[Quote]:

Outcry Leads Facebook to Back Away from Overt Censorship

Prominent political critics confirmed to us that their accounts had been suspended or inactivated yesterday in a coordinated purge.

But after we – and others – slammed the censorship, the activists’ accounts have been reinstated.

Peter Dale Scott told us:

The issue seems indeed to have been activism, but of many varieties, including gun advocacy. Above all it seems to have affected many more accounts in England than here. See the Guardian story on my webpage, now restored, also this:
http://www.secretsofthefed.com/facebook-now-suspending-accounts-which-question-mainstream-media-reportingaccount-of-events/

It is possible we [9/11 activists] were marginal victims of a procedure designed to prevent flash mobs (which alas we will never be).

Ejournalism seems to have taken care of the problem. Let’s take heart from this.

Michel Rivero writes:

Last night while I was sleeping the Magic Elves turned my Facebook account back on. I understand that most if not all of the other accounts were also switched back on. Frankly, I am honored to have been included in the list of leading political critics thus attacked. I feel like I made the varsity team!

Not a word of explanation has been forthcoming from Facebook. This, I think, rules out an external hacker attack.

The lesson to be learned here is that the alternative media has more power to affect change than we ourselves fully comprehend, and it is time to use that power.

Mike Adams of Natural News reports:

Facebook … suspended our account and gave us a “final warning” that one more violation of their so-called “community guidelines” would result in our account being permanently deactivated.

They then demanded we send them a color copy of a “government issued identification” in order to reactivate our account. Our account was removed from suspension just minutes before InfoWars posted its article on this Facebook censorship, and the Facebook page is now functioning at:
www.Facebook.com/NaturalNews

Perhaps Facebook wrongly assumed that we aren’t smart enough to notice?

[Quote]:

New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent.

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledgesOccupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conductingsurveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:

“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

 

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Politicians in Greece are calling for the country’s former finance minister to be investigated for allegedly removing the names of three of his relatives from a list of suspected tax evaders.

George Papaconstantinou, the minister who helped design the country’s first austerity measures, was quickly kicked out of his socialist Pasok party after his family members were found missing from a list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts that authorities were using to investigate possible tax evasion.

In a statement announcing his ejection on Saturday, Pasok said there were “clear indications” that names of family members had been deleted from the list.

Greek tragedies used to be big, sweeping dramas of Fate, Life and Death, not stories of small-minded, grasping thieves selling their fellow citizens into poverty.

[Quote]:

Let’s make America for the world what Cape Canaveral was to America: the world’s greatest launching pad. If I had fifteen minutes to pitch my idea to politicians, I’d tell them two things about transportation. First, there’s no way around the issue unless we’re prepared to spend less: and not just spend less, but spend smarter by investing in the kind of green energy that makes countries succeed. That’s going to require some tax cuts as well, but as they say, “them’s the breaks.”

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Royal Bank of Canada and National Bank of Canada led the 7.5 per cent surge in bonus awards among the country’s lenders this year, bucking a global trend of pay cuts on Wall Street and in London.

Royal Bank, Canada’s biggest by assets, and National, the sixth-largest lender, boosted variable compensation 11 per cent in the year ended Oct. 31. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was the only one among the group to pare its bonus pool, trimming 2 per cent from last year’s allocation.

“The Canadian bonuses are not remarkable, but relative to what their peers are getting in London and the U.S., it’s great,” Bill Vlaad, president of Toronto-based recruitment firm Vlaad & Co., said.

“We never saw the true upside of the glory years in the bull market, but we’ve reaped the rewards now by not having the abysmal downside in the tough years.”

Great news chaps! The Canadian government stopped us from wrecking the Canadian economy and we still get bonuses! Paar-tee!!

.

[Quote]:

Video captured the moment a plane careened off the runway in Russia and smashed into a highway, killing five crew members and spilling debris across the roadway.

The deadly accident happened Saturday in Moscow, and investigators are examining flight recorders and other evidence to try to determine the cause of the airliner crash.

The Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings was carrying eight people, all of them crew members, when it ran off the runway while landing at Vnukovo Airport. It went partly into an adjacent highway, broke into pieces and caught fire.

[Quote]:

In a statement, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, “in sum and substance,” as having told the police: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said.