Headlines of note for November 2013

Nov. 23: Breakthrough? A deal has been reached between the "P5+1" and Iran...

U.S. Department of State: First Step Understandings Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran's Nuclear Program

In spite of earlier French obstructionism...

Farsnews: Zarif Blasts France for Preventing Iran-Powers Deal

With Israel and Saudi Arabia festering on the sidelines...

AP: Israel, Gulf in 'strange alliance' against Iran

Wall Street Journal: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal - An Ally Frets About American Retreat

"For the first time, Saudi Arabian interests and Israel are almost parallel," he says, his voice rising. "It's incredible."

And plotting sabotage together...?

PressTV: Prince Bandar attends anti-Iran meeting in Israel

Ynet: Report - Israel, Saudi Arabia cooperating on possible attack on Iran

Intelligence Online: Nuclear - Mujahedin tips off the West

Some nation-state psycho-analysis courtesy of...

Steve Pieczenik: Saudi Arabia & Israel - Imminent Military Strike!

Is this indicative of new "redirection" in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East? It will do good to revisit this Seymour Hersh piece from 2007...

New Yorker: THE REDIRECTION

We must begrudgingly admit that Obama's second term in foreign affairs - with this agreement and with a peace process underway in Syria (even if his hand was forced by Putin) - is turning out much better in some areas than the first...  (continuing drone assassinations and NSA-related embarrassments notwithstanding)

Domestically speaking, however, it is not so good: Obama now has a Gallup favorable rating at 39%, premised on this...

Powerline: LIES OF OBAMACARE, DOCUMENTED

He's chewing the carpet right about now (11/12/13)...

Mediaite: Bill Clinton Scolds Obama - 'The President Should Honor the Commitment' He Made

Beyond the usual government incompetence account of all this, there is an alternate scenario, entertained by some (including detractors on the right and advocates on the left), that Obamacare is a deliberate failure - a failure strategically timed in order to usher in a "single payer," i.e. fully socialized system. This is a conspiracy theory that might get some corroboration from a Project Veritas video (though not necessarily; America's growing underclass naturally develops cadres of experts at gaming the system)...

Ulsterman: Project Veritas Captures Institutionalized Obamacare Fraud

What we found is shocking: navigators, in positions of public trust, told our undercover journalists to lie and defraud the government. Over and over again.

(the Casablanca link is ours)

We can't vouch for the claim made here, which seems a bit overstated, but only offer it as a case in point...

Western Center for Journalism: Revealed - The Man Who Wrote Obamacare

More on Robert Creamer is found at Discover The Networks. It should be noted however that his wife, Rep. Jan Schakowsky has the dubious distinction of residing in the Sibel Edmonds State Secrets Privilege Gallery. She was at the time one of the question marks, but Edmonds later revealed...

Majorityrights: Turkish Gov’t Blackmails Bisexual Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky

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Awaiting "Extraordinary Journalism"...

Information Clearing House: The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar

Snowden updates...

Wayne Madsen Report:  British embassy has lead on location and apprehension of Snowden

WMR has learned through its Russian sources that Britain's spy-infested embassy in Moscow has taken the lead among the "FIVE EYES" signals intelligence allies to locate the whereabouts of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in Russia. In fact, the British government is more keen on capturing Snowden than is the U.S. or the other governments of the FIVE EYES partnership, which also includes Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Britain's almost apoplectic reaction to Snowden's disclosures was recently on display when Britain's top three intelligence chiefs -- John Sawers of MI-6; Andrew Parker of MI-5; and Iain Lobben of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart of NSA, accused Snowden and those who published his leaked documents of aiding Al Qaeda. Former British Defense Secretary Liam Fox went further, accusing those who publish the leaked NSA and GCHQ secrets, including The Guardian, of being terrorists.

Ever since he was granted temporary political asylum by Russia after being held in transit limbo at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport after his flight from Hong Kong, Snowden's location in Russia has been a closely-guarded secret. Snowden is believed to have the protection of a combination of private security guards and agents of the Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB).

Last month, Snowden met with four other American national whistleblowers -- Ray McGovern, formerly of the CIA; Colleen Rowley, formerly with the FBI; former NSA official Tom Drake, and former Justice Department prosecutor Jesselyn Radack -- met with Snowden at an undisclosed location in Moscow. The four Americans traveled to Moscow to present Snowden with the Sam Adams Award for Integrity and Intelligence.

After the receipt by Snowden of the award, British MI-6 case officers assigned to the British embassy in Moscow began using NSA and GCHQ "contact chaining" intelligence gathered from surveillance of Facebook and other social networking systems to0 identify Snowden's location. The contact chaining began with the Facebook, Twitter, as well as phone call metadata, information derived from the four American visitors to Moscow. In turn, their contacts in Moscow were identified, thus expanding the chain used to determine Snowden's location and daily schedule.....

WMR is now reporting a man-in-the-middle attack on AOL account following publication of the above report.

Cryptome: 42 Years to Release Snowden Documents

Snowden looking for other venues to quicken that pace?

DW: Ströbele shares details of Snowden visit in Moscow

Serenading Deutschland...

Der Spiegel: Ein Manifest für die Wahrheit (A Manifesto for the Truth)

Notwithstanding a certain level of hypocrisy in Merkel's expression of outrage over US/UK surveillance...

