2012 Sheltered Technologies Brings You Up-To-Date-News To Let You Know What Is Currently Going On In The World Today. We Think That Everyone Will Need An Underground Shelter For Safety Leading Up To 2012. Do You?  Shelters For Your Family Will Be Your Ultimate Insurance Policy For the Future. 2009 - 2012 Will Be A Wild Ride For Everyone On The Planet. 2012 Sheltered Technologies Will Be Here To Assist You.

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Here is what the American people absolutely need to know.

There is a midterm election in November of this year. If conservatives do not take back both Houses of Congress with enough of a Republican majority to successfully impeach Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Joe Biden and about 50 federal judges within the first 60 days of the 112th Congress, install a new President and Vice President, and nullify every law and every political appointment made by Obama and the 111th Congress (since an illegal alien cannot sign bills into law, nor can he appoint federal judges or other political appointees), you can expect the gunless Election of 2012 to be the type of sham Adolph Hitler used to gain supreme power in Germany in 1933. After disarming the German people, it took Adolph Hitler exactly 39 days to overthrow the German Republic, destroy its written Constitution and become the dictator of the Third Reich. Kõnnen Sie sagan, "Heil, Barack"? (Can you say, "Heil, Barack?") 


While you were watching the oil spill, the New York failed terrorist bombing and other critical crises, Hillary Clinton signed the small arms treaty with the UN.

OBAMA FINDS LEGAL WAY AROUND THE 2ND AMENDMENT AND USES IT. IF THIS PASSES, THERE COULD BE WAR

On Wednesday Obama Took the First Major Step in a Plan to Ban All Firearms in the United States


On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments.

 These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms. The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before
 US citizens even understand what has happened.

Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress.
 We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.

This has happened in other countries, past and present! THIS IS NOT A JOKE OR A FALSE WARNING. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control. Read the Article U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto. The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former

 President George W. Bush's administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better. View The

Click on the link below for further acknowledgement…..U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade | Reuters

 

 

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/05/05/learning/oilslickLN/oilslickLN-blogSpan.jpg 

Oily Politics Grease the Wheels of Control  

by Cassandra Anderson
June 4, 2010

bp
The Obama Administration, in keeping with Rahm Emmanuel's philosophy of "never letting a serious crisis go to waste" is using the BP oil calamity to its advantage.  In order to understand the scope of the problem, we must begin by looking at a brief history of BP and how deeply energy markets affect politics.  Last week, Obama pretended to accept responsibility for the oil spill, but then ridiculously claimed that he didn't know that the ties of corruption between the oil companies and politicians would extend past Bush's administration into his time in office.(1) This is completely absurd, given the long history of oil and energy corruption in America.

BP's genesis began with the discovery of oil in Iran in 1908 by William Knox D'Arcy and became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.  In 1923, Winston Churchill was secretly paid 5000 British pounds to lobby the British government in order to create a monopoly over Iranian oil.  In 1951, the pro-Western Prime Minister was assassinated and the Iranian Parliament nationalized the oil industry by unanimous vote, and elected a new nationalist Prime Minister, Mossadeq. By 1953, the CIA, with British support, led a coup against Mossadeq and he was ousted.

 

In 1954 the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company changed its name to British Petroleum and became an international consortium that shared profits with Iran at a 50-50 split. The company was 40% owned by Iran, 40% owned by 5 American companies and 20% owned by Royal Dutch Shell and the French Petroleum Company. No Iranians were allowed on the Board of Directors or to audit the company. The 5 American companies include Exxon, Gulf Oil, Mobil, Standard Oil and Texaco; all of which were controlled, merged or or owned by parent companies affiliated with the Rockefeller family over time.(2)

The provenance of later acquisitions and the creation of subsidiaries are intentionally complex, and it is unlikely that the Rockefellers relinquished control over their oil monopoly when it was broken up as a result of the Sherman Antitrust Act.(3)  Oil cartels traditionally engage in price fixing. While BP is currently a publicly traded company, this does not mean that stockholders control the company.

In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini broke all contracts and gave 90% ownership to BP oil and Iran retained a 10% interest. In 1998, BP merged with Amoco (a subsidiary of Standard Oil), and in 2000, acquired ARCO.

Peter Sutherland was the non- executive chairman of BP for 13 years, until the end of 2009 and is an example of the the type of leadership that rules the world. His "accomplishments" include being non- executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs, director of the Bank of Scotland (until it was taken over by the UK government to avoid bankruptcy), former Director General of GATT (now the World Trade Organization), a chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Sutherland was instrumental in the UK's immigration mess, negating Ireland's ban on abortion and is reported to be on the steering committee of the Bilderberg group. He has been succeeded by Carl-Henric Svanberg, former CEO of Ericsson telecommunications.(4)

While Obama has claimed full authority over this environmental horror, he did not stop the use of the toxic dispersant "Corexit".  Corexit is produced by NALCO, originally named the National Aluminate Corporation, which formed a limited partnership with Exxon Chemical Company in 1994. Ondeo Nalco was purchased by Goldman Sachs, Apollo and Blackstone in 2003 and is currently a publicly traded company. Given NALCO's business ties, it seems that safe and natural cleanup methods were avoided in the Gulf to pursue an economic agenda. The use of Corexit in Alaska, after the Exxon Valdez disaster, resulted in toxicity to humans that included respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders.(5)

Perhaps this background provides some clues about Obama's delayed and incompetent reaction to the Gulf oil eruption and the direction of America's future energy policies.  Obama lifted bans for offshore drilling just before the Gulf oil disaster, in order to show support for American energy independence, but now he is considering banning more drilling.  Inefficient "green" energy will be promoted; this is pure Agenda 21 (policies that do not serve the public but are promoted using the environment as the excuse).  Green wind and solar energy are not efficient- Spain provides a good example of financial failure when this system is implemented.(6)  Better solutions for energy independence include natural gas (America is rich with underdeveloped natural gas), alcohol and hemp production.  Alcohol can be made from almost anything that ferments. 

According to Robert Deitch, in his book "Hemp: American History Revisited", Prohibition- the outlaw of alcohol on moral principles, which lasted from 1920- 1933 was a result of collusion between Rockefeller, who owned Standard Oil and Mellon, who owned Gulf Oil.  The purpose of Prohibition was to make America and the new automobile industry reliant on oil instead of alcohol in car engines, which was cheap and easy to make.  Hemp is also a source of natural oil, but it too was a threat to the oil industry and is prohibited by federal law.

Earlier this week, it was announced that a criminal investigation of BP may be conducted.  At first glance, this seems like it is a good idea.  However, we shouldn't expect anything more than window dressing, given BP's history of environmental crimes and lack of accountability, like the massive spill that took place in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 2006 that did not result in any felony convictions, despite plenty of evidence against BP.(7)

What we can expect from the "investigation" is more governmental control.  The proposed investigation cites BP's violations against the Clean Water Act; just as the EPA expanded its powers with the Clean Air Act and global warming (they have compiled an 18,000 page document with new regulations), this environmental crisis will likely result in the EPA massively expanding its powers within the realm of energy and water. 

There is also a suggestion of prosecution for Endangered Species Act (ESA) violations; the purpose for this is not to hold BP liable for killing wildlife and sea creatures, but to expand domination by the federal government over the masses, which is the ultimate objective of the ESA under Agenda 21.  In fact, the United Nations recently announced that they are shifting their attention away from man made global warming "problems" to endangered species.  Of course, this is a result of the unravelling of the of the scientific lies about man made global warming which was revealed in numerous scandals including 'Climategate'.(8)  The ESA is used as a weapon to steal private property from Americans, as Dr. Michael Coffman details in his slideshow "Taking Liberty".(9)

Americans should also beware of controlled opposition within environmental groups like Friends of the Earth (FOE), WWF, Sierra Club, NRDC, and many, many more that have financial ties to the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the United Nations and oil companies.  Most people think that these organizations are interested in promoting a healthy environment, but they fail to look beyond the surface to see the true objectives of these Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs).  One easy way to spot a compromised NGO is to check their website for global warming alarmist propaganda, look at their board of directors for UN affiliations and examine their objectives (often stated in feel- good language).  NGOs are a big component of Agenda 21 and its corrupt environmental and depopulation policies. 

 

The chief executive of BP sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused its value to collapse.

 
BP chief executive Tony Hayward has been under intense pressure 
since the oil well erupted on April 20
BP chief executive Tony Hayward has been under intense pressure since the oil well erupted on April 20

Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.

Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million.

There is no suggestion that he acted improperly or had prior knowledge that the company was to face the biggest setback in its history.

His decision, however, means he avoided losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago.

Since he disposed of 223,288 shares on March 17, the company’s share price has fallen by 30 per cent. About £40 billion has been wiped off its total value. The fall has caused pain not just for BP shareholders, but also for millions of company pension funds and small investors who have money held in tracker funds.

The spill, which has still not been stemmed, has caused a serious environmental crisis and is estimated to cost BP up to £40 billion to clean up.

There was growing confidence yesterday that a new cap placed over the well was stemming the oil flow. An estimated three million litres a day had been pouring into the sea off the coast of Louisiana since the April 20 explosion, damaging marine life.

The crisis has enraged US politicians, with President Obama yesterday forced to cancel a trip to Indonesia amid a row over the White House’s response.

Mr Hayward, whose position is thought to be under threat, risked further fury by continuing plans to pay out a dividend to investors next month.

 

Obama's Letter to Lula Exposes White House Forked Tongue On Iran

By Steve Hynd

May 28, 2010 "NewsHoggers" --May 27, 2010 -- Via Robert Naiman, it appears that President Lula of Brazil has decided to shine some light on the Obama administration's machinations on Iran. He has finally released the full text of Obama's 20th April letter to Brazil about the proposed TTR fuel swap deal and the entire thing appears today in Brazilian Foreign Policy.

The letter reads, in part:

Obama to Lula 1

The letter also specifically mentions the compromise of using Turkey as the location for Iran's fuel to be held "in escrow".

I would urges Brazil to impress upon Iran the opportunity presented by this offer to "escrow" its uranium in Turkey while the nuclear fuel is being produced.

This letter's authenticity is not disputed by the White House. It exposes the Obama administration's forked-tongue response to the Brazil and Turkey brokered swap. The White House is now in full spin mode, but the spin has already been undercut by the release of the letter's full text. Of late, Hilary Clinton has been the main vehicle for the White House's double-talk, which is now entirely aimed at closing down opportunities to find a negotiated settlement to the Iran nuclear issue no matter what the new National Security Strategy might say. But Obama must also bear the burden of blame, his is the desk where the buck stops. 

Bloomberg

BP Oil Leak May Last Until Christmas in Worst Case Scenario

June 02, 2010, 3:22 AM EDT

By Jessica Resnick-Ault and David Wethe

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc’s failure since April to plug a Gulf of Mexico oil leak have prompted forecasts the crude may continue gushing into December in what President Barack Obama has called the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP’s attempts so far to cap the well and plug the leak on the seabed a mile below the surface haven’t worked, while the start of the Atlantic hurricane season this week indicates storms in the Gulf may disrupt other efforts.

“The worst-case scenario is Christmas time,” Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said. “This process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines.”

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government’s current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

No Guarantee

BP, based in London, says it can’t guarantee the success of its attempt now underway to capture the flow of oil and divert it to a ship at the surface. Thad Allen, the U.S. government’s national commander for the incident, said operations may need to be suspended to allow for an evacuation ahead of a tropical storm or hurricane, during which oil would continue to gush into the Gulf.

The so-called relief well being drilled to intercept and plug the damaged well by mid-August might miss -- as other emergency wells have done before -- requiring more time to make a second, third or fourth try, Dave Rensink, President Elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said.

Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP, declined to detail the company’s own worst-case scenario.

In its original exploration plan for the Macondo well about 40-miles from the Louisiana coast, BP estimated the worst-case scenario for an oil spill was 162,000 barrels of crude a day, according to a filing with the U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service.

Hurricane Season

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward has more recently put the maximum potential leak rate at 60,000 barrels a day.

Wine reaffirmed BP’s estimate that it will take 90 days to stop the leak with a relief well, which would be the first half of August. He said an early, vigorous hurricane season could have an impact on the schedule.

The ultimate worst-case scenario is that the well is never successfully plugged, said Fred Aminzadeh, a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Center for Integrated Smart Oil Fields who previously worked for Unocal Corp. That would leave the well to flow for probably more than a decade, he said in a telephone interview.

More likely, the relief wells will eventually succeed, though it might take longer than the three months predicted by BP, he said.

Pemex Spill

It took Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, nine months to plug its Ixtoc I well after an explosion and fire in 1979.

The company’s first attempt with a relief well failed, so it had to drill a second. Eventually, more than 140 million gallons of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico -- the biggest offshore oil spill on record.

Last year, an explosion at a well off the Australian coast owned by Thailand’s national oil company, PTT Exploration & Production Pcl, required five attempts before it could be plugged by a relief well 10 weeks after the spill began.

BP has improved its odds by drilling two emergency wells at once. If a first attempt fails, it will have the second well ready to try again. The company is using techniques such as a larger well bore, raising its chances of hitting its mark, said Robert MacKenzie an analyst with FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia.

Plugging the well is another challenge even after BP successfully intersects it, Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, said. BP has said it believes the well bore to be damaged, which could hamper efforts to fill it with mud and set a concrete plug, Bea said.

Evacuating Ships

While these efforts are underway, BP could face delays if a hurricane enters the Gulf, forcing an evacuation. BP says it is developing a mechanism to quickly disconnect the ship collecting oil from the well so that it can evacuate ahead of a storm. That would leave the well gushing oil, Bea said.

Ocean biologists are concerned the oil could linger in deep layers in the sea, generating oxygen-depleted “dead zones” that kill marine life.

Plumes of oil spinning off of the spill have been detected in two directions, and researchers suspect there are more.

“Clearly, oxygen levels are going to be decreased in the vicinity of the plume area, and it looks like it could be a very large plume area,” said Saito, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Birds, Oysters

The crude oil could enter a current that would draw it out of the Gulf and up along the East Coast of the U.S. all the way to Nantucket, Roberts, of Lousiana State University, said.

The American Bird Conservancy has identified 10 key regions on the Gulf Coast where birds could be harmed. If the oil is spread widely by a hurricane, there could be long-term damage to bird populations, the non-profit organization has said.

“What is difficult to measure is the loss of future generations of birds when birds fail to lay eggs or when eggs fail to hatch,” George Fenwick, the organization’s president, said in a statement on at-risk areas in the Gulf Coast.

Marine life may take decades to recover, wiping out businesses along the coastline that depend on the fishing and seafood industry.

Al Sunseri, who runs P&J Oyster Co., the oldest continually operated oyster dealer in the U.S., said he could end up out of business:

“This could be the end of our 134-year-old business,” he said. “I’ve been doing this 30 years. I have a son and I don’t know if he’ll be able to carry on this next generation.”

--With assistance from Jordan Burke, Jim Polson in New York, and Mark Chediak in San Francisco, Aaron Kuriloff in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Editors: Susan Warren, Peter Langan, John Viljoen.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York at jresnickault@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net.

 

Criminal investigation looms in Gulf of Mexico oil spill

President Barack Obama has dispatched the US attorney general to the Gulf of Mexico to survey the damage to the area from the oil spill disaster and consider drawing up criminal charges against BP.

 
THAT'S IT, BLAME IT ON SOMEONE ELSE. WE ALL KNOW THAT HALLIBURTIN BOUGHT THE WELL 3 WEEKS PRIOR TO THE EXPLOSION AND GOLDMAN SACHS SOLD 44% OF BP STOCK, SOLD SHORT, 3 WEEKS PRIOR TO THE EXPLOSION. Hmmmmmmmmmmm
Criminal investigation looms in Gulf of Mexico oil spill
Smoke and fire emerge as oil burns during a controlled fire in the Gulf of Mexico Photo: AFP/GETTY

Eric Holder is also due to meet attorneys general from coastal states as well as government prosecutors. Sources within the Obama administration said the trip was almost certain to be the first step a criminal investigation into the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion last month that killed 11 workers and led to the gushing oil spill.

The very public consideration of criminal charges was the latest signal of a much tougher approach by the Obama administration, which has publicly castigated BP in recent days for playing down estimates of the extent of the pollution of the Gulf and its beaches.

The Justice Department has already demanded that the companies involved in the spill, including BP, Transocean Ltd and Halliburton, keep all documentation related to the accident because it could become part of an investigation.

Legal scholars have said the Justice Department was likely to consider potential violations of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Refuse Act.

 

US military rejects calls to take control of oil spill

The United States military does not have the technology or the know-how to deal with the devastating oil spill, its highest ranking military officer admitted on Monday night.

 
Video provided by BP PLC  shows oil continues to erupt from the remains of their oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico
Video provided by BP PLC shows oil continues to erupt from the remains of their oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico Photo: AP

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they had no more tactics left in their arsenal following BP’s latest failure to plug the leak.

Responding to calls for the armed forces to take control of the oil spill disaster, Mr Mullen said: “We’ve looked at that continuously since the leak started – whether or not we would have submersibles that could go do this.

“And the fact is the best technology in the world, with respect to that, exists in the oil industry.”

President Barack Obama is facing increasing criticism over his handling of the environmental catastrophe, which occurred when BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, causing a well more than a mile under the surface to rupture pumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

James Carville, a leading Democratic strategist, said: “This is literally a war we are in. Foreign substances are invading our coastline.”

Meanwhile, Louisiana Senator David Vitter added: “We need the federal response to really get with it and go on a wartime footing.”

More than 1,400 members of the US coast guard have been mobilised to help with the clean up operation in the gulf region, but Mr Mullen said there was little the armed forces could do to stop the leak help and the best chance remained with BP’s engineers.

Mr Mullen said: “We actually have been involved, but we have not been the lead. Any change with respect to the lead would be a decision the president would have to make.”

Meanwhile, environmentalists have expressed grave concern over the potential spread of the oil as Tuesday marks the first day of the region’s hurricane season when violent storms begin to sweep in and batter the Gulf coast.

With at least 23 tropical storms and seven major hurricanes forecast over the coming months it is feared high winds could not only hamper the operation to cap the well but could also push the oil further inshore and across a wider region.

Some have even suggested that the oil could reach the coastlines of Florida, Texas, Cuba and Mexico, devastating wildlife and crippling tourism.

Government backed scientists claim to have discovered plumes of toxic oil 22 miles long suspended under the surface of the water and drifting across wide areas threatening the fragile marine ecosystem.

Prosanta Chakrabarty, a biologist based at the Louisiana State University said: “Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying.”

However, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has disputed the existence of such plumes, insisting that rigorous testing by the company showed no evidence of oil being suspended in large masses under the water.

He claimed oil’s natural tendency was to move to the surface and any oil underwater was in the process of making its way to the top.

BP has also faced angry rebuttals from the White House, which has accused the company of deliberately playing down estimates of the amount of oil escaping in order to limit the amount of compensation the company will be liable for.

BPs’ fourth attempt to plug the leak by pouring debris such as used tyres and even golf balls into the well – a method known as top kill – failed at the weekend.

The company will now try to fit a containment cap on the ruptured well, but that could take more than a week to complete and also runs the risk of increasing the flow by a fifth if it fails.

The best chance of stopping the leak remains the completion of two relief wells which are under construction nearby.

However it is believed the earliest the project will be completed is the the end of August by which point millions more gallons of oil will have escaped.

A group called Seize BP is has organised demonstrations across 50 American cities to vent their frustration at the way the British based company has handled the environmental disaster.

 

THE GULF SEEMS TO BE BLEEDING!Gulf Oil Spill Wetlands  

NEW ORLEANS — The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said.

Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil.

They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.

More than 50 miles of Louisiana's delicate shoreline already have been soiled by the massive slick unleashed after the Deepwater Horizon rig burned and sank last month. Officials fear oil eventually could invade wetlands and beaches from Texas to Florida. Louisiana is expected to be hit hardest.

On Saturday, a major pelican rookery was awash in oil off Louisiana's coast. Hundreds of birds nest on the island, and an Associated Press photographer saw some birds and their eggs stained with the ooze. Nests were perched in mangroves directly above patches of crude.

Plaquemines Parish workers put booms around the island, but puddles of oil were inside the barrier.

"Oil in the marshes is the worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the federal effort to contain and clean up the spill.

Also Saturday, BP told federal regulators it plans to continue using a contentious chemical dispersant, despite orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to look for less toxic alternatives. BP said in a letter to the EPA that Corexit 9500 "remains the best option for subsea application."

The EPA didn't immediately comment on BP's decision.

Oil that has rolled into shoreline wetlands coats the stalks and leaves of plants such as roseau cane – the fabric that holds together an ecosystem that is essential to the region's fishing industry and a much-needed buffer against Gulf hurricanes. Soon, oil will smother those plants and choke off their supply of air and nutrients.

In some eddies and protected inlets, the ochre-colored crude has pooled beneath the water's surface, forming clumps several inches deep.

With the seafloor leak still gushing at least hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, the damage is only getting worse. Millions of gallons already have leaked so far.

Coast Guard officials said the spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

Over time, experts say weather and natural microbes will break down most of the oil. However, the crude will surely poison plants and wildlife in the months – even years – it will take for the syrupy muck to dissipate.

Back in 1989, crews fighting the Exxon Valdez tanker spill – which unleashed almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound – used pressure hoses and rakes to clean the shores. The Gulf Coast is just too fragile for that: those tactics could blast apart the peat-like soils that hold the marshes together.

Hundreds of miles of bayous and man-made canals crisscross the coast's exterior, offering numerous entry points for the crude. Access is difficult and time-intensive, even in the best of circumstances.

"Just the compaction of humanity bringing equipment in, walking on them, will kill them," said David White, a wetlands ecologist from Loyola University in New Orleans.

Marshes offer a vital line of defense against Gulf storms, blunting their fury before they hit populated areas. Louisiana and the federal government have spent hundreds of millions of dollars rebuilding barriers that were wiped out by hurricanes, notably Katrina in 2005.

They also act as nursery grounds for shrimp, crabs, oysters – the backbone of the region's fishing industry. Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds nest in the wetlands' inner reaches, a complex network of bayous, bays and man-made canals.

To keep oil from pushing deep into Louisiana's marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes want permission to erect a $350 million network of sand berms linking the state's barrier islands and headlands.

That plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

After surveying oil-stricken areas Saturday, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said the berms were the marshes' last hope.

"It's getting in between all the cane and it's working through from one bayou to the next," he said.

Smaller spills have been occurring in the marshes for decades. In the past, cleanup crews would sometimes slice out oiled vegetation and take it to a landfill, said Andy Nyman with Louisiana State University.

But with the plants gone, water from the gulf would roll in and wash away the roots, turning wetlands to open water.

Adm. Allen said that where conditions are right, crews could set fire to oil-coated plants.

Nyman and other experts, though, warn it's tricky. If the marsh is too wet, the oil won't burn. Too dry, the roots burn and the marsh can be ruined.

BP PLC – which leased the sunken rig and is responsible for the cleanup – said Saturday that cleanup crews have started more direct cleanup methods along Pass a Loutre in Plaquemines Parish. Shallow water skimmers were attempting to remove the oil from the top of the marsh.

Streams of water could later be used in a bid to wash oil from between cane stalks.

In other cases, the company will rely on "bioremediation" – letting oil-eating microbes do the work.

"Nature has a way of helping the situation," said BP spokesman John Curry.

But Nyman said the dispersants could slow the microbes from breaking down the oil.

White, the Loyola scientist, predicted at least short-term ruin for some of the wetlands he's been studying for three decades. Under a worst-case scenario, he said the damage could exceed the 217 square miles of wetlands lost during the 2005 hurricane season.

"When I say that my stomach turns," he said.


While you were watching the oil spill, the New York failed terrorist bombing and other critical crises, Hillary Clinton signed the small arms treaty with the UN.

OBAMA FINDS LEGAL WAY AROUND THE 2ND AMENDMENT AND USES IT. IF THIS PASSES, THERE COULD BE WAR

On Wednesday Obama Took the First Major Step in a Plan to Ban All Firearms in the United States


On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments.

 These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms. The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before
 US citizens even understand what has happened.

Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress.
 We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.

This has happened in other countries, past and present! THIS IS NOT A JOKE OR A FALSE WARNING. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control. Read the Article U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto. The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former

 President George W. Bush's administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better. View The

Click on the link below for further acknowledgement…..U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade | Reuters

 

 

Oil spill threatens 'total destruction'
Fri, 28 May 2010 17:12:02 GMT

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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may have apocalyptic consequences, a report by the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources said.
The British Petroleum oil spill is threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction," reports say.

An ominous report by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources warned of the impending disaster resulting from the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico, calling it the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history, the European Union Times reported.

Russian scientists believe BP is pumping millions of gallons of Corexit 9500, a chemical dispersal agent, under the Gulf of Mexico waters to hide the full extent of the leak, now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

Experts say Corexit 9500 is a solvent four times more toxic than oil.

The agent, scientists believe, has a 2.61ppm toxicity level, and when mixed with the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, its molecules will be able to “phase transition.”

This transition involves the change of the liquid into a gaseous state, which can be absorbed by clouds. The gas will then be released as “toxic rain” leading to “unimaginable environmental catastrophe” destroying all life forms from the “bottom of the evolutionary chart to the top,” the report said.

 

 

Nasa images reveal Gulf of Mexico oil spill entering powerful current that could carry it to Florida and beyond

By Mail Foreign Service


Oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has for the first time reached a powerful current that could take it to Florida and beyond, say scientists.

A small portion of the slick has entered the so-called 'loop current', a stream of faster moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Its arrival may herald a wider environmental catastrophe affecting the Florida Keys and tourist-dotted beaches along that state's East coast.

Even farther south, U.S. officials are talking to Cuba about how to respond to the spill should it reach the island's northern coast.

british petroleum protest

Two Greenpeace campaigners scaled BP'S UK headquarters building in London today in protest at the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The flag shows the multinational's logo smothered in oil

NASA images of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Spread: The top Nasa image shows the powerful 'loop current' of faster moving water the oil is hitting which circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast. The bottom image shows the extent of the spill

Florida's state meteorologist said it will be at least another seven days before the oil reaches waters west of the Keys, and state officials sought to reassure visitors that its beaches are still clean and safe.

 

During a news conference, David Halstead, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, showed off a picture of a Coppertone bottle on a beach.

'What's the only oil on the beaches? Suntan oil,' he said.

Tar balls found earlier in the Florida Keys were not from the spill, the Coast Guard has said. Still, at least 6million gallons have already poured into the Gulf off Louisiana since the April 20 explosion of an offshore oil rig that killed 11 workers and led to the spill, the worst U.S. environmental disaster in decades.

The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons (41.64 million liters) in Alaska in 1989.

Tar balls have washed ashore as far east as Alabama, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared Wednesday that heavier oil was now soiling his state's coastal marshes. Earlier waves of the slick had begun as a thin sheen before the thicker stuff starting washing ashore this week.

Covered in sludge: Greenpeace campaigner Lindsey Allen collects 
samples of oil in a bayou south of Venice, Louisiana

Covered in sludge: Greenpeace campaigner Lindsey Allen collects samples of oil in a bayou south of Venice, Louisiana

Aerial shot: Oil emanates from the site of the Deepwater Horizon 
oil leak

Aerial shot: Oil emanates from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak

The governor, inspecting the Mississippi Delta by boat, swept a fishnet through water, holding up a chocolate-thick ooze. The delta region is home to rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life in marshy wildlife refuges and offshore islands.

Billy Nungesser, president of coastal Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, said the oil 'has laid down a blanket in the marsh that will destroy every living thing there'.

In Washington, environmental groups criticised how BP PLC, the oil giant that operated the Deepwater Horizon rig, has handled the response, and urged the government to take greater control of the situation.

'Too much information is now in the hands of BP's many lawyers and too little is being disclosed to the public,' Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

'The Gulf of Mexico is a crime scene and the perpetrator cannot be left in charge of assessing the damage.'

BP has received thousands of ideas from the public on how to stop the oil gusher, but some inventors are complaining that their efforts are being ignored.

Disaster: This image taken by a NASA satellite shows the oil spill
 perilously close to the U.S. coastline

Disaster: This image taken by a NASA satellite shows the oil spill perilously close to the U.S. coastline

Oil-eating bacteria, bombs and a device that resembles a giant shower curtain are among the 10,000 fixes people have proposed to counter the growing environmental threat. BP is taking a closer look at 700 of the ideas, but the oil company has yet to use any of them.

'They're clearly out of ideas, and there's a whole world of people willing to do this free of charge,' said Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of InnoCentive Inc., which has created an online network of experts to solve problems.

BP spokesman Mark Salt said the company wants the public's help, but that considering proposed fixes takes time.

'They're taking bits of ideas from lots of places,' he said. 'This is not just a PR stunt.'

BP succeeded in partially siphoning away the leak over the weekend, when it hooked up a mile-long tube to the broken pipe, sending some of the oil to a ship on the surface. And the company said Wednesday it hopes to begin shooting a mixture known as drilling mud into the blown-out well by Sunday.

The 'top kill' method involves directing heavy mud into crippled equipment on top of the well, then aiming cement at it to permanently keep down the oil. Even if it works, it could take several weeks to complete.

If it fails, BP is considering a 'junk shot', which involves shooting knotted rope, pieces of tires and golf balls into the blowout preventer.

Crews hope they will lodge into the nooks and crannies of the device to plug it.

About 70 BP workers are taking more suggestions at a tip line center in Houston.

The company plans to test one idea from actor Kevin Costner, who has invested more than $24million on developing a centrifuge that can be dropped into the slick and separate the water from oil, storing the petroleum in tanks.

'It's like a big vacuum cleaner,' said Costner's business partner, John Houghtaling II of New Orleans. 'These machines are ready to be employed. The technology is familiar to the industry.'

Tracking the unpredictable spill and the complex loop current is a challenge for scientists, said Charlie Henry, a NOAA environmental scientist.

The loop moves based on the shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though the oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. And the slick itself has defied scientists' efforts to track it and predict its path.

Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward.

'The key point is that we watch and study and monitor oil adjacent to the loop current and we model it to try to get ahead of it,' Henry said.

'Nothing is changing quickly and nothing is changing drastically over the next few days.'

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Major Change Down Below... 


Putting everything back into proper chronological order, and have begun adding images and video for documentary purposes.

I've been watching the live Spillcam, and discussing it with folks, here all day long. About 5pm last night, we all started taking note of gas bubbling out of the seabed floor. It started earlier than that, actually-- see pic a few posts down. About 1am this morning, the eruptions began to increase in spew volume.

The First Noted Venting Hole (TNVH).


At about 8am, CDT, as I watched, things started changing rapidly. Where the water around the two major gush points used to be very clear, it is now super turbid, and detritus is flying everywhere in a chaotic manner. seabed venting is obvious to see when ROV cameras pan around.

Yet-to-be-confirmed rumors are that the casing wall has finally worn through, about 300 feet below seabed, at an annulus (coupling), and the gas and oil are now finding a new way out to the seabed.

Not good news, as it will make the Top-Kill/Junk Shot nearly ineffectual... At the least, it means that more pressure and mud/cement is going to be required.

We'll see.

See for yourself, here: via BP Live Spillcam

Screengrab of the early Morning Chaos Event. Everthing went up all at once. ROV was perfectly stationary. EVERYTHING went "BOOM" and black:

I am looking for video of this event. Most people started taping after the actual start.
The entire range of field erupted at once. Everything. Everywhere, and then the pipe went GUSH!

Update: Here's a screen grab showing the new hole in the seabed. That's not the riser end from a new angle. This was grabbed while the ROV on the riser end was panning around. The BOP is over 600 feet away, so it is not that, either.

What the First Noted Venting Hole (TNVH) turned into 18 hours later.
Same pair of broken pipes, Riser end is in same position, except everything has settled down a few feet, and the hole is bigger. that's an ejection rim. Those two broken pipes are more exposed.
A lot of earth got moved down and away all at once.


UPDATE: The riser pipe used to be pretty clean all along it's top. Now, it is piled over with sediment.

Something had happened to the dispersant mechanism, too. Pipes and connectors got knocked loose, green liquid (antifreeze?) was pouring out of the machine, and we watched the ROV repair the leak.



Seabed seems to have sunk rapidly (perhaps scoured away rapidly?). Riser end is now in a big crater. Side pipes more exposed-- different angle?

UPDATE 1:20pm CDT: While watching, ANOTHER major "explosion" occurred. ROV Cam now covered in Oil. It was pushed around by the force of expulsion, or moved back a few feet by controllers. Our Favorite Disaster Bot is taking a beating. Gush seems to have at least doubled in size and volume.

Grabs:

Provided by BSC:

Photo series equating 12:23 minutes from "WTF?" to BOOOM! No need for ROV "reading" lectures, The pipe end billowed out, and then everywhere around billowed up, and then SPLAT!:



Corroborating grabs in order... BOOM! Splat... WTF???:









UPDATE 5:45pm CDT: A brand new MAJOR eruption is happening. tune into the SpillCam at BP.com . It's black, all you can see is a cable. It started with yet another GUSH plume/tornado.

Oh, dear-- now, we can see that that is a LOT of oil-- and a BLIZZARD of Hydrates..


UPDATE 6:03pm CDT: The current eruption is way, way worse than the several that occured earlier. I think this might be a "Main Event" situation.

UPDATE 6:45pm CDT: An hour after the start of this most recent eruption, and it is still just a wall of oil, methane crystals, and gack.

Our Favorite Disaster Bot is damaged, and needs an oil change and the windshield cleaned. Up it goes.

Oh, fuck... look at all the giant plumes in the water column... wow!:



Cut to black.

UPDATE 7:35pmCDT: Live feed of recent blowout froze-up, requiring a reload of page. All of a sudden-- no more black chaos-- just the current clear-water gusher view. I suspect loop tape, but I have the screen grabs from the entire day, below.

If there is another delay in the "Top-Kill/Junk Shot," you'll know why.

Grab of the last moment as OFDB left site, below. You can dimly make out the lights of the lighting rig, lower center of pic image-- That is the signature of a major event... not some bot churn. Those lights should be illuminating more than a foot radius. (click for BIG):




UPDATE 8:15pm CDT:
Top-Kill Delayed. Imagine my surprise.

UPDATE 11:51pmCDT: Another major eruption. These are not coming from the riser. They are coming in to view from elsewhere, even in the long, high-view shots. Sometimes from behind the ROV. Twenty-four hours of near non-stop SpillCam viewing, and not one look at the BOP.

Grab of the latest (11:51pm) eruption-- that is the Floodlighting Rig... Occluded:


I am sorry. This is not simple Bot Fan churn. This one came out of the riser end, along with an all-around Ker-BOOM action. Everything went up. One noticed the pipe-end exploding, but then there was gack flying everywhere, all around, too. Impact-directional-- not" going with the flow."

More as I can provide.

I think this stands on its own. I am sure there is more out there to post, and I'll do my best to get it here. A series of bad things happened on Sunday, May 23, 2010 at the Deepwater Horizon disaster site.

If this is becoming sort of routine to clear the RITT (Sippy Straw) , then I wonder why the hell they are continuing with something that isn't working? Send something better down every damned day, until you get the fucker stopped and filtered. Get your Company Einsteins working. New fix and tweak and peak every day... not every other fucking week, BP. Your faulty machineery is showing signs of compromise. Do more, faster.

 

 

Striking New NASA Image of Gulf Spill Moving Towards Atlantic Ocean

2010-05-19-nasagulfofmexicooilslickcolumn
 

A striking new image released by NASA today shows a massive column of oil extending out Southeast towards the open ocean. This column has not been visible in any satellite photos taken so far and will change the estimated extent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Huge NASA Science Balloon Crashes in Australian Outback


NASA Space Balloon Launch a Flop Play Video FOX News  – NASA Space Balloon Launch a Flop
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...Suspicious!

This story was updated at 10:51 a.m. EDT.

A huge NASA balloon loaded with a telescope painstakingly built to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye crashed in the Australian outback Thursday, destroying the astronomy experiment and just missing nearby onlookers, according to Australian media reports.

In dramatic video released by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC),  the giant 400-foot (121-meter) balloon is seen just beginning to lift its payload, then the telescope gondola appears to unexpectedly come loose from its carriage. The telescopes crash through a fence and overturn a nearby parked sport utility vehicle before finally stopping.

The attempted balloon telescope launch took place at the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre, near the town of Alice Springs, in the northern territory of Australia.

The wayward balloon overturned one car, but missed another parked nearby with local Alice Springs couple Stan and Betty Davies, who had come to watch the launch, still inside.

"We were sitting in our car and preparing to move it out of the way and we were actually about a foot of being wiped out," ABC quoted Davies as saying.

The balloon was carrying the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT), a gamma-ray telescope built by astronomer Steven Boggs and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, California to study astrophysical sources in space.

"Today was a terrible day for a lot of people," wrote Eric Bellm, a graduate astronomy student at the UC Berkeley, in a blog chronicling the science mission.  "For the NCT team, we've poured our hearts into this instrument for years.  It was an almost unfathomable shock to find ourselves cleaning up the wreckage of our gondola rather than watching it lift off towards space."

The unmanned research balloon was built by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas and expected to haul its two-telescope payload up to an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,576 meters). That's about 23 miles (37 km), though smaller home-built balloons have been built to reach high altitudes as well. 

In his account of the crash, Bellm said an investigation into the balloon's launch failure will be performed, though a first glance found that at least some of the components for the Nuclear Compton Telescope appear to have survived relatively intact. The science team has cleaned up the wreckage and returned it to a staging hangar, he added.

Ravi Sood, director of the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre and a professor at Australia's University of New South Wales, said no one was hurt in the incident, but sometimes balloon launches can go awry.

"Ballooning, that's the way it happens on occasions but it is very, very disappointing. Gut-wrenching actually," he told ABC.

The failed balloon launch in Australia marked NASA's second balloon science campaign this month at the remote site. On April 15, NASA's balloon science program launched Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment (TIGRE), a gamma-ray telescope, to search the galactic center of the sky for emissions from radioactive materials, NASA officials said.

That launch, which sent the telescope and its balloon to an altitude of 127,000 feet (38,709 meters), went according to plan, the space agency said.

The balloon's next payload to fly, an X-ray telescope called HERO aimed at mapping the galactic center for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, was targeted for May, Australian officials added.

Original Story: Huge NASA Science Balloon Crashes in Australian Outbac

 

Updated April 27, 2010

Has Noah's Ark Been Found on Turkish Mountaintop?

FOXNews.com

The remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered 13,000 feet up a Turkish mountain -- according to a sensational claim by evangelical explorers.

A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say wooden remains they have discovered on Mount Ararat

in eastern Turkey are the remains of Noah's Ark. 

The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories. 

Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team that made the discovery, said: "It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it." 

There have been several reported discoveries of the remains of Noah's Ark over the years, most notably a find by archaeologist Ron Wyatt in 1987. At the time, the Turkish government

officially declared a national park around his find, a boat-shaped object stretched across the mountains of Ararat.

Nevertheless, the evangelical ministry remains convinced that the current find is in fact more likely to be the actual artifact, calling upon Dutch Ark researcher Gerrit Aalten to verify its legitimacy. 

“The significance of this find is that for the first time in history the discovery of Noah’s Ark is well documented and revealed to the worldwide community,” Aalten said at a press conference announcing the find. Citing the many details that match historical accounts of the Ark, he believes it to be a legitimate archaeological discovery.

“There’s a tremendous amount of solid evidence that the structure found on Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey is the legendary Ark of Noah,” said Aalten.

Representatives of Noah's Ark Ministries said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000 feet in the vicinity, Yeung said.

During the press conference, team member Panda Lee described visiting the site. “In October 2008, I climbed the mountain with the Turkish team. At an elevation of more than 4,000 meters, I saw a structure built with plank-like timber. Each plank was about 8 inches wide. I could see tenons, proof of ancient construction predating the use of metal nails."

We walked about 100 meters to another site. I could see broken wood fragments embedded in a glacier, and some 20 meters long. I surveyed the landscape and found that the wooden structure was permanently covered by ice and volcanic rocks."

Local Turkish officials will ask the central government in Ankara to apply for UNESCO World Heritage status so the site can be protected while a major archaeological dig is conducted.

The biblical story says that God decided to flood the Earth after seeing how corrupt it was. He then told Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every animal species.

After the flood waters

receded, the Bible says, the ark came to rest on a mountain. Many believe that Mount Ararat, the highest point in the region, is where the ark and her inhabitants ran aground.

 


Google discloses censorship demands to users

New tool shows which governments pressured the company for user data

 SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc.

By Michael Liedtke
updated 7:39 p.m. ET, Tues., April 20, 2010

Google has set up a new tool to show where it's facing the most government pressure to censor material and turn over personal information about its users.

The country-by-country breakdown released Tuesday on Google's Web site marks the first time that the Internet search leader has provided such a detailed look at the censorship and data requests that it gets from regulators, courts and other government agencies. The figures, for the roughly 100 countries in which it operates, cover the final half of last year and will be updated every six months.    

Google posted the numbers nearly a month after it began redirecting search requests to its China-based service. Those requests are now handled in Hong Kong rather than mainland China so Google wouldn't have to obey the country's Internet censorship laws. Google said details about the censorship demands it got while in mainland China still aren't being shared because the information is classified as a state secret.

In other countries, Google is making more extensive disclosures about censorship demands or other government requests to edit its search results. Google is also including demands to remove material from its other services, including the YouTube video site, although it is excluding removal requests related to allegations of copyright infringement, a recurring problem for YouTube.

Google is showing how often it honored those requests and spelling out which of its services were targeted.

In the United States, for instance, it received 123 requests to remove material from its services during the last half of 2009 and complied with 80 percent of them. Reasons include violations of Google's own policies regarding extreme violence, profanity and hate speech. More than 40 of those requests included a court order, Google said.

Google is providing a more limited snapshot of government requests for its users' personal information. The numbers are confined primarily to demands made as part of criminal cases, leaving out civil matters such as divorces. And Google isn't revealing how often it cooperated with those data demands.

The disclosure comes as more regulators and consumers watchdogs around the world are complaining that the company doesn't take people's privacy seriously enough. Google maintains that its users' privacy is one of the company's highest priorities. The company also notes that, in one instance, it has gone to court to prevent the U.S. Justice Department from getting broad lists of people's search requests.

Brazil's government peppered Google with the most requests during the six-month period covered. The company says that's largely because it operates a social network called Orkut. That service has attracted millions of users in Brazil and generates more taunting, derogatory language and other inflammatory material likely to trigger government requests and violate its own standards.

Google received 3,663 requests for user data and 291 requests to remove material from Brazil. Nearly 200 of the removal requests involved Orkut.

Other countries logging at least 1,000 requests for user data were the United States (3,580), United Kingdom (1,166) and India (1,061).

After Brazil, the most requests to edit material came from Germany, at 188. The country has laws that restrict the online display of content connected to the Nazi regime. India was next with 142 requests mostly tied to Orkut, followed by the United States, where the demands focused on YouTube.

Attack on Google said to hit password system

New details surface about the December raid that compromised security



By John Markoff
updated 10:19 p.m. ET, Mon., April 19, 2010

Ever since Google disclosed in January that Internet intruders had stolen information from its computers, the exact nature and extent of the theft has been a closely guarded company secret. But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company’s Web services, including e-mail and business applications.

The program, code named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, was attacked in a lightning raid taking less than two days last December, the person said. Described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the software is intended to enable users and employees to sign in with their password just once to operate a range of services.

The intruders do not appear to have stolen passwords of Gmail users, and the company quickly started making significant changes to the security of its networks after the intrusions. But the theft leaves open the possibility, however faint, that the intruders may find weaknesses that Google might not even be aware of, independent computer experts said.

The new details seem likely to increase the debate about the security and privacy of vast computing systems such as Google’s that now centralize the personal information of millions of individuals and businesses. Because vast amounts of digital information are stored in one place, popularly referred to as “cloud” computing, a single breach can lead to disastrous losses.

‘Poisoned’ Web site
The theft began with an instant message sent to a Google employee in China who was using Microsoft’s Messenger program, according to the person with knowledge of the internal inquiry, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

By clicking on a link and connecting to a “poisoned” Web site, the employee inadvertently permitted the intruders to gain access to his (or her) personal computer and then to the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Ultimately, the intruders were able to gain control of a software repository used by the development team.

The details surrounding the theft of the software have been a closely guarded secret by the company. Google first publicly disclosed the theft in a Jan. 12 posting on the company’s Web site, which stated that the company was changing its policy toward China in the wake of the theft of unidentified “intellectual property” and the apparent compromise of the e-mail accounts of two human rights advocates in China.

The accusations became a significant source of tension between the United States and China, leading Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to urge China to conduct a “transparent” inquiry into the attack. In March, after difficult discussions with the Chinese government, Google said it would move its mainland Chinese-language Web site and begin rerouting search queries to its Hong Kong-based site.

Company executives on Monday declined to comment about the new details of the case, saying they had dealt with the security issues raised by the theft of the company’s intellectual property in their initial statement in January.

Google executives have also said privately that the company had been far more transparent about the intrusions than any of the more than two dozen other companies that were compromised, the vast majority of which have not acknowledged the attacks.

Gaia system still in use
Google continues to use the Gaia system, now known as Single Sign-On. Hours after announcing the intrusions, Google said it would activate a new layer of encryption for Gmail service. The company also tightened the security of its data centers and further secured the communications links between its services and the computers of its users.

Several technical experts said that because Google had quickly learned of the theft of the software, it was unclear what the consequences of the theft had been. One of the most alarming possibilities is that the attackers might have intended to insert a Trojan horse — a secret back door — into the Gaia program and install it in dozens of Google’s global data centers to establish clandestine entry points. But the independent security specialists emphasized that such an undertaking would have been remarkably difficult, particularly because Google’s security specialists had been alerted to the theft of the program.

 

 

Fears that war between Israel and Hizbollah is 'imminent'



King Abdullah of Jordan has warned the US that there were fears in Lebanon that a war between Israel and Hizbollah was “imminent” amid high tensions in the region.

 
Jordan's King Abdullah II in Washington.
Jordan's King Abdullah II in Washington. Photo: EPA/Mike Theiler

The king, in Washington for President Barack Obama's nuclear summit, gave his warning after Israel claimed that Syria had handed over Scud missiles in its armoury to the Lebanon-based Hizbollah.

His comments, which were made to private meeting of the US Congressional Friends of Jordan caucus were said to be "sobering".

Syria yesterday denied the allegation that it has provided Hizbollah with long-range Scud missiles, which would allowing them to target Israel's cities. The country's foreign ministry said the claims would be used as a pretext by Israel to raise tension prior to a possible attack on Hizbollah.

"For some time now, Israel has been running a campaign claiming that Syria has been supplying Hizbollah with Scud missiles in Lebanon ," a foreign ministry statement released yesterday said.

" Syria strongly denies these allegations which are an attempt by Israel to raise tensions in the region."

However, the statement did not appear to rule out an alternative possibility being raised by defence sources, that Damascus has allowed Hizbollah control of or access to Scud missiles still currently in Syria .

Similar sources say that Syria has trained Hizbollah operatives on advanced anti-aircraft batteries, possibly a more useful tool since Hizbollah – and the Lebanese army - fears the overwhelming air superiority enjoyed by Israeli jets.

The Obama administration voiced alarm, though one source said it was still not certain whether the transfer had yet physically taken place.

"We are obviously increasingly concerned about the sophisticated weaponry that is allegedly being transferred," said Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman. "We have expressed our concerns to those governments and believe that steps should be taken to reduce any risk and any danger."

Allegations of the Scud transfer have continued to cause unease at a time when many other political issues in the Middle East are at an impasse.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said that the alleged transfer would alter the strategic balance of power between Hizbollah and Israel, which fought a short but bloody war in 2006.

An aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said that the pace of Hizbollah's re-armament and Syria's role in it was causing growing alarm in the Jewish state.

"We are very conscious of the build-up of Hizbollah's military machine," the aide said. "We have unfortunately seen new types and greater quality of missiles. The Syrian role in passing those weapons to Hizbollah is ongoing and is dangerous."

Al-Rai, the Kuwaiti newspaper which first raised the allegations, said a Hizbollah source had confirmed it had access to Scuds but that they were old and unusable. The source said the issue was being blown out of proportion by Israel in order to create a media frenzy.

The newspaper did, however, link the claims to Hizbollah's threat that if Lebanese infrastructure, such as Beirut Airport , came under attack in the event of conflict, Israel would be hit in turn, including towns at the edge of the range of Hizbollah's known missile arsenal.

What is undisputed is that all sides are raising the stakes in the absence of negotiations between Israel and either Palestinian factions or Syria .

The Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, has balanced overtures to Washington with reassurances that his alliances with both Hizbollah and Iran remain strong.

He held a high-profile meeting in Damascus with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and the Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in February.

Officials in Syria have warned that it would join in any war involving Israel , Lebanon and Hizbollah.

Apr 10, 10:19 AM (ET)

By VICTORIA BURAVCHENKO and MONIKA SCISLOWSKA

 

(AP) In this Friday, Sept. 7, 2007 file photo, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, leader of the lawmakers of...
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SMOLENSK, Russia (AP) - Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland's political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Although initial signs pointed to an accident with no indication of foul play, the death of a Polish president and much of the Polish state and defense establishment in Russia en route to commemorating one of the saddest events in Poland's long, complicated history with Russia, was laden with tragic irony.

(AP) This image from Polish Television's TVP via APTN shows a firefighter walking near some of the...
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Reflecting the grave sensibilities of the crash to relations between the two countries, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally assumed charge of the investigation. He was due in Smolensk later Saturday, where he would meet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was flying in from Warsaw.

"This is unbelievable - this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on TVN24 television.

It is "a cursed place, horrible symbolism," he said. "It's hard to believe. You get chills down your spine."

Andrei Yevseyenkov, spokesman for the Smolensk regional government, said Russian dispatchers asked the crew to divert from the military airport in North Smolensk and land instead in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, or in Moscow because of the fog.

While traffic controllers generally have the final word in whether it is safe for a plane to land, they can and do leave it to the pilots' discretion.

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Air Force Gen. Alexander Alyoshin confirmed that the pilot disregarded instructions to fly to another airfield.

"But they continued landing, and it ended, unfortunately, with a tragedy," the Interfax news agency quoted Alyoshin as saying. He added that the pilot makes the final decision about whether to land.

Russia's Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 97 dead. His ministry said 88 of whom were part of the Polish state delegation. Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up for the roughly 1 1/2-hour flight from Warsaw's main airport.

Some of the people on board were relatives of those slain in the Katyn massacre. Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers' strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent member.

