystone Competitors

BY: Lachlan Markay February 12, 2014 1:07 pm

Democrats who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline have thousands of dollars invested in direct competitors to the company looking to build the pipeline, public records show.

A recent environmental assessment by the State Department was seen as a step toward the pipeline’s approval, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) remains opposed to its construction.

“In my view, there is now enough evidence to conclude that construction of this pipeline is not in America’s long-term interest,” Kaine said in a statement on the review.

The freshman Democrat has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, according to his most recent financial disclosure. Kinder Morgan is looking to build a pipeline that would directly compete with Keystone.

Kinder Morgan is considering expanding its Canadian pipeline infrastructure with an expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which carries oil sands crude from Alberta to refineries and export terminals on Canada’s west coast.

The expansion would boost Trans Mountain’s capacity to 890,000 barrels per day. Keystone, a project of energy company TransCanada, is expected to carry about 830,000 barrels per day if fully constructed.

Observers have said a rejection of Keystone would be a boon for Kinder Morgan, since the Trans Mountain pipeline presents a viable alternative for exporting crude from Canadian oil sands.

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer dropped his stake in Kinder Morgan last year after critics pointed out that his vehement opposition to Keystone could enrich him personally.

Kaine’s office did not respond to attempts to confirm his continued stake in the company.

The availability of alternatives to Keystone—from Kinder Morgan and Enbridge, another TransCanada competitor and Canada’s largest crude oil transporter—is integral to the State Department’s assessment that approving the pipeline will have little impact on carbon emissions, President Barack Obama’s stated standard for approval.

The State Department found that rejecting the Keystone pipeline would not stop crude from Canadian oil sands being extracted, refined, exported (whether by pipeline, rail, or tanker), and burned.

However, Kaine maintains that he is opposed to the deal because of its impact on the environment.

“Building this pipeline would dramatically ramp up capacity for tar sands oil that moves us in the opposite direction of an innovative, make-it-cleaner approach,” he said in his statement.

Kaine also penned a column for the Washington Post last year opposing the project. “The real issue isn’t the pipeline,” he wrote. “It’s the wisdom of using tar sands oil.” Kaine did not disclose that he had a stake in a company that would still be transporting “tar sands” oil if Keystone were to be rejected.

Another anti-Keystone Democrat, California Rep. Alan Lowenthal, has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Enbridge Energy Management, $1,000 to $15,000 in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, and $15,000 to $50,000 in Kinder Morgan Management, which is a limited partner in and handles everyday management for the company’s Energy Partners subsidiary.

Lowenthal has been less outspoken then Kaine on Keystone, but he voted against legislation last year that would have approved the pipeline without sign-off from the administration, which has repeatedly put off a decision on the project.

He was also one of 22 Democrats to sign a December letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman insisting that the Keystone Pipeline would be detrimental to the environment.

Lowenthal’s office did not respond to requests to confirm his continued investments in TransCanada competitors.

Observers said his and Kaine’s investments in TransCanada competitors are troubling given their public positions on Keystone.

“This is not an ‘appearance of conflict of interest,’ it is a bald-faced conflict of interest,” said Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

Arnold, the author of Ecology Wars: Environmentalism as if People Matter, said the two legislators should “divest themselves of the tainted investments and recuse themselves from remarks and votes on the issue.”

Sen. David Vitter (R., La), the ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, previously criticized Steyer for maintaining a stake in Kinder Morgan while pursuing his intense anti-Keystone advocacy.

Steyer denied any financial incentive in opposing the pipeline, but opted to dump his stake, via the hedge fund he founded and led until 2012, in Kinder Morgan.

Members of Congress are not prohibited from taking positions that could benefit them financially, though legislation passed in 2012 prohibits them from trading stock based on knowledge obtained through their official duties.

http://freebeacon.com/democrats-who-oppose-keystone-xl-pipeline-own-shares-in-competing-companies/

I know Warren Buffet isn’t too pleased about Keystone since he’s got big stocks in the railroads and trucking companies – even owns most of them. And the Sauds are supposedly biting their nails while giving millions in backhanders to these same congressmen via lobbyists. A few thousand dollars isn’t why these congressmen went into the big business of government – the money lies with the people behind the lobbyists. Very few of them went into government as a public servant - Rand Paul, Lee, Crux and a couple of others are the exception.

By Matthew Balan | February 12, 2014

CNN’s Anderson Cooper did little to hide his outrage on his Tuesday program  over a zoo in Copenhagen, Denmark killing a giraffe. Cooper confronted the zoo’s  scientific director and asked, “Doesn’t the life of the animal itself  have some value, rather than just it being part of your breeding  program?” The host later expressed his dismay to Jack Hanna: “What he  seems to be saying is that the animal itself doesn’t really have any right to  live.”

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Cooper later used language familiar to pro-life  activists in defense of the giraffe: “At a certain point, the animals  themselves should have some right to actually having a life.” [MP3  audio available here; video below the jump] The  anchor’s pro-animal rights segments came just twenty days after CNN senior legal  analyst Jeff Toobin ripped pro-lifers on his now-cancelled 10 pm Eastern  program:

JEFFREY TOOBIN: …This is the logical extension of what  the anti-abortion woman – movement wants. They want women to have no  control over their own bodies. They want the Texas legislature to  decide whether this woman has to carry this baby to term, even though she’s  dead. It is a repulsive abrogation of women’s autonomy. This is an  anti-woman law.

The CNN host gave the first hint of his bias on the issue in his lead  question to Copenhagen Zoo’s scientific director, Bengt Holst: “I’ve seen  reports that other zoos – private philanthropists, even – were willing to step  in and make sure that this giraffe wasn’t killed. Why not do that? Why  kill the giraffe?” When Holst explained that the offers weren’t valid  ones and that “we don’t want to send our animal to places where we don’t know  what happens to it after we have delivered it,” Cooper replied, “What’s  worse that could happen to an animal, though, than being  killed?“
The scientific director retorted, in part, that “the  most important thing for us is that an animal has to have a good life as long as  it lives – be it short life or long life – but it has to be a good life. I mean,  if you send it to a place where you cannot take responsibility for it anymore,  you risk it going to what we would call a substandard place.” Cooper then asked  his “doesn’t the life of the animal itself have some value” question, which led  to Holst underlining that human society regularly controls various animal  populations:

HOLST: It has a value, and that’s why we say it has a  value as long as it lives. So, it has to have a good life as long as it  lives….we human beings are the ones controlling animals’ lives all the  time. And we do it for our domestic animals; we do it for the animals in the  parks; in the forests; on the open land. We do it everywhere.

The CNN anchor later indicated to Hanna that he just couldn’t comprehend why  the zoo took the course of action that it did:

ANDERSON COOPER: I don’t quite understand what – I mean,  he seemed adamant that there was no other option basically for this  giraffe….They couldn’t give to it any other zoo; and even some of the zoos  they could give it to – it was a matter of space. It seems like people  go to great lengths to – you know, adopt dogs to save them from being killed. It  seems like adopting a giraffe for a zoo to – you know, some zoo somewhere would  be able to take this giraffe.

