Banks Profit From Near-Zero Interest Rates: Another Reason for States to Own Their Own Banks

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"While individuals, businesses and governments suffer from a credit crisis created on Wall Street, the banks responsible for the crisis are tapping into nearly-interest-free credit lines and using the money to speculate or to make commercial loans at much higher rates. By forming their own banks, states too can tap into very low interest rates, and can buffer themselves from another Lehman-style credit collapse.

Keeping interest rates low is considered the� first line of defense for central banks bent on easing the credit crisis and getting banks to lend again. The Federal Reserve's target for the federal funds rate - the overnight interest rate that banks charge each other - has been kept at a rock-bottom 0% to 0.25% ever since December 2008. A growing number of economists now think it could stay there well into 2011 or even 2012, prompted by fears that a spreading debt crisis in Europe could hurt a budding U.S. recovery."

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WHO scandal exposed: Advisors received kickbacks from H1N1 vaccine manufacturers

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WHO scandal exposed: Advisors received kickbacks from H1N1 vaccine manufacturers: "A stunning new report reveals that top scientists who convinced the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare H1N1 a global pandemic held close financial ties to the drug companies that profited from the sale of those vaccines. This report, published in the British Medical Journal, exposes the hidden ties that drove WHO to declare a pandemic, resulting in billions of dollars in profits for vaccine manufacturers.

Several key advisors who urged WHO to declare a pandemic received direct financial compensation from the very same vaccine manufacturers who received a windfall of profits from the pandemic announcement. During all this, WHO refused to disclose any conflicts of interests between its top advisors and the drug companies who would financially benefit from its decisions."

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BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill

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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.

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Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

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Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.

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Bill Gates Among The Power Elite Attending 2010 Bilderberg Conference

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A club allegedly bringing together some of the world's most powerful people was holding a meeting Friday in the exclusive north-eastern Spanish seaside resort of Sitges amid high secrecy and draconian security, Spanish media reported.

The Bilderberg Club was named after the Dutch hotel where it was established in 1954, allegedly to strengthen the Europe-US axis against communism.

The annual gatherings are believed to bring together dozens of political and economic leaders, royalty, and business tycoons from Europe, the United States and Canada.

More than 350 police were guarding the luxury hotel located outside central Sitges, where access roads were cordoned off, the press and the public were kept away as the four-day meeting was beginning on Thursday, the daily El Pais reported.

Secrecy surrounded the guest list, but press leaks mentioned such names as former US Federal Reserve chairman and current presidential advisor Paul Volcker, Austrian President Heinz Fischer, European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

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Facebook and Muslim Outrage: Gleaning the Wrong Lesson, Again

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“Any depictions of the prophet are considered blasphemous by Muslims,” wrote Agencies, as reported readily by Aljazeera.net English. The above statement is meant to fully summarize the reason behind the outrage that arises in Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim world whenever some provocative ‘artist’ decides to express his freedom of expression and ‘expose’ Muslims as anti-democratic.

Such a simplistic interpretation of such an intricate issue.

There is no denial – and no shame – in the fact that most Muslims hold their Prophet in the highest regard. Despite the continued decrease in the number of faithful in increasingly secularized Western societies, Muslims are clinching even tighter to their faith. However, while the outrage over the latest transgression by some Facebook user and his “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” may appear as a straightforward news story – that of Western values vs Muslim narrow-mindedness – the true underpinnings of the outrage is suspiciously missing.

The naïve depiction by Western media makes it easy for ‘freedom of expression’ enthusiasts to condemn Muslims for yet again failing the democracy test.

The latest Facebook episode is a remake of the same old story. Some ill-intended ‘artist’, under the guise of freedom of speech, takes on a confrontational mission, knowing fully the response such an act would generate, and perhaps the lives that would be lost. Muslim masses, predictably, respond through angry protests, burning flags, denouncing America, Israel, Zionism, Facebook, Youtube and so on. Strangely, the very governments that are considered US allies tend to be on the forefront of condemning the ‘blasphemous’ provocations. Muslim masses are thus exploited on all fronts - by the media, by anti-Muslims, by rightwing forces in the West, and their own governments.