"This is a great tragedy, a great shock to us all," former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said.

(AP) This image from Polish Television's TVP via APTN shows debris at the crash site where Polish...
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The deaths were not expected to directly affect the functioning of Polish government: Poland's president is commander in chief of its armed forces but the position's domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. Most top government ministers were not aboard the plane.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s in the past four decades, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service, largely because the planes do not meet international noise restrictions and use too much fuel.

The aircraft was the workhorse of East Bloc civil aviation in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the crashes have been attributed to the chaos that ensued after the breakup of the Soviet Unio

Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said they lacked the funds.

The presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, the general director of the Aviakor aviation maintenance plant in Samara, Russia told Rossiya-24. The plant repaired the plane's three engines, retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment and updated the interior, Alexei Gusev said. He said there could be no doubts that the plane was flightworthy.

(AP) This image from Polish Television's TVP via APTN shows a firefighter walking near some of the...
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The plane tilted to the left before crashing, eyewitness Slawomir Sliwinski told state news channel Rossiya-24. He said there were two loud explosions when the aircraft hit the ground.

Rossiya-24 showed footage from the crash site, with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded with fog. A tail fin with the red and white national colors of Poland stuck up from the debris.

Polish-Russian relations had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish officers.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders but Putin's decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest near Katyn was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Kaczynski wasn't invited to that event. Putin, as prime minister, had invited his Polish counterpart, Tusk.

Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev both called Tusk to express their condolences and they promised to work closely with Poland in investigating the crash. Tusk said they had been the first to offer condolences.

(AP) This image from Polish Television's TVP via APTN shows a debris at the crash site where Polish...
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"On this difficult day the people of Russia stand with the Polish people," Medvedev said, according to the Kremlin press service.

Putin told Tusk that he would keep him fully briefed on the investigation, his spokesman said.

Rossiya-24 showed hundreds of people around the Katyn monument, many holding Polish flags, some weeping.

Poland's parliament speaker, the acting president, declared a week of national mourning. Tusk called for two minutes of silence at noon (1000GMT) Sunday.

"The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy," he said.

In Warsaw, Tusk also called an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet and the national flag was lowered to half-staff at the presidential palace, where several thousand people gathered to lay flowers and light candles. Black ribbons appeared in some windows in the capital.

Kaczynski, 60, was the twin brother of Poland's opposition leader, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Kaczynski's wife, Maria, was an economist. They had a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters.

Lech Kaczynski became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year's presidential vote.

The nationalist conservative had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk's governing Civic Platform party.

The constitution says the parliament speaker announce early elections within 14 days of the president's death. The vote must be held within another 60 days.

Poland, a nation of 38 million people, is by far the largest of the 10 formerly communist countries that have joined the European Union in recent years.

Last year, Poland was the only EU nation to avoid recession and posted economic growth of 1.7 percent.

It has become a firm U.S. ally in the region since the fall of communism - a stance that crosses party lines.

The country sent troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and recently boosted its contingent in Afghanistan to some 2,600 soldiers.

U.S. Patriot missiles are expected to be deployed in Poland this year. That was a Polish condition for a 2008 deal - backed by both Kaczynski and Tusk - to host long-range missile defense interceptors.

The deal, which was struck by the Bush administration, angered Russia and was later reconfigured under President Barack Obama's administration.

Under the Obama plan, Poland would host a different type of missile defense interceptors as part of a more mobile system and at a later date, probably not until 2018.

Kaczynski is the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

In the village of Gorzno, in northern Poland, the streets were largely empty as people stayed home to watch television.

"It is very symbolic that they were flying to pay homage to so many murdered Poles," said resident Waleria Gess, 73.

"I worry because so many clever and decent people were killed," said high school student Pawel Kwas, 17. "I am afraid we may have problems in the future to find equally talented politicians."

---__

Scislowska reported from Warsaw. Associated Press writers Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Deborah Seward in Paris, John Daniszewski in Centerville, Ohio, and Naomi Koppel in London contributed to this report.

 

Moscow Russia subway bombing causes BART and DC Metro alerts


The suicide bombing in Moscow that killed 38 people during the morning rush hour and was allegedly done by female suicide bombers representing "a terrorist group from the North Caucasus region" according to Alexander Bortnikov of the russian Federal Security Service as reported by CNN.

The suicide bombing in Moscow has put the industrialized World on high alert; in America, BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System that serves The San Francisco Bay Area, and the DC Metro subway system that serves the Washington DC region are the focus of heightened security efforts.

Washington DC Metro police are conducting random inspections of stations and rail yards and BART Spokesperson Linton Johnson explained that BART police have taken similar alert actions. "BART has long been a part of Bay Area Counter-terrorism efforts", Johnson said this morning. Johnson says that BART riders don't have to worry about their safety. Indeed, BART has maintained a campaign of making sure riders also served as the "eyes and ears" of the system. "We have 3,000 employees and 300,000 riders, so the extra eyes and ears help us," Johnson said.

 

 

Obama Signs Health Care Bill: Healthcare Reform Bill Summary [Video] – Republicans Repeal Healthcare Bill!

March 23, 2010 11:25 PM EDT

views: 589 | comments: 4

Obama Signs Health Care Bill: Healthcare Reform Bill Summary [Video] – Republicans Repeal Healthcare Bill!

President Obama made history on Tuesday, as he signed the health care reform into law. This was most certainly a big win for most Democrats, and Obama as he made his primary objective of his presidency come to life. Obama was quoted as saying, "I'm signing this reform bill into law on behalf of my mother, who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days."

Today marked the end of a year-long legislative battle, but it is still far from being completely over. Not one Republican supported the actual bill, and there are already big plans underway to repeal the controversal law, with an agenda to deem it unconstitutional. Attorney generals from 13 different states, 12 of which are Republican, have already filed lawsuits. They are claiming that the absurd amounts it will cost their individual states violates the Constitution. Senator John McCain posed another valid concern, claiming that Democrats have potentially lost their chances of bipartisan support. Come election time in November, they may face some serious trouble.

This monsterous $940 billion plan is expected to provide health coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.

U.S. News

A national ID card in 2010?

A new attempt at immigration reform may require a biometric ID card for all working Americans. Privacy advocates aren't pleased

Fingerprint national ID

Would it be an invasion of privacy to make all Americans carry an ID, complete with their fingerprints? Photo: Corbis

Best Opinion:  Fox News, IT Business Edge, Wash. Examiner, CNN

National identification cards, long feared by privacy advocates, may soon become mandatory for American workers. In a bipartisan effort to curb the hiring of illegal immigrants, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have proposed legislation that, if passed, will require all working Americans to carry biometric ID cards containing fingerprint records and other personal information. Sen. Schumer calls the measure "the nub of solving the immigration dilemma." But Chris Calabrese, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, warns the cards would be a "massive invasion" of privacy. Are national ID cards the solution to our immigration woes — or an unacceptable intrusion into our lives? (Watch Ron Paul chime in on the national ID card debate)

 

Telepathic computer can read your mind

The Daily Telegraph

2010-03-12

The system is able to decipher thought patterns and tell what people are thinking simply by scanning the brain.

The breakthrough is a step forward because it can delve into people's memories and differentiate between different recollections.

The breakthrough follows research last year by the same team who used the same technique to track a person's movements around a computer-simulated room.

The study published online in Current Biology focussed on the hippocampus, an area at the centre of the brain that plays a crucial role in short term memory.

A telepathy machine raises the prospect of a lie detector tests and could even lead to manipulations of memories such as in the film the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MInd.

In their latest experiment the researchers showed 10 volunteers three seven second films featuring different women carrying out an everyday task in a typical urban street such as posting a letter or drinking coffee from a paper cup.

The volunteers were asked to memorise what they saw and then recall each one in turn whilst inside an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner which records brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow within the brain.

The computer algorithm then studied the electrical patterns and could tell which film the volunteer was recalling with an accuracy of about 50 per cent - which was well above chance.

Prof Eleanor Maguire, of University College London, said: "In our previous experiment we were looking at basic memories, at someone's location in an environment.

"What is more interesting is to look at 'episodic' memories – the complex, everyday memories that include much more information on where we are, what we are doing and how we feel.

"We've been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory — to look at actual memory traces. We found our memories are definitely represented in the hippocampus.

"Now that we've seen where they are, we have an opportunity to understand how memories are stored and how they may change through time."

The researchers used the same scanning technique in their earlier study to work out the locations of four men as they navigated their way around a virtual reality room.

The pattern of brain activity was different for each of the four points they visited - allowing the team to work out where the men were.

 

 

Cybersecurity bill to give president new emergency powers

By Tony Romm - 02/26/10 02:30 PM ET

The president would have the power to safeguard essential federal and private Web resources under draft Senate cybersecurity legislation.

According to an aide familiar with the proposal, the bill includes a mandate for federal agencies to prepare emergency response plans in the event of a massive, nationwide cyberattack.

The president would then have the ability to initiate those network contingency plans to ensure key federal or private services did not go offline during a cyberattack of unprecedented scope, the aide said.

Ultimately, the legislation is chiefly the brainchild of Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, respectively. Both lawmakers have long clamored for a federal cybersecurity bill, charging that current measures — including the legislation passed by the House last year — are too piecemeal to protect the country's Web infrastructure.

Their renewed focus arrives on the heels of two, high-profile cyberattacks last month: A strike on Google, believed to have originated in China, and a separate, more disjointed attack that affected thousands of businesses worldwide.

Rockefeller and Snowe's forthcoming bill would establish a host of heretofore absent cybersecurity prevention and response measures, an aide close to the process said. The bill will "significantly [raise] the profile of cybersecurity within the federal government," while incentivizing private companies to do the same, according to the aide.

Additionally, it will "promote public awareness" of Internet security issues, while outlining key protections of Americans' civil liberties on the Web, the aide continued.

Privacy groups are nonetheless likely to take some umbrage at Rockefeller and Snowe's latest effort, an early draft of which leaked late last year.

When early reports predicted the cybersecurity measure would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency," online privacy groups said they felt that would endow the White House with overly ambiguous and far-reaching powers to regulate the Internet.

The bill will still contain most of those powers, and a "vast majority" of its other components "remain unchanged," an aide with knowledge of the legislation told The Hill. But both the aide and a handful of tech insiders who support the bill have nonetheless tried to dampen skeptics' concerns, reminding them the president already has vast — albeit lesser-known — powers to regulate the Internet during emergencies.

It is unclear when Rockefeller and Snowe will finish their legislation. And the ongoing debate over healthcare reform, financial regulatory reform, jobs bills and education fixes could postpone action on the floor for many months.

Both lawmakers heavily emphasized the need for such a bill during a Senate Commerce Committee cybersecurity hearing on Wednesday.

"Too much is at stake for us to pretend that today’s outdated cybersecurity policies are up to the task of protecting our nation and economic infrastructure," Rockefeller said. "We have to do better and that means it will take a level of coordination and sophistication to outmatch our adversaries and minimize this enormous threat."

 

Anniversary of Iran Revolution: News updates

February 11, 2010 12:10 p.m. EST
Iranian security forces guard the tens of thousands of Iranians who listened to President Ahmadinejad speak.

 Giant Squid Caught Off OC Coast

Humboldt jumbo squid show up near Newport Beach.

Updated: Monday, 01 Feb 2010, 4:02 PM PST
Published : Sunday, 31 Jan 2010, 8:17 PM PST

Posted by: Scott Coppersmith / myFOXla.com

Humboldt squid streamed into Orange County waters in large numbers this weekend... and anglers have been wrestling them into boats off Newport Beach.

The giant squid... some of them clocking in at up to 60 pounds... started showing up on Friday.

Anglers aboard the Western Pride out of Balboa Peninsula caught 225 of them. The largest weighed 60 pounds.

Another 300 were caught Saturday night.

Captains at Davey's Locker and Newport Landing were sending out their public sportsfishing boats thanks to the mysterious appearance of the squid, but said no catches were guaranteed.

Wal-Mart shares up as Sam's Club to cut 11,000-plus jobs

By Andria Cheng, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Wal-Mart shares were up slightly in premarket trading on Monday after the world's largest retailer said it plans to cut more than 11,000 jobs at its Sam's Club wholesale club chain.

Wal-Mart shares rose 1% to $53.45 in pre-market trading. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company's /quotes/comstock/13*!wmt/quotes/nls/wmt (WMT 52.88, -0.06, -0.11%) shares have risen 9.5% in the past year, lagging the 49% jump of the S&P Retail Index /quotes/comstock/10u!i:rlx (RLX 395.07, -0.57, -0.14%) .

Reuters

In a letter to employees Sunday, Sam's Club's President and Chief Executive Brian Cornell said 10,000 product demo jobs, most of which are part-time, will be cut. The wholesale club chain, which charges membership fees, said it's outsourcing its in-club product sampling and demonstration to a third-party marketing company, Shopper Events, in a new program titled Tastes and Tips.

Cornell said Sam's Club also plans to cut its New Business Membership Representative positions, about two per club. That would equal to more than 1,000 positions as Sam's Club had 602 clubs as of Jan. 31 2009. Sam's Club earlier this month already said it would cut about 1,500 jobs with its plans to shut 10 underperforming Sam's Club locations. The company as a whole employs more than 2 million employees.

Risk Aversion Is Back On The Rise

Despite a return to normality with currencies being driven by rates ealrier this year, market sentiment has reversed again - leaving risk - not rates - back in the driving seat.

In the nine months ended Oct. 31, Sam's Club's operating profit declined 0.1% while Walmart U.S. rose 5.1%. The company's namesake chain in the U.S. has benefited from budget-conscious shoppers seeking bargains in the recession, but Sam's Club was hurt by deflation in food and other commodity costs and competition from its top rival Costco Wholesale Corp. /quotes/comstock/15*!cost/quotes/nls/cost (COST 57.44, +0.37, +0.65%) , analysts said.

The job cuts "showed that the formerly slow-to-move retailer was intent on maximizing profitability in each of its three major units," said Craig Johnson of consulting firm Customer Growth Partners, estimating the job cuts are the largest downsizing in the retailer's history. "Shopper Events will sharply improve the effectiveness of Sam's in-store sampling."

He said Sam's Club has underperformed both Walmart U.S. and Walmart International, in terms of both sales growth and lagging operating profitability. Sam's Club's 3.5% operating margin is barely half the 6.6% margin of the rest of the company, he said.

Andria Cheng is a MarketWatch reporter based in New York 


Former President Clinton cites fund-raising plan

  •        
FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2006, file photo, then-President George W. Bush is AP – FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2006, file photo, then-President George W. Bush is greeted by former President …

WASHINGTON – Former President Bill Clinton said Friday he'll try to pattern a disaster assistance fund for earthquake-stricken Haiti along the same lines he and former President George H.W. Bush pursued succcessfully for victims of the Asian tsunami.

"If you want to just give $10, you can make a huge difference because we've got another week or so of the work you see on television," Clinton said in a nationally broadcast interview.

A U.N. special envoy to Haiti, Clinton was tapped by President Barack Obama Wednesday to work with former President George W. Bush, the son of George H .W. Bush, on a massive fund-raising effort for victims of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

Appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," Clinton said, "I expect we'll do something like the first President Bush and I did after the tsunami. Our goal is to raise as much money as possible and put it into the most constructive channels possible." He said he and Bush "want everybody to get involved in this."

On NBC's "Today" show, Clinton called the next four or five days crucial, saying that rescuers will be "pulling people out of the rubble who are alive. While that gets done, we've got to move the food, the water and the medical supplies in."

Clinton also said that before the quake, Haiti was working to adopt an economic plan and modernize, and said that work could get back on track after the crisis.

"Because they started from a low base, we can reconstitute where they are quicker than everyone thinks," the former president said. "I just do not agree that they've been set back 50 years."

"If we go back to work we'll be all right," Clinton added. "But first we have to get through the time that's disastrous now because we don't have enough food, water medical supplies and shelter. ... Get us through the next two weeks. ... I think you'll be amazed how much good we can do, but I don't want to minimize how awful it is now. Let's get through this first."

Clinton rejected the notion some are suggesting that there's no need to donate money to the Haiti disaster relief because U.S. tax money is already going to the effort.

"That's just not true. We give a modest amount of aid to Haiti every year, but the United States and other countries that have committed assistance have done it after Haiti, keep in mind, year before last had four hurricanes that devastated the country," he said on CBS's "The Early Show."

"We've got to help them get through this," he said. "I would just like to ask the Americans who hear that message that they don't need any help: How would you feel if other countries said that to you and you didn't know anybody with water, anybody with food, anybody with a roof over their head and people were still looking for their loved ones buried under rocks."

 

Possible peacekeeping role for US troops in Haiti

Published: Friday January 15, 2010

The US relief mission in Haiti remains focused on saving lives but American troops could be called on to help keep order if security deteriorates, officials said.

With more than 5,000 US ground troops bound for Haiti this week as part of a major relief effort after Tuesday's devastating earthquake, US and international officials were watching closely for signs of potential rioting or unrest.

"At this time we're not seeing any security concerns," a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

"The focus of the US troops on the ground will be providing humanitarian assistance and relieving the suffering of the Haitian people."

But he added: "Soldiers and Marines are trained to conduct security operations if they need to."

Haiti has no army, and its police forces have all but collapsed in the aftermath of the country's worst earthquake in over a century.

Security has fallen almost entirely to the UN peacekeeping mission, whose force of 7,060 troops and 2,091 police have been deployed since 2004 to help stabilize the impoverished Caribbean nation of nine million.

Amid looting and scenes of chaos, some rescue crews in the Haitian capital said they faced dangerous conditions that forced them to stop work at nightfall.

"Our biggest problem is insecurity. Yesterday they tried to hijack some of our trucks. Today we were barely able to work in some places because of that," said Delfin Antonio Rodriguez, civil defense chief and rescue commander for the Dominican Republic, whose teams worked to rescue victims trapped under rubble in Port-au-Prince.

Mounting tensions in the street could complicate international plans to pour in aid and assistance but US officials said they were not alarmed over the state of security at the moment.

The Pentagon said a 3,500-strong brigade from the 82nd Airborne ordered to deploy to Haiti -- with an advance corps of 100 arriving late Thursday -- would be charged in part with maintaining a "safe environment" for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

More than 2,000 Marines heading to Haiti over the weekend also could be asked to carry out a similar role, officials said.

Ensuring safe conditions was crucial for a steady flow of international aid and urgent medical care, the US State Department said.

"Obviously, in those situations, one of the keys is maintaining law and order," spokesman PJ Crowley said. "So far it's been pretty good."

He said US efforts were designed "not only to provide life-saving support to the Haitian people, but to rebuild the capacity of the Haitian government."

US officials are anxious to avoid a breakdown in order that could trigger a mass exodus from the impoverished country as in years past, with desperate Haitians on rickety boats trying to flee to US soil.

But diplomats and military officers were cautious in discussing the sensitive issue, stressing that Americans were not out to assert control in the Caribbean nation and would work to support the Haitian authorities and the UN peacekeepers.

"I'm confident that this government (in Haiti) is not looking for the US to take over," said State Department counselor Cheryl Mills.

"They are looking for a partner, and we will be their partner and provide the kind of leadership that is necessary... but we have no intention of supplanting the leadership of Haiti," she said.

In natural disasters elsewhere, armed US combat troops have provided security for engineers or other expert teams.

But US officers said their military sometimes has to tread lightly to avoid antagonizing the population they are trying to help.

Mindful that a heavy military presence could backfire, some US Marines helping with humanitarian efforts in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami operated without weapons, helmets or flak jackets.

General Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, said Wednesday that the situation in Haiti was "calm" and that it was too early to speculate about possible security operations.

The general praised the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), and said the peacekeeping force had performed a "significant job in sustaining and maintaining stability and security within the country."

"So we will work with MINUSTAH and get assessments and figure out what the security situation is and then decide what to do from there," he said.

 

Obama, Bush, Clinton stand 'united' for Haiti

   So, now we will take over the country to keep an eye out on Cuba & Venezula. Believe me, this was a HARRP earthquake!!!

    Obama, Bush, Clinton stand 'united' for Haiti AFP – From L: Former US President George W. Bush and Bill Clinton stand as US President Barack Obama speaks …

    WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Saturday brought together his White House predecessors, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, for a joint appeal for victims of Haiti's devastating earthquake.

    "By coming together in this way, these two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and to the people of the world," Obama said in the Rose Garden, flanked by the two former leaders.

    "In these difficult hours, America stands united. We stand united with the people of Haiti who have shown such incredible resilience, and we will help them to recover and to rebuild."

    The United States was launching "one of the largest relief efforts in our history" to bring aid to Haiti following Tuesday's devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the heart of the poorest nation in the Americas.

    Bush, who congratulated Obama for his "swift and timely response to the disaster," said he was pleased to work with Clinton "to mobilize the compassion of the American people."

    The challenges in Haiti "are immense, but there's a lot of devoted people leading the relief effort," he said.

    "The most effective way for Americans to help the people of Haiti is to contribute money. That money will go to organizations on the ground who will be able to effectively spend it.

    "I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water. Just send your cash," added Bush.

    Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, said the priority for now to ship food, medicine and water to Haiti.

    "But when we start the rebuilding effort... we want there to be a place where people can know their money will be well spent, where we will ensure the ongoing integrity of the process. And we want to stay with this over the long run," he said.

    Obama and the ex-presidents directed people to the website www.clintonbushhaitifund.org to make donations. 

     

    Haiti quake survivors face 2nd night in streets

    PM fears death toll above 100,000; food, water needed, aid worker says

    Image: People search for survivors under the rubble
    Ricardo Arduengo / AP
    People search for survivors under the rubble of a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday. "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,'' Haiti's president said.
    Video
      Haiti brought to its knees
    Jan. 13: A nation that once failed to thrive is now struggling just to survive. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    Nightly News

      Your tweets about the Haiti quake

    1. Rebecca_McClainRebecca_McClain @PreviouslyOwned Thanks for doing your part to help the people in Haiti.
    2. dkdanielsondkdanielson @datafordonkeys LOL.And protesting us giving aid to Haiti? http://ow.ly/WfO8
    3. LuizLBLuizLB Do Jerusalem Post: Ban Ki-moon: 16 UN personnel killed, 150 missing in Haiti http://bit.ly/8n9aYd
    4. luismbellogluismbellog Si quieres ayudar a #HAITI comunícate con @eloybc o con @elissus @lauracsilva. Mañana estaremos recolectando ayuda!!
    5. CATHYALBISACATHYALBISA For Haiti donate to PIH. They gave been there for decades. You can be sure your $ is well used and gets to the people http://bit.ly.5KEwXa
    6. vlampomeister95vlampomeister95 RT @keewatinrose: RT @schachin: Quake lasted only 1 min. 2 million ppl lived w/in 1miles of the epicenter. Homes split apart, many lived ...
    7. BluelightLiveBluelightLive RT @LennyKravitz: When 1 person hurts, we all do. It's a global community.Help our brothers&sisters in Haiti.Thx, Lenny http://bit.ly/8lS3ZV
    8. CurlybossCurlyboss RT @THON: RT @RedCross Please use this link to donate to the International Response Fund http://www.redcross.org #Haiti
    9. LaEllaBellaLaEllaBella thanks again to my city... i STLL suggest donating through www.yele.org for Haiti assistance efforts tho.
    10. nickstekovicnickstekovic $1.2 Million in Donations for Haiti, via Text Message http://bit.ly/4TkWlv
    11. 03410341 Help the victims of the recent Haiti earthquake. Click here to donate. Que estúpido y malvado es el ser humano. #YouTube #AmericanRedCross
    12. MrCCProductionsMrCCProductions Just had some good chicken soup from my baby grabbin a red bull headin out da door to push for haiti on daflavaradio.com 9 to 12 tune in.
    13. adampalmamilleradampalmamiller Text "Haiti" to 90999 and $10 will go to the Red Cross from your phone bill. http://www.state.gov/
    14. cyberbonncyberbonn Volunteer in Haiti: http://bit.ly/8xDix8
    15. staceycarusillostaceycarusillo RT @TOMSshoes: Pls RT: http://bit.ly/66nzqu for orders in the nxt 48 hours, TOMS will donate $5 for #Haiti
    16. chantomchantom we need to pray for Haiti:) God bless those people and their families i hope America can help save many
    17. DR_PottzDR_Pottz RT @DrSamuelJohnson: Ghoulish Pastor Pat ROBERTSON does blame Haiti's free'd Slaves for Earth-Quakes & thus makes his own Date with HELL ...
    18. mayahbirdmayahbird My prayers for Haiti...
    19. TimKlutsaritsTimKlutsarits @Kevin_Hogarth Hey Kevin...Haiti is an island...Hayti is in SE Missouri Bootheel. Just saying.
    20. emelismemelism RT @CNN: RT @EliseLabottCNN: State Dept: campaign for texting "Haiti" to 90999 and donate $10 has received close to 83,000 hits; has rai ...


    Slideshow
    Image: Haitian girl weeping
      Devastation
    The Caribbean island is devastated by a 7.0-magnitude quake and dozens of aftershocks.

    more photos

    INTERACTIVE
    Image: Dr. Francois Duvalier, nicknamed "Papa Doc," is elected president for a six-year term.
    History of Haiti
    View key dates of the Caribbean nation.
    NBC, msnbc.com and news services
    updated 8 minutes ago

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Facing a second night on the streets, dazed earthquake survivors wandered past dead bodies Wednesday, crying for loved ones or seeking help. Officials feared the death toll could reach the tens of thousands.

    Death was everywhere in this devastated city of 2 million. Bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of women lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather. Bodies of men were covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets.

    Moreover, untold numbers were still trapped after the magnitude-7 earthquake Tuesday crushed thousands of structures — from schools and shacks to the local U.N. headquarters and the National Palace, where a dome tilted ominously above the manicured grounds.

    Voices cried out from the rubble.

    "Please take me out, I am dying. I have two children with me," a woman told a journalist from under a collapsed kindergarten.

    The first cargo planes with food, water, medical supplies, shelter and sniffer dogs headed to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation as charities on the ground warned they were running out of supplies, food and water.

    At a triage center improvised in a hotel parking lot, people with cuts, broken bones and crushed ribs moaned under tent-like covers fashioned from bloody sheets.

    "I can't take it any more. My back hurts too much," said Alex Georges, 28, who was still waiting for treatment a day after the school he was in collapsed and killed 11 classmates. A body lay a few feet away.

    "There's no water," said doctors' assistant Jimitre Coquillon. "There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die."

    'Most horrific thing'
    "It's the most horrific thing I've ever seen," Bob Poff, a Salvation Army worker in Port-au-Prince, told MSNBC. "We have to get food and water" quickly, he said, in describing conditions that range from stifling heat to numerous aftershocks. "We're trying to stay alive."

    Video
      From Haiti, images 'of courage and despair'
    Jan. 13: Bob Poff, director of disaster services for the Salvation Army, talks about the tragic scenes.

    Nightly News

    Haiti's leaders struggled to comprehend the extent of the catastrophe — the worst earthquake to hit the country in 200 years — even as aftershocks still reverberated.

    "It's incredible," President Jean Preval told CNN. "A lot of houses destroyed, hospitals, schools, personal homes. A lot of people in the street dead. ... I'm still looking to understand the magnitude of the event and how to manage."

    As nations around the world mobilized to send help, Preval said at least thousands of people were probably killed. Haitian Sen. Youri Latortue said 500,000 could be dead, but conceded that nobody really knows.

    "Let's say that it's too early to give a number," Preval said.

    Haitian Red Cross spokesman Pericles Jean-Baptiste said his organization was overwhelmed. "There are too many people who need help ... We lack equipment, we lack body bags," he said Wednesday.

    Video
      Doctors Without Borders works without meds
    Jan. 13: NBC's Robert Bazell reports on efforts to treat the thousands of injured.

    Nightly News

    Doctors Without Borders said its three hospitals in Haiti were unusable and it was treating the injured at temporary shelters.

    "The reality of what we are seeing is severe traumas, head wounds, crushed limbs, severe problems that cannot be dealt with the level of medical care we currently have available with no infrastructure really to support it," said Paul McPhun, an operations manager for the charity.

    Haiti seems especially prone to catastrophe — from natural disasters like hurricanes, storms, floods and mudslides to crushing poverty, unstable governments, poor building standards and low literacy rates.

    Digging with bare hands
    In Petionville, next to the capital, people used sledgehammers and their bare hands to dig through a collapsed commercial center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a U.N. truck.

    Nearby, about 200 survivors, including many children, huddled in a theater parking lot using sheets to rig makeshift tents and shield themselves from the sun.

    Looting began almost as quickly as the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. on Tuesday and people were seen carrying food from collapsed buildings. Many lugged what they could salvage and stacked it around them as they slept in streets and parks.

    People streamed into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage. Many balanced suitcases and other belongings on their heads. Ambulances and U.N. trucks raced in the opposite direction, toward Port-au-Prince.

    About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest.

    The international Red Cross said a third of the country's 9 million people may need emergency aid, a burden that would test any nation and a crushing catastrophe for impoverished Haiti.

     

    Poster of the Solomon Islands Region Earthquake of 03 January 2010 - Magnitude 7.2

    Tectonic Summary

    The Solomon Islands earthquake of January 3, 2010, likely occurred at the boundary between the Pacific and Australian plates, where the Australian plate subducts beneath the Pacific towards the northeast at a rate of approximately 95 mm/yr. The mechanism of the January 3rd earthquake is consistent with its occurrence in relation to underthrusting of the Australia plate beneath the Pacific plate, as part of this subduction process.

    The Solomon Islands arc as a whole experiences a very high level of earthquake activity, and many shocks of magnitude 7 and larger have been recorded since the early decades of the twentieth century. The January 3rd, 2010 earthquake nucleated approximately 50 km to the southeast of a M8.1 earthquake in April 2007, which with an associated tsunami caused at least 50 fatalities and destroyed several coastal villages on nearby islands. An M6.5 foreshock occurred less than one hour before this main shock, in approximately the same location.

     

    Govt to implement unified ID system in March

    The controversial unified identification system will be implemented this March following the signing of an agreement with all concerned government agencies.

    Social Security Service (SSS) administrator Romulo Neri, who is spearheading the national ID system, made the announcement Thursday during the signing of Republic Act 9903, which condones penalties on un-remitted SSS premium contributions by employers.

    "By March, we will be printing two million IDs. We expect to print 12 million IDs in five years," he said.

    A Malacañang statement said representatives of the SSS, Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), and Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) will sign the agreement.

    Human rights advocates had voiced strong opposition to the national ID system, saying it can be used by the government to spy on citizens, particularly its critics and political opponents. Malacañang, on the other hand, said the system could be an effective tool against terrorism.

    Neri said the ID system was first intended to be used for the automated elections on May, but they had to abandon the plan due to time constraints.

    "Since the [Commission on Elections] has not completely finished its registration and other
    concerns, then we strongly doubt we can push through with it. Besides,we do not want to make it appear that we are doing this for the election," he said.

    The national ID system was proposed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in January 2007 during a command conference with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at Camp Aguinaldo.

    In September 2008, the SSS spearheaded the project with a common reference number to be issued by the National Statistics Office (NSO) based on its database.
    - KBK, GMANews.TV

    Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid

    FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2006, file photo Russia's Federal Space Agency AP – FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2006, file photo Russia's Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov …

    MOSCOW – Russia's space agency chief said Wednesday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of earth impact, even though U.S. scientists say such a scenario is unlikely.

    Anatoly Perminov told Golos Rossii radio the space agency would hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis. He said his agency might eventually invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project.

    When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated its chances of smashing into Earth in its first flyby, in 2029, at 1-in-37.

    Further studies have ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) from Earth's surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.

    NASA had put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 as 1-in-45,000. In October, after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path, the agency changed its estimate to 1-in-250,000.

    NASA said another close encounter in 2068 will involve a 1-in-330,000 chance of impact.

    Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, said better calculations of Apophis' path in several years "will almost certainly remove any possibility of an Earth collision" in 2036.

    "While Apophis is almost certainly not a problem, I am encouraged that the Russian science community is willing to study the various deflection options that would be available in the event of a future Earth threatening encounter by an asteroid," Yeomans said in an e-mail Wednesday.

    Without mentioning NASA's conclusions, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," Perminov said.

    "People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people," Perminov said.

    Scientists have long theorized about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid to gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or hitting it with nuclear weapons.

    Perminov wouldn't disclose any details of the project, saying they still need to be worked out. But he said the mission wouldn't require any nuclear explosions.

    Hollywood action films "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," have featured space missions scrambling to avoid catastrophic collisions. In both movies, space crews use nuclear bombs in an attempt to prevent collisions.

    "Calculations show that it's possible to create a special purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision," Perminov said. "The threat of collision can be averted."

    Boris Shustov, the director of the Institute of Astronomy under the Russian Academy of Sciences, hailed Perminov's statement as a signal that officials had come to recognize the danger posed by asteroids.

    "Apophis is just a symbolic example, there are many other dangerous objects we know little about," he said, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

    ___

    AP Science Writer Alicia Chang contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

     


    Previously undiscovered ancient city found on Caribbean sea floor

    By Jes Alexander on December 9, 2009

    WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) - EXCLUSIVE - Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization.  Guarding the location’s coordinates carefully, the project’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza.

    The site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Russian explorers near Cuba in 2001, at a depth of 2300 feet. “To be seen on satellite, our site is much shallower.”  The team is currently seeking funding to mount an expedition to confirm and explore what appears to be a vast underwater city.  “You have to be careful working with satellite images in such a location,” the project’s principle researcher said, “The digital matrix sometimes misinterprets its data, and shows ruins as solid masses.  The thing is, we’ve found structure - what appears to be a tall, narrow pyramid; large platform structures with small buildings on them; we’ve even found standing parallel post and beam construction in the rubble of what appears to be a fallen building.  You can’t have post and beam without human involvement.”

    Asked if this city is the legendary city of Atlantis, the researchers immediately said no.  “The romanticized ideal of Atlantis probably never existed, nor will anyone ever strap on a SCUBA tank, jump in the water, and find a city gateway that says, ‘Welcome to Atlantis.’  However, we do believe that this city may have been one of many cities of an advanced, seafaring, trade-based civilization, which may have been visited by their Eurocentric counterparts.”

    It is unknown at this time how the city came to be on the sea floor, and not on dry land.  “We have several theories.”

    The team hopes to conduct a massive mapping and research expedition, to learn as much as possible about who these people were, before turning the site over to the Caribbean island’s home government.  “Whatever we’ve found does not belong to us,” the project’s leader said, “It belongs to the people of this island, and to the world at-large.  If any pieces are brought to the surface, they belong in the hands of a museum.”

    The project team asks that for more information, or to find out how to help fund their research, please contact the Herald de Paris’ publisher, Jes Alexander, at a specially set-up telephone number:  415-738-7811.

     

    Obama hails 60th Senate vote for health care

    Democrats line up 60th vote for health care Play Video AP  – Democrats line up 60th vote for health care

    President Barack Obama speaks on climate change and healthcare reform in the AP – President Barack Obama speaks on climate change and healthcare reform in the Diplomatic Reception Room …

    WASHINGTON – Jubilant Democrats locked in Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson as the 60th and decisive vote for historic health care legislation Saturday, putting President Barack Obama's signature issue firmly on a path for Christmas Eve passage.

    At the White House, Obama swiftly welcomed the breakthrough, saying, "After a nearly century-long struggle, we are on the cusp of making health care reform a reality in the United States of America."

    In the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid smiled broadly when asked if Nelson's decision gave him the 60-vote majority necessary to overcome solid Republican opposition. "Seems that way," he said. The Nevada Democrat agreed to a series of concessions on abortion and other issues demanded by Nelson in daylong talks on Friday, then informed Obama of the agreement in a late night phone call as the president flew home from climate talks in Copenhagen.

    The Congressional Budget Office said the Senate bill would extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who lack it. It also imposes new regulations to curb abuses of the insurance industry, and the president noted one last-minute addition would impose penalties on companies that "arbitrarily jack up prices" in advance of the legislation taking effect.

    CBO analysts also said the legislation would cut federal deficits by $132 billion over 10 years and possibly much more in the subsequent decade.

    The developments unfolded on a day of improbables — a snowstorm enveloped the Capitol, creating whiteout conditions outside; while inside senators staged dueling news conferences as if their presence on the Saturday before Christmas was the rule rather than the rarest of exceptions.

    At its core, the legislation would create a new insurance exchange where consumers could shop for affordable coverage that complied with new federal guidelines. Most Americans would be required to purchase insurance, with federal subsidies available to help defray the cost for lower and middle income individuals and families.

    In a concession to Nelson and other moderates, the bill lacks a government-run insurance option of the type that House Democrats inserted into theirs. In a final defeat for liberals, a proposed Medicare expansion was also jettisoned in the past several days as Reid and the White House maneuvered for 60 votes.

    Outnumbered Republicans unleashed a new series of attacks against the legislation and vowed to delay its passage as long as possible. The next — and most critical — test vote was set for about 1 a.m. Monday.

    To secure passage, Democrats will need to show 60 votes on two additional occasions, and in the meantime, Reid made sure Republicans would have no additional chances to seek changes to the measure.

    "This bill is a legislative train wreck of historic proportions," the party's leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said at a news conference. He pointed to cuts to Medicare that CBO said totaled more than $470 billion over a decade, with reductions in planned payments to home health care agencies and hospices. He also said the bill includes "massive tax increases" at a time of double-digit unemployment.

    Republicans also noted that CBO concluded that under the bill, "federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period, as would the federal budgetary commitment to health care."

    True to their word, Republicans objected when Reid sought permission for Nelson to announce his decision in a speech on the Senate floor, then insisted clerks read aloud 383 pages of last-minute changes the majority leader unveiled.

    Many of Reid's revisions were designed to secure the 60 votes needed to steer the bill past the GOP filibuster.

    Those drafted at Nelson's behest drew the most attention, and included further restrictions on abortion coverage in policies sold inside the exchanges.

    States would be permitted to ban insurance coverage of abortions in policies sold in the exchange, except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. In states where such coverage is permitted, consumers must notify their insurance company they want it, and pay for it separately.

    The Nebraskan also won increased federal funds to cover his state's cost of covering an expanded Medicaid population at a cost that one Democratic official put at $45 million over a decade, and took credit for easing the bill's impact as well as other, smaller changes.

    When he finally announced his decision, Nelson did so at a news conference in a Capitol corridor, rather than from his Senate desk as Democrats had preferred. Noting the bruising negotiations over abortion, he said, "I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree. But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions."

    Senators who support abortion rights accepted the changes reluctantly. But conservative Republicans and the National Right to Life Committee criticized them as a step backward from the equivalent part of the House bill, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also opposed them.

    Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who pushed through the restrictions in the House-passed bill, also rejected Nelson's deal. He called it "not acceptable" because it "would allow the federal government to subsidize insurance policies with abortion coverage." He said he intends to keep working to find a solution that would allow him to ultimately vote for the health care bill.

    Nelson, Nebraska's former state insurance commissioner, wasn't the only squeaky senatorial wheel within the 60-member Democratic caucus.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., claimed credit for a last-minute, $10 billion increase in funding for community health centers nationwide, which he said would create new or expanded facilities in 10,000 areas and provide primary care for 25 million more Americans.

    Sanders made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor earlier in the week on behalf of a doomed proposal for government-run health care. In an interview, he said he only agreed to vote for the legislation on Friday, when Reid told him additional billions for the health centers would be included.

    Another provision in Reid's changes provides additional federal funding for hospitals in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and the Dakotas, although no cost estimate was available.

    The House passed its version of the bill in November, and final compromise talks are expected to begin after a brief break for the holidays. Numerous issues must be resolved — including the role of government in the new insurance market and abortion restrictions. But Democrats have made a point all year of compromising on difficult issues in the name of the most far-reaching changes in the nation's health care system in generations, and hope to have a bill for Obama to sign before next month's State of the Union address to Congress.

    In place of a government-run insurance option, the estimated 30 million Americans purchasing coverage through new insurance exchanges would have the option of signing up for national plans overseen by the same office that manages health coverage for federal employees and members of Congress. Those plans would be privately owned, but operated on a nonprofit basis, as many Blue Cross Blue Shield plans are now.

    Insurance companies would be barred immediately from denying coverage to children because of a pre-existing health condition. The prohibition on denial of coverage for adults would not take effect in the Senate bill until 2014, a disappointment for consumer advocates.

    Among the changes Reid incorporated was dropping a proposed tax on cosmetic surgical procedures, including Botox injections. Instead, Senate Democrats are proposing a 10 percent sales tax on tanning salons, to be paid by the person soaking up the rays. The Food and Drug Administration says ultraviolet radiation from tanning can increase the risk of skin cancer.

    The revised bill also calls for a .9 percent increase in the Medicare payroll tax on incomes over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Reid's earlier bill had a smaller hike, .5 percent.

    The bill also taxes high-cost insurance plans as part of a plan to put downward pressure on health care use.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Andrew Taylor, Donna Cassata and Erica Werner contributed to this story.

     


    Bayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control

    • Greenpeace International, Dec 8, 2009


    EXTRACT: Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite 'the best practices [to stop contamination]'(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.
    ---
    ---
    $2 million US dollar verdict against Bayer confirms company's liability for an uncontrollable technology

    Greenpeace welcomes the United States federal jury ruling on 4 December 2009 that Bayer CropScience LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing in 2006.

    This verdict confirms that the responsibility for the consequences of GE (genetic engineering) contamination rests with the company that releases GE crops.

    Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite 'the best practices [to stop contamination]'(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

    A report prepared for Greenpeace International concluded that the total costs incurred throughout the world as a result of the contamination are estimated to range from $741 million to $1.285 billion US dollars.(2) The verdict indicates that Bayer is liable for what could turn out to be a large proportion of these costs, as it awards damages in the first two of more than 1,000 currently pending lawsuits. The decision must be used to support all claims for losses incurred by other US farmers whose crops have suffered from GE contamination.

    (1) Bayers Defense lawyer, Mark Ferguson as reported in Harris, A. 2009.
    Bayer Blamed at Trial for Crops 'Contaminated' by Modified Rice. Bloomberg News 4th November 2009, available at:
    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aT...
     
    (2) E.N. Blue (2007) Risky Business. Economic and regulatory impacts from the unintended release of genetically engineered rice varieties into the rice merchandising system of the US. Report prepared for Greenpeace International, available online at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press....

     

     

    Research Reveals Most Victims Of 1918 Spanish Flu Died From Bacterial Pneumonia – Just Like Victims Dying From The New H1N1 Swine Flu Mutation In Ukraine

    Most Victims Of 1918 Spanish Flu Died From Bacterial Pneumonia1918 Spanish Flu H1N1 Mutation In UkraineA common misperception is that most people who died during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic actually died from the flu itself.  But according to high level scientific research done over the past few years, most of the people who died from the 1918 Spanish flu actually died from bacterial pneumonia that was caused when bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat invaded the lungs along a pathway created when the 1918 Spanish flu virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs.  This explains what is going on in Ukraine.  Over the past several weeks, there have been rumors that the pneumonic plague was on the loose in Ukraine.  But that is not the case.  What apparently is happening is that the H1N1 swine flu has mutated and is acting more like the 1918 Spanish flu (which was also an H1N1 flu).  This new H1N1 mutation is directly attacking the respiratory system of its victims.  This attack on the respiratory system is destroying the protective cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs, thus allowing the bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat to invade the lungs.  As victims near death, temperatures inside the lungs have gotten as high as 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and doctors on the ground in Ukraine have said that the lungs of these victims become "as black as charcoal".

    If this new H1N1 mutation is acting just like the 1918 Spanish flu, that is a great cause for concern because the 1918 Spanish flu killed between 50 and 100 million people around the globe during the early part of the last century.

    But according to the most recent research, the 1918 Spanish flu did indeed act much like the H1N1 mutation that is spreading in Ukraine and elsewhere.

    According to a report entitled "Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths in 1918 Influenza Pandemic" from the National Institutes of Health, research shows that most people did not die from the flu itself during the 1918 pandemic.....

    Jeffery Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., examined lung tissue samples from 58 soldiers who died of influenza at various U. S. military bases in 1918 and 1919. The samples, preserved in paraffin blocks, were re-cut and stained to allow microscopic evaluation. Examination revealed a spectrum of tissue damage "ranging from changes characteristic of the primary viral pneumonia and evidence of tissue repair to evidence of severe, acute, secondary bacterial pneumonia," says Dr. Taubenberger. In most cases, he adds, the predominant disease at the time of death appeared to have been bacterial pneumonia. There also was evidence that the virus destroyed the cells lining the bronchial tubes, including cells with protective hair-like projections, or cilia. This loss made other kinds of cells throughout the entire respiratory tract — including cells deep in the lungs — vulnerable to attack by bacteria that migrated down the newly created pathway from the nose and throat.

    According to another report entitled "Predominant role of bacterial pneumonia as a cause of death in pandemic influenza: implications for pandemic influenza preparedness", examination of samples from victims of the 1918 flu clearly revealed that bacterial pneumonia was involved in most of the deaths.....

    The postmortem samples we examined from people who died of influenza during 1918-1919 uniformly exhibited severe changes indicative of bacterial pneumonia. Bacteriologic and histopathologic results from published autopsy series clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory-tract bacteria in most influenza fatalities.

    This explains why there was so much confusion during the initial stages of the current Ukraine pandemic.  There were some reports that H1N1 was killing people.  There were other reports that it was the pneumonic plague.  Others were reporting that it was just an unusual number of cases of pneumonia. 

    Well, it turns out that what most likely is going on is that the H1N1 swine flu mutation in Ukraine is behaving in a very similar manner to the 1918 Spanish flu.   It is attacking the protective cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs, therefore allowing the bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat to invade the lungs and cause massive destruction.

    Unfortunately that makes things more complicated.

    You see, it has been admitted that the H1N1 swine flu vaccine will "probably" not be effective at all against this new H1N1 mutation detected in Ukraine.

    In addition, once someone has contracted the mutant version of H1N1, it will not only be a matter of treating that virus - treatment will also be required to fight the bacteria invading the lungs.

    Meanwhile, California officials have just announced that nearly 800 people in California were hospitalized with the H1N1 swine flu last week alone, the largest one week number of hospitalizations since swine flu cases began escalating this fall.

    While some mainstream media outlets are heralding that the worst of the H1N1 swine flu is over, the truth is that we may only be entering the next chapter.  Let us all hope that this new H1N1 mutation does not develop into a major world flu pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu did.

     

    Authorities: Tiger Woods hurt in Fla. car crash

    ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)—Tiger Woods was seriously injured in a car accident early Friday when his car struck a tree near his mansion in a gated waterfront community, authorities said.

    The Florida Highway Patrol said Woods, 33, hit the hydrant and a tree after pulling out of his driveway in his 2009 Cadillac sports utility vehicle.

    The patrol reported his injuries as serious, and that he was taken to Health Central Hospital. His condition was not immediately known. A supervisor in the emergency room said Friday afternoon that Woods was not a patient there.

    The report said alcohol was not involved, though the accident remains under investigation. No one else was in the car, patrol spokeswoman Kim Montes said.

    Woods, who has won 82 times around the world and 14 majors, returned to his $2.4 million home in the exclusive Isleworth subdivision near Orlando earlier this week after attending the Stanford-Cal football game, where he tossed the coin at the start of the game and was inducted into Stanford’s sports Hall of Fame at halftime.

    He had traveled to China and Australia earlier in the month, winning the Australian Masters on Nov. 15.

    Woods was to host his tournament, the Chevron World Challenge, on Monday at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

    He won six times this year after missing eight months recovering from reconstructive surgery on his left knee. Even though he failed to win a major, Woods said he considered this a successful year because he did not know how his knee would respond 

    Aliens 'already exist on earth', Bulgarian scientists claim

    Aliens from outer space are already among us on earth, say Bulgarian government scientists who claim they are already in contact with extraterrestrial life.

     
    "Aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time," Mr Filipov told Bulgarian media. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

    Work on deciphering a complex set of symbols sent to them is underway, scientists from the country's Space Research Institute said.

    They claim aliens are currently answering 30 questions posed to them.

    Lachezar Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, confirmed the research.

    He said the centre's researchers were analysing 150 crop circles from around the world, which they believe answer the questions.

    "Aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time," Mr Filipov told Bulgarian media.

    "They are not hostile towards us, rather, they want to help us but we have not grown enough in order to establish direct contact with them."

    Mr Filipov said that even the seat of the Catholic church, the Vatican, had agreed that aliens existed.

    He said humans were not going to be able to establish contact with the extraterrestrials through radio waves but through the power of thought.

    "The human race was certainly going to have direct contact with the aliens in the next 10 to 15 years," he said.

    "Extraterrestrials are critical of the people's amoral behavior referring to the humans' interference in nature's processes."

    The publication of the BAS researchers report concerning communicating with aliens comes in the midst of a controversy over the role, feasibility, and reform of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

    Last week it lead to a heated debate between Bulgaria's Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, and President Georgi Parvanov.

     

     

    Spanish Flu : Born Again Bioweapon?

    Gepost door: pipo ()
    Datum: 02 november 2009 20:07

    October 2, 2009
    George Ure

    The hardest daily decisions in most newsrooms is deciding which story to 'lead' with. In television, that would usually be the story with their the catchiest images to would hold people over through breaks while in print it's a combination of exclusivity, insight, quality of writing, and the bent of the publication (news, glitz, business, sports, etc.).

    Since the focus here in on long wave economics - and how they come creeping through to form a control layer over much of human behavior - you'd think the decision to lead with something like the Sunday Financial Times article by ace economist/realist Nouriel Roubini where he explains the "Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust" would be a simple call to make; that's definitely 'above the fold, page one material.

    But, around here, decision-making is never so cut and dried. Life has become incredibly complicated since mid 2001 when I started writing about a 'predictive linguistics project run by Cliff High at www.halfpasthuman.com - although at the time, there was not HPH and Cliff was much more reclusive. Here lately, the linguistics have - since last spring - been pointing to an October 25/26 turn date which would lead to a period of extremely high building tensions from that 'turn date' until two or three weeks later, by which time we should all be able to look back over our shoulders and say "Damn! That's what a turn date's all about..."

    The hints are sketchy - but that's the nature of the technology. The event is supposed to be something on the order of 85% economic and 15% other and it arises from the GlobalPop portion of the modelspace, which means whatever it is, it should be more or less planet-wide and not just some series of events that puts the fear of God into some fraudsters and greedsters down on Wall Street (or in Washington, where they also seem drawn in sizeable numbers).

    today, my bet - subject to change at whim - is that the 'swine' flu story will be "IT" in retrospect. Not only did president Obama issue the national state of emergency right on schedule, but there has been steadily building concern around the topic such the by the end of the week, the shutting down of most of Europe comes into view as a 'nonzero' possibility and with that would come the fulfillment of economic impacts.

