FBI entraps 4 geriatric extremists

In the latest episode of Federally Fabricated Fantasy, US authorities have used an informant to setup four old guys in a plot to overthrow the government. The dudes, with too much time on their hands and heads full of right-wing hate radio, proved to be fertile ground for the sowing of this latest plot that the FBI could then shut down in a blaze of headlines.

Still, where there's smoke, when it comes to these FBI stings, there's all too often no fire. Not even a spark. Using promises of leniency in pending federal felony charges against the informant, the government was able to dupe simple-minded, self-righteous patriotic idiots into voicing support for a variety of illegal activities -- none of which, it is safe to say, would ever have come to fruition without the ample encouragement of the FBI:

4 militamen accused of planning ricin attacks: "Investigators said the four men took several concrete steps to carry out their plans. Thomas is accused of driving to Atlanta with a confidential informant to scope out federal buildings that house the IRS and other agencies.

During the trip, Thomas at one point said to the informant: "There's two schools of thought on this: go for the feds or go for the locals. And I'm inclined to consider both. We'd have to blow the whole building like Timothy McVeigh," according to court documents.

He and Adams also arranged to buy what they thought was an explosive device and a silencer from an undercover agent. The men were arrested days after a lab test confirmed they had trace amounts of ricin in their possession, authorities said.

"While many are focused on the threat posed by international violent extremists, this case demonstrates that we must also remain vigilant in protecting our country from citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security," said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates."

As usual when it's a plot involving white Christians, this is not be trumpeted as "terrorism," which according to the government's lexicon can only be carried out by Muslims, primarily of middle-eastern background.

Still, the message to a fearful and nervous public is to be afraid -- be VERY afraid. No matter how homely, inept and inconsequential some individual may seem from the outside, within they may be a seething mass of violent extremist violence preparing to erupt! Your only hope to remain alive in these uncertain times is the fear everybody and report everything. Under no circumstances should one ever assume that destruction isn't lurking around the next corner, and our only hope for salvation is to allow the government and its enforcers to operate with a free hand, no oversight and without restraint.

If these sad sacks hadn't been so gullible and impressionable, who's to say they wouldn't be turning in their neighbors as well, and becoming FBI informants themselves? Indeed, in these uncertain financial times, it might be the smartest move you can make: FBI pays its informants hundreds of thousands of dollars for their help entrapping other weak-minded and impressionable fools.

Hey, you could be next!

Kim Kardashian is a big, fake 'ho

Now's time to play a little defense for Kim Kardashian, after her spectacular marital implosion. She responds to suspicions of most of the conscious public that she's a shameless gold digger with a very weak and telling defense:

Kim Kardashian PISSED Over 'Sham Marriage' Stories | TMZ.com: "Kim Kardashian is telling her friends ... her marriage to Kris Humphries was true love, and she's extremely angry at reports that the wedding was one big sham.

Kim is telling people very close to her ... the marriage was "100% real," adding they loved each other very much.

Kim is saying they cultivated their relationship for a year -- it wasn't an overnight thing. She says when they got engaged ... she truly believed the marriage was "forever."

As for the 72 days ... Kim is explaining it this way: "Sometimes marriages end ... rapidly. Just because it's short doesn't mean it's fake."

"Just because it's short doesn't mean it's fake," sweetie, but it sure does help make the case. After all, she's taking the money and it's back to that relentless self-promotion that's such a staple of the Kardashian racket.

The only real question is not what Kimmy baby thinks, but what these dunderheads that go gaga over her every ass-jiggling, cheap spectacle she puts on in front of the media. This is a scummy symbiotic business where her pimp is the press that does the pandering, while the slutty star of the show gets fat paydays for spectacular lapses of taste and class.

Just another dumb 'ho. I hope this Humphries dude has learned the difference between silicone and substance.

Israel to speed up crime spree

Poor Palestine, the international criminal conspiracy is poised to brazenly flout the law by unilaterally annexing more lands for illegal settlements, and seems to be daring the international community to make it stop:

Israel to speed up settlement building in West Bank | Reuters: "(Reuters) - Israel decided Tuesday to accelerate Jewish settlement building and withhold Palestinian Authority funds, moves likely to further hold up international efforts to revive peace talks.

Israel's move came a day after UNESCO awarded the Palestinians full membership of the U.N. cultural agency, a diplomatic victory for the Palestinian Authority in its push for recognition as a state at the United Nations.

