ECB Lends Record $622 Billion in Bid to Ease Crisis
June 25th, 2009Coincidence? Bonds Rise After Strong Auction of 7-Year Notes
Via: Wall Street Journal:
The European Central Bank pumped a record €442 billion ($622 billion) into euro-zone money markets Wednesday in its first-ever offer of one-year funds as it battles the Continent’s recession.
Euro-zone banks borrowed the one-year funds, the largest amount the central bank has ever dispersed in a single shot, at the ECB’s current key rate of 1%. Much of the total likely substituted for amounts banks had been borrowing from the ECB for shorter periods, so the net stimulus to the economy is less than it appears at first sight.
The novelty lies more in the length of time over which the ECB is prepared to offer unlimited funding, reflecting a desire to bring longer-term money-market interest rates down. Although the risk premium that banks charge each other for funds has fallen since the dramatic days of September, it still appears big enough to strain the economy.
The ECB’s move signals the central bank remains committed to bolstering the euro-zone economy even as policy makers world-wide discuss how best to unwind the welter of monetary and fiscal stimulus pumped into the global economy over the course of the crisis. The ECB believes the 16-nation euro-zone economy will start growing again by the middle of 2010.
The ECB said in May that it would begin offering banks funds for one year. Before Wednesday, the longest period banks could borrow from the central bank was six months.
Analysts said the high demand for the ECB funds reflected the problems some banks are still having in funding their businesses.
Kurt Sonnenfeld: 9/11 FEMA Videographer at Ground Zero Goes Public
June 25th, 2009This was a longer one, so I put it on hold until I was able to read it all the way through. I shouldn’t have sat on this one. Please click through to the source on this and read the entire piece.
Via: Voltairenet:
As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: “What I saw at certain moments and in certain places … is very disturbing!” He never handed them over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since. Kurt Sonnenfeld lives in exile in Argentina, where he wrote “El Perseguido” (the persecuted). His recently-published book tells the story of his unending nightmare and drives another nail into the coffin of the government’s account of the 9/11 events. Below is an exclusive interview by The Voltaire Network.
“Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough”: The U.S. Eugenics Legacy
June 25th, 2009Via: USA Today:
Paul Lombardo hadn’t planned on a three-decade detour when he stopped at a greasy-spoon restaurant for breakfast in February 1980. Lombardo, then a graduate student at the University of Virginia, picked up a newspaper to read as he ate his bacon and eggs.
And the rest is history, literally and figuratively. For almost 30 years, Lombardo has tried to uncover the full story of the wrongs he read about that day.
The article he had stumbled across was about two sisters sterilized in the 1920s by the state of Virginia for being “feeble-minded.” The younger sister hadn’t even known she’d had a tubal ligation. She didn’t learn until she was in her late 60s that the surgery hadn’t been for appendicitis. The older, more famous sister — Carrie Buck — was the subject of the now infamous lawsuit over the legality of the operation, Buck v. Bell, that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
He read that although Carrie Buck was the first victim of a 1924 sterilization law, 8,300 Virginians had involuntary sterilization until the practice was stopped in the 1970s. The law itself was repealed in 1974. “It was startling,” says Lombardo, 59, now a legal historian at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
He had not known of eugenics — the “science” of human improvement through controlled breeding — as more than a vague concept. Learning that there had been many eugenics programs in the United States in the 20th century and that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Buck’s sterilization amazed him.
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in the 1927 ruling. Lombardo says: “This woman got railroaded. And one of the giants of the Supreme Court was driving the train.”
In the years that followed, Lombardo’s Ph.D. dissertation focused on the attorney who fought to have Buck sterilized. In 1985, he published more research in the New York University Law Review, saying that key “facts” of the Buck case were simply not true and that Buck never received any real legal representation.
He has written journal articles and made many speeches on the subject, finding himself returning to the details of the story again and again. The case was “part of my intellectual life for so long that in some senses it was my … ‘hobby’ is not the right word,” Lombardo says. ” ‘Obsession’ would probably be closer.”
Last fall, his book Three Generations, No Imbeciles was published. In February, he traveled to Rome to speak on the dangers of eugenics at a Vatican conference. He is working on a book titled 100 Years of Eugenics: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Project.
H.R. 675: Building Obama’s Civilian National Security Force
June 25th, 2009Via: Prison Planet:
In January, without any recognizable corporate media coverage, Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, introduced H.R. 675. The bill would amend title 10 of the United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms. The bill was referred to the Armed Services Committee on January 26, 2009.