    Moreover, the whole 'swine flu' story is developing almost along two tracks in the public mind: One track follows the 'offishul' (sic) version which is that the 'swine' flu just arose ad hoc in a swine population in Mexico and spread to the USA and elsewhere. The second track notes that the evidence is thin on the swine part and that the dispersal and now coming of the killer version/bleeding lungs part of 'swine flu' to eastern Europe seems mighty awful suspiciously like a low-grade bio-war between East and West. But let's not get ahead of ourselves - this story will be incubating for another week or possibly longer.

    The BIG story this morning, economic in nature, is that "Swine Flu Grips Ukraine". It's in the Wall Street Journal, after all, so it must have something to do with economics, right?

    And indeed it does: Ukraine is something of a bread basket area to Russia populated by smart, hard-working people. Since independence in late summer 1991, Ukraine has been evolving into the 29th largest economy in the world on a mix of agriculture, aerospace, and manufacturing while being a critical chunk of real estate to the Russians since goods like natural gas from Russia to Europe through its borders.

    As of this weekend, 53 people have died of swine flu, some by what's described as bleeding lungs which hark back to the 1918 Spanish Flu and cytokine storming where the body's defensive mechanisms got crazy and attack the host body itself.

    Responding to the situation, the government is closing down schools, some businesses, banning large gatherings, and is trying to buy another 700,000 doses of Tamiflu from Roche. A stock to watch?

    The thing we probably should watch over the next few days is how the neighboring countries fare. Already Hungary's health minister says the "Ukraine flu epidemic to create emergency in Hungary" as it may also do in Romanian, Moldova, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Russia, and anyone pulling into port from he Black Sea or the Sea of Azov.

    Now we go into deep background mode on this with an email I received from a particularly well informed reader who expects this will be one for the history books that should be watched closely:
    "This story may be the most important of our lifetimes. I'm a retired Ph.D. biochemist FYI. I conjecture that much of the coming troubles the web bot project speaks of may well arise from this new flu variant. I note that the first cases appeared a few days ago, just the length of the incubation period from October 25th.
    OK, a Mossad microbiologist warned two months ago that a new deadly flu bug was going to be released into Ukraine in two months. He got the place right, the bug right, and the time right.

    The sequence of all 8 pieces of RNA in the virus that caused the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918-1919 is public knowledge. A long dead Inuit woman buried in the permafrost was dug up and the virus taken from her body a couple of years ago and the RNA pieces were sequenced. Quite simple to synthesize these 8 pieces with widely available commercial machines and reagents. Then transfect mammalian cells with the RNA genes to obtain the intact, fully functional, virus. Another quite well known technology. Then grow all you want in fertilized chicken eggs or a mammalian immortal cell line. More quite well known technologies.

    What scares the sh*t out of me is that the bleeding in the lungs is exactly what killed a lot of folks in the 1918-19 pandemic. See the great book "The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history? ." People would literally fall dead walking across the street. The bleeding out of the lungs was most likely the result of a "cytokine storm" that so increased the vascular permeability in the air sacks that blood filled the lungs. The reason why the mortality in the 1918-1919 pandemic was concentrated in the 18-25 yo cohort was that they had the most active immune systems.

    Now I've NO conjecture as to who may have let this loose or why. But I do know that the technology is widespread to replicate the 1918-1919 virus that killed 2-4 million Americans and about 50 million world wide. And folks only traveled by ship in 1918. And there is NO vaccine for this flu type.

    Hopefully we will know in a couple of weeks the sequences of the 8 RNA pieces in the Ukraine virus. I'll bet the farm that it is a replicant of the "Spanish Flu." If so, the odds are totally infinitesimal that this was NOT a deliberate bioweapon release.

    I note that long haul truckers will simply go home and park their rigs if this flu reaches the USA. And exactly what reason do we have to suppose that it will be confined to Ukraine? The average city has 3 days of food. Connect the dots... please...............

    A credit is due here. the word "replicant" is from the great sci-fi movie "Blade Runner."

    All of this is puts us on the scale of impact somewhere in the middle between inconvenient to bad on one end of the scale to horrific and Biblical at the far end. But the linguistics seem to be pointing to the most terrible of all yet to come with temporal hints around the time of the Whistler Olympics (late February to mid March) for another round of dispersal.

    The nonzero probabilities keep adding up and at some point, even the most skeptical human has to reach the point of non-coincidence and conclude what's for now only a possibility: Namely that the factions of the PowersThatBe are at war with one-another and we - humans down here at the worker bee level - are the unwilling cannon fodder for the coming year or longer

     

    WORLD NEWS

    MILLION HIT BY 'PLAGUE WORSE THAN SWINE FLU'

    Story Image


    Fears that a deadly virus could spread west from Ukraine

    Sunday November 15,2009

     

     

     

    y Greg Miskiw

    A DEADLY plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbours into a state of panic.

    A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.

    President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation and a team of nine specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv to identify the virus. Samples have been sent to London for analysis.

    President Yushchenko said: “People are dying. The epidemic is killing doctors. This is absolutely inconceivable in the 21st Century.”

    In a TV interview, the President added: “Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine – two seasonal flus and the Californian flu

    “Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an even more aggressive new virus as a result of mutation.”

    Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been touring hospitals where victims are being treated and presidential elections in January could be cancelled .

    Four men and one woman have died from the flu in Lviv, said emergency hospital chief doctor Myron Borysevych. Two of the dead patients were in the 22-35 age group, with two others over 60. He diagnosed the disease as viral pneumonia.

    “We have sent the analyses to Kiev. We don’t believe it’s H1N1 swine flu. Neither do we know what kind of pneumonia it is.”

     
     
     

     

    Universities, schools and kindergartens have been closed, public meetings have been banned and theatres shut. Last week several border crossings in the country were also closed.

    Last night reports emerged of profiteering over face masks, which have sold out since the outbreak. There are also incidents of anti-virus medication being sold for exorbitant prices. A spokesman for the World Health Organisation said: “We do not have a time scale for the results of the tests in London, although some preliminary results have been obtained. I cannot tell you what they are.

    “We did not have enough of the virus samples so we will have to grow some more before we can come to a conclusive decision about its nature.”

    Neighbouring Poland has called on the EU to take action, fearing the mystery virus may spread westwards.

    Prime Minister Donald Tusk has written to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who holds the EU presidency, saying: “The character of this threat demands that rapid action be undertaken at the European Union level.”

    Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania, countries that border Ukraine, have already launched health checks on Ukrainians entering their territory.

    Slovakia has closed two of five border crossings.

    A doctor in Western Ukraine who did not want to be named, said:” We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

    “They look like they have been burned. It’s terrifying.”

     

    Feds Propose Takeover of Subways, Light-rail Systems

    Red Line crash spurred safety plan Obama administration to push for Congress to change law

     
     
     
    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Sunday, November 15, 2009

    The Obama administration will propose that the federal government take over safety regulation of the nation's subway and light-rail systems, responding to what it says is haphazard and ineffective oversight by state agencies.

    Under the proposal, the U.S. Department of Transportation would do for transit what it does for airlines and Amtrak: set and enforce federal regulations to ensure that millions of passengers get to their destinations safely. Administration officials said the plan will be presented in coming weeks to Congress, which must approve a change in the law.

    The proposal would affect every subway and light-rail system in the country, including large systems in Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    Administration officials said they are responding to a growing number of collisions, derailments and worker fatalities on subways -- and in particular to the fatal June 22 crash on Metro's Red Line and failures in oversight that have surfaced in its wake. Those failures have been the subject of an ongoing investigative series in The Washington Post.

    "After the [Metro] train crash, we were all sitting around here scratching our heads, saying, 'Hey, we've got to do something about this,' " Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in an interview. "And we discovered that there's not much we could do, because the law wouldn't allow us to do it."

    Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said the agency had not seen details of the proposal. "The bottom line is we welcome additional safety oversight with open arms," she said.

    LaHood said he expects the proposal to be welcomed on Capitol Hill, but some Republicans said Saturday night that more federal oversight might not be the answer.

    "The administration is right to raise this issue, but federal regulation should only apply to systems that cross state lines," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who had not been briefed on the plan.

    Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) said the proposal sounded like a credible way to fix a broken oversight system. "Without seeing the details, it would make sense," Wolf said. "Some states have done a good job, while others have not. There needs to be consistent safety enforcement."

    Critical details of the plan remain unclear, including how much it would cost, where the money would come from, how the federal government would enforce its rules and whether it is equipped to carry out enhanced oversight. Existing state oversight bodies could remain in place to enforce the new regulations but would need to meet federal standards and gain federal approval.

    Safety experts praised the initiative.

    "It's long overdue," said Kitty Higgins, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board until August. "I applaud the secretary and his team for recognizing the gap in oversight in the current law. I hope that Congress will act on it swiftly."

    Federal oversight of subways proposed

    An Exception to the Rule 

     
     

    The federal government long has regulated the safe operation of airplanes, Amtrak and even ferries. But a law passed in 1965 prohibits federal regulation of subways. When that law was put into effect, there were only a handful of subways -- Metro wouldn't open its first line for another 11 years -- and lawmakers reasoned that federal oversight would hamper their growth.

    As a result, rail transit operates under two very different federal systems offering disparate levels of safety oversight.

    Commuter rail systems, such as MARC and the Virginia Railway Express, are subject to a long list of federal regulations and are regularly inspected by federal safety monitors.

    Safety oversight of light-rail and subway systems, on the other hand, is delegated to 27 regional bodies controlled by states. Quality varies widely, as does funding and enforcement power. With a few notable exceptions, those agencies tend to be threadbare, averaging less than one staff person per agency, according to federal statistics.

    The state organizations have been criticized for lacking expertise and independence. Some rely on the transit systems they oversee to supply their funding. Many lack the legal authority to force transit agencies to grant them access to equipment and documents, and cannot compel transit agencies to correct any deficiencies they identify.

    For Metro, the second-busiest subway system in the nation, the monitoring body is the Tri-State Oversight Committee, which has six members but no employees, office or phone number. It also has no direct regulatory authority over Metro.

    As it stands, the Transportation Department also cannot direct subway systems to adopt safety recommendations issued by the National Transportation Safety Board.

    Details of the proposal

    Under the administration's proposal, states that kept their oversight bodies would have to pass safety certification programs and demonstrate that they had an adequately trained staff, as well as financial independence and authority to compel compliance from systems they oversee.

    States running their own programs would receive federal funds to cover salaries, training and other expenses. Federal regulations would ensure that the state programs established standards similar to those set by federal monitors.

    The Federal Transit Administration would assume direct oversight for states that opt out of safety monitoring. The agency also would take over for state organizations that the administration determined to be inadequate.

    If subway or light-rail systems did not meet the new safety standards, they would risk losing federal funding for capital expenditures, according to an administration official who was briefed on the plan.

    Transit systems would be responsible for shouldering the cost of complying with new federal safety requirements.

    The plan would also allow the FTA to issue safety regulations for bus transit systems, but officials said early efforts would focus on rail.

    In August, The Post reported that Metro's supposedly fail-safe crash avoidance system had failed in March on Capitol Hill, allowing two trains to come perilously close to colliding. A few weeks later, the newspaper reported that the automatic crash avoidance system also failed in 2005, when three trains narrowly escaped what records said would have been "disastrous collisions" in a tunnel under the Potomac River. That system is a focus of the federal investigation into the cause of the June 22 crash, which killed nine people and injured 80, making it the deadliest incident in the history of Metro.

    Last week, an article revealed that Metro had barred independent safety monitors from walking along live subway tracks to assess compliance with safety rules. Since the ban began, two track workers have been fatally injured on the rails.

    Metro board Chairman Jim Graham said Friday that the agency is increasing supervision of safety chief Alexa Dupigny-Samuels, who denied access to the monitors.

    Also last week, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) called on LaHood to investigate Metro's oversight by the committee. And Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who chairs a transportation subcommittee, said he would hold a hearing in the next few weeks that will look into issues raised as part of the investigation.


    President Obama declares national emergency over swine flu pandemic, but why?
    Published on 10-25-2009

    Source: NaturalNews - Mike Adams

    According to the CDC, swine flu infections have already peaked, and the pandemic is on its way out. Peak infection time was the middle of October, where one in five U.S. children experienced the flu, says the CDC. Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were confirmed as H1N1 swine flu infections. (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/)

    featured stories   President Obama declares national emergency over swine flu pandemic, but why?  
      featured stories   President Obama declares national emergency over swine flu pandemic, but why?
       
      Your rights as an American are no longer recognized under this national emergency declaration.
       

    Even though the H1N1 pandemic appears to have peaked out, U.S. President Barack Obama has now declared a national emergency over swine flu infections. The reasoning behind such a declaration? According to the White House, it’s designed to "allow hospitals to better handle the surge in patients" by allowing them to bypass certain federal laws.

    Emergency powers trump the Bill of Rights

    That’s the public explanation for this, but the real agenda behind this declaration may be far more sinister. Declaring a national emergency immediately gives federal authorities dangerous new powers that can now be enforced at gunpoint, including:

    • The power to force mandatory swine flu vaccinations on the entire population.

    • The power to arrest, quarantine or "involuntarily transport" anyone who refuses a swine flu vaccination.

    • The power to quarantine an entire city and halt all travel in or out of that city.

    • The power to enter any home or office without a search warrant and order the destruction of any belongings or structures deemed to be a threat to public health.

    • The effective nullification of the Bill of Rights. Your right to due process, to being safe from government search and seizure, and to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination are all null and void under a Presidential declaration of a national emergency.

    None of this means that federal agents are going to march door to door arresting people at gunpoint if they refuse the vaccine, but they could if they wanted to. Your rights as an American are no longer recognized under this national emergency declaration.

    What emergency?

    The declaration of this national emergency seems suspicious from the start. Where’s the emergency? The number of people killed by swine flu in the United States is far smaller than the number of people killed each year from seasonal flu, according to CDC statistics. People obviously aren’t dropping dead by the millions from H1N1 influenza. Most people are just getting mild flu symptoms and a few days later they’re fine.

    So where’s the emergency?

    The only emergency I can see is the emergency fabricated by Big Pharma to sell more vaccines. By declaring a national emergency over the H1N1 pandemic, Obama is playing right into their hands.

    I find the timing of all this curious. Two days ago, New York gave up on its efforts to require mandatory vaccinations of health care workers. This was designed to defuse a large number of planned protests from health freedom-conscious people who don’t want government-mandated chemicals pumped into their veins.

    The planned protests in New York would have fueled yet more resistance among health care workers across the country, and had it been allowed to continue, it could have resulted in a huge nationwide backlash against swine flu vaccines. By backing off the vaccine mandate and blaming it on a vaccine shortage (http://www.naturalnews.com/027313_N…), and then having Obama declare a national emergency, our state and national leaders have halted the protests and put in place a pro-vaccine Big Brother mandate that can be enforced at gunpoint.

    Big Pharma must be pleased with all this. With these emergency powers in place, all that’s necessary to force vaccinations upon the entire population is a larger supply of the vaccines — and that’s coming in November.

     

     

    Wednesday, 7 October 2009

    Temperature goes to 400C( 752 degrees fahrenheit) in Jordan Burning Trees and Killing Sheep

    AMMAN , Jordon- Authorities are investigating an unexplained phenomenon that was reported in the area of Umm Jouzeh, near Rmemin, some 10 kilometres to the north of Salt, on Tuesday.

    According to Balqa Governor Abdul Jalil Sleimat, the phenomenon was discovered by coincidence when a sheep entered an area of land while grazing. According to the shepherd attending the herd, Sleimat said, the sheep caught fire, “was completely burned and disappeared”.

    According to Sleimat, the ground in the area was still unusually hot until late Tuesday, and once any material was thrown into the area, it burned quickly and smoke and flames came out.

    A committee comprising members of the governorate, the Natural Resources Authority (NRA), the Royal Geographic Centre, the Royal Scientific Society (RSS) and the Civil Defence Department (CDD) was formed to extract samples from the land for examination.

    Maher Hijazin, director of the NRA, told Ammonnews.com that the explanation of the phenomenon is “simple”, saying that since the area lies at the end of a sewage pipeline, organic materials might have collected under the surface and interacted in a way that heated up an area of 50-60 square metres.

    Jordan Geologists Association President Bahjat Odwan yesterday dismissed the presence of any earthquake or volcanic activity in the area.

    In cooperation with the University of Jordan, the association will form a committee of specialists to examine the phenomenon and find its causes, he said.

    Odwan agreed it was possible that the phenomenon could be explained by the presence of some underground remnants of organic materials in the area.

    A police patrol was placed at the site and the place was completely sealed off with phosphoric tape, Sleimat said. The area’s people were evacuated to ensure their safety, he said, noting that the area, around two dunums, is plain with red soil.

    Butrus Hasso, a nearby resident, told The Jordan Times: “It is just a strange thing, so strange.”

    “Two fire trucks came earlier in the day, trying to put out the flames and cool the area, but the area continued to be very hot,” he added.

    “In the daytime, flames could be seen coming out of the area,” Hasso said.

    Hasso said the area was packed with CDD personnel until late in the evening.

    Commenting on the phenomenon, Greater Salt Municipality Council member and representative of the Rmemin area Ahmad Kharabsheh said the plot's temperature rose dramatically, burning all grass and trees around it.

    In the morning, he told The Jordan Times over phone, an RSS team measured the temperature of the ground at the site and found it to be "400-450 degrees" Celsius.

    The area was still ablaze and emitting smoke as of late yesterday evening, Kharabsheh added, noting that the site has been designated a restricted area.

    Minnesota County Conducts “Operation Big Shot” Mass Vaccination Drill

    Kurt Nimmo
    Infowars
    September 29, 2009

    In preparation for the distinct possibility of a mandatory vaccination of the American public, a county in Minnesota will hold a mass vaccination drill today dubbed “Operation Big Shot.” County officials expect “300 volunteers to conduct the drill alongside about 200 health department staff members. They emphasized that staffers will not dispense actual vaccinations,” according to The Star Tribune.

    featured stories   Minnesota County Conducts Operation Big Shot Mass Vaccination Drill

    drive thru



    A drive-thru vaccination in Massachusetts, 2008. Is Minnesota preparing for this sort of mass vaccination?


    “Operation Big Shot is one of several training exercises health officials in Ramsey County conduct each year and was scheduled prior to the emergence of the H1N1 flu pandemic,” the newspaper adds.

    A number of sources have indicated the government may require mandatory vaccinations this autumn. “Nearly $8 billion will be spent to address a ‘potential pandemic flu’ which could result in mandatory vaccinations for no discernible reason other than to enrich the pharmaceutical companies that make the vaccine,” Ron Paul wrote on June 24, 2009.

    According to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, 42 states have mandatory vaccine policies. “Rampant conflicts of interest in the approval process has been the subject of several Congressional hearings, and a recent Congressional report concluded that the pharmaceutical industry has indeed exerted undue influence on mandatory vaccine legislation toward its own financial interests,” the AAPS notes.

    The UN’s WHO supports mandatory vaccinations. On July 13, a World Health Organization (WHO) Global Alert suggested universally mandated vaccines are coming.

    “During a pandemic, it may be necessary to overrule existing legislation or (individual) human rights,” states a 2005  WHO document. “Examples are the enforcement of quarantine (overruling individual freedom of movement), use of privately owned buildings for hospitals, off-license use of drugs, compulsory vaccination or implementation of emergency shifts in essential services. These decisions need a legal framework to ensure transparent assessment and justification of the measures that are being considered, and to ensure coherence with international legislation (International Health Regulations).” (Emphasis added.)

    WHO “recommendations” are binding on all 194 member countries in case a pandemic emergency is declared under the 2005 International Health Regulations Act and April 2009 WHO pandemic plan.

    In August, the WHO recommended a mandatory global vaccination. “The global pandemic vaccination program will begin somewhere around the end of September and last about two months. Many countries are in the process of acquiring from Baxter, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies enough doses of vaccine to vaccinate their entire population twice. They remain quiet about mandatory vaccination, simply saying they will make vaccination ‘available’ to all on a priority basis,” the Columbia Valley News reported.

    “We hope that the whole world will have some access to the vaccine,” Marie-Paule Kieny, director of WHO’s Initiative for Vaccine Research, told the Washington Post today. “In some countries it will be possible to vaccinate the whole population and in some countries only 10 percent.”

    In the United States, any mandatory vaccination program will likely be the responsibility of the states. “Historically, the preservation of the public health has been the responsibility of state and local governments, and the authority to enact laws relevant to the protection of the public health derives from the state’s general police powers,” explains a  CRS Report for Congress. “With respect to the preservation of the public health in cases of communicable disease outbreaks, these powers may include the institution of quarantine or the enactment of mandatory vaccination laws.”

    Massachusetts recently passed the “Pandemic Response Bill.” It suspends virtually all Constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens and forces anyone “suspected” of being infected to submit to interrogations, “decontaminations” and vaccines, according to Mike Adams. “It’s also sets fines up to $1,000 per day for anyone who refuses to submit to quarantines, vaccinations, decontamination efforts or to follow any other verbal order by virtually any state-licensed law enforcement or medical personnel.”

    Infowars and Prison Planet have documented numerous instances of the states preparing for mass vaccinations.

    Judge Andrew on the Massachusetts martial law bill and the Constitution.

    In the last few weeks, states and municipalities around the country have mandated seasonal flu vaccinations for health care workers. In response, health care workers in New York are taking to the street in opposition. “Under what circumstances can government officials order mandatory vaccination? And could the general public be ordered to roll up their sleeves for injections, even if there might be side effects beyond a sore arm or mild fever? The concern in New York also comes as skepticism of vaccination in general seems to be on the rise,” Declan McCullagh writes for CBS News today.

    The drill in Minnesota is yet another indication the government is ramping up to vaccinate the entire population, either through a massive propaganda campaign and scare tactics now well underway through the corporate media, or through legal mandate backed up by the cops and the military.

    “Get ready because that’s precisely what’s coming — universal orders to risk toxic vaccine hazards. In the coming weeks, the dominant media globally will get into high gear fear-mongering mode to convince people voluntarily to submit to jeopardizing their health and well-being. It’s essential to refuse and be safe and international law absolutely allows it,” warns Stephen Lendman.

     

     

    Ammo rationing at Wal-Mart as panic buying sweeps US

    'Used to be gold was precious. Now it's lead.'

    The USA is suffering the most severe ammunition famine in living memory. Gun fanciers, fearing a Democrat crackdown on every American's right to pack heat, are clearing shelves at ammo shops and hoarding cartridges.

    AP reports that the Remington Arms Company's factory in North Carolina is now working around the clock trying to supply insatiable demand for rifle, pistol and shotgun cartridges.

    "We've had to add a fourth shift and go 24-7," Remington spokesman Al Russo told the news wire. "It's a phenomenon that I have not seen before in my 30 years in the business."

    The shortages are so bad that retail globocorp Wal-Mart has been forced to introduce rationing at the ammo counter in many of its stores. Depending on calibre, customers may be limited to purchases of just 50 rounds at a time. Apparently, classic .45 ACP pistol ammunition is especially scarce - a fairly good indication that it is in fact conservative Middle America rather than, say, inner-city criminals buying up all the ammo*.

    According to the National Rifle Association, America's pro-guns lobby, the people of the USA normally buy about 7 billion cartridges a year (an average of 23 rounds per head). The past year has seen that figure jump to 9 billion. The FBI reports a 25 per cent climb in background checks made prior to gun sales.

    The ammo rush has been dubbed the "Obama effect" by gun-industry people, but in fact there is no sign at present of any particularly aggressive move towards stricter federal gun laws.

    Police forces across the States reportedly suffered from some ammo shortages earlier in the year, but this was in large part unrelated to the surge in civilian demand. Rather, heavy use by the US military overseas made it hard to obtain ammunition such as 5.56mm assault-rifle/intermediate-power cartridges, commonly used by plods and troops but much less so by civilian gun owners.

    Meanwhile the ongoing shortages have seen ammo prices soar.

    "Used to be gold, but now lead is the most expensive metal," one gun enthusiast told AP. "And worth every penny." ®

    Bootnote

    *Most kinds of .45 have unexceptional muzzle energy and are big and fat, giving fairly poor performance even against light, flexible body armour. It was the standard US military pistol round for a long time and many diehards still swear by it, but people who carry guns for a living - cops, soldiers, criminals - are mostly using other calibres these days. (Some spec-ops troops still use .45, as the bullet is subsonic and thus can be effectively silenced.)

    BILDERBERGERS WANT GLOBAL CURRENCY NOW

    But nationalists and populists around the world ready to fight to retain financial sovereignty

      rss202
    By James P. Tucker, Jr.

    Bilderberg has had front-men call anew for creating a global currency and establishing major European Union-style regions for the administrative convenience of a planned world government. Both steps were taken in September, one by the new Bilderberg-crowned prime minister of Japan and one separately by the UN.

    The Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a global currency in a report made public on September 7. UN countries should agree on a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, UNCTAD said. The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, it said.

    Heiner Flassbeck, a former German deputy finance minister, is co-author of the report calling for a global currency. He worked with then U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in 1997-98 to contain the Asian financial crisis. Summers is a longtime Bilderberg luminary and has been photographed by AFP at annual secret Bilderberg confabs.

    Eliminating national currencies has long been a goal of Bilderberg as a crucial step in its plan to establish a world government. A nation’s currency is a symbol of sovereignty, so Bilderberg wants to divide the world into three giant regions, each with its regional currency, for the administrative convenience of its world government bureaucrats.

    Bilderberg used its immense power to get Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan elected over the Liberal Democratic Party, which had led the nation for 64 years. Hatoyama obediently called for an Asian economic bloc, similar to the EU, complete with a regional currency.

    Bilderberg’s goal is an “Asian-Pacific Union” and an “American Union,” both modeled after the EU. The EU has its common currency, the euro, and a European Parliament that can impose laws on the once sovereign nations of Europe and a European Court superior to the highest courts of member states. The EU is effectively a single super-state.

    The “American Union” is to evolve from the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, as it extends throughout the Western Hemisphere. The common currency is to be the “amero.” Fortunately, Bilderberg’s efforts in the Western Hemisphere have been stalled but the campaign continues using “free trade” propaganda.

    Ultimately, the UN is to function as a world government with the General Assembly serving as a world parliament. Bilderberg, a secret organization of international financiers and political leaders, will serve as a world shadow government that dictates to the UN.

     AFP correspondent James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Tucker is the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary. Bound in an attractive full-color softcover and containing 272 pages—loaded with photos—the book recounts Tucker’s experiences over the last quarter century at Bilderberg meetings. $25 from AFP. No charge for S&H in U.S.

     

     

    Another Shocking Warning About Swine Flu Vaccine
    Posted by: Dr. Mercola
    September 08 2009

    swine flu, vaccineThe swine flu vaccine has been hit by new cancer fears after a German health expert gave a shocking warning about its safety.

    Lung specialist Wolfgang Wodarg has said that there are many risks associated with the vaccine for the H1N1 virus. The nutrient solution for the vaccine consists of cancerous cells from animals, and some fear that the risk of cancer could be increased by injecting the cells.

    The vaccine can also cause worse side effects than the actual swine flu virus.


    Sources:
      Socio-Economics History Blog July 15, 2009

     

    Mainstream Media Cover-Up Implodes As World Discovers Millions Marched In DC

    Kurt Nimmo
    Prison Planet.com
    Sunday, September 13, 2009

    The Gray Lady of Operation Mockingbird, the New York Times, reports today that “thousands” of patriots protested against Obamacare, cap and trade, the bankster bailout, and unchecked federal government power in the District of Criminals yesterday.

    featured stories   Massive Corporate Media Coverup of Real Numbers at D.C. Rally

    “The demonstrators numbered well into the tens of thousands, though the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd,” the newspaper reports, attempting to downplay the historical significance of the protest.

    The New York Times says the police declined to estimate the crowd — or rather the corporate media declined to report it — because the number was around two million, the largest protest in the capitol’s history.

    The protest out-numbered Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. That march was estimated at around 200,000 people.

    ABC News did likewise, pegging the turnout in the thousands. “Thousands of conservative protesters from across the country converged on the Capitol Saturday morning to demonstrate against President Obama’s proposals for health care reform and voicing opposition to big government, what they say is over-the-top spending,” the corporate propaganda outlet claimed on Saturday.

    featured stories   Massive Corporate Media Coverup of Real Numbers at D.C. Rally

    Ditto the War Street Journal — excuse me, the Wall Street Journal — although they put the number at tens of thousands. The Journal admitted the obvious: “While some Republican officeholders were at the rally, not everybody there called themselves Republicans.”

    Fox News tried to spin the event as a Glenn Beck phenomenon.

    NPR, the news service of Soros and the foundations, did the same parlor trick with the math, putting the number at tens of thousands. NPR contradicted itself, however, and reported that as “the demonstrators walked along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol, the line stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. The crowd was so thick in places that it was difficult to move.”

    As to be expected, the “progressives” (left cover bankster faction) attempted to portray two million patriotic Americans as racists. Think Soros, Think Progress, posted a blog entry supposedly revealing racist placards at the event — in fact, none of the signs showed were racist — the worst the Soros operatives produced was a photo of a woman with a Confederate flag. The Soros clan said everybody at the event was white (as if they had examined the skin color of two million people).

    It’s not going to work. The two million people who showed up to voice their outrage at a federal government out of control and in violation of the Constitution was but a small sampling of the millions of people across the country in opposition to Obama and the corporate-fascist agenda of his one-world masters.

    If Obama and the Democrats ram the deathcare bill through the House by way of “reconciliation,” the opposition will redouble its numbers and once again take to the streets.

     


    Russian report: Netanyahu may be planning attack

    PM's rushed visit to Moscow under cloud of secrecy occupies Russian media. Kommersant paper quotes 'informed Israeli' source as saying 'It can't be ruled out that Israel may be ready to move on to decisive actions with regards to Iran, and Netanyahu decided to inform Kremlin of this'

    Olga Gouresky

    Published: 09.10.09, 14:16 / Israel News

    Russian media on Thursday continued to cover Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's mysterious visit to Moscow, that was leaked to the media from his office.

    Kommersant newspaper quoted "experts" as saying they believe a visit of this kind could have stemmed from urgent circumstances, "for example, in the event that Israel plans to attack Iran".
    Cloud of Mystery

    Report: PM held secret talks in Russia / Ynet

    Yedioth Ahronoth says Netanyahu's Monday 'disappearance' was actually Moscow visit meant to discuss arms deals between Russian, Iran. PMO asserts Netanyahu was 'handling classified matters,' never left the country
    Full Story

     

    At first, Moscow denied a visit ever took place, but after Netanyahu's office was forced to admit to the PM's Military Secretary Meir Kalifi's lie, a senior Kremlin source also confirmed to Kommersant that the Israeli prime minister did indeed visit the city.

     

    Russian media also directed questions on the visit to the Israeli embassy in Moscow, but embassy sources said that if there was such a visit, "We know nothing about it."The paper then quoted what it called an "informed" Israeli source, who wished to remain anonymous, as saying, "Such a visit could be related to new information and could threaten the Iranian nuclear program. It should not be ruled out that Israel may be ready to move on to decisive actions with regards to Iran, and Netanyahu has decided to inform the Kremlin of this." Russian Foreign Minister Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko published an announcement saying, "We have no knowledge of a Netanyahu's 'secret' visit to Moscow. We saw reports in various media. They are inconsistent. Other than that, I cannot tell you anything. I have no detailed information in the matter, or any information in the matter. We have seen the reports."

     

    Advertisement 



     

     

    The prime minister's aides who published the false announcements of his whereabouts were a loss for words. Wednesday night the Prime Minister's Office published yet another announcement in an attempt to rectify the damage, said, "The prime minister was busy with secret, classified activity. The military secretary took his own initiative to defend this activity."

     

     

    Thousands of downtown DC protesters blast Obama

    WASHINGTON – Tens of thousands of protesters fed up with government spending marched to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, showing their disdain for the president's health care plan with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" and "I'm not your ATM."

    The line of protesters clogged several blocks near the Capitol, according to the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Demonstrators chanted "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others yelled "You lie, you lie!" and "Pelosi has to go," referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

    Throngs of people waved U.S. flags and held signs reading "Go Green Recycle Congress" and "Obama Bin Lyin.'" Men wore colonial costumes as they listened to speakers who warned of "judgment day" — Election Day 2010.

    Other signs — reflecting the growing intensity of the health care debate — depicted President Barack Obama with the signature mustache of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Many referred to Obama as a socialist or communist, and another imposed his face on that of the villainous Joker from "Batman."

    Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam War veteran and former Teamster, came from Paw Paw, Mich. He said health care needs to be reformed — but not according to Obama's plan.

    "My grandkids are going to be paying for this. It's going to cost too much money that we don't have," he said while marching, bracing himself with a wooden cane as he walked.

    FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, organized several groups from across the country for what they billed as a "March on Washington."

    Organizers say they built on momentum from the April "tea party" demonstrations held nationwide to protest tax policies, along with growing resentment over the economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

    Armey and other speakers directed their ire at Pelosi — Armey took a photo, telling the crowd he wanted to be able to prove to her they were there.

    "If it's necessary, we'll come back here next year," he said.

    Many protesters said they paid their own way to the event — an ethic they believe should be applied to the government. They say unchecked spending on things like a government-run health insurance option could increase inflation and lead to economic ruin.

    Terri Hall, 45, of Starke, Fla., said she felt compelled to become political for the first time this year because she was upset by government spending.

    "Our government has lost sight of the powers they were granted," she said. She added that deficit spending is out of control, and said she thought it was putting the country at risk.

    Race also became an issue when a black Republican leader denounced African-American politicians that she said had an "affinity" for socialism.

    "I'm outraged prominent black politicians use the race card" to cover up their failed policies, said Deneen Borelli of New York.

    One woman held a sign with images of Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama, with the words printed alongside: "He had a dream, we got a nightmare."

    Lawmakers also supported the rally. Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said Americans want health care reform but they don't want a government takeover.

    "Republicans, Democrats and independents are stepping up and demanding we put our fiscal house in order," Pence, of Indiana, told The Associated Press.

    "I think the overriding message after years of borrowing, spending and bailouts is enough is enough," Pence said.

    Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., also spoke at the rally.

    Other sponsors of the event include the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and the Ayn Rand Center for Individuals Rights.

    Connie Castleton, 52, of Irving, Texas, said she drove 20 hours from her home to attend the rally. The nurse said she's motivated to try and get others involved in opposing Obama's health care plan.

    "There's a lot more people mad about what's going on than I thought," she said.

    Several protesters said they represented a "silent majority" or referred to themselves as "community organizers" — a phrase often associated with the president.

    "This isn't some right-wing conservative agenda," said 30-year-old Adam Moore of Rochester, Mich. "This is a true grass-roots movement."

    Erica Coyle, who's in her 50s and is from Louisville, Ky., said problems began before Obama took office, but she said the situation has worsened and people are "finally waking up."

    "This is his Waterloo," Coyle said of Obama.

      

    Amazingly, that coastal storm is still off the coast of Virginia....can you imagine, 3 days! I believe it is being controlled by the Government-HARPP so the monsoon rains will keep the march down. How foolish....a cause is a cause....the march will go on! AND SO CAME THE SUN!!!!!!

    FreedomWorks Taxpayer March on Washington Scheduled for            September 12, 2009

    Monday September 7, 2009 6:30AM EDT


    The Tea Party Movement Heads to the Nation`s Capital

    Politicians Who Supported Bailouts, Stimulus, and Record Deficits Will Be Held
    Accountable
    WASHINGTON--(Business Wire)--
    Over the last six months the national debt skyrocketed by nearly $3 trillion.
    According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, our national debt will
    more than double by 2019. Americans will have to pay for this stratospheric
    spending spree first by begging foreign nations to buy our bonds, and later
    through higher taxes and inflation.

    Grassroots anger at the inability of Washington to live within a budget has been
    building for some time, and began to boil over in late 2007 as the Bush
    Administration and Treasury Secretary Paulson abandoned their claimed free
    market principles to bail out auto makers and Wall Street banks through TARP.

    When newly-elected President Obama and his allies in Congress passed the $780
    billion debt stimulus plan in February 2009, activists took to the streets.

    On tax day, the tea party movement began in earnest. Until now the movement has
    remained at the local levels. No longer will that be the case. The movement is
    coming to Washington on September 12, 2009 for a march and rally at the US
    Capitol.

    From autos to banking, the government is crowding out the private sector of our
    economy. Where Bush bailed out the private sector, Obama is making hostile
    government takeovers. Ignoring our multi trillion dollar deficit, Washington is
    considering a massive new energy tax and a takeover of health care.

    On Saturday, September 12th FreedomWorks will be joined by over ten thousands of
    liberty-loving activists to take a stand against politicians who are bankrupting
    our future. National co-sponsors include Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, National
    Taxpayers Union, Americans For Tax Reform, Young Americans for Liberty, Ayn Rand
    Center, Campaign for Liberty, Free Republic, Young America`s Foundation, Smart
    Girl Politics, and The Club for Growth.

    The event will kick-off on September 10th and 11th with various events
    throughout Washington including grassroots leadership training and Capitol Hill
    visits. The three-day event culminates on September 12th as taxpayers march on
    the Capitol building.

    For more information, including media inquiries, registration, contacting event
    coordinators, and the schedule of events, please visit our event website at
    www.912dc.org.



    FreedomWorks
    Adam Brandon, 202-942-7698
    abrandon@freedomworks.org


     

    09/12/2009 March On Washington- Be there or be square

    August 17, 2009 12:10 AM EDT

    The politicians in Washington, D.C. take our hard-earned money with taxes and inflation. Then they bail out their buddies in the banks with $700 Billion of our money. Then they bail out their buddies in the auto industry... before taking over the biggest ones. Then they pass a so-called "stimulus bill" that is nothing more than a HUGE piece of pork. Then they try to pass the largest tax increase in history with their fake-environmental "cap and tax" bill.

    THEN... they try to take over the American healthcare system, and try to ram socialized medicine down our throats.

    We've had enough, and we're NOT taking it any more. The "sleeping giant" is waking up.

    You and I have taken part in "Tea Parties" across America, ranging in size from around a dozen patriots to over 20,000 people, letting Washington know that we're "Taxed Enough Already".

    We've been attending our Congress-critters' "town hall" meetings all around the country, letting our Representatives and Senators know that we're on to their schemes, and that they had BETTER listen to their constituents and REJECT "ObamaCare".

    As a result of all of this... Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the Radical Left have called you and I "mobs," "fascists," "Nazis," "Astroturf," "corporate shills," "plants," "brown shirts," "liars," "disruptors"... their list of slanders goes on and on and on. They don't have the truth on their side, so they have to do what big-government bullies have always had to do... LIE.

    But we're NOT backing down! They think they can bully us into submission, and FORCE us to accept their plans for socialism in America.

    They're wrong. These have only been the first steps in the grassroots' efforts to take back America.

    Now it's time for the next step. Are you ready for it?

    TAKE ACTION: On Saturday, September 12th, 2009, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of grassroots patriotic Americans will be descending upon Washington, D.C. for the largest "tea party" in history -- the 09.12.09 March on Washington.

     

     

    Most doctors reject swine flu vaccine

    HealthCareRepublic
    August 25, 2009

    Up to 60% of GPs may choose not to be vaccinated against swine flu, with many concerned about the safety of the vaccine, a GP newspaper survey suggests.

    Of 216 GPs who responded to the survey, 29% said they would not opt to receive the swine flu vaccine and a further 29% said they were not sure whether they would or not.

    Of those who would refuse vaccination, 71% said they were concerned that the vaccine had not been through sufficient trials to guarantee its safety.

    Professor David Salisbury, DoH director of immunisation, told Healthcare Republic, the website for GP newspaper, that frontline health workers have a duty to themselves regarding vaccination.

    ‘They have a duty to their patients not to infect their patients and they have a duty to their families,’ he said.

    ‘I think you solve those responsibilities by being vaccinated.'

     

    Obama: N. Korea ‘challenging’ the world

    President says the world must ‘stand up’ to Pyongyang on missile tests

    Video
      Obama condemns N. Korea's nuclear test
    May 25 2009: President Obama makes remarks on North Korea's nuclear test.

    MSNBC

    updated 1 hour ago

    WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama assailed North Korea Monday for new missile tests, saying the world must "stand up to" Pyongyang and demand that it honor a promise to abandon it nuclear ambitions.

    Appearing on the White House steps, Obama said that its latest nuclear underground test and subsequent test firings of short-range ground to air missiles "pose a grave threat to the peace and security of the world and I strongly condemn their reckless action."

    It was his second statement within hours on the tests, the latest in a number of nuclear actions that Obama said "endanger the people of Northeast Asia." He called it "a blatant violation of international law" and said that it contradicted North Korea's "own prior commitments." Obama had released a written statement chastising the North Koreans in the early morning hours of Monday.

    Tests denounced by China, Russia
    In his statement before cameras and microphones arrayed in the White House Rose Garden at mid-morning, he noted that the latest tests had also been denounced by China and Russia and had drawn the scorn of many around the world. Pyongyang's actions "have flown in the face of U.N. resolutions" and had deepened its isolation, he said, "inviting stronger international pressure."

    "North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons," the president said. "We will work with our friends and allies to stand up to this behavior. The United States will never waver from our determination to protect our people and the peace and security of the world."

    In Pyongyang, North Korea said that it had carried out a powerful underground nuclear test — much larger than one conducted in 2006. The regime also test-fired three short-range, ground-to-air missiles later Monday from the same northeastern site where it launched a rocket last month, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing unnamed sources.

    Condemned by U.N. Security Council
    The rocket liftoff, widely believed to be a cover for a test of its long-range missile technology, drew censure from the U.N. Security Council, which after a special meeting Monday condemned North Korea's nuclear test as a clear violation of its resolutions.

    The council said in a statement Monday that it will begin work immediately on a new legally binding resolution addressing North Korea's violations.

    The U.N.'s most powerful body held the emergency meeting at Japan's request.

    Reining in Pyongyang's nuclear program has been a continuing problem for U.S. administrations, dating to Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s. Former President George W. Bush labeled North Korea as a country that was part of an international "axis of evil," but the United States subsequently removed Pyongyang from its list of official state sponsors of terrorism when it shut down a nuclear installation late in the Bush administration.

    Looking at available options
    The question now is calculating precisely the nature of a threat and what are options are available to the Obama administration.

    Obama left no doubt about his intention to work with other world leaders to bring diplomatic pressure to bear on Pyongyang, and the United States could still try to resuscitate so-called Six-Party talks with the North as well as work with other nations at the United Nations. And while neither past administrations nor this one has taken the military option off the table, diplomacy seemed the card most likely to be played in the short term.

    'Engaged in intensive diplomacy'
    At the State Department, officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was "engaged in intensive diplomacy" on the issue.

    It said in a statement that she "has been in regular consultation with our Six Party partners," spoke with her counterparts in Japan and South Korea and planned to speak later Monday with officials in China and Russia.

    "In her conversations, the secretary stressed the importance of a strong, unified approach to this threat to international peace and security," State said. The statement said that Clinton "reiterated our commitment to regional security and to our alliances."

    Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last month dismissed an earlier rocket launch as a failure — both technologically and as an effort to market its missiles to other countries.

    "Would you buy from somebody that had failed three times in a row and never been successful?" he asked during a briefing at the Pentagon. Cartwright said the abortive missile launch showed that North Korea had failed to master the midair thrust shift from one rocket booster to another, an integral part of ballistic missile technology.

    'A grave threat to the United States'
    Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CBS's "The Early Show" show that "all of those things point to a country I think continues to destabilize that region and in the long term, should they continue to develop a nuclear weapons program, poses a grave threat to the United States."

    He did not discuss whether there were any changes in U.S. military alert status.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leading a congressional delegation on a tour in China, said, "If today's announcement is true, these tests would be a clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, which requires that North Korea not conduct any further nuclear tests. Such action by North Korea is unacceptable and cause for great alarm."

    Wendy Sherman, a former Clinton administration adviser on North Korean policy, told The Associated Press: "We're sending the message that there is international law; there are international norms; that countries will be isolated from the international community."

    "U.S. officials had expected that North Korea might conduct a second nuclear test," she said. "That said, this is as President Obama said, 'of grave concern.' "

     

    Iran deploys missiles in Persian Gulf

     

    The Jerusalem Post
    May 12, 2009

    Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have begun deploying mobile launchers for surface-to-air and surface-to-sea missiles in the Strait of Hurmuz and other areas in the Gulf, it has been revealed.                                                                

     

    An Iranian flag flutters, in this image released Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008 taken at an undisclosed location in Iran, that shows a missile prior to the test firing by Iranian armed forces.

    An Iranian official, quoted anonymously in the Saudi daily Al-Watan, said Iranian forces deployed the missile bases following secret reports that the United States and Israel were working on a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    Iran’s preparations for a potential military strike are not new. The republic has conducted several military exercises over the past few years, some with the explicit intention of preparing the armed forces for a possible confrontation with the West.

    The source said the missiles were deployed a few weeks ago. Iran is said to have informed Arab countries in the region of its activities and reassured its neighbors that the missiles were not aimed at states in the region, a reference to Sunni Arab states such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which has a Shi’ite majority but Sunni government.

     

    Car giant GM seeks deal to survive

    Car giant General Motors could be owned by the US government and the United Auto Workers union under a massive restructuring plan laid out that will cut 21,000 jobs by next year.

    The deal would leave current shareholders holding just 1% of the century-old company, which is fighting for its life in the worst car sales climate in 27 years.

    GM is living on 15.4 billion dollars in government loans and faces a June 1 deadline to restructure and get more government money.

    If the restructuring does not satisfy the government, the company could go into bankruptcy protection.

    GM said it will ask the government to take more than 50% of its common stock in exchange for cancelling half the government loans to the company.

    In addition, GM is offering the UAW stock for at least 50% of the 20 billion dollars the company must pay into a union run trust that will take over retirement health care expenses starting next year.

    If both are successful, the government and UAW health care trust would own 89% of GM stock, with the government holding more than a 50% stake, CEO Fritz Henderson said.

    President Barack Obama's administration said that the bond exchange filing is an important step in GM's restructuring but it had not made a final decision.

    Mr Henderson said if the debt exchange is not successful, he would expect GM to file for bankruptcy protection around June 1.

    "The task at hand in terms of what we need to get done is formidable," he said. "But it can be done."

    Mexican Swine Flu An Advanced Biowar Event That Will Be Bigger Than 9/11

    By The Earl of Stirling
    4-25-09

    On 23 rd April 2009 the world began to become aware of a very strange new version of swine flu H1N1 in Mexico with limited cases in Texas and California. By the morning of the 24th of April, we began hear that there were hundreds of sick and 20 or so dead. By late in the day, we have learned that over 1,000 are now reported ill and over 60 are reported dead. There are solid reasons to suspect that this new Mexican Swine Flu is NOT a naturally occurring event but instead is an Advanced Biological Warfare recombination DNA genetically engineered virus.

    Here is what we know of the virus so far. This virus has already gone international having crossed the border from Mexico to America. All schools in Mexico City have been canceled, millions of students told to stay home due to Mexican Swine Flu. Sick victims of this strange new virus are currently reported in California and Texas. Over 60 deaths reported in Mexico (could be substantially higher considering the state of Mexican health care and reporting).

    Young healthy adults seem to be the most at risk. This is similar to the deadest killer flu in history, Spanish Flu in 1918. Most if not all nations with advanced biological warfare programs have been interested in recreating the Spanish Flu DNA sequence and several are reported to have done so.

    The new Mexican Swine Flu has elements of DNA from the following: avian flu, human flu Type A, human flu Type B, Asian swine flu, and European swine flu. A strange combination never seen before and having less than 1/10% chance of being a natural event. Human and animal viruses from four or more continents suddenly recombine in a new flu during a non-flu season that
    spreads from human-to-human with a 10% fatality rating.

    Over 1,000 reported infected in Mexico; true rate may be much higher. Mexico City seems to be the epicenter of the new virus. Mexico City has 20 million citizens, most terribly poor. Mexico City is notorious for its poor sanitation and public health. "Don't drink the water" has been the byword in Mexico City for decades. It is the perfect breading ground for an explosive growth of this new killer virus. Mexico City has closed all schools, public gatherings, public buildings. People are wearing medical masks on the streets. The government has announced a massive new emergency swine flu vaccination program that will be, at best, either totally non-effective or of very limited effect, and could be, at worst, a deadly option for patients. It is thought that the authorities are trying to contain public panic by announcing the vaccination program.

    Both the World Health Organization and the US CDC (Center for Disease Control) have announced, today/24th April, that they are 'very concerned' about a global pandemic developing out of this new disease. Based on advanced biowargaming projections, it is already too late to stop the global spread of this new killer disease. Based on the three waves of Spanish Flu, the latter ones being more lethal, fatality rates may range from approximately 10% to 40% or so in later waves. More people could die in America, Mexico, Canada, Europe, and globally from Mexican Swine Flu than died in World War II.

    This new flu is a lab created advanced biological warfare DNA genetically engineered virus that either: (1) Escaped accidentally from a lab; or (2) was deliberately released by a nation or non-state organization or a well-trained individual.

    If there is a positive side to this coming global disaster, it may force governments to quickly come to grips with containing advanced biowar attacks. This is of considerable short term importance as Israel is apt to attack Iran by no later than mid-July 2009. The Iranians, having hired a large number of key ex-Soviet advanced biowar scientists 18 years ago and having spent billions on their asymmetrical MAD (mutually assured destruction) counter-force, are expected to respond to any significant attack on Iran with a biowar attack on Israel, North America, and Europe using in-place agents and dozens of genetically engineered viruses, many with very high projected kill rates.

    This event is an advanced biological warfare event. It is far more important than 9/11 and, by itself, could bring deaths in such magnitudes as to exceed the number of deaths from all causes in the Second World War.

    Stirling

     

     

     

    U.S. declares swine flu public health emergency

    20 cases have been confirmed so far in the U.S.; up to 86 killed in Mexico

    April 26, 2009

    MSN and Staff

     

    Slideshow
      Swine flu found in Mexico, U.S.
    Worries that a new swine flu strain has “pandemic potential” increased with the announcement that the virus has spread to Kansas and likely to New York City.

    more photos

    Video
      CDC: ‘We expect to see more cases of swine flu’
      April 26: Dr. Richard Besser, the acting director of the CDC, and Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, offer warnings about the spread of the new swine flu strain which has infected numerous people across the United States.

    MSNBC

    Video
      CDC chief: Situation changing ‘rapidly’
      April 25: Dr. Richard Besser, the acting director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sits down with NBC’s Lester Holt to discuss the spread of swine flu.