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Bilderberg 2010: Plutocracy with Palm Trees

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Another year, another Bilderberg. The first “participants” (as the delegates are known) won’t be arriving until Thursday, but already the Hotel Dolce in Sitges is buzzing with anticipation. This Catalan seaside town hasn’t hosted an event as large and politically sensitive as Bilderberg since the legendary 2008 Foam Party at the Mr Gay Sitges awards night.

Last year, Bilderberg was held in Vouliagmeni, on the coast just south of Athens. The Greek minister of finance attended, the minister of foreign affairs, and the governor of the National Bank of Greece. A few months later, Greece was bankrupt and Athens was in flames. So … good luck, Madrid!

Police are already stretching their red stripy tape around the hotel, and zipping up and around the local roads in their squad cars, sniffing for trouble. I’m really hoping there’s none to find. The Spanish are promising a beach party and an “awareness camp”, with political discussion forums and meditation zones.

I plan to spend at least part of Friday sitting cross-legged in a campsite, sending beams of white light up the hill and into the hotel. Feel my love, Marcus Agius – Chairman of Barclays and senior non-executive director on the BBC’s new executive board. Let it surround you, Queen Sofia of Spain. Don’t fight it, president of the World Bank. You can’t beat the love.

It would be nicer if the interface between Bilderberg and the world could be softer – if it could turn an open face towards us, rather than the barrel of a machine gun. What I’m hoping is that this year, in the all-new CamCleggian spirit of openness and political transparency, any British elected official who attends the meeting – and I’m talking to you, Kenneth Clarke and George Osborne – will tell us they attended, tell us what they spoke about, and tell us what the next 12 months has in store. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Big Pharma blackmails Greece; halts medicine supply over cash demands

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In the midst of runaway economic problem in Greece, the pharmaceutical industry has decided to blackmail the nation and halt shipments of medicines to Greece until it agrees to pay full price for the drugs. In order to cut costs during its severe debt crisis, Greece had announced it would pay drug companies 25 percent less for their products, but this loss of profit was enough to convince several pharmaceutical companies supplying key drugs to the country to initiate their own medical blockade where they simply refuse to deliver any more medicines.

In doing this, Big Pharma shows its true character. When the profits are flowing and the companies are raking in full-price profits, they're you're best friend. But when budgets get tight and everybody is asked to take a cut, Big Pharma betrays your country and its citizens, withholding medicines in a thinly-veiled blackmail attempt to force you to cough up more cash.
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Yahoo and AP Caught Manipulating User Comments

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It was like déjà vu all over again. I’d go from one Yahoo article to another and notice that regardless of the subject matter, the first user comment was always the same — at least on AP articles covering the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The comment that kept reappearing was posted by “Robert” and it was a one liner. “Hamas is now in control of the Gaza Strip after winning an election there against Abbas Palestinian Authority.” That was it. Fair enough — I’ve got no quarrel with the messenger or the message. But somehow that one comment generated an incredible 184 responses and, last I checked, readers had given it 3212 thumbs up and 2525 thumbs down.

I got a little curious about why Robert’s one liner had generated so much controversy. I’ve written hundreds of articles and never got anywhere near that kind of attention. Frankly, I was full of envy. How did ‘Robert’ pull this off with one miserly line? Then I noticed the strangest thing: it was dated March 09, 2010. The comment was two months old and was the lead comment of 40,000 responses. That seemed a little high considering the fact that the AP article I was reading had only been posted for thirty minutes.

What were Yahoo and AP up to? The answer is simple; they were porting comments from one article to another and, in this particular case, they’ve been doing it for two months. It took a little research till I realized that the first few hundred comments were related to Biden’s ill-fated visit to Jerusalem. It was an ancient story and quite unrelated to the posting I was reading which was a slanted AP article white washing the murderous Israeli assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

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The Black Art of News Management

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How do wars begin? With a “master illusion”, according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA’s pioneers in “black propaganda”, known today as “news management”. In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an “incident” that became the “conclusive proof of North Vietnam’s aggression”. This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

“The CIA,” he said, “loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons - the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam.” An invasion that took three million lives was under way.