Cooper became the most adamant, to use his own term, about his pro-animal  rights position towards the end of the segment with Hanna:

COOPER:  What he seems to be saying is that the animal itself doesn’t really have any  right to live; or the animal itself, there’s no inherent value in the  animal living out its natural life, which just seems odd for – I mean,  zoos in the United States are…spending tens of millions of dollars to try to  recreate habitats; to try to – you know, give polar bears an existence that is  one like the one they would have in the wild. It just seems odd that  there’s no sense from this guy that the animal itself – the life of the animal  actually matters. It’s just a product in the breeding program.
HANNA: Right. I like that term you use – ‘a product in the breeding program.’  Anderson, this is a living creature. It’s like I was taught on our farm – my dad – and I try to teach people whether you go to a pet shop or wherever you  buy a pet or whatever – you have an obligation to that animal, Anderson. That’s  a living creature. God put that creature on earth for certain reasons. It  teaches responsibility; it teaches love. That’s what the zoological  world does.

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COOPER: In talking to him, I started to think: well, if  you’re killing 20 to 30 exotic animals a year because they don’t fit into your  breeding program anymore, it just, sort of, makes you start to question – well,  what’s the real value of this breeding program if these aren’t – if it’s not an  endangered animal. I mean, I know you – this zoo, you know, wants to keep – keep  a stock going and wants to attract people, but at a certain point, the animals  themselves should have some right to actually having a life.
HANNA: They  sure should, shouldn’t they? We’re now trying to build places in this country – our country – to take surplus animals where they can live out their regular  lives….We’re trying teach people what they will never see, Anderson. You and I  have seen it. That’s why I appreciate what you know about the animal world,  because you’re one of the few reporters that have gotten out there and  understand why it’s so important….
COOPER: It just seems odd. I mean, I kind of wonder if this zoo has a poster somewhere that says – you  know, enjoy our animals. We are going to kill 20 of them this year, but – you  know, enjoy them while they last. No one, I think, knowing that would, kind of,  keep going to that zoo. It just seems an odd set of priorities.

To be fair, the CNN anchor did gave a platform to a woman, who decided to  let her infant daughter live despite her severe genetic defects, during a June 3, 2009 interview on Anderson Cooper 360:

COOPER: Obviously, other women, other families in that  situation make different choices.
ELDER: Right.
COOPER: Do you  believe that- that women should have the right to make that choice?
ELDER: When a baby is a fully formed, living baby, I don’t think that, really,  we have ever had the choice to- to take a life at that stage. I think that- that’s a — that’s a fully-formed baby. I mean, I think you had some of the  pictures up there, and you saw her. She’s a fully-formed baby. She was born  early, by the way. She came out at eight months….
COOPER: Well, I- I  appreciate you coming on and talking about this. I know it’s not easy,  and I appreciate you writing the e-mail to me and- and that we were able to have  you on today. Thank you very much.
ELDER: Thank you so  much.
COOPER: Thanks. Thanks for your strength.

Read more:  http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2014/02/12/cnn-endorses-right-lifefor-animals#ixzz2tA0Oc2ns

Note the pro-human life language for saving animals spewing forth from their mouthes. CNN=putting down animals = bad. Killing babies by the millions = good.

There are many animals on  endangered lists…. human babies are not one of them. (:

Wall Street on Parade ^ | 2/12/14 | Pam Martens – Russ Martens

The nonstop crime news swirling around JPMorgan Chase for a solid 18 months has started to feel a little spooky – they do lots of crime but never any time; and with each closed case, a trail of unanswered questions remains in the public’s mind.

Just last month, JPMorgan Chase acknowledged that it facilitated the largest Ponzi scheme in history, looking the other way as Bernie Madoff brazenly turned his business bank account at JPMorgan Chase into an unprecedented money laundering operation that would have set off bells, whistles and sirens at any other bank.

The U.S. Justice Department allowed JPMorgan to pay $1.7 billion and sign a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning no one goes to jail at JPMorgan — again. The largest question that no one can or will answer is how the compliance, legal and anti-money laundering personnel at JPMorgan ignored for years hundreds of transfers and billions of dollars in round trip maneuvers between Madoff and the account of Norman Levy. Even one such maneuver should set off an investigation. (Levy is now deceased and the Trustee for Madoff’s victims has settled with his estate.)

Then there was the report done by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the London Whale episode which left the public in the dark about just what JPMorgan was doing with stock trading in its Chief Investment Office in London, redacting all information in the 300-page report that related to that topic.

Wall Street On Parade has been filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Federal government in these matters, and despite the pledge from our President to set a new era of transparency, thus far we have had few answers coming our way.

One reason that JPMorgan may have such a spooky feel is that it has aligned itself in no small way with real-life spooks, the CIA kind.

Just when the public was numbing itself to the endless stream of financial malfeasance which cost JPMorgan over $30 billion in fines and settlements in just the past 13 months, we learned on January 28 of this year that a happy, healthy 39-year old technology Vice President, Gabriel Magee, was found dead on a 9th level rooftop of the bank’s 33-story European headquarters building in the Canary Wharf section of London.

The way the news of this tragic and sudden death was stage-managed by highly skilled but invisible hands, turning a demonstrably suspicious incident into a cut-and-dried suicide leap from the rooftop (devoid of eyewitnesses or motivation) had all the hallmarks of a sophisticated covert operation or coverup.

The London Evening Standard newspaper reported the same day that “A man plunged to his death from a Canary Wharf tower in front of thousands of horrified commuters today.” Who gave that completely fabricated story to the press? Commuters on the street had no view of the body because it was 9 floors up on a rooftop – a rooftop that is accessible from a stairwell inside the building, not just via a fall from the roof. Adding to the suspicions, Magee had emailed his girlfriend the evening before telling her he was finishing up and would be home shortly.

If JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, needed a little crisis management help from operatives, he has no shortage of people to call upon. Thomas Higgins was, until a few months ago, a Managing Director and Global Head of Operational Control for JPMorgan. (A BusinessWeek profile shows Higgins still employed at JPMorgan while the New York Post reported that he left late last year.) What is not in question is that Higgins was previously the Senior Officer and Station Chief in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, a component of which is the National Resources Division. (Higgins’ bio is printed in past brochures of the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation, where Higgins is listed with his JPMorgan job title, former CIA job title, and as a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors for 2013.)

According to Jeff Stein, writing in Newsweek on November 14, the National Resources Division (NR) is the “biggest little CIA shop you’ve never heard of.” One good reason you’ve never heard of it until now is that the New York Times was asked not to name it in 2001. James Risen writes in a New York Times piece: [the CIA’s] “New York station was behind the false front of another federal organization, which intelligence officials requested that The Times not identify. The station was, among other things, a base of operations to spy on and recruit foreign diplomats stationed at the United Nations, while debriefing selected American business executives and others willing to talk to the C.I.A. after returning from overseas.”