    Nightly News

    Q&A
    Image: Pigs
    Swine flu
    Learn about the virus found in pigs and why it is causing concern among health officials.

    msnbc.com

     
    msnbc.com staff and news service reports
    updated 2 hours ago

    Government officials have declared a public health emergency in connection with the swine flu outbreak that has killed dozens in Mexico and sickened 20 in the U.S., said the nation’s director of Homeland Security Sunday.

    Secretary Janet Napolitano also said border agents have been directed to begin passive surveillance of travelers from affected countries, with instructions to isolate anyone who appears actively ill with suspected influenza.

    The number of cases confirmed in the United States by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now 20, including eight New York City high school students. Other cases are in Ohio, California, Texas and Kansas. Patients have ranged in age from 7 to 54.

    Government health officials expect to see more cases of swine flu here, including possibly serious infections, a senior CDC official said.



    “We expect there to be a broader spectrum of disease here in the U.S.,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for the agency’s Science and Public Health Program. “I do fear that we will have deaths here.”

    Napolitano said the emergency declaration is a warning, not a notice of imminent danger, similar to preparing for a hurricane.

    "I wish we could call it a declaration of emergency preparedness,” Napolitano said.

    Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC, said that compared to cases in Mexico, “what we’re seeing in this country is mild disease,” noting that the U.S. cases would not have been detected without increased surveillance.

    CDC officials said they don’t yet have basic information about how the virus spreads, including how many cases each primary case might create, or how long it might take for them to be infected. However, agency officials believe the virus is spreading person-to-person. In the U.S., all the patients have recovered and only one patient was hospitalized.

    Besser said he still can’t say why cases in U.S. are so much milder than the deadly cases in Mexico. There, the disease has killed up to 86 people and likely sickened nearly 1,400 since April 13.

    “The real important take away is that we have an outbreak of a new infectious disease that we’re addressing aggressively,” Besser said.

    The incubation period for the virus is 24 to 48 hours, health officials said. President Barack Obama recently traveled to Mexico but the president’s health was never in any danger, said John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security.

    The president has received regular briefings from advisers on the swine flu outbreak and the White House readied guidance for Americans.

    “The government can’t solve this alone; we need everybody to take some responsibility,” Napolitano said.

    Besser urged Americans to practice frequent handwashing and to stay home if they feel sick. “If your children are sick, have a fever and flu-like illness, they shouldn’t go to school.”

    Schuchat said symptoms that would trigger alarm include h igh fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, vomiting and diarrhea. But she cautioned those could also be signs of any number of respiratory diseases.

      Swine flu at a glance

    Key developments Sunday on swine flu outbreaks:

    — Deaths: 86, all in Mexico. 22 confirmed as swine flu, 64 suspected.
    — Sickened: 1,384 in Mexico, suspected or confirmed; 20 confirmed in U.S.; 10 suspected in New Zealand; 6 confirmed in Canada; 7 suspected in Spain; 1 suspected in France; 1 suspected in Israel.
    — Locations in Mexico: 17 states, including Mexico City, Mexico State, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Baja California and San Luis Potosi. Some, including Oaxaca, Mexico City and Baja California, have tourist areas, but authorities have not said where in these states the outbreaks occurred.
    — Locations in U.S.: California, Kansas, New York, Ohio and Texas.
    — Safety measures in Mexico: In Mexico City, surgical masks being given away on the subway system, public events canceled, schools and public venues closed and church services postponed. President Felipe Calderon has assumed new powers to isolate infected people.
    — Safety measures worldwide: Airports screening travelers from Mexico for flu symptoms. China, Russia and Taiwan plan to put anyone with symptoms under quarantine. Hong Kong and South Korea warn against travel to Mexican City and three provinces. Italy, Poland and Venezuela advised citizens to postpone travel to affected areas of Mexico and the United States.
    — Safety measures in U.S: Roughly 12 million doses of Tamiflu being moved from federal stockpile to be delivered to states. Travelers at border being asked about travel to flu-stricken areas. St. Francis Preparatory School in New York, where eight cases are confirmed, will be closed Monday and Tuesday.

    Source: The Associated Press

    “There’s not a perfect test right now that will let a person, a member of the public or a doctor, know,” she said.

    U.S. to screen travelers at borders
    The U.S. will begin screening travelers at the nation’s borders and isolating people who are actively ill with suspected influenza, Napolitano said. No travel restrictions are issued currently, but that could change, she said.

    CDC officials said Sunday they would begin handing out “yellow cards” at airports with information about signs, symptoms and ways to reduce the chance of acquiring the virus.

    Health officials said the facts of the outbreak don’t yet warrant testing or quarantine of travelers from Mexico, but that that could change if the situation gets worse.

    Anne Schuchat reiterated that the outbreak can’t be contained.

    “We cannot stop this at the border,” she said, adding: “But we think there’s a lot we can do to limit the impact on health and to slow transmission.”

    “We think that slowing transmission can have an impact on health,” she said.

    Officials said Sunday they are considering whether to begin manufacture of a vaccine.

    “At this point, there is not a vaccine for this swine flu strain,” Besser said.

    Deaths in Mexico

    Symptoms in the eight newly confirmed cases in New York have been mild, said Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. City health officials said more than 100 students at the St. Francis Preparatory School, in Queens, recently began suffering a fever, sore throat and aches and pains. Some of their relatives also have been ill.

    Swine flu outbreak
    ‘Probable’ swine flu found in NYC
    April 25: Eight suspected cases of swine flu have been identified at a New York school where a number of students fell ill this week. NBC’s Jeff Rossen reports.

    Some St. Francis students had recently traveled to Mexico, The New York Times and New York Post reported Sunday.

    The World Health Organization chief said Saturday that the strain has "pandemic potential," and it might be too late to contain a sudden outbreak.

    Monitoring possible cases
    State infectious-diseases, epidemiology and disaster preparedness workers have been dispatched to monitor and respond to possible cases of the flu. Gov. David Paterson said 1,500 treatment courses of the antiviral Tamiflu had been sent to New York City.

    The city health department has asked doctors to be extra vigilant and test patients who have flu symptoms and have traveled recently to California, Texas or Mexico.

    Investigators also were testing children who fell ill at a day care center in the Bronx. Families in Manhattan also have contacted the city, saying they had recently returned ill from Mexico with flu symptoms, Frieden said.

    Frieden said New Yorkers having trouble breathing due to an undiagnosed respiratory illness should seek treatment but shouldn't become overly alarmed. Medical facilities near St. Francis Prep have already been flooded with people overreacting to the outbreak, he said.

    Kansas health officials said Saturday that they had confirmed swine flu in a married couple living in the central part of the state after the husband visited Mexico. The couple, who live in Dickinson County, weren't hospitalized, and the state described their illnesses as mild.

    "Fortunately, the man and woman understand the gravity of the situation and are very willing to isolate themselves," said Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, the state health officer.

    No immunity
    Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A flu viruses, the CDC's Web site says. Human cases are uncommon but can occur in people who are around pigs. It also can be spread from person to person.

    Health officials are concerned because people appear to have no immunity to the virus, a combination of bird, swine and human influenzas. The virus also presents itself like other swine flus, but none of the U.S. cases appear to involve direct contact with pigs, Eberhart-Phillips said.

     

     

     

    G20 show of unity offers $1-trillion in aid, few specifics

    LONDON — The leaders of the Group of 20 countries put on a show of unity Thursday to fight the global recession, with pledges of more than $1-trillion (U.S.) in aid to help struggling countries and revive trade.

    But their failure to unveil new stimulus spending was criticized as a “disappointment” by economists, who fear the global downturn will only deepen unless governments everywhere open the stimulus spigots even further.

    The G20 countries also agreed to rein in the world's financial system through the creation of international accounting standards, the regulation of debt-ratings agencies and hedge funds, a clampdown on tax havens and controls on executive pay. But the lack of details on these proposals suggests they will not become effective any time soon.

    U.S. President Barack Obama, who had been calling for more stimulus spending, nonetheless welcomed the communiqué.

    “The steps that have been taken are critical to preventing us sliding into a depression,” Mr. Obama told reporters after the close of the G20 gathering in London's Docklands. “They are bolder and more rapid than any international response that we've seen to a financial crisis in memory.”

    Characterizing it as historic, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the summit's host, said the agreement ushered in a new period of international co-operation while ending the era of the Washington consensus, a term from the late 1980s that has come to be equated with market fundamentalism.

    “Today we have reached a new consensus that we take global action together to deal with problems that we face, that we will do what is necessary to restore growth,” he said.

    Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined fellow leaders in the praise, saying new regulations will help the market work better. “The declaration is very clear that globalization, that open markets, that liberalized trade remain the essential base of our economic system and will be the basis of any recovery and future economic growth,” he said.

    The agreement was the object of last-minute negotiations, and overcame the initial objections of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who at one point threatened to leave the meeting if the other leaders did not agree with his position on stricter regulation of the financial world.

    Ms. Merkel said she was pleased the group came to a broad agreement after such a short period of time. “We now have been able to rally around a message of unity,” she told a news conference.

    Mr. Sarkozy said his alliance with Ms. Merkel worked well.

    “We would never have hoped to get so much,” he said.

    Thursday's agreement calls for the creation of a Financial Stability Board, which is designed to work with the International Monetary Fund to provide early warning of financial risks and the actions needed to reduce them. The agreement says the countries will take action against tax havens by slapping sanctions against offending nations. “The era of banking secrecy is over,” the communiqué said.

    The $1-trillion-plus in emergency aid is anchored by a commitment to add $500-billion to the resources of the IMF, taking it to $750-billion, a level that should give it enough firepower to extend bailout loans to the hardest-hit countries. Of this amount, $100-billion will come from the European Union, $100-billion from Japan and $40-billion from China.

    Another $250-billion will be given to the IMF to support special drawing rights, the organization's own “basket” currency that can be used to boost global liquidity. Trade finance will be supported with $250-billion channelled through the World Bank and export agencies, though almost none of that amount has been committed yet. The IMF has also agreed to sell gold reserves to provide as much as $50-billion in aid to the poorest countries.

    The G20's IMF measures were more aggressive than expected and helped lift the world's markets. Commodities such as oil and metals rose as traders evidently took the view that global growth would revive more quickly than they had expected. News of possible U.S. accounting changes of the mark-to-market rules, used to value assets, helped to trigger a bank rally.

    “What is most encouraging for the G20 leaders' summit in London today is the building evidence that the Lehman-related collapse in global demand seems to be coming to an end,” Derek Halpenny, the head of currency research at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in London said in a report Thursday.

    The communiqué also called on countries to resist protectionist measures.

    The regulatory changes agreed by the G20 countries are sweeping, but lacked detail about their scope and implementation, whether or not they could be enforced globally or nationally.

    Mr. Brown said that hedge funds, whose failure can trigger a domino effect in the financial-services industry, would be subject to greater regulation and oversight. Pay and bonuses will have to adhere to “sustainable” compensation schemes.

    “There will be no more rewards for failure,” Mr. Brown said.

    The leaders, emboldened by the recent progress in prying open tax havens, said sanctions will be slapped on any sponsor country that refuses to sign international agreements to exchange tax information.

    Mr. Brown said another G20 summit will take place late this year – with the host city yet to be determined – to review the measures unveiled Thursday and at previous summits.

    The G-20 Summit: Neoliberal Agenda Untouched. Next Phase of the Crisis is Looming

     

     

    Dr. Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet
    Global Research
    April 2, 2009

    The G20 summit meeting in London from April 1st onward was loudly announced and publicized. Those 20 industrialized and emergent countries (G20) are meeting to find solutions to the crisis. But long before the end of the summit, it is clear that they will not rise to the challenge.

    featured stories   The G 20 Summit: Neoliberal Agenda Untouched. Next Phase of the Crisis is Looming
    G20
    The G20 strategy is to put a fresh coat of paint on a world which is collapsing.

    The G20 was not created in order to provide genuine solutions; it was hastily summoned a first time in November 2008 to salvage the powers that be and try and to plug the breaches in capitalism. It is therefore impossible for this body to opt for measures that are sufficiently radical to save the day.

    Public opinion will be told to look in the two directions that are expected to focus aggravation: tax havens and the CEOs’ incomes.

    Tax havens have to be abolished, that goes without saying. To achieve this it should be easy enough to make it illegal for companies and residents to have any assets in, or relationships with partners located in, tax havens. The EU countries that function like tax havens ( Austria , Belgium , the UK , Luxembourg …) as well as Switzerland must do away with bank secrecy and put an end to their outrageous practices. Yet such is not at all the orientation chosen by the G20: a couple of emblematic cases will be cracked down on, minimal measures will be required from those countries, and a black list of non-cooperative territories eventually made public will have been carefully vetted (the City, Luxembourg or Austria have already been promised they will not be on it ).

    On the other hand CEOs’ incomes, including golden parachutes and other bonuses, are indeed outrageous. In time of growth the employers claimed that those who brought in such benefits to their companies had to be rewarded to prevent them from moving to another. Now that we live in a time of crisis and those companies have to admit to increasing losses, the same executives still claim similar rewards. The G20 will try to regulate their incomes for a limited duration. The logic of the system is not questioned.

    Apart from tax havens and CEOs’ superbonuses, which will not be hit by any specific penalties anyway, the G20 countries will further bail out their banks. Though globally discredited and de-legitimized, the IMF will be put back at the hub of the political and economic game thanks to a new provision of funds which will have been made available by 2010.

    The G20 strategy is to put a fresh coat of paint on a world which is collapsing. Only a strong popular mobilization will make it possible to lay solid foundations to build another world in which finance is at the service of people, and not the other way round. The 28 and 30 March demos were big ones: 40,000 people in London , thousands and thousands in Vienna , Berlin , Stuttgart , Madrid , Brasilia , Rome , etc. with the common motto “Let the rich pay the crisis!” The week of global action called for by the social movements from all over the world at the WSF at Belém last January thus had a gigantic echo. Those who had announced the end of the movement for another globalization were wrong. It has proved that it is able to bring large crowds together, and this is only the beginning. The success of the mobilizations in France on 29 January and  19 March (three  million demonstrators were in the streets) is evidence that the workers, the unemployed and young people all want other solutions to the crisis than those which consist in bailing out bankers and imposing restrictions on the lower classes.

    As a counterpoint to the G20 summit, the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d ‘ Escoto, has called a general meeting of Heads of States and Governments in June and asked the economist Joseph Stiglitz to chair a commission that will draft proposals to meet the global crisis. The suggested solutions are inadequate because too timid, but they will at least be discussed at the the UN general Assembly.

    A new debt crisis is looming in the South, it is a consequence of the real estate private debt bubble bursting in the North. The recession that now affects the real economy of all countries in the North has led to prices of raw material plummeting, which considerably has reduced the strong currency revenues with which governments of countries of the South repay their external public debts. Moreover the current credit crunch has induced a rise in borrowing rates for countries of the South. The combination of these two factors has already resulted in suspensions in debt repayment by those governments that are most exposed to the crisis (starting with Ecuador ). Others will follow suit within one or two years.

    The situation is absurd: countries of the South are net creditors to the North, starting with the US whose external debt is over US$ 6,000 billion (twice the total external debt of all the countries of the South). Central banks in countries of the South buy US Treasury bonds instead of setting up a democratic bank of the South to finance human development projects. They should leave the World Bank and the IMF, which are tools of domination, and develop South-South relations of solidarity such as those which exist between countries that are members of ALBA ( Venezuela , Cuba , Bolivia , Nicaragua , Honduras , and Dominica ). They ought to audit the debts they are asked to repay and put an end to the payment of illegitimate debts.

    The G20 will see to it that the core of neoliberal logic is left untouched. Its principles are asserted again and again, even though they have blatantly failed: the G20 maintains its attachment to a  global economy based on an open market. Its support to the god of free market is non-negotiable. Everything else is hocus-pocus. 

     

    U.S deploys battleships ahead of controversial North Korean    long-range missile test

    By David Gardner
    Last updated at 4:28 PM on 30th March 2009

    The United States has today deployed a missile-interceptor ship from South Korea days ahead of North Korea's plans to test-fire a long-range missile capable of striking the US.

    U.S. President Barack Obama will discuss Pyongyang's intentions with global leaders including Chinese President Hu Jintao this week at the G20 summit in London.

    The United States, however, has no plans to shoot down the rocket, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

    Two American warships with anti-missile capabilities were deployed off the coast of Japan.

    The Taepoding-1, described as the first generation of North Korea's ballistic missile. The communist state is set to test the second generation in three or four days, reports claim

    The Taepoding-1, described as the first generation of North Korea's ballistic missile. The communist state is set to test the second generation in three or four days, reports claim

    'I would say we're not prepared to do anything about it,' Gates said on 'Fox News Sunday' when asked if the Pentagon planned to shoot down the missile.

    'If we had an aberrant missile, one that looked like it was headed for Hawaii, we might consider it,' he said, adding the Pentagon does not believe North Korea can put a warhead on the missile or reach the U.S. West Coast.

    Japan's military has also deployed Patriot missile interceptors around Tokyo and sent warships to the Sea of Japan ahead of the launch.

    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned North Korea that firing a missile for any purpose would be seen as a ‘provocative act’ that would have serious consequences.

    The Obama administration is worried that the North Korean plan to launch a communication satellite next week is a cover for testing a warhead that could reach as far as Alaska.

    Anti-North Korean protesters shout slogans during a rally against North Korea's missile near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea

    Anti-North Korean protesters shout slogans during a rally against North Korea's missile near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea

    U.S. Navy's guided-missile destroyer U.S.S. John S. McCain ahead of the planed missile launch by North Korea

    U.S. Navy's guided-missile destroyer U.S.S. John S. McCain ahead of the planed missile launch by North Korea

    Analysts suggested the move was a typical act of brinkmanship designed to test the new president’s foreign policy mettle.

    Mr Obama has made it clear he prefers a diplomatic approach rather than the aggressive stance taken by George Bush against traditional US foes like Iran and North Korea.

    But speaking in Mexico today, Mrs Clinton said the launch would be a clear violation of a UN Security Council missile ban.

    North Korea insists it has the right to develop its space programme and loaded the rocket in readiness for the launch with a warning for the West not to interfere.

    The Pyongyang regime said it would restart nuclear production if the international community takes punitive action.

    If the long-range rocket test-fires successfully, North Korea would have a strike range of 4,200miles - putting it at least in range of the American state of Alaska

    If the long-range rocket test-fires successfully, North Korea would have a strike range of 4,200miles - putting it at least in range of the American state of Alaska

     It claims it is entitled to make the ‘satellite test’ – scheduled for sometime between April 4 and 8 - under international law.

    The only previous test flight of the rocket in 2006 ended in failure when it blew apart within seconds of lift-off.

    North Korea froze its ageing nuclear reactor and agreed to seek better diplomatic relations three years ago.

    The US Navy said it has dispatched two destroyers – the USS McCain and USS Chafee – equipped with Aegis technology capable of tracking and destroying ballistic missiles from Sasebo port in southwest Japan.

    ‘I would say we are ready for any contingencies,’ said a spokesman. The US military has said it could with ‘high probability’ intercept any North Korean missile heading for American territory, if ordered to do so.

    Face off: U.S. President Barack Obama and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il

    Pyongyang says any attempt to shoot down the rocket would be an 'act of war.'

    South Korea claims the launch would be a serious challenge to security in north Asia, which accounts for one sixth of the global economy.

    Japan said the move would destabilise the region.

    A successful test would prove a huge boost at home to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, whose illness last year - widely thought to have been a stroke - has raised questions over his grip on power.

    North Korea positions rocket for April liftoff

    Neighbors suspect Pyongyang is testing technology for a long-range missile

    Image: Satellite image of Musudan Ri rocket launch facility
    DigitalGlobe via Reuters
    A satellite image taken Tuesday shows Musudan Ri, formally know as the Taepodong missile launch facility, the area where a North Korean rocket launch facility is located.
    msnbc.com news services
    updated 8:24 p.m. ET, Thurs., March. 26, 2009

    SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's positioning of a rocket on its east coast launchpad ratcheted up tensions Thursday with Washington, which warned that pushing ahead with the April launch would violate a U.N. ban and have serious consequences.

    Pyongyang says the rocket is designed to carry its Kwangmyongsong-2 satellite into orbit, an accomplishment timed for the eve of the inaugural session of North Korea's new parliament and for late founder Kim Il Sung's April 15 birthday.

    But regional powers suspect the North will use the launch to test the delivery technology for a long-range missile, one capable of striking Alaska, or may even test-fire the intercontinental Taepodong-2 missile itself. Keeping speculation about the payload alive, North Korea reportedly has kept the top of the rocket covered.

    White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that any rocket launch would be "provocative" and violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.

    Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made similar comments Wednesday, saying the action could jeopardize the stalled talks on supplying North Korea with aid and other concessions in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program.

    The Security Council banned North Korea from any ballistic activity in 2006.

    "We intend to raise this violation of the Security Council resolution, if it goes forward, in the U.N.," Clinton said Wednesday in Mexico City. "This provocative action in violation of the U.N. mandate will not go unnoticed, and there will be consequences."

    Japan has approved the deployment of a missile defense system to intercept debris that may fall onto its territory if the rocket launch fails, Japanese officials said Friday.

    Getting Obama's attention
    North Korea responded Thursday by threatening "strong steps" if the Security Council criticizes the launch, and suggested it would reverse nuclear disablement carried out so far. Any challenge to its bid to send the satellite into space would mean an immediate end to nuclear disarmament talks, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

    Top nuclear envoys from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. were to meet in Washington Friday, signaling growing concern over North Korea's plans.

    "A launch of any type of vehicle we would consider to be in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions," said State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said. "This provocative type of action would ... not go unnoticed."

    The diplomatic tussle puts North Korea right where it wants to be: at the center of Washington's attention, analysts said.

    "This action is something that cannot be ignored. ... This is a way to get attention from the U.S. and the Obama administration," said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank. "The North Korean leadership probably believes this will help achieve their objective of engaging the U.S."

    Analysts say Pyongyang is angling to establish direct relations with President Barack Obama's White House in hopes of circumventing the international disarmament talks that require the North to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for much-needed aid.

    Complicating the diplomacy is the detention of two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling of former Vice President Al Gore's online media venture Current TV, for allegedly crossing into North Korea illegally from China last week.

    North Korea could use the Americans as bargaining chips, said North Korea expert Koh Yu-hwan of Dengue University. He called their detention an "unexpected gift" for Pyongyang, giving the regime added leverage in its push for direct talks with Washington.

    "The timing couldn't be better for North Korea," Pinkston said. "It strengthens the North's bargaining position with the U.S. in dealing with the nuclear issue."

    'Brisk headway'
    North Korea had declared last month that it was making "brisk headway" in preparations to shoot the satellite into space, and notified aviation and maritime authorities the launch would happen April 4-8.

    U.S. spy satellites detected the rocket two days ago, South Korean reports said.  and intelligence officials in Washington confirmed reports that a rocket was in position.

    Once in place, scientists need several days to test and fuel the rocket, analysts said. North Korea is now "technically" capable of launching it in three to four days, South Korea's Chosen Elba newspaper said, citing an unnamed diplomatic official.

    South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have not yet determined whether the rocket is intended to carry a satellite or a missile because the top is concealed with a cover, the  news agency said, citing an unnamed South Korean government official.

     

    Smokescreen?
    One analyst called it a possible smokescreen designed to invite speculation.

    "I think North Korea is trying to raise as much attention as it can by covering (the top) so that it cannot be verified and it will create confusion," said Yang Moo-jinn, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

    Missiles and satellites share the same delivery technology so either way, next month's launch "would contribute to the development of its ballistic capacities," said French Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic  told reporters in Paris in joining calls against any launch.

    North Korea is not believed to have mastered the miniaturization technology required to mount a nuclear weapon onto a ballistic missile, but successfully test-firing the rocket would be a step toward developing a means to deliver a nuclear weapon, Koh said.

    Seoul warned that a launch would threaten regional stability and said it would take the matter to the Security Council.

    Japan on alert
    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman In Gang urged restraint, saying he hoped all parties would "do things to contribute to peace and stability on the peninsula."

    Japan's national security council approved an order to deploy interceptors in case debris falls onto its territory, public broadcaster NHK reported. North Korea has designated waters off northern Japan as at risk for falling fragments.

    Japan is also set to shift some of the PAC-3 land-to-air missiles, now around Tokyo, to the north coast and to send a pair of destroyers carrying missile interceptors to nearby waters.

    Tokyo has also warned of additional sanctions if North Korea goes ahead with a launch.

    Japan imposed tight trade sanctions against Pyongyang in 2006 after it tested ballistic missiles in waters between the two countries and conducted an atomic test. Japan's current sanctions, which have been extended every six months, are set to expire April 13.


     

     

    Israeli leaders pledge 'painful' rocket response

    Olmert suggests Israel's earlier offensive against Gaza fell short of its goal

    updated 2 hours, 15 minutes ago
    March 1, 2009
     

    JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday threatened a "painful" response to Palestinian rocket fire menacing southern Israel, suggesting that Israel's blistering offensive against Gaza Strip militants fell short of its goals.

    The prospect of heightened hostilities in Hamas-ruled Gaza cast a pall over a week of crucial diplomatic activity, including an international conference designed to drum up billions of dollars to rebuild the heavily damaged territory. With a new Israeli government to take office within weeks, however, it wasn't clear how sweeping any response would be.

    More than 110 rockets and mortar shells have exploded in Israel in the six weeks since it ended its air and ground onslaught against Gaza, meant to end the rocket threat and stanch the flow of arms into Gaza. So far, Israel has responded to the rocket fire mainly with airstrikes targeting underground tunnels used to smuggle weapons and other goods into Gaza from Egypt. 

    Olmert pledges severe response
    On Sunday, Olmert told Gaza's Islamic militant rulers to expect a severe response if the attacks don't stop.

    The rockets "will be answered with a painful, harsh, strong and uncompromising response from the security forces," Olmert said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.

    There was no comment from Hamas or other Gaza militant groups. But several hours after Olmert spoke, a rocket exploded in southern Israel, causing no injuries.

    The fire from Gaza has intensified as Egyptian-led efforts to cement the informal cease-fire with a long-term truce have faltered.

    Hamas wants Israel to end its blockade of Gaza, imposed after the Islamic militant group wrested control of the territory in June 2007, leaving moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas controlling only the West Bank. Israel says it won't end the blockade until Hamas releases an Israeli soldier captured nearly three years ago.

    For three weeks beginning in late December, Israeli aircraft, tanks and artillery pounded Gaza, leveling buildings and sometimes entire streets. By the time the offensive ended, some 1,300 Palestinians — at least half of them civilians — were dead, Palestinian officials said. So, too, were 13 Israelis, including three civilians.

    In declaring a Jan. 18 cease-fire, Olmert said the war had achieved its aims. But he also noted, "we took into account the possibility that shooting by the terrorist organizations might resume."

    Did Gaza operation end too soon?
    Many Israelis believe the Gaza operation ended too soon, most prominently hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the incoming prime minister who is to replace Olmert within weeks. Netanyahu had no immediate comment on the Cabinet decision.

    The prospect of renewed hostilities in Gaza came at the start of a week of intense diplomatic activity. In Egypt on Monday, the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, will ask some 80 donor countries to pledge $2.8 billion to rebuild Gaza.

    Raising the money won't be the hard part: The U.S. is expected to pledge $900 million, and Saudi Arabia has promised to kick in $1 billion.

    The problem will be getting the money into Gaza, a tiny seaside territory that is home to 1.4 million Palestinians. Many of the donors consider Hamas a terrorist organization and won't funnel money directly to its government. Hamas could sidestep that problem by agreeing to share power with bitter rival Abbas and soften its violent anti-Israel ideology. Repeated reconciliation efforts have failed, and no breakthroughs have emerged in ongoing talks in Egypt.

    Translating donations into construction projects would also require Israel and Egypt to recognize Hamas' authority in Gaza and reopen sealed borders. But without a truce, Israel will continue to keep tight control over concrete, steel and other supplies needed to rebuild 15,000 homes, roads and other infrastructure.

    High-profile foreign visitors
    In the runup to the donors' conference, a string of high-profile foreign visitors have arrived in Gaza, indicating a new willingness on the part of the international community to become involved there.

    International Mideast envoy Tony Blair toured the territory on Sunday, his first visit since appointed in 2007 to represent the Quartet of Mideast negotiators — the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia.

    Without truce and reconciliation agreements in place, money for Gaza won't have the desired effect, Blair said.

    "This money will not have a lasting impact unless there is a political solution," he said.

    From
    February 21, 2009

    Binyamin Netanyahu warns of Iranian nuclear threat

    Israel was set for the return to power of Binyamin Netanyahu after the Likud leader was invited to form a coalition government yesterday.

    Immediately after he was invited to become the next prime minister by President Peres, Mr Netanyahu lost no time in restating his warnings about a nuclear-armed Iran, calling it the greatest existential threat faced by Israel since its creation. His words came a day after the UN announced that Tehran had acquired sufficient uranium to build a nuclear bomb — a “red line” development Israel has said it will not tolerate.

    Likud came second in last week’s elections to the Kadima party, led by Tzipi Livni, but Mr Netanyahu’s chances of forming a government are significantly greater. However, he may find himself at the head of a narrow, far-right coalition that is at war with itself and at loggerheads with the US.

    His main partner will be the hardline nationalist party Yisraeil Beitenu, led by Moldovan Avigdor Lieberman. With the support of the remaining parties on the right — the ultra-Orthodox and settler factions — the new coalition will be able to count on 65 MPs in the 120-seat Knesset.

    George Mitchell, the peace envoy appointed by President Obama almost as soon as he took office, fired a warning shot across Mr Netanyahu’s bows, saying that Israel needed to pursue a political track with the Palestinians, not just an economic one — which is what Mr Netahyahu has proposed.

    The Likud leader’s plan for an “economic peace” means that Israeli forces would keep security control of the West Bank and its borders and air space. Palestinians would police their own towns. Israelis would mount raids against militants deemed a threat.       

    In return Israel would build industrial centres and attempt to bolster the Palestinian economy in an effort to turn the population away from radicalism. It is unlikely that any Palestinian leadership could accept such terms and retain any credibility, especially with support for Hamas on the rise.

    Egyptian-brokered truce talks with the Islamic group to avoid a repeat of last months’ devastating war in Gaza have broken down, and both sides have carried on with sporadic attacks across the border. Mr Netanyahu and Mr Lieberman have said that they would remove Hamas by whatever means necessary once in office.

    The Israeli Right fears that creating a Palestinian state would allow Hamas to take over the West Bank as it did Gaza and put all Israel’s central cities within range of its rockets.

    Mr Netanyahu has accused Hamas of being Iranian proxies, intent on squeezing the Jewish state between Tehran-controlled enclaves. “Iran is developing nuclear weapons and poses the greatest threat to our existence since the war of independence. Iran’s terror wings surround us from the north and south,” he said in reference to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as he accepted the nomination to form a government.

    Mr Lieberman has also spoken of the need to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Many fear his bullish approach would set Israel — which has a covert nuclear stockpile — on track for an imminent attack on Iran.          

    The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Thursday that it had discovered an additional 209 kilograms of low-enriched uranium undeclared to inspectors, taking Tehran over the threshold of “nuclear breakout capability” of a ton of fissile material. UN officials cautioned that many practical obstacles to the production of a bomb remained, and inspectors reported that Iran had slowed down on building its uranium enrichment capacity, a possible goodwill gesture to Mr Obama. The news will increase Israeli calls to deal with Iran.

    In return for supporting the Likud leader Mr Lieberman has reportedly asked for a senior Cabinet position. Mr Netanyahu will be wary of giving too much away to a man denounced by critics as a racist and who has angered Israel’s large Arab minority by insisting they take an oath of allegiance to the Jewish state. Mr Lieberman has also suggested giving away Arab areas of Israel in return for keeping Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank.

    Mr Netanyahu is loathe to rely on a narrow, hard-right majority, which he did when first elected in 1996. When he bowed to US pressure to relinquish control of part of the West Bank under the Oslo Accords, his Government collapsed. For that reason, in the 42 days he has to form a government Mr Netanyahu will be wooing Ms Livni and Kadima, the centre-right party, which won more seats than Likud but could not form a stable parliamentary alliance.  

     

    Tony Blair being plugged by Nicolas Sarkozy for President of Europe 

    UNITED STATES OF EUROPE?            REBIRTH OF THE  HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE?

    By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

    fEBRUARY 9, 2009

                                                 

                                                                                 

       

    VERSAILLES, France, February 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A report by the UK Daily Mail has revealed that a senior aid to French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a private gathering of senior British and French politicians that Sarkozy intends to promote Tony Blair for the yet-to-be-established job of President of Europe.

    The statement by Alain Minc, a member of Sarkozy's inner circle of advisors, was made at a meeting last month of the Franco-British Colloque, a group of influential British and French politicians and businessmen.

    Mr. Minc told the gathering, attended by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon: "When the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, Europe will move into a new phase. Europe will need a strong leader and Nicolas Sarkozy will nominate Tony Blair for the position," according to the Mail report.

    Minc concluded his remarks by stating that Sarkozy was determined to promote Blair because, "we cannot afford not to have Tony Blair, who will be a strong figurehead, is entirely respected around the world and will be a commanding leader at the helm of Europe."

    Tony Blair, the former U.K. prime minister, is well known to pro-life and pro-family activists as one of the most anti-life and anti-family political leaders in the world. Despite his oft-touted Christianity, and highly public "conversion" to Catholicism after stepping down as prime minister, the U.K. under Blair distinguished itself for pursuing radically liberal policies on the life and family issues. 

    The April 2003 cover issue of the UK Spectator covered Blair's stand on life issues.  Peter Oborne wrote: "The Prime Minister (Blair) has never once voted with the pro-life lobby and has voted 14 times for the pro-choice lobby in Parliament. In 1990, during the debates leading up to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, he voted on three occasions to extend the time limit for abortion to birth on grounds of handicap. In December 2000 he gave personal backing to regulations permitting stem-cell research on human embryos; and his government enthusiastically promotes the morning-after pill."

    On family issues, Osborne noted: "The married-couples allowance has been abolished, funding has been switched from groups backing marriage to those taking a relaxed view of any kind of relationship, the benefits system has been changed to target all money for children regardless of family structure, etc., etc. Far from being morally neutral on the family, the Blair government has actively discriminated against it."

    Despite Blair's "conversion" to Catholicism, he has never publicly repudiated any of his former anti-life and anti-family activities.

    The new position of President of the EU's Council of Ministers is dependent on all of the EU nations ratifying the controversial Lisbon Treaty. The treaty, however, has been rejected by Ireland and the Czech Republic, although a "re-vote" is reportedly in the works in Ireland.

    Should the Lisbon treaty pass, the EU president will be a full-time official, serving a two-and-half-year term, in contrast to the current practice of six month rotation of presidents. The president would be aided by a foreign minister and diplomatic service that critics have said will not be subject to scrutiny by the member nations or accountable to the electorate.

     

    Congress, White House agree on $790B stimulus bill         

    By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent David Espo, Ap Special CorrespondentWed Feb 11, 6:29 pm ET

    Obama Promises Help for States

     

    Speaker of the House Pelosi and House Majority Leader Rep. Hoyer speak about the stimulus package in Washington

    Reuters – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) speak about the stimulus …

    WASHINGTON – Moving with lightning speed, Congress and the White House agreed Wednesday on a compromise $790 billion economic stimulus bill designed to create million jobs in a nation reeling from recession. President Barack Obama could sign the measure within days.

    "More than one-third of this bill is dedicated to providing tax relief for middle-class families, cutting taxes for 95 percent of American workers," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at a Capitol news conference where he was joined by moderates from both parties whose support is essential for the legislation's final passage.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Reid's partner in negotiations over more than 24 hours, initially withheld public approval in a lingering dispute over federal funding for schools. But her spkesman, Brendan Daly, said more than two hours after Reid's announcement, "We are moving forward with this legislation, which will create or save more than 3 million jobs."

    Obama estimated 3.5 million in his own celebration of the agreement. He said it would "get our economy back on track."

    The emerging legislation is at the core of Obama's economic recovery program, and includes help for victims of the recession in the form of expanded unemployment benefits, food stamps, health coverage and more, as well as billions for states that face the prospect of making deep cuts in school aid and other programs.

    Another provision will mean a one-time payment of $250 for millions of beneficiaries who receive Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and veterans pensions and disability, according to officials.

    The measure also preserves Obama's signature tax cut — a break for millions of lower and middle income taxpayers. Wage-earners who don't make enough to pay income taxes would get a reduction in the Social Security and Medicare taxes they pay.

    The president also won money for two other administration priorities — information technology in health care, and "green jobs" to make buildings more energy-efficient and reduce the nation's reliance on foreign oil.

    The bill "will be the beginning of the turnaround for the American economy," predicted Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut.

    Republicans couldn't have disagreed more.

    "It appears that Democrats have made a bad bill worse by reducing the tax relief for working families in order to pay for more wasteful government spending," said Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

    The events capped a frenzied 24-plus hours that began at mid-day Tuesday when the Senate approved its original version of the bill on a party-line vote of 61-37. Reid, Pelosi and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel plunged into a series of meetings designed to produce agreement in time for Obama to sign the bill by mid-month.

    Pelosi was conspicuously absent from Wednesday's news conference in which members of the Senate announced the agreement. But moments later, Reid arrived in her office, and the two talked by phone with Emanuel, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    Officials had said previously that one of the final issues to be settled was money for school modernization, a priority for Pelosi as well as Obama and one on which they differed with Collins and other moderates whose votes will be essential for final Senate approval.

    There also was last-minute disagreement about a House proposal that could direct education funds to schools even if a state's governor didn't approve, they said, a squabble that one official said related principally to South Carolina.

    Stocks moved higher in the moments after Reid stepped to the microphone just outside the Senate chamber. The Dow Jones industrials, which plunged 382 points on Tuesday, rose 51 points for the day.

    Obama has been campaigning energetically for the legislation in recent days, saying it was essential to avoid turning what is already the worst economic crisis in a generation into a catastrophe.

    As if to underscore the urgency, he said a few hours before the agreement was announced that machinery giant Caterpillar Inc. plans to rescind some of the 22,000 layoffs the firm recently announced — once the stimulus is signed into law.

    Scaling back the bill to levels lower than either the $838 billion Senate measure or the original $820 billion House-passed measure caused grumbles among liberal Democrats, who described the cutbacks as a concession to the moderates, particularly Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who are under pressure from conservative Republicans to hold down spending.

    Working to accommodate the new, lower overall limit of the bill, negotiators effectively wiped out a Senate-passed provision for a new $15,000 tax credit to defray the cost of buying a home, these officials said. The agreement would allow taxpayers to deduct the sales tax paid on new car purchases, but not the interest on loans for the same vehicles.

    School construction was a problem apart from all others.

    Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told reporters that $6 billion would be set aside, and officials said it could be spent only on repair and modernization work, a limitation designed to appease the moderates.

    But officials said House Democrats were holding out for as much as $9 billion.

    With numerous demands for the funds in the bill, lawmakers worked to satisfy competing demands.

    A Senate-passed provision to give $10 billion to the National Institutes of Health for research — a favorite of both Harkin and Specter, appeared likely to survive.

     

    Hero Pilot Recounts Hudson Landing

    AP
    posted: 18 MINUTES AGO February 9, 2009
     
     
    NEW YORK (Feb. 9) - The pilot who ditched his jetliner in the Hudson River and saved the lives of everyone on board said he had a "sickening" feeling when a flock of birds disabled both engines with violent thuds, crippling the plane at 3,000 feet over the nation's most populous city.
    Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger said in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that the sound of the geese hitting the plane and the smell of burning poultry entering the cabin was "shocking."
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    In an interview with CBS' Katie Couric, the crew of US Airways Flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River Jan. 15, described their ordeal. For Doreen Welsh, right, the attendant at the back of the plane, the impact was "violent." Water rushed in when a passenger opened a rear door. Here, she gestures to show how high the water was by the time she left.
    "Oh, you could hear them," he said. "Loud thumps. It felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail. It sounded like the worst thunderstorm I'd ever heard growing up in Texas."
    The interview with Sullenberger and the other four crew members was broadcast Sunday, their first since US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the frigid water Jan. 15.
    Sullenberger took control of the plane from his first officer and glided it to safety, but said that in the aftermath of the emergency landing, he lay awake at night second-guessing his performance, even though all 155 people aboard survived.
    Skip over this content
     
    He said he initially had trouble forgiving himself because he thought he could have done something different in that "critical situation."
    "The first few nights were the worst," Sullenberger said. "When the 'what ifs' started."
    He said he no longer regrets his actions that day, calling his decision to land in the river "the only viable alternative" to attempting a return to LaGuardia Airport or landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
    "The only level, smooth place sufficiently large to land an airliner was the river," he said, recalling that the plane had no thrust and was "descending rapidly.
    Skip over this content
     
     
    Sullenberger, a former Air Force fighter pilot who has flown commercial planes for nearly three decades, said he knew he had to touch down with the wings level and the nose slightly up, and "at a descent rate that was survivable."
    "Did you, at any point, pray?" CBS' Katie Couric asked.
    "I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane," he said.
    The flight attendants said they didn't know they were landing in the water until it happened.
    "When I got out of my seat and saw that water, it was the most shocked I've ever been in my life," flight attendant Doreen Welsh said, adding that her emotions "had gone through, within seconds, accepting death and seeing life."
    Skip over this content
     
    She said she then "went crazy" and started yelling and pushing people to get them out because the impact tore a hole in the plane's tail and water poured into the cabin.
    "And as I was getting up, I thought I might actually live," Welsh said. "'Cause a second ago, I thought I was gone."
    Sullenberger landed the plane near two ferry terminals, and rescue boats appeared within minutes to take the 150 passengers and five crew members to safety.
    When the pilot got official confirmation that everyone had survived, "I felt like the weight of the universe had been lifted off my heart," he said.
    The crew met some of the passengers and their relatives at a reunion in Charlotte, N.C., the destination of Flight 1549.
    "More than one woman came up to me and said, 'Thank you for not making me a widow,'" Sullenberger said. "'Thank you for allowing my 3-year-old son to have a father.'"
    One passenger asked Sullenberger to sign his shirt.
    "Where, right there?" Sullenberger replied. "You got it. Let me make it big and bold."
    The flight crew received keys to the city on Monday from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called them "five real American heroes."
    Bloomberg said that day "could have been one of our most tragic, but became one of our most triumphant."
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    Mario Tama, Getty Images
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    US Airways 1549 went down in the Hudson River off New York City on Jan. 15 after the Airbus 320 collided with a flock of birds, disabling both engines. The pilot decided to ditch the crippled airliner in the frigid Hudson. All 155 people on board survived.

     

     

    Israeli jets stage mock raids in Lebanon airspace
    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:15:09 GMT
     
    Israeli warplanes carried out reconnaissance flights over Lebanon's border regions on Friday.
    Israeli fighter jets have carried out mock attacks and reconnaissance missions in border regions with Lebanon, Press TV has learned.

    Violating the Lebanese airspace, the warplanes carried out reconnaissance flights over border regions including Hasbaya, Arqub, Shaaba farms and Western Beqaa on Friday, a Press TV correspondent reported.

    The military jets also overflew several other regions at low altitude and launched mock raids against Lebanese targets.

    The report comes as the Israeli military has put its forces along the border on full alert ahead of the first anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah top commander Imad Mugniyah who was killed in a car bomb attack in Damascus in February 2008.

    Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, who has vowed to revenge the commander, believes all evidence gathered so far indicate that Israel's spy agency was responsible for Mugniyah's assassination.

    The Israeli army has also moved its forces to the northern border with Lebanon after deploying them to the Gaza Strip during the military offensive in the coastal sliver.
     

     

     

    Ice Melt Could Increase Sea Level Risks

    AP
    posted: 48 MINUTES AGO
    A
    WASHINGTON (Feb. 5) - Long-term sea level increases that could have a devastating effect on southern Florida and highly populated coastal areas may be even larger than once thought, a report suggests.
    Some studies have suggested that melting of ice in Antarctica and other areas could raise sea levels by 16 feet to 17 feet over the long run, a potential threat to coastal areas such as Washington, D.C., New York City and California.
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    Weiss and Overpeck, The University of Arizona
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    Northeast: A map created by University of Arizona scientists in 2007, based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey, show areas in the Northeast that would become flooded if the the sea rose one meter.
    But a report in Friday's edition of the journal Science warns that factors not previously considered could one day boost that increase to up to 21 feet in some areas.
    The study did not list a time frame for such a dramatic change. But co-author Peter Clark, a geoscientist at Oregon State University, stressed that they "aren't suggesting that a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is imminent."
    The most recent International Panel on Climate Change report estimated sea level rise of up to 3 feet by the end of this century.
    "People have been trying prepare for sea level rise for some time, it's not a new issue," Clark said, noting that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are holding a meeting in San Francisco on the effects of coastal change.
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    Many of the world's biggest cities are coastal and highly vulnerable to rising sea levels, according to a 2007 study by the Worldwatch Institute. One such city is Bangkok, above, which has an area population of 7,221,000. Click through for other huge cities at risk.
    Earlier research has focused on melting ice adding water to the oceans and on thermal expansion of sea water in a warmer climate over long periods of time.
    In the new report geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica and physics graduate student Natalya Gomez of the University of Toronto, Canada, and Clark, say other factors need to be considered.
    --When an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull on the ocean is reduced and water moves away from it. That means sea levels could fall near Antarctica and rise more than expected in the northern hemisphere.
    --Antarctic bedrock that currently sits under the weight of the ice sheet will rebound from the weight, pushing some water out into the ocean.
    --The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet will cause the Earth's rotation axis to shift, potentially moving water northward.
    "The net effect of all of these processes is that if the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the rise in sea levels around many coastal regions will be as much as 25 per cent more than expected," Mitrovica said in a statement.
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    Jonathan Hayward, CP / AP
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    A rise in methane has scientists worried that melting Arctic ice could be releasing ancient stores of the gas. Here, a glacier makes its way to Croaker Bay in Canada last summer. Click through for examples of global warming.

     

    Obama administration to clash with corporations over UFO files

    January 31, 2009, 6:09 AM

    by Michael Sala, Ph.D.  Honolulu Exopolitics Examiner


    Lockheed Skunk Works, Palmdale, CA. Photo: Wikimedia

    President Obama’s January 21 Memoranda to promote Open Government and strengthen the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) are intended to release unnecessarily classified national security files. Among the many millions of classified files to ultimately be released, some will concern UFOs and extraterrestrial life. From these releases, UFO enthusiasts and exopolitical researchers hope to find clues into how government policy has been developed. More importantly, FOIA releases will point to where the bulk of the nation’s UFO files are located. That’s when the Obama administration will run up against corporate control of UFO files and policy.

    Testimonial evidence exists that corporations have become the ultimate repository of the nation’s UFO secrets. A number of whistleblowers have emerged revealing how corporate control has been achieved. A recently deceased corporate
    whistleblower revealed how during the mid-1980s, he worked for six months as an archivist for a large aerospace defense contractor based in California.  It was a temporary assignment with his employer at an obscure office building. The archivist found many files dealing with flying saucers and extraterrestrial life. The files contained: “Reports, photos, media materials (tapes, films, video cassettes) and material from crashed saucers.” When asked where the files came from he revealed the “materials came from everywhere. CIA, Air Force, Navy, Army, DARPA, NORAD, DoD, FBI, and government officials to name most.”

    Project Camelot Video of Corporate UFO archivist

    If the archivist’s testimony is accurate, this means that prior to the mid-1980s UFO files were taken out of the possession of U.S. government agencies and military departments due to security concerns. One reason for this is that the proprietary rights of corporations would enable UFO files to remain hidden from the prying hands of congressmen, and private citizens using the Freedom of Information Act first passed in 1966 and strengthened in 1974.

    The above scenario is supported by comments by Ben Rich, former CEO of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. In hand written responses to questions from John Andrews of the Testor Corporation in 1986, Rich confirmed the existence of both man-made and extraterrestrial UFOs. Most importantly, Rich revealed to Andrews how control of UFO files had slipped from the U.S. military to private corporations. Andrews relayed Rich’s responses to questions from UFO investigator William McDonald which confirmed:

    There are two types of UFOs -- the ones we build, and ones THEY build. We learned from both crash retrievals and actual "Hand-me-downs." The Government knew, and until 1969 took an active hand in the administration of that information. After a 1969 Nixon "Purge", administration was handled by an international board of directors in the private sector.

    Former astronaut, Dr Edgar Mitchell recently confirmed an incident in 1997 where the Head of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff was supplied the code names of UFO related projects, but was denied need-to-know access. The first to report the incident was UFO researcher, Dr Steven Greer, who in 2001 revealed that Admiral Wilson was furious over his failure to gain access. On a July 4, 2008 CNN interview, Dr Mitchell confirmed Greer’s version of events when  he said that Admiral Wilson “had found the people responsible for the cover-up and for the people who were in the know and were told, I'm sorry, admiral, you do not have need to know here and so, goodbye.” A reliable source furthermore revealed to UFO researcher Richard Dolan that Admiral Wilson was frustrated by attorneys of a corporation that denied him access. I interviewed an active duty U.S. Navy officer in October 2008 who confirmed the powerful role of corporations involved in UFO projects.

    A number of senior officials in the Obama administration were deeply involved in Clinton administration efforts to disclose files concerning UFOs. If President Obama’s January 21 Memoranda are fully implemented, FOIA requests will allow much information about UFOs to emerge. This will give important clues to where the bulk of the nation’s UFO files are kept. That is when the Obama administration will run up against powerful corporate interests claiming proprietary control of UFO information and advanced extraterrestrial technology. The Obama administration will ultimately need to confront corporate interests that house UFO files, and controlled UFO policy since the Nixon Administration.

     el jefe del guano: The real reason why corporations are trying to withhold information about UFOs is because such knowledge would challenge the existence of such corporations. Our system ('Capitalism,' with a capital 'C') is threatened by anything that might be 'alternative' to the proper functioning of capital accumulation and consumption.

    A successful alien species must have advanced itself to an new stage of socio-economic relations, as the whole of society would not be based on differences and rivalries; thus, an alien society must be: socialistic (which is also democratic as equality in economics ensures equality in being properly in control of governmental affairs), which would rely on the sake of exploration for the advancement of knowledge, rather than for a materialistic gain; fascistic, as such a society had already tried a socio-economic system that is similar to 'Capitalism,' and thus what we would consider 'corporations' had sprung up and did to an alien planet what 'corporations' have done to this planet and so eventually a 'corptocracy' must have emerged and thus eliminated opposition to the extent where the devotion of the said planet's resources and societal constructs may be placed toward outer-space; finally, the society could also be sheerly autocratic and dynastic and thus such an alien planet may have evolved differently than how royalty and dynasties have here (meaning, the rise of 'mercantilism' was contained by royal initiatives and thus eliminated what we would call a 'liberal or bourgeois revolution(s).'