Israel called the UNESCO decision a "tragedy" and the United States said it would stop its funding of the organization.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the accelerated construction of some 2,000 housing units, said an official statement released after he convened his cabinet."

The more desperate and audacious the Israeli regime acts -- with the full support for its puppets in DC -- the less respect and credibility their state has in the eyes of the rest of the world. It's only through the military muscle of the big dog the Israeli tail wags that these kinds of in-your-face defiance are possible, and once the US has spent itself into bankruptcy and irrelevance on the world stage, what will Israel have in the bag to ensure its survival? The threat of unleashing its nuclear arsenal on its neighbors?

It literally will come to that, since there is no reason or rationale to this belligerent and insulting behavior.

Can we feel and remorse or regret for those who feel none for others? When their time is truly up, who will rush to their defense?

We watch with bewilderment and resignation as Netanyahu burns every means of reconciliation with the rest of the world. In the end, will it have been worth it?

Greek premier throws a wrench into Europe's plans

The Greek PM George Papandreou kicked Europe's power brokers in the nuts yesterday by announcing that he was going to hold a referendum on the future of austerity measures in his country. It would finally take the matter out of the hands of the politicians and return the power to the people, and boy are Europe's big wheels pissed!

WRAPUP 4-Greece risks meltdown after bailout vote bombshell | Reuters: "ATHENS, Nov 1 (Reuters) - The Greek government faced possible collapse on Tuesday as ruling party lawmakers demanded Prime Minister George Papandreou resign for throwing the nation's euro membership into jeopardy with a shock call for a referendum.

Caught unawares by his high-risk gamble, the leaders of France and Germany summoned Papandreou to crisis talks in Cannes on Wednesday to push for a quick implementation of Greece's new bailout deal ahead of a summit of the G20 major world economies.

The euro and global stocks were pummeled on financial markets after the Greek move threw into question the survival of crucial efforts to contain the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis."

You couldn't make this up, it's so ludicrous. The Greek nation is suffering from the same malady as homeowners here in the US whose mortgages are "underwater" -- who owe more than their home is worth. Greece, which is a small and relatively poor country, is so saddled with debt that it can't possibly pay it all back, but as in so many other venues around the West, the solution to Greece's woes is to simply pile more debt upon already bad debt. And this is done not for the sake of the Greek nation or the Greek people, but for the sake of banks in Europe and the US.

Without the steady flow of interest payments, the banks would collapse, triggering a cascade of sovereign defaults the likes of which has never been seen. The amount of financial exposure that banks and governments have to swaps and derivatives is so immense that there isn't enough money in the whole wide world to cover the losses should the house of cards come crashing down. TARP and the trillions of dollars that the FED lavished on the banks in 2008 to keep them afloat would not even be a drop in the bucket on the scale of these losses -- and the strip of duct tape holding the edifice together is at this point nothing but the willingness of Greek politicians to pander to their masters and sell out their people.

Every week for months, we've been watching this back-and-forth drama of negotiations over what sort of deal the European nations could work out with the Greek politicians to prevent a default, which would be a "credit event" triggering the payment of the derivatives contracts held on the Greek debt. So long as the fiction of an arrangement existed, the can could be kicked down the road, and the other countries teetering on the brink of insolvency would be salvageable, too. Now that there's the distinct possibility that the Greek people will be allowed to walk out on pacts demanding more austerity, the entire edifice is looking shakier by the day.

It's sad that it had to come to this, but whose fault is it that these fantastic sums of debt were allowed to accumulate, and whose fault is it if undisciplined politicians along with deceitful and insatiable bankers colluded to make these impossible financial arrangements to gradually bleed the nation dry?

The debts of Greece are too onerous for the people to bear, and it should not be laid on the backs of the common folk to prevent bankers and their investors from taking a loss. This is where the financial crisis took a wrong turn to begin with: instead of prosecuting the deal-makers with fraud and writing off the bad debts, anything and everything is being done to bleed working people in order to preserve the wealth of the wheeler-dealers responsible for creating this fiasco.

It's about time someone asked the Greek people how they feel about how they've been treated, instead of how investors in foreign countries feel about their prospects for profiting in spite of their failure to do due diligence before investing. We are entirely too submissive and subservient to the investing classes, rather than the working people whose lives and futures are most jeopardized by the ill-conceived machinations of big Wall Street firms and the international banking cartel.

Lets restore some balance and some sanity to this financial system, before it sucks us all down a whirlpool.