Stein gets much of that out in the open in his piece for Newsweek, citing sources who say that “its intimate relations with top U.S. corporate executives willing to have their companies fronting for the CIA invites trouble at home and abroad.” Stein goes on to say that NR operatives “cultivate their own sources on Wall Street, especially looking for help keeping track of foreign money sloshing around in the global financial system, while recruiting companies to provide cover for CIA operations abroad. And once they’ve seen how the other 1 percent lives, CIA operatives, some say, are tempted to go over to the other side.”

We now know that it was not only the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Treasury Department’s FinCEN, and bank examiners from the Comptroller of the Currency who missed the Madoff fraud, it was top snoops at the CIA in the very city where Madoff was headquartered.

Stein gives us even less reason to feel confident about this situation, writing that the NR “knows some titans of finance are not above being romanced. Most love hanging out with the agency’s top spies — James Bond and all that — and being solicited for their views on everything from the street’s latest tricks to their meetings with, say, China’s finance minister. JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein, one former CIA executive recalls, loved to get visitors from Langley. And the CIA loves them back, not just for their patriotic cooperation with the spy agency, sources say, but for the influence they have on Capitol Hill, where the intelligence budgets are hashed out.”

Higgins is not the only former CIA operative to work at JPMorgan. According to a LinkedIn profile, Bud Cato, a Regional Security Manager for JPMorgan Chase, worked for the CIA in foreign clandestine operations from 1982 to 1995; then went to work for The Coca-Cola Company until 2001; then back to the CIA as an Operations Officer in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle East countries until he joined JPMorgan in 2011.

In addition to Higgins and Cato, JPMorgan has a large roster of former Secret Service, former FBI and former law enforcement personnel employed in security jobs. And, as we have reported repeatedly, it still shares a space with the NYPD in a massive surveillance operation in lower Manhattan which has been dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center.

JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon have received a great deal of press attention for the whopping $4.6 million that JPMorgan donated to the New York City Police Foundation. Leonard Levitt, of NYPD Confidential, wrote in 2011 that New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly “has amended his financial disclosure forms after this column revealed last October that the Police Foundation had paid his dues and meals at the Harvard Club for the past eight years. Kelly now acknowledges he spent $30,000 at the Harvard Club between 2006 and 2009, according to the Daily News.”

JPMorgan is also listed as one of the largest donors to a nonprofit Foundation that provides college tuition assistance to the children of fallen CIA operatives, the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation. The Foundation also notes in a November 2013 publication, the Compass, that it has enjoyed the fundraising support of Maurice (Hank) Greenberg. According to the publication, Greenberg “sponsored a fundraiser on our behalf. His guest list included the who’s who of the financial services industry in New York, and they gave generously.”

Hank Greenberg is the former Chairman and CEO of AIG which collapsed into the arms of the U.S. taxpayer, requiring a $182 billion bailout. In 2006, AIG paid $1.64 billion to settle federal and state probes into fraudulent activities. In 2010, the company settled a shareholders’ lawsuit for $725 million that accused it of accounting fraud and stock price manipulation. In 2009, Greenberg settled SEC fraud charges against him related to AIG for $15 million.

Before the death of Gabriel Magee, the public had lost trust in the Justice Department and Wall Street regulators to bring these financial firms to justice for an unending spree of fleecing the public. Now there is a young man’s unexplained death at JPMorgan. This is no longer about money. This is about a heartbroken family that will never be the same again; who can never find peace or closure until credible and documented facts are put before them by independent, credible law enforcement.

The London Coroner’s office will hold a formal inquest into the death of Gabriel Magee on May 15. Wall Street On Parade has asked that the inquest be available on a live webcast as well as an archived webcast so that the American public can observe for itself if this matter has been given the kind of serious investigation it deserves. We ask other media outlets who were initially misled about the facts in this case to do the same. Wall Street on Parade ^

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Under Investigation in London

Godfather Original Song – ll Padrino

It’s an international heist perped by the 1% global bankster-gangster mafioso who have the money to pay off corrupt politicians via lobbyists/foundation - NGO’s, intelligence services w/ people on the take - CIA, MI5-6, BND, CNI, and so on. The 1% global powers and their agents have infiltrated every government agency in the globe, and control every area of our lives. What to do:

If we understand that the fundamental problem facing not only America, but the entire world, is a global corporate-financier oligarchy that has criminally consolidated their wealth by “liberalizing” their own activities while strangling ours through regulations, taxes, and laws, we should then understand why events like Beck’s “Restoring Honor” are not only fruitless, but in fact, counterproductive. We should also realize that any activity we commit ourselves to must be directed at this corporate-financier oligarchy rather than the governments they have co-opted and positioned as buffers between themselves and the
masses.

While people understand something is wrong and recognize the necessity to do “something,” figuring out what that “something” should be becomes incredibly difficult when so few understand how power really works and how to strip it away from the oligarchs that have criminally consolidated it…. Continued: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/10/self-sufficiency-local-solution-to.html

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, once famously said he believed banks were doing “God’s work.” [MC->Bill Gates says the same thing - these guys literally believe they actually are gods.] Now, the Netherlands is going one step further: starting later this year, all 90,000 Dutch bankers will have to swear an oath that they’ll do their “utmost to maintain and promote confidence in the financial-services industry. So help me God.”

It’s part of a major attempt by regulators and banks to clean up after the financial crash of 2008, and put behind them scandals that continue to blacken the financial service industry’s reputation. Just last October, the big Dutch cooperative bank Rabobank paid a $1 billion fine to settle charges in the Libor rate-fixing scandal.

Board members of the banks have already been required to swear the oath since last year, but now it’s being expanded to cover everyone who works in the sector. It consists of eight statements, including promises not to abuse knowledge and “to know my responsibility towards society.” There’s also a new banking code, a special declaration of moral and ethical conduct that all board members are required to sign, a “treat your customer fairly” initiative, and a “suitability” test for executive and non-executive directors of supervisory boards.

Bankers who fundamentally object to invoking God’s name can instead pledge: “This I declare and promise.”

The Dutch Banking Association, which is behind the move, says it is still developing the disciplinary procedures and sanctions for bank staff who are found in breach of the pledge.

“The idea is to set the tone at the top,” says Robert Van Altena, a partner at KPMG in Amsterdam. “The banks themselves realised that they have to regain trust.”

That’s a tall order, and one that, at this point, may actually require some divine intervention to achieve. According to an annual survey conducted by consultant Ronald Pont, public trust in Dutch bankers has dropped from 92 percent in 2008 to 34 percent today. Pont, who himself used to work at Fortis, a financial services conglomerate that was nationalized by the government after 2008 and then broken up, says people used to be worried about banks failing; now they mistrust them because they seem to neglect customers’ needs.

