Sarkozy Calls for Tax on Financial Transactions to Fund Global Development
August 16th, 2011Via: AFP:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday called for a tax on all financial transactions at the UN Millennium Goals summit to pay for global development.
“Finance has globalized, so why should we not ask finance to participate in stabilizing the world by taking a tax on each financial transaction,” Sarkozy told the summit.
The French leader said he would press for a global tax when France is president of the Group of 20 countries next year.
Doubling Down: Germany, France Propose Collective Government for Eurozone Led by EU President
August 16th, 2011HAHA. What could possibly go wrong?
Via: CBC:
The leaders of Germany and France are proposing collective governance for the euro zone led by the European Union president.
Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy announced the proposal Tuesday after meeting in Paris, as new figures showed economic growth in the region all but stalled even before last week’s turmoil on the financial markets.
Sarkozy said he and Merkel want a “true European economic government” that would consist of the heads of state and government of all eurozone nations.
The leaders are also pushing all 17 nations that use the euro to enshrine balanced budgets in their constitutions.
The new body would meet twice a year and be led by EU President Herman Van Rompuy.
MABEL: University of Michigan Demonstrates Running Bipedal Robot—Sort Of
August 16th, 2011This is from the description of the University of Michigan MABEL video on YouTube:
In our opinion, this is the most realistic, human-like running achieved on a robot.
Call me old fashioned, but most humans that I’ve seen running don’t require a boom to keep them from toppling over as they run. And they usually don’t run in circles—unless Tequila is involved.
But what I want you to do here is push the play button, close your eyes and listen to the sounds that it makes…
WOOOOH! That ought to get your pilomotor reflex going!
Shell Finds Second Oil Leak in North Sea
August 16th, 2011Via: Guardian:
A second oil leak has been discovered from an offshore platform in the North Sea.
An estimated 216 tonnes (1,300 barrels) has already spilled into the sea after the initial spill, which began at the Gannet Alpha platform 112 miles east of Aberdeen last Wednesday.
Glen Cayley, technical director of platform operator Shell’s exploration and production activities in Europe, said the main leak was “pretty much dead” but a small secondary leak was proving a challenge.
Around two barrels a day are leaking into the sea, compared with hundreds of barrels a day at the start of the incident, Shell said.
Cayley said: “The leak that we’ve stemmed was in the flow line so job number one was to close in the wells and isolate the reservoir, which of course is the large volume from the leak.
“We’re confident that it’s under control. The residual small leak is in an awkward position to get to. This is complex sub-sea infrastructure, and really getting into it among quite dense marine growth is proving a challenge.
“The primary leak in the flow line is pretty much dead.
“There is a small secondary leak created by that which is the small flow of two barrels a day which is proving a little difficult to get to and isolate.”
He said it is not known how the leak initially happened, and it was first spotted by a helicopter flying overhead.
Cyber Recruits Key Part of NSA Hiring Blitz
August 16th, 2011Via: Federal News Radio:
The National Security Agency is on a hiring blitz. The cryptologic intelligence agency — home to the government’s chief codemakers and breakers — announced its intention to hire as many as 3,000 people over the next two years, many of them cybersecurity experts.
In fact, NSA recruiters even took a trip to Las Vegas in the last few weeks to look for potential hires at DefCon, a high-profile hacker conference there.
ATF Promotes Operation Fast and Furious Supervisors
August 16th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.
All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office.
McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.
“I share responsibility for mistakes that were made,” McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. “The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently.”
Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.
Britain: Police Could Get New Curfew Powers
August 16th, 2011Via: Guardian:
New powers allowing police to clear the streets and create “no-go” areas for the public are being considered, the home secretary, Theresa May, has said.
May said it was time to consider whether the police needed a power “to impose a general curfew in a particular area” in the aftermath of last week’s riots.
The home secretary said the government was also contemplating tougher powers to impose curfews on individual teenagers under the age of 16.
In a speech in London, she said the power to declare a general curfew was needed because existing dispersal powers only allowed the police to declare a “no go” area with advance notification.
Swiss Ponder Unthinkable as World’s Chaos Turns Franc Economy Upside Down
August 16th, 2011Infinite dollars. Finite world.
Via: Bloomberg:
Switzerland, the nation that hasn’t gone to war with a foreign power since Napoleon, is reluctantly debating a generational taboo: ceding monetary independence to win a battle over its runaway currency.
Swiss National Bank Vice President Thomas Jordan said the central bank is assessing “a whole range of options” to prevent the franc, which reached a record against the euro this month, from making Swiss goods prohibitively expensive. Even a cup of coffee at Café St. Gotthard in Zurich costs $8.30, with one Swiss franc buying $1.2750 at today’s exchange rate.
Billionaire entrepreneur Christoph Blocher, one of the politicians who called on SNB President Philipp Hildebrand to resign after the bank lost $21 billion last year in a vain attempt to restrain the currency, now supports a franc target.
“The franc is catastrophically overvalued,” said Blocher, a former justice minister for the People’s Party, Switzerland’s largest. “It’s almost like economic warfare — to wage a war, you must use all measures at your disposal, and you must win.”
Switzerland’s currency is 41 percent overvalued against the euro, based on purchasing power parity as calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s “a headache,” according to ABB Ltd., the world’s largest maker of power-transmission gear, which responded by buying more parts from euro-region suppliers to feed its Swiss factories. Workers at Lonza AG, a Basel-based chemicals maker, are working longer hours without extra pay, while VonRoll Infratec AG, the Zug- based maker of piping systems and castings, is paying some salaries in euros.
As Economy Tanks, “New Normal” Police State Takes Shape
August 15th, 2011Via: Dissident Voice:
Forget your rights.
As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieu Medicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.
After all, with world share prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by speculators and rentier scum, the state better dust-off contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British “contagion” spread beyond the fabled shores of “old Europe” and infect God-fearin’ folk here in the heimat.
Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the “responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances.” (emphasis added)
With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called “Western democracies.”
A Short Meditation on America’s Loss of Manufacturing
August 15th, 2011Via: Dissident Voice:
By now most people are aware that the United States produces very little of its own furniture, carpeting, toys, textiles, shoes, electronics and appliances. Those once flourishing industries are a thing of the past. Indeed, hard as it may be to believe, a sizeable number of American flags are now made in China.
On a less urgent note, we’ve also lost our “novelty” manufacturing base. It’s true. Our plastic, artificial vomit and artificial dog poop are now being produced in Asia. While some people might greet this news with apathy, I see it differently. If we’ve already lost our fake vomit and dog poop to foreign manufacturers, how soon before we lose our truck nuts?
Related: 10 of Today’s Hottest Jobs: Proof That America Is Doomed
