Month: April 2009

Budget 2009: Now we are all up to our ears in it

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Alistair Darling’s calamitous Budget not only consigned the nation to decades of debt, but also planted a poisonous legacy that will blight generations to come.


Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown have landed the voters in it Photo: PA

“To preserve [the people’s] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

This week, Alistair Darling made a selection for us. His Budget for Bankruptcy banished economy and liberty. In their place, he delivered a profusion of unaffordable spending and a contract of servitude, not just for this generation, but for the next and the one after that. This is how independence is murdered. A ball-and-chain of spirit-sapping debt has been clamped to the nation’s future. We are all serfs now.

In a speech of stunning torpidity (how does he manage it?), the Chancellor claimed: “You can grow your way out of recession, you can’t cut your way out of it.” Growth sounds attractive, an aspiration for solid citizens. Except the growth that Mr Darling had in mind was government borrowing, which is shooting up like bindweed on steroids, choking the economy.

His red numbers are so immense that most pocket calculators cannot accommodate them. Over the next five years – if all goes according to plan – Mr Darling will borrow £703,000,000,000. As the late Roy Castle used to say: “It’s a record breaker!”

Related articles:
– Taxes ‘must rise’ by £45bn a year to meet Budget 2009 target (Telegraph)
– Time to bail out of Britain? (Telegraph)

The United Kingdom is mired in debt, and the Chancellor’s fiendishly clever escape route is, er, to borrow his way out of it. He’s in a hole and digging furiously. Yet Gordon Brown, whose face is beginning to resemble a smacked bottom, was delighted by his cipher’s performance. This style of presentation – straight from the Ceausescu handbook of statistics management – appeals to the Prime Minister’s control-freakery.

Read moreBudget 2009: Now we are all up to our ears in it

World’s first electric car built by Victorian inventor in 1884

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This picture shows what may be the world’s first electric car – built by a Victorian inventor in 1884.


Thomas Parker: He is in the light suit in the front of the car.

Sitting aboard is Thomas Parker, who was responsible for innovations such as electrifying the London Underground, overhead tramways in Liverpool and Birmingham, and the smokeless fuel coalite.

Last week the government announced it wanted to create a mass market in electric cars in order to cut down carbon emissions.

Read moreWorld’s first electric car built by Victorian inventor in 1884

China almost doubled its gold reserves

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China has quietly almost doubled its gold reserves to become the world’s fifth-biggest holder of the precious metal, it emerged on Friday, in a move that signals the revival of bullion after years of fading importance.

Gold rose to a three-week high of more than $910 an ounce after Hu Xiaolian, head of the secretive State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which manages the country’s $1,954bn in foreign exchange reserves, revealed China had 1,054 tonnes of gold, up from 600 tonnes in 2003.

The news could spark interest in gold among other central banks. “When the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves discloses an increase in gold holdings, other countries may decide to think more carefully about underweight gold positions,” said John Reade, a precious metals strategist at UBS.

Read moreChina almost doubled its gold reserves

Chuck Baldwin: Obama Positioning For Backdoor Gun Control

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“Of course, Obama is a longtime liberal radical when it comes to the Second Amendment. As a senator, he voted against the Second Amendment at every opportunity. He has never seen a piece of gun control legislation that he did not support. And as I have said before in this column, gun control is high on the list of priorities for the newly elected President Barack Obama.”

On his recent trip to Central America, President Barack Obama did more than cozy up to Marxist dictators; he also signed onto an international treaty that could, in effect, be used as backdoor gun control. It appears that Obama wants to use international treaties to do what congressional legislation is not able to do: further restrict the right of the American people to keep and bear arms.

Obama is using the oft-disproved contention that “90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States” as the stated basis of his support for the international treaty he is promoting. The treaty is formally known as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA) treaty. The Bill Clinton administration signed the treaty back in 1997, but the U.S. Senate has never ratified the treaty. Obama intends to change that.

Related article: Another Bright Shining Lie

To date, 33 nations in the western hemisphere have signed the treaty. The U.S. is one of four nations that have yet to ratify it. According to one senior Obama administration official, passing the treaty is a “high priority” for the President.

If ratified, the treaty would require the United States to adopt “strict licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to make them easier to trace, and establish a process for sharing information between national law enforcement agencies investigating [gun] smuggling.”

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee promises to “work for its [the CIFTA treaty’s] approval by the Senate.”