So will swearing an oath make a difference? “It’s ridiculous,” says René Tissen, a professor at Nyenrode Business University in Breukelen, who jokes that the pledge should be referred to as “the Bernanke oath.” “People wonder whether bankers will ever adhere to it, in the light of the culture of self-enrichment. There’s a deep distrust, and it keeps coming to the surface.”

It’s easy to mock the initiative. Yet the Dutch have a point in identifying the fundamental problem. While there has been a slew of regulatory initiatives across Europe to shore up balance sheets — the latest being a new round of stress tests carried out by the European Central Bank — there has been little action aimed at curtailing the sort of “Wolf of Wall Street” attitudes that have been rife on trading floors and, at times, in executive suites.

The Dutch banks are following a long tradition of professionals swearing oaths. It was part of the ritual for “Masters” in craft guilds in the Middle Ages. The Hippocratic oath for doctors dates back to the 5th century BC. Lawyers have to swear them to be admitted to the bar. And over the past two decades, even if they haven’t had to evoke God, companies around the world have adopted codes of conduct. An entire industry focused on corporate social responsibility has sprung up, giving work to numerous consultants.

In that vein, requiring bankers to make a public ethical pledge is a step that some believe could help bring the financial sector back down to earth. Angus Tulloch, a managing partner at fund manager First State Investments, told members of the Scottish parliament this month that an oath of some sort is a good idea, because “the financial sector has become almost completely detached from the real world.”

The question is, of course, whether it can be effectively enforced. “Regulation of behaviour is a pretty big ambition,” says Ben Boyd, who heads the corporate practice division at Edelman, the New York-based global public relations company that publishes an annual trust barometer. Banks once again come out at the bottom of the heap in the 2014 survey. Boyd says what will change behaviour more anything are strong leadership and clear motivation, especially when it comes to compensation packages.

The Dutch are trying to ensure that their measures do have teeth. They can’t guarantee that offending bankers who have taken the oath will be struck by lightning bolts, but they have already put in place an array of sanctions for top executives, even as they decide on how to deal with less elevated bankers.

Take the new “suitability” rules for supervisory board members, which came into effect in 2012. They lay out a range of criteria, including the professional knowledge, experience and skills required of each board member; any previous disciplinary proceedings are a red flag. Last year the Dutch Central Bank and the Authority for the Financial Markets announced that nearly 10 percent of the supervisory board members of the four largest Dutch banks and insurance companies had failed these suitability tests, and were thus either released from the posts or prevented from accepting an appointment.

Would moral safeguards have prevented the 2008 meltdown? Probably not. The Netherlands was badly hit; as well as having to nationalise Fortis, the government injected capital into the biggest bank, ING, and insurer Aegon. A parliamentary inquiry into the rescue efforts in 2012 concluded that the government had made major mistakes in its handling of the crisis.

Professor Tissen says the only way to restore trust and avoid another meltdown is for banks to be split up. Above all, “people want transparency that’s easy to understand. They’ve turned against globalized finance. They want banks cut down in size,” he says.

Still, in a country with deep Protestant roots, a little God-fearing can’t do any harm. And, who knows, it may just do some good.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/02/12/in-the-netherlands-bankers-turn-to-god-by-law/

They need to swear on the Holy Bible at least once a day…probably burn their hand.

The debtor is servant to the lender.

I am a person who has been permitted same-sex attractions (the world would like to label me as “gay”). It seems that I am expected to support the anti-Russian Olympic campaigns, which are spreading across the western world in a viral fashion. Even Google had gotten into the mix on opening day and the first image millions of youth saw when they fired up their browser was an image aimed at affirming not just ”human rights” but also a particular type of identity. The rainbow symbolism today means far more than simply being honest with ourselves about the existence of our sexual attractions and or inclinations, for those have been packaged as one with the notion of how we should self-identify and define ourselves. That is, the rainbow symbolism in this context reinforces a particular way of anchoring our self-concept – which extends far beyond the matter of simply being honest with ourselves about the existence of any particular type of sexual attraction and or inclination that we might experience.

GOOGLE SUPPORTS THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE SHOULD SELF-IDENTIFY AND DEFINE THEMSELVES ACCORDING TO THEIR SEXUAL ATTRACTIONS AND OR INCLINATIONS. (MC->as does Facebook as we’ve just recently discovered w/ their 50 gender choices)

For this reason, if I want to be honest with myself and how I understand the world, I must oppose the ideology represented by the rainbow symbolism (in this context). I must oppose all who promote this rainbow ideology, albeit I hope to do so in an invitational manner such that people might see beyond the surface of this topic. I realize that I will likely be condemned for sharing my voice, even though I am the one giving the invitation to grow. Many people will not want my voice to be heard, and I will likely be discredited and labelled a hateful bigot.  If that is not upside-down, I don’t know what is.  However, to those who are open to considering what I have to say (even if you disagree), I sincerely thank you for your openness. Also I wish to be very clear that my voice is not directed to condemn any individual person, but rather is directed towards elevating the conversation on this topic by examining the fruits of this particular collective movement.

by George Neumayr - Fri Feb 14, 2014 16:27 EST

Editor’s Note: The terms “progressive” and “progressivism” are being widely used in the secular and religious worlds. Most people hearing these words have no idea of their manipulative context and what many who use them actually intend them to mean. “Progressivism” has a political/historical background that must be understood by pro-life, pro-family people and people of faith in order to prevent them from falling prey to its dangerous agendas…. After reading this you will better understand the need to question anyone referring to “progressive” ideas or calling someone “progressive”.

 George Orwell

February 14, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The English author George Orwell wrote that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” In the history of manipulative political language, the term “progressive” surely occupies a high place.

The term is used incessantly to describe policies, political figures, and churchmen, among others, whom a liberal elite deem enlightened. Through repetitive use of “progressive,” modern liberals have hoped to gull the public into equating progressive with progress. But no such equation is justified. The gulf between the rhetoric of “progress” and the reality of progress is glaring.

The darkness of the twentieth century is sufficient to dissuade anyone from confusing “progressive” with progress. Its vilest ideologies were all presented as “progressive.” In the name of bettering humanity, self-described progressives felt emboldened to “progress” beyond the most basic precepts of reason and the natural law.

While some causes labeled “progressive” in the twentieth century qualify as either innocuous or at least debatable, many were unmistakably evil. The century’s eugenic schemes, for example, came not from so-called reactionaries but from proud self-described progressives. The West’s leading judges and university presidents championed eugenics openly before World War II.

In the 1920s, Oliver Wendell Holmes, considered a pillar of progressivism, thought nothing of calling for widespread sterilization of whomever the elite considered inferior. After all, he wrote, “It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for the crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Long before Hitler’s Final Solution, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was writing about eliminating the “feeble-minded” and undesirable minorities. Long before the architects of Obamacare conceived of death panels for the elderly, the playwright George Bernard Shaw, a darling of progressives, blithely proposed extermination panels: “You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence?”

