March 2010 – Page 5 – Infinite Unknown

Papandreou Gives EU One Week to Seal Aid Plan as Germany Pushes IMF Option

March 18, 2010March 18, 2010 by Infinite

– Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

– Greece: 2009 Budget Deficit Was Just Revised From 12.2% To 16% Of GDP!

– The CDS Puppetmaster Behind It All And The Ever Increasing Parallels Between AIG And Greece

The people will have to pay the bill …

… and the elite that controls the banksters, the governments, the media and the central banks always gains more money, power and control.

George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, gestures during a press briefing at the European Union Parliament headquarters in Brussels, on March 18, 2010. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou set a one-week deadline for the European Union to craft a financial aid mechanism for Greece, challenging Germany to give up its doubts about a rescue package.

Papandreou said he may turn to the International Monetary Fund to overcome Greece’s debt crisis unless leaders agree to set up a lending facility at a summit March 25-26. The IMF option has already been dismissed by European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who say it would show the EU can’t solve its own crises.

“It’s an opportunity to make a decision next week at the summit,’’ Papandreou told reporters in Brussels today. “This is an opportunity we should not miss. When you have that instrument in place, that could be enough to tell the markets hands off, no speculation, let this country do what it’s doing.”

Record: National Debt Up $2 Trillion in Just 421 Days on Obama’s Watch

March 17, 2010 by Infinite

‘Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” Obama said in a 2006 floor speech that preceded a Senate vote to extend the debt limit. “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.’

Exactly right!

The latest posting from the Treasury Department shows the National Debt has increased over $2 trillion since President Obama took office.

The debt now stands at $12.6 trillion. On the day Mr. Obama took office it was $10.6 trillion.

President George W. Bush still holds the record for the most debt run up on his watch: $4.9 trillion. But it took him over four years to rack up the first two trillion dollars in debt. It has taken Mr. Obama 421 days.

But the Obama Administration routinely blames the Bush Administration for inheriting a budget surplus and turning it into years of record-breaking deficits and debt — and then leaving it on the doorstep of the new president.

The IRS … Your New Facebook Friend

March 17, 2010 by Infinite

Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites:

EFF has posted documents shedding light on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. The records, obtained from the IRS and DOJ Criminal Division, are the first in a series of documents that will be released through a FOIA case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic.

One of the most interesting files is a 2009 training course that describes how IRS employees may use various Internet tools — including social networking sites and Google Street View — to investigate taxpayers.

The IRS should be commended for its detailed training that clearly prohibits employees from using deception or fake social networking accounts to obtain information. Its policies generally limit employees to using publicly available information. …

The documents released by the IRS also include excerpts from the Internal Revenue Manual explaining that employees aren’t allowed to use government computers to access social networking sites for personal communication, and cautioning them to be careful to avoid any appearance that they’re speaking on behalf of the IRS when making personal use of social media.

Computer World, IRS, DOJ Use Social Media Sites to Track Deadbeats, Criminal Activity
PC Magazine, EFF Describes How Govt. Gets Info From Social Sites
PC World, Your Next Facebook ‘Friend’ Could be a Federal Agent
Web CPA, IRS Uses Social Networks for Tax Probes
Wired News, Undercover Feds on Social Networking Sites Raises Questions
ZDNet, The IRS and FBI Are Looking for You on Facebook

Pharma Backed Australian of the Year Psychiatrist Wants Millions in Government Funding for Brave New World of “Pre-Drugging” Kids

March 17, 2010 by Infinite

Who is Patrick McGorry and what does he promote? He’s a psychiatrist just named Australian of the Year for his work in “youth mental health reform.” What does that reform consist of? What he calls a “new form of climate change.” It sure is.

[See TIME Magazine Article “Drugs Before Diagnosis?”]

He not only promotes youths being put on antipsychotics and antidepressants, cited by international drug regulatory agencies as causing hallucinations, hostility, personality change, life-threatening diabetes, strokes, suicide and death, McGorry goes a giant step further-drug them before they’ve even developed a “psychiatric” disorder.