Should the Senate ratify CIFTA, Americans who reload ammunition would be required to get a license from the government, and factory guns and ammunition would be priced almost out of existence due to governmental requirements to “mark” each one manufactured. Even the simple act of adding an after-market piece of equipment to a firearm, such as a scope or bipod, or reassembling a gun after cleaning it could fall into the category of “illicit manufacturing” of firearms and require government license and oversight.

In addition, CIFTA would authorize the U.S. federal government (and open the door to international entities) to supervise and regulate virtually the entire American firearms industry. Making matters worse is the fact that, as a treaty, this Act does not have to be passed by both houses of Congress, nor is it subject to judicial oversight. All Obama needs to do in order to enact this unconstitutional and egregious form of gun control is convince a Democratic-controlled Senate to pass it.

Read moreChuck Baldwin: Obama Positioning For Backdoor Gun Control

CDC: U.S. swine flu cases now total 8; Never-before-seen form of the flu, combines pig, bird and human viruses

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Neal Van Hoeven, a post-doctoral fellow at the Centers for Disease Control, examines a culture flask as he looks for any signs of growth in a stock of influenza virus in this 2008 handout image from the CDC, released April 24, 2009. (REUTERS)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A strange new strain of flu that may have killed as many as 60 people in Mexico has also sickened eight people in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.

“Our concern has grown as of yesterday,” CDC acting director Dr. Richard Besser told reporters in a telephone briefing.

“We do not have enough info to fully assess the health threat posed by this new swine flu virus.” He said 7 of 14 Mexican samples had tested positive for the new and unusual strain of H1N1 swine flu.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Sat Apr 25, 2009 1:02am IST

Source: Reuters

Source: AP

ATLANTA – Health officials are investigating a never-before-seen form of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses and which has infected seven people in California and Texas. All the victims recovered, but the cases are a growing medical mystery because it’s unclear how they caught the virus.

None of the seven people were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, health officials said it’s not a cause for public alarm: The five in California and two in Texas have all recovered, and testing indicates some mainstream antiviral medications seem to work against the virus.

Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC said officials believe it can spread human-to-human, which is unusual for a swine flu virus.

The CDC is checking people who have been in contact with the seven confirmed cases, who all became ill between late March and mid-April.

Read moreCDC: U.S. swine flu cases now total 8; Never-before-seen form of the flu, combines pig, bird and human viruses

Mexico Shuts Some Schools Amid Deadly Flu Outbreak

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MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 16 people and possibly dozens more in recent weeks, shuttered schools from kindergarten to university for millions of young people in and around the capital on Friday and urged people with flu symptoms to stay home from work.

“We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable,” Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova told reporters late Thursday, after huddling with President Felipe Calderón and other top officials. He said the virus had mutated from pigs and had at some point been transmitted to humans.

Mexico’s flu season is usually over by now, but health officials have noticed a significant spike in flu cases. The World Health Organization reported about 800 cases of flu-like symptoms in Mexico in recent weeks, most of them among healthy young adults, with 57 deaths in Mexico City and 3 in central Mexico.

That is a worrisome pattern because seasonal flus typically cause most of their deaths among infants and old people, while pandemic flus — like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics — often strike young, healthy people the hardest.

Read moreMexico Shuts Some Schools Amid Deadly Flu Outbreak

Children tracked by satellite on public transport; Stasi ‘Bus Angels’ to report bad behaviour

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Children will be tracked by satellite on public transport and encouraged to spy on their friends and report bad behaviour, under a pilot scheme by the Welsh Assembly.


Pupils will use a picture swipe card to clock on and off the bus allowing parents to keep a closer check on their child via a website

The project is being trialled across the six North Wales counties to tackle anti-social behaviour on school buses.

Pupils will use a picture swipe card to clock on and off the bus allowing parents to keep a closer check on their child via a website.

It will help deal with a number of issues including truancy, drivers reporting and identifying ill-behaved children and monitoring a child’s whereabouts in the event of them going missing or a bus breakdown.

The scheme include ‘Bus Angels’ aged 14 and above, who covertly report incidents of bad behaviour,

Read moreChildren tracked by satellite on public transport; Stasi ‘Bus Angels’ to report bad behaviour

CDC: New H1N1 swine flu a mixture of swine flu, avian flu and human flu viruses from North America, Europe and Asia

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– CDC to mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study (2004):

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a “reassortant” virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.”

pigs
Pigs stick out their snouts through a fence at a farm. (REUTERS)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Seven people have been diagnosed with a strange and unusual new kind of swine flu in California and Texas, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday.