The Israelis have played this murderous game since 1948. The massacre of peace activists in international waters on 31 May was “spun” to the Israeli public for most of last week, preparing them for yet more murder by their government, with the unarmed flotilla of humanitarians described as terrorists or dupes of terrorists. The BBC was so intimidated that it reported the atrocity primarily as a “potential public relations disaster for Israel”, the perspective of the killers, and a disgrace for journalism.

A similar master illusion currently preoccupies Asian governments. On 20 May, South Korea announced that it had “overwhelming evidence” that one of its warships, the Cheonan, had been sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine in March with the loss of 46 sailors. The United States maintains 28,000 troops in South Korea, where popular sentiment has long backed a détente with Pyongyang.

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CIA Drone Operators Oppose Strikes as Helping al Qaeda

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Some CIA officers involved in the agency's drone strikes programme in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the programme within the agency, because it is helping al Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.

"Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, it is doing more harm than good," said Jeffrey Addicott, former legal adviser to U.S. Special Forces and director of the Centre for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with IPS.

Addicott said the CIA operatives he knows have told him the drone strikes are being used effectively by al Qaeda and Taliban leaders to recruit more militants.

CIA officers "are very upset" with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. "They'll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise."

"They say we're largely killing rank and file Pakistani Taliban, and they are the ones who are agitated by the campaign," he added.

Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they "infuriate the Muslim male", said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan's tribal region "view Americans as cowards and weasels", he added.

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Report: All aid flotilla victims shot dead

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The nine activists who died in an Israeli raid on aid ships bound for Gaza were shot dead, the Anatolia news agency reported today.

Forensic experts in Istanbul found bullet marks on the bodies of all the victims and determined that one was shot at close range.

The experts said the exact circumstances of the activists’ deaths would become clear in a balistics examination that would take about a month to complete.

Up to nine people aboard a flotilla of ships carrying aid for the Gaza Strip were killed earlier Monday when Israeli navy commandos stormed the vessels in international waters.

The incident prompted a wave of international condemnation, as Israel said it was forced to board the ships to uphold its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory.

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Washington Post Exposes BP ties to Eco-Groups, Other Media Ignore Controversy

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British Petroleum’s (BP) reputation has been marred by the April oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill which is still gushing more than 40 days later. But according to The Washington Post, the reputation of some left-wing environmental groups has also been polluted by the incident.

“[T]he Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years,” Joe Stephens wrote for the Post May 24.

It’s not just Nature Conservancy either, the Post found $2 million in donations to Conservation International and relationships between BP and other lefty activist groups Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Sierra Club and Audubon.

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#205 No Agenda Show For Wednesday June 2nd 2010 Two Ugandans One Cup

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New Law Will Require a License to be a Journalist

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What good is a government if they can’t regulate every aspect of your life? From the same lawmakers that brought us the Detroit economic calamity comes a new bill, aimed at controlling the flow of information to the unsuspecting public even more than the mainstream does now.

A Michigan lawmaker wants to register reporters to ensure they’re credible and have “good moral character.”
State Sen. Bruce Patterson is introducing legislation that will regulate reporters much as the state regulates hairdressers, auto mechanics and plumbers. Patterson, who also practices constitutional law, says the general public is being overwhelmed by an increasing number of media outlets — traditional, online and citizen generated — and an even greater amount of misinformation.
“Legitimate media sources are critically important to our government,” he said.
He told FoxNews.com that some reporters covering state politics don’t know what they’re talking about and they’re working for publications he’s never heard of, so he wants to install a process that’ll help him and the general public figure out which reporters to trust.
“We have to be able to get good information,” he said. “We have to be able to rely on the source and to understand the credentials of the source.”
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Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill

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Firm's stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment

The brokerage firm that's faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman's sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP's stock during the quarter.

If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman's holdings -- meaning that Goldman's remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.