     

    • Posted on Friday, January 30, 2009

    Threat of naval clash off Korean Peninsula rises

     

    BEIJING — The potential for a naval clash off the Korean Peninsula grew Friday after North Korea scrapped a nonaggression pact with South Korea and declared as void a western sea border, warning in shrill language that the region has "reached the brink of war."

    South Korea expressed regret that Pyongyang canceled all political and military accords and pledged "firm counteraction" should North Korean vessels cross a U.N.-set demarcation line on the Yellow Sea.

    "We will uphold the maritime border just as we maintain the military demarcation line on land," Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said in Seoul, according to South Korea's semi-official Yonhap news agency.

    "The agreement reached between the two sides cannot be scrapped just because one side decides to scrap it," Won said.

    North Korea is prone to strident outbursts to gain attention, and its actions Friday may be aimed not only at Seoul but also at Washington, where, it fears, it won't be a diplomatic priority for the new Obama administration in its early days as the Middle East seizes attention. North Korea also may seek to intimidate the South into offering more financial support.

    Early on Friday, North Korea issued a statement through its official news agency that lambasted South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who took office 11 months ago with a tough stance toward North Korea, and canceled two reconciliation accords with Seoul.

    "The group of traitors has already reduced all the agreements reached between the north and the south in the past to dead documents," the agency said.

    It declared void a 1992 agreement that recognizes a U.N.-set boundary line in the Yellow Sea as the maritime border between the nations. North Korea has objected to the boundary, saying that it should be set further to the south. Disputes on the Yellow Sea led North Korean and South Korean vessels to square off in bloody battles in 1999 and 2002. Shots were fired in 2004.

    "The confrontation between the North and the South in the political and military fields has been put to such extremes that inter-Korean relations have reached the brink of a war," North Korea's statement added.

    The boundary line in the Yellow Sea gives control of offshore islands, rich in blue crabs, to South Korea. With the spring crabbing season around the corner, a source of foreign exchange is at stake.

    Tensions between North Korea and South Korea have escalated sharply since Lee took office. Lee has placed conditions on multimillion-dollar humanitarian aid to cash-starved North Korea, and has permitted private groups to launch balloons over North Korea that drop leaflets criticizing its leader, Kim Jong Il.

    Significantly, Pyongyang hasn't shut down the joint industrial park in the North Korean city of Kaesong, where 90 or so South Korean factories employ 33,000 low-wage North Koreans. The Kaesong complex is an important source of scarce foreign exchange for Pyongyang.

    Just a few days ago, Kim offered a positive signal on six-nation talks designed to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Kim told a visiting Chinese envoy that he didn't "want to see tension emerge on the Korean Peninsula" and renewed a commitment to work toward a nuclear-free peninsula.

    North Korea tested its first nuclear device in 2006, demonstrating a nuclear capability.

     

    Family: Octuplets' mother has 6 other children

     

    The home of the Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets this week AP – The home of the Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets this week is seen in Whittier, …

     

    WHITTIER, Calif. – The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week has six other children and never expected to have eight more when she took fertility treatment, her mother said.

    Angela Suleman said her daughter expects a big challenge raising 14 children. The good news, she said, is all the babies appear healthy.

    "I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful," Suleman told The Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

    Suleman's daughter gave birth to the octuplets Monday at a hospital in Bellflower but has requested that doctors keep her name confidential. Media knew little about the woman until a family acquaintance told CBS' "The Early Show" on Thursday that the mother is "fairly young" and lives with her parents and her six children.

    Within hours, media had camped out at the family's home in Whittier, where the babies' grandfather pulled up in a minivan in the evening and briefly spoke to The Associated Press. Beside him were two children — a 7-year-old and 6-year-old — who said they were excited to have eight new siblings.

    But the grandfather warned that media may have a tougher time finding the family after the babies are released from the hospital.

    "We have a huge house, not here," said the man, who would only identify himself as Ed. "You are never going to know where it is."

    The mother also has two children, ages 5 and 3, and 2-year-old twins, neighbors told the Times.

    Suleman said her daughter had embryos implanted last year, and after finding out she was pregnant with multiple babies was given the option by ducing the number of embryos. The woman declined.

    "What do you suggest she should have done? She refused to have them killed," Suleman told the Times. "That is a very painful thing."

    Dr. Harold Henry said the woman was already pregnant when she came to Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center, and she was counseled about the risks of her pregnancy and on the option of aborting some of the fetuses. Doctors had been expecting only seven babies, but an eighth was born in the cesarean delivery.

    The six boys and two girls, the second octuplets born alive in the United States, have garnered worldwide attention as media have attempted to find out more about the mother and her family. Hours after media gathered outside the Whittier home, Kaiser issued a statement on behalf of the mother requesting privacy.

    "Please know, in our own time, we will share additional details about this miraculous experience," the statement read. "The babies continue to grow strong everyday and make good progress. My family and I are ecstatic about all of their arrivals. Needless to say the eighth was a surprise to us all, but a blessing as well."

    Dr. Mandhir Gupta said seven of the babies were breathing without assistance. One was still receiving oxygen through a tube in his nose.

    Seven of the infants were being tube-fed donated breast milk. One of the boys was expected to begin feedings Friday.

    All babies continued to receive an intravenous nutritional combination. They were expected to remain in the hospital for several more weeks.

    Some fertility specialists have said the children face increased health risks because they are octuplets and born nine weeks premature. At birth, they ranged between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces.

    Doctors say they advise against higher-order births, but acknowledge the decision is not theirs to make.

    "Who am I to say that six is the limit?" said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, which has clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York City. "There are people who like to have big families."

    Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the NYU School of Medicine, added: "I don't think it's our job to tell them how many babies they're allowed to have. I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States. My role is to educate patients."  

     

    From

    January 28, 2009

    Israeli soldiers recall Gaza attack orders

    “Fire on anything that moves in Zeitoun” – that was the order handed down to Israeli troops in the Givati Shaked battalion, who reduced the eastern Gaza City suburb to little more than rubble in a matter of days.

    According to Israeli soldiers who took part in the three-week offensive, the destruction of the area, a known Hamas stronghold, was designed to send a wider message to Gazans. “We pounded Zeitoun into the ground,” an Israeli soldier who was deployed in the area, told The Times.

    “We knew everything was booby-trapped, we knew that they would try to kidnap us and if they did that was the end, we were finished . . . so we took no chances. We pounded them with fire; they never had a chance.”

    Stretched along the southeastern corner of Gaza City, Zeitoun is where the coastal enclave narrows to just under five miles, serving as the perfect launching point for the Israeli military’s forays deeper into the Gaza Strip.

    Soldiers on foot first entered the neighbourhood on January 4, overtaking several key positions there and finally withdrawing on January 14 – destroying much of the area in their wake.

    The stories that have emerged from Zeitoun have been some of the most shocking of the war. The Samuni family said they lost 29 members after soldiers forced them all into one building that subsequently came under fire. Survivors said that the initial shelling killed 22 people, while others slowly bled to death after being denied medical care for nearly three days.

    Others, including the Helw and Abu Zohar families, have similar accounts of watching loved ones dying of their wounds and coming under fire after emerging from their homes carrying white flags.

    Human Rights organisations have called for an independent investigation into the Israeli army’s conduct in Zeitoun, accusing them of denying medical access to the wounded and firing on civilians. An Israeli military spokesman said that the incident was being investigated, and that the accusations were being taken “very seriously”.

    The soldier, who broke Israeli military censorship restrictions to talk to The Times and did not wish to be named, was part of the second wave of troops who set up positions in the neighbourhood. “Most of the positions had been secured and we heard that the [Hamas] fighters had gone into the other areas. We had been warned of traps and it was very tense. We were to shoot first and ask questions later.”

    He added that Zeitoun was a known Hamas stronghold and that militants had used the local fields and orchards to launch rocket attacks into southern Israel.

    “There was definitely a message being sent,” he said. This weekend, the experienced infantryman took leave from his unit and was able to read some media accounts of Zeitoun. “I read about the family, the Samunis, and it was hard, it was horrible.” Asked if what he had read made him rethink his actions in Gaza he said: “I don’t know, I’m not sure. It maybe raised some questions.”

    Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza during the military operation. It has since censored the names of military units and soldiers who took part in the fighting, fearing that lawsuits will be filed against them by human rights organisations, which renewed their criticism of Israel’s conduct yesterday.

    “Having interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses and, having examined the ballistic evidence from north to south, we are convinced that Israel did not do everything possible to minimise civilians’ harm and death,” said Fred Abrahams, of Human Rights Watch.

    “The rules of engagement were exceedingly loose, and they dropped the bar on the laws of war. This allowed civilian casualties to rise.”

    Some in Israel have questioned the decision to send the Givati Shaked battalion to the area. Two of the battalion's four company commanders were removed, although one was later exonerated in an incident that involved the killing of Iman al-Hams, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, in Rafah on October 2004. In the same year 11 Givati soldiers were killed when militants captured two armoured personnel carriers in Zeitoun.

    One soldier from Givati Shaked told an Israeli daily newspaper that “revenge is our first impulse” after a friend of his was killed during an operation in Gaza last year.  

     

     

    Studies Report Mercury Levels In Popular Food Sweetener

    January 28, 2009 9:04 a.m. EST

    David Goodhue - AHN Reporter

    Miami, FL (AHN) - Mercury was found in nine of 20 samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup tested by a Food and Drug Administration researcher, and a separate study by a public health group found mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brand named food and beverages where the sweetener was listed as the first or second ingredient.

    High fructose corn syrup has replaced sugar in many processed foods, including beverages, breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of high fructose corn syrup. Consumption by teenagers and other high consumers can be up to 80 percent above average levels, according to the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy -- the group responsible for the second report.

    "Mercury is toxic in all its forms," the IATP's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author in both studies, said in a statement. "Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply."

    The original FDA study was conducted in 2005, and Wallinga is accusing the agency of not informing the public of the mercury findings.

    In making high fructose corn syrup, caustic soda is used, among other things, to separate corn starch from the corn kernel, Wallinga said. For decades, the sweetener has been made using mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine plants, according to Wallinga. The use of mercury cells to produce caustic soda can contaminate caustic soda, and ultimately high fructose corn syrup, with mercury.

    "The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury," Wallinga said. "The good news is that mercury-free [high fructose corn syrup] ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients."

     

     

     Two US warships escort Iranian ship carrying arms for

     Hamas out through Suez Canal

    DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

    January 23, 2009, 1:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

    DEBKAfile's military sources report that a US Navy Coast Guard team this week boarded an Iranian arms ship flying a Cypriot flag in the Red Sea and found weapons in its hold.

    This was the first time an America warship had ever intercepted an Iranian vessel in international water. The incident activated the Memo of Understanding the former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice signed with Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni a week ago on actions to halt the flow of Iranian arms to Hamas as part of the Gaza ceasefire.

    The Iranian ship's captain showed the US boarding team documents recording the Syrian port of Latakia as its cargo's destination. DEBKAfile reports that both US and Israeli intelligence are certain the arms were bound for Hamas. But according to international law, the US Navy's Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, set up last week to combat piracy, was not authorized to confiscate the cargo or stop the ship because no enforcement mechanism was yet in place.

    After a few hours, therefore, the US force released the Iranian vessel and two warships escorted it out of Red Sea waters. The ship and its escort are due to enter the Suez Canal heading north Saturday night, Jan. 23, after being prevented from unloading its arms freight on the coast of Sinai or Gaza.

    Tehran has so far not reacted to the incident.

    DEBKAfile revealed last week that the new US task force policing the waters of the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Red Sea, under the command of Rear Adm. Terry McKnight, had been additionally assigned with intercepting Iranian ships smuggling arms for Hamas, often in conjunction with Somali pirates and Sinai Bedouin militias.

    Massed on the lead ship San Antonio is a helicopter detachment, a "surgical team" for dealing with small speedboats trying to hem the ship in and 14 Navy VBSS members, including two Navy boarding officers. The Coast Guard detachment is made up of eight members, all of them qualified as boarding officers.

     

    FDA OKs First Human Trials

    CHICAGO - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday that a California-based company can begin the nation's first human clinical trials using embryonic stem cells.

    Geron Corp. will this year begin such cells in a clinical trial of spinal cord patients. If Geron's trials are successful, it opens the door to new therapies and drug discoveries that many believe the Bush administration stymied because it had banned the use of federal funds for such research. Geron, however, has used its own money and that of investors.

    "This marks the beginning of what is potentially a new chapter in medical therapeutics - one that reaches beyond pills to a new level of healing: the restoration of organ and tissue function achieved by the injection of healthy replacement cells," Geron chief executive officer Dr. Thomas Okarma said Friday.

    Because there is no federal money for this kind of research, there has been little movement in the embryonic stem cell arena outside of Geron's privately funded effort. That means regulators lack the data needed as comparison to Geron's studies, further slowing the clinical trial approval process.

    Geron's chief executive told the Chicago Tribune in November that the FDA took longer to review Geron's application because complexity of stem cell products. Other stem-cell trials using adult-derived stem cells are well under way although such a product has yet to be approved by the agency.

    "We have submitted all Geron publications because there is no NIH-funded literature to compare it to," Okarma told the Tribune in November. "The FDA has to go through every page with a fine-tooth comb. While we will be first to deliver a human embryonic (stem cell product) into the clinic, with that accomplishment comes a burden of doing it right."

    Human embryonic stem cells can grow into any type of tissue, giving scientists hope of replacing or helping to heal tissues damaged by diseases or injuries. Doctors have used adult stem cells for decades in bone marrow transplants for cancer patients, but embryonic stem cells are considered more versatile in the lab.

    In Geron's case, researchers tapped fertilized embryos that were unused in in-vitro fertilization procedures and destined to be destroyed. Adding chemicals allows the cells to divide naturally, eventually scaling them into thousands of dosages of a drug.

    In a video presentation to analysts and investors in New York in November, Geron showed rats with spinal cord injuries that could barely move. Within weeks after they were injected with the stem cell-derived drug known as GRNOPC1, the rodents

     

     

     

    Coffee with the Bushes

    As massive crowds gather for Inauguration Day, the Obamas try to take it easy.

     

    Barack Obama admits to harsh realities in his inauguration speech

     

     

     

    Beam me up: Scientists left baffled as mysterious columns of coloured light appear in the night skies

    By Mail Foreign ServiceLast updated at 11:29 AM on 15th January 2009

    These stunning images show mysterious columns of light streaming into the sky above the town of Sigulda in Latvia at the end of last month.

    Taken by designer Aigar Truhins with a standard digital camera, the photographs have prompted excited online discussions among amateur astronomists all over the internet.

    'My son exclaimed, 'The aliens are coming!'' Truhins was quoted as saying.

    Enlarge   Beam me up: Mysterious columns of light stream into the air above the town of Sigulda

    Beam me up: Mysterious columns of light stream into the air above the town of Sigulda

    The mysterious lights prompted excited discussion on the internet

    The mysterious lights prompted excited discussion on the internet

    'It certainly looked that way,' he added.

    But experts are agreed there may be a more prosaic explanation - ice crystals in the air.

    The air above the town was notably cold and filled with suspended ice crystals.

     It is believed that the columns were formed by those reflecting light from the bright streetlamps and other lights on the ground - beaming it back downwards again.

    Skies all over Europe have been filled with such natural phenomena during the cold snap of recent weeks.

    But finally the experts agreed on one explanation...

    But finally the experts agreed on one explanation...

    The lights were said to be a reflection caused by the light from streetlamps on the ground hitting ice crystals suspended in the cold air

    The lights were said to be a reflection caused by the light from streetlamps on the ground hitting ice crystals suspended in the cold air

    Scientists at the website spaceweather.com said: 'Truhin’s pillars are not the ordinary kind. Even eading experts in atmospheric optics can’t quite figure them out

    'These pillars are mysterious. They have unexplained curved tops and even curved arcs coming from their base.

    'Arcs in rare displays like these could be from column crystals to give parts of tangent arcs, others could be the enigmatic Moilanan arc or even the recently discovered reflected Parry arc.

    'We do not know – so take more photos on cold nights!' 

     

    Plane Goes Down in Hudson River                      
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    NEW YORK (Jan. 15) — A US Airways jetliner crashed into the frigid Hudson River in New York on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds disabled both its engines, sending more than 150 passengers and crew members scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities said.
    All passengers and crew members were evacuated, the Federal Aviation Administration said. No serious injuries were immediately
    FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan. The plane, an Airbus 320, took off at 3:26 p.m. and went down minutes later, Brown said.
    "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She added, "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."
     
    The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews opened the door and pulled passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Rescue boats and ferry boats that ply the Hudson surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking in the near-freezing water on one of the coldest days of the year, with a temperature around 20 degrees.  Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down.
    "I see a commercial airliner coming down, looking like it's landing right in the water," said Bob Read, who saw it from his office at the television newsmagazine "Inside Edition." ''This looked like a controlled descent." New York City firefighters and the Coast Guard worked to rescue the passengers. The fuselage appeared intact, and the plane appeared to be sitting high in the water well after the crash with rescuers standing on the wings once they reached the site.

    An Airbus 320 US Airways aircraft that went down in the Hudson River is seen in

     
    "I saw what appeared to be a tail fin of a plane sticking out of the water," said Erica Schietinger, whose office windows look out over the Hudson. "All the boats have sort of circled the area." Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, said it is not unusual for birds to strike planes. In fact, he said, when planes get ready to take off, if there are birds in the area, the tower will alert the crew.
    "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," Mazzone said.

     

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    Russian warships dock at Turkish naval base

    14:53

    |

    01/ 05/ 2009

    January 05, 2009

    Moscow Observer

    MOSCOW, January 5 (RIA Novosti) - A naval task force from Russia's Northern Fleet began on Monday an informal visit to Turkey, a Navy spokesman said.

    "Today, on January 5, a group of Northern Fleet warships led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and the Admiral Levchenko destroyer arrived at the Akzas naval base for an informal visit," Capt. 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said.

    The Levchenko will dock at the base while the Kuznetsov remains at sea. The visit will last until Thursday, after which the carrier group will carry out joint exercises with the Turkish Navy before returning to its duties in the Mediterranean Sea, Dygalo said.

    The Russian Navy spokesman also said that the large ASW ship Admiral Chabanenko was in the Atlantic on its way back to the Northern Fleet base after a Latin American tour that included visits to Cuba and Venezuela.

    He added that the Northern Fleet's Pyotr Veliky nuclear-powered missile cruiser was in the southeastern Atlantic and would dock in Cape Town on Friday for an historic visit by the Russian Navy to South Africa.

    Russia announced last year that its Navy had resumed, and would continue to build up, a constant presence throughout the world.

     

     

     

    Israel Faces Possible Second Front in War

     

    By IBRAHIM BARZAK and AMY TEIBEL
    AP
    posted: 50 MINUTES AGO
     
    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (Jan. 14) – Guerrillas in Lebanon rocketed northern Israel on Wednesday for the second time in a week, drawing Israeli artillery fire and threatening to drag the Jewish state into a second front as it battled Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
    The violence defied a new call from the U.N. chief to immediately end fighting in Gaza.
     

    AP
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    Israeli soldiers gather on the Israel-Gaza border during Israel's military offensive, early morning Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009. Israeli aircraft struck a Gaza City cemetery Wednesday, pulverizing newly buried bodies, and pounded militants' weapons positions and arms smuggling tunnels, witnesses and the military said, as guerrillas in Lebanon raised the specter of a new front by sending rockets crashing into northern Israel. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
     
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    Bin Laden Calls for Jihad Against Israel
     

    Israel showed no signs of slowing its bruising 19-day-old offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, striking some 60 targets in the strip bordering southern Israel. One airstrike hit an overcrowded cemetery, spreading body parts and rotting flesh over a wide area. The army said the airstrike targeted a weapons cache hidden near the graveyard.
     
    The rocket fire from Lebanon caused no injuries, but sent residents scurrying to bomb shelters. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed guerrilla group that fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006, denied involvement in last week's attack, and speculation focused on small Palestinian groups.
     
    Lebanese security officials said the Israeli army fired at least eight artillery shells on south Lebanon in response. There were no reports of Lebanese injuries from the retaliatory fire. The Israeli military said it targeted the source of the rockets, and that it regarded the Lebanese government and military responsible for preventing attacks on Israel. The government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned the attack.
    Israel repeatedly has said it does not seek renewed fighting with Lebanon, but is prepared for hostilities along the northern border. The Muslim world has expressed outrage over Israel's Gaza offensive, and in a new condemnation Wednesday, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to launch a holy war against Israel. Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious opinion, or fatwa, declaring the purchase of any Israeli goods or trade with Israeli companies to be forbidden.
     
    Israel launched the onslaught in Gaza on Dec. 27, seeking to punish the ruling Hamas militant group for years of rocket attacks on southern Israel. The offensive has killed more than 940 Palestinians, half of them civilians, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The toll included 11 Palestinians killed Wednesday, medical officials said.
     
    Thirteen Israelis have also been killed since the offensive began, four by rocket fire from Gaza. Desperately trying to end the fighting, U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon opened a visit to the Mideast on Wednesday urging an immediate halt to the violence.
    "My call is (for) an immediate end to violence in Gaza," he said in Cairo after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
    "It is intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict," he said, adding that the "negotiations need to be intensified to provide arrangements and guarantees in order to sustain an endurable cease-fire and calm." Ban is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday.
    Palestinian rocket fire has dropped off dramatically since the offensive began. Twelve rockets were fired at Israel on Wednesday, down from as many as 80 a day early in the operation.
     
    Israel is trying to keep up the pressure on Hamas to accept Israel's truce terms: A complete cessation of violence from Gaza and international guarantees of a halt in the smuggling of weapons into Gaza through the porous Egyptian border. Hamas, which is backed by Iran, cannot hope to score a battlefield victory over the powerful Israeli military, but mere survival could earn it political capital in the Arab world as a symbol of resistance to the Jewish state. Lebanon's Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group, largely achieved that goal in its 2006 war with Israel.
    Overnight, Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships pounded a police court in Gaza City, rocket-launching sites, gunmen, weapons-production and storage facilities and about 35 weapons smuggling tunnels, the military said. Later in the day, witnesses in southern Gaza reported air strikes on the house of a rocket squad leader and a militant's car.
     
    Aircraft also struck the Sheikh Radwan cemetery in Gaza City, destroying about 30 graves — some just recently dug — and scattering bits of flesh and body parts for yards (meters), residents said. The stench of scorched and rotting flesh hung over the area. Maj. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said the army targeted a weapons cache next to the cemetery and a nearby rocket-launching site. She said the heavy damage was the result of secondary explosions.
    Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, Reuters
    18 photos
     
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    An Israeli air strike hits in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip Jan. 13. Israel began the bombing campaign in the conflict on Dec. 27. Click through the gallery for other photos of dangers around the globe.
    Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using mosques, schools and other civilian areas to stage attacks or store weapons.
    Witnesses described a gruesome scene of strewn body parts and the stench of charred and rotting flesh.
    "There was flesh on the roofs, there was small bits of intestines. My neighbor found a hand of a woman who died a long time ago, we put it all into a plastic bag," said resident Ahmad Abu Jarbou. "One man who buried his cousin yesterday couldn't find the body at all."
    In other fighting, artillery units fired shells that spread white smoke above the city center, witnesses said. Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using phosphorous shells — a weapon that can burn anything it touches. The Israeli military has not confirmed reports that it has improperly used white phosphorous shells, saying only that it uses munitions is in accordance with international law.
     
    The International Committee of the Red Cross urged Israel to exercise "extreme caution" in using the incendiary agent, which is used to illuminate targets at night or create a smoke screen for day attacks, said Peter Herby, the head of the organization's mines-arms unit. The ICRC said it had no evidence to suggest white phosphorous was being used improperly or illegally.
     
    Fireballs and smoke plumes from Israeli bombing have become a common sight in the territory of 1.4 million people, who are trapped because Israel and Egypt have blockaded border crossings ever since the Islamic Hamas overran Gaza in June 2007. Humanitarian concerns have increased amid the onslaught although some aid is getting through to Gaza during daily three-hour lulls Israel has allowed to let in supplies. A total of 111 truckloads of food and medical supplies were to pass through on Wednesday, the military said. Hamas has said it would only observe a cease-fire if Israel were to withdraw from Gaza.
     
    Israeli military officials have said talks in Cairo will determine whether Israel moves closer to a truce with Hamas or widens its offensive to send thousands of reservists into crowded, urban areas where casualties on both sides would likely mount.
    Israel had planned to send its lead negotiator, Amos Gilad, to Cairo on Thursday, but his trip was postponed, defense officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the date of his departure has not been set.
     
    Teibel reported from Jerusalem.

     

     

    Army creating 'security zone' in Gaza


    January 11, 2009 

    Israel dispatched reserve units to the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the IDF was said to be carving out a security zone" along the border, which it would retain even after an end to the fighting and use to conduct routine patrols aimed at halting rocket attacks against the South.

    Senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that while diplomatic efforts were picking up speed, Israel was likely to "expand" the operations in Gaza before agreeing to a withdrawal and cessation of operations against Hamas.

    On Sunday, IDF tanks and infantry units pushed deeper into Gaza City, encountering fierce Hamas resistance and killing, according to the military, close to 50 Hamas operatives. Earlier in the day, the IAF bombed the home of Ahmed Ja'abri, commander of the Hamas military wing. Ja'abri was not believed to be home at the time.         

    The IDF would not say whether the insertion of the reserve forces constituted the much-anticipated "third phase" of Operation Cast Lead, which is believed to be either a deeper incursion into Gaza City or an expansion of operations in other parts of Gaza including in the south.

    "We will escalate operations before pulling out," a senior defense official told the Post. "There is still more to do in order to achieve our goals and hurt Hamas's military wing more significantly."

    A senior military officer who is commanding forces fighting inside Gaza said on Sunday that Hamas terrorists were trying to cross the line the IDF had created separating northern Gaza from the south. Some attempts to cross the line, he said, were made by Hamas gunmen hiding inside Red Crescent ambulances.  

    The IDF said that Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure to carry out its attacks had increased in recent days. On Sunday, the IDF spokesperson released video footage showing how Hamas had booby-trapped a school and zoo in Gaza City's Zeitun neighborhood.

    The booby-trap was first reported in the Post last week when it was discovered by troops from the Givati Brigade who had slept inside a school and awoke in the morning to discover that the school, located adjacent to the zoo, was wired with explosives that were miraculously not triggered.

    Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the Golani Brigade's command center outside of the Gaza Strip, and said that Israel would continue its operations as it continued to review several cease-fire proposals.

    Meanwhile Sunday, in the fiercest ground battles since the start of the operation, IDF troops fought against Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza City suburb of Sheikh Ajleen.

    Fighting in Sheikh Ajleen erupted before dawn and continued into the day as IDF infantrymen and tanks advanced toward the neighborhood of Gaza City and its approximately 400,000 residents, Palestinian witnesses said.             

    Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they ambushed the soldiers, leading to some of the heaviest fighting since Israel sent ground forces into the territory on January 3.

    Gunfire subsided in the early afternoon, with the IDF in control of buildings on the neighborhood's outskirts.

    At least 40 Palestinians had been killed across Gaza by Sunday afternoon, according to Gaza health officials. Many were noncombatants, they claimed, including four members of one family killed when a tank shell hit their home near Gaza City.

    On Sunday, the IAF dropped additional leaflets urging Gaza residents to report the whereabouts of Hamas operatives, even providing a phone number to call.

    "You can call the numbers listed below to inform us about the locations of rocket launchers, warehouses, tunnels and terrorist groups operating in your area," the leaflet said in Arabic, promising "confidentiality guaranteed."

    On Saturday, flyers were dropped on Gaza City warning residents of a wider offensive.

    "The IDF is not working against the people of Gaza but against Hamas and the terrorists only," the flyer said. "Stay safe by following our orders."

    Also on Sunday, the IAF hit at least seven rocket cells, as well as the launcher used to fire the Grad-type rockets at Beersheba on Sunday morning. In searches in the northern Strip on Sunday the IDF found several weapons caches, one of them containing communications equipment.

     

     

    From
    January 10, 2009

    Rise in US jobless raises spectre of Great Depression

     

    Fears that the world is sliding into the worst global recession since the Great Depression multiplied yesterday as figures showed the steepest jump in American unemployment since the Second World War and a slump in manufacturing across Europe.

    Economists on both sides of the Atlantic were startled by the severity of the latest indications of global economic slump, which further stoked pressure for radical action to stave off economic calamity.

    A further surge in US joblessness led the litany of bleak developments yesterday. Official figures confirmed that more Americans lost their jobs last year than in any year since 1945, and that unemployment is soaring at the fastest pace seen since then.

    A total of 524,000 Americans were made redundant by US employers last month alone, the latest official payroll figures showed. The mounting toll of job losses drove the unemployment rate in the world's largest economy up to a 15-year peak of 7.2 per cent, sharply higher than November's 6.8 per cent, amid predictions that it will leap to 9.5 per cent or more by the second half of next year.

    “The jobs situation is ugly and it is going to get uglier,” Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York, said. “There's no reason to expect hiring any time in the next three to six months. We're not going to get any hiring until the Government steps in and acts. Talk doesn't work.”

    Anxieties over the scale of the recession now gripping the whole Western economy were intensified by a further decline in European industry. Germany, Spain, Sweden and France joined Britain in reporting the worst collapse in their manufacturing sectors for many years.

    In Germany, Europe's manufacturing heartland, factory production fell by 3.1 per cent in November to stand 10 per cent down from levels a year ago. The figures left senior government sources in Berlin predicting that Europe's biggest economy probably shrank by as much as 2 per cent during the final quarter of last year.

    “The financial crisis has pushed German industry into a condition of shock and awe,” Carsten Brzeski, of ING Financial Markets, said. “In terms of economic growth, the fourth quarter will make history as the worst quarter ever.”

    As German industry slid into the mire, its European competitors were not far behind. In Sweden, industrial production tumbled by 11.9 per cent in November; in France, it suffered a larger than expected 2.4 per cent drop                              . 

    It was the trend in the American jobs market that provoked the greatest consternation, however.

    As well as December's huge number of job losses, the data also laid bare a worse than previously reported toll in previous months, as prior job losses were revised upwards.

    The severe pressures on American businesses were emphasised, too, as the average weekly hours worked by American employees sank to a record low of 33.3 last month. Over the past year, numbers of hours worked have fallen by 1.5 per cent, in the steepest decline since late 2001.

    The figures showed that the job cuts afflicting the American economy last month were widespread. The construction industry succumbed to 101,000 job losses, while US manufacturers cut payrolls by 149,000. Services businesses shed 273,000 posts.

    The news piled pressure on the US Congress to move swiftly to implement plans by President-elect Obama for a huge new fiscal stimulus package of tax cuts and increased government spending.

    The American economy has already been officially in recession for 12 months. If the situation persists for more than 16 months, this will mark its longest recession since the Depression in the Thirties.

     

     

    Israeli Warns Gaza to Brace for Escalation

    By IBRAHIM BARZAK and JASON KEYSER
     
    AP
    posted: 1 HOUR 42 MINUTES AGO
     
    JERUSALEM (Jan. 10) -- T-Israeli forces pounded dozens of targets in Gaza Saturday and planes dropped leaflets warning residents of an escalation in attacks, as southern Israel came under more Palestinian rocket fire.
    Egypt hosted talks aimed at ending the violence.
     
    Reuters
    500 photos
     
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    A Palestinian boy gestures as he holds a toy gun during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah against Israel's offensive in Gaza January 9, 2009. Israel rejected a U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on Friday and, as jets and tanks again pounded the Palestinian enclave, ministers debated whether to step up their two-week-old campaign against Hamas guerrillas. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte (WEST BANK)
     
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    Flames and smoke rose over Gaza City amid heavy fighting. The Israeli threat to launch a "new phase" in its two-week-old offensive that has already killed more than 800 Palestinians came in defiance of international calls for a cease-fire.
     
    "The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) will escalate the operation in the Gaza Strip," the leaflets said in Arabic. "The IDF is not working against the people of Gaza but against Hamas and the terrorists only. Stay safe by following our orders."
     
    The leaflets urged Gaza residents not to help Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, and to stay away from its members.
     
     
    The Israeli military said more than 15 militants were killed in overnight fighting. It said aircraft attacked more than 40 targets including 10 rocket-launching sites, weapons-storage facilities, smuggling tunnels, an anti-aircraft missile launcher and gunmen.
     
    In the day's bloodiest incident, an Israeli tank shell killed nine people in a garden outside a home in the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya. Separately, a woman was killed by an airstrike in the southern town of Rafah. Israel has come under international criticism for the rising number of civilian casualties. Paramedics said the nine people killed in the garden were from the same clan and included two children and two women.
    "Residents brought them to the hospital in a civilian car. They put them all in the trunk because their bodies were mangled," said hospital administrator Adham Hakim.                                                                                                                   
     
    The Israeli army had no immediate comment, but has repeatedly accused Hamas of using residential areas for cover. Earlier this week, an Israeli attack outside a U.N. school killed nearly 40 people. Both Israel and Palestinian witnesses said militants carried out an attack from the area moments earlier. Israel launched the offensive on Dec. 27 to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel. A week later, ground troops moved in.
     
    Palestinian medical officials say more than 800 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians. Thirteen Israelis have been killed — four of them by militant rockets, the rest in battle in Gaza. Five soldiers were lightly wounded in Saturday's fighting.
    Israel and Hamas ignored a U.N. resolution passed Thursday calling for an immediate and durable cease-fire that would lead to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Israel has dismissed the Security Council resolution as impractical, while Hamas, whose government in Gaza is not recognized internationally, is angry it was not consulted in the diplomatic efforts.
     
     
     
     

     

    Obama Issues Dire Warning on Economy

    By JENNIFER LOVEN

    January 8, 2009

    AP
    posted: 1 HOUR 27 MINUTES AGO
     
    WASHINGTON (Jan. 8) - President-elect Barack Obama said Thursday the recession could "linger for years" unless Congress pumps unprecedented sums from Washington into the economy. "I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible," Obama said in a speech set to be delivered at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington. Excerpts from his prepared text were released in advance by his transition team.
     
    AP
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    Nancy Killefer makes a few remarks after President-elect Barack Obama, left, introduced her to the newly created position of chief performance officer, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009, at his transition office Washington. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)

     
     

    It was the fourth day in a row that Obama has addressed this front-burner issue and it was the highest-profile appearance yet on an issue that can define his early months in office. His events have increasingly taken on the trappings and air of the presidency, with the speech — coming a full 12 days before he takes over at the White House — a particularly showy move. Presidents-elect typically sticks to naming administration appointments and otherwise staying in the background during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, but Obama has clearly made the calculation that a nation anxious about its economic outlook and eager to bid farewell to the current president, George W. Bush, needs to hear from him differently and more frequently. Indeed, the economic news is grim. "A bad situation could become dramatically worse," Obama said, painting a dire picture — including double-digit unemployment and $1 trillion in lost economic activity — that recalled the days of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Consumers and companies are folding under the negative forces of a collapsed housing market, a global credit crunch and the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The recession, which started in December 2007, already is the longest in a quarter-century.
     
    WireImage
    40 photos
     
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    Sanjay Gupta, CNN medical correspondent
    Position: Surgeon general
    Status: Speculative
     
    A report due out the same day as Obama's speech is expected to show that the number of newly laid-off people signing up for state unemployment insurance last week rose to 540,000, up from 492,000 in the previous week. The number of people continuing to draw jobless benefits is projected to stay near 4.5 million, demonstrating the troubles the unemployed are having in finding new jobs. For all of 2008, employers probably slashed payrolls by at least 2.4 million. That's based on economists' forecasts for a net loss of 500,000 additional jobs in December, as well as the job losses previously reported. Some, however, think the number of jobs cut last month will be higher, around 600,000 or 700,000. The Labor Department will release that report Friday.
     
    A day after the release of a stunning new estimate — that the federal budget deficit will reach an unprecedented $1.2 trillion this year, nearly three times last year's record. Obama acknowledged some sympathy with those who "might be skeptical of this plan" because so much federal money has already been spent or committed in an attempt — largely unsuccessful so far — to get credit, the lifeblood of the American economy, flowing freely once again. Such statements are coded to appeal to budget hawks in both parties, whom Obama wants to win over so that approval of a package draws wide, bipartisan support in the Democratic-led Congress. To answer their concerns, he promised to allow funding only for what works. He also pledged a new level of transparency about where the money is going. A day earlier, he promised to tackle the out-of-control fiscal problem posed by Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs and named a special watchdog to clamp down on all federal programs. Obama made broader arguments, too, saying that the private sector, typically the answer, cannot do what is needed now.
     
    "At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe," he said.
    Obama's transition team and Democratic congressional leaders are working daily to hammer out the still-evolving package, expected to total nearly $800 billion. The initial hope had been to have a new stimulus package approved by Congress in time for Obama to sign it upon taking office on Jan. 20. That timeline has slipped considerably, into at least mid-February if not later.
     
    J. Scott Applewhite, AP
    6 photos
     
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    In an extremely rare gathering, all of the nation's living former presidents joined the current and future presidents at the White House on Wednesday. From left to right: George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, President George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Click through this gallery to see other times when presidents past and present have gotten together.
    The package is expected to include tax cuts for businesses and middle-class workers, money to help cash-starved states with Medicaid programs and other operating costs, and a huge share for infrastructure building, investments in energy efficiency and a rebuilding of the information technology system for health care. Much of the latter portions of the plan are aimed at what Obama likes to talk about as the need for "reinvestment" and not just "recovery."
     
    Obama also promised action to address the economy's ills beyond the package, such as tackling the massive wave of home foreclosures many experts expect, preventing the failure of financial institutions, rewriting financial regulations and keeping accountable the "Wall Street wrongdoers" who engage in risky investing. 

     

     

     

     

     

    'Extraordinary Gathering' at White House

    By BEN FELLER
     
    AP
     
    January 7, 2009
     
     
     
    WASHINGTON (Jan. 7) -- Confronting a grim economy and a Middle East on fire, Barack Obama turned Wednesday to perhaps the only people on the planet who understand what he's in for: the four living members of the U.S. presidents' club. In an image bound to go down in history, every living U.S. president came together at the White House on Wednesday to hash over the world's challenges with the president-elect. There they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder in the Oval Office: George H.W. Bush, Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
     
     
    "All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office," Obama said. "And for me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary. And I'm very grateful to all of them." Bush, blistered without mercy by Obama during the campaign season, played the role of gracious host."All of us who have served in this office understand that the office transcends the individual," Bush said as Obama nodded in thanks. "And we wish you all the very best. And so does the country."
     
     
    It was a moment of statesmanship that tends to happen when presidents get together, no matter how bitter their previous rivalries. In a photo opportunity that lasted less than two minutes, Carter, Clinton and the senior Bush smiled but said nothing. They deferred to the nation's incoming and outgoing leaders.
     
    Earlier, Bush and Obama met privately in the Oval Office in a chat expected to cover events of the day, mainly the troubled economy and Middle East. The two have shown solidarity since Obama's win in November, with one previous Oval Office sit-down and at least a few phone calls in recent weeks. All sides were determined to say as little as possible about what was discussed. Presidents — new, old, incoming — like to keep their conversations private.
     
     
    Without offering any specifics, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs said all the presidents "had helpful advice on managing the office as well as thoughts on the critical issues facing the country right now. The president-elect is anxious to stay in touch with all of them in the coming years."
    From the White House, press secretary Dana Perino said the discussion was "wide-ranging" but declined to comment further. Before the gathering, she had said she could not imagine the leaders would meet without discussing the Middle East, where conflict rages in Gaza, or the economy, which is sinking. The White House would not even say what the men ate, allowing only that they ordered off the menu of the White House mess, as Bush does all the time.
     
    Intentionally or not, Bush opened the media moment in a curious way, suggesting that he was already out the door.
    "I want to thank the president-elect for joining the ex-presidents for lunch," said Bush, who is in fact still the president until Jan. 20.
    All sides were determined to say as little as possible about what was discussed. Presidents — new, old, incoming — like to keep their conversations
     
     
    "One message that I have, and I think we all share, is that we want you to succeed," Bush added, a beaming Clinton at his other side. "Whether we're Democrat or Republican, we care deeply about this country." White House aides tried to usher the media out of the Oval Office when Bush stopped speaking. The lighting for the event even went dark. But sometimes, there is more than one president at a time.
    Obama spoke up on his own, the lights went back on, and the cameras kept rolling. "I just want to thank the president for hosting us," Obama said. When a reporter asked Obama what he could learn from the mistakes of the four presidents surrounding him, he smiled and said he planned to learn from their successes. The get-together was Obama's idea, and Bush liked it. The lunch lasted about 90 minutes, held in a small dining room off the Oval Office. Carter, Clinton and the two Bush presidents were last together at the Washington funeral service of President Gerald Ford in 2007. And presidents have gathered at other occasions over the years. But not since October 1981 — 27 years ago — had all of the living presidents gathered at the White House.

     

     

    Israeli Forces Push Deeper Into Gaza

    By IBRAHIM BARZAK and MATTI FRIEDMAN 
    AP
     
    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (Jan. 4) - Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, cutting the coastal territory into two and surrounding its biggest city as the new phase of a devastating offensive against Hamas militants gained momentum.
    The military used overwhelming firepower from tanks, artillery and aircraft to protect the advancing soldiers, and Gaza officials said at least 31 civilians were killed in the onslaught. The military said troops killed several dozen militants, but Gaza officials could confirm only four dead — in part because rescue teams could not reach the battle zones.
    AP
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    Palestinian medics carry a child injured in Israeli shelling into Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009. Israel pummeled Palestinian militants from the air, sea and ground early Sunday after taking the risky decision to embark on a land invasion in the crowded, Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.(AP Photo/AP Photo/Fadi Adwan)
    The ground invasion and live images of the fighting in Gaza drew international condemnations and dominated news coverage on Arab satellite TV stations, many of which aired footage of wounded Palestinians at hospitals. Hamas threatened to turn Gaza into an Israeli "graveyard."
    Israel reported one soldier was killed by mortar fire on Sunday — the first Israeli death in a ground offensive that so far has been widely popular with the Israeli public.
     
    Thousands of soldiers in three brigade-size formations pushed into Gaza after nightfall Saturday, beginning a long-awaited ground offensive against the area's Hamas rulers after a week of intense aerial bombardment. Black smoke billowed over Gaza City at first light as bursts of machine gun fire rang out.
     
     
    The ground operation is the second phase in an offensive that began as a weeklong aerial onslaught aimed at halting Hamas rocket fire that has reached deeper and deeper into Israel, threatening major cities and one-eighth of Israel's population.
    The new deaths brought the death toll in the Gaza Strip to more than 500 since Dec. 27. Palestinian and U.N. officials say at least 100 civilians are among the dead.
     
    TV footage showed Israeli troops with night-vision goggles and camouflage face paint marching in single file. Artillery barrages preceded their advance, and they moved through fields and orchards following bomb-sniffing dogs to guard against booby-traps.
    Gaza City's civilians cowered inside as battles raged, while terrified residents in other areas fled in fear. In the southern town of Rafah, one man loaded a donkey cart with mattresses and blankets preparing to flee.
     
    Lubna Karam, 28, said she and the other nine members of her family spent the night huddled in the hallway of their Gaza City home. The windows of the house were blown out days earlier in an Israeli airstrike, and the family has been without electricity for a week, surviving without heat and eating cold food.
     
    She said no one slept overnight. "We keep hearing the sounds of airplanes and we don't know if we'll live until tomorrow or not," she said.
    Gaza health officials said the dead included a 12-year-old girl, five members of a single family, eight civilians killed by a tank shell in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, and an ambulance driver.
     
    The military reported 31 Israeli troops wounded, three seriously. The Israeli chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, told a meeting of Cabinet ministers that most of the fighting was at close range, with Hamas preferring to fight in built-up areas rather than on open ground. Ashkenazi said the operation aimed to take over areas militants use to launch rockets.
    Military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet that Hamas was using mosques, public institutions and private houses as ammunition stores.
     
    Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the ministers there was a "weakening" in Hamas' desire to keep fighting. Still, he said, while the Hamas political leadership has been hit hard, its military organization has "yet to be dealt the harsh blow Israel expects it to be dealt." The security officials' comments were later relayed to the press by the Cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel.
    In his first public comments on the operation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel could not allow its civilians to continue to be targeted by rockets from Gaza.
     
    "This morning I can look every one you in the eyes and say the government did everything before deciding to go ahead with the operation. This operation was unavoidable," he said.
    Gil Nahushtan, Reuters
    18 photos
     
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    Bombs fall during an explosion in northern Gaza on New Year's Day during an Israeli airstrike. Among those who died that day: a senior Hamas leader tied to the organization's military branch. Israel began the bombing campaign on Dec. 27. Click through the gallery for other photos that show dangers around the globe, both natural and man-made.
    A senior military officer said Hamas was well-prepared for the Israeli incursion into Gaza, a densely populated territory of 1.4 million where militants operate and easily hide in the crowded urban landscape. He said the operation was "not a rapid one that would end in hours or a few days."
     
    Still, he said, Israel would not remain in Gaza "for the long term." He spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with army regulations.
    "You entered like rats," Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told Israeli soldiers in a statement on Hamas' Al Aqsa TV. "Gaza will be a graveyard for you, God willing," he said.
     
    The Hamas Interior Ministry said it was still in control of Gaza and had captured residents collaborating with Israel, as well as traders exploiting the situation to inflate their prices.
     
    Rocket fire into Israel has persisted, and more than 30 rockets and mortar shells fell in Israel on Sunday morning, sending Israelis scrambling for bomb shelters. Two Israelis were lightly wounded. In much of southern Israel, school has been canceled and life has been largely paralyzed.
    While the air offensive presented little risk for Israel's army, sending in ground troops is a much more dangerous proposition. Hamas is believed to have some 20,000 gunmen and has had time to prepare. Israeli leaders had resisted a ground invasion for months, fearing heavy casualties.
    Israel has called up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers, which defense officials said could enable a far broader ground offensive. The troops could also be used in the event Palestinian militants in the West Bank or Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon decide to launch attacks, as Hezbollah did in 2006 when Israel was in the midst of a large operation in Gaza.
     
    An armored force south of Gaza City penetrated as deep as the abandoned settlement of Netzarim, which Israel left along with other Israeli communities when it pulled out of Gaza in 2005.
     
    That move effectively cut off Gaza City, the territory's largest population center with some 400,000 residents, from the rest of Gaza to the south.
    The offensive focused on northern Gaza, where most of the rockets are fired into Israel, but at least one incursion was reported in the southern part of the strip. Hamas uses smuggling tunnels along the southern border with Egypt to bring in weapons.
    Ground forces did not enter major Gaza towns and cities, instead fighting in rural communities and open areas militants often use to launch rockets and mortar rounds.
     
    Israel launched the air campaign against Gaza on Dec. 27 with the aim of halting incessant rocket fire on its south. The operation appears to have slowed but not halted the rocket fire.
    Hundreds of rockets have hit Israel since the offensive began, and four Israelis have been killed. The relatively low number of Israeli casualties is largely due to warning sirens that give residents notice of incoming missiles and allow them to take cover.
    The death toll in Gaza has outraged many. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed his "extreme concern and disappointment" to Olmert and called for an "immediate end" to the operation.
     
    Denunciations also came from the French government, which unsuccessfully proposed a two-day truce earlier this week, and from Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, Muslim nations with ties to Israel.
     
    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a rival of Hamas who governs from the West Bank, condemned the Israeli invasion as "brutal aggression."
    An Israeli government statement said Israeli leaders have been in contact with their counterparts abroad and encountered "much understanding" of the country's actions.
     
    The U.S. has put the blame squarely on Hamas. At an emergency consultation of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday night, the U.S. blocked approval of a statement demanded by Arab countries calling for an immediate cease-fire and expressing serious concern at the escalation of violence.
     
    Hamas emerged as Gaza's main power broker when it won Palestinian parliamentary elections three years ago. It has ruled the impoverished territory since seizing control from forces loyal to Abbas in June 2007.
     
    In the West Bank, Israeli troops shot and killed a 20-year-old Palestinian who was demonstrating against the Gaza offensive. The army said troops were quelling a violent demonstration and shot at the man when he tried to climb over Israel's West Bank separation barrier and ignored orders to stop.
     
    Matti Friedman reported from Jerusalem.
     
     

     

    Hamas plans to defeat Israeli force with epic "last stand" at Gaza City

    DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

    January 1, 2009, 7:42 PM (GMT+02:00)

    DEBKAfile's military sources report that Hamas does not propose to put its entire 15,000-strong army in harm's way against the expected Israeli military invasion. It will confine its resistance to small pockets and sabotage and let Israel troops occupy most of Gaza Strip territory. Assuming the incoming force will stop short of conquering Gaza City and put it to siege, Hamas planners believe this siege force will be Israel's Achilles heel. They propose to wear it down over weeks by nocturnal guerrilla forays from within Gaza City and force an inconclusive end to the conflict.

    Thousands of Hamas combatants have begun infiltrating Gaza City after shedding their uniforms and are taking over civilian apartments.

    DEBKAfile's military sources disclose that Israel's war planners have factored Hamas' thinking into their calculations and built tactics to catch them unawares.

    Hamas strategists expect the Israeli ground operation to start with a simultaneous three-prong incursion of armor and special forces from the north, the east and the south. The invaders will occupy most of the 20x40-kilometer area of the Gaza Strip within 5 to 7 days at most, skirting and encircling Gaza City and other main towns. They will then, according to Hamas' calculations, carve the territory up into five pockets, each with its own military commander.

    Pocket 1 will extend from the southernmost Philadelphi belt on the Egyptian border up to the southern outskirts of Khan Younis. Israeli units will then set about destroying the network of hundreds of smuggling tunnels which has kept Hamas supplied with arms, fuel and reinforcements through Sinai. Cairo may have tacitly approved the Israel plan.

    Pocket 2 will cover the Khan Younes district up to the Kissufim junction.

    Pocket 3 will cover the central region of the Gaza Strip up to the Karni Crossing, including the Moazi and El Bureij refugee camps.

    Pocket 4 will encompass Jebalya, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, the primary rocket and missile sites, up to the northern border with Israel.

    Pocket 5 An Israeli force will encircle Gaza City and send detachments into the town to liquidate Hamas targets and operatives from allied Palestinian terror groups.