The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AHRPP) likens such concepts to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of-but do not have-breast cancer.”[i]

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed “serious concerns” about child drugging and Senate investigations in the United States have found high profile psychiatrists who were pharmaceutically funded and using fraudulent research being among the heaviest promoters of psychiatric drug use on children. While the rest of the world is experiencing serious alarm at the rampant use of deadly psychiatric drugs on children, McGorry pushes full steam ahead to increase the amount of children being needlessly subjected to psychiatry’s most powerful drugs-antidepressants and antipsychotics.

His theory and practices are so controversial that even his colleagues in the United States have backed away from it. And a parallel study done in the United States based on the same theory that McGorry uses was considered an abject failure-even by the investigators themselves. Other psychiatrists have criticized McGorry’s pre-drugging practice as unethical and harmful to adolescents. More on that later.

This is especially so as the “symptoms” McGorry and cohorts invented to “pre-label” youths as potential candidates for psychosis and “schizophrenia” (to start with) are, according to one U.S. psychiatrist, “remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.”

And what was the first thing he did to capitalize on his winning his “Australian of the Year” award? He demanded the Australian government hand over another $200 million to fund more of his centers where he can drug more children. Worse, the government is entertaining the idea.

China trims holdings of Treasury securities for a third straight month

March 17, 2010March 17, 2010 by Infinite

WASHINGTON (AP) — China retained its spot as the biggest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury debt in January even as it trimmed its holdings for a third straight month. The string of declines underscored worries that the U.S. government could face much higher interest rates to finance soaring budget deficits.

The Treasury Department said Monday that China’s holdings dipped by $5.8 billion to $889 billion in January compared with December. Japan, the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, also trimmed its holdings but by a much smaller $300 million, to $765.4 billion.

Chinese Fluoride In Mass. Water Raises Concern

September 18, 2010March 17, 2010 by Infinite

Fluoride is the main ingredient in rat poison and Prozac. It is also used in Sarin nerve gas. It must be safe!

Hitler and Stalin used it in the concentration camps and gulags.

Fluoride also uncouples the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain, destroys the pineal gland and creates cancer.

(As a sidenote: Fluorine is the most reactive element on planet earth.)

Fluoride is not added to prevent tooth decay. Fluoride in the amounts you and especially children are exposed to every day with fluoridated water destroys slowly & totally the entire bone structure of the human body.

– Health Professionals Call for End to Water Fluoridation
Over 1,600 Professionals Call for an End to Fluoridation of Drinking Water

– Professional Perspectives: Fluoride in Tap Water

You really should be very happy, if they pull fluoride from the water supply.

Chinese Fluoride In Mass. Water Raises Concern

Team 5 Investigates After Amesbury Pulls Sodium Fluoride From Water Supply

AMESBURY, Mass. — Fluoride is added to the water most of us drink because the government believes it’s a safe and inexpensive way to prevent tooth decay.

However, Team 5 Investigates found the Amesbury Water Department pulled fluoride from its system amid concerns about its supply from China.

Department of Public Works Director Rob Desmarais said after he mixes the white powder with water, 40 percent of it will not dissolve.

“I don’t know what it is,” Desmarais said. “It’s not soluble, and it doesn’t appear to be sodium fluoride. So we are not quite sure what it is.”

Desmarais said the residue clogs his machines and makes it difficult to get a consistent level of fluoride in the town’s water.

Since April the fluoride pumps in Amesbury have been turned off and they will stay that way until Desmarais can find out what’s in the fluoride that’s imported from China.

Both state and federal health officials told Team 5 Investigates that Chinese fluoride is safe.

The Department of Public Health said it believes that more than 650,000 customers in 44 Massachusetts communities are getting the flouride in question and only Amesbury has temporarily stopped using it.

However, they were unable to say with certainty which of the other 43 communities are actually using the sodium fluoride from China in its water.

Obamacare: Now This Is BLATANT Manipulation Of The Healthcare Market

March 17, 2010 by Infinite

Insider manipulation to manipulate public opinion.

We noticed this earlier, but didn’t quite process it.

The opening trade on the Intrade healthcare market this morning was around 35, well below what the bid/ask are at (around 50).