The sale and its size itself isn't unusual for a large asset management firm. Wall Street brokerages routinely buy and sell huge blocks of shares for themselves and their clients. In light of a recent SEC lawsuit arguing that Goldman kept information about a product they sold from their clients, however, the stock sale may raise fresh concern among Goldman's critics. Goldman is also a frequent target of liberals and journalists, including Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who famously dubbed the firm a "vampire squid."

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Rating Agencies, Warren Buffett and Corruption

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Today’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing on credit rating agencies promises to shed quite a bit of light on one of the most profitable and corrupt businesses in Corporate America. Rating agencies score huge profits regardless of how accurate their ratings prove, and thus never felt any serious pain from the financial crisis, despite the central role rating agencies played in the collapse.

The basic model for rating agencies like Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings is a conflict of interest. These companies rate securities– if a bank wants to package a bunch of mortgages into a security to sell to investors, the rating agencies stamp a rating on that security to indicate how safe the investment is. But Moody’s et al do not get paid by the investors who use their ratings. Instead, they get paid by the banks that create and package the securities. That creates a clear incentive to inflate ratings in order to win more business from banks.

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No Free Pens But Pharma Influence Still Felt at Psychiatric Meeting

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It was 95 degrees with 99 percent humidity. The Gulf had the biggest oil spill in US history. And attendees to this week’s American Psychiatric Convention (APA) annual meeting in New Orleans had to brave 200 protestors chanting “no drugging kids for money” and “no conflicts of interest” to get into the convention hall.

Since 2008 when Congress investigated some APA psychiatrists for alleged pharma conflicts of interest, more light has shone between the two groups, historically almost indistinguishable.

Participants at this year’s meeting, estimated at 14,000, saw conflict of interest slides before presentations and in their 240-page program book, fewer pharma funded classes and entertainment and no gifts or free meals at the 5-day event.

“They used to wine us and dine us,” said one participant, a veteran of decades of annual meetings, ruefully.

“An SSRI maker flew my entire group to a Caribbean island,” remembered a doctor from the East coast who did not want to be identified. Anymore.

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Why did Israel attack civilians in the Mediterranean?

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Israel weighed in advance the consequences of its attack against a humanitarian convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip. What were its objectives in triggering a world diplomatic crisis, and why did it defy its Turkish ally as well as its U.S. protector?

The attack launched by three Israeli Saar missile patrol boats on 31 May 2010 against the freedom flotilla in international Mediterranean waters denotes a headlong rush on the part of Tel Aviv.

The freedom flotilla stems from an initiative by human rights activists [1] [2], supported by the Turkish government. Its aim was to take humanitarian aid to Gaza and, in so doing, to break the blockade illegally enforced by the Israeli army against more than 1.5 million Gazans.

Under international law, the decision to accost a civilian vessel in international waters is an "act of war". Legally speaking, Israel's acts constitute the appropriation of the vessels and their cargo, the kidnapping of the passengers, murder or possibly even assassination, if one accepts the reports relayed by Turkish television according to which the commandos were in possession of a list of people that had to be eliminated.

This act of war against vessels flying Greek and Turkish flags was carried out to reinforce the blockade, which is itself a violation of international law.

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Goldman Sachs May Settle for $1 Per Share, or About $621 Million

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Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will probably settle a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission at a cost of a little more than $1 a share, Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Bradley Hintz said.


Hintz said in a note last week that Goldman Sachs may spend about $621 million to settle the case.

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From the 1953 CIA Overthrow of Democracy in Iran, to the Iraq War, to the Criminal Gulf Catastrophe and Deaths, BP Was There

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If you were to draw an oily line from the first exploitation of oil in the Middle East by the British in 1901 (they were in the process of converting their then world dominating naval fleet from coal to oil and were in desperate need of it) to the overthrow of the secular democratic leader in Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, to the Iraq War, to the criminal environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, BP would have been there.  