    Hamas believes the IDF force will be at its most vulnerable when its Gaza City siege force is faced with an active fighting front of 3,000-5,000 armed Palestinians. By day, they will mingle with the civilian population and by night emerge from hideouts in private homes to hit the Israeli armored forces from the rear with anti-tank weapons and suicide bombers.

    The Palestinian group's leaders are counting on inflicting casualties that will mount up week after week and wear Israeli forces down until they are driven into an ignominious retreat. 

    H A P P Y  N E W  Y E A R 

     

    On Saturday, December 27, 2008 at 11:15:56 PM (CST) a small, shallow magnitude 3.9 earthquake occurred under Yellowstone Lake.  This is the largest of over 250 tremors which may indicate that Yellowstone may experience larger earthquakes.  It occurred on a 50 percent hazard level.

    Event: Volcano Activity

    Location: USA States of Montana, Wyoming Yellowstone National Park

    Situation

    The headline "Scientists track unusual earthquake swarm beneath Yellowstone" only means one thing to fans of the Discovery channel like myself: supervolcano. Here is what the earthquake center at the University of Utah had to say yesterday afternoon:


    - The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a notable swarm of earthquakes has been underway since December 26 beneath Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, three to six miles south-southeast of Fishing Bridge, Wyoming. This energetic sequence of events was most intense on December 27, when the largest number of events of magnitude 3 and larger occurred.


    - The largest of the earthquakes was a magnitude 3.9 (revised from magnitude 3.8) at 10:15 pm MST on Dec. 27. The sequence has included nine events of magnitude 3 to 3.9 and approximately 24 of magnitude 2 to 3 at the time of this release. A total of more than 250 events large enough to be located have occurred in this swarm. Reliable depths of the larger events are up to a few miles. Visitors and National Park Service (NPS) employees in the Yellowstone Lake area reported feeling the largest of these earthquakes.


    - Earthquakes are a common occurrence in the Yellowstone National Park area, an active volcanic-tectonic area averaging 1,000 to 2,000 earthquakes a year. Yellowstone's 10,000 geysers and hot springs are the result of this geologic activity. A summary of the Yellowstone's volcanic history is available on the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory web site (listed below).


    - This December 2008 earthquake sequence is the most intense in this area for some years and is centered on the east side of the Yellowstone caldera. Scientists can not identify any causative fault or other feature without further analysis. Seismologists continue to monitor and analyze the data and will issue new information if the situation warrants it.


    - The University of Utah operates a seismic network in Yellowstone National Park in conjunction with the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). These three institutions are partners in the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.


    And what if the supervolcano blew? Kind of like if a giant rock hit the Earth. A planet killer. An extinction-level event. Let me quote the words of President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman) in the comet-hitting-earth film Deep Impact::


    - Within a week, the skies will be dark with dust from the impact and they will stay dark for years. All plant life will be dead within weeks. Animal life within a few months. So that's it. Good luck to us all.


    Such a scenario would be very bad for equity values and the outlook for the labor market.

     


    Scientists eye unusual swarm of Yellowstone quakes

    By MEAD GRUVER - 15 hours ago from 12/30/2008 12:12 PM

    CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come. Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone, but it's very unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days, said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

    "They're certainly not normal," Smith said. "We haven't had earthquakes in this energy or extent in many years."
    Smith directs the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park. He said the quakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to one of magnitude 3.8 that happened Saturday. A magnitude 4 quake is capable of producing moderate damage.

    "This is an active volcanic and tectonic area, and these are the kinds of things we have to pay attention to," Smith said. "We might be seeing something precursory.

    "Could it develop into a bigger fault or something related to hydrothermal activity? We don't know. That's what we're there to do, to monitor it for public safety."

    The strongest of dozens of tremors Monday was a magnitude 3.3 quake shortly after noon. All the quakes were centered beneath the northwest end of Yellowstone Lake.

    A park ranger based at the north end of the lake reported feeling nine quakes over a 24-hour period over the weekend, according to park spokeswoman Stacy Vallie. No damage was reported.

    "There doesn't seem to be anything to be alarmed about," Vallie said.

    Smith said it's difficult to say what might be causing the tremors. He pointed out that Yellowstone is the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 70,000 years ago.

    He said Yellowstone remains very geologically active - and its famous geysers and hot springs are a reminder that a pool of magma still exists five to 10 miles underground.

    "That's just the surface manifestation of the enormous amount of heat that's being released through the system," he said.

    Yellowstone has had significant earthquakes as well as minor ones in recent decades. In 1959, a magnitude 7.5 quake near Hebgen Lake just west of the park triggered a landslide that killed 28 people.

    Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

    Accessed at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hklq5saMBlMynv31EbfNSka-SpOwD95COBD00 on December 30, 2008. 

     

     

    ISRAEL CALLS IN THOUSANDS OF RESERVISTS

    Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:15:59 GMT

     
     
    Israel has summoned 2,500 extra reserve forces who will join those stationed along Gaza amid talk of a ground incursion into the strip.

    The order raised the number of reservists Israel has mobilized for the Gaza operation to 9,200, Israel's Debkafile reported on Wednesday.

    Israeli ground troops stationed at Israel's border with the Gaza Strip now await orders to enter the impoverished slither, added Debkafile -- believed to have ties with Israeli intelligence and military sources.

    The Israeli cabinet on Sunday gave a green light for the call-up of thousands of reservists, giving rise to fears of a ground incursion into the Palestinian territory.

    The Hamas military wing has warned Tel Aviv that a ground assault inside the strip would turn Gaza into "an anti-Israel volcano".

    Israel says through its military campaign, it seeks to topple the Hamas movement, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after winning the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections in January 2006.

    In retaliation to the attacks on Gaza, Hamas has vowed to launch rocket strikes against Israel. Six Israelis have died since Saturday and sixteen others have been reported wounded.

    On the Palestinian side, however, over 1800 Palestinians have so far been injured and at least 385 killed -- scores of whom were women and children.

    MT/AA

     

    GAZA ASSAULT BY ISRAEL VIDEO

     

    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051593.html

     

     

    Phil Berg Goes Back To
    SCOTUS Vs Obama

    For Immediate Release 
    For Further Information Contact:
    Philip J. Berg, Esquire
    12-30-8
     
    DETERMINED to have the TRUTH regarding OBAMA that he is NOT "NATURAL BORN" and therefore NOT constitutionally QUALIFIED to be PRESIDENT
     
    BERG files a lawsuit on behalf of a RETIRED COLONEL
     
    The lawsuit is an "Interpleader" that shifts the burden of proof to OBAMA
     
    Further, OBAMA is named as "BARRY SOETORO" as that is his "real" name when he was legally adopted in Indonesia
     
    (Lafayette Hill, PA ­ 12/30/08) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the Attorney who filed suit against Barack H. Obama challenging Senator Obama's lack of "qualifications" to serve as President of the United States which is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court [Docket No. 08 ­ 570] with two [2] Conferences scheduled on January 9th and 16th 2009, filed suit against Barry Soetoro a/k/a Obama on behalf of a Retired Military Colonel.
     
    Berg today, with co-counsel Lawrence J. Joyce, Esquire, filed another lawsuit in Federal Court in the United States District for the District of Columbia on behalf of Retired Colonel Hollister against Barry Soetoro a/k/a Barack Hussein Obama demanding to know Obama's real name and if he is constitutionally qualified to be President. Plaintiff, Gregory S. Hollister, is a resident of Colorado Springs, Colorado and Hollister has "standing" and needs a decision so he knows whether or not to follow any Order of Soetoro a/k/a Obama.
     
    The suit is in the nature of an Interpleader that shifts the burden of proof to the Defendants, Soetoro a/k/a Obama and Biden to show that they are "qualified" for office.  
     
    Berg stated, "I am determined, on behalf of the 320 million citizens in the United States, to see that "our U.S. Constitution" is followed. Specifically, in the case of Soetoro a/k/a Obama, does he meet the constitutional qualifications for President ? I do not believe so based upon: 1) Obama was born in Kenya and because his mother was not nineteen [19], he was only "naturalized" and therefore, not qualified to be President; 2) Obama was legally adopted/acknowledged in Indonesia at the approximate age of six [6] and attended school as "Barry Soetoro," [his step-father is Lolo Soetoro] for four [4] years ­ Indonesia did not have dual citizenship and to attend school, he had to be adopted or acknowledged and he became a "natural" citizen of Indonesia; 3) when he returned to Hawaii at age ten [10], there is a question if he returned through U.S. Immigration ­ (a) if he did, Barry Soetoro would have been given a "Certification of Citizenship" that would have indicated he was a "naturalized" U.S. citizen since he was a "natural" citizen of Indonesia; or (b) if he did not go through immigration, which I believe, then Soetoro a/k/a Obama is an illegal alien and therefore, not constitutionally qualified to be President and his three [3] years as an U.S. Senator were a fraud."
     
    Berg continued, "I am appalled that the main stream media continues to ignore this issue as we are headed to a 'Constitutional Crisis.' There is nothing more important than our U.S. Constitution and it must be enforced. I am encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled two [2] Conferences to look into the merits of our allegations. I know that Mr. Obama is not a constitutionally qualified 'natural-born' citizen and therefore, is ineligible to assume the Office of the President of the United States.
     
    Obama, knows he is not 'natural born' as he knows where he was born and he knows he was legally adopted/acknowledged in Indonesia; is an attorney, Harvard Law head of the Law Review and graduate who taught Constitutional law; knows the Obama candidacy is the biggest 'hoax' attempted on the citizens of the United States in over 200 years; places our Constitution in a 'crisis' situation; and Obama is in a situation where he can be blackmailed by leaders around the world."
     
    Berg concluded, "I will continue my efforts until Obama either proves he is qualified or does the right thing and states that he is proud that he, an African American, received more votes than anyone else in the Presidential election on November 4, 2008, but because of things in his past, he must withdraw his name."  
     
    For copies of all Court Pleadings, go to obamacrimes.com
     
     
    For Further Information Contact:
     
    Philip J. Berg, Esquire
     
    555 Andorra Glen Court, Suite 12
    Lafayette Hill, PA 19444-2531
     
     
    (610) 825-3134
    (800) 993-PHIL  [7445]
    Fax (610) 834-7659
     

     

    Airstrikes target Gaza City, Khan Yunis


     
     

    Israel pressed ahead with Operation Cast Lead on Tuesday afternoon, with Palestinians reporting IAF strikes on two targets in Gaza City and the city of Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Strip. Army Radio reported that a Hamas police station was one of the targets.

    Earlier in the day, at least 10 people were killed and 40 others wounded when IAF planes bombed a series of targets in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said.

    The IDF confirmed air strikes against dozens of targets in the central Gaza town of El-Bureij, near Khan Yunis, and in Gaza City.

    Hamas's Interior Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Treasury, and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's offices were amongst the targets, as well as police stations.

    Facilities belonging to Izzadin Kassam, Hamas's military wing, were also struck, as well as the homes of operatives in the group, including that of its Gaza Division commander.

    Palestinians reported that two sisters, aged four and 11, were killed in a strike in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

    The IDF announced Tuesday that since Operation Cast Lead started on Saturday, 390 Hamas targets had been hit.

    The army added that 30 targets were struck on Monday night, including launch sites, arms caches, a vehicle carrying Grad missiles and a northern Gaza mosque used for storing weapons.

    According to UN figures, more than 360 Palestinians have been killed since the operation began, most of them members of Hamas security forces, but at least 64 of them civilians.

    Senior defense officials on Tuesday said that Izzadin Kassam had been severely weakened by the IDF operation. They added, however, that Monday night's rocket and mortar shell barrage on the South, which killed three Israelis, proved that Gaza terrorists are still capable of firing deep into the Israeli home front.

    Hamas had scaled back its operations and reduced rocket fire prior to the barrage, officials said, while it reestablished its communication infrastructure as well as its command and control centers. The group has been severely impaired by the IDF operation, the officials stated.

    "Hamas is still strong, and is getting ready to engage Israeli soldiers in the event of a ground operation," one defense official said. "For now, it is busy working to recover its capabilities."

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev wouldn't comment on the prospects for a ground operation, but said Israel would "continue keeping the pressure up on the Hamas military machine."

    "This operation will continue until a new security reality can be created in the south, and those hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in fear of Hamas rockets no longer have to live in that fear," Regev said.

    Meanwhile, speaking to Israel Radio on Tuesday morning, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i stated that Hamas would increase the range of its fire on Israel, but that Israel was prepared for this possibility.

    He said that Hamas had hundreds of missiles, but that the group's strength was weakening.

    Vilna'i went on to say that the IDF would see Operation Cast Lead through to its conclusion, and that Israel was prepared for long weeks of battle.

    Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit was quoted by Israel Radio as saying that there was no room for a cease-fire in Gaza.

    The minister said that the government was determined to eliminate the threat of fire on residents of the South, and that the IDF must not end its operation until Hamas's will to fire had been broken.

    If Israel gives up, he said, it will not have achieved anything.

    Sheetrit emphasized that the IDF was operating with utmost caution so as not to harm civilians in the Strip, and said that supplies and medicine were being transferred to Gaza.

    "The time has come for Israel to say: Our citizens come first," he said.

    Sheetrit spoke as Israel let some 100 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies from Jordan, Turkey and international aid groups into the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

    In addition, five new ambulances given by Turkey were allowed into the Strip.

    Meanwhile, the IDF was making final preparations for a penetrating ground operation into the Strip.

    Tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery batteries and soldiers from several infantry units massed along Gaza's border ahead of the operation, which defense officials said would likely be limited in time.

    Defense officials said that the ground operation, if launched, would penetrate deep into Gaza with the aim of dealing a strategic blow to Hamas. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the officials said, declared during the assessment that he did not want to utilize all of the forces at the IDF's disposal since it would create "static targets" for Hamas.

    "We will hit them where they least expect it," one official said, adding that the artillery batteries deployed along the border would likely be used in the event of a ground operation. "We will need to constantly be moving on the ground to maintain the element of surprise."

    Gil Hoffman and AP contributed to this report

     

     


    Three Israelis killed, 32 injured in 100 Hamas missile attacks Monday

    DEBKAfile Special Analysis

    December 30, 2008, 8:07 AM (GMT+02:00)

    On Day 3 of Israel's Gaza operation, Dec. 29, Hamas hit back hard with volleys of rockets and missiles at points closer to central Israel than ever before. The three Israelis killed were IDF career officer, Sgt. Maj. Lutfi Nasr e-Din, 38, from Daliat Hacarmel, at Nahal Oz, a woman motorist, Irit Sheetrit, 39, mother of four, who sought shelter in the Ashdod bus terminus, 30 km from Gaza; and earlier in Ashkelon, Hani al-Mahdi, 27, a construction worker from the Bedouin Negev village of Ar'ur.

    DEBKAfile's military sources report that Monday, Hamas had recovered sufficiently from Israel's air offensive to bring out its new Iranian Grad rockets to expand their range up to 40 km and launch them over the heads of the hundreds of Israel tanks, armored cars and artillery piled up outside the gates of Gaza and awaiting the order to move in.

    At the Nahal Oz facility, in addition to the fatality, seven soldiers were injured, one critically, by incoming Palestinian mortar fire. Hamas' night barrage also struck Ashdod, Ofakim, Yavne (25 minutes drive from Tel Aviv), Netivot, Ashkelon, Sderot, Shear Hanegev. Ashkelon was battered day and night. The last round targeted school yards, kindergartens and bus stations. Ofakim, like Yavne, was hit for the first time by 3 missiles and suffered five injured.

    Following this barrage, the Homeland Command extended the radius of schools that would not reopen Tuesday, Dec. 30, after the Hanukkah holiday from 20km to 30km. A quarter of a million Israelis are now on active missile alert around the clock.

    Overnight, the Israeli air force pounded the Hamas-ruled government compound in Gaza City, hitting the prime minister's office, and the foreign, finance and interior ministry buildings and Hamas command centers. The Palestinians report 10 people killed, raising their death toll in three days to 360. All senior Hamas officials and commanders are ensconced safely in underground bunkers.

    Three Israelis killed, 32 injured in 100 Hamas missile attacks Monday

    On Day 3 of Israel's Gaza operation, Hamas hit back hard with volleys of rockets and missiles at points closer to central Israel than ever before. The three Israeli dead were IDF career officer, Sgt. Maj. Lutfi Nasr e-Din, 38, from Daliat Hacarmel, at Nahal Oz, a woman motorist, Irit Sheetrit, 39, who sought shelter in the Ashdod bus terminus, 30 km from Gaza, and earlier in Ashkelon, Hani al-Mahdi, 27, a construction worker from the Bedouin Negev village of Ar'ur.

    DEBKAfile's military sources report that Monday, Hamas showed itself recovered sufficiently from Israel's air offensive to bring out its new Iranian Grad rockets to expand their range up to 40 km and launch them over the heads of the hundreds of Israel tanks, armored cars and artillery piled up outside the gates of Gaza and awaiting the order to move in.

    At the Nahal Oz facility, in addition to the fatality, seven soldiers were injured, one critically, by incoming Palestinian mortar fire. Hamas' night barrage also struck Ashdod, Ofakim, Yavne (25 minutes drive from Tel Aviv), Netivot, Ashkelon, Sderot, Shear Hanegev. Ashkelon was battered day and night. The last round targeted school yards, kindergartens and bus stations. Ofakim, like Yavne, was hit for the first time by 3 missiles and suffered five injured.

    Following this barrage, the Homeland Command extended the radius of schools that would not reopen Tuesday, Dec. 30, after the Hanukkah holiday from 20km to 30km. Beersheba, Gedera and Kiryat Gat are braced for attack. A quarter of a million Israelis are now on active missile alert around the clock.

    Overnight, the Israeli air force pounded the Hamas-ruled government compound in Gaza City, hitting the prime minister's office, and the foreign, finance and interior ministry buildings and Hamas command centers. The Palestinians report 10 people killed, raising their death toll in three days to 360. All senior Hamas officials and commanders are ensconced safely in underground bunkers.

    They can only be dug out by special forces and armored units on the ground.

    The crucial battle of Gaza is therefore still to come, as indicated by Israel's deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. Israel Harel, when he warned Monday that the hardest part of the campaign is still ahead.

    Hamas tacticians pin their hopes on the overcast, rainy conditions forecast for the rest of the week to slow Israeli air attacks, delay an incursion, and further intensify their cross-border missile onslaught.

    Homeland Front, police forces, 200 ambulances, 2 medical helicopters and hospitals are on alert around the clock at all targeted locations. Hospitals in central Israel are also on the ready.

     

    Israel pounds Gaza for fourth day

    BBC News

    December 30, 2008

    Wounded Palestinian, Gaza Strip, 29 September 2008
    The UN says Israel has killed 320 Palestinians since Saturday

    Israeli jets have attacked the Gaza Strip for a fourth day, with raids on a number of Hamas government buildings and security installations.

    Air strikes early on Tuesday killed at least 10 people, medical officials in the coastal enclave said.

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned both Israel and Hamas.

    About 320 Palestinians have died since Saturday, the UN says. Four Israelis have been killed by rockets from Gaza.

    One was a soldier, the first member of the military to die since the current fighting began.

    While recognising Israel's right to defend itself from militant rocket attacks, Mr Ban condemned its "excessive use of force".

    "The suffering caused to civilian populations as a result of the large-scale violence and destruction that have taken place over the past few days has saddened me profoundly," he said.

    'Bitter end'

    Forty people were said to have been wounded in Tuesday's raids, which targeted Hamas-run offices and security installations, Palestinian officials said.

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate ceasefire

    Israel's defence chief earlier said his country was fighting a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas.

    The UN says at least 62 of the Palestinians killed so far have been women and children.

    Israel has massed forces along the boundary with Gaza and has declared the area around it a "closed military zone".

    Correspondents say the move - in addition to the call-up of thousands of reservists - could be a prelude to ground operations, but could also be intended to build pressure on Hamas.

    The Red Cross earlier described the situation in Gaza's hospitals as chaotic, with medical teams "stretched to the limit".

    Trucks laden with medical aid have been permitted to cross into Gaza from Egypt at the Rafah crossing.

    European Union foreign ministers are scheduled to to meet in Paris later (1730 GMT) to discuss the escalating crisis.

    The meeting, hosted by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, is expected to consider the idea of an humanitarian aid corridor, and how to bring additional aid to Gaza.

    Angry protests

    Dozens of centres of Hamas strength, including security compounds, government offices and tunnels into Egypt, have been hit since Israel started its massive bombing campaign on Saturday morning.

    Palestinian children search the ruins of a destroyed house following an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip, 29 December 2008

    Israel says its aim is to end the rocket attacks by Hamas-linked militants - of which there were reportedly more than 40 on Monday.

    Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel wanted to deal Hamas a "severe blow" and its operation would be "widened and deepened as needed".

    The US - Israel's strongest ally - said the onus was on Hamas to end the violence and commit itself to a truce, but there have been angry protests against the offensive in many cities across the Arab world and in several European capitals.

    The strikes began less than a week after the expiry of a six-month-long ceasefire deal with Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.

    Israel withdrew in 2005 but has kept tight control over access in and out of Gaza and its airspace.

    GAZA VIOLENCE 27-29 DECEMBER
    map
    1. Ashdod: First attack so far north, Sunday
    2. Ashkelon: One man killed, several injured in rocket attack, Monday
    3. Sderot: rocket attacks
    4. Nevitot: One man killed, several injured in rocket attack, Saturday
    5. Civilian family reported killed in attack on Yabna refugee camp, Sunday

    6. Israeli warplanes strike tunnels under Gaza/Egypt border, Sunday
    7. Three young brothers reported killed in attack on Rafah, Sunday
    8. Khan Younis: Four members of Islamic Jihad and a child reported killed, Sunday
    9. Deir al-Balah: Palestinians injured, houses and buildings destroyed, Sunday
    10. Interior ministry and Islamic University badly damaged, Monday
    11. Gaza City port: naval vessels targeted, Sunday
    12. Shati refugee camp: Home of Hamas leader Ismail Hanniyeh targeted, Monday
    13. Intelligence building attacked, Sunday
    14. Jebaliya refugee camp: several people killed in attack on mosque, Sunday

     

     

    Mideast papers on Gaza

    BBC News

    December 29, 2008

    Debris in Gaza City
    Israeli air strikes have destroyed Hamas targets in Gaza.

    Commentators in the West Bank-based Palestinian press are united in dismay at the Israeli operation in Gaza, condemning it as an "ugly massacre".

    Some also voice their fury at what they see as the inaction of the region's Arab states and the West's support for Israel, while one commentator fears the operation will only drive more of Gaza's young men into the arms of radical Islamists.

    In Israel, press commentators are broadly supportive of the army operation, and insist that it is up to Hamas to stop the violence, by ending firing of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. One writer, however, disagrees, saying that every war is a "crime against humanity".

    EDITORIAL IN PALESTINIAN AL-QUDS

    As the Arab and international silence continues, the credibility of Europe, the United States and the Arab regimes is collapsing. It is becoming very clear that the Palestinians are required to be a broken people... However, they forget that the many massacres to which our people in the Gaza Strip have been exposed will only increase their steadfastness.

    BASIM ABU-SAMMIYA IN AL-HAYAT AL-JADIDAH

    The Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip is an ugly massacre. However, the public protests by the Arab countries are not enough on their own. We have become used to being massacred and to dying under the rubble while hearing statements of condemnation and the commotion of demonstrations. However, after a day or two they disappear only to leave the sounds of shells and missiles.

    KHALID AL-HARRUB IN AL-AYYAM

    What is happening now is the ideal situation for the recruitment of the angry young men who feel collectively insulted. The picture that the Islamists on the streets are painting is that Israel, supported by the West, is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinian people as powerless Arab regimes watch idly.

    SAMIH SHBEIB IN AL-AYYAM

    The main objective of the Israeli operation is not to destroy Hamas's rule [in Gaza], because this would entail a land invasion and lengthy occupation of the Gaza Strip. What it wants is to deal Hamas and the resistance a painful and effective blow in the Gaza Strip, in order to weaken the resistance and force it to accept a truce according to Israel's conditions.

    EITAN HABER IN YEDIOT AHARONOT

    This is a strange, unique war. It has no defined borders. There is no occupation and no victory. It could end in an hour or in a year. The way in which it develops will be dictated to a large extent by the Palestinians: They stop firing, we will also stop firing. They'll continue? Their end will be bitter.

    BEN KASPIT IN CENTRE-RIGHT MA'ARIV

    The ground operations are due at some point. At some point it will be possible to take control of territory in Gaza and effect great damage. Hamas can halt the whole affair at any given moment if it agrees to renew the truce on acceptable terms. Meanwhile, Hamas is conveying stubbornness.

    JONATHAN GEFFEN IN CENTRE-RIGHT MA'ARIV

    Just like in the first days of the Second Lebanon War, we are again in euphoria. The media, like then, is full of prattle about the morality of the war. Have we not learned that every war, no matter how justified, is a crime against humanity? Most of the public is united around the only consensus we have ever had: war and bereavement, Holocaust and disasters.

    EDITORIAL IN LEFT-OF-CENTRE HA'ARETZ

    Re-establishing the ceasefire on better terms and with better supervision is a reasonable goal. Toppling the Hamas regime, or eradicating the last rocket factory where the last Hamas member is making the last Qassam rocket, are not reasonable goals, in part because they are unachievable without a prolonged presence on the ground in Gaza.

    ALEX FISHMAN IN CENTRIST YEDIOT AHARONOT

    In order to stop the firing [of rockets] there is a need to reach a settlement, and in order to convince Hamas to reach a settlement we are now breaking its bones - in part to ensure that the price it demands is not high. However, we have not yet decided what price we are ready to pay. It is worth our while to decide quickly so that others may not decide for us.

    BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.

     

     

     

    Israel Bombs Gaza for Second Day

     

    By IBRAHIM BARZAK and AMY TEIBEL
     
    AP
    December 28, 2008
     
    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (Dec. 28) - Gazans cowered in their homes Sunday as Israeli warplanes pressing one of Israel's deadliest assaults ever on Palestinian militants unleashed missiles on weapons warehouses, a police station, the homes of militant field commanders and dozens of other targets across the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
    More than 270 Palestinians — most of them militants — have been killed and more than 600 people wounded since Israel's campaign to quash rocket barrages from Gaza began midday Saturday. Israeli military spokesman Avi Benayahu said some 250 attacks were carried out since the offensive began.

     

    Russia to supply missiles to Syria

    Russia plans to supply air-defense missile systems valued at $250 million to seven countries including Syria, Libya and Venezuela, Vedomosti reported, citing an unidentified Russian Technologies Corp official.

    The Moscow-based newspaper reported that Russia had started fulfilling orders of 200 S-125 systems that were due to be delivered during the next three years.

    Russia will ship about 70 missile systems to Egypt, and will also supply Myanmar, Vietnam and Turkmenistan with the systems, the paper said.

    On Monday, US officials said that they wanted answers from Russia about whether it was selling advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran.

    A senior military intelligence official said that while Moscow has sent out conflicting responses to reports on sales of long-range S-300 missiles, the United States believes they are occurring.

    Russia's state arms export agency said Monday it was supplying Iran with defensive weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, but did not say whether they include sophisticated long-range S-300 missiles.

    A day earlier Israeli officials categorically denied Iranian press reports that Russia would soon begin delivery of the state-of-the-art anti-missile system that could make it considerably harder to attack the Islamic republic's nuclear facilities.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel had been assured by senior Russian officials that these reports were "baseless," and that the Kremlin stood by the agreement, reached with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his visit there in October, not to sell weapons in the region that would "tip the strategic balance."

    Herb Keinon, Yaakov Katz, AP and Bloomberg contributed to this report.

     
     
     
    From
    December 20, 2008

     

    Russian warships return to Havana for first time since Soviet era

     

    (Claudia Daut/Reuters)

    Admiral Chabanenko in Havana bay. The Russian warship is the first to enter Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

    Russian warships pulled into Havana yesterday for the first time since the end of the Soviet era in the last port of call on an expedition designed to send a message to Washington about the military reach of Moscow.

    The five-day stop in Cuba, a Soviet-era ally with whom Russia is reviving relations, is designed to test the enthusiasm of Barack Obama, the President-elect, for plans by his predecessor for military expansion in Eastern Europe.

    Russia sent an ageing flotilla to the Caribbean in September for wargames with Venezuela, a month after US warships sailed into the Black Sea in the aftermath of the war in Georgia.

    Moscow was furious at the US incursion into what Vladimir Putin has described as its “privileged sphere of influence” in the former Eastern bloc. The crisis also brought to a head US plans for a missile defence system with bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, formulated by President Bush.

    Washington has continued to press for Nato to admit the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. By sending its warships to the Western hemisphere, Moscow plans to show that it too can flex its muscles in an adversary’s backyard.

    Its cruise through Venezuelan and Panamanian waters have ruffled frustratingly few feathers in Washington. Asked how it felt to watch the first Russian warship since the Second World War to transit the Panama Canal, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, said: “I guess they’re on R&R. It’s fine.”

    The open alliance between Russia and Cuba came in the wake of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and led to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when US military photographs showed Soviet missile bases being built on the island.

    Americans lived on the brink of nuclear war for two weeks until a deal was made to dismantle the bases. Washington then agreed to withdraw missiles aimed at Moscow.

    The commander of Russia’s strategic missile forces announced yesterday that Moscow was ready to abandon plans to renew its entire nuclear missile arsenal if Washington halted deployment of the Eastern European stage of the missile shield.

    Under current plans Russia will replace its Soviet-era nuclear missile arsenal by 2020 with systems that it says will be able to overcome new defences such as the missile shield.

    “If the Americans give up their plans to deploy the third position area and other elements of strategic missile defence, then undoubtedly we will respond in kind,” Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov said.

    Russia could do without the expense of replacing its arsenal. Some analysts say that all Russia has achieved with its Caribbean cruise is a reminder of how far gone its days of naval glory really are.

    The Russian Navy is a shadow of its Soviet-era force, with many ships and submarines rusting away from lack of investment. Neglect has contributed to several deadly accidents, such as the sinking of the Kursk nuclearpowered submarine in 2000.

    Cuban missile crisis

    1962 Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, ships nuclear missiles to Cuba that could hit the US

    August 29, 1962 US spy aircraft report military construction and the presence of Soviet technicians

    October 22, 1962 President Kennedy announces a naval quarantine on Cuba. Most Soviet ships avoid the area except for three ships and four nuclear-armed submarines, which stop only after a US warship intercepts them

    October 28, 1962 Deal is reached between the Russians and US

    Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Times Archive  

     

    Telegraph.co.uk

    Friday 19 December 2008

    Large hole in magnetic field that protects Earth from sun's rays

     

    Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun's violent blasts.

     

    The discovery was made last summer by Themis, a fleet of five small NASA satellites.

    Scientists have long known that the Earth's magnetic field, which guards against severe space weather, is similar to a draughty old house that sometimes lets in violent eruptions of charged particles from the sun. Such a breach can cause brilliant auroras or disrupt satellite and ground communications.

    Observations from Themis show the Earth's magnetic field occasionally develops two cracks, allowing solar wind – a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million mph (1.6 million kph) – to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere.

    Last summer, Themis calculated a layer of solar particles to be at least 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometres) thick in the outermost part of the Earth's magnetosphere, the largest tear of the protective shield found so far.

    "It was growing rather fast," Themis scientist Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley told an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

    Scientists initially believed the greatest solar breach occurs when the Earth's and sun's magnetic fields are pointed in opposite directions. But data from Themis found the opposite to be true. Twenty times more solar wind passed into the Earth's protective shield when the magnetic fields were aligned, Mr Oieroset said.

    The Themis results could have bearing on how scientists predict the severity of solar storms and their effects on power grids, airline and military communications and satellite signals.

    Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the first sunspot of a new 11-year cycle has appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere.

    Jimmy Raeder, a physicist with the University of New Hampshire, predicted a more intense solar cycle. That's because the Earth's and the sun's magnetic fields will be in sync at the cycle's peak, expected in 2012, that will cause an influx of solar particles, Raeder said.

    The Themis satellites were launched to find the source of brief powerful geomagnetic disturbances in the Earth's atmosphere.

     

     

    Israel: Iran could attack US with nuclear bomb

    Israel has warned that Iran could try to attack the US if it acquired a nuclear weapon.

     

    Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, appealed to world leaders to act now to prevent Iran from continuing its nuclear programme.

    "If it built even a primitive nuclear weapon like the type that destroyed Hiroshima, Iran would not hesitate to load it on a ship, arm it with a detonator operated by GPS and sail it into a vital port on the east coast of North America," Mr Barak told a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

    Indicating the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran, Mr Barak said: "We are not taking any option off the table, and we recommend to the world not to take any option off the table, and we mean what we say."

    His comments came as a Russian news agency reported that the Kremlin had confirmed that it will deliver a new air defence system to Iran. The Russian foreign ministry denied reports of the deal in October.

    But it is now believed to be implementing the deal, which will see Russia deliver an S300 system to the Islamic republic to help it fend off possible air strikes on its nuclear sites by Israel or the US.

    The most advanced version of the S-300 system can track targets and fire at aircraft 75 miles away. It is known in the West as the SA20.

     

     

    Oil tumbles below $40 for first time since 2004

     

     Crude Continues its Decline

     

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    OPEC agrees to slash output but oil price sinks AFP/File – Flags of member states of the oil cartel OPEC seen in front of the Sheraton hotel in Oran, Algeria. Oil …

    Oil prices tumbled below $40 for the first time since the summer of 2004 Wednesday despite an announcement from OPEC of a record production cut of 2.2 million barrels a day.

    The drop shows that even the mighty Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has little sway over a growing global recession, analysts said. Crude prices are down more than 72 percent from their summer peak of $147 a barrel, yet tankers continue to idle in the Gulf of Mexico and other ports waiting for buyers.

    "There's just so much oil in inventory out there right now," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. "Nobody wants to buy this stuff."

    Markets had already priced in a vastly reduced flow of oil and traders focused instead on troubling economic data that points to a long and severe recession.

    Light, sweet crude for January delivery tumbled 8 percent, or $3.54, to settle at $40.06 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Benchmark crude prices fell as low as $39.88, a price last seen in July 2004.

    OPEC had already announced cuts totaling 2 million barrels earlier this year, also with little effect. The unprecedented production cuts and the market reaction show just how fast energy demand has fallen during the worst economic downturn in at least a generation.

    "You've got a commodity that people are buying less of because they can't afford to buy more," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. "People are fearful. They have a lack of confidence in the economy. They're closing their factories."

    Lynch said global demand has slowed to its worst point since the early 1980s. Economists previously thought China and other developing countries were impervious to a global recession, he said.

    "Now it's pretty clear that things are going to be bad everywhere," Lynch said.

    U.S. gasoline inventories continued to rise, the government reported, providing further evidence of a major pullback by American motorists.

    Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended Dec. 12 was 2.7 percent lower than a year earlier.

    Grim economic news radiates out of the U.S., Europe and Asia almost daily as consumers and industries pull back on spending.

    The Cooper Tire and Rubber Co. said Wednesday it will cut 1,300 jobs and close a plant in Georgia.

    Newell Rubbermaid Inc. is reducing its salaried work force by as much as 10 percent. The Atlanta-based company slashed its fourth-quarter and full-year profit guidance Wednesday.

    In Detroit, General Motors Corp. put the brakes on construction of an engine factory trying to hold on to the cash that it has left.

    Meanwhile, the dollar suffered its biggest one-day decline against the euro after the Federal Reserve cut a key lending rate target to historic lows.

    That would typically lead more investors into the crude market because oil is bought and sold in dollars and you can get more bang for the buck.

    But investors in this harsh economic climate are holding onto their wallets like never before, betting there's not enough global demand to support higher crude prices, said Gene McGillian, an analyst at Tradition Energy.

    "Oil prices should be a lot stronger," McGillian said.

    The last time oil prices dipped below $40 a barrel was July 21, 2004. Prices settled that day at $40.09, according to Peter Beutel, an oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.

    Many analysts believe oil prices will continue falling next year with agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to the International Energy Agency forecasting weak demand.

    IHS Global Insight Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh was among the industry experts forecasting lower prices for oil.

    "Oil prices will (easily) fall below $40 per barrel in the next year, and could tumble all the way to $30," Behravesh said in a research note. "With the economic outlook deteriorating by the day, futures markets for commodities have not priced in the full extent of the 'demand destruction' taking place."

    Doubts also remain about the willingness of some OPEC members to adhere to price-boosting production quotas.

    "OPEC has lacked credibility for a long time on discipline," said Gerard Rigby, energy analyst at Fuel First Consulting in Sydney. "OPEC is going to have to show they are committed to the cut, that it's not just talk."

    U.S. crude inventories rose slightly last week despite expectations for a drop, while gasoline reserves increased as demand stayed below year-ago levels, according to government data released Wednesday.

    Analysts had expected a drop of 900,000 barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

    Gas prices, because it must be refined from crude, almost always lags the movement in oil prices.

    Retail gas prices, which hit a low of $1.656 a gallon on Friday, rose to $1.667 a gallon Wednesday, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.

    In London, February Brent crude rose 97 cents to settle at $45.53 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

    In other Nymex trading, gasoline futures fell 3.45 cents to settle at $1.0055 a gallon. Heating oil fell 1.77 cents to $1.4425 a gallon while natural gas for January delivery fell 15.2 cents to settle at $5.619 per 1,000 cubic feet.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Alex Kennedy in Singapore and George Jahn in Oran, Algeria, contributed to this report.

     

     

    Fed presses on into uncharted territory

    As benchmark goes to zero, Bernanke tries new ways to revive economy

     
      Recession tightens grip on U.S.
    Dec. 5: Employers across all sectors of the economy slashed more than a half-million jobs in November, the biggest monthly job loss since 1974. CNBC's Scott Cohn reports.

     

     
     Economy in turmoil
    Keeping the economy afloat
    Dec. 16: Federal officials say they will try other methods, including buying mortgage debt, to try to keep the economy afloat. CNBC's Steve Liesman offers analysis on how this might affect your bottom line.

    By John W. Schoen
    Senior producer
    msnbc.com
    updated 3:19 p.m. ET, Tues., Dec. 16, 2008

    John W. Schoen
    Senior producer

    The Federal Reserve's decision to cut its target for short-term interest rates to as low as zero reflects the reality of a central bank scrambling to apply a new  set of monetary tools to battle the deepening recession.

    “These are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary measures,” said Robert McTeer, former president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank.

    In an unprecedented move, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues Tuesday set a new target range for overnight lending between banks at zero to 0.25 percent, down from the previous target of 1 percent

    The decision was just one of several bold and unexpected steps announced by the Fed. In an unusually extensive statement, the central bank acknowledged that the weakening economy called for an expanded range of responses and pledged to use “all available tools” to get growth back on track.

    Those tools include an aggressive buying spree of public and private debt securities that the central bank began in September. The Fed reiterated Tuesday that it intends to buy “large quantities of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities” and announced that it is considering buying longer-term Treasury securities. In addition the Fed will consider other “ways of using its balance sheet to further support credit markets and economic activity.”

    Over the past three months of financial crisis, the Fed has unveiled an alphabet soup of new progrCommercial Paper Funding Facility — with one common goal: buying up debts that no one else wants and swapping them for cash.

    Those efforts to flood the financial system with cash have been far more important than the rate-setting that is usually the Fed's most effective tool. The Fed's decision to announce a target range of zero to 0.25 percent is an acknowledgement that the central bank has been unable to meet its stated target rate through normal purchase and sale of Treasuries in the open market.

    Although the Fed has had a target of 1 percent since Oct. 29, the actual market-based rate has fallen as low as 0.125 percent in recent weeks due to slack demand for short-term borrowing.

    With short-term interest rates effectively at zero, the Fed can do little more to lower the cost of borrowing. The hope is that by pumping trillions of dollars of cash into the credit system by buying up securities, that money will find its way into the hands of cash-strapped consumers and businesses to help revive the economy.ams — from the Term Auction Facility to the

    With more than a half million jobs lost in November alone, the government provided fresh data Tuesday on just how much deeper the recession has become.

    Shrcosts.inking demand sent consumer prices last month on their biggest slide since records were first kept 61 years ago, the Labor Department reported. Prices fell 1.7 percent, due largely to the deep slide in energy In a separate report, the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes fell in November by 18.9 percent, the biggest drop in a quarter-century. The decline pushed construction down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 625,000 homes, the slowest pace on records dating to 1959.

    Now as banks, companies and consumers all struggle to pay down a mountain of debt taken on during the easy-money years of the first half of the decade, spending and investment have slowed to a crawl and new credit has dried up. To fill the hole created by that huge private sector debt, the Fed is now taking unprecedented levels of debt onto its own books, and swapping that debt for cash to try to get money flowing normally again through the financial system.

      

     

    AmericanFreePress.Net

    December 15, 2008

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    Change? Obama Inner Circle Filled With Bilderbergers

    NWO 

    By Victor Thorn

    FOR TWO YEARS, Americans have heard an unrelenting mantra of change emanating from the campaign trail. But now that President-elect Barack Obama has begun forming his cabinet, we’re seeing a cadre of more deeply entrenched insiders than any administration that has preceded it.

    In regard to key foreign policy advisors, all three of Obama’s selections either initially supported the Iraq war, or still do. On the economic front, each appointee maintains a close relationship with the Jewish triad of Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan—as well as bailout engineer Henry
    Paulson. Barack Obama himself is a Council on Foreign Relations member, has strong ties to Zbigniew Brzezinski, and participated in a clandestine meeting with Hillary Clinton at Bilderberg member Diane Feinstein’s house at the time when 2008 Bilderberg members were congregating only a few miles away.

    Below is an overview of Obama’s top 14 selections to date. When considering their collective histories, a trend becomes clear, proving that the more things change under Obama, the more they stay the same.



    1. TIMOTHY GEITHNER – TREASURY SECRETARY

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, president and CEO of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, director of policy development for IMF, member Group of Thirty (G30), employed at Kissinger & Associates, architect of the recent 2008 financial bailouts, mentored by Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin.

    2. PAUL VOLCKER – ECONOMIC RECOVERY ADVISORY BOARD

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, North American chairman of Trilateral Commission, Federal Reserve chairman during Carter and Reagan administrations, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, G30 member, chairman Rothschild Wolfensohn Company, key figure in the collapse of the gold standard during the Nixon administration, longtime associate of the Rockefeller family.

    3. RAHM EMANUEL – CHIEF OF STAFF

    Member of Israeli Defense Force, staunch Zionist, senator, Board of Directors for Freddie Mac, member of Bill Clinton’s finance campaign committee, made $16.2 million during 2.5 years as an investment banker for Wasserstein Perella. His father was a member of the Israeli Irgun terrorist group.

    4. LAWRENCE SUMMERS – NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, treasury secretary during Clinton administration, chief economist at World Bank, former president of Harvard University, Brookings Institute board member, huge proponent of globalization while working for the IMF, protege of David Rockefeller, mentored by Robert Rubin.

    5. DAVID AXELROD – SENIOR ADVISOR

    Political consultant whose past clients include Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Christopher Dodd; main Obama fixer in the William Ayers and Reverend Wright scandals.

    6. HILLARY CLINTON – SECRETARY OF STATE

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, clandestine CIA asset used to infiltrate the anti-war movement at Yale University and the Watergate hearings, senior partner at the Rose Law Firm, key figure in the Mena drug trafficking affair, architect of the Waco disaster, implicated in the murder/ cover-up of Vince Foster, and many other deaths.

    7. JOSEPH BIDEN – VICE PRESIDENT

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senator since 1972, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, current chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, strong Zionist sympathizer who recently told Rabbi Mark S. Golub of Shalom TV, “I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”

    8. BILL RICHARDSON – COMMERCE SECRETARY

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former U.S. congressman, chairman of the Democratic National Convention in 2004, employee of Kissinger Associates, UN ambassador, governor of New Mexico, energy secretary, major player in the Monica Lewinsky cover-up with Bilderberg luminary Vernon Jordan.

    9. ROBERT GATES – DEFENSE SECRETARY

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former CIA Director, defense secretary under President Bush, co-chaired CFR task force with Zbigniew Brzezinski, knee-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, named in a 1999 class action lawsuit pertaining to the Mena drug trafficking affair.

    10. TOM DASCHLE – HEALTH SECRETARY

    Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former Senate majority leader, Citibank lackey, mentored by Robert Rubin.

    11. ERIC HOLDER – ATTORNEY GENERAL

    Key person in the pardon of racketeer Marc Rich, deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, facilitated the pardon of 16 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists under Bill Clinton.

    12. JANET NAPOLITANO – HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR

    Council on Foreign Relations, Arizona governor, attorney for Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, instrumental in the OKC cover-up, where she declared, “We’ll pursue every bit of evidence and every lead,” described as another Janet Reno, soft on illegal immigration (i.e. pro-amnesty and drivers licenses to illegals).

    13. GEN. JAMES L. JONES – NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR

    Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, European supreme allied commander, special envoy for Middle-East Security during Bush administration, board of directors for Chevron and Boeing, NATO commander, member of Brent Scowcroft’s Institute for International Affairs along with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bobby Ray Inman, Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger and former CIA Director John Deutch.

    14. SUSAN RICE – U.N. AMBASSADOR

    Council on Foreign Relations, Rhodes scholar, campaign foreign policy advisor to presidential candidates John Kerry and Michael Dukakis, member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and assistant secretary of state for Africa, member of the Brookings Institute (funded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers), and member of the Aspen Strategy Group (teeming with Bilderberg insiders such as Richard Armitage, Brent Scowcroft, and Madeleine Albright).

     

    Citizen WellsFront Page About he Cause

    hilip J Berg Lawsuit

     

    Obama indictment, Blagojevich arrest, Patrick Fitzgerald, December 11, 2008, Rezko trial,Obama, Rezko, Levine, Blagojevich, Health Planning Board, Pay for Play, IL Senate, Obama arrest and indictment by USDOJ, US Department of Justice

    December 11, 2008

    Legal Notice

    To:

    Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald
    US Department of Justice
    219 S. Dearborn Street, Fifth Floor
    Chicago, IL 60604

    The US and state governments are composed of Executive,
    Legislative and Judicials branches. This is designed to
    provide a system of checks and balances and protect the
    American public. We now need the protection from the American
    Government more than ever. We have a presidential candidate
    that will soon be voted for by the Electoral College with
    these issues threatening to cause a constitutional crisis:

    • Obama is not a natural born citizen and is ineligible to be
      president.
    • Obama in his official capacity as IL State Senator and US
      Senator has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors on multiple
      occasions.
    • Obama lied on his IL Bar Application.
    • Obama has a very suspect Selective Service Application.
    • Obama has been involved in illegal and corrupt dealings with
      the following indicted and/or convicted IL officials and
      businessmen:  

    Tony Rezko
    Stuart Levine
    Dr. Robert Weinstein
    Governor Rod Blagojevich

    • Obama conspired with one or more of the above
    •  
    • named to rig the IL Health Facilities Planning Board. 
    •  
    •  Patrick Fitzgerald and the US Justice Department have been involved
      in an investigation of crime and corruption in Chicago and IL,
      sometimes referred to as “pay for play.” This investigation and
      subsequent prosecutions has been methodical and well executed. The
      initial focus was on Tony Rezko and his trial and conviction that
      evolved out the testimony of Stuart Levine who had been wiretapped.
      Multiple indictments and arrests have developed from the Rezko trial
      leading up to the recent arrest of IL Governor Rod Blagojevich. All
      of the people indicted or arrested  out of the investgation have one
      thing in common. Connections to Barack Obama. It has been believed for
      months that Rezko would talk and that Blagojevich and/or Obama was next.
      It is now time to indict Barack H. Obama.

    From the Petition to Impeach, expel Senator Obama

    Whereas: Senator Barack Obama used the office of IL Senator to facilitate the vote rigging in Chicago as chairman of the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee. Mr. Obama pushed legislation in Senate Bill 1332 to reduce the number of members of the Health Facilities Planning Board from 15 to 9. Mr. Obama did conspire with Stuart Levine, Tony Rezko and Rod Blogojevich to rig the committee and was rewarded with campaign contributions. The new members appointed included 3 doctors who contributed to Mr. Obama. On April 21, 2004, Stuart Levine explicitly advised Dr. Robert Weinstein, who is now indicted, of Tony Rezko’s role in manipulating the Planning Board’s vote.

    The following have been indicted and/or arrested

    Tony Rezko

    “During the same time period, the indictment alleges, Rezko and Levine also were seeking to obtain a kickback of at least $1 million from contractor Jacob Kiferbaum, whose construction company was to build a new facility for Mercy Hospital in Crystal Lake, Illinois, if that facility received approval from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, on which Levine sat.”

    Tony Rezko Indictment

    Stuart Levine

    “Levine used his influence with the Planning Board to ensure that Mercy Hospital received approval of its application to build the Crystal Lake hospital after hiring Kiferbaum’s company. In voting for, and influencing other Planning Board members to vote for, Mercy’s application, Levine concealed from the Planning Board his financial arrangement or contacts with Kiferbaum.”

    Stuart Levine Indictment

    Dr. Robert Weinstein

    “The false statements count alleges that on May 24, 2004, Weinstein lied to an FBI agent when he said that Levine never told him that Rezko had influence over the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, the state board that regulates hospital construction and expansion. In fact, the indictment alleges Weinstein knew that he and Levine had discussed Rezko’s influence over the Planning Board, including in a recorded conversation on April 21, 2004, in which Levine explicitly advised Weinstein of Rezko’s role in manipulating the Planning Board’s vote earlier that day on the Certificate of Need application of Mercy Health System Corp. Hospital and other matters.”

    Dr. Robert Weinstein Indictment

    Governor Rod Blagojevich

    “Rezko was a principal fundraiser for ROD BLAGOJEVICH. 3 His criminal trial
    focused on allegations that Rezko and Stuart Levine, a member of the board of trustees of
    the Teachers Retirement System and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, engaged
    in a scheme to defraud the State of Illinois of Levine’s honest services by demanding
    kickbacks, as well as political contributions to the campaign of ROD BLAGOJEVICH, in
    return for the exercise of Levine’s official influence. Relevant evidence presented at the
    Rezko trial is summarized below.”

    “According to Levine, in approximately late October 2003, after Levine was
    reappointed to the Planning Board, he shared a private plane ride from New York to Chicago
    with ROD BLAGOJEVICH and Kelly. Levine, ROD BLAGOJEVICH, and Kelly were the
    only passengers on the flight. According to Levine, at the beginning of the flight, Levine
    thanked ROD BLAGOJEVICH for reappointing him to the Planning Board. ROD BLAGOJEVICH
    responded that Levine should only talk with “Tony” [Rezko] or [Kelly]
    about the Planning Board, “but you stick with us and you will do very well for yourself.”
    ROD BLAGOJEVICH said this in front of Kelly.”