Guardian: GCHQ and European spy agencies worked together on mass surveillance

Germany and Brazil are taking the initiative to tame the surveillance beasts, NSA and GCHQ...

RT: Germany, Brazil submit UN draft resolution to end mass surveillance

Another area in which it appears Germany will take the lead: taming the robber barons of finance...

Reuters: Merkel, SPD agree to renew German push for transaction tax

Well, Italy was there first, and where it counts...

ZeroHedge: First Ever High Frequency Trading Transaction Tax Introduced In Italy

There to snoop on all of that...

Schweiz am Sonntag: US-Geheimdienst - Abhöranlage in Zürich

Spiegel: Quantum Spying - GCHQ Used Fake LinkedIn Pages to Target Engineers

Huffimgton Post: Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radicalizers'

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Libya descends into complete anarchy, as reported by some who helped create the mess...

Al Jazeera: Libya - on the brink of abyss

BBC: Libya army in Benghazi clashes with Ansar al-Sharia

Middle East Online: Libya jihadists to government - It’s either sharia or chaos!

Saudi Gazette: Libya PM warns foreign forces may act to halt chaos

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Shooter of the month: "CIA" written all over this one...

KTTV-LA: The Gunman: 23-year-old Suspect Paul Ciancia

Some initial reports indicated that a second suspect had been arrested, but Gannon said, "This was a lone shooter,'' and the gunman "was the only person that was armed in this incident.''

Did he say there was not a second suspect?

Infowars: TSA Shooting Narrative Disintegrates

Digital Journal: LAX Shooting - Police trained for 'exact scenario' 3 weeks ago

Dry ice dry runs..?

LATimes: Second suspect in LAX dry-ice bomb case pleads not guilty

The real target is not the TSA, however, but...

SPLC Hatewatch: Alleged LAX Shooter Referenced ‘Patriot’ Conspiracy Theories

... with Alex Jones referenced in ABC and CBS spots, we can see where this is going; to borrow Jones's own narrative: the national security apparatus, having been nurtured post-9/11 by the foreign threat of Islamic extremism, now is to focus domestically upon the patriot "extremist". To facilitate this refocus, we can expect more incidents framing the anti-government and anti-NWO protester as the violent extremist threat over which Americans must surrender more of their constitutional protections. The new threat will be caricatured as "bizarre" and "paranoid" largely from Alex Jones's own narrative, he being the most popular or notorious face of anti-government sentiment. We concur that there will be a continuing shift away from terrorism as perpetrated by Islamists, and more as perpetrated by the sovereign citizen, Christian patriot, constitutionalist and the like, but even implicative to the TEA Party, thus framed in order to the discrediting of independent media and political movements that are more and more successfully channeling the ubiquitous discontent with "the powers that be". As one of the Islamic extremist type - one who incidentally was recently assassinated by drone on the eve of peace talks - Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud recently said in a BBC interview...

These explosions in public places are certainly being carried out by secret agencies as part of a conspiracy to pollute the minds of the people about Taliban and to discourage them to co-operate with Taliban.

Another case in point, if not carried out by the "secret agencies" themselves, then fostered by them...

DailyMail: Was Kenya mall massacre 'mastermind' backed by CIA cash? Disturbing claims by 'double agent who worked with terror suspect for years'

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Police state news: what the new bogeymen can look forward to...

Institute on Medicine as a Profession: Medical, Military, and Ethics Experts Say Health Professionals Designed and Participated in Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment and Torture of Detainees; Seek Policies To Assure Conformance With Ethical Principles

And what the American people generally have to look forward to...

Prison Planet: Police, Doctors Force Man To Undergo Humiliating Enemas, Anal Exams And X-rays

Storyleak: Documents Reveal Seattle’s Secretive DHS Funded “Mesh Network” Surveillance Grid

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And so it begins [soon]: extracting the spent fuel rods from their precarious perch atop reactor number 4 at Fukushima Daiichi...

TEPCO: Fuel Removal from Reactor 4 Spent Fuel Pool

Cross your fingers...

Fukushima Diary: Fuel removal of Reactor4 pool to start next week – No quake is allowed for 13 months

Trouble already...

ENENews: Multiple assemblies ‘deformed’ in Fukushima Unit 4 pool — One “bent at a 90-degree angle” — Tepco: Mistake occurred when handling the fuel… 25 years ago

It's a start...

Japan Times: First batch of fuel from Fukushima reactor 4 pool now in different storage site

The damage done...

Ecologist: Fukushima fallout damaged thyroid glands of California babies

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Other toxins - of a more ephemeral sort - stirring across the Pacific...

WikiLeaks: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)

Land Destroyer: Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) - Threat To National Sovereignty

Techdirt: Trade Agreements Are Designed To Give Companies Corporate Sovereignty

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Pedo bust - it turns out that Toronto, home of the crack-head mayor, is a major hub...

The Star: Child porn bust - The men who were charged

Aangirfan: POPULAR CHILD MODELS

Kosher pedos in a Brooklyn mikvah...

Vice: THE CHILD-RAPE ASSEMBLY LINE

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Google preppers...

C-NET: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

Google patents: Water-based data center

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JFK assassination 50 years on - the investigations continue...

MadCow Morning News: Barry Seal, the Dallas get-away plane, and the JFK assassination

WhoWhatWhy: Bush And The JFK Hit, Part 10 - After Camelot

Johnson, Bush and Nixon kill John F. Kennedy.