But the fourth largest company in the world wasn't always called BP.  It used to be owned by the British Government (remember the navy armada in need of oil). It was named the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company when the CIA teamed up with the British because the Western style Iranian leader Mossadeq wanted to nationalize Britain's 100% owned and run giant oil concession in Iran, and the West would have none of that.  So Eisenhower authorized "Operation Ajax," and the Shah of Iran was placed in power -- ruling with an iron fist and the dreaded SAVAK, all the time fully backed by the U.S. -- leading to the radical theocratic revolution that we still confront today.  All the time BP, which formally adopted its current name in 1954, was there.


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Curious Trading by Federal Reserve Advisor May Result in JPMorgan Chase $1.264 Billion Windfall

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There is some mighty curious trading going on in Maiden Lane LLC, the entity set up by the Federal Reserve to buy some of Bear Stearns' assets. The Federal Reserve hasn't released enough information to be able to determine the exact details of the trading, but from the information that is available, it appears that trades are being made for the benefit of JPMorgan Chase.

There are big questions, such as why is a portfolio, that is supposed to be wound down, showing a double digit turnover of its portfolio?

In an EPJ exclusive, Bob English does a forensic analysis of the public information surrounding Maiden Lane and it doesn't come out smelling roses. The analysis is here.

What if Iran had carried out the Gaza carnage?

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It's not unjustifiable to consider Israel as the absolute incarnation of fraudulence, relentlessness and brutality. Since its establishment, the Zionist regime has carried out actions which contravene the international regulations and cancel out the human rights in a way or another. Only a brief look into the account of Israel's bloody interaction with the Palestinian people over the past years shows us that this fabricated regime does not deserve "the right of existence", as the U.S. and European officials put it periodically.

The Monday assault of the Israel Defense Forces into the flotilla of humanitarian aids which was heading to the besieged Gaza Strip from Turkey left at least 10 dead and several other wounded. Never mind that Israel's criminal action violated the 4th Geneva 1949 Convention. Just imagine for a single moment that Iran had carried out the carnage instead of Israel. Simply replace the two names and then read the news as reported by CNN: "The Free Gaza Movement, one of the organizers of the aid, said that Israeli commandos dropped from a helicopter onto the deck of one of the ships early Monday and immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians."

Since September 2000, Israel killed more than 6,300 Palestinians, most of whom were children and defenseless civilians. Israel has also demolished more than 25,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. It possess up to 200 nuclear warheads in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution 487. Interestingly, it receives something around $7 million of military aid from the U.S. per day. 7,383 Palestinians are being kept in the prisons of Israel. The racist regime of Israel has built 223 settlements on the Palestinians' confiscated lands. Over the six-year period between September 2000 and February 2006, 36589 Palestinians were injured by the Israeli forces of whom 3530 Palestinians were permanently disabled or maimed. Shockingly, this six-year period was witness to the confiscation of 249680 km2 of Palestinian lands. Israeli forces even refused to overlook the Palestinian trees as they uprooted 1,187,762 Palestinian trees from 2000 to 2006. This shows the nature of the brutal regime of Israel which is even at odds with the natural resources and trees, let alone the human beings.

Although it's practically unthinkable, try to replace Iran and Israel, imagining for a single moment that Iran is the occupying state that kills at least two foreign civilians a day, beleaguers some 1.5 million people who don't have any access to the barest rudiments of their daily life and live under the continual threats of military assault and are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Would the so-called international community tolerate it? Would the UN Secretary General suffice to a simple "expression of concern" with regards to such an incessant viciousness, if it had not been Israel?

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Latest climate climbdown: the Royal Society reviews its statements on global warming

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The latest institutional retreat from uncritical support of the AGW hypothesis is one that will chill warmists to the core: the Royal Society has announced it is to review its public statements on climate change. The Society now believes that its previous communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood. It has appointed a panel to review its statements, assisted by two critical sub-groups, including a number of Fellows who have doubts about the received view on the risks of increasing CO2 levels.