“Progressive” California, the epicenter of eugenics in the 20^th century, didn’t pick up its schemes from Hitler’s Germany. Rather, bloodless German social engineers picked up their eugenic ideas from California. Edwin Black, the author of War Against the Weak, has noted, “Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German official and scientists.”

Supposedly progressive places like Pasadena and Palo Alto (Stanford’s president in the early twentieth century, David Starr Jordan, was a loud proponent of eugenics) were beacons of enlightenment in Hitler’s eyes, according to Black:

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler’s race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America. During the ’20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany’s fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. “There is today one state,” wrote Hitler, “in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.”

Self-described progressives also entangled themselves in the roots of Russian communism.  “I have seen the future and it works,” remarked the journalist Lincoln Steffens after visiting Russia in 1921. Bolshevism and progress were viewed as one and the same.

“Most liberals saw the Bolsheviks as a popular and progressive movement,” wrote Jonah Goldberg in Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left. “Nearly the entire liberal elite, including much of FDR’s Brain Trust, made the pilgrimage to Moscow to take admiring notes on the Soviet experiment.”

In view of this dark history, contemporary uses of “progressive” should merit the greatest suspicion. Indeed, one might have expected the word to fade away. Instead, it has enjoyed a revival.  To many politicians and journalists, “progressive” now sounds better than “liberal.”

In 2007, at a debate during the Democratic presidential primaries, Hillary Clinton declined to call herself a liberal and chose instead to call herself a progressive. She explained:

Hilary Clinton

I prefer the word ‘progressive,’ which has a real American meaning, going back to the Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th century. I consider myself a modern progressive – someone who believes strongly in individual rights and freedoms, who believes that we are better as a society when we’re working together and when we find ways to help those who may not have all the advantages in life, get the tools they need to lead a more productive life for themselves and their family. So I consider myself a proud modern American progressive, and I think that’s the kind of philosophy and practice that we need to bring back to American politics.

Her vague definition of progressive makes it sounds wholesome and harmless, as if progressives stand for nothing more than up-to-date food inspection standards and a robust civil society.  In truth, progressivism sparks off secularist and socialist notions of human perfectibility and social engineering divorced from God and the natural moral law that have proven disastrous for the human race.

If progressivism is difficult to define, that’s because it rests on nothing more than the ever-changing will of man. It has no criterion of progress apart from whatever those in power call “progress.” The false and empty philosophy underlying it allows for the most sinister forms of subjectivism and ideologies of power.

Of course, self-described progressives would like the public to believe that their political, economic, and religious ideas have the same proven character and measurability as technological progress. They push the idea that society will improve under “progressive” politics, economics, and religion to the same extent that, say, computers have improved under measurable and undeniable technological progress.

That assumption drives progressivism, but it has no sound philosophical basis. Equally unsound is what C.S. Lewis called the “chronological snobbery” built into progressivism—“the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” A true idea does not cease to be true simply because those in power no longer hold it.

The irony of progressivism is that its policies almost always entail a return to the bad ideas and corrupt practices of ancient times. It is old barbarism in a new guise. What exactly is new about euthanizing the elderly, killing babies, celebrating promiscuity, and so forth? Even its more sophisticated notions of a “living Constitution” and a collectivist federal government (ideas which are hallmarks of the American Progressive movement) are simply glorified versions of tyrannies well known to the ancients.

The term progressive invariably attaches itself to policies that might have even made debauched pagans blush. Self-described “progressive” Democrats, for example, have no qualms about extending the term to openly brutal practices like partial-birth abortion. Barack Obama, who takes pride in the term “progressive,” couldn’t even bring himself to oppose laws against infanticide as a state senator in Illinois.

In ordinary language, progress refers to the gradual improvement of a thing. In its political and religious uses, “progressive” more often than not refers to regressive and primitive practices and ideas that deform life and undermine the development of civilization.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, the truly progressive person is the one who stands athwart a false idea, whatever its labeling, and moves in the direction of truth.

“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be,” he wrote. “And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

Authentic progress, in other words, is inseparable from the truth about the good of man. Any ideology with a criterion of progress not rooted in that truth can only mean gradual corruption and disorientation.  As evident in the mania for gay marriage in the West, “progress” is now defined not by greater and greater adherence to the natural moral law but by the natural law’s total abolition.

Very prominent “progressive ” Catholic theologian Hans Kung

Similarly, the media’s understanding of “progress” in the Catholic Church is not measured by growing adherence to holiness and truth but by departures from them. It crowns churchmen “progressive” if they appear to be substituting modern liberalism for orthodoxy.

The incorporation of modern liberalism into Catholicism is the destination point toward which “progressives,” both inside and outside the Church, wish to go.

Moving beyond “truth and falsehood” into an alliance with the “world” is the antithesis of the Church’s mission. But progressives, such as Hans Kung, drawing upon a Darwinian conceit, will always claim that the latest development, whether in religion or politics, is the best one. All changes are cast as perfective, not destructive.

Bitter experience should have taught the public by now that “change you can believe in,” as Obama put it, is usually an alarming mutation. “Progress,” as applied to politics and religion, falls into Orwell’s category of self-serving rhetoric designed to silence opposition to whatever is under proposal. It should at the very least invite skepticism, not submission.

To paraphrase Lincoln Steffens, we have seen the future under progressivism and it clearly doesn’t work.

George Neumayr is a contributing editor to The American Spectator and co-author of No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/progressivism-the-greatest-source-of-death-and-terror-in-the-twentieth-cent

Food for thought…

Eugen Fischer wrote the book - Principles of Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene – he claimed that the Herero were animals, the German race was superior, applauded the concentration camps… Hitler may well have been Fischer’s creation, at the very least his book influenced Mein Kampf - Fischer was funded by Rockefeller.

• Cache of personal and financial details  stolen and sold to rogue traders
• Unscrupulous dealers ‘used information to  pressure investors into scams’
• Bank thanked Mail on Sunday for  revelation and launched investigation
• Barclays now face unlimited fines for not protecting customer information
• Former City broker blew the whistle on  the files to stop problem growing

ByIan Gallagherand Stephanie Condronand Simon Watkins

PUBLISHED:          17:00  EST, 8 February 2014

Reeling: Barclays launched an urgent investigation into  the security breach after the Mail on Sunday brought it to their  attention

Barclays Bank is reeling from  an unprecedented security breach after thousands of confidential customer files  were stolen and sold on to rogue City traders.

In the worst case of data loss from a British  High Street bank, highly sensitive information, including customers’ earnings,  savings, mortgages, health issues and insurance policies, ended up in the hands  of unscrupulous brokers.

The data ‘gold mine’ – also containing  passport and national insurance numbers – is worth millions on the black market  because it allowed unsuspecting individuals to be targeted in investment scams.

