US Domestic Protesters As Terrorists

Would be really interesting to know who ordered the production of this new video game, where protesters against the financial oligarchy are terrorists. Here is the setting:

"Years of political and economic frustration have finally hit a boiling point. Though the United States military has long trained for terrorism abroad, its greatest fear is about to be realized. Domestic terrorists finally have a leader and a voice, and they're ready to strike back at the sources of their anger, to take back that which they believe was stolen from them - their country. The rules of modern warfare are about to be thrown out the window as America's own cities become the battlegrounds of the future."

Note how perfect this scenario fits to the spirit of the 2 previous postings Dubious Militarization of US Local Police and The NDAA-Puzzle.

English/German Trailer:

German Spiegel reports: Occupy Wall Street: Computerspiel macht Banken-Kritiker zu Terroristen

Déjà Vu: Saleh in the US to Drink the Waters

Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's dictator since 1978, will visit his US friends - officially to have medical treatment. Any associations? Ah, yes, on 22 October 1979, at the request of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, President Jimmy Carter invited the notorious Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, to the US for a treatment, after he had been chased out by the Iranian people. (He had been in power there since 1941, so it somehow looks like that being a long time proconsul for the US may really pay off, provided you play by the rules.)

Do you remember Noam Chomsky on the Ongoing Arab Spring?

Dubious Militarization of US Local Police

In addition to the NDAA puzzle, here's another dubious step taken into a problematic future for US citizens: the militarization of the police. "More than ever before, local police across the U.S. have transformed into small army-like forces using billions in grants from the federal government" the Center for Investigative Reporting says. Drones are already in use on US soil. Here's an elaborate DemocracyNow! report:

The NDAA-Puzzle

On December 15, the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 has been approved by the US Senate. Since then, there were discussions about the question whether the new law allows indefinite detention of US citizens by the military (on US soil).
E.g. Senate votes to allow indefinite detention of Americans, Senator Bob Casey says the NDAA will NOT be used against the American people. Needless to say, this issue is crucial, alarming and should be monitored.

But even law academics seem to have problems in analyzing the law in order to give the text a definite meaning.

"We've Got All Sorts of Dark Arts"

One of this year's finest contributions of real journalism: When reporters from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (a sister paper of The Independent) posed as agents for the government of Uzbekistan – a notorious dictatorship allegedly responsible for killings, human rights violations and child labour – they caught on camara what the guys of PR agency Bell Pottinger Group plc told about their dark arts, e.g.

• exploiting their contacts to highest governmental officials to get into dialogue with foreign politicians;
• manipulating Google results to "drown" out negative coverage;
• using members of parliament known to be critical of investigative programs to attack their reporting for minor errors ...

An interesting development of monitoring the British lobbying machine followed since then, including revelations on the PR firm manipulating Wikipedia entries, now under investigation by Wikipedia's own staff.

Not much coverage in German speaking media on that, except "PR-Agentur brüstet sich mit Manipulation von Wikipedia und Google".

Probably the easiest way of manipulation politics in European countries is via EU staff and law makers, as the example of Ernst Strasser, ex-Federal Minister for the Interior of both conservative Schüssel-governments in Austria - has spectacularly shown:

Ernst Strasser taped red-handed

Best of Strasser

Strasser/EU-Lobbyism Persiflage

Following the Dark Prince of Militarism

Washington Post: Notorious private security contractor firm formerly known as Blackwater, intermediately known as Xe Services LLC, now changed its name to Academi. (see also Wikipedia entry)
The net is following the Dark Prince.

Occupy Wall Street auf Österreichisch

Occupy Wall Street auf Österreichisch, das heißt: 1 Grantler beschwert sich. Derzeit oft und gern gesehen in der Alpenrepublik: die Rede des Wutbürgers & Kabarettisten Roland Düringer.

Hier das dazugehörige Interview: "Hamsterrad: Das System ist am Ende"

EU testet Schmerzgrenze der Bürger

Die niederländische EU-Kommissarin für die Digitale Agenda, Neelie Kroes - selbst mit einem einigermaßen zweifelhaften Ruf belastet - schlägt einen in Deutschland amtsbekannten Plagiator als Berater vor, der für einen sog. US-think tank im Solde steht: Karl-Theodor von Guttenberg vom Center for Strategic and International Studies.
--> Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Former German Minister of Defense, Joins CSIS as Distinguished Statesman

Das kann doch nicht wahr sein!

update: die "No Disconnect Strategy" der EU

Madman Gingrich on Palestinians: An Invented People of Terrorists

US-Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich: "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state, [...] Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, who are historically part of the Arab community [...] And they had a chance to go many places."

Can anyone see any logic in this? 

And later on:  "these people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, if there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left? We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. It's fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, enough lying about the Middle East."

Keine Anhaltspunkte für Terror von rechts in Deutschland!