In fact this review has been forced on the Society by 43 of its Fellows who demanded last January that the pamphlet Climate Change Controversies, produced in 2007 and published on its website, should be rewritten to take a less aggressive stance in support of AGW and respect climate change “agnostics”. In such partisan activities the Royal Society has form: in 2005 it published “A guide to facts and fictions about climate change”, which denounced 12 “misleading arguments” which today, post Climategate and the subsequent emboldening of sceptical scientists to speak out, look far from misleading.

This development does not, of course, mean that the Royal Society is embracing climate scepticism. On the contrary, it is very reluctantly modifying its stance to accommodate some of its Fellows who take the very scientific position that a degree of agnosticism is good practice when hypotheses remain unproven. Yet this retreat from absolutist global warming orthodoxy will deeply dismay the AGW lobby. For years, there was no fiercer proponent of the AGW theory than the Royal Society. Its previous president Lord May notoriously stated: “The debate on climate change is over.”

That was about as unscientific a statement as you could get: even the theories of iconic pioneers such as Einstein are routinely revisited by scientists. Yet Lord May intolerantly declared: “On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots.” Most major scientific advances have been achieved by a handful of people. That kind of dogmatic assertiveness brought great joy and comfort to the Al Gore cultists; to sceptics it was a reminder that the Royal Society’s founding members dabbled in alchemy – was the Society returning to its roots? Is carbon capture the new Philosopher’s Stone?

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Stop patenting the food chain!

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Multinational seed corporations are following a consequent strategy to gain control over basic resources for food production. As recent research shows not only genetically engineered plants, but more and more the conventional breeding of plants gets into the focus of patent monopolies: International patent applications in this sector are skyrocking, having doubled since 2007 till end of 2009. Further on the multinationals expand their claims over the whole chain of food production from feed to animals and food products such as meat. In a pending patent application from Monsanto even bacon and steaks are claimed: Patent application WO2009097403 is claiming meat stemming from pigs being fed with the patented genetically engineered plants of Monsanto. A similar patent is applied for fish from aquaculture in March 2010 (WO201027788). Far reaching patents on food are even already granted: Monsanto received a European patent (EP 1356033) in 2009, which the chain of food production from
seeds of genetically engineered plants up to food products such as meal and oil are covered.

"There is a process going on, multinationals are trying to gain increasing control of the whole chain of food production. Consumers, farmers and food producers are all caught by the same trap. This has to be regarded as an immoral attempt to abuse patent law. The company is heading for maximising its profits by filing patents on food while at the same time one billion people is suffering from hunger," says Francois Meienberg from the Berne Declaration.

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Israel attacks Freedom Flotilla, two civilians killed, 30 injured

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Israel Navy troops opened fire on pro-Palestinian activists aboard a six-ship aid flotilla sailing for the Gaza Strip, killing two of them and wounding several others, after the activists ignored Israeli orders to turn back, Turkey’s NTV reported early Monday.

The Israeli naval vessels reportedly made contact earlier with the six-ship flotilla, which is carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza.

The Israeli navy was operating under the assumption that the activists manning the boats would not heed their calls to turn around, and Israeli troops were prepared to board the ships and steer them away from the Gaza shores and toward the Israeli port city of Ashdod.
Huwaida Arraf, one of the flotilla organizers, said the six-ship flotilla began the journey from international waters off the coast of Cyprus Sunday afternoon after two days of delays. According to organizers, the flotilla was expected to reach Gaza, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) away, on Monday afternoon, and two more ships would follow in a second wave.

The flotilla was fully prepared for the different scenarios that might arise, and organizers were hopeful that Israeli authorities would do what’s right and not stop the convoy, one of the organizers said.

“We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us,” Arraf said. “They are going to have to forcefully stop us.”

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Did an American Mine Sink the South Korean Ship?

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BEIJING - South Korean Prime Minister Lee Myung-bak has claimed "overwhelming evidence" that a North Korean torpedo sank the corvette Cheonan on March 26, killing 46 sailors. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that there’s "overwhelming evidence" in favor of the theory that North Korea sank the South Korean Navy warship Cheonan. But the articles of proof presented so far by military investigators to an official inquiry board have been scanty and inconsistent.