    “Levine’s criminal activities included his abuse of his position on the Planning
    Board to enrich both himself and Friends of Blagojevich. The Planning Board was a
    commission of the State of Illinois, established by statute, whose members were appointed
    by the Governor of the State of Illinois. At the relevant time period, the Planning Board
    consisted of nine individuals. State law required an entity seeking to build a hospital,
    medical office building, or other medical facility in Illinois to obtain a permit, known as a
    “Certificate of Need” (“CON”), from the Planning Board prior to beginning construction.”

    “Almanaseer testified that Beck instructed him that Rezko wanted
    Almanaseer to vote a particular way and that Almanaseer should follow Levine’s lead in
    voting on CONs.”

    “During his testimony, Levine described a plan to manipulate the Planning
    Board to enrich himself and Friends of Blagojevich. The plan centered on an entity
    commonly known as Mercy Hospital (“Mercy”) that was attempting to obtain a CON to build
    a new hospital in Illinois.”

    Governor Rod Blagojevich Criminal Complaint

    Chicago Tribune Rezko Trial Transcripts

    March 6, 2008; 12:29 a.m.

    “Hamilton finished remarks after an hour. She did not mention the name of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, whose U.S. Senate campaign in 2004 allegedly was the beneficiary of $20,000 in campaign cash from intermediaries in the kickback schemes the government says were orchestrated by Rezko.”

    March 10, 2008; 4:16 p.m.

    “The name of Barack Obama, the Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination, also appears in the e-mail as a member of a strategic team reviewing hospital board matters with the governor’s staff when he was a state senator. The hospital board was scheduled to be revamped in the summer of 2003.

    Obama was then chairman of the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services. Other legislative leaders, including Madigan, were part of that review panel as well, according to the e-mail.”

    March 13, 2008; 3:09 p.m.

    “Dr. Imad Almanaseer is on the witness stand this afternoon, testifying about his links to Antoin “Tony” Rezko and his time on the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board”.
    “Almanaseer was appointed to the planning board in 2003 on Rezko’s recommendation. Prosecutors contend he became part of a five-member voting bloc on the board that followed Rezko’s wishes. Almanaseer said board Chairman Thomas Beck tried to steer his voting.”

    March 19, 2008; 11:21 a.m.

    “Prosecution witness Stuart Levine is walking jurors through the evolution of his relationship with defendant Tony Rezko. The two met at a dinner party shortly before the 2002 election in which Rezko’s close friend Rod Blagojevich was elected governor.”

    “Levine said he met increasingly with Rezko in early 2003 after Blagojevich was sworn in as governor. On occasion, Levine said, Rezko described his close relationship with Blagojevich.

    “He said that he had raised a great deal of money for Gov. Blagojevich and that he had great hopes and expectations that Gov. Blagojevich would run for president,” Levine recalled. “And although he knew it was a long shot, he was working toward that end.”"

    “”Mr. Rezko told me that he was able to have individuals appointed to state boards and was able to have individuals hired into state agencies and that he spoke very often — and in fact went over decisions — that Lon Monk would put into place,” Levine said.”

    March 21, 2008; 12:10 p.m.

    “Another government wiretap has been played with Antoin “Tony” Rezko’s voice on it, and this one could prove damaging to his defense. On the tape, recorded May 18, 2004, Rezko can be heard giving orders to political fixer Stuart Levine about how he wanted to manipulate the vote of one of Levine’s fellow members on the Illinois Health Facilities Planning board, Danalynn Rice.

    On the call, Rezko is heard mentioning Chris Kelly, who with Rezko was one of the top fundraisers for Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Both Rezko and Kelly were key members of Blagojevich’s kitchen cabinet.

    Rezko makes it clear in the phone call that Kelly, too, had been involved in trying to manipulate decisions of the hospital board, which Rezko has been charged with corrupting. Kelly apparently had called Levine earlier and told him he should be Rice’s mentor on the board, directing her to follow his lead on voting. Rice had been recently installed on the hospital panel at the insistence of a leader of the Laborers’ International Union, which had contributed more than $133,000 to Blagojevich’s campaign.”

    Obama’s ties to Rezko, Blagojevich, corruption

     

    Evelyn Pringle: Curtain Time for Obama Part 2
    Feds track Obama’s visits to Rezko

    In the media, Obama always made it sound like he rarely saw Rezko, saying they met for breakfast or lunch once or twice a year. However, the FBI mole John Thomas helped investigators “build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru’s Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005,“ according to the February 10, 2008 Sun-Times.

    During his March 14, 2008 interview, the Times told Obama, Thomas is an FBI mole and he “recently told us that he saw you coming and going from Rezko’s office a lot.”

    “And three other sources told us that you and Rezko spoke on the phone daily.”

    “Is that true?” the reporter asked.

    “No,” Obama said, “That’s not accurate.”

    “I think what is true,” he said, “is that, it depends on the period of time.”

    “I’ve known him for 17 years,” Obama stated. “There were stretches of time where I would see him once or twice a year.”

    He told the Times, “when he was involved in finance committee for the U.S. Senate race, or the state senate races, or the U.S. Congressional race, then he was an active member.”

    “During the U.S. Senate race, there’s be stretches of like a couple of weeks - for example prior to him organizing the fundraiser that he did for us - where I would probably be talking to him once a day to make sure that was going well,” he said.

    “But the typical relationship was one that was fond,” he added. “We would see each other.”

    “But there would be no reason for me to be seeing him that often,” he stated. This issue may be sorted out soon enough because Fitzgerald’s charts matching up Obama’s contributions, visits and calls are bound to be every bit as thorough as the ones produced to prove Rezko is guilty as charged in the first trial. They simply were not produced because they were not needed to prove the defendant guilty in the first case.

    As an example of what records might be squirreled away, consider that an FBI agent presented a chart to the jury on April 28, 2008, showing 257 calls from Rezko’s phones to Blagojevich’s chief of staff, Lon Monk, between March 2004 and May 2004 alone.

    He also had a list of all calls between Levine and Rezko from November 2002 to May 2004. Rezko’s attorney brought out a point that backs the assertion that just because records on Obama were not shown, does not mean they do not exist.

    The attorney questioned the agent about missing calls, and specifically those to and from Christopher Kelly. The agent first said records were not available, but later admitted the government probably does have records on Kelly that were not available to him.

    In addition, the contributions extorted through the Planning Board scheme were for the intended presidential candidate, Blagojevich. Obama’s US senate war chest was already funded and by the time these kickbacks were paid that campaign would be over.

    But Obama did end up with $20,000 from the very first kickback paid in the pension fund scheme set up through the Board of the Teacher’s Retirement System.

    Elie Maloof and Joseph Aramanda, the straw donors used to funnel the contributions to Obama, also made $1,000 contributions of their own for his failed run for Congress in 2000, on the same day March 17, 2000.

    In addition, Aramanda gave $500 to Obama’s senate campaign on June 30, 2003. In the summer of 2005, Aramanda’s teenage son landed a coveted intern position in Obama’s senate office in Washington.

    Obama also received contributions directly from the persons appointed to the pension board for the express purpose of rigging the votes. On June 30, 2003, appointee, Jack Carriglio contributed $1,000.

    The other appointee, Anthony Abboud, donated $500 to Obama on June 30, 2003, $250 on March 5, 2004, and $1,000 on June 25, 2004.

    Michael Winter, who prosecutors say agreed to serve as a funnel for kickbacks paid through an investment firm in one scheme donated $3,000 to Obama on June 30, 2003.”

     

    Obama’s role in rigging the Health Planning Facilities Board

     

    Evelyn Pringle, Obama Curtain Time 2

    “Obama was chairman of the Senate Health & Human Services Committee in January 2003. A few articles in the media have mentioned that Obama sat on a committee that reviewed matters related to the Planning Board in conjunction with the Governor’s staff but none have discussed his integral part in getting the bill passed.

    A review of senate records from January 2003 to August 2003, shows Obama played a major role as chairman of that committee, in pushing through Senate Bill 1332, that led to the “Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act,” which reduced the number of members on the Board from 15 to 9, making the votes much easier to rig.

    Democratic Senator Susan Garrett sponsored the bill in the senate, and the chief co-sponsor was Republican Senator Dale Righter. These two senators were also on the Human Services Committee with Obama.

    The bill was filed with the senate secretary on February 20, 2003, and assigned to Human Services Committee for review on February 27. Less than a month later, as chairman, Obama sent word that the bill should be passed on March 13, 2003.

    On May 31, 2003, the House and Senate passed the bill and the only senator listed in the “yes” votes mentioned in the Board Games indictments is Obama.

    Blagojevich made the effective date June 27, 2003, and the co-schemers already had the people lined up to stack the Board and rig the votes with full approval from Obama.

    As discussed fully in >Curtain Time for Obama Part 1, the Republicans and Democrats worked together in setting up the Planning Board scheme because the Combine as a whole would profit.

    During the trial, Stuart Levine testified that when he sought reappointment to the Planning Board, he told Republican co-schemer, Bill Cellini, to tell the Blagojevich administration he would vote however they wanted when approving projects.

    He told the jury he had the same understanding with the two prior Republican governors, Jim Edgar, and George Ryan, who is now sitting in prison due to Fitzgerald’s successful prosecution of a corruption case against him.

    A June 2003 email exchange produced in the trial shows Obama was one of eight officials who received the names of the nominees for the new Board ahead of time, from the office of David Wilhelm, who headed Blagojevich’s 2002 campaign for governor.

    Tony Rezko’s name does not appear in the email. In fact, his attorney made the point to the jury that the exchange was from Blagojevich’s general counsel, Susan Lichtenstein, and Wilhelm’s office, and indicated the appointees were recommended by Wilhelm and supported by those who received the memo.

    The memo said, “we worked closely over the past six months” with eight officials including three state senators.

    Jennifer Thomas, a former aide in Blagojevich’s patronage office, testified that she attended regular weekly meetings at Rezko’s office between the spring of 2003 and November 2004, and Rezko floated names and specifically said Levine should be reappointed to the new Board.

    The Senate bill said, the “Board shall be appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate.” But the Senate Confirmation Hearings were a joke. For instance, the Feds recorded Levine talking to co-schemer, Jon Bauman, the day Levine learned he was approved by the Senate from the executive secretary of the Board.

    Levine told Bauman he ran into Jeffrey Marks, who said “congratulations on your appointment,” and Levine asked for what. Marks said, “well the Senate Confirmation Hearings on Health Facility Plan Board members.”

    He told Levine Senate President, Emil Jones, only allowed 2 members to be approved and “that was you and the other person he just put in.”

    “Isn’t that hysterical ’cause you know they had this big battle going on,” Levine told Bauman.

    Laughing away, Levine said, “don’t you just love it.”

    “I’m one of those independents and not part of the block.”

    “Well, good, you know it’s good to be just a true independent civil servant,” Bauman said laughing along with Levine.

    “Is, is that a good thing,” Levine replied, “I’ve never been that.”

    Corrupt appointees fund Obama and Blagojevich campaigns

    The corrupt new appointees were all contributors to the presidential hopeful, Blagojevich, and the US senate hopeful Obama.

    The previous Act allowed the Board itself to select a “Chairman and other officers as deemed necessary.” But the new law stated: “The Governor shall designate one of the members to serve as Chairman and shall name as full-time Executive Secretary.”

    The Board’s then sitting-chairman, Thomas Beck, who was originally appointed by a Republican governor, testified under a grant of immunity that he brought a $1,000 check to Rezko on July 15, 2003, to make sure Blagojevich reappointed him.

    A few weeks later, Beck said, Rezko called to say he would be reappointed along with a Republican holdover Levine. Beck also testified that Rezko told him Blagojevich was set to appoint Rezko’s three doctor friends to complete the rigged voting bloc. He said he met the doctors in August 2003, at the first meeting of the new Board.

    Dr Michel Malek gave Obama $10,000 a little over a month before the first meeting on June 30, 2003. He also donated $25,000 to Blagojevich three weeks later on July 25, 2003, and gave Obama another $500 in September 2003. Malek was an investor in Riverside Park.

    Dr Fortunee Massuda donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003, and gave a total of $2,000 to Obama on different dates. Massuda’s husband, Charles Hannon, is a co-schemer in the pension fund case and testified against Rezko in the trial.

    Dr Imad Almanaseer contributed a total of $3,000 to Obama after he landed the appointment. On March 13, 2008, Almanaseer testified against Rezko and told the jury he was an investor in Rezko’s fast-food businesses.

    This doctor’s son, Ahmed Almanaseer, was given a trade office intern position with the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Ahmed is president of HireIraqis.com a bilingual human resources “site aimed at linking Iraqi job seekers with the companies engaged in the reconstruction [in Iraq] efforts,” according to Rezko Watch/RBO.”

    Conclusion

     

    The names of Blagojevich and Obama were mentioned regularly
    during the Rezko trial. Since Blagojevich and Obama were not
    on trial at the time, much information known about them was
    withheld. To understand this fact simply read the Criminal
    Complaint against Rod Blagojevich. It is apparent that much
    more is known about Barack Obama and that he is next in line
    to be indicted.

    Since Barack Obama is attempting to sneak through the election
    process with a great many legal questions clouding his past and
    since the American public needs and depends on the Judicial Branch
    of government to protect it from criminals and imposters, I
    Citizen Wells, on behalf of the American public, ask that Mr.
    Patrick Fitzgerald or any authorized employee of the US Justice
    Department, present Mr. Barack H. Obama with an indictment and/or
    Criminal Complaint at the earliest possible moment, with time being
    of the essence. The Electoral College meets next week and it is
    imperative that we do all that is in our power to prevent a
    constitutional crisis in this country.

    I do hereby swear that the information provided above is, to the
    best of my knowledge, accurate.

    Citizen Wells                December 11, 2008 

     

    Already 'Bankrupt' GM Won’t Be Rescued by U.S. Loan

    By Doron Levin and John Helyar

     

    Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- For General Motors Corp., the question is no longer whether it will get a government loan or if Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner will be replaced. It’s whether anything can prevent the largest U.S. automaker from sliding into bankruptcy.

    Even an offer by the Treasury Department today to provide temporary relief, after the Senate rejected a bailout plan approved by the House, isn’t likely to offset the Dec. 10 announcement that GM’s 49 percent-owned affiliate, GMAC LLC, lacked the capital to become a bank holding company. That means the financing unit won’t be able to access Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program to help make auto loans.

    GMAC may now have to file for Chapter 11 protection, with or without a loan, joining GM’s biggest parts supplier, Delphi Corp., which is already in bankruptcy. The Detroit-based automaker, leaking $67 million a day -- enough to buy a fleet of 1,800 Cadillac CTS coupes -- may soon be sucked into the vortex.

    “GM already is bankrupt and should file for bankruptcy,” said David Littman, senior economist for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a policy research organization in Midland, Michigan. “They have too much overhead and too little time left to reduce size to be a survivor in this industry.”

    The company eschewed the Chapter 11 option for months, believing it would make consumers unwilling to buy their cars. Lead director George Fisher said last week that bankruptcy is “way down the list of options.” GM has been working with New York lawyer Martin Bienenstock of Dewey & LeBoeuf to devise an option for using the bankruptcy process to restructure, according to a person familiar with the contingency plan.

    Cash Concerns

    A bankruptcy filing in the U.S. wouldn’t necessarily include overseas subsidiaries such as GM Europe, which builds Opel and Vauxhall automobiles. It would, said Alan Baum, manager of forecasting for Planning Edge, a consulting firm in Birmingham, Michigan, make a foreign supplier or partner “fear that a GM bankruptcy might eat up its cash.”

    The Senate thwarted the government bailout in a procedural vote after talks failed in a dispute with Republicans over how quickly auto-union wages should be cut. Only 10 Republicans voted to move forward on the rescue plan.

    GM shares fell about 4 percent to $3.94 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading as of 5:30 p.m.

    To GM’s critics, worries about cash are three years too late. The financial crisis wasn’t the culprit that brought the company to the brink of insolvency, as Wagoner told Congress last month. It was just the final straw in a succession of unresolved or unaddressed issues.

    Shrinking Sales, Value

    Since 2005, GM has lost a cumulative $72.4 billion, had its debt downgraded to junk, watched its share of U.S. auto sales shrink by almost 1 million vehicles and shed 90 percent of its market value. It introduced gas-guzzling vehicles as fuel prices rose, failed to slim down its product offerings and dealer networks quickly enough and wasn’t able to cap its labor costs in time to stem the bleeding. In September 2007, the company won the right to hire new workers at lower wages starting in 2010 -- too far down the road to avoid the consequences of a recession and a credit crunch that engulf it now.

    “We made mistakes,” Wagoner conceded at a Senate hearing last week. Among the errors, he said, were “failing to build sufficient flexibility into our operations and not moving fast enough to invest in smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.”

    100th Birthday

    Wagoner, 55, who has been CEO since 2000 and declined to be interviewed for this article, was also slow to see the impact of the credit crisis. On Sept. 16, the day after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, he told reporters at a party at Detroit’s Renaissance Center marking the company’s 100th birthday that he saw “no big impact” on consumers. The next month GM’s auto sales in the U.S. plunged 45 percent.

    After 77 years as the world’s largest automaker, GM and its executives were unable to embrace change. The company continued to plow resources into sport-utility vehicles and make bad alternative-fuel bets, even after consumer buying habits shifted. It rejected an offer from Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co., to form a global alliance. And it dismissed calls for radical restructuring from former board member Jerome York and other critics.

    Ignoring Advice

    York, 70, a former Chrysler Corp. finance chief, was advising Tracinda Corp. CEO Kirk Kerkorian, who had amassed a 9.9 percent stake in GM. He told analysts in January 2006 that the time had come for the automaker “to go into a crisis mode and act accordingly.” York calculated that GM was burning through cash at a rate of $24 million a day, which meant it had about 1,000 days before it ran out -- in October 2008.

    GM ignored York’s advice to reduce its number of models, including getting rid of the Hummer and Saab brands, and to cut both management and labor costs in what he called an “equality of sacrifice.” He resigned nine months later, in October 2006, frustrated by the board’s unwillingness to take action. Only after York left did GM decide to sell Hummer. Now it’s talking about getting rid of Saab and Saturn, as well as Pontiac.

    “Three years ago I thought GM had the time and financial resources to save itself,” York, now CEO of Harwinton Capital LLC, said in an interview. “Now I’m not so sure. Who’s responsible? Top management and the board of directors.”

    Auto Bubble

    Although York’s prediction was prescient -- GM has told Congress it will run out of cash by the end of the year if it doesn’t get relief -- what no one could foresee then were two developments that sealed GM’s fate: a run-up in gasoline prices and a credit-market freeze that followed Lehman’s collapse.

    The frozen credit markets signaled the end of an era of easy money that delayed GM’s day of reckoning. In a parallel to the housing bubble, GM and its Big Three brethren enjoyed a decade of artificially inflated sales. Finance companies did a booming business in subprime auto loans, a rarity in 2000, which accounted for 18 percent of new-car financing by 2005, according to CNW Market Research in Bandon, Oregon. And the automakers’ own subsidiaries offered low-interest financing that helped move cars off dealers’ lots.

    That did nothing to stem GM’s steady loss of market share in the U.S., from 30 percent in 2000 to 22 percent today. It did help keep the industry’s annual U.S. sales at or near record levels, topping 17 million vehicles.

    Managed for Cash

    “They were trying to delay the draconian measures they needed to take,” said Ashvin Chotai, managing director of Intelligence Automotive Asia Ltd., a consulting firm in London.

    GM gave the bubble a boost with a zero percent “Keep America Rolling” financing campaign started eight days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Sales jumped 42 percent in October. The program got the company even more hooked on incentives than it had been in the 1980s. “Keep America Rolling” was followed by “Employee Pricing,” “Red Tag Specials” and other low-interest and rebate deals that made discounting the norm.

    “It was a great initiative to prop up the market, but it’s a trap they fell into,” said Chotai, who estimates that annual U.S. auto sales would have fallen to 13 million to 14 million without incentives. “Nobody believes list price anymore, so you’ve destroyed your pricing power and you’ve diluted your brand.”

    That’s only one way GM executives were short-sighted. It’s not that Wagoner, who received an MBA from Harvard University in 1977, doesn’t know management. It’s that between dwindling liquidity and its sky-high fixed costs, the company was increasingly managed for cash, even at the expense of profit.

    ‘Alternate Universe’

    GM continued to build unprofitable models because it needed the cash to meet financial obligations, such as a roughly $5 billion annual health-care bill for workers and retirees. In 2007, even though GM posted a $38.7 billion net loss, it managed to generate $189 million in free-cash flow. That’s equivalent to burning the furniture in order to stay warm.

    “These are not stupid people, but they had created an alternate universe,” said James Womack, co-author of “The Machine That Changed the World,” a book about the Toyota Motor Corp. production system that bested Detroit’s. “They lived in a cocoon. GM was weak for reasons that were under the surface, and the financial crisis brought it all out.”

    To John Shook, a former Toyota manager who worked at a joint-venture plant run by the Japanese company and GM in Fremont, California, that explains why the two automakers are in such different shape today. When it comes to engineering and manufacturing, Shook says, Toyota and GM are about equal. Where they differ is in their corporate cultures.

    “Toyota is built on trial and error, on admitting you don’t know the future and that you have to experiment,” Shook said. “At GM, they say, ‘I’m senior management. There’s a right answer, and I’m supposed to know it.’ This makes it harder to try things.”

    ‘Increasing Certitude’

    So while Toyota assumed it must continuously adapt if it wanted to succeed in the U.S., Shook says, GM believed it would forever be the market leader. Its managers brought Toyota’s manufacturing methods from Fremont to Detroit. They couldn’t duplicate Toyota’s zen: question everything.

    Wagoner, a 31-year GM veteran, was the embodiment of its culture, an apostle of incremental change. Exciting as a Saturn, quotable as an owner’s manual, the one-time Duke University basketball player exuded quiet confidence about GM’s future.

    “I know that things will turn around,” he told Fortune magazine in February 2006, after problems erupted at the automaker. The magazine concluded in a cover story that “the evidence points, with increasing certitude, to bankruptcy.”

    “GM people tend to internalize, to think that they can figure things out on their own,” said Don Runkle, chairman of Inkster, Michigan-based battery maker EaglePicher Inc. and a former GM chief engineer.

    Perot Appalled

    Over the years, the occasional outsider who entered the company with notions of shaking it up has been rejected as a foreign organism. GM acquired Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $2.55 billion in 1984 and gave its chairman, H. Ross Perot, a seat on the board. The brash Texan, appalled at GM’s ways, shocked directors by challenging then-CEO Roger Smith in meetings and publicly ridiculing the company.

    “The first EDS-er to see a snake kills it,” Perot told Business Week in 1986. “At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.”

    In 1986, GM paid Perot $700 million for his stock and his resignation from the board.

    Even when GM did make changes, they weren’t revolutionary. In 1992, a year when the automaker posted a $23.5 billion loss, Chairman and CEO Robert Stempel resigned under pressure after 27 months on the job. It named director John Smale, the retired CEO of Procter & Gamble Co., as non-executive chairman and appointed Jack Smith, a GM lifer, as CEO.

    ‘Run Common, Run Lean’

    Smith invested in SUVs and pickup trucks, starving cars, especially smaller models where Japanese automakers dominated. He rode a wave of prosperity, cheap gasoline and a strong North American housing market to eight straight years of profitability and a record share price of $93.62 in April 2000 before turning over the wheel to his protégé, Wagoner.

    While Smith’s mantra was “run common, run lean,” he never achieved the goal of creating shared platforms and standards that might have slashed operating costs. GM has long been penalized, compared with its Japanese rivals, by its capital costs. It develops scores of chassis to meet different consumer preferences around the world. Yet it wasn’t until this year, after more than a decade of reorganization, that the company introduced its first common chassis for use worldwide. It will serve a mid-size Opel Insignia in Europe and a new Buick LaCrosse to be built in the U.S. next year.

    Pontiac Aztek

    Smith was also unable to drive sales with novel products. The Pontiac Aztek, a mid-size crossover introduced in 1999 as “the most versatile vehicle on the planet,” was so unsightly, so badly received, it was voted the ugliest car of all time in an August 2008 poll by the London Telegraph. The model was discontinued in 2004.

    Challenged by 2001’s twin shocks of recession and 9/11, the new CEO, who had spent most of his career in finance, fell back on what he knew best. Through its GMAC LLC unit, GM attracted ever more buyers with creative financing gambits. One was the “incentivized lease,” requiring no money down and low monthly payments. While that lured customers and stoked production, when the leases expired, GM had to write off the difference between a vehicle’s assumed value, for lease purposes, and its true market value. Since resale prices had been reduced by the surfeit of GM product on the market, so was the company’s profit.

    Shattered Illusion

    The illusion of prosperity would vanish when the era of easy money passed. In the first quarter of 2005, after 12 straight years of profit, GM lost $1.3 billion. The company’s guidance on March 15 that a loss was coming startled Wall Street. Investors beat down the company’s shares by 24 percent over the next four weeks.

    On May 4, Kerkorian, 91, who had reaped $3 billion on a 10 percent stake in Chrysler that he sold in 1998, disclosed that he had amassed 3.9 percent of GM’s shares and was launching a tender offer for more. The next day Standard & Poor’s knocked the company’s bonds down to one grade below investment quality. GM, once the bluest of blue-chips, now had junkers for bonds.

    Turnaround Plan

    Wagoner unveiled a “turnaround plan” in November 2005. It called for closing nine plants, eliminating 30,000 jobs, boosting employee contributions to GM’s health-care plan, increasing investment in its best-selling models such as the Hummer and revamping marketing efforts.

    To Kerkorian and York, who joined GM’s board in February 2006, that wasn’t bold enough. The plant closings and health- care changes saved only $2 billion a year, they said, and the company’s idea of innovation was more versions of the same thing: the SUVs and trucks whose sales had been carrying GM.

    Others had come to a similar conclusion. A month after Wagoner’s plan was announced, S&P again downgraded GM’s debt and called bankruptcy “not far-fetched.”

    Wagoner found the crisis talk overblown. He dismissed a flurry of Chapter 11 questions by saying there was “no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy.”

    In April 2006, Wagoner took charge of GM’s North America division. That same month, he announced the sale of 51 percent of GMAC to New York-based private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP for $7.4 billion. The move was intended to improve GM’s liquidity and protect GMAC’s access to credit markets, which had been threatened by the parent company’s ratings.

    Confidence Vote

    Wagoner sought a vote of confidence from the board that month and got it -- though not from GM’s newest director. York said he thought more sweeping changes were needed and that they weren’t going to come from within.

    He and Kerkorian began to pursue Ghosn, 54, who had pulled Nissan back from the brink of bankruptcy. In May, Kerkorian met with Ghosn in Nashville, Tennessee, and asked him to consider an alliance. Renault and Nissan would each take a 10 percent stake in GM, share resources and collaborate as a way of cutting costs and spurring change. Ghosn was interested, according to York, and said he’d want a seat on the GM board. That would give him influence over the company’s strategy and perhaps position him to succeed Wagoner.

    Kerkorian then sent a letter to Wagoner. In GM fashion, the proposal was studied for months and brought to the board. For directors, it was another opportunity to show their confidence in the incumbent CEO. On Oct. 4, they put an end to any alliance talks. Two days later, York quit the board.

    “I haven’t found an environment in the boardroom that is very receptive to probing much beyond the materials provided by management,” York wrote in his letter of resignation.

    Twin Pillars

    GM shares dropped 6.3 percent on the news, and over the next two months Kerkorian unwound his position in GM. He netted $106 million on his $1.7 billion investment, according to regulatory filings.

    In 2007, the two pillars holding up the company began to crumble, and not even the deal to reduce labor costs with the United Auto Workers could save it.

    First, the subprime-loan market imploded, hurting GMAC’s Residential Capital LLC unit. On Nov. 1, 2007, GMAC reported a third-quarter loss of $1.6 billion as a result of subprime- mortgage writedowns. Over the next three weeks, GM lost one- third of its market value.

    $4.11 a Gallon

    Then gasoline prices began climbing, topping out at an average price of $4.11 a gallon in July 2008, ending America’s love affair with SUVs and pickup trucks -- the very categories that Wagoner had staked the company’s future on in his 2005 turnaround plan.

    It’s not as if other automakers hadn’t also favored trucks in recent years. Gas-guzzlers were more profitable than light vehicles and, as long as fuel was cheap, far more popular.

    The problem was that GM so skewed its model lineup away from sedans that it was out of position when the market turned. To make matters worse, at the moment many Americans became concerned with getting better gas mileage and going “green,” GM was years behind on developing alternative-energy cars.

    Toyota and Honda Motor Co. each introduced gas-electric hybrid cars in 1997 -- the Prius and Insight, respectively. GM engineers scoffed at both. These were small, odd-looking and costly to produce. Why would people buy a car whose price outweighed the gas savings? GM executives told reporters the hybrids were public-relations gimmicks.

    EV1’s Demise

    GM discontinued its one alternative-energy vehicle -- the battery-powered EV1 -- in 2003, after spending more than $1 billion on a car with limited range that flopped with consumers. Company engineers believed that cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells were the real future in this field.

    “They knew the home run was 20 years away, and they weren’t willing to settle for singles and doubles in the meantime,” said Shook, the former Toyota manager. “At Toyota, they said, ‘We don’t know the future; let’s try something we can do right now.’”

    Today, with Prius a hit with consumers, GM is scrambling to catch up. It has several hybrid models of its own and, with Congress badgering him to produce more alternative-energy cars, Wagoner has made their development a major part of the restructuring program for which he’s seeking $10 billion.

    GM Apologizes

    He conceded the error of his ways in June, when GM’s board gave the go-ahead to market the electric-powered Chevrolet Volt in 2010. “Axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids,” Wagoner told Motor Trend magazine, when asked to name his greatest mistake as CEO. “It didn’t affect profitability, but it did affect image.”

    The confession may have come too late. As did an ad GM placed on Dec. 8 in the Automotive News, an industry publication, acknowledging it had “disappointed” Americans in recent years with its quality, design and reliance on trucks.

    Without a reduction in debt and lower labor costs, GM may not weather the current slowdown in U.S. vehicle sales. Congressional critics have argued that the rescue plan passed by the House on Dec. 10 doesn’t give the government leverage to force substantive changes on management and labor. Even a bridge loan, said Edward Altman, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, “is destined to fail.”

    “They’ve actually done some terrific stuff,” said Womack, the author, who is chairman of management-training firm Lean Enterprise Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It’s just that the scale is so large and the changes came so late in the game. The band was all tuned up, the brass was polished, but the ship had already hit the iceberg.”

     

     

    Proof that Albert Einstein's black holes do exist, claim scientists

    Astronomers believe they have come up with concrete proof for the existence of black holes.

     
    Milky Way: the team proved the existence of black holes by tracking the motions of 28 stars circling around the Milky Way 

    Ever since Albert Einstein came up with his general th

    The team proved the existence of black holes by tracking the motions of 28 stars circling around the Milky Way Photo: PA

    eory of relativity, black holes has been central to our knowledge of the Universe.

    Now experts say they have shown that the theoretical phenomenon, whose gravitational pull is thought to hold galaxies together, exist "beyond any reasonable doubt".

    The team of scientists spent 16 years studying the existence of a super massive black hole thought to be at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

    While the black hole itself is invisible to the eye, the team proved its existence by tracking the motions of 28 stars circling around it.

    Just as swirling leaves caught in a gust of wind can provide clues about air currents, so the stars' movements reveal information about forces at work at the galactic centre.

    The observations show that the stars orbit a central concentration of mass four million times greater than that of the Sun, claim the team from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, near Munich, Germany.

    "Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our long term study is that it has delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist," said study leader Professor Reinhard Genzel.

    "The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt."

    The astronomers were also able to measure with great accuracy how far the Earth is from the centre of the galaxy - a distance of 27,000 light years.

    Usually the central region of the Milky Way is hard to see because the view from Earth is blocked by interstellar dust.

    To overcome this problem, the astronomers, who published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal, focused on infrared light wavelengths that can penetrate the dust clouds.

    The galaxy's central mass, long suspected of being a giant black hole, is known as "Sagittarius A star".

    The European Southern Observatory study, which began in 1992, was made using the 3.5 metre (11ft) New Technology Telescope at the La Silla observatory and the Very Large Telescope - an array of four 8.2 metre (26ft) telescopes at the Paranal observatory. Both operate from the Atacama desert in Chile.

    The team, who found that one particular star made a full orbit of the black hole in the 16 year study, now hope to use even more powerful telescopes to further test Einstein's theories.

    A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation (visible light), can escape its pull. They are believed to be the remnants of burnt out suns.

    While the idea of a black hole dates back as far as 1783, it was only after Einstein published his general relativity theory in 1916 that the modern concept was introduced by the German physicist Karl Scharzchild. The actual phrase black hole was not, however, coined until 1968.

     

     
     
     

     

     

     

    Page last updated at 20:52 GMT, Monday, 8 December 2008

    Oil prices up on talk of Opec cut

    Oil pump
    Some analysts expect Opec to cut output by 2m barrels per day

    Oil prices have rebounded from four-year lows after Opec's president said the oil cartel could announce a large reduction in oil production.

    US light, sweet crude rose $2.90 to settle at $43.71 a barrel, while London's Brent added $3.68 to $43.42.

    On Friday, oil prices fell to a low of $40.50 after weak US economic data.

    Opec President Chakib Khelil said on Saturday the cartel could "surprise" markets with an output cut at its meeting on 17 December in Algeria.

    He did not specify how big the cut could be, but said that some analysts were expecting a reduction of up to 2 million barrels per day.

    Economic factors

    "The possibility of Opec moving to tighten up the oil market is real," said David Moore at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

    A jump in stock markets and hopes for a stimulus plan for US carmakers also helped support oil prices.

    Oil prices reached an all-time record of $147 a barrel in July.

    Now analysts forecast much lower prices amid the worsening situation in the global economy.

    Merrill Lynch said crude prices could fall to $25 a barrel if China is hit hard by the global recession.

     

     

    Foreclosures soar 76% to record 1.35 million

    Foreclosure rate hits nearly 3% in the third quarter, while another 7% of borrowers fell behind on their mortgages.

     
     
     
    By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer


     

    NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A record 1.35 million homes were in foreclosure in the third quarter, driving the foreclosure rate up to 2.97%, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Friday.

    That's a 76% increase from a year ago, according to the group's National Delinquency Survey.

    At the same time, the number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgages rose to a record 6.99%, up from 5.59% a year ago, the association said.

    This means that one in 10 borrowers in America are either delinquent or in foreclosure.

    Many of those troubled borrowers are in California and Florida, which have among the highest delinquency rates in the nation.

    The weakened economy and mounting job losses are expected to push these numbers even higher. And that will likely affect homeowners with prime, fixed-rate mortgages, which make up the vast majority of loans and have so far held up fairly well. Until now, much of the housing market's problems were concentrated in the subprime, adjustable-rate market, where homeowners with weak financial backgrounds got loans they ultimately couldn't afford.

    "We have not gone into past recessions with the housing market as weak as it is now, so it is likely that a much higher percentage of delinquencies caused by job losses will go to foreclosure than we have seen in the past," said Jay Brinkmann, MBA's chief economist.

    Unemployment soared to 6.7% as payrolls shrunk 533,000 in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. It was the largest monthly job loss in 34 years, and brought the year's total job losses to 1.9 million.

    The number of homes going into foreclosure in 2008 is on track to hit 2.2 million, Brinkmann said.

    Modification efforts evident

    The percentage of homes starting the foreclosure process in the third quarter actually inched down to 1.07% from 1.08% a year ago. But that's due at least in part to the fact that some states have instituted foreclosure moratoriums in order to give troubled borrowers a chance to get their loans modified.

    But the moratoriums may just delay the inevitable for many, and could push up the foreclosure rate even more in coming quarters. For instance, Massachusetts, which instituted such a moratorium earlier this year, saw a large drop in foreclosures during its moratorium and then a big increase the following quarter, Brinkmann said.

    Asked how recent government and servicer efforts to modify loans would affect the foreclosure rate in coming quarters, Brinkmann said it depends on how many of those borrowers are interested in workouts. Some reports say that 40% of homes with delinquent mortgages are already vacant.

    At the same time, the foreclosure moratoriums and foreclosure prevention efforts have pushed up the number of loans that are 90 days or more late to its highest level ever. But this might not be as dire as it sounds, Brinkmann said. Many of the one million homeowners who fall into this category may never go into foreclosure if a more affordable mortgage can be arranged.

    Another hint of good news in Friday's report is that the number of borrowers one month behind in payments remained fairly steady at 3.39%. This remains below levels seen during the last recession in 2001, Brinkmann said.

    As for 2009, it all depends on whether the economy recovers, he said.

    "Absent a recession, the 2009 number would likely have fallen by several hundred thousand, but the effects of job losses and general economic deterioration make the 2009 outlook worse, particularly if mortgage problems become more widespread," Brinkmann said.

    The report is based on 45.5 million mortgages, about 85% of the total number of first mortgages nationwide.

    California, Florida continue to suffer

    California and Florida continue to have the country's highest rates of new foreclosures. These states have about 93,000 and 90,300 of the foreclosure starts in the quarter, respectively, according to the group. The next state, Illinois, is far behind with about 27,500 starts.

    California and Florida also lead the nation in job losses, with the Golden State losing 101,300 positions over the past year and the Sunshine State shedding 156,200 jobs.

    "Until those two markets turn around, they will continue to drive the national numbers," Brinkmann said.

    Seven other states had rates of foreclosure starts that were above the national average for the quarter: Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. But 20 states saw a decline in their foreclosure start rate, due to the moratoriums and modification efforts.

    Subprime loans weaken

    One in five subprime loans are now delinquent, crossing the 20% threshold for the first time, the group said. That level was up 3.72 percentage points from a year ago.

    The number of prime loans past due also increased to 4.34%, up 1.22% from a year ago.

    A growing number of prime borrowers are expected to fall behind on their mortgages as they lose their jobs. Until the economy turns around, the housing market will continue to suffer.

    "It's clear the mortgage market is being driven by fundamental issues with jobs and the economy," Brinkmann said.

     

    This is exactly what the establishment has been hiding

    Indian Group - Al Qaeda
    Is CIA-Mossad Front
    Al-Qaeda is a front organization of CIA and MOSSAD  
    says Mumbai based group of intellectuals and human rights activists
    India Daily
    12-4-8
     
    The Mumbai based group alleged that Al-Qaeda is a front organization of CIA and MOSSAD. "There is enough evidence that the Al-Qaeda is a front organization of the CIA and MOSSAD. The Bush junta has used the bogey of terror and of Al Qaeda to justify his unending and ever expanding Global War on Terror, which is only a means of capturing the resources of the world and of establishing the sole hegemony of Israel in West Asia," said the group of activists and intellectuals. The group is holding a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday to "expose the links between Al-Qaeda and the CIA-MOSSAD".
     
    Holding American-Israeli operation accomplices of the 9/11 attack on the WTC, the spokesman of the group said that this has been widely written about in USA and Europe itself and more than 50% of the American people and far more Europeans, now believe and are convinced about this fact. He said that sections of the Indian ruling political and military elite are importing the same Bush-Olmert formula into India. "The increasing terror attacks only serve the cause of the Indian elite and divide the masses along communal lines. It is only the ordinary Indians who are the victims of terror either in temples, mosques, buses or trains," he said adding that practically no political leader suffers a similar fate, where the terrorists are apprehended and killed in "encounters".
     
    "Every terror attack is meant to push and drag the Indian masses further into the waiting arms of Uncle Sam and the Israeli Goliath. Every terror attack spreads further hatred for Muslims and Islam and weakens the Indian Muslim community," he said.
     
     
    http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/17121.asp
     

     

     

     

    US masses naval-air-marine might in Arabian Sea opposite India, Pakistan, Iran

    DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

    December 1, 2008, 9:18 AM (GMT+02:00)

    Three US aircraft carriers with strike groups, task forces and nuclear submarines have piled up in the waters of the Arabian Sea opposite the shores of India, Pakistan and Iran, and in the Persian Gulf.

    DEBKAfile's military sources report that the US began massing this formidable array of floating firepower at the outset of the Islamist terrorist attack on the Indian city of Mumbai last Wednesday, Nov. 26.

    Tehran responded typically with a threat of retaliation should the Americans decide to use the Mumbai terrorist attack to hit Iran.

    It is more likely, according to our military sources, that the Americans are on the ready in case the rising tensions between India and Pakistan over the New Delhi's charge of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai atrocity explodes into an armed clash on their border.

    This is indicated by the units now deployed:

    1. the USS John C. Stennis, which carries 80 fighter-bombers and 3,200 sailors and airmen and leads a strike group..

    This carrier joins two already there, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which patrols the northern Arabian Sea, part of whose strike group cruises opposite Iran's southern coast; and the USS Iwo Jima, which carries a large marine contingent on board.

    2. New to these waters, according to DEBKAfile's military sources, is the Destroyer Squadron 50/CTF 55, which has two task forces: Patrol Forces Southwest Asia (PATFORSWA) for strikes against warships and the rapid deployment of marines to flashpoint arenas; and Mine Countermeasures Division 31, which stands ready to prevent New Delhi or Islamabad from mining the Arabian Sea routes connecting their ports. Those routes are vital waterways for US marine traffic supporting the war in Afghanistan.

    3. To manage this armada, the command and control vessel, USS Mount Whitney, has been brought over from the Mediterranean.

    4. Four nuclear submarines.

    The arrival of the southwest Asian marine patrol carrier Stennis and the Mount Whitney to the Arabian Sea opposite Iran's shores set alarm bells ringing in Tehran. Our Iranian sources note that the Islamic republic's rulers remember that after al Qaeda's attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, the Americans did not only invade Afghanistan, but also Iraq and they fear a similar sideswipe.

    The Iranian chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Ataoallah Salehi sounded a warning when he stated Sunday, Nov. 30: The "heavy weight" of enemy warships provides the Iranian side with an ideal opportunity for launching successful counter-attacks.

     

    "Iran’s Nuclear Reality "

     
    By Stephen Brown
    FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, November 26, 2008

    An International Atomic Energy Agency report last week escalated the debate concerning whether the United States or its ally, Israel, will soon launch a military strike against Iran. Experts determined from the report, which was sent to the United Nations, that the Islamic Republic now has enough enriched uranium for at least one nuclear weapon. Just as disturbing, the report states the Iranians intend to install “thousands more” of the machines that enrich uranium gas.

    “They clearly have enough material for a bomb,” said Richard L. Garwin, a respected nuclear physicist and government advisor, in                     the    New York Times  . “They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter.”

    Washington and Tel Aviv have long regarded Iran’s nuclear program with great concern. Until now, the bottom line of both countries’ foreign policies is that Iran will not be allowed to possess atomic weapons. Some believe the major reason, if not the principal one, for the 2003 Iraq invasion was to position American forces for an attack against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities; but the post-invasion insurgency thwarted that plan.

    Israel’s and America’s tough stance in regard to Iran’s nuclear program is hardly surprising. The mullah regime has openly stated its intention to annihilate Israel, while several government members have denied the Holocaust ever occurred. In this vein, Tehran once even held a Holocaust denial conference.

    While Israel has hoped to end Iran’s nuclear program by diplomatic means, it has always refused to rule out a military option. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) staged a special training exercise last summer over the Mediterranean that appeared to be a practise run for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Involving more than 100 jet fighters, helicopters and refueling aircraft, the exercise stretched 1,000 miles over the ocean, the approximate distance from Israel to Iran’s Nantanz uranium-enrichment plant.

    But some are questioning whether a military option is now even necessary given the terrible condition of the Iranian economy, which is worsening due to rapidly falling oil prices. Hosein Askari, a professor of international business and international affairs at Georgetown University, wrote recently that while international sanctions have had an impact on the Iranian economy, especially in regards to deterring foreign investment, he stated it was Iran’s own economic policies that have been the “most detrimental.”

    Among the more damaging economic actions undertaken by the government, Askari lists nationalization of industries, economic privileges bestowed on the Revolutionary Guards, an unemployment rate of 15-25 percent the past ten years, “widespread and regressive subsidies” and an inflation rate 20-30 percent. Iran also has no access to international finance markets and, to make matters worse, banks in the United Arab Emirates are now refusing to do business with the many Iranian trading firms based there, while the US has cut off Iran’s access to its banking system.

    Due to its poor economic performance, the Tehran government has become dependent on oil revenues. But Iran’s oil production, Haskari notes, is down almost a third since 1979 and there was no increase in Iran’s financial reserves when oil prices were high.

    “If oil prices continue their decline, then the regime in Tehran is in for the fight of its life,” Haskari states.

    While the ruling elite and its supporters still enjoy the good life in Iran, with some becoming extremely wealthy, the majority of the population is impoverished. In addition, according to Haskari, there will only be jobs for half of the 800,000 young people expected to enter the workforce over the next four to five years.

    Facing such economic failure, some argue that the West should just wait for Iran to implode economically, like the Soviet Union did, and then make cancellation of its nuclear weapons program a condition for financial assistance. Economic dissatisfaction may even cause a regime change in next year’s election in Iran, making any attack unnecessary.

    An expression of this dissatisfaction occurred recently when sixty Iranian economists signed an open letter, criticizing President Ahmadinejad’s nuclear weapons program and his economic and foreign policies. But the Iranian mullahs believe they are on an Allah-inspired mission. Like North Korea, they may not care how much the ordinary people have to suffer in their quest to acquire nuclear weapons.

    If an attack is to take place with American involvement or assistance, it would probably have to occur before January 20, since president-elect Barack Obama intends to hold talks with Iranian leaders and would therefore not authorize any strike, at least in the foreseeable future. Besides, given the current domestic economic situation in the United States, Obama would be against any military action that would cause oil prices to go back up to $150 per barrel. Moreover, Obama wants to withdraw American troops from Iraq, and an attack against Iran would probably force him to leave American forces there, as the Iranians would have their anti-American Iraqi proxy, Muqtada al-Sadr, reignite the Shiite insurgency.

    If Israel goes it alone, the response will be much different than when it destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and a suspected reactor in Syria this year. After an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, it is expected that Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in southern Lebanon, would immediately fire hundreds of rockets into northern Israel, leading to another war in that area. Israel would also be subjected to rocket attacks from Iran itself. The Islamic Republic possesses 50-100 Shahab 3 missiles, an old North Korean design, that has a range of 1,700 miles and lands within 100 meters of the target. One military publication calls it an “effective weapon.”

    With no regime change in Iran, it is inevitable the religious fanatics in Tehran will possess a nuclear weapon in the next few years. Looking through Israeli eyes, such a horrible eventuality does not bear thinking. So if Israel and the United States intend to end this nightmare scenario by military action, expect it to happen soon.

     

     

    Massacre in Mumbai: Up to SEVEN gunmen were British and 'came from same area as 7/7 bombers'

    By Justin Davenport , Rashid Razaq and Nicola Boden

    Last updated at 7:39 PM on 28th November 2008

    • British-born Pakistanis among arrested militants
    • Commandos storm strongholds to rescue hostages
    • Siege continues at Taj hotel as bystanders wounded
    • Death toll rises as another 24 bodies found in hotel
    • At least five dead hostages found in Jewish Centre

    British-born Pakistanis were among the Mumbai terrorists, Indian government sources claimed today, as the death toll rose to at least 155.

    As many as seven of the terrorists may have British connections and some could be from Leeds and Bradford where London's July 7 bombers lived, one source said.

    Two Britons were among eight gunmen being held, according to Mumbai's chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. At least nine others are reportedly dead.

    The eight arrested were captured by commandos after they stormed two hotels and a Jewish centre to free hostages today. Despite the Indian authorities' assurances that the situation was under control, the siege continued at the Taj Mahal hotel and explosions could still be heard in central Mumbai.

    One security official said: 'There is growing concern about British involvement in the attacks.'

    But Gordon Brown has urged caution. He emerged from a conversation with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say there was no suggestion of a British link.

    'At no point has the prime minister of India suggested to me that there is evidence at this stage of any terrorist of British origins, but obviously these are huge investigations that are being done and I think it will be premature to draw any conclusions at all,' Mr Brown said.

    station

    Calm: One of the young gunmen with his weapon, looking for more victims. Indian authorities say two of the arrested militants were British-born Pakistanis

    Loss: Bollywood actor Ashish Chaudhary is consoled outside Mumbai's Trident-Oberoi Hotel after learning about his sister's death

    Loss: Bollywood actor Ashish Chaudhary is consoled outside Mumbai's Trident-Oberoi Hotel after learning about his sister's death

    Gone: US citizen Alan Scherr and daughter Naomi, pictured with his wife Kia, were killed in Mumbai's Oberoi hotel. They were in India with religious group Synchronicity Foundation, which was hosting a meditation program at the hotel

    Gone: US citizen Alan Scherr and daughter Naomi, pictured with his wife Kia, were killed in Mumbai's Oberoi hotel. They were in India with religious group Synchronicity Foundation, which was hosting a meditation program at the hotel

    Senior Whitehall sources said it was too early to say whether there had been any involvement by British nationals but that security services, working with overseas partners, would be looking at any potential links to the UK.

    Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also said UK authorities had "no knowledge" of any British links with the massacre, while Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it was "too early to say" whether any of the terrorists were British.

    As authorities tried to piece together the identities and motivations of the attackers, special forces were still battling with gunmen.

    At the five-star Taj Mahal Hotel, officers were still locked in combat with up to six militants believed to be holed up in the ballroom.

    The Indian authorities thought they had ended the siege there last night after they shot dead three terrorists and released hundreds of hostages, but it raged again today.

    In a major army operation, soldiers threw grenades at the walls in a bid to smoke out the militants. Four bystanders were reported wounded in the crossfire.

    Mumbai officials say more than 155 people in total have now died in the attacks. Another 370 were wounded.

    Scroll down for more

    Enlarge   mumbai

    Terror: Indian special forces prepare to take back the Taj Palace Hotel in Mumbai

    Indian forces personnel fire towards the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India,

    The tragic figures include the bodies of another five hostages who were found dead inside the Nariman House Jewish Centre this afternoon after commandos finally secured the building.

    Two militants were also killed. It is not known whether the Rabbi and his wife who were believed to be among the hostages are dead or alive.

    Around 20 masked officers had raided the centre this morning, dropping from helicopters onto the roof, in an operation dubbed Operation Black Tornado.

    Hours of heavy fighting ensued as they moved from floor after floor. As dusk fell, there was a massive explosion and it appeared to be over.