All seven people have recovered but the virus itself is a never-before-seen mixture of viruses typical among pigs, birds and humans, the CDC said.

“We are likely to find more cases,” the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat told a telephone briefing. “We don’t think this is time for major concern around the country.”

The CDC reported the new strain of swine flu on Tuesday in two boys from California’s two southernmost counties.

Now, five more cases have been seen — all found via normal surveillance for seasonal influenza. None of the patients, whose symptoms closely resembled seasonal flu, had any direct contact with pigs.

“We believe at this point that human-to-human spread is occurring,” Schuchat said. “That’s unusual. We don’t know yet how widely it is spreading … We are also working with international partners to understand what is occurring in other parts of the world.”

Two of the new cases were among 16-year-olds at the same school in San Antonio “and there’s a father-daughter pair in California,” Schuchat said. One of the boys whose cases was reported on Tuesday had flown to Dallas but the CDC has found no links to the other Texas cases.

STRANGE MIXTURE

Unusually, said the CDC’s Nancy Cox, the viruses all appear to carry genes from swine flu, avian flu and human flu viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.

“We haven’t seen this strain before, but we hadn’t been looking as intensively as we have,” Schuchat said. “It’s very possible that this is something new that hasn’t been happening before.”

Read moreCDC: New H1N1 swine flu a mixture of swine flu, avian flu and human flu viruses from North America, Europe and Asia

Cyber-spies breach US fighter-jet program: report

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F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Computer spies have hacked into the Pentagon’s costly program for a new fighter jet, a US newspaper reported Tuesday, but the Defense Department said sensitive technology for the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft had not been compromised.

Citing current and former government officials, The Wall Street Journal said cyber-intruders were able to copy vast amounts of data on the 300-billion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter project, also known as the F-35 Lightning II.

Related articles:
– Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project (Wall Street Journal)
– China denies it hacked into US jet program (AP)
– Pentagon denies jet program hacked (Brisbane Times)

The newspaper cited unnamed former US officials saying the attack appeared to have originated in China, which the Pentagon says has put a priority on bolstering its cyber-warfare capability.

Asked if sensitive technology for the Joint Strike Fighter had been jeopardized, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: “I’m not aware of any specific concerns.”

Whitman declined to confirm the breach of security for the F-35 but said the number of attempted attacks on the US military’s computer network were on the rise.

Read moreCyber-spies breach US fighter-jet program: report

US: Large uptick in first-time delinquent income taxpayers

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WASHINGTON, April 14 (Reuters) – As a deep recession strips Americans of their jobs, homes and investments, the 2009 U.S. tax season promises to see a large uptick in first-time delinquent income taxpayers.

“Our calls are up 280 percent,” said Richard Boggs, founder and chief executive of Los Angeles-based Nationwide Tax Relief, a firm that helps delinquent taxpayers resolve tax issues.

“We’ve seen a huge rise in what we call the rookie delinquent taxpayer,” he said. “They are incredibly scared, and they have no idea what’s going to happen to them because, God bless them, they’ve never owed before.”

Read moreUS: Large uptick in first-time delinquent income taxpayers

Germany bans Monsanto’s GM maize

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Greenpeace has long campaigned against the planting of GM maize

Germany is to ban the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) maize – the only GM crop widely grown in Europe.

The decision, announced on Tuesday by German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, is a blow to the US biotech firm Monsanto, which markets the maize.

Monsanto’s variety, called MON 810, is resistant to the corn borer, a moth larva which eats the stem.

MON 810 is controversial in the EU. Several countries have banned it, defying the European Commission.

Ms Aigner, a member of the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU), said she had concluded that “there is a justifiable reason to believe that… MON 810 presents a danger to the environment”.

The variety has been allowed in Germany since 2005. Ms Aigner said the decision to ban it now, based on new data, was purely scientific, not political. She also said it was a specific case, and not a fundamental decision against all GM crops.

In March EU governments resisted European Commission pressure to get bans on MON 810 lifted. The commission wanted Austria and Hungary to allow cultivation of MON 810. The variety is also banned in France and Greece.

Read moreGermany bans Monsanto’s GM maize

Profits of Kuwaiti listed firms nosedive 90 pct

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Kuwait Stock Exchange has dived more than 53% since late June

Global economic downturn hits 2008 profits of 172 firms listed on Kuwait Stock exchange.

KUWAIT CITY – Overall net profits of Kuwaiti firms listed on the Kuwait Stock exchange plummeted by more than 90 percent last year due to the global economic meltdown, an economic study said on Sunday.

