Archive for July 16, 2010
July 16, 2010 | 
Author 
Posted in 
Gilad Atzmon: British Jews Support Israeli War Crimes
The Jewish community in Britain seems to be over the moon. A survey that was published a few days ago suggests that British Jews are nothing but ‘peace lovers’. The Guardian was also quick to report that 77% of “British Jews favour a ‘two-state solution’ in Israel”.
In practice, this actually means that at least 77% of British Jews believe that millions of dispossessed Palestinians should continue to dwell in refugee camps and never be allowed to their homes, cities, and villages. I am actually far from impressed with British Jewry’s inclination towards peace.
Professor Dan McGowan pointed out recently that Israel and Palestine are in fact “one country with one water system, one electrical grid, one monetary system, one telephone system and one postal system. It is already one state, although half the population has lesser rights or none at all.” Bearing McGowan’s insight, I wonder what drives 77% of British Jews? Why don’t they really welcome Palestinian people to return to their land and enjoy exactly the same civil rights British Jews celebrate in the UK?
But a further question must be raised here. What is it that qualifies British Jews or any other Diaspora Jews to interfere or engage so closely with the fate of millions of Palestinians?
As it happens the Survey provides us with more devastating news. At the time we were devastated to find out that 94% of the Israelis supported the IDF’s murderous tactics at the time of Operation Cast Lead. As this new survey clearly reveals, the lack of ethics in British Jewry is far more concerning. Eighteen months after the massacre in Gaza and a year after the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict found Israel guilty of numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, nearly three quarters (72%) of British Jews agreed that Israel’s action in Gaza in 2008 and 2009 was “a legitimate act of self-defence”. I believe that in practice this means that 7 out of 10 British Jews support Israeli war crimes and somehow dismiss the finding of a UN Fact Finding Mission. This is pretty scary.
Bank of England governor’s men fiddle with UK forecasts
It is time to reveal a dirty little insider’s secret. It isn’t hard to make time-series forecasting models produce wildly different results.
Estimates have a tendency to whizz around all over the place in the face of small changes in assumptions, data used and time period covered. And errors can be huge, especially at turning points, so carefully considered judgment matters. Economic forecasts can be massaged, so independence is vital.
During my time on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, which makes quarterly economic prognoses, Governor Mervyn King controlled the hiring and firing of the forecast team, who did his bidding. They had to produce a result that was consistent with King’s views, or else they would be history. A patchwork of arbitrary fixes and prejudices frequently drive forecasts, which for the uninitiated are hard to see.
King always emphasized the importance of top-down judgments, which means you can just make stuff up as you go along. Worryingly, this was often only loosely based on the workings of the real world. Such glorified guesswork operated reasonably well during the boom years, but failed miserably when the recession hit. To put it bluntly, it isn’t that hard to manipulate a forecast. I have seen it done.
On May 17, 2010, the UK’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced that the Treasury would stop producing its own economic forecasts.
Wall Street Is Laundering Drug Money And Getting Away With It
Too-big-to-fail is a much bigger problem than you thought. We’ve all read damning accounts of the government saving banks from their risky subprime bets, but it turns out that the Wall Street privilege problem is far more deeply ingrained in the U.S. legal system than the simple bailouts witnessed in 2008. America’s largest banks can engage in flagrantly criminal activity on a massive scale and emerge almost completely unscathed. The latest sickening example comes from Wachovia Bank: Accused of laundering $380 billion in Mexican drug cartel money, the financial behemoth is expected to emerge with nothing more than a slap on the wrist thanks to an official government policy which protects megabanks from criminal charges.
Bloomberg’s Michael Smith has penned a devastating expose detailing Wachovia’s drug-money operations and the government’s twisted response. The bank was moving money behind literally tons of cocaine from violent drug cartels. It wasn’t an accident. Internal whistleblowers at Wachovia warned that the bank was laundering drug money, higher-ups at the bank actively looked the other way in order to score bigger profits, and the U.S. government is about to let everyone involved get off scott free. The bank will not be indicted, because it is official government policy not to prosecute megabanks. From Smith’s story:
No big U.S. bank . . . has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again . . . . Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory. Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets.
Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo in late 2008. The bank’s penalty for laundering over $380 billion in drug money is going to be a promise not to ever do it again, and a $160 million fine. The fine is so small that Wachovia will almost certainly turn a profit on its drug financing business after legal costs and penalties are taken into account.
[more...]
America Plunging to Bankruptcy While DC Plays Politics as Usual
Eric Blair
Activist Post
More deficit uproar is coming out this week to reveal the quickening pace of the planned implosion of the U.S. economy while politicians wear out the same old arguments. The AP reported Tuesday that the Federal budget gap topped $1 trillion through June with the sub-headline amid GOP resistance to more gov’t spending, which went on to state:
The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the budget year, showing the lasting impact of the recession on the government’s finances.
In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Tuesday that through the first nine months of this budget year, the deficit totals $1 trillion. That’s down 7.6 percent from the $1.09 trillion deficit run up during the same period a year ago.
Worries about the size of the deficit have created political problems for the Obama administration. Congressional Republicans and moderate Democrats have blocked more spending on job creation and other efforts. Republicans also have held up legislation to extend unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless because of its effect on the deficit.
This story comes on the heels of the IMF pressuring the U.S. to reduce debt and China’s top credit rating firm downgraded the United States and other western countries. The deficit panic mode is ramping up the rerun political show as fiscal conservatives echo the age-old mantra “cut taxes and spending” while the progressives pretend to be for the little guy and demand more public spending. However, every economist (and central banker) worth their salt knows that when the money supply contracts the economy goes into a depression, while expanding the money supply to the consumer class stimulates economic growth.
July 16 and Nuclear Everything: Oppenheimer, Clinton, Beatles, Vanunu and the Bhagvad Gita
eileen fleming
On July 3, 2010, “as a child of the Cold War” Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton remarked to to Members of the U.S. Delegation to the New START Negotiations and Nuclear Posture Review Department Staff:
“As every one of you know better than I, we are now looking at new threats from nuclear and radiological materials in the hands of rogue regimes.”[1]
This reporter was in the audience on Feb. 10, 2007 when Dr. Phyllis Bennis, Mid East analyst explained, “Iran has signed the NPT, which allows them the right to have nuclear power and to enrich uranium. The 185 non-nuclear states have agreed to give up the right to have nuclear weapons and the five nuclear powers that signed the NPT agreed to get rid of their nuclear weapons… Iran is not in violation of the NPT, but America is! The USA has been in violation ever since the day they signed it. The USA is acting like a rogue state.” [2]
On July 7, 2010, Israel’s Army Radio reported that the United States has sent Israel a ‘secret’ document committing to nuclear cooperation between the two countries. According to Army Radio, the U.S. has pledged to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
A Little History of July 16:
At 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began, when the first nuclear bomb was exploded by the American federal government at the Trinity Test Site, at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Plutonium and other toxic and radioactive chemicals were dispersed for hundreds of miles and some areas are still contaminated.
The bomb exploded over the New Mexico desert, vaporizing a tower and turning the asphalt to green sand. Seconds later a huge blast of heat scorched the desert. No one could see the radiation generated by the explosion, but they all knew it was there. A half a mile away, the steel container called “Jumbo,” weighing over 200 tons was knocked over as the orange and yellow fireball stretched up and spread into a second column, that rose and flattened into a mushroom cloud; imprinting upon the human consciousness a symbol of violent power and destruction.
The father of the atomic bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer chose to name this harrowing happening the “Trinity” test.
“Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: ‘As West and East, In all flat Maps—and I am one—are one, So death doth touch the Resurrection.’ That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God.’”
“Batter my Heart” continues:
- Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town to another due, Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, But am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
In the moment that followed the atomic inferno, Oppenheimer recalled this sentence from the Bhagvad Gita: “Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds.”
Trust Your Doctor! A study of 4,000 physicians found that 96% received money from drug companies!
Doctors Agreeing to Be Named As Ghost-authors on Pharmaceutical Research
Doctors have been agreeing to be named as authors on studies written by employees of the pharmaceutical industry, giving greater credibility to medical research, according to new evidence.
http://www.worldgazettenews.com/news/doctors-agreeing-to-be-named-as-ghost-authors-on-pharmaceutical-research-new-evidence-suggests-26.html
The Guardian has learned that one of Britain’s leading bone specialists is facing disciplinary action over accusations that he was involved in “ghost writing”.