As a reader points out, someone obviously attempted a MAJOR selling attack today, to shift the sentiment — and we actually buy this, since even now CNBC is quoting the contract during the day. Right now the bid is back above 50, but if you want evidence that there’s manipulation

Print Joe Weisenthal | Mar. 17, 2010, 9:21 AM

Source: The Business Insider

Russia: Bloggers Battle Corrupt Bureaucrats

March 17, 2010March 17, 2010 by Infinite

Russian blogger Alexander Malyutin as he speaks in his office in Moscow in 2009

MOSCOW — It started with a golden bed and African drummers and led to Russia’s latest, surprising, political duel pitting tenacious bloggers against bureaucrats whose excesses went a step too far.

Russians typically shrug their shoulders at the lavish lifestyles of government officials, assuming nothing can be done about bureaucrats who take bribes and pocket state funds.

But when Russia’s interior ministry announced plans to buy a golden bed, it raised an outcry — and revealed the potential of the Internet for stirring up outrage against entrenched corruption.

While the docile, state-dominated media looks the other way, a small but determined group of Russian bloggers is challenging corrupt bureaucrats, rallying public opinion and goading prosecutors into action.

Their blogs have attracted unanticipated popularity, reflecting deep-seated anger at the high-handed behavior of officials in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government.

“I didn’t expect the blog to become so popular,” said Alexander Malyutin, who runs a blog devoted to exposing suspicious government tenders, including the interior ministry’s infamous golden bed purchase.

Last August, the ministry announced plans to buy 24 million rubles (800,000 dollars) worth of furniture, including a bed “covered with a thin layer of 24-carat gold,” according to the official tender documents.

The documents were posted deep within a website where all the government’s purchases must be published, under a law passed in 2005 during one of the Kremlin’s periodic efforts to root out corruption.

After bloggers and journalists exposed the plans, the ministry defended itself from ridicule by saying the bed was needed for a special VIP guesthouse in Moscow where it hosts foreign officials.

Nancy Pelosi may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it!

March 16, 2010 by Infinite

It’s getting better every day. Who needs Congress anyway?

Nancy Pelosi

(Washington Post) — After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

“It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi’s plan would be unconstitutional.

“It’s very painful and troubling to see the gymnastics through which they are going to avoid accountability,” Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the senior Republican on the House Rules Committee, told reporters. “And I hope very much that, at the end of the day, that if we are going to have a vote, we will have a clean up-or-down vote that will allow the American people to see who is supporting this Senate bill and who is not supporting this Senate bill.”

US shipping hundreds of powerful bunker buster bombs for coming attack on Iran

June 21, 2017March 16, 2010 by Infinite

Chossudovsky: US will start WW3 by attacking Iran

“Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Allow the president to invade a (neighboring) nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure. “
– Abraham Lincoln

Any attack on Iran will start WW III. I told you before that it is the plan of the elite to start WW III.

Final destination Iran?

Exclusive: Rob Edwards – The Sunday Herald

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. “US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he added.

Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs.

Although the story was not confirmed at the time, the new evidence suggests that it was accurate.

Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders’ website by the US navy.

A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia.

Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs.

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. “US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he added.

Obama agencies invoking secrecy provision more often than under Bush

March 16, 2010 by Infinite

Transparency we can believe in!

One day after being sworn into office, President Barack Obama instructed federal agencies to ensure government transparency by complying with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act law.

“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government,” Obama wrote in a memo to federal agencies Jan. 21, 2009. “The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public,” the newly-installed president continued. “They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and down by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.”

One year later, Obama’s requests for transparency have apparently gone unheeded. In fact a provision in the Freedom of Information Act law that allows the government to hide records that detail its internal decision-making has been invoked by Obama agencies more often in the past year than during the final year of President George W. Bush.

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

US Army considered attack on Wikileaks

March 16, 2010 by Infinite

* Mole hunt mulled

It is claimed that leaked documents show the US Army felt sufficiently threatened by security breaches on Wikileaks that it considered ways it might wreck the site.

A 2008 report by the Army Counterintelligence Center, classified Secret, calls for a mole hunt and prosecutions to undermine potential sources’ trust in Wikileaks.

“Wikileaks.org uses trust as a center of gravity by assuring insiders, leakers, and whistleblowers who pass information to Wikileaks.org personnel or who post information to the Web site that they will remain anonymous,” the report said.

“The identification, exposure, or termination of employment of or legal actions against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others from using Wikileaks.org to make such information public.”