Read moreProfits of Kuwaiti listed firms nosedive 90 pct

Gerald Celente: Fascism has come to America in broad daylight

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If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.
– New York Post

When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.
– CNN Headline News

There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about. – CNBC

Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.
– The Wall Street Journal

A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.
– The Economist


11. April 2009
Source: YouTube

See also:
– The Obama Deception
– Ron Paul: Obama Foreign Policy Identical To Bush

Schools hire bouncers as crowd control to cover classes for teachers

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Doormen were given jobs at a secondary school in the MidlandsTeaching union in warning over use of untrained staff

Bouncers and former military personnel are being hired by schools as “crowd control” to cover classes for teachers.

In one case, a state secondary school in the Midlands approached an agency which employed bouncers to take two doormen on to their staff. They were given full-time jobs as “cover supervisors” – standing in for teachers who are sick, on maternity leave or on courses.

Related article: Schools hiring bouncers instead of supply teachers to cover lessons (Daily Mail)

Teachers at the National Union of Teachers’ annual conference in Cardiff warned yesterday that too many heads were using untrained staff to take lessons. They voted to demand that every class should have a qualified teacher.

Andrew Baisley, a maths teacher from Camden, north London, said: “The idea is more about crowd control… than education. If you’re stern and loud, that’s all that’s necessary.”

He added: “I have nothing against a bouncer wanting to become a teacher and training for the job, but if you want to be a teacher you need training to work with children.”

Read moreSchools hire bouncers as crowd control to cover classes for teachers

Lloyds banksters are harassing customers with talk of home repossessions and blacklists

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Lloyds bank staff ‘puts frighteners’ on debtors

LLOYDS Banking Group staff are intimidating victims of the recession who have fallen behind on loan payments, an investigation by The Sunday Times has found.

Workers at Lloyds debt recovery department were secretly tape-recorded saying they would “put the frighteners on” and “f***” customers who owed the bank money.

The bank staff are incentivised by bonuses and some claimed to be representing a solicitors’ firm, while others pressured customers with repeated calls that left them in tears. Customers were told they would not even be able to obtain a Blockbuster video shop card if they failed to pay back their debt.

The employees would appear to be in breach of the Banking Code, which pledges to customers that banks “will be sympathetic and positive” when dealing with people in financial difficulties.

The tactics were witnessed by an undercover reporter who worked at the bank’s debt recovery office in Hove, East Sussex, for more than three weeks.

Andrew Mackinlay, the Labour MP, said he would be raising this newspaper’s findings in the Commons next week when he is due to speak in a adjournment debate on debt collection. “The current rules on the collection of debt are inadequate and need to be reviewed because they are not being enforced properly,” he said. “There need to be severe financial penalties if companies are found to be harassing customers and treating them badly.”

Read moreLloyds banksters are harassing customers with talk of home repossessions and blacklists

China Slows Purchases of U.S. and Other Bonds

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Related article: Treasuries Rise After Federal Reserve Buys Government Debt:
 The U.S. needs to borrow $3.25 trillion this fiscal year, according to primary dealer Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve a $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.

The Fed is creating pure inflation.

The USS Titanic is sinking.

HONG KONG – Reversing its role as the world’s fastest-growing buyer of United States Treasuries and other foreign bonds, the Chinese government actually sold bonds heavily in January and February before resuming purchases in March, according to data released during the weekend by China’s central bank.

China’s foreign reserves grew in the first quarter of this year at the slowest pace in nearly eight years, edging up $7.7 billion, compared with a record increase of $153.9 billion in the same quarter last year.

China has lent vast sums to the United States – roughly two-thirds of the central bank’s $1.95 trillion in foreign reserves are believed to be in American securities. But the Chinese government now finances a dwindling percentage of new American mortgages and government borrowing.

In the last two months, Premier Wen Jiabao and other Chinese officials have expressed growing nervousness about their country’s huge exposure to America’s financial well-being.

Read moreChina Slows Purchases of U.S. and Other Bonds

Obama and habeas corpus — then and now

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(updated below)

It was once the case under the Bush administration that the U.S. would abduct people from around the world, accuse them of being Terrorists, ship them to Guantanamo, and then keep them there for as long as we wanted without offering them any real due process to contest the accusations against them.  That due-process-denying framework was legalized by the Military Commissions Act of 2006.  Many Democrats — including Barack Obama — claimed they were vehemently opposed to this denial of due process for detainees, and on June 12, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that the denial of habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees was unconstitutional and that all Guantanamo detainees have the right to a full hearing in which they can contest the accusations against them.