Filner’s bill would amend the United States code with the following: “Sec. 1585b. Law enforcement officers of the Department of Defense: authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms… for any offense against the United States.” (Emphasis added.)
The Posse Comitatus Act, passed on June 18, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction, limits the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property within the United States.
H.R. 675 sidesteps Posse Comitatus by defining “law enforcement officer of the Department of Defense” as “a civilian employee of the Department of Defense,” including federal police officers, detectives, criminal investigators, special agents, and game law enforcement officers classified by the Office of Personnel Management Occupational Series 0083 (the United States Office of Personnel Management is described as an “independent agency” of the U.S. government that manages the civil service of the federal government).
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
Emails Between Mark Sanford and His Mistress Were Turned Over to Newspaper Back in December
June 25th, 2009UPDATE: The Mistress’ Other Boyfriend (Not Sanford, but Some Other Punter) Sent the Emails to The State
Ok, I guess we can put this one to bed. (Sorry, I could resist.)
Via: New York Times:
The mystery of who revealed Gov. Mark Sanford’s e-mail messages may finally be solved. A business associate of Mr. Sanford’s Argentine mistress said Friday that private messages between the two lovers had been sent anonymously to a South Carolina newspaper last December by an Argentine man the mistress had briefly dated.
The associate, who asked not to be identified, is a Buenos Aires television executive involved in hiring the woman, whom he identified as María Belén Chapur, a producer at the television network America from 2001 to 2002.
Last December, the executive said, Ms. Chapur was dating a young Argentine a few months after her affair with Mr. Sanford began. The man happened to see the e-mail messages being exchanged between the governor and Ms. Chapur, said the executive — who said he had direct knowledge of the situation — and hacked into her e-mail account to see the rest.
Infuriated, the man sent the messages to The State, the newspaper in South Carolina’s capital, Columbia.
When she found out, the executive said, Ms. Chapur immediately ended the relationship with the man, whose identity has not been disclosed.
In one of the published messages, dated July 9, 2008, Ms. Chapur wrote Mr. Sanford that she had seen another man.
“He is a very nice guy, great heart,” she wrote, “but unfortunately I am not in love with him. You are my love. Something hard to believe even for myself as it’s also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation.”
—End Update—
UPDATE: L.A. Times:
The emails, “Appeared to come from a personal e-mail account belonging to Sanford rather than a government-related account.”
—End Update—
What consenting adults do with their peepees is their business, but as this absurd spectacle unfolded yesterday, I didn’t see anyone asking: “How did a newspaper get these emails?”
There is no doubt that NSA would have intercepted these emails. First of all, they’re international communications. That’s just a no brainer. However, the fact that they involved a U.S. Governor and a foreign citizen probably means that the stuff was going into a database forever.
Looking at Maria Belen Shapur’s professional background (executive at a large agribusiness corporation, speaks several languages, including Chinese) it’s possible that she was a full time NSA target on her own. The U.S. routinely uses national intelligence means to benefit U.S. corporations operating abroad. With Governor Sanford on the scene, it’s easy to see how this link might have been a very worthwhile target.
Does this mean that the emails delivered to The State came from some sort of NSA leak? The potential is definitely there. To get at the likelihood of NSA involvement in this, we would have to know more about how Sanford sent the emails.
Did he use his official state government email account? Assuming he was that stupid, all of the messages would be available to some number of system administrators at the state. If he used something like Gmail, at work, while it’s still definitely possible that high level IT staff could have intercepted all of this information, it is somewhat less likely. The wholesale retention of a large organization’s network sessions is not trivial in terms of cost and infrastructure. Emails are routinely archived, network activity is routinely logged, but the actual contents of web sessions typically aren’t. For example, if someone went to gmail.com, most organizations would know that the employee went to gmail.com. Most organizations, however, wouldn’t routinely store what you read or wrote during the session. It depends. Obviously, if you’re working for some .mil or .gov outfit, I’d assume that your boss could sit your down and play back what did on the web like someone watching a movie on a DVD player.
But is South Carolina running a system like that? I doubt it, but maybe someone involved with the South Carolina State Government’s IT operations can tell us how much stuff is being pulled off the wire as part of standard operating procedure. Is the full session there? If so, sure, the emails could have come from work.
The big question is, did he use a non government email account on a non government Internet connection to carry out the conversations? If he did, it’s much more likely the work of NSA.
