November 2009 – Page 7 – Infinite Unknown

North Sea oil collapse is dragging UK economy down with it

November 7, 2009 by Infinite

Oil wealth was the secret saviour of the economy, but no longer

Production of North Sea oil has halved in the past decade Photo: EPA

What was the industry that powered Britain towards prosperity in the 1980s, and made us one of the most dynamic and successful nations in the Western world? I’ll give you a clue: it was described by a prime minister as “God’s gift” to the British economy; its revenue stream pumped ever larger amounts of cash into the Exchequer – and its subsequent collapse has helped send the public finances spiralling towards disaster.

If your first reaction was “the City”, think again. The answer is North Sea oil. One of the peculiarities of British politics – and economics – is the reluctance to take into account the critical contribution of oil to the economy. We spend so much time droning on about our excessive reliance on the financial sector that we tend to ignore this elephant in the room. But the truth is that, for the past quarter of a century, Britain has been a petro-economy. In 1999, we were producing more oil than Iraq, Kuwait or Nigeria. The following year, we pumped out almost twice as much natural gas as Iran – a country with reserves that are the envy of the world.

The result is that while we are apt to attribute the sudden spurt in Britain’s prosperity in the mid- to late-1980s to a deregulated and reinvigorated City, it owed far more to the massive windfall from the North Sea. Take a look at the numbers. In 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, the amount Britain owed, as a nation, was £88.6 billion. In the subsequent six years, taxes from the North Sea (which had been pretty much non-existent previously) generated an incredible £52.4 billion.

This was no temporary windfall: last year, thanks to record oil prices, the Treasury had its largest ever haul from the North Sea, at £13 billion. This colossal sum equates to more than 3p on the basic rate of income tax – and it was thanks in great part to such revenue that Labour was able to sustain public spending in recent years without a drastic increase in interest rates or having to pass the extra costs on to consumers in the form of higher taxes.

The benefits went far beyond the public finances. Were it not for the cushion provided by oil exports, the deficit in Britain’s current account – its international ledger – would have been one of the worst in the Western world. Moreover, much of the massive rise in business investment in the years before the financial collapse was due entirely to spending in the North Sea. In short, without oil, recent history would have been vastly different. Growth would have been weaker, consumer spending less and the public finances decidedly more parlous. That’s not to say Britain would have been an economic pygmy – just that oil is a luxury that has permitted us to live much more comfortably.

Absolute Perfection: Goldman Sachs Loses Money On Just One Trading Day In Q3

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

The Goldman 10-Q is out, providing numerous interesting datapoints for those willing to scour through them. The key one: Goldman lost money on just one trading day in Q3, making money on all the other 64.

As a reminder, even in Q2 Goldman lost money on two trading days. The statistical probability distribution of 1 out of 65 is something that not the SEC, but Richard Feynman should be looking into, as Goldman Sachs, after rewriting the lass of risk/return, is now set to redefine normal distributions and other Statistics 101 concepts.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Looking at Goldman’s risk profile, total VaR presumably declined from $221 to $189: this was due to declines in Interest Rates and Equity Prices VaRs, coupled with an increase in Currency Rates and, more importantly, Commodity Prices. Notably, the “diversification effect” of numbing VaR provided about a ($93) benefit to reducing overall risk. One wonders what will happen to Goldman’s VaR when the dollar carry trade bandwagon hits a wall and death and destruction become pervasive.

Goldman Sachs: Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

When a firm’s trading performance challenges not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions, one can merely stand back and watch in awe. Attached is a graphic of what a rigged, backstopped and manipulated market is all about.

The chart demonstrates Goldman’s YTD trading track record: out of 194 trading days in 2009, the firm has made over $100 million on 116 occasions! This alone accounts for $11.6 billion in revenue (and is likely much more as Goldman could have easily had a $1 billion trading day in the rightmost bracket as it is open ended).

Assuming midline averages for any given bucket and multiplying by the amount of days that the firm traded within these, Goldman Sachs has made $15 billion courtesy of the skewed and very highly improbable (but not impossible, thank you taxpayers and Ben Bernanke) chart.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

And a more granular read, demonstrates that as the year has progressed, Goldman has become much better at extracting larger wins and minimizing losses. The firm lost money on just 3 days in the last two quarters. Is this a ponzi scheme? We surely don’t know absent additional information (which will never be forthcoming, despite that GS is a public company).