In the wake of the Boumediene ruling, the U.S. Government wanted to preserve the power to abduct people from around the world and bring them to American prisons without having to provide them any due process.  So, instead of bringing them to our Guantanamo prison camp (where, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, they were entitled to habeas hearings), the Bush administration would instead simply send them to our prison camp in Bagram, Afghanistan, and then argue that because they were flown to Bagram rather than Guantanamo, they had no rights of any kind and Boudemiene didn’t apply to them.  The Bush DOJ treated the Boumediene ruling, grounded in our most basic constitutional guarantees, as though it was some sort of a silly game — fly your abducted prisoners to Guantanamo and they have constitutional rights, but fly them instead to Bagram and you can disappear them forever with no judicial process.  Put another way, you just close Guantanamo, move it to Afghanistan, and — presto — all constitutional obligations disappear.

Back in February, the Obama administration shocked many civil libertarians by filing a brief in federal court that, in two sentences, declared that it embraced the most extremist Bush theory on this issue — the Obama DOJ argued, as The New York Times‘s Charlie Savage put it, “that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”  Remember:  these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield.   Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country — abducted from their homes and workplaces — and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned. Indeed, the Bagram detainees in the particular case in which the Obama DOJ filed its brief were Yemenis and Tunisians captured outside of Afghanistan (in Thailand or the UAE, for instance) and then flown to Bagram and locked away there as much as six years without any charges.  That is what the Obama DOJ defended, and they argued that those individuals can be imprisoned indefinitely with no rights of any kind — as long as they are kept in Bagram rather than Guantanamo.

Read moreObama and habeas corpus — then and now

U.S. shipped 989 munitions containers to Israel week before Gaza invasion

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In the dying days of the Bush administration, and a week before Israel launched an aerial bombing campaign, followed by a land invasion of the Gaza Strip, the U.S. military shipped 989 containers of munitions to Israel.

Each container was 20-feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tonnes. The shipment reportedly reached Israel last month at Ashod, 40 kiometres north of Gaza. The huge arsenal of munitions will replenish those expended in the Gaza War.

According to Amnesty International in the UK, the shipment included white phosphorous.

The international organization says 300 of the containers had been unloaded at Ashod in March by a German cargo ship, Wehr Elb.

“We are sure that the consignment contained arms and munitions.” We have a strong suspicion that it contained white phosphorous which has been used against civilians in Gaza,” Brian Wood, head of Arms Control Campaign at Amnesty International in London said late this week.

“The cargo ship had been chartered and controlled by US Military Sealift Command. It left the USA for Israel on December 20, one week before the start of Israeli attacks on Gaza. The vessel was carrying 989 containers of munitions, each of them 20-feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tonnes,” he said.

“The world community including the Palestinians should be able to know where the remaining 680 containers on board the Wehr Elbe have gone and why the US is not transparent about the final destination of the dangerous cargo.

“A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Amnesty International that “the unloading of the entire US munitions shipment was successfully completed at Ashdod on March 22,” Wood pointed out.

Read moreU.S. shipped 989 munitions containers to Israel week before Gaza invasion

The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs

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What a wonderful world!

The development of a drug that controls a chemical used to form memories sparked heady scientific and philosophical speculation this week.

Granted, the drug has only been tested in rats, but other memory-blunting drugs are being tried in soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now.

Some think this represents an opportunity to eliminate the crippling psychic effects of past trauma. Others see an ill-advised chemical intrusion into an essential human facility that threatens to replace our ability to understand and cope with life’s inevitabilities.

Oxford University neuroethicist Anders Sandberg spoke with Wired.com about the future of memory-editing drugs. In some ways, said Sandberg, our memories are already being altered. We just don’t realize it.

Read moreThe Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs

Germany muzzles WikiLeaks

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WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE

On April 9th 2009, the internet domain registration for the investigative journalism site Wikileaks.de was suspended without notice by Germany’s registration authority DENIC.

The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks’ publication of Australia’s proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government.

The publication of the Australian list exposed the blacklisting of many harmless or political sites and changed the nature of the censorship debate in Australia. The Australian government’s mandatory internet censorship proposal is now not expected to pass the Australian senate.

On March 25 the German cabinet finalized its own proposal to introduce a nation-wide internet censorship system. Australia and Germany are the only Western democracies publicly considering such a mandatory censorship scheme.