    Enlarge   Air rescue: A commando drops to the roof of Mumbai's Jewish centre this morning where at least 10 hostages are thought to still be being held

    Air rescue: A commando drops to the roof of Mumbai's Jewish centre and below, officers span out ready to storm the building

    Battle: Indian commandos take their positions near the Jewish centre

    Across the city at the Oberoi Hotel, the siege ended when two militants were shot dead. 

    Dozens of traumatised guests emerged unharmed but inside there were scenes of carnage and the bodies of another 24 victims.

    Many of those freed had been locked in their rooms, terrified, for 41 hours while the gunmen rampaged.

    Today, around 100 people were rescued and struggling to absorb their ordeal. One man was clutching a tiny baby in his arms as he walked out.

    British lawyer Mark Abell emerged with a beaming smile, saying: 'I'm going home, I'm going to see my wife. '

    The 51-year-old told how he had spent the night listening to gunshots and explosions and communicating with the outside world on his phone and Blackberry.

    Describing the scene when he was eventually led to safety, he said it was 'carnage' with 'blood and guts everywhere'.

    'I was supposed to be working in Delhi but I think I have had more than my fair share of my business trip so I am looking forward to going home to see my family,' he said.

    Finally safe: A British man being led from the Oberoi Trident Hotel this morning after a siege lasting more than a day

    Rescued: A British man is led to safety from the Oberoi Trident Hotel today and below, another guest emerges clutching a tiny baby

    Safe at last: A guest emerges from the Oberoi hotel clutching a tiny baby

    A number of the hostages were airline staff still wearing their Lufthansa and Air France uniforms when they emerged from the building.

    As they came out some carried luggage with Canadian flags, and two women were dressed in black abayas, traditional Muslim women's garments.

    Others were not so lucky. Reported dead tonight was an American and his 13-year-old daughter as well as the wife and two children of the Taj hotel's general manager.

    Foreigners from Japan, Australia, Italy and Germany and one Briton - tycoon Andreas Liveras - have already been confirmed as among the victims.

    At least eight Britons were injured and there are fears the British toll could yet rise further as more and more buildings are made stable and searched.

    Earlier, one commando revealed he had seen around 50 bodies littering the Taj hotel floor after special officers stormed the building and rescued hundreds of guests.

    Clad in black, with a mask covering his face, the unit chief said: 'There was blood all over the bodies. The bodies were strewn here and there and we had to be careful as we entered the building to avoid further bloodshed of innocent civilians.'

    The terrorists had seemed like young, ordinary men but had clearly been very well trained, he said.

    'They were wearing T-shirts, just ordinary looking, but they have definitely been trained to use weapons. There is no way they could handle such weapons without being taught how to.'

    Held hostage: Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were held at a Jewish center. Below, their two-year-old son is carried to safety

    Feared dead: Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were believed to be inside the Jewish centre where the bodies of five hostages were found

    At least nine terrorists are thought to have been shot dead in gun battles across the city as police and special forces tried to regain control.

    Three arrested at the Taj Mahal have been officially identified as a Pakistani national and two Indians. Another is reported to be a Mauritian national.

    They arrived in the city by sea before fanning out to at least 10 locations. Dinghies were found moored at a jetty by the famous Gateway to India monument.

    Today, coast guard officials said they could have hijacked an Indian trawler to drop them off after finding an abandoned boat drifting near the shore.

    The captain's dead body was found inside the vessel, along with communications equipment.

    Dressed in jeans and T-shirts and heavily armed, they then headed for the city - which is India's financial centre - and started firing indiscriminately.

    It is thought they gained entrance to the hotels by pretending to be staff and hotel guests, according to reports.

    Blast: Police throw a grenade into the Taj Mahal hotel as they desperately try to control a militant believed to be holed up in a ballroom inside

    Blast: Police throw a grenade into the Taj Mahal hotel as they desperately try to smoke out up to six militants hiding in the ballroom

    Indian authorities have not released any details about the two Britons and the Foreign Office has refused to confirm Indian television reports.

    Security services in Britain are now examining images of the gunmen in an effort to identify them.

    India's High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee played down speculation some of the gunmen were British: 'I have seen nothing more than what is in the media and that is based on speculation. I will wait for the investigation to produce some hard facts.'

    Speculation linking the attackers with Bradford was quashed by the Leeds-based Counter Terrorism Unit.

    A statement from officers said: "At this stage we are not in receipt of any intelligence or information linking the events in India to our area."

    A team of Scotland Yard anti-terrorist detectives and negotiators are now on their way to Mumbai to assist in the investigation.

    Indian commandos have recovered credit cards and the militants' ID cards as well as seizing a vast arsenal of grenades, AK-47 magazines, shells and knives.

    Enlarge   Desperate: A hostage at the Oberoi peeks out of his window as the siege continues

    Desperate: A hostage at the Oberoi peeks out of his window during the siege

    A previously unknown Islamic group, Deccan Mujahideen, has claimed responsibility for the attacks but terror experts believe is is linked to Al Qaeda.

    It is known that dozens of British-born Pakistanis have travelled to Pakistan to train in its camps in recent years.

    One security source said recently: 'The camps are full and many of the people inside are Brits.'

    There has been speculation that a British Al Qaeda suspect reportedly killed by a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan last weekend may have helped plot the attacks.

    Rashid Rauf was among five killed in a missile attack in a tribal area in North Waziristan on Saturday.

    Security sources believe that at the time of his death Rauf had been planning a major attack on Western targets.

    Met officers were also interviewing passengers returning from Mumbai as they stepped off planes at Heathrow.

    There was also speculation that England cricketers could have been an intended target of the terrorists.

    It emerged that some of the team had been due to stay in Mumbai, most likely the Taj Mahal, on Wednesday evening before a late decision was made to switch training to Bangalore.

    Shocked player Michael Vaughan said: 'I don't know why it was switched but we could have been there in one of those hotels when they were attacked.

    'All our white Test kit is in one of the rooms at the Taj Mahal hotel: All our pads and clothes for the Test series and our blazers and caps and ties. That's how close the danger is.'

    The England team will fly back to Britain today.

    Rampage: The terrorist is joined by another machine gun-wielding fanatic as they hunt down victims

    On the hunt: Two baby-faced gunman brandishing automatic weapons and below, the scene of carnage they left behind at the main train station

    Massacre: Blood splatters the floor at the train station where travellers were slaughtered. Others abandoned their luggage and ran for their lives

    The bloody drama which began on Wednesday night has now lasted more than two days. The targets across the city were:

    • The Oberoi Hotel, in the commercial district. Its restaurant was bustling with diners, many of them tourists; 
    • Also attacked was the Leopold restaurant, a haunt of the city's art crowd. As the fanatics sprayed the packed cafe, diners fled in terror;
    • Some of the worst scenes were at the major railway station. As they entered the Gothic Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, once named after Queen Victoria, the gunmen were smiling. With an astonishing air of casualness, the terrorists started to shoot. Within seconds the concourse was a bloodbath. People lay screaming on the floor;
    • A further prestigious target was the 105-year-old Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel;
    • More hostages were taken at the nearby Chabad House, headquarters for an ultra-orthodox Jewish group. A rabbi was among those held.

    About 15 police officers were killed, including the head of Mumbai's anti-terrorism unit.

    India's prime minister Manmohan-Singh has blamed militant groups based outside the country - usually meaning Pakistan - raising fears of renewed tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals. Pakistan condemned the attacks.

    The attack on the train station had echoes of previous terror outrages.

    In July 2006 more than 180 people were killed in seven bomb explosions at railway stations and on trains in Mumbai that were blamed on Islamist militants.

    • Worried friends or relatives should call the Foreign Office's emergency line on 0207 008 0000. Enlarge   A map shows the locations of the bombings across Mumbai

      A map shows the locations of the bombings across Mumbai

     

     

    Oil Falls Towards $53 As Demand Worries Weigh

    Thu Nov 27, 2008 2:50pm EST
     
      
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    By Chris Baldwin

    LONDON (Reuters) - Oil fell to around $53 a barrel on Thursday as a holiday weekend in the United States and an upcoming OPEC consultative meeting limited trade.

    Oil fundamentals are weak, with U.S. crude stocks rising sharply and oil demand in the United States falling in September to its lowest level for any month in more than a decade.

    U.S. crude was at $54.08 a barrel, down 36 cents, at 1525 GMT, having earlier dipped to a low of $52.62, erasing some of the $3.67 gains made on Wednesday.

    London Brent crude fell 39 cents to $53.53.

    Venezuela's oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, on Wednesday said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries might agree to cut production at its special informal meeting on Saturday in Cairo.

    OPEC's Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri on Thursday in Cairo said the oil market was oversupplied, and the group should exercise restraint in responding to the sharp fall in prices and slumping demand.

    "The market is oversupplied....We have to be patient, we should not panic," al-Badri said.

    Both Venezuela and Libya, which are leading advocates in OPEC of earlier action to support prices, have pushed for the producer group to decide quickly on an output cut of at least 1 million barrels per day.

    Analysts say an output cut is coming, although probably at a December meeting in Algeria rather than in Egypt this weekend.

    "Prices have held steady this week, so there's no rush to go in and do it," said Mike Wittner, global head of oil research at Societe Generale.

    FALLING DEMAND

    U.S. weekly crude stocks rose by a hefty 7.3 million barrels last week, well above forecasts of an 800,000 barrel increase, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.

    Total U.S. product demand over the past four weeks was down 6.6 percent from year-ago levels, while September oil demand fell by 12.8 percent versus a year ago to its lowest point in 12 years, the EIA said.

    The NYMEX trading floor is closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, though Globex trading continues. On Friday the NYMEX session in New York will close at 1:30 p.m. EST (1839 GMT), an hour earlier than usual.

    The holiday is traditionally one of the busiest periods of travel and shopping in the United States, though this year, on the back of glum economic data, analysts say driving and spending will be much lower.

     

    Global demand is expected to decline by 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) each in 2008 and 2009, the first drop in a generation, that would leave it at 86.01 million bpd then, a poll of analysts found on Wednesday.

    OPEC seaborne exports, excluding Ecuador and Angola, fell 315,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the four weeks to November 9, Lloyd's Marine INtelligence Unit said on Thursday.

    The London-based consultancy that tracks oil tanker shipments of 11 producers, including Iraq and Indonesia, said exports fell to 22.812 million bpd, down from 23.127 million bpd in the four weeks to October 12.

    The estimate indicates OPEC is acting on its pledge to remove about 2 million bpd from world markets.

    (Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson; editing by James Jukwey)

     

     

    Thu 27 Nov 2008 | 6:44 IST
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    Gunmen killed at least 80 people in a series of attacks in India's financial capital Mumbai and troops began moving into one of two five-star hotels on Thursday where Western hostages were being held, local television said.

    Mumbai attacks kill 80, police shoot four gunmen

    Thu Nov 27, 2008 5:20am IST
    Photo
     

    By Rina Chandran

    MUMBAI (Reuters) - Gunmen killed at least 80 people in a series of attacks in India's financial capital Mumbai and troops began moving into two five-star hotels on Thursday where Western hostages were being held, local television said.

    Police said they had shot dead four gunmen and arrested nine suspects.

    However, the chief minister of Maharashtra said the situation was not yet contained.

    "The situation is still not under control and we are trying to flush out any more terrorists hiding inside the two hotels," Vilasrao Deshmukh, Maharashtra's chief minister, told a news conference.

    Gunfire and explosions were heard at the landmark Taj Mahal hotel and thick plumes of smoke rose from the building, witnesses said. There were also explosions at the Oberoi hotel and firing at a hospital where gunmen were surrounded.

    "The terrorists are throwing grenades at us from the rooftop of the Taj and trying to stop us from moving in," Ashok Patil, a police inspector told Reuters.

    Police said at least 250 people were wounded in the attacks which also targeted a railway station and the Cafe Leopold, perhaps the most famous restaurant and hang-out for tourists in the city.

    An organisation calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen said it was behind the attacks, television channels said. The previously little known group sent an email to news organisations claiming responsibility

    "THEY HAD BOMBS"

    "I guess they were after foreigners, because they were asking for British or American passports," said Rakesh Patel, a British witness who lives in Hong Kong and was staying at the Taj Mahal hotel on business. "They had bombs."

    "They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs," he told the NDTV news channel, smoke stains covering his face. "Young boys, maybe 20 years old, 25 years old. They had two guns."

    India has suffered a wave of bomb attacks in recent years. Most have been blamed on Islamist militants, although police have also arrested suspected Hindu extremists thought to be behind some of the attacks.

    The latest attack, apparently aimed at least partly at prosperous Western tourists, is bound to spook investors in one of Asia's largest and fastest-growing economies.

    Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai, was killed during the attacks, police said.

    "We have shot dead four terrorists and managed to arrest nine suspected terrorists," P.D. Ghadge, a police officer at Mumbai's central control room, told Reuters.

    Japan's Foreign Ministry said one of its nationals was killed in the Mumbai attacks and one injured. 

    TRAPPED HOTEL GUESTS

    Mark Abell, a British lawyer, said he had locked himself inside his Oberoi hotel room after hearing two explosions.

    Several hundred people had been evacuated from the Taj hotel, one witness said, but many more remained inside, some calling for help from the fifth floor. Firefighters broke windows to reach trapped guests.

    "We came down the fire exit, but I think they took some more people, they are trying to get to the roof," one foreigner told local television. "I think about 15 people (have been taken hostage), about half of them are foreigners.".

    In Washington, the White House and U.S. President-elect Barack Obama condemned the attacks, as did France, current president of the European Union, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

    Home Minister Shivraj Patil said there were around four or five attackers in each of the two hotels.

    "They have attacked hotels, they have attacked the hospitals, they have attacked the railway station," he said.

    KOREANS, EUROPEANS CAUGHT UP IN ATTACKS

    A driver told Reuters at least 50 Koreans were stuck inside the Taj with their drivers waiting outside.

    "We were just getting ready to pick them up, when we heard the first blast, police did not let us get past and they (the Koreans) are not answering the phones," Deepak Aswar, the driver said.

    Europeans were also caught up in the attacks.

    "I was in the restaurant inside Oberoi and I saw this series of gunshots and death which I don't want to see again," a Spaniard who declined to give his name told Reuters.

    "I crawled out into the kitchen and waited there, until I sensed it was all quiet and seemed over."

    Maharashtra state police chief A.N. Roy said attackers had fired automatic weapons indiscriminately, and used grenades, adding that they were still holed up in some buildings.


     

     

    NY warns of possible Al Qaeda attack

    Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:16pm ESTShare
     
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    By Michelle Nichols

    NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. authorities have warned of a possible al Qaeda threat to transit systems in and around New York City, a Homeland Security official said on Wednesday.

    New York police said they were increasing security in response to the warning but said this was "in an abundance of caution." The warning comes at the start of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, one of the busiest U.S. travel periods of the year.

    "The New York City Police Department is aware of an unsubstantiated report indicating that al Qaeda terrorists discussed targeting mass transit in New York City and the vicinity," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told Reuters.

    Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said the warning was issued on the basis of "plausible but uncorroborated information" and that al Qaeda may have discussed such attacks in late September.

    Knocke said Homeland Security and the FBI had passed on the warning to state and local officials on Tuesday but there was no specific information to confirm that the plot had developed "beyond aspirational planning."

    The warning was issued as a routine matter and no adjustments were being made to the nation's threat level.

    New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it was aware of "threats against transit properties during the holiday season" and was working closely with officials to increase police presence throughout the sprawling bus and rail system.

    Browne said: "In an abundance of caution the NYPD has deployed additional resources in the mass transit system."

    New York has remained on an orange alert -- the second highest level, below red -- since the September 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. The rest of the United States is on yellow alert, one level below orange.

    In October 2005, New York City's subway system was on high alert after detainees in Iraq were thought to be plotting a bomb attack. but the threat was later found to lack credibility.

    In August 2007 police stepped up security throughout Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels in response to an unverified Internet report that al Qaeda might be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the city.

    (Additional reporting by Deborah Charles in Washington; editing by Philip Barbara)

     

     

     

    Meteor Streaks Across Canadian Skies

    AOL / Wire Services

    posted: 1 HOUR 8 MINUTES AGO

     

     (Nov. 22) - Canadians and scientists are buzzing about a spectacular fireball that streaked across the western skies, an event that was captured on video. Most believe Thursday's stunning show was caused by a meteor. "An event of this size, this brightness .type of event, maybe twice," sad Christopher Herd, a science professor at the University of Alberta.

     

    CBC News said hundreds of people reported seeing the fireball, and scientists are now on the hunt for meteorite fragments that likely hit Earth.

    Video of the event shows a brilliant fireball in the sky. A camera in a police cruiser in Edmonton, Alberta, captured it as it descend rapidly and then erupts, lighting up the street below. "It was just like an overgrown firecracker coming back to Earth," said one eyewitness, who reported seeing the meteor break into pieces while it was in the sky. Said another woman who saw it: "It was like a streak of lightning went through the air." The Edmonton Sun said scientists want to find the landing site before snowfall hits the area and complicates the search.

     WHERE IS PRESIDENT BUSH???

    OH....IN PERU...MAJOR PACIFIC RIM MEETING...

    WHAT, YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THIS ON THE NEWS?

    ISN'T THAT AMAZING!!

    *  *  *

    Bush in Peru for APEC Summit; Meets with China's Hu


    21 November 2008


    U.S. President George Bush is in Peru for his final Pacific Rim summit. After his arrival Friday, Mr. Bush met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Lima ahead of the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which opens Saturday. VOA White House Correspondent Paula Wolfson reports this is expected to be Mr. Bush's last foreign trip before leaving office.

    President Bush attended his first Pacific Rim summit just two months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

    Now, with the nation in the midst of a financial crisis, he is making his last appearance at the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

    White House aides say the president will urge APEC to endorse steps already being taken to boost the global
    economy. They indicate he will likely focus on the need to expand trade worldwide and open markets.

    Charles Freeman is a former U.S. trade official. He says even though Mr. Bush has little time left in office, his words can have an impact at the forum.

    "Well, I mean, words count," Freeman said. "So I think what the leadership says about trade liberalization is very important. And standing up for that is key."

    The Pacific Rim countries account for about half of the world's trade and population. And the number of bilateral and free trade agreements between and among APEC members has soared in recent years.


    APEC is not a formal organization or a negotiating body, but a venue for leaders to come together to exchange thoughts and ideas. And while it does not have the clout of the Group of 20 leading industrialized and emerging economies, it is an instrument of dialog in a key region of the world.

    Steven Schrage, an expert on international business and trade at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says the Pacific Rim is vitally important.

    "You've got 60 percent of U.S. exports, 60 percent of world GDP [i.e., gross domestic product]. I believe it is over 50 percent of world trade, three billion consumers - so there is a critical mass of world leaders here with some of the most advanced and important economies," Schrage said.


    The APEC forum also gives Pacific Rim leaders a chance to hold numerous one-on-one meetings on the sidelines. President Bush, for example, is expected to confer with the leaders of China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and host Peru.

    While it will be an opportunity to say his farewells, aides say Mr. Bush has a full agenda for these meetings. They say he wants to discuss North Korea's nuclear ambitions with others involved in the negotiating process with Pyongyang. And they say he wants to discuss Georgia and a proposed missile defense system for Europe with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

     

     

    Bush Hands Over Reins of U.S. Economy to EU



    The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy.

    In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in total, to the Western European model of socialism, stagnation, and excessive government regulation.

    Sovereignty is out the window. Without a vote, we are suddenly members of the European Union. Given the dismal record of those nations at creating jobs and sustaining growth, merging with the Europeans is like a partnership with death.

    At the G-20 meeting, Bush agreed to subject the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and our other regulatory agencies to the supervision of a global entity that would critique its regulatory standards and demand changes if it felt they were necessary. Bush agreed to create a College of Supervisors.

    According to The Washington Post, it would "examine the books of major financial institutions that operate across national borders so regulators could begin to have a more complete picture of banks' operations."

    Their scrutiny would extend to hedge funds and to various "exotic" financial instruments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), a European-dominated operation, would conduct "regular vigorous reviews" of American financial institutions and practices.

    The European-dominated College of Supervisors would also weigh in on issues like executive compensation and investment practices.

    There is nothing wrong with the substance of this regulation.

    Experience is showing it is needed. But it is very wrong to delegate these powers to unelected, international institutions with no political accountability.

    We have a Securities and Exchange Commission appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, both of whom are elected by the American people. It is with the SEC, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve that financial accountability must take place.

    The European Union achieved this massive subrogation of American sovereignty the way it usually does, by negotiation, gradual bureaucratic encroachment, and without asking the voters if they approve.

    What's more, Bush appears to have gone down without a fight, saving his debating time for arguing against the protectionism that France's Nicolas Sarkozy was pushing.

    By giving Bush a seeming victory on a moratorium against protectionism for one year, Sarkozy was able to slip over his massive scheme for taking over the supervision of the U.S. economy.

    All kinds of political agendas are advancing under the cover of responding to the global financial crisis.

    Where Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism by regulating it, Bush, to say nothing of Obama, has given the government control over our major financial and insurance institutions. And it isn't even our government!

    The power has now been transferred to the international community, led by the socialists in the European Union.

    Will Obama govern from the left? He doesn't have to.

    George W. Bush has done all the heavy lifting for him. It was under Bush that the government basically took over as the chief stockholder of our financial institutions and under Bush that we ceded our financial controls to the European Union.

    In doing so, he has done nothing to preserve what differentiates the vibrant American economy from those dying economies in Europe.

    Why have 80 percent of the jobs that have been created since 1980 in the industrialized world been created in the United States? How has America managed to retain its leading 24 percent share of global manufacturing even in the face of the Chinese surge?

    How has the U.S. GDP risen so high that it essentially equals that of the European Union, whose population is 50 percent greater?

    It has done so by an absence of stifling regulation, a liberation of capital to flow to innovative businesses, low taxes, and by a low level of unionization that has given business the flexibility to grow and prosper.

    Europe, stagnated by taxation and regulation, has grown by a pittance while we have roared ahead. But now Bush — not Obama — Bush has given that all up and caved in to European socialists.

    The Bush legacy? European socialism. Who needs enemies with friends like Bush?

    © 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

     

     

    Hillary Clinton to accept Obama's offer of secretary of state job

    President-elect Barack Obama reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration

    Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama

    Hillary Clinton will be Barack Obama's secretary of state. Photographs: AFP/Getty Images

    Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

    Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

    Clinton would be well placed to become the country's dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops.

    Clinton, who still harbours hopes of a future presidential run, had to weigh up whether she would be better placed by staying in the Senate, which offers a platform for life, or making the more uncertain career move to the secretary of state job.

    As part of the coalition-building, Obama today also reached out to his defeated Republican rival, John McCain, to discuss how they could work together to roll back some of the most controversial policies of the Bush years. Putting aside the bitter words thrown about with abandon by both sides during the election campaign, McCain flew to meet Obama at his headquarters in the Kluczynski Federal Building, in downtown Chicago.

    Obama, speaking before the meeting, said: "We're going to have a good conversation about how we can do some work together to fix up the country." He said he also wanted to thank McCain for his service to the country.

    Asked by a reporter whether he would work with Obama, McCain, who has long favoured a bipartisan approach to politics, replied: "Obviously".

    Sources on both sides said Obama did not offer McCain a cabinet job, but focused on how the senator for Arizona could help to guide through Congress legislation that they both strongly favour.

    Given Obama's status as president-in-waiting, the two met in a formal setting, a room decked out with a US flag, and were accompanied by senior advisers. Obama appeared the more relaxed of the two, sitting with legs crossed, smiling broadly and waving to reporters, while McCain sat stiffly, with a seemingly fixed grin.

    Although the two clashed during the election campaign over tax policy and withdrawal from Iraq, they have more in common than they have differences. They both favour the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, an increase in US troops to Afghanistan, immigration reform, stem cell research and measures to tackle climate change, and oppose torture and the widespread use of wire-tapping.

    Although Democrats made gains in the Senate in the November 4 elections, they fell short of the 60 seats that would have allowed them to override Republican blocking tactics and will need Republican allies to get Obama's plans through. This was highlighted today when the Democratic leadership in Congress announced that a broad economic stimulus package Obama sought was not likely to be passed because of Republican opposition.

    Obama confirmed at the weekend that he would offer jobs to some Republicans. One of the names that crops up most often is Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator who is a specialist in foreign affairs and a critic of the Iraq war.

     

          

    World Leaders Pledge to Revive Sagging Economies at Summit

    Sunday, November 16, 2008

    Nov. 15: President George W. Bush sits with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson during a plenary session of the world economic summit.

    WASHINGTON  —  World leaders emerging from a financial summit in Washington pledged to continue taking "urgent and exceptional" action to revive the global economy Saturday, calling for increased cooperation and regulation to prevent the crippling crisis from repeating itself.

    President Bush, speaking after the meeting, stressed that the emergency summit was only a "first step," and that others would be scheduled — but praised the measures given the go-ahead so far.

    He said the United States could have gone into a depression worse than the Great Depression without the steps already taken.

    Nearly two dozen foreign leaders convened Saturday in an attempt to steer their countries away from recession and at the same time draft plans to prevent future financial meltdowns.

    Bush said the participants agreed to modernize their regulations by making financial markets more "transparent and accountable."

    He urged other nations to resist erecting trade barriers, and pledged that the United States would also make good on its aid commitments to developing countries despite the financial stresses.

    "I thought this was a very successful summit," Bush said.

    In a joint statement from the group of 20 nations released Saturday afternoon, those countries' leaders said: "We must lay the foundation for reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again."

    The countries are "determined to enhance our cooperation and restore global growth," they said.

    The lengthy statement spelled out six immediate steps that would be taken.

    The nations pledged to continue "vigorous efforts" to stabilize the financial system; recognize the importance of "monetary policy support"; "use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demands"; help developing nations gain access to financing especially through the International Monetary Fund; encourage the World Bank and other banks to fully support developing nations; and ensure that organizations like the IMF and World Bank have "sufficient resources" to help countries overcome the crisis.

    Bush said the world's top economies will also take "a fresh look at rules that govern market manipulation and fraud."

    In a global climate marked by increased government intervention and rescue packages, Bush said at the start of the meeting that he was glad the partner nations were reaffirming the principles of "open markets and free trade."

    According to one diplomatic source, the summit participants were also discussing ways to boost international coordination of stimulus packages.

    A thorny issue, however, is whether all nations should pledge to enact government spending plans to stimulate their economies. The leaders supported the benefits of that approach, but stopped short of a commitment for all to act at the same time, as some Europeans had favored.

    The plan endorses an early warning system for problems such as the speculation frenzy that fed the U.S. housing bubble. It calls for the creation of "supervisory colleges" of financial regulators from many nations to better detect risky investing and other potential problems.

    It will be up to finance ministers to flesh out the details to put such changes in place by the end of March, in advance of the next summit on April 30, when Barack Obama is president.

    "Our nations agree that we must make the financial markets more transparent and accountable," Bush said.

    Leaders backed efforts to improve international monitoring of markets and bolstering rules about how companies value their assets, a weakness seen as partly responsible for the crisis at hand.

    The leaders pledged to "use fiscal measures" to energize individual countries' economies "as appropriate." They recognized the importance of the Federal Reserve and other central banks to order interest rate reductions to help cushion the economic fallout.

    "We have reached important conclusions today about trade, about financial stability and about the expansion of our economies," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

    Under the glare of an intense political and public spotlight, presidents and prime ministers needed to be careful not to let the talks become a blame game, which could further roil the fragile markets.

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy was heartened that leaders could come together on a plan for action despite diverse interests from individual nations.

    While the plan would boost oversight of fragile financial markets, it fell short of the sweeping tough new set of regulations or ambitious regulatory overhauls that some Europeans initially wanted.

    "These are difficult talks," acknowledged Brown, who had taken a lead in pushing for a global coordination of country-by-country economic aid plans.

    In his weekly radio address, Bush said he's confident that the developed and developing countries involved in the talks can return their economies "to the path of growth and vitality."

    "Nations around the world have responded to this situation with bold measures, and our actions are having an impact," Bush said. "It will require more time for these improvements to fully take hold and there will be more difficult days ahead, but the United States and our partners are taking the right steps to get through the crisis."

    The Bush administration, however, has reacted coolly to a second U.S. stimulus plan and opposes a bailout of the teetering U.S. auto industry. Democrats are pushing for aid to Detroit automakers amid reports that the biggest one, General Motors Corp., could be forced into bankruptcy by the end of next month.

    Not far from the summit at the stately National Building Museum, a handful of protesters carried neon yellow signs that read: "Money for people's needs, not bankers' greed" and "Money for jobs, not for war and occupation."

    The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, is among the international finance leaders who welcomed the more inclusive mix of countries — beyond the wealthiest nations — at the summit. Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said, "Emerging economies have to be taken into consideration in today's globalized world."

    Japan's prime minister, Taro Aso, urged China and others to help increase the International Monetary Fund's $250 billion bailout pool for struggling nations hit by the crisis. Japan on Friday said it was ready to put in as much as $100 billion.

    The crisis broke out in the United States around August of last year.

    Mortgage investments soured with the housing market's collapse and the fallout quickly spread to other countries. Banks and other financial companies suffered huge losses and foreclosures skyrocketed. The troubles crimped auto and student loans and locked up lending for many consumers and businesses worldwide.

    Although Obama stayed away from the summit, he designated two representatives — former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa — to meet with leaders on the sidelines.

    Besides the United States, the participants are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey.

    Other than Spain, those countries — plus the European Union — make up the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies, or G-20. The group accounts for roughly 90 percent of the global gross domestic product, which measures the value of goods and services produced worldwide.

    FOX News' Bret Baier, Peter Barnes and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

     

     

    Reuters


    Soros says deep recession inevitable, depression possible
    Thursday November 13, 11:01 am ET

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday. Highlights:

        * Said "a deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out."

    * Said hedge funds were an integral part of the financial market bubble which now has burst.

       * Said hedge funds will be "decimated" by the current financial crisis and forced to shrink their portfolios 

          by 50-75 percent.                   

        * Said Fed, Treasury Department and the SEC must accept responsibility to prevent market bubbles from growing 

          too big in the future.

        * Said impossible to prevent market bubbles from forming, but they can be kept within "tolerable bounds."

        * Said financial engineering should be regulated and new products approved by regulators, and that such regulation   

          should be a high priority of the Obama Administration. 

        * Said a recent IMF credit facility not large enough to stabilize markets

     

     

     

    November 4, 2008

    Obama to be first African-American president

     

    Obama inspires historic victory
    BREAKING NEWS
     
     
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    AN ECONOMIC FORCAST

    The US Dollar rally in the last several weeks has been remarkable. At closer examination, it highly resembles a spurt prior to death. Imagine an old man who just had a heart attack, lost feeling in certain body parts, his mind not working right, plenty of nonsense gibberish coming from his mouth, and now he is dancing hard on some last gasps. The vast liquidation movement is akin to the old man going through an embalming process while dancing atop the tables at the funeral parlor, as bidding proceeds for his cadaver.

    Are Americans last to realize the financial structure destruction means the US Economy does not enter a recession, but rather a bizarre unprecedented disintegration? It seems so. The liquidation of speculative positions, the massive de-leveraging, the payout's of defaulted bonds, these events are the opposite of developments toward revival or resuscitation, like business investment!! Liquidation is the exact opposite of investment, and precedes job cuts, not job creation.

    The following survey of important issues is covered in depth in the October Hat Trick Letter. This month, an additional Crisis Coverage report was included, since too much has been happening, most of it confusing. Plenty of stories are occurring behind the stories, many covered. Here is a quick survey touching the surface on issues discussed and analyzed more in depth for subscribers.

    FACTORS BEHIND US DOLLAR RALLY

    What is pushing the US Dollar up cannot be construed as anything remotely resembling healthy factors. In no way whatsoever does it resemble investment. It is more like paid off death contracts, paid off death investments, paid off transfers from toxic US bonds into what are falsely regarded as safer US bonds with a guarantee from a crippled USGovt. Foreign financial entities are liquidating on massive scale. They need a tremendous amount of US Dollars in order to complete transactions. Also, a tremendous amount of US Dollars are needed for CDSwap payout's as defaulted bonds are resolved. Almost all CDSwap and other credit derivatives are paid out in US Dollars The Lehman Brothers payout was full of lies, again. The Lehman Brothers total volume of corporate bonds was $160 billion, but $400 billion existed in total CDS volume tied to them! It is no surprise that the Dow and S&P500 stock indexes fell hard (by almost 400 points on Dow) and on the Lehman resolution day. And market mavens boasted of no impact on the Lehman funeral date!

    The DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corp) reported only a net $5.2 billion payout on the Lehman Brothers failure CDSwap resolution. The ‘Dis-Trust Clearing Corp' might want to check credit derivative experts who claim between $220 billion and $270 billion in that total after netting. By the way, the DTCC is the official banking entity that oversees all stock clearing overnight, including all the naked shorting. The de-leveraging process has left the central bankers empty handed, exposed as having empty financial cupboards. Thus the need for massive central bank swaps from the US Fed, which has perversely farmed out its function to foreigners. In fact, the foreign central banks might be in possession of more US$ inventory items than the US Fed So the US central bank has asked foreign central banks to do its job, and to manage the world reserve currency? This amidst a US$ rally!?!

    The Credit Default Swaps are capable of burning Hiroshima holes all over the US financial system, resulting in US Economic implosion from eliminated bank and financial system structures almost entirely. The process has only begun, but in darkness. The other purpose for big bailouts was to prevent CDSwap explosions, risking a string of bombs to go off. The key aspect of CDSwap contracts is their hidden nature, with fuses intersecting in the dark.

    When the market mavens talk about the de-leverage process, they refer to speculative investments being liquidated. Oftentimes, they do not include in the story how Wall Street firms, desperate to stave off bankruptcy, are targeting viciously their own clients. The big accounts lie in hedge funds, where the private wealthy are being decimated. Credit is being pulled. Margin calls are being delivered. Margin ratios are being raised. Those funds whose positions are aligned with the predators on Wall Street continue in their investment portfolios. Those funds in opposition are attacked with artillery, carpet bombs, and early morning raids. The US

    Dollar is rallying amidst this type of sinister liquidation.

    The result has been numerous spread trades anchored by the USTreasury Bond are forced into sale. That means a USTBond buyback occurs from the short cover on the trade. Whether a spread on mortgage bonds, corporate bonds, emerging market bonds, or crude oil, or gold, the trade is liquidated, and a USTBond is bought back. NO TANGIBLE END DEMAND, ONLY USTREASRY BOND SHORT COVERS. This is the basis for a US$ rally?

    WORSENING US$ FUNDAMENTALS

    How many times have we seen the US stock market go down, non-government bond yields rise, the US Dollar rise, and the USTBond yields fall? That has been the norm in the last few weeks. These are death signals, not investment signals. The US Economy cannot afford liquidation and constricted credit, a well-known fact, seemingly forgotten today. These signals come amidst falling confidence, more bank distress measures, more job loss, more home foreclosures, and lately, trouble with letters of credit at port facilities.

    Financial markets, including the US Dollar, have yet to factor in the deep US Economic recession.

    The US Dollar rally flies in the face of deteriorating fundamentals. See job cut announcements at Caterpillar, Merrill Lynch, General Motors, Chrysler, several Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs today. Weekly jobless claims at close to half a million per week, equal to peak during the unrecognized 2001 recession. See the UMichigan consumer sentiment, Philly Fed index, Empire Fed index, leading economic indicators, durable goods orders, on and on. Retail sales, the backbone of the backwards US Economy, are plummeting. That is, the plummet is before inflation price adjustments. Car sales are plummeting also.

    Exports are to be worse from the higher US$ exchange rate on the table, combined with slower foreign economies. The improved export trade has been a big boast from the lunatics running the asylum. The US Economy is accelerating in its decline, certain to produce a recession and huge USGovt deficits. That deficit is likely to at least double and possible quadruple next year. USTreasury Bond issuance cannot conceivably finance all, or at least half, of the commitments. The printing press will do the rest, which will cut down the US$ valuation. The US Dollar decline lies ahead, when the distortions slow or come to an end. Gold will soar on the other side of this liquidation.

    An extreme backlash attack is coming against the US Dollar Rising import prices in foreign economies have already caused alarm. Foreigners will soon attack the US$ in a matter of time, using heavy US$-based reserves. Their banking sectors are in disarray, primarily because they are intimately tied to the US$ and USTBonds. The process has begun with Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, to use their strong reserves and sell into this queer US$ strength. That is what reserves are for. The process will spread to other nations.

    GOLD MARKET CLOSE TO BREAKING

    The gap between the physical gold market and paper gold market is widening. An example bears this out. In Toronto this week, a major off-market gold transaction took place. The price paid was $1075 per ounce on the physical transaction. Its volume was in the multi-million$. There was no US involvement in the transaction, and the settlement was in euros. Enormous repositioning is ongoing by the groups that will participate in the new, partially gold-backed currency. My take is this movement is from a large financial entity with global activity, and ties to central banks. It might be tied to the upcoming split in the euro, into a Nordic Euro and trashed Latin Euro. The Nordic version might contain a gold component. This and other transactions are taking place with European settlement. They are being satisfied in the alternative market, far from the distortions of COMEX. This was a physical transaction with the real metal being moved. Big shifts occur behind the scenes. A couple of months ago, 400 metric tonnes were moved into storage with the Royal Canadian Mint by a sovereign entity.

    The more massive the paper manipulation, the more violent the coming correction. The asylum managers are losing control of their paper-physical arbitrage. Watch the gold lease rates, and silver lease rates, which have each more than tripled in the last two months. Lease rates precede price movement. Bullion bankers, including central banks, are reluctant to lease their physical supply. This time is no different, an event to come after the COMEX criminality is swept aside, or simply overwhelmed in return. One well-informed source, with over two decades of gold market experience, actually expects arrests to take place among COMEX officials before long.

    John Embry of Sprott Asset Mgmt has raised the possibility of a December gold futures contract default. He is not predicting it, or claiming it as certain, but rather mentions how talk centers on the December gold contract as having extreme stress for actual delivery. Pressure is building. The December contract not only is end of quarter, but end of year. He suggests a possible default. He said, “there is probably going to be such an event to change perceptions.” He cited a possible force majeure that could act as a “seminal event that defines the whole situation.” He explained that the physical gold price would then dictate the paper gold price, a return to normalcy, and with a gigantic move up in the gold price. Right now the paper gold market is overwhelming the physical side, but the physical side is constricted on supply. He explained that hedge funds are being unwound on a massive scale, slaughtered by margin calls. The long side must call for delivery on many contracts. He also expects there will be many questions on the Exchange Traded Funds soon as well, although those are surely not as important as the COMEX contract defaults. Watch and listen to his interview on the Canadian Business News Network (CLICK HERE ), and be sure to move to the 10 to 11 minute mark.

    NEW BRETTON WOODS II FARCE

    Last weekend in Brussels, G8 Finance Ministers met. Among other things, they discussed a reform to the global banking structures. For the many challenged on geography, that city is in Belgium, headquarters for many European Union functions, in Western Europe. Creditors were not present, which means the finance ministers were talking to themselves. Credit masters were not invited. The nations whose banking systems are in the process of implosion are essentially attempting to revise the global currency system. Those in attendance constitute the losers! However, the Arabs and Chinese were not present. This seems entirely backwards. The bankrupt nations do not dictate to the creditors terms of a revised agreement.

    Imagine a large business saying the following. “We are bankrupt. We want a meeting. We are going to dictate to you bankers anyway. We are broke. Our economies are shattered. Our banking systems are in ruins. But we going to tell you how we are to restructure our debt and rework a new system. We realize our debts to you are bigger than we can ever repay. We realize we cannot continue in commerce without your continued extended credit. But we will force upon you a new system. It does not matter what your opinion is. You do not have a seat on this elite committee, sorry!” THIS FLOW IS NOT FROM THE WORLD OF REALITY!

    No! Bankruptcy receivership is next, where creditors will be left with few options. They will be compelled to run management committees, and dissolve many functions of government. Creditors will probably await the G8 initiative, then summarily reject it. They will next propose their own new global financial structure. The teenager's credit card is about to be taken away, when the irresponsible kid proposes a new repayment system, new promises, new chores done even. The kid has burned down half the neighbourhood, yet thinks he can call the shots! Sadly, the parents will probably ground him and force a tutor to direct his studies, and force a strict drill sergeant to direct his work activities. His friends will not be permitted to form new teams that include him. A ‘Post-US World' is being planned, and Americans are the last to know. Entire new barter systems between a key pair of nations is about to be launched. Regional bond and commodity organizations are being formed, with exclusion of the US. The US press reports nothing on these important developments.

    Foreign creditors will form new committees, which will be recognized in time as the Receivership Committee. Foreigners are watching in horror. Decisions have already been made, with Americans the last to know. In order to arrest the cancer they so clearly see, they are ready to force a complete upheaval. The US Dollar will lose its global currency status, a thoroughly abused privilege. The above lack of disclosure only reinforces their motive to take action. They will move when they must, upon a system failure, or when they are challenged, or when flimsy attempts by debtors are made to dictate reform.

    Without any changes forthcoming soon, the foreign banking systems and economies face huge threats to failure. To friends, family, and contacts, my approach has been to attempt to explain the underlying forces behind revolutionary financial change. Foreigners must cut off a cancerous body part, the one attached to the United States. Foreigners must cut off flow from a toxic systemic organ, the one attached to the United States. CUT IT OFF OR RISK DEATH. They must disconnect of US Dollar from the global currency system attached intimately to their own financial and economic systems. They must to survive.

    ARAB GOALS & MOTIVES

    Arabs clearly lust to control and manage a global gold trading center. It will be in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The new Gulf dinar currency will pave the road to that center. The Gulf Coop Council is biding time, cutting time delay deals, warding off pressure by the USGovt, appeasing with weapons contracts from the USMilitary, and is working behind the scenes to create a new dinar currency. The new Gulf dinar is likely to be primarily gold in its backing. So, foreign nations will soon be forced to purchase the dinar for all or most of crude oil payments. This forces the purchase of gold in order to purchase crude oil. The demand for gold will thus fortify the global banking system, by means of commodity settlements. Many details are unknown, but the basic structure has been slowly come to light. A new motive flashes red in front of Arabs to institute some changes FAST. The crude oil price is down, cut in half from July. Their revenues are sharply reduced. Russia figures into the complex deal to launch the dinar. The Saudis and small sheikdoms need security protection. The next chapter will involve protection amidst a gold-backed currency, not a military-backed currency, in Saudi eyes.

    ISOLATED US TREASURYS

    The other side to the Arab dilemma is that the USTreasury Bond demand is quickly eroding from Petrodollar recycle on trade surplus. The USGovt finds itself as relying far too much on foreign central banks for demand of USTBonds, relying far too much soon on the printing press. The USTBond demand is missing the oil surplus in recycle. Their reduced and unstable oil revenue motivates the Arabs to install a new payment system, based upon an end to the ugly defacto Petrodollar standard. It shamefully is the basis of what my analysis has called a Protection Racket.

    The incredible fact evident in the data is that until mid-September, the US Federal Reserve has drained liquidity from the US private banking system in order to offset its colossal bond swap bailouts for major Wall Street and New York money center banks. Their objective was to avoid undue US$ money supply growth. THEY WERE TARGETING GOLD. They essentially drained the lifeblood from the US Economy on Main Street in order to subsidize fraud sanctioned and approved on Wall Street. Only since mid-September has the US Fed been monetizing USTBond debt issuance. They are running scared, printing with abandon. The gold price is falling as the US Dollar printing press is rapidly heating up, no longer offset by bank system drains. Details are in the Hat Trick Letter report.

    DESERVED DISRESPECT TO GREENSPAN

    Can you believe what is happening before a Congressional banking committee? Greenspan is being grilled, as his past errors are vividly pointed out. His past memos are being read back to him. His wrong premises are being questioned as having being totally discredited. His opposition to credit derivative disclosure is being challenged. His opposition to Fannie Mae reform is being challenged. He has been brought to task for his steadfast opposition for reform in the past during his tenure as US Fed Chairman. He is being interrupted by lowly Congressional reps. His time to speak is being cut, in defense of others to be grilled. HE IS BEING SHOWN THE DISRESPECT DESERVED OF ANY FAILED PUBLIC OFFICIAL. Maybe they will demand to know who paid his second paycheck from Switzerland, and what his agenda was! Not likely! My view is that Greenspan was a primary key person used to take down the US banking system, to pave the way for a bigger agenda. These are intelligent people who knew what they were doing, who were the cheerleaders, even the Mythology High Priest.

    Greenspan admitted a grand flaw in his free market ideology. He admitted being shocked that financial markets did not self-regulate. Hey Alan! They never self-regulate amidst a Fascist Business Model, since regulators and law enforcement is compromised as much as humanly or institutionally possible! He admitted a failure in the global financial market structure as he perceived it, a stunning admission. He acknowledged the US Economy is faltering badly. He sees the rise in job layoffs and unemployment. He sees the retrenchment in consumer spending. He sees the price declines in housing without abatement. He forecasted a worsening recession.

    His biggest admission is this. He admits to a flaw in the structural model perceived in the critically function for global banking. Wow! THAT IS A BIG ADMISSION, NOT PROPERLY PERCEIVING THE GLOBAL BANK STRUCTURE. He admits to how his risk pricing model did not take into account periods of financial stress. Hey Alan! Is that not what they are designed for? He used to boast for a full decade how offloaded risk via credit derivatives was a sign of sophistication, which enabled economic expansion. Instead, my view is that risk offload devices contributed toward an expansion atop a bubble, which when burst, killed the entire US banking system and then the US Economy He used to boast that credit derivatives shared the risk, but in fact it resulted in destruction on a widespread systemic basis. Recall the many claims made by Bernanke, that the subprime mortgage bond bust would be contained. The former Princeton Professor is not a good student of banking and economics! Unlike me, he is greatly encumbered by the limitations of economics credentials! Mathematics and statistics are pure science and its application as artistry.

    NO SOLUTIONS FOR ECONOMY FROM BAILOUTS

    Almost all US-based bailouts to date are to pay for dead financial firms. Their shareholders and bond holders and asset base have been repaired but not restored. To think this benefits the loan process is folly. It facilitates retirement to the Caribbean for corrupt bank executives. The flow of federal funds will not find its way to the people, or at least only pennies per dollar will. The ‘Top-down Approach' is destined to fail because the corruption, bond fraud, accounting fraud, financial instrument shell game, and other assorted illicit procedures are the cause of the problem, and all lie at the top of the structure intended to trickle down!

    To expect benefits downstream is lunacy. In fact, the devices to assist and subsidize the criminal behaviour at the top are vastly expanding with multiple branches. No less than five special purpose vehicles created by JPMorgan Chase were announced on Wednesday. The number of US Fed lending facilities, all to big banks, none to people on Main Street, has exploded to such an extent that one needs a sports book guide to comprehend all the acronyms. David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch even coined the YAP, yet another program. Proliferation might be what the architects of the Financial Coup d'Etat intended. Confusion is the best friend of coup architects, just like truth is the first victim of war.

    The people receive $1 for every $500 given to Wall Street elite in fraud redemption. The rank & file population entered a ‘Revolving Door' of loan repayments that often do not reduce the loan balance, assured to end in foreclosure within a year or so. The same nonsense of ‘Trickle Down' was prevailed when it has no past precedent of succeeding.

    The lack of disclosure is a tragedy. Congress demands no better disclosure, and receives none. The Lehman Brothers resolution has been conducted in total darkness. Evidence coming my way indicates that JPMorgan is using the dead Lehman carcass as a vast private arsenal to attack hedge funds. Some such funds have most of their assets frozen, while their positions are attacked. What is happening is criminal, a climax of this administration, which has been taken over by Wall Street. A complaint has been made that Treasury Dept documents look like redacted CIA documents, hardly what is needed to instill confidence. One official decree after another undermines investor confidence, the last being short rule restrictions on financial stocks, with an exemption given to Goldman Sachs. This is a selective bailout of Wall Street, a process run by Wall Street, permitting financial crimes worthy of 1000-page indictments.

    DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS INTERUPTED

    Big disruptive events are occurring in the distribution system. Letters of credit are routinely being refused by export nations who distrust US sources. A fall of 10% to 20% in shipping traffic to western US ports has been reported. Ships are empty at Asian ports, some even loaded but interrupted on their voyage to US ports and European ports. Many details are given in the October Hat Trick Letter reports. Even manufacturers of shipping vessels are being severely affected, as credit has interrupted construction projects. Indian suppliers are often demanding 100% upfront on costs to east coast retailers, again showing the distrust. Almost total attention has been given to banks and credit markets and stock markets. The US Economy is moving from recession toward something different from depression. The current interruption could actually be more like disintegration. Short-term credit is soon to interfere greatly with truckers and railways in distribution channels on the domestic side, much like letters of credit are wrecking havoc on the overseas shipper side.

    The next big shoe to drop is credit cards. Bank of America has announced plans, not yet fully implemented, to cut back on credit cards to lower FICO scorers. The lower 60%-ile of credit score recipients will find themselves without credit cards at all. One friend told me that he used to own 10 credit cards. Recently, all but four were simply discontinued, but a few were not used. Other friends said most of their credit limits were slashed. Changes are coming. Then the next big shoe to drop will be commercial mortgage default. No reprieve, rest, or respite for US bankers. Changes are coming. It will force defaults in most every conceivable financial corner.

    DISHONOR AMONG BANKERS

    The system is breaking down. Just when the heart attack signals are actually improving, although only slightly, the US Economy is falling off a cliff, as unprecedented decay is occurring. Some improvement has been seen with the short-term LIBOR rate, the money market funding, TED spreads, and mortgage bond spreads. But bankers and financial subsidiaries are in focus for dishonour.

    The following message came yesterday to my desk. It pertains to General Electric. It involved dishonoured Letters of Credit (L/C). The US banks not only distrust each other, they are engaging in criminal activity, like contract fraud. If big enough, or connected well enough to the power center, it is permitted. Again, no solutions, only proliferation of chaos.

    “Try this one on. One of our clients did a bond early last year (underwritten by RBC/Dain Rauscher) backed up by a General Electric Letter of Credit. There is a tag end of $1 million. The deal was the sale and lease back of 13 bank branches. One remains. The tenant is a regional bank. RBC cannot remarket the bond now because the market is still frozen. So the client, per the documents, called on the L/C for performance (as allowed in the L/C, which extends to 2021). GE has reneged on the L/C and will not pay unless the two principals come up with $1M in cash. The client has said no way, the L/C has no such provision. GE has said, too bad, if you don't like it, talk to our attorney. We're not paying.” Stories like this are probably surfacing all over the North American landscape. US banks are defending themselves by dishonouring contracts.

     

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