Barclays last night launched an urgent  investigation and promised to co-operate with police.

It is not clear how the records were stolen,  but the bank could face an unlimited fine if found guilty of putting customers’ details at risk.

The leak was exposed by an anonymous  whistleblower who passed The Mail on Sunday a memory stick containing files on  2,000 of the bank’s customers.

He claimed it was a sample from a stolen  database of up to 27,000 files, which he said could be sold by shady salesmen  for up to £50 per file.

‘This is the worst [leak] I’ve come across by  far,’ said the  former commodity broker. ‘But this illegal trade is going  on all the time in the City. I want to go public to stop it getting  bigger.’

Under the guidance of lawyers, this newspaper  has viewed a small selection of the files, which are effectively stolen goods.  Each report is about 20 pages long, and among the victims are doctors,  businessmen, scientists, a musician and a cleaner.

Barclays, which was fined £290 million in  2012 for its part in the Libor rigging scandal, said it would contact the  customers as soon as possible.

The loss is a breach of its obligation under  the Data Protection Act to keep personal information secure.

One of the victims, 69-year-old Janice  Snowling, from Maldon, Essex, said: ‘I’m really angry. I think we should get  some sort of compensation. It’s outrageous. The banking industry is the  pits.’

All the customers had sought financial advice  from the bank, and passed on their details during meetings with an adviser. The  consultations included filling out questionnaires – or ‘psychometric tests’ – which revealed their attitude to risk.

That information could be exploited to  persuade victims to buy into questionable investments.

‘The data is a gold mine for traders because  it is so incredibly detailed. It gets them inside the customer’s head,’ said the  whistleblower, who is prepared to make a statement to police.

Until last year he was working alongside a  firm of brokers which, he said, regularly tried to get people to invest in ‘all  manner of dodgy schemes’.

He said select traders were given the ‘Barclays leads’ which they exploited to the full. ‘They would start by saying  that they had a great investment opportunity that would suit someone on a  particular income or with a particular amount of money to invest.

‘Of course, they already knew this about the  person they were talking to.’

The whistleblower first became aware of the  Barclays leads in September when the boss of the brokerage firm asked him to  sell them to other traders. ‘The obvious question I asked was, “These are  fantastic leads, why are you not using them yourself?”

‘He replied, “We have – sell it as secondary  data.” He had got all he could out of them. New, they were worth £50 per file.  He asked us to sell for £8.’

The whistleblower showed the leads to a  select group of brokers ‘who thought they were amazing’, but eventually decided  not to sell.

‘My conscience got the better of me. It was  all just so wrong,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t a broker myself at this stage, but I had  a business link to the firm.’

Between December 2012 and September 2013 the  firm persuaded victims to buy rare earth metals that did not exist, it is  claimed. The whistleblower estimates up to 1,000 people could have been ‘scammed’.

When the investors began to suspect they were  being fleeced he said the boss chose to ‘shut the trading floor’.

‘His orders were to get rid of the evidence,  to show that we were never there. We bleached the desks so his DNA was not in  the office. We destroyed his laptop and 15 bags of paperwork. We wiped the  computers. During this fiasco he asked me, “Have you got the Barclays leads?” I  said, “No, I haven’t, they must have been destroyed”.

‘But I kept them because I thought the whole  thing had gone too far. I want to stop it now, to tell people what was  happening.’

+5

Barclays said in a statement: ‘We are  grateful to The Mail on Sunday for bringing this to our attention and we  contacted the Information Commissioner and other regulators on Friday as soon as  we were made aware.

‘Our initial investigations suggest this is  isolated to customers linked to our Barclays Financial Planning business, which  we ceased  in 2011.

‘We will take all necessary steps to contact  and advise those customers as soon as possible so that they can also ensure the  safety of their personal data.

‘Protecting customers’ data is a top priority  and we take this issue extremely seriously. This appears to be criminal action  and we will co-operate with the authorities on pursuing the  perpetrator.

‘We would like to reassure all of our  customers  that we have taken every practical measure to ensure that  personal and financial details remain as safe and secure as  possible.’

The Mail on Sunday has arranged to pass on  the data to the Information Commissioner’s Office. A spokesman said: ‘We’ll be  working with The Mail on Sunday this week as well as working with the  police.’

It is not the first data loss by a leading  bank, but the depth of the data included in this case outstrips anything else  uncovered so far. The Information Commissioner’s Office can impose fines of up  to £500,000 on organisations that fail to protect private data.

But the City watchdog the Financial Conduct  Authority can levy unlimited fines.

In 2009 HSBC was fined £3million after parts  of its business were found to have been ‘careless’ in handing customers’ data  when discs were lost in the post; and in 2010 the UK arm of Zurich Insurance was  fined £2.275 million after it lost 46,000 customers’ data.

In neither case was the data thought to have  fallen into the wrong hands.

But the Barclays data appears to have been  actively stolen and ended up in the hands of unscrupulous  salesmen.

The revelation comes as the bank is bracing  itself for a row over bonuses, with as much as £2.4 billion set to be handed out  to staff.

STOLEN FILES WERE PURE GOLD… THEY GAVE  BROKERS AN EDGE OVER POTENTIAL INVESTORS – BY FORMER BROKER WHO EXPOSED TRADE IN  STOLEN DATA

Anonymous: A former broker who was given the lost data  to sell went public to stop the practice growing

I was given the Barclays ‘leads’ after they  had been ‘rinsed’ – or used up – and told to sell them to other  brokers.

In the end, I didn’t do this because I  thought it was wrong – and by that time I’d had enough of the whole  business.

There is no question that the Barclays data  was used, though. It was pure gold to brokers (who must have made a fortune out  of it) because it gave them a psychological edge over potential investors – their victims.

Because of its detail it allowed the brokers  to get inside the minds of their targets. They knew exactly how much money these  people were prepared to invest and their attitude to risk.

They knew everything about them and tailored  their strategy accordingly. I was told only the best brokers were given the  Barclays leads – these are the most manipulative people.

There are a lot of good people in the  brokerage industry but also a lot of undesirables. I know plenty of drug dealers  who got involved because they realised they could make more money in the City  than they could on the streets.

The perfect money-making opportunity for many  of the brokers came during the recession when people’s savings were hit by low  interest rates.

Potential investors became susceptible to the  broker’s questionable approaches and promises of sky-high  returns.

I worked at a type of brokerage known in the  industry as a ‘spank shop’, operating from rented offices outside London or even  in the City.

The brokers ‘spank’ or punish people over the  phone by advising them to invest in certain commodities which make lots of money  for the broker, but not the investor.

The broker sells the commodity for such a  massive mark up that it eliminates any opportunity the investor has to make  money. The industry gets young people, brainwashes them, shows them a high end  lifestyle and trains them to pull private investors.

Brokerages want to hire people who are  money-oriented, articulate and who speak the Queen’s English.