While last week German police claimed to the news magazine Der Spiegel that they had been ignorant about WikiLeaks’ role as an international press organization, this “excuse” is surely no longer valid. Despite being questioned by the press, German authorities have still not contacted WikiLeaks or its publishers to resolve the issue, or indeed, at all. The lack of contact is inexcusable.

Read moreGermany muzzles WikiLeaks

Global News (04/11/09)

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– Old NASA Tapes Reveal Stunning New Moon Images; Resolution Unparalleled (KTVU)

– US accused of covert operations in Somalia (Observer):
Dramatic evidence that America is involved in illegal mercenary operations in east Africa has emerged in a string of confidential emails seen by The Observer.

– Treasury tells US investors to buy American (Telegraph):
US private investors are to be encouraged to “Buy American” as a number of financial houses prepare to launch investment bonds that will allow individuals to part-fund the American government’s $1 trillion (£682bn) toxic asset clean-up. (Yes, we can … buy worthless garbage.)

– Nigeria oil unrest ‘kills 1000’ (BBC News):
Violence in Nigeria’s oil region left 1,000 people dead and cost $24bn (£16bn) last year, a report says, according to an official and activist.

– Sending a Brutal Message About Human Rights (Washington Post):
For 3 1/2 years, Morales has been scouring and digitizing an extraordinary trove of millions of documents discovered by chance in a rotting warehouse. The archive contains the secret files of Guatemala’s notorious national police agency.

– Israel wants time limit on Iran nuclear talks (AFP):
“What is certain is that neither Israel, nor the Arab countries, Europe and the United States can tolerate an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon,” Silvan Shalom said. (Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons.)

– North Carolina, Colorado Banks Shut as 2009 Failures Reach 23 (Bloomberg):
The Washington-based FDIC insures deposits at 8,305 institutions with $13.9 trillion in assets. The FDIC’s insurance fund, used to reimburse a bank’s customers as much as $250,000, tumbled 45 percent in the quarter. The fund fell to $18.9 billion after 25 lenders closed last year. (So do not think for one moment that your money is safe!)

Malls shedding stores at record pace

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This will be much bigger than the subprime mortgage crisis:
– Gerald Celente: The Collapse of 2009; The Greatest Depression
– Mass Retail Closings: About 220,000 stores may close this year

Vacancy rates at strip malls, neighborhood markets and community centers accelerate as retailers confront spending slump, industry report says.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Strip malls, neighborhood centers and regional malls are losing stores at the fastest pace in at least a decade, as a spending slump forces retailers to trim down to stay afloat, according to a real estate industry report.

The consequence for consumers: Fewer stores to shop and less product choice.

In just the first quarter of 2009, retail tenants at these centers have vacated 8.7 million square feet of commercial space, according to the latest report from New York-based real estate research firm Reis.

That number exceeds the 8.6 million square feet of retail space that was vacated in all of 2008.

Reis’ report shows that store vacancy rates at malls rose 9.5% in the first quarter, outpacing the 8.9% vacancy rate registered in all of 2008, and marking the largest single-quarter jump in vacancies since Reis began publishing quarterly figures in 1999.

“These record numbers are symptomatic of the pervasive weakness that we’re seeing across economic sectors,” said Victor Calanog, director of research with Reis.

“Consumers are worried about their asset bases and they aren’t buying things,” he said. “Their home values and retirement accounts are still reeling, and consumers remain concerned about future income as job losses accelerate.”

Read moreMalls shedding stores at record pace

Goldman Sachs hires law firm to shut blogger’s site

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Goldman Sachs is attempting to shut down a dissident blogger who is extremely critical of the investment bank, its board members and its practices.


The New York headquarters of Goldman Sachs, which has instructed a Wall Street law firm to tell a blogger to stop criticising the bank Photo: Getty Images

The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.

Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled “Facts about Goldman Sachs” – the web address for which is goldmansachs666.com – just a few weeks ago.

In that time Mr Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has added a number of posts to the site, including one entitled “Does Goldman Sachs run the world?”. However, many of the posts relate to other Wall Street firms and issues.

Read moreGoldman Sachs hires law firm to shut blogger’s site

Top cop fired for allegedly using Taser on wife

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OAKWOOD, Texas (AP) — The chief of a small Central Texas town’s police department has been fired and jailed for allegedly using a Taser gun on his wife.

Former Oakwood police chief Oly Ivy is in Leon County Jail in Centerville on Wednesday, charged with aggravated assault. Bond is $100,000.

Ivy, 30, was arrested near Palestine on Monday. The city council fired him that night.

Read moreTop cop fired for allegedly using Taser on wife