Is this comparable to the returns generated by a ponzi scheme? Absofuckinlutely.

Can the SEC please dissolve itself already and save taxpayers at least a little money?

Ukraine Declares Martial Law Over Mystery Epidemic

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

MUST-READ!

Arrest of objectors ordered as President says “We must change the entire system of government in Ukraine”

Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko has all but declared martial law in the country as he announced yesterday that the National Security and Defense Council will become the supreme ruling authority in the wake of a mystery epidemic sweeping the country.

Yushchenko has made high ranking health ministers members of the NSDC, a government body consisting of the president himself, the chairman of parliament, the prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko (pictured), the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and other high ranking ministers.

Yushchenko told reporters Wednesday night that “the non-fulfillment of its decisions will be prosecuted,” adding “We need to change the system. We need to change the whole system of the state power organization in Ukraine. We have no time for remonstrance no time for waiting”.

The President reiterated his statements in an official address to the Ukrainian people yesterday, in which he states “Failure to comply with [NSDC] orders will immediately result in application to the law enforcement authorities.”

Congressman Ron Paul on the Copenhagen Treaty and the Cyber Security Act: ‘They are doing everything in the world to control the internet.’

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

This is the New World Order taking away your money and your freedom.

On the Copenhagen Treaty:

– Lord Christopher Monckton: Is President Obama Poised to Surrender the Constitution and US Sovereignty to World Government?

Date: 5th Nov 09

IAEA: U.N. inspectors found ‘nothing to be worried about’ at Iran site

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

A view of the underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, Iran, in a DigitalGlobe satellite image released with notations by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) on April 16, 2006.

VIENNA (Reuters) – U.N. inspectors found “nothing to be worried about” in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

Mohamed ElBaradei also told the New York Times that he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.

The nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to Western fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.

ElBaradei was quoted in a New York Times interview as saying his inspectors’ initial findings at the fortified site beneath a desert mountain near the Shi’ite holy city of Qom were “nothing to be worried about.”

UN assembly votes for probes of Gaza war crimes charges

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

Israeli soldiers prepare white phosphorus 155mm artillery shells (light green) (AFP)

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 (Reuters) – In a move that angered Israel, the U.N. General Assembly voted on Thursday to urge the Jewish state and Palestinians to investigate war crimes charges leveled in a controversial U.N. report on the Gaza war.

The Arab-drafted resolution is nonbinding and unlikely to lead to inquiries by either Israel or the militant Palestinian Hamas movement that rules Gaza into their conduct during the December-January conflict.

But the outcome was seen by Arab states as a public relations coup and a public discomfiture for Israel, which has reacted with outrage to the findings of the U.N. report, as have American Jewish groups.

Following a two-day debate, 114 countries voted for the resolution with 18 opposed — including Israel and its ally the United States — and 44 abstaining. No country has veto power in the assembly.

USDA report: H1N1 swine flu infects commercial swine in USA

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

Pork

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So what will happen to pork prices?!

Related article: Commercial pigs in Ind. test positive for H1N1 (AP)

(NaturalNews) The pork industry desperately wants you to believe “the Big Lie” about swine flu: That it can’t infect pigs, and therefore it’s perfectly safe to buy and eat lots and lots of pork products.

It’s a merry little tale, and it would be a nice little piece of information to pass along if only it were true.

But it isn’t.

H1N1 swine flu can and does infect pigs. And the safety margin for eating pork products from H1N1-infected pigs is not well known.

In fact, the USDA just confirmed H1N1 infections in commercial pigs (the kind used to make those pork chops you ate for breakfast). This is the first time that a commercial herd of pigs has been publicly acknowledged to be infected with H1N1 swine flu by the USDA. (And we all know from watching the USDA’s behavior on mad cow disease that the agency goes to great lengths to downplay any such reports…)

The timing of the announcement is, not surprisingly, highly suspicious. Just a few days ago, the USDA negotiated an end to the pork import ban placed on U.S. pork products by China. Before the ink on that agreement was even dry, the USDA — surprise! — announced they had discovered this H1N1 infection in commercial swine in the U.S.

