Free Republic

Let me say that again. ALL MONEY COMES FROM DEBT (for those of us who suffered the most indoctrination by attending schools like Harvard, let's pause here for a moment so we can catch up to the rest of the class). This means in order for governments, businesses, and people to have the liquidity necessary to live, they must agree to sign over a claim on their assets to banks. As the banking system inflates over time passing out credit, which makes everyone feel good with more digits in their accounts, it gathers claims on all the assets in the...

North Korea fires on South Korea and the gold price falls. Counter-intuitive? Not quite. As I’ve been arguing for the past two weeks, a chill wind of deflation is blowing through world markets. The European Community is rescuing Ireland (and probably Portugal and then Spain) because $1.3 trillion of bank assets are in jeopardy. American banks’ loan quality is not that great, either. China is tired of capital inflows from the US bubbling through its rather primitive financial system and has slapped higher reserve requirements on its banks

The latest TSA training video

Notice of Revocation of Independence

Another Gem from Dave Goldman on the Inner Workings blog at Atol. Enjoy

Woah! Unbelievable– President Obama loses it in Connecticut! Watch him go off on the protesters… Then he switches side and starts going off some other people. It went on for 3 minutes.

“Catholic Church: Christ nullified God’s promises to the Jews,” reads the headline on the Israel Today website. That is not quite true: At the just-concluded Synod of Middle East Bishops, a cleric from the tiny group of Melkite Greeks, Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, made such a statement on behalf of the Melkites, not the Catholic Church. The head of the same church, the Syrian-based Patriarch Gregorios III Laham, also attacked priestly celibacy before the Synod. He wasn’t speaking for Rome, either. Clerical marriage hasn’t helped the Melkites; they claim just 1.3 million members worldwide, fewer than the Korean Methodist Church...

The best political ad this election

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday to a hero's welcome and blaze of fanfare that belied the country's rising intercommunal tensions and Western misgivings about his visit. Shouts of "khosh amadi" ("welcome" in Persian) and showers of rice, sweets and petals greeted the Iranian leader as he waved to crowds from an open-topped car after arriving in Beirut at the beginning of a two-day trip. It's Ahmadinejad's first visit to Lebanon, where Iran has cultivated close relationship with Hezbollah, the Shi'ite Islamist group that fought a bitter five-week conflict with Israel in 2006. He was expected to...

Amid the mass of published analysis of the Stuxnet virus, Iran's most obvious vulnerability to cyber-war has drawn little comment: much of the Islamic Republic runs on pirated software. The programmers who apparently cracked Siemens' industrial control code to plant malware in Iran's nuclear facilities needed a high degree of sophistication. Most Iranian computers, though, run on stolen software obtained from public servers sponsored by the Iranian government. It would require far less effort to bring about a virtual shutdown of computation in Iran, and the collapse of the Iranian economy. The information technology apocalypse that the West feared on...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran acknowledged Saturday that some personnel at the country's nuclear facilities were lured by promises of money to pass secrets to the West but insisted increased security and worker privileges have put a stop to the spying. The stunning admission by Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi provides the clearest government confirmation that Iran has been fighting espionage at its nuclear facilities. In recent weeks, Iran has announced the arrest of several nuclear spies and battled a computer worm that it says is part of a covert Western plot to derail its nuclear program. And in July, a...

The Stuxnet worm has taken the computer security world by storm, inspiring talk of a top secret, government-sponsored cyberwar, and of a software program laden with obscure biblical references that call to mind not computer code, but "The Da Vinci Code." Stuxnet, which first made headlines in July, (CNET FAQ here) is believed to be the first known malware that targets the controls at industrial facilities such as power plants. At the time of its discovery, the assumption was that espionage lay behind the effort, but subsequent analysis by Symantec uncovered the ability of the malware to control plant operations...

Today in Rabbis Say the Darndest Things, Ari Schvat ruled that female Mossad agents may engage in “honey-pot sex”—I had never heard the phrase before either—as part of their missions. Which is to say, they can sleep with men as part of their espionage. Among other things, Schvat cited Biblical precedent: Esther slept with the Persian king to save the Jews (though weren’t they married anyway?), and apparently Yael slept with the enemy of her husband in order to tire him out so that his head could be more easily chopped off (Book of Judges, yo).

Gloom and Doom with a catchy beat

Send in the clown. That’s the message voters in Brazil’s largest state have sent to Congress. With 1.3 million ballots cast in his favour, a professional clown named Tiririca won more votes than any other candidate in Sunday’s elections. It’s the second-highest tally ever recorded in Brazil’s history. “It’s amazing, this is from God,” he said after the vote. Tiririca’s bid to represent Sao Paulo state in the Chamber of Deputies was widely supported as a symbolic protest against government corruption and scandals. Tiririca, whose moniker is Portuguese slang for “grumpy,” campaigned on the slogan “Vote Tiririca! It can’t get...

What the world looks like in stereotypes

debkafile's intelligence sources report from Iran that dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program. Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus. One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning...

Industrial control systems made by German company Siemens, which are widely used in Iran, were the targets of the worm, indicating that its creators had advanced knowledge of these types of systems far beyond the scope of a most information technology experts. The code is so specialized that it targets only two models of Siemens programmable logic controllers, the S7 300 and S7 400, and will execute only if it finds very specific parameters within the machine. These controllers are usually associated with the management of oil pipeline systems, electrical power grids, and nuclear power plants

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TEHRAN — Iran's intelligence minister said on Saturday authorities had arrested several "nuclear spies" who were working to derail Tehran's nuclear programme through cyberspace. Without saying how many people were arrested or when, Heydar Moslehi was quoted on state television's website as saying Iran had "prevented the enemies' destructive activity." His remarks came against the backdrop of reports that the Stuxnet worm is mutating and wreaking havoc on computerised industrial equipment in Iran and had already infected 30,000 IP addresses. But Moslehi said intelligence agents had discovered the "destructive activities of the arrogance (Western powers) in cyberspace, and different ways...