Their ideal is the young, hungry white guy.  They want the most aggressive person, very manipulative and bullish, almost like  a New York broker in the 1980s.

Our guru: The trader revealed how they were trained by  Jordan Belfort, the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, portrayed here by Leonardo  DiCaprio

In the first interview they would ask: ‘Do  you **** whores and sniff coke? Do not come and work here if you  don’t.’

They might even ask the interviewee to sing a  song. They want to see if they can bend them over a barrel and get them to do  what they want.

Out of 10,000 brokers, 9,000 will be earning  below the minimum wage. The majority will never succeed. The successful ones do  not have a moral compass.

Most people drop out after a couple of years  because they burn out but I know old school brokers who’ve done it since the  1980s.

We got trained by Jordan Belfort, the  real-life Wolf of Wall Street. It cost £38,000 for an hour’s conference call  with him from New York. Three different firms took part and there were 40  brokers in the room, sitting around a phone.

He’s big on ‘rapport building’. He shows how  to apply pressure in the right places – how to manipulate people in a controlled  way. In all cases, brokers try to find the person’s motive for  investing.

When trust is established  it’s very  easy to make the ale or ‘load’ a client with a commodity. Loaders are a breed of  broker and some can earn 40 per cent a deal on just the  commission.

At one time carbon credits were the top  commodities sold. Investors paid £6.50 for the credits – in fact worth  nothing.

Now the spank shops are selling diamonds and  rare earth metals. Brokers can quickly get greedy. A quantity of diamonds sold  to a broker for £1,000 are sold on to the investor (or victim) for £40,000.

A lot of contracts between broker and  investor include ‘exit confirmation’ – the date when the return on investment is  expected. But in many cases those clauses are a lie.

A month or two before the exit strategy is  due, the firm winds up and disappears.

The owners – criminals in sharp suits – will  set up shop, trade for a bit, then the company will close, only for the brokers  to open another one.

The next day they ring the same clients, but  with different voices on the end of the phone. You might use a different name – nobody uses their real name.

Many on the Barclays list were born in the  1930s. Old people are perfect targets because they are more trusting and they  haven’t got long left. You hope they die before your exit strategy comes up.

The spank shop industry is terrible and needs  to be stamped out.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554875/Barclays-account-details-sale-gold-27-000-files-leaked.html#ixzz2snPs6ljC Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

How Much Is Each Agency Getting? Obama Won’t Say

Getting information on the intelligence spending habits of the United States has been virtually impossible over the years, with only a single dollar figure of all spending everywhere released publicly, usually in the $70-$75 billion range.

But there are 16 distinct civilian spy agencies in the United States, and then there’s military intelligence spending on top of that. Yet when Congress gets the bill and is asked to approve the spending, it just gets the one number lumping everything together.

In fact, the only look they’ve ever really gotten at how that money is divvied up is a leak from Edward Snowden, which showed a handful of the top-line figures for individual agencies. Many in Congress say that’s not good enough.

A group in the House of Representatives led by Reps. Peter Welch (D – VT) and Cynthia Lummis (R – WY) are pushing a new bill that would require individual dollar values for each of the 16 civilian spy agencies. The White House has yet to comment on the matter, but the fact that they have refused to provide such data when asked suggests they’ll also be opposed to being forced to hand it over.

• Thousands Flee Syrian Rebel Town in Anticipation of ‘Major Assault’ – February 14th, 2014
• Saudis Give Syrian Rebels Anti-Aircraft Missiles – February 14th, 2014
• Islamist Rebel Car Bomb Kills 43 in South Syria – February 14th, 2014
• Syria Talks Crumble as US, Russia Offer More of the Same – February 14th, 2014
• Pentagon: Threat of Afghan Troops Killing US Forces as Big as Ever – February 14th, 2014

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/02/13/congress-wants-black-budget-info-on-spy-agency-spending/

I’m glad they’re aware, while it’s a good start doubt it’ll go anywhere, unfortunately.

• Almost 2,500 ‘goodwill payments’ in the last five  years
• They went to householders wrongly  threatened with prosecution
• One was a grieving son  hassled to buy licence for his dead mother

ByAlasdair Glennie

PUBLISHED:  18:33  EST, 6 February 2014

The BBC has admitted handing out more than £100,000 in compensation to innocent people   hounded by ‘aggressive’  TV Licensing officers.

Over the past five years it has made almost  2,500 ‘goodwill payments’ to householders who were wrongly threatened with  prosecution, bombarded with leaflets and taken to court.

They included a grieving son who was given £250 for the stress caused when the BBC repeatedly ordered him to buy a licence  for his dead mother.

The BBC made almost 2,500 ‘goodwill payments’ to  householders who claimed they were harassed by licensing officers in the last  five years

Peter Troy, of County Durham, was threatened  with a £1,000 fine unless he paid the fee, despite the fact his mother had died  six months earlier and her house was empty.

He repeatedly explained the situation to  officers from Capita – the firm with a £560 million contract to collect the fee  for the BBC’s TV Licensing – but received an apology only when he threatened to  sue.

Another viewer was eventually given £100  after reporting TV Licensing officers who repeatedly turned up on his doorstep  threatening legal action, even though he did not own a TV.

He said: ‘I even considered buying a TV  licence in my panic … because I was so worried about the whole situation.

‘I was shaken up by the brazen way in which  an organisation could ignore legal restrictions to literally bully people in  their own homes. This is clearly harassment … to force people into buying  licences they do not need, simply to increase revenue.’

The revelation – uncovered by a Freedom of  Information request – comes amid growing anger at the heavy-handed way in which  the £145.50 fee is collected.

The BBC repeatedly ordered a grieving son to buy a  licence for his dead mother

Last night Jonathan Isaby, of the TaxPayers’  Alliance said: ‘It’s bad enough that Auntie has squandered cash on various  digital debacles without then wasting money on chasing people who have already  paid for the broadcaster’s profligacy.’

TV Licensing prosecutions are clogging up the  courts, with the BBC accounting for one in ten cases brought before magistrates.  More than 180,000 people were prosecuted for non-payment in 2012.

Last year, the Daily Mail revealed the  corporation’s army of 334 ‘enforcement officers’ – who have no legal right of  entry to homes – are paid a bonus every time they gather evidence leading to a  successful prosecution.

Critics say it means they have a strong  incentive to harass those they suspect of not paying.

A TV Licensing spokesman said: ‘Sometimes we  get it wrong and work hard to put things right.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553496/BBC-pays-100-000-compensation-people-bullied-TV-licence-collectors-Corporation-500-goodwill-payments-past-five-years.html#ixzz2tRcJfE6Y

Paul Pindar is the ex-CEO of Capita- Rothchilds Gillian Sheldon took his place on the board of Capita as an Independent Non-Executive Director in 2012. Paul Pindar was hired by Carlyle Group in 2012 for their giant Integrated Dental Holdings. In 2013 Pindar became a boardmember of Towerbrooks Senior Advisory Board. The vast majority of Towerbrook are Soros agents – click links. Paul Pindar was making 900,000 pounds with Capita – who knows what he makes now – these bankster gangsters take good care of their own.