This particular commercial herd of swine was located in Indiana. (The USDA isn’t saying where.) But here’s the best part: The USDA did not ban those pigs from being used in the food supply! At least I couldn’t find any such report after scouring the web looking for one. This means these swine flu infected pigs could end up on your dinner table (if you eat pork, that is).

This isn’t the first report of H1N1 infecting pigs in the USA, by the way. A few weeks ago, H1N1 infections were confirmed in show pigs at the Minnesota State Fair. Nobody seemed to care, since people weren’t planning on eating those show pigs (“Looks good on stage, but tastes even better on the plate!”), but now that H1N1 has been found in commercial herds, suddenly things seem different.

Rep. Eric Massa on Afghanistan: 2950 Days, 300 Billion Dollars, 911 Dead Americans – End the War, Bring back the Troops

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

And Obama, this slick elite puppet President, is escalating the war in Afghanistan.

Change you can believe in!

Added: 4. November 2009

More of Afghanistan:

CFR admits false scarcity tactic to get people to take the H1N1 swine flu vaccine

February 13, 2010November 6, 2009 by Infinite

– Hillary Clinton at the Council on Foreign Relations: We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.

– The New World Order:
Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice among others at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

CFR admits false scarcity tactic to get people to take the H1N1 vaccine

Added: 4. November 2009

Clips taken from the Council On Foreign Relations Symposium on Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics and Foreign Policy October 16th, 2009 transcript of symposium: Here

Speakers:
Arnold Monto, Professor, Epidemiology, University of Michigan; Peter Palese, Professor and Chair, Microbiology; and Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Mount Sinai School of Medicine; Lone Simonsen, Research Professor and Research Director, Department of Global Health, George Washington University;

Presider: Jon Cohen, Correspondent, Science Magazine

October 16, 2009

Conference Panel Session: Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics, and Foreign Policy: The Science
Symposium: Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics, and Foreign Policy

This session was part of a CFR symposium, Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics, and Foreign Policy, which was cosponsored with Science Magazine.

CFR File: How to get the public to take the H1N1 vaccine

Added: 3. November 2009

New Record: Americans on Food Stamps Tops 36 million – Study: Half of US Kids Will Receive Food Stamps

November 6, 2009 by Infinite

– Study: Half of US kids will receive food stamps (USA Today):
Half of American kids will live in households receiving food stamps before age 20, according to a study reported Monday in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

– Kids on food stamps: 49% up to age 20 will be in homes that get food stamps (CNN):
A staggering half on the nation’s children will be on food stamps at some point before age 20 Joshua Levs reports.

Government programs like food stamps can’t go on forever, because the US is totally broke. Prepare yourself.

A lunch meal portion waits at the Part of the Solution (POTS) soup kitchen and food pantry in the Bronx borough of New York, in this file image from December 13, 2006. The number of Americans receiving food stamp assistance soared above 36 million for the first time in August, the eighth month in a row that enrollment set a record, the U.S. Agriculture Department said. (REUTERS)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans receiving food stamp assistance soared above 36 million for the first time in August, the eighth month in a row that enrollment set a record, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday.

USDA said 36.492 million people were receiving food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In July, enrollment stood at 35.851 million. At the current rate, an estimated one in eight Americans receive benefits.

CIA Director Reveals Spec Ops Report: US Needs Hit Squads, ‘Manhunting Agency’

November 5, 2009November 5, 2009 by Infinite

Commentary:

Maybe those guys just watched ‘The Bourne Trilogy’ too often.

Oh, wait a minute:

1. The US has a nice CIA rendition and torture program:

– ACLU hits Obama administration hard over torture controversies:

“The Obama administration has now fully embraced the Bush administration’s shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU lawyer representing the five men, in a press release. “The CIA’s rendition and torture program is not a ’state secret;’ it’s an international scandal.

If the Obama administration has its way, no torture victim will ever have his day in court, and future administrations will be free to pursue torture policies without any fear of liability.”

2. The US has contractor concentration camps or gulags all over the world and floating prison ships on the sea:

– Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

– Afghanistan’s ‘Guantanamo’ poses new prison problem for Barack Obama

– Another Gitmo Grows in Afghanistan

– US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

– Ghost Ships

3. The US is fighting illegal wars.

4. The US has a exploding deficit because of stimulus programs like in Hitler’s Germany. The US will not be able to finance the deficit without destroying the dollar and the economy.