The wider phenomenon has come to light through documents disclosed in the US courts which have revealed a culture in which doctors agree to “author” studies written by employees of drug firms. The doctors may have some input but do not have access to all the evidence from the drug trial on which the paper’s conclusions are based, the documents showed.
The General Medical Council will call Professor Richard Eastell in front of a fitness to practice committee. Eastell, a bone expert at Sheffield University, has admitted he allowed his name to go forward as first author of a study on an osteoporosis drug even though he did not have access to all the data on which the study’s conclusions were based. An employee of Proctor and Gamble, the US company making Actonel, was the only author who had all the figures.
[more...]
Immigration to Bring Slavery to Europe for Jobs That Don’t Exist!
By Neil Foster
I just want to point out something extremely important here before I start.
THIS IS NOT A RACIST ARTICLE!
There will be those who will read the start of this and either, because you’ve lost the ability to think for yourselves and see it as a call to arms for racists or are simply too lazy to read the whole article and will switch off your brain and stop reading.
Ok that’s that out of the way, so what’s this about? Well it’s about the European Union now saying that they are going to increase the amount of non EU immigrants to Europe because, as far as they’re concerned, there aren’t enough people in Europe to fill the huge amount of job vacancies available.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/186745/Brussels-go-ahead-for-new-wave-of-migrants
Well, excuse me if I’ve missed something but I don’t see massive amounts of job vacancies where I am in the West of Ireland. I have many friends in the UK who don’t see them either and not because they aren’t looking; myself and alot of my friends, here and abroad in other EU countries are OUT OF WORK because there are no jobs for them to apply for. There hasn’t been for 2 years! Furthermore, if you’re formerly classed as ‘self employed’ in Ireland, as is my situation, then you get no help from the state in the form of benefits.
http://www.insideireland.ie/index.cfm/Lng/English/section/news/ext/jobsgrowth001/category/1084/
http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=5505
Show me the jobs!
So what jobs are they talking about? We’re being told the same thing here as they’re being told in the US and in Britain, and that is that we are coming out of recession but that it will be a ‘jobless recovery’. As if that wasn’t a big enough oxymoron, the fact is that, yes we are coming out of a recession, but what they haven’t pointed out is that we’re going rapidly into the BIGGEST DEPRESSION IN HISTORY!
Raids are increasing on farms and private food-supply clubs—here are 5 tips for surviving one
by David Gumpert
When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn’t know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat’s milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)
But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn’t the least bit tongue-tied. “She started back-talking to them,” recalls Palmer. “She said, ‘If you take my computer again, I can’t do my homework.’ This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven’t gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids.”
As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents — from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture — took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.
[5 Tips...]
A Puzzling Collapse of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
July 15, 2010: NASA-funded researchers are monitoring a big event in our planet’s atmosphere. High above Earth’s surface where the atmosphere meets space, a rarefied layer of gas called “the thermosphere” recently collapsed and now is rebounding again.
Layers of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Credit: John Emmert/NRL. [larger image]
“This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years,” says John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19th issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). “It’s a Space Age record.”
The collapse happened during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009—a fact which comes as little surprise to researchers. The thermosphere always cools and contracts when solar activity is low. In this case, however, the magnitude of the collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.
“Something is going on that we do not understand,” says Emmert.
The thermosphere ranges in altitude from 90 km to 600+ km. It is a realm of meteors, auroras and satellites, which skim through the thermosphere as they circle Earth. It is also where solar radiation makes first contact with our planet. The thermosphere intercepts extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photons from the sun before they can reach the ground. When solar activity is high, solar EUV warms the thermosphere, causing it to puff up like a marshmallow held over a camp fire. (This heating can raise temperatures as high as 1400 K—hence the name thermosphere.) When solar activity is low, the opposite happens.
Lately, solar activity has been very low. In 2008 and 2009, the sun plunged into a century-class solar minimum. Sunspots were scarce, solar flares almost non-existent, and solar EUV radiation was at a low ebb. Researchers immediately turned their attention to the thermosphere to see what would happen.