None of the site’s sources have yet been publicly exposed, however. The site aims to guarantee their anonymity, and the counterintelligence assessment notes a “high level of sophistication in [staff’s] efforts to provide a secure operating environment for whistleblowers”.

The report is available in full, here (pdf), at Wikileaks.

The investigation appears to have been prompted by US Army leaks in 2007. Documents posted to Wikileaks included embarrassing internal reports on operations in Iraq, and equipment lists for Afganistan and Iraq. One report obtained by Wikileaks, on the 2004 US offensive on Fallujah, received particular attention from counterintelligence analysts.

“The leaked report could also provide foreign governments, terrorists, and insurgents with insight into successful asymmetric warfare tactics, techniques, and procedures that could be used when engaging US or Coalition forces,” they wrote.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: ‘America’s Second-Rate Broadband Is Dragging Us Down’

March 16, 2010March 16, 2010 by Infinite

DAVOS/SWITZERLAND – Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Executive Officer, Google, USA; Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 talks during the session ‘Technology for Society’ at the Annual Meeting 2010 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 29, 2010 in the Congress Centre.

Power. Clean water. The Interstate highway system. It’s easy to forget that the advantages of modern American life result from basic infrastructure investments made by earlier generations.

Tomorrow the FCC will release a national broadband strategy. The plan will set goals for expanding broadband to unserved and under-served areas, promote greater speeds, and drive consumer demand. It will harness this communications technology to urgent national priorities, such as jobs, education, health, energy, and security. In short, the plan will lay the groundwork for investing in America’s future.

Yes, the Internet was invented in the United States. Yes, we once led the world in broadband development. But now, networks in many countries, from Western Europe to East Asia, are faster and more advanced than our own. Long after we recover from this recession, this broadband gap will be a dead weight on American businesses and workers, unless we act now.

Timmy-Gate: Did Geithner Help Hide Lehman’s Fraud?

March 16, 2010 by Infinite

Timmy-Gate Takes a Turn For The Worse: Did Geithner Help Lehman Hide Accounting Tricks?

Timothy Geithner at the Council on Foreign Relations

By L. Randall Wray

L. Randall Wray, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute. His research expertise is in: financial instability, macroeconomics, and full employment policy.

Just when you thought that nothing could stink more than Timothy Geithner’s handling of the AIG bailout, a new report details how Geithner’s New York Fed allowed Lehman Brothers to use an accounting gimmick to hide debt. The report, which runs to 2200 pages, was released by Anton Valukas, the court-appointed examiner. It actually makes the AIG bailout look tame by comparison. It is now crystal clear why Geithner’s Treasury as well as Bernanke’s Fed refuse to allow any light to shine on the massive cover-up underway.

Recall that the New York Fed arranged for AIG to pay one hundred cents on the dollar on bad debts to its counterparties-benefiting Goldman Sachs and a handful of other favored Wall Street firms. (see here) The purported reason is that Geithner so feared any negative repercussions resulting from debt write-downs that he wanted Uncle Sam to make sure that Wall Street banks could not lose on bad bets. Now we find that Geithner’s NYFed supported Lehman’s efforts to conceal the extent of its problems. (see here) Not only did the NYFed fail to blow the whistle on flagrant accounting tricks, it also helped to hide Lehman’s illiquid assets on the Fed’s balance sheet to make its position look better. Note that the NY Fed had increased its supervision to the point that it was going over Lehman’s books daily; further, it continued to take trash off the books of Lehman right up to the bitter end, helping to perpetuate the fraud that was designed to maintain the pretense that Lehman was not massively insolvent. (see here)

Geithner told Congress that he has never been a regulator. (see here) That is a quite honest assessment of his job performance, although it is completely inaccurate as a description of his duties as President of the NYFed. Apparently, Geithner has never met an accounting gimmick that he does not like, if it appears to improve the reported finances of a Wall Street firm. We will leave to the side his own checkered past as a taxpayer, although one might question the wisdom of appointing someone who is apparently insufficiently skilled to file accurate tax returns to a position as our nation’s chief tax collector. What is far more troubling is that he now heads the Treasury – which means that he is not only responsible for managing two regulatory units (the FDIC and OCC), but also that he has got hold of the government’s purse strings. How many more billions or trillions will he commit to a futile effort to help Wall Street avoid its losses?