5. The US is deploying military combat units within the US in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act:

– Pentagon Wants Authority to Post Almost 400,000 Military Personnel in the US

– Northcom Combat Team Conducts “Humanitarian Support” Exercise in Maryland

– US Military To Work With FEMA During Swine Flu Pandemic

– Pentagon: 20,000 Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

– Army combat unit to deploy within U.S.

6. The US government tried to use the swine flu scare to impose mandatory vaccinations and although swine flu is no threat at all President Obama declared it a ‘national emergency’:

– H1N1 Swine Flu A National Emergency? Take A Close Look At This Chart

– CDC drafts ‘ISOLATION ORDER’ for swine flu (H1N1)

– US: Military to get mandatory swine flu shots soon

– New York judge puts hold on mandatory swine flu vaccinations

– Forced Swine Flu Vaccination Refused By Nurses In New York

– Long Island nurses to rally against mandatory swine flu vaccines

– Yes, you will! FORCED vaccinations, isolation & quarantine, health care interrogations and mandatory ‘decontaminations’

– Massachusetts ’swine flu’ legislation: A $1000 fine per day or up to 30 days in prison for each day that you do not follow the emergency declaration rules

And the swine flu vaccine is designed to destroy your health:

– Dr. Gary Null Speaking Out at the NYS Assembly Hearing on Vaccinations, Fraud, Junk Science, Crimes Against Humanity and Profit

– Doctor, cited on FOX News as expert on infectious diseases, would not give highly toxic swine flu vaccine to his children

– Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Shocking Vaccine Cover Up

– Junk Science And The Flu Vaccine Scam Revealed

– Dr. Leonard Horowitz: The CDC’s Vaccination Genocide

– Autism Explodes As Childhood Vaccines Increase

– First wave of vaccine will be mostly nasal spray, a LIVE FLU VIRUS

– Nanoparticles used in untested swine flu vaccines

– Study: Causal Connection Between Thimerosal and Autism Established

– Historical facts exposing the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines

– German health expert’s swine flu warning; Does virus vaccine increase the risk of cancer?

– D r. Russell Blaylock: Harmful Effects of Swine Flu Vaccine

– Leaked Government letter to neurologists reveals concern about swine flu vaccine

– Untested swine flu vaccine could be given to your children

– Squalene: The Swine Flu Vaccine’s Dirty Little Secret Exposed

– Former Assistant Secretary of Housing: ‘I believe one of the goals of the swine flu vaccine is depopulation’

– US: 12,000 Children To Be Swine Flu Vaccine Guinea Pigs

– Baxter Filed Swine Flu Vaccine Patent a Year Ahead of Outbreak

– Swine flu vaccine to be cleared after five-day trial !!!

– Baxter sent out 72 kilos of live bird flu material destined for vaccines confirmed by Austrian Health Minister Alois Stöger

– Baxter: Product contaminated with live H5N1 avian flu virus

– New Zealand orders 300,000 doses of untested and unapproved swine flu vaccine

– Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

7. The US will have a Civilian National Security Force and the Obama Youth:

– US wants to enlist Girl Scouts to combat pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters

– Boy Scouts Train to Become Homeland Gestapo

– Children taught to praise Obama at school

– Obama calls for Civilian National Security Force:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

8. The US elite has everything in place so that their elite puppet of choice can become the absolute dictator that has to answer to no one:

– Obama leaves Bush’s NSPD 51 intact

– G. W. Bush and Adolf Hitler signed a Directive 51

– Do the Secret Bush Memos Amount to Treason? Top Constitutional Scholar Says Yes

– Ter·ror·ist (noun): Anyone Who Disagrees with the Government

– Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children

For more information on Obama:

– Fall Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama (The Full Movie HQ)

– President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize and hell freezes over!

– The Obama Deception

9. Now who would have something against a nice, uncomplicated SS hit squad to hunt down and kill terrorists!

What could possibly go wrong?!!!

CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough (.pdf). Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.