Via: The State:
E-mails, obtained by The State newspaper in December, between Gov. Mark Sanford and Maria, a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
At the time, efforts to authenticate the e-mails were unsuccessful. However, Sanford’s office Wednesday did not dispute their authenticity.
The State has removed the woman’s full name and other personal details, including her street address, e-mail address and children’s names.
Research Credit: ottilie
Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order
June 25th, 2009Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order by F. William Engdahl:
For the faction controlling the Pentagon, the military industry, and the oil industry, the Cold War never ended. They engineered an incredible plan to grab total control of the planet, of land, sea, air, space, outer space and cyberspace. Continuing ‘below the radar,’ they created a global network of military bases and conflicts to advance the long-term goal of Full Spectrum Dominance. Methods included control of propaganda, use of NGOs for regime change, Color Revolutions to advance NATO eastwards, and a vast array of psychological and economic warfare techniques. They even used ‘save the gorilla’ organizations in Africa to secretly run arms in to create wars for raw materials. It was all part of a Revolution in Military Affairs, as they termed it. The events of September 11, 2001 would allow an American President to declare a worldwide War on Terror, on an enemy who was everywhere, and nowhere. 9/11 justified the Patriot Act, the very act that destroyed Americans’ Constitutional freedoms in the name of security. This book gives a disturbing look at the strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance, at what is behind a strategy that could lead us into a horrific nuclear war in the very near future, and at the very least, to a world at continuous war.
This is from part 1 of Stephen Lendman’s extensive review of Full Spectrum Dominance:
Engdahl’s newest book is reviewed below. Titled “Full Strectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order,” it discusses America’s grand strategy, first revealed in the 1998 US Space Command document – Vision for 2020. Later released in 2000 as DOD Joint Vision 2020, it called for “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.
Other means as well, including propaganda, NGOs and Color Revolutions for regime change, expanding NATO eastward, and “a vast array of psychological and economic warfare techniques” as part of a “Revolution in Military Affairs” discussed below.
September 11, 2001 served as pretext to consolidate power, destroy civil liberties and human rights, and wage permanent wars against invented enemies for global dominance over world markets, resources, and cheap labor – at the expense of democratic freedoms and social justice. Engdahl’s book presents a frightening view of the future, arriving much sooner than most think.
Introduction
After the Soviet Union’s dissolution in late 1989, America had a choice. As the sole remaining superpower, it could have worked for a new era of peace and prosperity, ended decades of Cold War tensions, halted the insane arms race, turned swords into plowshares, and diverted hundreds of billions annually from “defense” to “rebuild(ing) civilian infrastructure and repair(ing) impoverished cities.”
Instead, Washington, under GHW Bush and his successors, “chose stealth, deception, lies and wars to attempt to control the Eurasian Heartland – its only potential rival as an economic region – by military (political, and economic) force,” and by extension planet earth through an agenda later called “full spectrum dominance.”
As a result, the Cold War never ended and today rages with over a trillion dollars spent annually on “defense” in all forms even though America has no enemy, nor did it after the Japanese surrendered in August 1945. So the solution was to invent them, and so they were.
Ministry of Defence Blocks Wikileaks
June 25th, 2009Via: Guardian:
The Ministry of Defence is trying to block all internet access to the whistleblowing site Wikileaks from thousands of its own computers after discovering that dissidents have been using it to leak copies of British military manuals.
Newly obtained MoD emails reveal alarm over the discovery that Wikileaks is freely publishing manuals that are used by patrols in Iraq.
One email says: “There are thousands of things on here, I literally mean thousands. Not just UK MoD but other places as well. Everything I clicked on to do with MoD was ‘restricted’ … It is huge.”
Dismay was sparked by the discovery that Wikileaks had posted copies of a 2007 manual on UK tactics for Iraq and Afghanistan, and a handbook on Istar (intelligence surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) on its website.
The Iraq “stability operations” manual contains details on how to organise roadblocks, conduct searches and tackle suicide bombers, advising: “Immediate incapacitation of the suicide bomber, using lethal force, is likely to be the only means of stopping him.”
The manual contains “cultural awareness” advice on Arab and Afghan etiquette, warning soldiers that it is “very rude” to make the thumbs-up sign in Afghanistan. It advises: “Feel free to return a hug or kiss on the cheek, initiated by an Iraqi man. This is a sign of friendship, not homosexuality.”