Spies: The History of the Honey Trap

March 16, 2010March 16, 2010 by Infinite

Five lessons for would-be James Bonds and Bond girls — and the men and women who would resist them.

MI5 is worried about sex. In a 14-page document distributed last year to hundreds of British banks, businesses, and financial institutions, titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage,” the famed British security service described a wide-ranging Chinese effort to blackmail Western businesspeople over sexual relationships. The document, as the London Times reported in January, explicitly warns that Chinese intelligence services are trying to cultivate “long-term relationships” and have been known to “exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships … to pressurise individuals to co-operate with them.”

This latest report on Chinese corporate espionage tactics is only the most recent installment in a long and sordid history of spies and sex. For millennia, spymasters of all sorts have trained their spies to use the amorous arts to obtain secret information.

The trade name for this type of spying is the “honey trap.” And it turns out that both men and women are equally adept at setting one — and equally vulnerable to tumbling in. Spies use sex, intelligence, and the thrill of a secret life as bait. Cleverness, training, character, and patriotism are often no defense against a well-set honey trap. And as in normal life, no planning can take into account that a romance begun in deceit might actually turn into a genuine, passionate affair. In fact, when an East German honey trap was exposed in 1997, one of the women involved refused to believe she had been deceived, even when presented with the evidence. “No, that’s not true,” she insisted. “He really loved me.”

Those who aim to perfect the art of the honey trap in the future, as well as those who seek to insulate themselves, would do well to learn from honey trap history. Of course, there are far too many stories — too many dramas, too many rumpled bedsheets, rattled spouses, purloined letters, and ruined lives — to do that history justice here. Yet one could begin with five famous stories and the lessons they offer for honey-trappers, and honey-trappees, everywhere.

1. Don’t Follow That Girl

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli technician who had worked in Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility, went to the British newspapers with his claim that Israel had developed atomic bombs. His statement was starkly at odds with Israel’s official policy of nuclear ambiguity — and he had photos to prove it.

The period of negotiation among the newspapers was tense, and at one point the London Sunday Times was keeping Vanunu hidden in a secret location in suburban London while it attempted to verify his story. But Vanunu got restless. He announced to his minders at the paper that he had met a young woman while visiting tourist attractions in London and that they were planning a romantic weekend in Rome.

The newspaper felt it had no right to prevent Vanunu from leaving. It was a huge mistake: Soon after arriving in Rome with his lady friend, Vanunu was seized by Mossad officers, forcibly drugged, and smuggled out of Italy by ship to Israel, where he was eventually put on trial for treason. Vanunu served 18 years in jail, 11 years of it in solitary confinement. Released in 2004, he is still confined to Israel under tight restrictions, which include not being allowed to meet with foreigners or talk about his experiences. Britain has never held an inquiry into the affair.

Secret Pentagon Spy Network Hired To ‘Track And Kill’

March 15, 2010 by Infinite

A Pentagon official has been accused of hiring a secret network of private contractors to spy on militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan so they could be hunted and killed.

The employee is said to have paid firms using former members of the special forces and CIA under the cover of an innocuous government scheme to gather tribal and cultural information.

Their reports were then passed to military and intelligence units so they could kill militants and target insurgent camps, officials told The New York Times.

It was not clear if Michael D Furlong, the Pentagon official at the centre of the accusations, had approval for the scheme but officials said they had become alarmed he was running an off-the-books spy agency.

The network is alleged to have been blown when the CIA chief in Kabul personally complained to the US Defence Department.

His operation has now been shut down and he is subject to criminal investigation for offences including contract fraud.

One official said: “While no legitimate intelligence operations got screwed up, it’s generally a bad idea to have freelancers running around a war zone pretending to be James Bond.” Government officials alleged Mr Furlong could have improperly siphoned off funds from a scheme to supply commanders with information on the region’s tribes.

In 2008, he was put in charge of a £15m ($22m) budget to hire private contractors to glean political and tribal information for Nato commanders.