Palestinians find world is not a very nice place

Following its acceptance as a full member of UNESCO, the population of Palestine finds itself subject to a quite different kind of attack today:

Palestinians hit by cyber-attack following success at Unesco | World news | The Guardian: "Internet services in the West Bank and Gaza have come under "sustained attack" by unknown hackers in multiple locations, according to officials.

"There has been a sustained attack since the morning from many sources in many countries," said Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib. "It is deliberate and continuous."

Computer experts were trying to identify the sources of the attack and the authority would seek assistance from the governments of those countries involved, he said. The attack had interrupted services, causing internet connections to range from "very, very slow to completely stopped".

The authority has no idea who was behind the cyber- attack and the reason for it, Khatib said."

The last assertion, by "the authority," seems disingenuous at best -- the perpetrators of the "cyber-attack" are the people who are most steadfastly against granting the Palestinian people their rights. Those state actors by now are well known, and can be counted on a couple of fingers.

While it's a bit odd to choose the internet as the latest venue through which to flog these beleaguered people, hey, apparently anything goes when you're on the side of freedom and democracy -- or are at least hypocrites of the most egregious kind.

Israel and it's big, dumb friend the US are like a couple of teenagers out to harass and intimidate people they don't like -- always under the cover of anonymity, always while posturing as wholesome and virtuous.

When two nations that ought to be leaders instead resort to childish provocations to express their displeasure at other nations, it gives us all pause. What incentive have other nations -- places like Libya and Syria and the Saudis, that oppress their people -- have to behave in a more civilized manner when the most advanced and prosperous societies behave in such a tawdry and disreputable manner?

Defenders of these two reprobates can spare us the perfunctory denials: no other nation would be so trifling and mean-spirited. For a couple of countries accustomed to being "winners," being denied apparently doesn't sit very well.

U.S. Economy: Pulling growth out of their stinky butts

Everybody can take off early today and go out to celebrate the grand new economy. We'll soon be getting those raises we haven't seen in several years, and all those people who've been unemployed finally have something to look forward to:

U.S. Economy: Growth Accelerates as Consumers Spend More - Businessweek: "Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter at the fastest pace in a year as Americans reduced savings to boost purchases and companies stepped up investment in equipment and software.

Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, rose at a 2.5 percent annual rate, up from 1.3 percent in the prior three months, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Household purchases, the biggest part of the economy, increased at a 2.4 percent pace, more than forecast by economists."

As usual, we have this huge uptick in consumer spending, at the same time consumer sentiment is in the tank. And home sales are up, even though home prices went down over 4 percent. What the hell is going on here?

If the figures aren't fudged, what miracle explains these contradictory phenomena? The economy can't be riding the up and down escalators at the same time, yet these figures seem to suggest this is the case.

Euphoria is also ascribed to Europe supposedly solving its debt crisis. This was only done through a variety of dubious agreements that still must be put into effect with money the Europeans don't have. They talk about billions of Euros as if its nothing -- and perhaps it is nothing. Still, it's enough to make it appear, for the moment at least, that Europe at least has the will to solve its problems.

What's lacking is the way...

The US is also whistling past the graveyard. There is no plan to put people back to work. Government action on the economy is limited to trying to bolster up the TBTF banks, since the only interests that really count are those of the obscenely wealthy -- which depend primarily on their investments. Investors and stockholders, hedge fund managers, bankers -- they're the ones who pay for the political campaigns, so theirs are the voices that are heard.

Amy Winehouse drank herself to death

I confess I've never heard any of Amy Winehouse's records -- even though I have been in rehab. I knew about the dissolute part of her persona from reading too many gossipy stories in the British press about her. She was no doubt a mess, so how surprised could one be reading about the coroner's verdict in her death:

Amy Winehouse died from too much alcohol: "Soul diva Amy Winehouse died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood - more than five times the drink driving limit.

British coroner Suzanne Greenaway gave a verdict of "death by misadventure", saying the singer died of accidental alcohol poisoning when she resumed drinking after weeks of abstinence.

"The unintended consequence of such potentially fatal levels (of alcohol) was her sudden and unexpected death," Greenaway said on Wednesday."

It's been fairly commonplace to make note that she passed at the age of 27, like many other musical legends of our times -- the 27 Club, it's called.

While that's a good point, her passing is most like that of Hank Williams, who drank himself to death in the back of a car on the way to a gig on New Year's Eve in 1953.

That would've been a hell of a duet.