Carlyle Group: Government, CIA Contractor Booz Allen & Hamilton,… - this is a good read – needs updating – need to add that Carlyle via their Riverstone Holdings partnered with Goldman Sachs Capital in the acquisition of Kinder Morgan one of the largest pipeline operators in the US. The buyout was backed by Richard Kinder, the company’s co-founder - a former president of Enron. Kinder Morgan is keeping the US and Canada from building the Keystone pipelines. Obama (got big bucks from Carlyle etc for his campaign) therefore likes Kinder Morgan so won’t okay Keystone XL.  Democrats Who Oppose Keystone XL Pipeline Own Shares in Competing Companies

In 2013 Pindar became a boardmember of Towerbrooks Senior Advisory Board.  The vast majority, if not all, of Towerbrook are agents of George Soros – click links.

2005 Towerbrook – Soros: http://www.altassets.net/private-equity-news/soros-professionals-found-new-private-equity-firm-towerbrook.html

I don’t know much about the licence fees but wonder why the BBC is beholden to pay the compensation? What kind of contract did they make with Capita one might wonder.

Published time: February 15, 2014 04:14                                                

Image from brown-moses.blogspot.ru

Frustrated by the deadlock of the second round of Geneva 2 talks, Saudi Arabia has reportedly offered to supply the rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. Meanwhile Russia has accused the US of once again hijacking peace talks and pushing for regime change.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Russian-made  antitank guided missiles and Chinese man-portable air-defense  systems are up for grabs, already waiting in warehouses in Jordan  and Turkey.

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An Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of  the Saudi efforts have told WSJ that these supplies are likely to  tip the battlefield scales, as the rebels will become capable of  taking on the government’s air power and destroying heavy armored  vehicles.  “New stuff is arriving imminently,” a Western diplomat  with knowledge of the planned weapons deliveries told the  American publication.

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Leaders of the Syrian opposition said they don’t yet know the  total amount of military aid that will be shipped. The new  weapons are expected to reach southern Syria from Jordan while  the opposition in the north will get arms from Turkey, the  Western diplomat said.
Raising fears that civilian aircraft may eventually become  targets, last June several media outlets suggested that Saudi  Arabia had already begun supplying anti-aircraft launchers and  missiles to militants in Syria. But so far Saudi Arabia, as well  as the US, has been officially opposed to arming the rebels with  big guns and antiaircraft missiles as they could fall into  extremist hands.

Image from brown-moses.blogspot.ru

According to the WSJ report, rebel commanders struck a deal on  the new armaments shipment during a meeting with US and Saudi  intelligence agents in Jordan on January 30. During that meeting,  rebels allegedly claimed that their new military gains would help  force official Damascus consider President Assad’s ouster and  bring forward a political solution to the conflict.

  Mercenaries on US payroll?

  The Wall Street Journal also reports that their rebel sources  claimed the US government is paying their salaries to fight the  Assad forces. The Southern Front brigades allegedly received $3  million in cash in salaries during the two meetings in Jordan,  one held on January 30 and the other late last year. 

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Meanwhile, congressional aides told the WSJ about scheduled  meetings with Syrian opposition leaders next week. The Syrian  delegation will allegedly seek extra armaments in order to battle  al-Qaeda and al-Nusra elements.

Two destroyed tanks outside of a damaged mosque in Azaz, Syria. Credit: christiaantriebert via Flickr

“We’re trying to assure the international community that they  can support moderates without the threat of arms falling into the  hands of al-Qaeda,” said Oubai Shahbandar, a senior adviser  to the Syrian opposition. Saudi Arabia and US have so far refused  to comment.

  Geneva 2 stalemate

As the second round of Geneva 2 talks so far fails to produce any  results, the Russian Foreign Minister has criticized the American  stance at the negotiations accusing it of hijacking the talks for  the purpose of “regime change” in Syria.
“The only thing they want to talk about is the establishment  of a transitional governing body,” Sergey Lavrov said Friday  after meeting with the German foreign minister in Moscow.  “Only after that are they ready to discuss the urgent and  most pressing problems, like terrorism.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (right) and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during a meeting in Moscow on February 14, 2014. (RIA Novosti / Eduard Psov)

“I am very worried about the systematic attempts to disrupt  the political settlement in Syria,” therefore “forcing  the (Syrian) government to slam the door.”  Lavrov recalled that talks were kick started to implement the  original Geneva communique, position of which Russia and Syria  solemnly defend. The June 2012 document stipulates the creation  of a transitional political body, holding of free and fair  elections, the start of a national dialogue, a review of the  constitution and legal system. Nowhere does it mention removal of  president Assad.  “Now they are saying that to keep talking is senseless, because  the government (of Syria) doesn’t want to agree about the makeup  of a transitional governing body. We are going in circles,”Lavrov said.

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The Syrian government’s position remains that stopping terrorism  and bloodshed should be the priority at the negotiations that  started last month. The second round of negotiations between  government and opposition representatives began on Monday but no  progress has yet been made. The opposition, backed by the US and  its allies, insists on forming a transitional authority with  “full executive powers,” thus ousting Assad.

Rebel fighters inspect an alley in the eastern Syrian town of Deir Ezzor on February 14, 2014. (AFP Photo / Ahmad Aboud)

After five days of negotiations the opposition has accused the  government’s team of “belligerence,” while the  government delegation said that the opposition have an  “unrealistic agenda.”    “The negotiations are not moving toward a political  solution,” said Louay Safi, a spokesman for the Syrian  opposition delegation, accusing the government side of adopting a  hostile stance.  “I deeply regret to say that this round did not achieve any  progress,” Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad  said. “We came to the Geneva conference to implement Syria’s  declared position to reach a political solution. …  Unfortunately the other side came with another agenda, with an  unrealistic agenda.”    The UN’s Lakhdar Brahimi, curator of the talks, plans to meet the  sides on Saturday, the final day for round two of the  negotiations, but it remains unclear if he can offer any prospect  of drawing the warring parties closer together.

http://rt.com/news/saudis-new-weapons-syria-124/

No surprise here that Obama is paying their salary. The Muslim Brotherhood (political not religious though they pretend to be) manage the paid mercenaries.

Congress is looking for a detailed budget - Congress Wants ‘Black Budget’ Info on Spy Agency Spending

Also related: Obama Funding Syrian Rebels Beheading Christians, Using Child Soldiers

Philadelphia, November 1839. “Robert Cornelius, self-portrait facing front, arms crossed. Inscription on backing: The first light-picture ever taken. 1839.” One of the first photographs made in the United States, this quarter-plate daguerreotype, taken in the yard of the Cornelius family’s lamp-making business in Philadelphia, is said to be the earliest photographic portrait of a person. View full size.  Source: Shorpy: