Military Organizations Searching for Information on Michael Stansberry
April 29th, 2010Here are some interesting visits to Cryptogon that resulted from searches for information on Michael Stansberry:
U.S. Special Operations Command
wsa176.socom.mil
209.22.222.176
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U.S. Air Force
ws000210.ramstein.af.mil
132.25.0.210
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U.S. Air Force
bc2.hurlburt.af.mil
151.166.15.115
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U.S. Air Force – 754th Electronic Systems Group
132.34.248.10
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U.S. Air Force
zhtv-wpa-003.wpafb.af.mil
198.97.67.62
Updates on Derek Michael Stansberry
April 29th, 2010Check out the text of the note:
FBI Special Agent James R. McCarty said in an affidavit that Stansberry, 26, of Riverview, Fla., had passed a somewhat incoherent note to a flight attendant:
“I am not an American citizen. I was in Ouaga illegally. My passports and identity are fake. I bought that bag on eBay and have no association with the United States. I will take whatever COA the US wants. I will leave my wallet & passport on this aircraft.”
McCarty said the note ended: “Please let my family know the truth — I [screwed] up & will let the HN preside over prosecutions; and that I love them.”
U.S. Coast Guard Sets Oil Slick Ablaze
April 29th, 2010Via: Reuters:
The U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday set a “controlled burn” to battle a giant oil slick from last week’s deadly offshore drilling rig explosion, as the spill threatened wide-scale coastal damage for four U.S. Gulf Coast states.
The leaking well, 5,000 feet (1,525 metres) under the sea off Louisiana’s coast, has created an oil sheen and emulsified crude slick slightly bigger than the U.S. state of West Virginia, the Coast Guard said.
Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead after the worst oil rig disaster in almost a decade. Swiss-based Transocean Ltd’s (RIGN.S)(RIG.N) Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after it exploded and caught fire while finishing a well for BP Plc (BP.L) about 40 miles (64 km) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
The burn began at 5 p.m. CDT (2200 GMT), an agency spokesman said. Workboats were to pool segments of the spill inside a fire-resistant “boom,” essentially a floating corral, to be towed to a remote area for burning, the Coast Guard said.
The agency said it planned “small, controlled burns” of several hundred gallons each lasting about an hour and invisible from shore.
BP, which owns the well, is spending millions of dollars a day on what it has called the largest oil spill containment operation in history, involving dozens of ships and aircraft.
More: 42,000 Gallons and Now Greater Than 2000 Square Miles
Research Credit: RS
GREECE NEEDS UP TO €120-BILLION
April 28th, 2010Via: Globe and Mail:
Greece will need financial assistance amounting to between €100-billion and €120-billion over the next three years, German parliamentarians reported on Wednesday after meeting Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank.
They said that the €45-billion currently proposed as a rescue package of loans from the IMF and other members of the euro zone was only enough for the first year of support.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn refused to confirm the higher figure on Wednesday, saying that all details of the negotiations would only be announced once the entire Greek standby program had been finalized by the IMF, ECB and European Commission officials meeting the Greek government in Athens.
The details of the discussion were revealed by Jürgen Trittin, parliamentary leader of the Green party, and Thomas Opperman, chief whip of the Social Democratic party, after their three-hour meeting at the German finance ministry in Berlin.
Mr. Trittin said that two thirds of the full Greek financial requirement over three years would have to be met by the euro zone member states, with a contribution from Germany of at least €16-billion.
Crisis, Martial Law, and Black Market Operations
April 28th, 2010Via: Knowledge Is The Killer of Fear:
In the coming years, I think there is a strong possibility that there is going to be crisis and martial law in the United States and in other nations as well. During such periods, the items you need to survive will become increasingly scarce, especially if the crisis and martial law goes on for an extended period of time.
This article could have well been entitled How to Be a Successful Criminal, because what we are talking about bartering during crisis and/or martial law. In crisis and martial law, bartering of goods will be considered a criminal act. As such, if you barter you will be a participant in the black market (at least in the eyes of the government). Remember, during crisis with martial law, you can be arrested for just about anything.
The rules I cover in this article come from the book Black Market Operations: Marketing Theory and the Fencing of Stolen Goods, A report by Ted Roselius and Douglas Benton, associate professors in the college of business at Colorado State University. The book was published by the now defunct publisher Loompanics Unlimited. You may still be able to find the book on some internet booksellers. The book’s ISBN number is 1-55950-017-4. If you can get a copy, I recommend you add it to your preparedness library.
…
In the book listed above, the author’s list some characteristics of goods that are best for selling and trading on the black market. Let’s examine those characteristics in detail and how the principles will apply to a pure barter economy during a prolonged crisis with martial law.
Research Credit: dagobaz
SPAIN’S DEBT DOWNGRADED
April 28th, 2010Via: CNN:
Standard and Poor’s downgraded the sovereign debt ratings of Spain to a lower investment grade status Wednesday, citing “risks to budgetary position” for the troubled European nation.
Spain’s long-term sovereign debt rating was reduced to “AA” from “AA+.” The short-term rating was left unchanged at “A-1+.”
Greece Debt Rating Cut to Junk by S&P
April 28th, 2010Via: BBC:
Global stock markets tumbled after Greece’s debt was downgraded to “junk” by rating agency Standard & Poor’s over concerns that the country may default.
It makes the struggling nation the first eurozone member to have its debt downgraded to junk level.
Portugal’s debt was also lowered on fears of “contagion”, adding to the markets’ rout and a fall in the euro.
Germany immediately said it would not “let Greece fall”, and there were signs that an aid package could be increased.
Greece wants 40bn euros (£34bn) from eurozone governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to shore up its finances.
But there are fears it will not meet conditions needed to access the funds it needs to make looming debt repayments.
Doubts intensify
When ratings agencies downgrade the country’s credit rating – it means they think it is now a riskier place to invest. If it reaches junk status, a country loses its investment grade status. Some financial institutions have rules prohibiting them from investing in “junk” bonds.
Greece’s 2-year government bond yield surged to almost 15% on Tuesday, making it highly expensive for the country to borrow from the debt market.
The Next Empire: China in Africa
April 28th, 2010Via: The Atlantic:
Africans’ attitudes toward China’s recent initiatives on their continent are perhaps inevitably riddled with ambivalence. Many African intellectuals bridle at Western criticism of China’s African full-court press. The West, they say, has long patronized their continent, and since the end of the Cold War, has subjected it to outright neglect. And all of that is true. But the question remains: How does their continent overcome a pattern of extractive foreign engagement—beginning with its first contact with Europe, when gold or slaves were acquired in exchange for cloth and trinkets—that is still discernible today?
This question, which one hears almost everywhere, was addressed most powerfully by the Congolese lawyer I met in Lubumbashi. He received me in his office in his downtown home, where he bathes in water collected from an old parabolic satellite dish, and where he says the mail gets delivered once or twice a year, after he pays a bribe to the post office.
I asked him if the arrival of the Chinese was a new and great opportunity for the continent, as some have said. “The problem is not who is the latest buyer of our commodities,” he replied. “The problem is to determine what is Africa’s place in the future of the global economy, and up to now, we have seen very little that is new. China is taking the place of the West: they take our raw materials and they sell finished goods to the world. What Africans are getting in exchange, whether it is roads or schools or finished goods, doesn’t really matter. We remain under the same old schema: our cobalt goes off to China in the form of dusty ore and returns here in the form of expensive batteries.”
Blankfein Supports Financial Reform Legislation
April 28th, 2010In Fiat Currency Hell, endless financial complexity allows for swindling at heretofore unthinkable levels. This may sound counterintuitive, but the purpose of expanding the regulatory machinery is to facilitate even vaster amounts of fraud. This is what happens when big organizations fail, but aren’t allowed to die. A small number of people makes off with unthinkable amounts of plundered money—and then the government gets bigger! The people who are left walking funny at the end of all of this get the bill.
—“This Was a Failure of the Entire System,” Obama Said; Solution? Make the System Bigger
Via: The Hill:
A financial regulatory reform bill has at least one supporter outside of Congressional Democrats, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of investment bank Goldman Sachs.
“I’m generally supportive,” Blankfein told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Wall Street will benefit from the bill because it will make the market safer, Blankfein said.
“The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself,” he said. “The biggest risk is risk financial institutions have with each other.”
American consumers also would benefit from better regulations, he said.
