Leaked Documents Reveal Obama Regime Intends to Give Radical New Powers to Multinational Corporations
June 13th, 2012Via: Huffington Post:
A critical document from President Barack Obama’s free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.
The leaked document has been posted on the website of Public Citizen, a long-time critic of the administration’s trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.
“The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of [trade] negotiations,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in a written statement.
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The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration’s advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.
Under the agreement currently being advocated by the Obama administration, American corporations would continue to be subject to domestic laws and regulations on the environment, banking and other issues. But foreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings.
Saab Auto Sold to China-Japan Group In Electric-Car Push
June 13th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
A Chinese-Japanese investment group agreed to buy Saab Automobile and convert the bankrupt Swedish manufacturer into a maker of electric cars.
The first vehicle under the plan will be based on Saab’s 9-3 car and will go on sale early in 2014, with China as the main market, purchaser National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB and the bankruptcy administrators for Trollhaettan-based Saab said today in a joint statement. The parties agreed not to disclose the price of Saab’s sale.
“We’re striving to be a world-leading company for electric cars,” Mattias Bergman, a spokesman for National Electric Vehicle Sweden, said at a press conference in Trollhaettan. “It’s not only about China being a big market for electric cars, it’s also about China having the ability to make the investments required and build the needed infrastructure.”
Syria Issues New Currency That Was Printed in Russia
June 13th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Syria has released new cash into circulation to finance its fiscal deficit, flirting with inflation after violence and sanctions wiped out revenues and led to a severe economic contraction, bankers in Damascus say.
Four Damascus-based bankers told Reuters that new banknotes printed in Russia were circulating in trial amounts in the capital and Aleppo, the first such step since a popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.
The four bankers said the new notes were being used not just to replace worn out currency but to ensure that salaries and other government expenses were paid, a step economists say could increase inflation and worsen the economic crisis.
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The four bankers, along with one business leader in touch with officials, said the new money had been printed in Russia, although they were not able to give the name of the firm that printed it. Two of the bankers said they had spoken to officials recently returned from Moscow where the issue was discussed.
“(The Russians) sent sample new banknotes that were approved and the first order has been delivered. I understand some new banknotes have been injected into the market,” said one of the bankers. All requested anonymity.
Two other senior bankers in Damascus said they had heard from officials that a first order of an undisclosed amount of new currency had arrived in Syria from Russia, although they were unable to confirm whether it had entered circulation.
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Goznak, the state firm that operates Russia’s mint and has exclusive rights to secure printing technology, regularly prints money for other countries. It declined to comment.
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Russia is one of Syria’s major political backers and a close trading and economic partner. There are no sanctions in place that would bar a Russian firm from printing money for Syria.
Syrian money was previously printed in Austria by Oesterreichische Banknoten- und Sicherheitsdruck GmbH, a subsidiary of the Austrian central bank. That order was suspended last year because of European Union sanctions, an Austrian central bank spokesman said.
One of the four bankers described the decision to use newly printed money from Russia to pay the deficit as a “last resort” after several months of consideration.
MOODY’S TAKES SPANISH CREDIT RATING DOWN THREE NOTCHES
June 13th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Rating agency Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating on Spanish government debt by three notches on Wednesday to Baa3 from A3, saying the newly approved euro zone plan to help the country’s banks will increase the country’s debt burden.
Moody’s, which said it could lower Spain’s rating further, also cited the Spanish government’s “very limited” access to international debt markets and the weakness of the country’s economy.
The rating is on review for possible further downgrades, which could come within the next three months.
A spokeswoman at Spain’s Economy Ministry in Madrid declined to comment.
Greeks Withdraw $1 Billion a Day Ahead of Vote
June 13th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Greeks pulled their cash out of the banks and stocked up with food ahead of a cliffhanger election on Sunday that many fear will result in the country being forced out of the euro.