America’s military, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies already devote thousands of people and billions of dollars to tracking down top terrorists and insurgents. But even the most successful of these efforts – like going after Iraqi militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – have been “ad hoc” efforts, with units cobbled together from different corners of the government. Report author and retired Lt. Col. George Crawford instead would like to see a permanent group with clear authority, training, doctrine and technology to go after these dangerous individuals. These “manhunting teams would be standing formations, trained to pursue their designated quarry relentlessly for as long as required to accomplish the mission,” he writes.

Sometimes, that will mean operating “in uncooperative countries.” In those cases, the teams must be prepared “to act unilaterally, with no support or coordination with local authorities, in a manner similar to that employed by Israel’s Avner team in response to the Munich Olympics massacre.” (That was the controversial unit, fictionalized in Steven Spielberg’s movie, that allegedly roamed the world, assassinating Palestinian militants in response to the 1972 Olympic attack.)

The hit squads would only be one part of the manhunting agency, according to the Joint Special Operations University monograph, uncovered by Inside Defense. “Dedicated teams must be assembled, able to respond ‘on-call’ in the event of a raid on a suspect site or to conduct independent ‘break-in and search’ operations without leaving evidence of their intrusion,” Crawford notes.

Manhunting will also “require personnel who are experts at conducting surveillance of particular facilities, personnel, or activities without arousing suspicion or being detected,” he adds. “Picture in your mind a typical city street scene, with a little old lady walking her dog, the phone repair crew descending into a manhole, two little old men playing an innocent game of checkers, or the homeless person sleeping on the park bench, and you are on the right track.”

Italy convicts 23 CIA agents in rendition trial

November 5, 2009 by Infinite

There is no change:

– ACLU hits Obama administration hard over torture controversies:

“The Obama administration has now fully embraced the Bush administration’s shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU lawyer representing the five men, in a press release. “The CIA’s rendition and torture program is not a ’state secret;’ it’s an international scandal.

If the Obama administration has its way, no torture victim will ever have his day in court, and future administrations will be free to pursue torture policies without any fear of liability.”

Here is what consequences this could have for every human being on earth. They can do this to everyone in their way:

– Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

MILAN/ROME (Reuters) – An Italian judge sentenced 23 Americans to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric, in a symbolic condemnation of the CIA “rendition” flights used by the former U.S. government.

The Americans were all tried in absentia because the United States refused to extradite them.

The U.S. State Department expressed its disappointment with the verdict, the first of its kind, but campaigners who have long complained that the renditions policy violated basic human rights said the ruling set an important precedent.

“This decision sends a clear message to all governments that even in the fight against terrorism you can’t forsake the basic rights of our democracies,” said prosecutor Armando Spataro.

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

November 5, 2009 by Infinite

This is a MUST-READ.

This is “winning the hearts and minds of people” in action. This is how the US creates real terrorists.

Soldiers wake up! You die for nothing in Afghanistan except corporate profit benefiting only the elite.

The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009.

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is “endemic” to the country’s justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a “totalitarian” state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan’s gulags “were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”

“I was absolutely stunned — it changed my whole world view in an instant — to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn’t do the torture ourselves,” Murray said.

IT’S THE PIPELINE, STUPID

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

“The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.

Pentagon Study: A Third of US Youth Too Fat, Sickly To Serve, Most of The Rest Are Too Dumb Or Have Used Too Many Drugs to Qualify

January 2, 2011November 5, 2009 by Infinite

As a side note:

The US military won’t accept people who are or were on Ritalin (Concerta, Medikinet, Equasym).

“Ritalin uncouples the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain.” (This information was given to me on a lecture by a German brain researcher that is a good friend of the source of this information, a German Prof. of Neuroscience)

The frontal lobe is the crowning achievement of humanity. You are a zombie without it, but that is not the reason that the US military won’t accept people who are or were once on Ritalin.

The effect of Ritalin (Concerta, Medikinet, Equasym) on the brain is like that of several harmful drugs combined and this will limit your combat capability a lot. Ritalin destroys the brain.

(PS: Obesity is in 99% of the cases so easy to cure.)

Study to show that when all factors are considered, 75% of military-age youth are not eligible to serve.

(USA TODAY) More than a third of American youth of military age are unfit for service, mainly because they are too fat or sickly, the Army Times reports, quoting the latest Pentagon figures.

Most of the rest are too dumb or have used too many drugs to qualify, the study shows.

The report says 35% of the 31 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified because of physical and medical issues.

“The major component of this is obesity,” Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, tells the Times. “We have an obesity crisis in the country. There’s no question about it.”

He also said young people, by and large, can’t do push-ups.

“And they can’t do pull-ups,” Gilroy says. ” And they can’t run.”

The Times says the Pentagon gets its data from the Centers for Disease Control, which has found that the percentage of youth 18 to 34 who are considered obese has jumped from 6% in 1987 to 23% now.

Here’s the Pentagon’s breakdown of the ineligible population, according to the Times:

* Medical/physical problems, 35%.
* Illegal drug use, 18%.
* Mental Category V (the lowest 10% of the population), 9%.
* Too many dependents under age 18, 6%.
* Criminal record, 5%.

Update at 1:06 p.m. ET: The Times reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a group of retired military officers will issue a report on Thursday warning that the situation is so dire it amounts to a threat to national security.

America is performing its familiar role of propping up a dictator: Robert Fisk

November 5, 2009 by Infinite

Robert Fisk, The Independent’s award-winning Middle East correspondent:

“US forces were participating in a civil war in Vietnam while claiming they were supporting democracy and the sovereignty of the country. In Lebanon in 1982, they claimed to be supporting the “democratically” elected President Amin Gemayel and took the Christian Maronite side in the civil war. And now, after Disneyworld elections, they are on the Karzai-government side against the Pashtun villagers of southern Afghanistan among whom the Taliban live. Where is the next My Lai? Journalists should avoid predictions. In this case I will not. Our Western mission in Afghanistan is going to end in utter disaster.”

Change you can believe in!

Why Karzai?

The man who spotted Karzai’s leadership potential and recruited him to “the fold” was then RAND (the Santa Monica, California think tank, mostly conducting contract research for the Pentagon) program director, now US National Security Council member and special Bush envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad. Like Karzai, Khalilzad is an ethnic Pashtun (born Mazar-i-Sharif, PhD University of Chicago). He headed Bush’s defense department transition team, and served under present US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Reagan State and Bush I Defense Departments. Also like Karzai (whom Mullah Omar once asked to represent the Taliban at the UN), Khalilzad early on supported and urged engagement of the Taliban regime, only to drop such notions when the true nature of the regime became patently obvious by 1998. And one further thing both men have in common is that in 1996/97 they advised American oil company Unocal on the US$2 billion project of a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline. In 2000, Khalilzad invited Karzai to address a RAND seminar on Afghanistan; the same year, Karzai also testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and met periodically with Christina Rocca, then a Senate aide (to Kansas Republican Sen Sam Brownback), now the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs. “To us, he is still Hamid, a man we’ve dealt with for some time,” said a state department official. Such close connections to the US foreign policy, security and intelligence community lay Karzai open to the charge of being an American puppet.
Source: Asia Times

The Times on election fraud:

– I was ordered to cover up President Karzai election fraud, sacked UN envoy says:

The head of the UN mission in Afghanistan has been accused by his former deputy of ordering a systematic cover-up to conceal the extent of electoral fraud by President Karzai.

As in Vietnam, Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption

US puppet Karzai

Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.

And now we are still trying to persuade his opponent to join a national unity government, an administration led by the man whose vote-stuffing was the very reason that same leader of the opposition – the good pseudo-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah – refused to run in a second round of elections. And Karzai got his fawning congrats from the Obama-Brown twins. So that’s OK then. Wagons Ho. For Westmoreland, read McChrystal. Send in the brave 40,000 to join the rest of the US cavalry as it fights its way west – or rather south-west – to the Khe Sanh of Afghanistan in Year Eight of the War on Terror.

The March of Folly was Barbara Tuchman’s title for her book on governments – from Troy to Vietnam-era America – that followed policies contrary to their own interests. And well may we remember the Vietnam bit. As Patrick Bury, a veteran British soldier of our current Afghan adventure, pointed out yesterday, Vietnam is all too relevant.

Back in 1967, the Americans oversaw a “democratic” election in Vietnam which gave the presidency to the corrupt ex-General Nguyen Van Thieuman. In a fraudulent election which the Americans declared to be “generally fair” – he got 38 per cent of the vote – Thieu’s opponents wouldn’t run against him because the election was a farce.