Goldman Sachs Squeezes Hedge Funds in $110 Billion ‘Collateral Arbitrage’

March 15, 2010 by Infinite

Goldman Sachs Demands Collateral It Won’t Dish Out

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., speaks during a session on day two of the World Economic Forum in Davos, on Jan. 24, 2008. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

March 15 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., two of the biggest traders of over-the- counter derivatives, are exploiting their growing clout in that market to secure cheap funding in addition to billions in revenue from the business.

Both New York-based banks are demanding unequal arrangements with hedge-fund firms, forcing them to post more cash collateral to offset risks on trades while putting up less on their own wagers. At the end of December this imbalance furnished Goldman Sachs with $110 billion, according to a filing. That’s money it can reinvest in higher-yielding assets.

“If you’re seen as a major player and you have a product that people can’t get elsewhere, you have the negotiating power,” said Richard Lindsey, a former director of market regulation at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who ran the prime brokerage unit at Bear Stearns Cos. from 1999 to 2006. “Goldman and a handful of other banks are the places where people can get over-the-counter products today.”

US: Foreclosures, Homes ‘Under Water’, Mortgage Delinquencies

March 15, 2010 by Infinite

– Metro Atlanta foreclosures set new monthly record (Atlanta Journal Constitution):

Metro Atlanta’s foreclosure problem keeps getting worse.

The number of foreclosure notices this month — 12,568 — set a new record for metro Atlanta, according to data just released by Equity Depot.

Foreclosure notices in the 13-county metro area jumped 22 percent when compared with February and 24 percent compared with March of last year, Alpharetta-based Equity Depot said.

This month’s number also is greater than the previous monthly record of 12,318 notices, set in September of last year.

– Foreclosures are still on the Rise in Illinois (The Chicago 77):

Foreclosures in Illinois increased 22% in February, 2010. The high foreclosure rate can be attributed to the high unemployment rate and declining home prices. With the declining market many people are finding themselves underwater in their homes. Meaning . . . they owe more on their home than their home is worth.
….
Lucky for those that live in Illinois, the state had the lovely distinction of having 17,312 properties in foreclosure, which is the fourth-highest state nationwide. California ranked number one

– Foreclosures: February ties November for highest number of foreclosure filings (Daily Press):

Foreclosure filings were reported on 134 properties in Hampton last month.

That’s roughly one for every 449 housing units, ranking it 12th highest among Virginia cities and counties for its foreclosure rate, according to RealtyTrac’s latest foreclosure report.

Across the Peninsula, foreclosure filings were reported on 361 properties. That’s ties November for the highest monthly number recorded.

February’s 361 filings are up 18 percent from January and up 57 percent from February 2009.

– Connecticut Foreclosures Up 3 Percent in February (New York Times):

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A new report says the number of foreclosures in Connecticut increased 3.4 percent from January to February, despite a national decline.

Foreclosure tracking firm RealtyTrac Inc. released its monthly report Thursday. It says there were nearly 2,300 foreclosure filings in the state last month, compared with about 2,200 in January.

Total foreclosures nationwide decreased 2 percent from January to February, raising hopes that the housing crisis may be ending. RealtyTrac says more than 308,000 households nationwide, or one in every 418 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice in February.

– Md. foreclosure filings skyrocket in February (Washington Examiner):

Prince George’s County saw nearly 1,800 foreclosure filings last month — about one-third of Maryland’s total — as state and federal officials scramble to find a solution to the unrelenting mortgage crisis.

Nine of the 10 Washington-area ZIP codes with the most foreclosure filings in February were in Prince George’s. The county’s filings increased 71 percent from last February, pushing Maryland to the 10th-worst rate in the country, according to the online foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac.

Just a few years ago, Northern Virginia was ground zero for the foreclosure crisis; Prince William County had more than 6,500 actual foreclosures in 2008, according to data from the county’s assessments office. Over the past 16 months, though, the crisis has shifted from the Virginia suburbs to Maryland.

– Foreclosure starts up nearly 20 percent in California (Central Valley Business Times):

After reaching the lowest level in a year in January, Notice of Defaults, the start of the foreclosure process, increased by 19.7 percent in February, according to a report Monday from ForeclosureRadar Inc., a Discovery Bay-based foreclosure information company that says it tracks every California foreclosure.