Bankers said up to 800 million euros ($1 billion) were leaving major banks daily and retailers said some of the money was being used to buy pasta and canned goods, as fears of returning to the drachma were fanned by rumors that a radical leftist leader may win the election.
Sweden: Narcolepsy Traced to Specific Vaccine Batches
June 13th, 2012Via: The Local:
A new Swedish study shows that all Swedes who developed narcolepsy from the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix received the vaccine from 12 of the 35 batches, despite the Swedish Medical Products Agency’s (Läkemedelsverket) previous claim that no such connection exists.
“We will have to think again,” said Maria Szirmai of the Swedish Medical Products Agency to newspaper Göteborgsposten (GP).
Research Credit: UnwelcomeGuests
Michigan: Nuclear Power Plant Shut Down After Leak
June 13th, 2012I’ve been following the Michigan/Indiana radiation spike meme for days, but I haven’t seen anything to convince me that anything weird was actually happening there.
And now…
Via: Reuters:
Entergy Corp shut its 793-megawatt Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan on Tuesday due to leakage from a refueling water tank, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said in a report.
The company is in the midst of cooling down the reactor in order to make repairs to the refueling water tank, company spokesman Mark Savage told Reuters.
He said that the plant would return to service once repairs were completed, although he did not provide a length of time for the outage.
The tank was believed to be leaking from several locations, the company told the NRC.
The event had no impact on the health and/or safety of the public, the report said.
Mexico’s Largest Television Network Sold Favorable Election Coverage to Top Politicians
June 13th, 2012Via: Narco News Bulletin:
The US Embassy in Mexico City in 2009 issued a series of cables indicating that Mexican political candidates, “are paying networks to provide them with television coverage” and that leading presidential contender Enrique Peña Nieto, in particular, “is paying media outlets under the table for favorable news coverage.”
The documents were part of the release of thousands of leaked US State Department cables in August 2011 by the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks. They have taken on new significance in the wake of documents surfaced last week by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. On June 7, The Guardian published computer files provided to the newspaper by a “source who worked with [the Mexican media company] Televisa” that indicate that Mexico’s largest television network “sold favourable election coverage to top politicians,” particularly 2012 presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, in its Spanish initials).
Televisa issued an indignant denial and questioned the veracity of the London daily’s report. But the facts of The Guardian story are supported by documents sent by the US Embassy in Mexico City to other US government agencies in 2009.
Research Credit: latitude38
Quick Note for Members of the Private Jet and Personal Submarine Class Who Read Cryptogon
June 13th, 2012Amazon will pay me commissions on your new laptop purchases:
Apple MacBook Pro MC975LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display, 2.3 GHz, 256 GB SSD
Apple MacBook Pro MC976LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display, 2.6 GHz, 512 GB SSD
Thank you.
Indians in Gated Communities Meet Their Neighbors Online
June 12th, 2012So it goes…
Via: Washington Post:
Sumit Jain has fond memories of his childhood in a small town where everybody knew everybody. But as a young man, he moved to a big city for work and began living in an apartment building. Jain said he soon missed feeling connected to a community.
That sense of loss led him to create Commonfloor.com, a “neighborhood portal” for Indians whose lifestyles have changed with this nation’s economic transformation but who still crave neighborhood life. A sort of hyper-local version of Facebook, Commonfloor creates online communities for the half a million users in 30,000 apartment buildings across 100 cities it has attracted so far.
“Something fundamental is changing among urban Indians today,” said Jain, 27, a software engineer and co-founder of the start-up in the southern city of Bangalore. “We no longer know who our next-door neighbor is, we don’t speak to each other in the elevators and we cannot knock on the neighbor’s door just to say hello without making them wary.”
As India’s economy modernizes, millions of young people are leaving their parents’ homes to find work, and many of them are moving into apartment complexes in the city. These fortress-like gated communities — with uniformed security guards and surveillance cameras — are designed to keep strangers out. But neighborly ties are rare as residents adjust to fast-paced lives, long commutes and access to an abundance of technology.