US Companies Cut Estimated 203,000 Jobs, says ADP

November 5, 2009November 5, 2009 by Infinite

Stating the obvious:

– Obama warns of more US jobs losses ahead (AFP):
“We anticipate that we’re going to continue to see some job losses in the weeks and months to come,” Obama said ahead of the release of unemployment figures for October on Friday.

The Obama administration (and the Fed) are running the US into the ground:

– US: Up to 95.2% Income Tax Rate Needed to Close Deficit in 2010

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Long-term unemployment. (Can’t show this graph often enough.)

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) — Companies in the U.S. cut an estimated 203,000 jobs in October, according to a private report based on payroll data.

The drop was the smallest in more than a year and followed with a revised 227,000 decline the prior month, data from ADP Employer Services showed today. The figures were forecast to show a decline of 198,000 jobs, according to the median estimate of 34 economists in a Bloomberg survey.

Afghan policeman kills 5 British soldiers, escapes; Taliban claims attack, says Brown

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

In this image made from video, Wednesday Nov. 4, 2009, a casualty is unloaded into an ambulance before being taken to a base hospital in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, after five British soldiers were shot dead in an attack. The five soldiers, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, were killed in the Nad-e’Ali district of Helmand Province on Nov. 3, where they were training and operating with Afghan security forces, when an Afghan policeman opened fire on them inside a checkpoint.
(AP Photo/APTN)

KABUL – An Afghan policeman opened fire on British soldiers in the volatile southern province of Helmand, killing five before fleeing, authorities said Wednesday, raising concerns about discipline within the Afghan forces and possible infiltration by insurgents.

The attack Tuesday afternoon came a month after an Afghan policeman on patrol with U.S. soldiers fired on the Americans, killing two. Training and operating jointly with Afghan police and soldiers is key to NATO’s strategy of dealing with the spreading Taliban-led insurgency and, ultimately, allowing international forces to leave Afghanistan.

Attacks such as these will heighten concern about the effectiveness of the Afghan forces.

Lt. Col. David Wakefield, spokesman for the British forces, told Sky News that the soldiers had been mentoring Afghan national police and had been working and living in the police checkpoint in Helmand’s Nad-e-Ali district.

Alistair Darling warns RBS could still need more money after biggest bailout in history!

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

Darling warns RBS could still need more money after £33.5bn bailout

Royal Bank of Scotland may need more taxpayer funds to nurse the state-controlled lender back to health, Alistair Darling said yesterday hours after announcing a £33.5 billion bailout package for the bank — the biggest of its kind in the world.

Unveiling details of increased bailout funds for RBS and Lloyds Banking Group, the Chancellor told MPs that RBS “may need more capital” in order to help the bank to return to stability.

The Treasury said that it would inject a further £25.5 billion of taxpayers’ funds into RBS to prop up the lender, along with a new £8 billion pot of reserves intended for emergencies only. Mr Darling also announced a new capital injection of £5.7 billion for Lloyds, in which the Government holds a 43 per cent stake. The total bailout for the two banks now stands at £76 billion, the equivalent of almost 17p in the pound for every taxpayer.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said: “They [the Government] went around boasting that they had saved the world, and they are still trying to save the British banks and they haven’t got on to saving the British economy.” He added that the extra financial help for RBS represented a “new world record” as the single biggest bailout.

The government spent £4,350 per family to bailout Britain’s banksters

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

Every family in the country is now facing a tax liability of £4,350 to prop up Britain’s banking system after Alistair Darling announced the biggest bail-out in history.

The Government is injecting a further £30bn into Lloyds and RBS.

The Chancellor confirmed that the Government would pump an extra £25.5 billion into Royal Bank of Scotland, and declared that it was the only way to keep the business alive.

Taxpayers have poured a total of £53.5 billion into RBS, including the £20 billion part-nationalisation last year and another £8 billion that was set aside as insurance against further trouble in the future.

In total, the Government has put £74 billion of taxpayers’ money into the banks, including RBS, Lloyds and HBOS, since the start of the financial crisis last year.

The Conservatives claimed the latest bail-out equated to an extra tax liability of £2,000 for every one of the 17 million families in the country. This comes on top of the £2,350 to which every household is already exposed as a result of previous attempts to prop up the financial system.

Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

This is all about looting the taxpayer and the New World Order and not about science:

– Lord Christopher Monckton: Is President Obama Poised to Surrender the Constitution and US Sovereignty to World Government?

– EU Proposes €50bn Climate Change Deal Ahead of December’s Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.

Al Gore: Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire Photo: AP

Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming sceptics scientists and even more scientists, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Gold Hits New Record High Near $1,100

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

– IMF Sold 200 Metric Tons of Gold to The Reserve Bank of India (Bloomberg)

The precious metal continues to push higher in electronic trading after closing at an all-time high in the previous session.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gold rose to a record high Wednesday, extending gains from the previous session.

Gold for December delivery surged $5.60 to $1,090.40 an ounce in electronic trading after hitting an all-time high of $1,096.20 earlier in the session. On Tuesday, gold closed at a record $1084.90 an ounce.

Gold surged more than $30 in the previous session after the International Monetary Fund sold 200 metric tons of the precious metal to India’s central bank.

Twenty Reasons Why Vitamin D Is Better Than The Swine Flu Vaccine

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

More on Vitamin D:
– Michael Holick M.D.,Ph. D.: Vitamin D and Prevention of Chronic Diseases
– Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D (Flashback)
– US: Vitamin D deficiency common in children
– Doctor questions value of vaccines
– Vitamin D is ray of sunshine for multiple sclerosis patients

(NaturalNews) The news is out: Vitamin D is better than the swine flu vaccine at halting H1N1 infections. In fact, without vitamin D, chances are that a vaccine won’t generate much of an immune response in the first place.

That’s because vitamin D is essential for healthy, active immune function. That’s just one of the reasons smart people are choosing vitamin D instead of the swine flu vaccine. Here are nineteen more reasons:

Protect your child from swine flu vaccinations: A letter for your school principal (and nursing staff)

November 4, 2009 by Infinite

– H1N1 Swine Flu A National Emergency? Take A Close Look At This Chart

Parents: Send this note to your school principal if you wish to protect your child from swine flu vaccinations

(NaturalNews) After reading about the forced vaccination of a Brooklyn schoolgirl who ended up in the hospital, many parents are concerned about how they might protect their own children from school-based vaccination schemes.

To help parents protect their children, I’ve written a letter that you may copy, modify and use as a warning to the principal of the school(s) where your own children are students. This letter will serve as a warning to the school principal that if your child is vaccinated without your permission, you will unleash a hellstorm of legal action and media attention that every school principal desperately wishes to avoid. (Feel free to modify this letter to tone down the language a bit if you already have a friendly relationship with your local school principal.)

Once you’re satisfied with the language, print and sign this letter, then have it notarized so the signing date can be proven in court. When that’s complete, mail a copy to your school using registered mail (so you have proof it was delivered), then print off another copy for your child to carry with them at all times.

Prof. William Black: Timothy Geithner ‘Burned Billions,’ Shafted Taxpayers on CIT Loan

November 3, 2009 by Infinite

Every bailout only increased the problems the US will have to face in the future. The bailout money just went to Wall Street and did nothing for the people.

Another one of the nation’s largest lenders has filed for bankruptcy. On the brink for months, CIT filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sunday.

The prepackaged plan allows CIT to restructure its debt while trying to keep badly needed loans flowing to thousands of mid-sized and small businesses. The plan keeps CIT’s operations alive and makes it possible for the company to exit bankruptcy by year’s end.

But here’s the bad news: While senior debt holders will only lose 30% of their investment, we, the U.S. taxpayer, will lose the entire $2.3 billion we lent the company this summer.

William Black, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law is dumbfounded. “We put ourselves on the hook in a completely inept way where we lose first. We lose entirely as the taxpayers.”

Black, a former top federal banking regulator, blames Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for negotiating such a bad deal on behalf of the American public.

His argument goes as follows:

The government was in no way obligated to lend the struggling CIT money and, in fact, initially refused to provide it bailout funds. More importantly, being the lender of last resort, the government should have guaranteed we’d be the first to get paid if CIT eventually filed Chapter 11. By failing to do so, “it’s like he [Geithner] burned billions of dollars again in government money, our money, gratuitously,” says Black.