“Restricted” is the lowest level of security classification, but MoD officials feared that terminals at some of Britain’s 1,100 military locations were being used by disaffected soldiers to email copies of the documents.
After an “urgent” investigation, one unnamed official warned that it “might be quite tricky to block” because Wikileaks has a variety of domain names.
The MoD’s directorate of information, headed by John Taylor, nevertheless went ahead and instructed BT, which has a private contract to manage the military’s landlines, to block access to Wikileaks and one of their main servers in Sweden.
A Wikileaks source said yesterday: “Wikileaks has many alternative names. MoD site blocking has not prevented dissident MoD staff providing us with material exposing the UK involvement in Iraq and elsewhere.”
Asked why it had blocked access to Wikileaks, an MoD spokesman told the Guardian: “MoD staff are unable to access Wikileaks because there is no compelling business reason to have the facility.”
The MoD released some of its emails following a freedom of information request.
Research Credit: SW
California Set to Issue IOUs as Fiscal Crisis Weighs
June 25th, 2009Via: Reuters:
California’s controller said on Wednesday that he would have to issue IOUs in a week if lawmakers can’t quickly solve a $24 billion budget deficit, and the state’s treasurer plans to tap a reserve fund to meet debt service costs.
The measures came as a budget crisis deepened in the most populous U.S. state and the gridlocked legislature failed to pass a proposed $11 billion in cuts.
“Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression,” Controller John Chiang said in a statement announcing that he would be forced to use IOUs to pay the state’s bills beginning on July 2.
“The state’s $2.8 billion cash shortage in July grows to $6.5 billion in September and after that we see a double digit freefall,” Chiang said. “Unfortunately, the state’s inability to balance its checkbook will now mean short-changing taxpayers, local governments and small businesses.”
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, meanwhile, is planning to draw on reserves for economic recovery sales tax bonds, according to a spokesman.
Rating agency Standard & Poor’s warned it may downgrade the bonds, given the problems California is likely to face in replenishing its emergency funds.
The state is expecting to file a material event notice on Thursday to alert bondholders to the move that comes in response to plunging sales tax receipts, said spokesman Tom Dresslar.
“The senior coverage account will be drawn on and debt service on all economic recovery bonds will be paid in full on July 1,” Dresslar said.
California has been in crisis since the housing slump and credit crunch caused a severe decline in revenues. The state has seen its unemployment rate climb steadily to 11.5 percent in May from 6.8 percent a year earlier, according to labor department data.
Sam’s Club Giving Kids Candy In Pill Bottles
June 25th, 2009Via: Consumerist:
The Sam’s Club in Salisbury, Maryland, is promoting its pharmacy by handing out pill bottles filled with candy to kids. I guess that’s better than filling Dots boxes with Vicodin. Or handing out gallon-sized jugs of Nerds.
On the downside, as a pill recipient at Salisbury News notes, “Now my 3 year old thinks all prescription pill bottles are just tasty snacks”.
China Buys Addax for £4.4bn to Tap Iraqi Oil
June 24th, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Who provided the credit for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq? Mmm hmm.
See the part in bold below for a hint on where oil prices are headed.
Via: Telegraph:
China has made its first big foray into Iraq in a C$8bn (£4.4bn) deal to buy London-listed oil explorer Addax Petroleum.
The board of Addax, which is also listed in Toronto and based in Switzerland, has recommended a C$52.80 per share offer from Sinopec, the Chinese state oil and gas company.
Addax has oil assets in West Africa and the Middle East, particularly the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The company has increased its crude oil production from 8.8m barrels per day ten to 134.7m barrels per day over the last ten years.
There has been a scramble for oil assets in Iraq’s Kurdish region, which is more open to foreign investment than Baghdad. Heritage Oil, also a London listed explorer, agreed to buy Addax’s partner in Kurdistan, Turkey’s Genel Energy, for £1.5bn earlier this month.
Addax and Genel both produce oil at Taq Taq, with the intention of increasing its production from 40,000 barrels a day to a peak production of 180,000 barrels a day.
Sinopec’s offer represents a 47pc premium to the closing price on June 5, the day before Addax announced it was in preliminary discussions with Sinopec and others about a potential deal. Its shares rose 282, or 12pc, to £26.50 in London
The offer from the cash-rich Sinopec, an abbreviation of the China Petrochemical Corporation, does not rely on outside financing. It will have to pay a termination fee of C$300m if it withdraws from the acquisition, which needs the approval of the Chinese government by the end of August.