– More than half of mortgaged homes in St. Lucie, Martin are ‘under water’ (Vero Beach Press-Journal):

More than half of mortgaged residential properties in St. Lucie and Martin counties are “under water,” a recent report by a company that tracks home sales, price trends and foreclosures shows.

The report by California-based First American CoreLogic found that 56 percent, or 62,696, of all residential properties with a mortgage in the Port St. Lucie Metropolitan Statistical Area were in a negative equity position for the fourth quarter of 2009. That’s more than double the national rate of 24 percent.

The Port St. Lucie Metropolitan Statistical Area encompasses St. Lucie and Martin counties. First American did not report similar data for Indian River County.

Another 3 percent, or 3,345, in the two-county area had equity of less than 5 percent.

– Jacksonville mortgage delinquencies rise above 10% (Florida Times-Union):

The number of Jacksonville homeowners who have fallen behind on mortgage payments rose steadily over the past three years and today stands at more than 10 percent, according to a national credit monitoring company.

Mortgage delinquencies of 60 days or more were 2.2 percent at the end of 2006 – a figure that grew to 10.3 percent by the close of 2009, according to TransUnion LLC, a company that maintains credit histories on about 500 million people internationally.

Moscow irked by bogus Georgian TV report of Russian invasion

March 15, 2010 by Infinite

Georgian opposition denounces phony TV war report

Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili speaks during his meeting with the residents of the Rachisubani settlement, some 50 km (31 miles) south-west of the capital Tbilisi, Sunday, March 14, 2010. Georgians have been panicked by a hoax television news program announcing the Russian army had invaded and killed President Mikhail Saakashvili. The private television station Imedi, Georgia’s third-most popular channel, showed the faux report on its Khronika news bulletin at 8 p.m. Saturday, a time when many of the country’s 4 million population would have been watching. (AP Photo/Irakly Gedenidze, Presidential Press Service, Pool)

TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s opposition politicians on Monday denounced the government over a hoax television broadcast that said Russia had invaded and the president had been killed.

The broadcast Saturday, which simulated a news program, sparked wide anxiety in Georgia, which is still traumatized by the August 2008 war in which Russian troops advanced deep into the country.

Cellular phone networks briefly went down as panicked Georgians phoned each other. The show was identified as fictional only at its beginning — which many viewers apparently missed — and its end 30 minutes later.

Imedi, the station that aired the show, is private, but its director is a former chief of staff for President Mikhail Saakashvili. Opponents characterized the broadcast as government propaganda, aimed at discrediting them.

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI
March 15, 2010

Full article: AP

Moscow irked by bogus TV report of Russian invasion

The fake news report aired on Georgian TV was a provocation aimed at jeopardizing regional stability and security, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday.

The Imedi TV channel sparked panic in Georgia on Saturday with a broadcast that said Russian tanks had invaded the capital and the country’s president was dead.

“The provocative TV show has caused tangible damage to security and stability in the region, significantly heightening the intensity of an already complex situation,” Andrei Nesterenko said.

He added that the move was “irresponsible and immoral” especially with regard to Georgian society where it “caused panic.”

The broadcast, which used the channel’s normal news graphics, began with a warning that the program showed a sequence of possible events that could occur “if Georgian society is not united against Russia’s plans.”

Imedi head Georgy Arveladze said on Monday that the special report was a warning against a possible danger.

“Our objective was not to scare society but to show the dangers facing our country,” he said.

He added that he assumed full responsibility for the report and apologized for its negative consequences.

Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Seed Patents May Trump Antitrust Claims

March 15, 2010March 15, 2010 by Infinite

It all began with the ruling that a corporation is legally a ‘person’, which undermined the constitution and was dead wrong.

Then in another case (1980 Diamond v. Chakrabarty) those idiot supreme court judges ruled that it is OK to patent life forms, were before life forms were considered a part of nature and were not patentable.

This ruling lead to corporations patenting the genes of everything they can think of, that could later on bring them profit.

Hugh Grant, chief executive officer of Monsanto Co., speaks during an interview in Chicago, Illinois, on Jan. 8, 2010. Photographer: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

March 12 (Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., facing antitrust probes into its genetically modified seeds, may benefit from previous court rulings in which intellectual property rights trumped competition concerns, antitrust lawyers say.