There’s yet another possibility, that a U.S. rising mine sank the Cheonan in a friendly-fire accident.

In the recent U.S.-China strategic talks in Shanghai and Beijing, the Chinese side dismissed the official scenario presented by the Americans and their South Korean allies as not credible. This conclusion was based on an independent technical assessment by the Chinese military, according to a Beijing-based military affairs consultant to the People Liberation Army.

Hardly any of the relevant facts that counter the official verdict have made headline news in either South Korea or its senior ally, the United States.

The first telltale sign of an official smokescreen involves the location of the Choenan sinking - Byeongnyeong Island (pronounced Pyongnang) in the Yellow Sea. On the westernmost fringe of South Korean territory, the island is dominated by a joint U.S.-Korean base for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operations. The sea channel between Byeongnyeong and the North Korean coast is narrow enough for both sides to be in artillery range of each other.

Anti-sub warfare is based on sonar and acoustic detection of underwater craft. Since civilian traffic is not routed through the channel, the noiseless conditions are near-perfect for picking up the slightest agitation, for example from a torpedo and any submarine that might fire it.

North Korea admits it does not possess an underwater craft stealthy enough to slip past the advanced sonar and audio arrays around Byeongnyeong Island, explained North Korean intelligence analyst Kim Myong Chol in a news release. "The sinking took place not in North Korean waters but well inside tightly guarded South Korean waters, where a slow-moving North Korean submarine would have great difficulty operating covertly and safely, unless it was equipped with AIP (air-independent propulsion) technology."

The Cheonan sinking occurred in the aftermath of the March 11-18 Foal Eagle Exercise, which included anti-submarine maneuvers by a joint U.S.-South Korean squadron of five missile ships. A mystery surrounds the continued presence of the U.S. missile cruisers for more than eight days after the ASW exercise ended.

Only one reporter, Joohee Cho of ABC News, picked up the key fact that the Foal Eagle flotilla curiously included the USNS Salvor, a diving-support ship with a crew of 12 Navy divers. The lack of any minesweepers during the exercise leaves only one possibility: the Salvor was laying bottom mines.

Ever since an American cruiser was damaged by one of Saddam Hussein's rising mines, also known as bottom mines, in the Iraq War, the U.S. Navy has pushed a crash program to develop a new generation of mines. The U.S. Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command has also been focused on developing counterparts to the fearsome Chinese naval "assassin's mace," which is propelled by a rocket engine.

A rising mine, which is effective only in shallow waters, rests atop a small platform on the sea floor under a camouflage of sand and gravel. Its detection system uses acoustics and magnetic readings to pick up enemy ships and submarines. When activated, jets of compressed air or solid-fuel rockets lift the bomb, which self-guides toward the magnetic center of the target. The blast rips the keel, splitting the ship or submarine into two neat pieces, just as was done to the RKOS Cheonan.

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The FTC's Plan to Bailout the Dinosaur Newspaper Industry and Suffocate Blogs

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The Federal Trade Commission has been nosing around how to save journalism and in its just-posted “staff discussion draft” on “potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism,” it makes its bias clear: The FTC defines journalism as what newspapers do and aligns itself with protecting the old power structure of media.


If the FTC truly wanted to reinvent journalism, the agency would instead align itself with journalism’s disruptors. But there’s none of that here. The clearest evidence: the word “blog” is used but once in 35 pages of text and then only parenthetically as an example of buying ads on topical sites (“e.g., a soccer blog…”); otherwise, it’s only a footnote. The only mention of investing in technology — the agent of disruption — comes on the 35th page (suggesting R&D for tools such as “improved electronic note-taking”). There’s not a hint of seeing a new ecosystem of news emerge – the ecosystem we study and support at CUNY — except as the entry of nonprofit entities that, by their existence, give up on the hope the market will sustain news.

If the FTC truly wanted to rethink journalism and its new opportunities and new value in our democracy, it would have written this document from the perspective of the people it is supposed to represent: the citizens, examining how we can benefit from news that is newly opened to the opportunity of collaboration and greater relevance. Instead, the document is written wholly from the perspective of the companies and institutions of the industry.

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Israel Stations Nuclear Missile Subs Off Iran

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Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.

The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

The flotilla’s commander, identified only as “Colonel O”, told an Israeli newspaper: “We are an underwater assault force. We’re operating deep and far, very far, from our borders.”

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#204 No Agenda Show For Sunday May 30th 2010 Oil Spill Déjà vu

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 Link to the show.



Major General Albert "Bert" N. Stubblebine III, head of all intelligence says:

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Pentagon NOT hit by a plane
WTC 7 brought down by explosives 

Another Blow to Guantánamo Plan

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The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to bar the construction of a military detention center in Thomson, Ill., in a further blow to the Obama administration’s fading hopes of shuttering the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The committee met behind closed doors on Thursday to vote on amendments to the 2011 national defense authorization bill. On Friday, it released a summary of the results, which included the prison issue. The Obama administration has proposed spending $350 million to renovate a prison in Thomson and transfer dozens of Guantánamo detainees there. The House version of the bill contains a similar restriction, so the Senate committee’s decision means the final package is virtually certain to include such a ban.

Source: NY Times

Roundup Kills More Than Weeds

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To protect our health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets maximum legal residue levels for every pesticide, for dozens of crops. But a new study in the respected journal Toxicology has shown that, at low levels that are currently legal on our food, Roundup could cause DNA damage, endocrine disruption and cell death. The study, conducted by French researchers, shows glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic to human reproductive cells.

The potential real-life risks from this are infertility, low sperm count, and prostate or testicular cancer. But, “Symptoms could be so subtle, they would be easy to overlook,” says Theo Colborn, president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange. “Timing is of critical importance. If a pregnant woman were to be exposed early in gestation, it looks like these herbicides could have an effect during the sexual differentiation stage. They really lock in on testosterone.” The bottom line is more research is needed before we can fully understand the effects of glyphosate exposure.

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China Government Requests Censorship On Foxconn News

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According to one of the Hong Kong English newspaper report, the Chinese Government and authorities request all press media in China to use the official news from Xinhua when they report Foxconn suicide case. All news website have to remove all special reports on Foxconn and major forums are requested to delete related posts, and no new post is allowed to go public. So at the moment, major press media in China are only allowed to republish the news from three sources, Xinhua News Agency which is owned by the Government, the Government Press Release and Foxconn’s own statement.


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The Least Trusted Name in News

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AC360: See Anderson Cooper Run for Ratings


If you would like to know why the network that calls itself "the most trusted name in news" is the least trustworthy, Freedom Magazine brings you, in living color, what Anderson Cooper refused to show.

With the ratings for Anderson Cooper 360 in a free fall over the past year and rumors rampant he is bailing out for another network, CNN had one final act of desperation up its sleeve.

CNN became the latest media outlet to buy into the increasingly over-the-top, bizarre tales spread by four admitted liars leading a self-proclaimed "posse" of expelled former Church of Scientology staffers. Their yearlong orchestrated campaign exploits the media to run stories which attack their former Church, attack their former friends and even attack their own families—parents, wives and children. It's all part of an effort to aggrandize themselves and make money by promoting everything from their self-published rants to their perverted style of psychological counseling and "deprogramming."

In doing so, the once-great network—that nearly 20 years ago set the standard for journalism during the Persian Gulf War—broadcast five nights of so-called reports on the Church of Scientology, becoming the mouthpiece for a criminal group of cyberterrorists. It used salacious, false allegations to try to salvage a program whose ratings have been so anemic that at times only about a half-million viewers tune in—roughly the population of a mid-size city.

Far from conducting an actual investigation, CNN was simply the latest stop on the "posse's" anti-Scientology media tour. There was literally no original reporting—just a regurgitation of long-disproven allegations that sourced from the Internet, and which dozens of outraged Church officials refuted with statements sworn under oath. This should have raised the antenna of any seasoned journalist, especially one who portrays himself as a skeptic, as Anderson Cooper does.

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