The Department of Justice and seven state attorneys general are investigating whether the world’s largest seed company is using gene licenses to keep competing technologies off the market. At issue is how the St. Louis-based company sells and licenses its patented trait that allows farmers to kill weeds with Roundup herbicide while leaving crops unharmed. The company’s Roundup Ready gene was in 93 percent of U.S. soybeans last year.

“Justice is clearly trying every way it can to see whether Monsanto is exceeding its rights under the patent,” said James Weiss, a Washington-based attorney at K&L Gates LLP who helped defend Microsoft Corp. against a federal antitrust probe. “At the end of the day, they may not be able to do much with it because of the scope of those patents. In almost all the cases, the courts come out on the side of intellectual property.”

NASA Scientists Search For ‘Nemesis’ (‘Nibiru’, ‘Planet X’) An Invisible ‘Death Star’ That Circles The Sun

March 14, 2010 by Infinite

– Large ‘Planet X’ May Lurk Beyond Pluto

NASA scientists are searching for an invisible ‘Death Star’ that circles the Sun, which catapults potentially catastrophic comets at the Earth.

This diagram shows a brown dwarf in relation to Earth, Jupiter, a low-mass star and the sun. Photo: NASA

The star, also known as Nemesis, is five times the size of Jupiter and could be to blame for the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

The bombardment of icy missiles is being blamed by some scientists for mass extinctions of life that they say happen every 26 million years.

Nemesis is predicted to lie at a distance equal to 25,000 times that of the Earth from the Sun, or a third of a light-year.

Astronomers believe it is of a type called a red or brown dwarf – a “failed star” that has not managed to generate enough energy to burn like the Sun.

But it should be detectable by a heat-sensitive space telescope called WISE, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Launched last year, WISE began surveying the skies in January. It is expected to discover a 1000 brown dwarfs within 25 light-years of the Sun – right on our cosmic doorstep – before its coolant runs out in October.

Catholic Church Child Abuse: Nuns Now Also Accused

March 14, 2010March 14, 2010 by Infinite

Following recent reports about sexual abuse of children by Dutch priests, it now appears that some nuns also took advantage of their charges. Tuesday’s edition of newspaper De Telegraaf contains the story of Herman Harends, who says he was abused by nuns at a Roman Catholic boarding school he attended in the 1950s.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper NRC Handelsblad published their report on sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church two weeks ago. Since then, more and people have come forward, saying they, too, were childhood victims.

Mr Harends and his two brothers attended a boarding school in the southern Dutch town of Tegelen.
“I have not spoken out before because it is a hard claim to substantiate,” he explains, “I’m not looking for atonement or apologies, most of the nuns have died.”

“The abuse by the sisters started when I was 11. When I was in the bath they played with my penis and tried to give me an erection … They would also put my hand under their robes and into their underwear.”

China concerned about US dollar, wants reassurance

March 14, 2010March 14, 2010 by Infinite

In 2009 the Fed monetized 80% of US government debt, according to PIMCO’s Bill Gross.

The US has no credibility anymore.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao makes a point at his annual press conference after the closing of the National People’s Congress held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Sunday, March 14, 2010.
(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

BEIJING – China’s premier expressed concern about the U.S. dollar and called on Washington on Sunday to take “concrete steps” to reassure Beijing about the safety of its huge Treasury bond holdings.

“Any fluctuation in the value of the U.S. currency is a big concern for us,” Premier Wen Jiabao said at a news conference.

“We cannot afford any mistake, how slight it is, when running our financial assets,” he said. “I would like the United States to take concrete steps to reassure investors.”

China has pressed Washington to control its yawning budget deficit and prevent inflation that would erode the value of the dollar and China’s holdings.

The premier said Treasury values were a matter of the “national credibility” of the United States.

Dylan Ratigan & Eliot Spitzer on The Lehman Brothers Report

March 14, 2010 by Infinite

– Report: JPMorgan, Citigroup helped trigger Lehman collapse (Telegraph)

– Lehman bosses used accountancy gimmick to cover up debt (Times)

– EXPLOSIVE: Lehman Corruption – Where Are The Cops? (Market Ticker)

Added: March 12, 2010 MSNBC