Gerald Celente: Obama’s Financial Reform Is Just A Show


Date: 22nd Apr 10

More from Gerald Celente:

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente on ObamaCare, Dollar Devaluation And Gold

Gerald Celente: This time they will close the Banks & Wall Street (03/27/10)

Gerald Celente: ‘It’s the greatest bank robbery in world history and the banks are doing the robbing.’

Gerald Celente: ‘The Crash is Coming in 2010.’

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

Survivor, America: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse,’ Gerald Celente Says

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Terror And The Crash of 2010

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli Airport Security Expert: Full-Body Scanners Are Waste of Money

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A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a full-body scanner. (Reuters)

A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.

“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.

“That’s why we haven’t put them in our airport,” Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.

Sela, former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security at Ben Gurion.

Read moreIsraeli Airport Security Expert: Full-Body Scanners Are Waste of Money

Fed Chairman Bernanke Admits Printing $1.3 Trillion Out Of Thin Air

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Video from the Joint Economic Committee Hearing.

Watch for yourself Bernanke nod yes to printing $1.3 trillion:

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted the central bank created $1.3 trillion out of thin air to buy mortgage backed securities.  This shocking admission came from the Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capital Hill last week.  I was dumbfounded when I saw Bernanke shake his head in the affirmative as Representative Ron Paul said, “Well, where did you get the money? You created this money. So you did monetize debt, and that went into the banking system.” I was amazed he admitted this.  I looked up the original hearing on C-Span to make sure the clip was not edited.  It was not.

What is even more shocking is I could not find a single mainstream news agency that covered this revelation.  Congress just finished voting on the bitterly contested Obama health care bill that is supposed to cost nearly a trillion dollars over ten years.  (Some contend it will be more than twice that amount.)  The mainstream media doesn’t even bat an eye over the Fed creating $1.3 trillion in a little more than a year to buy worthless debt no one else will touch.  I do not get it.  I guess we could have asked the Fed to print up a trillion dollars to pay for health care and avoided that drawn out battle in Congress.

Then, Rep. Paul brings up printing another $105 billion to bailout Greece.  Bernanke answers by saying, “. . . I think one of the agreements that the G20 leaders came up with was sort of a mutual commitment to put more money into the IMF as a way of addressing the financial crisis around the world. . .” Notice how Bernanke used the term “mutual commitment.” I think what that really means is an agreement between all the G-20 nations of a “mutual debasement of their currencies.” I think this is why gold has been rising in price around the globe.  I have been saying for months that we are going to have some very big inflation.  (Real inflation is already at 9.5% according to shadowstats.com.)  I wrote about this last November in a post called “The Fix Is In.”

I think Bernanke just opened the Fed playbook and revealed money will be printed to fix all financial problems.  I don’t think he’s even trying to hide it anymore.  Rep. Paul also brought up the big debt trouble coming soon with many, many bankrupt cities and states such as Los Angeles and California.  I think they will all be bailed out one way or another by the printing press.

Read moreFed Chairman Bernanke Admits Printing $1.3 Trillion Out Of Thin Air

Exclusive: WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients, cancelling their health insurance

Reuters has removed the article. See Google cache.

Just don’t get sick and PAY!

In case you get sick you will lose your mandatory health insurance.

It’s called ObamaCare.


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(Reuters) – Shortly after they were diagnosed with breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. There was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. And there was Patricia Reilling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.

Neither of these women knew about the other. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders — more than any other health insurance company in the United States.

The women paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, neither had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women’s specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as “rescission,” for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.

But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.

The disclosures come to light after a recent investigation by Reuters showed that another health insurance company, Assurant Health, similarly targeted HIV-positive policyholders for rescission. That company was ordered by courts to pay millions of dollars in settlements.

In his push for the health care bill, President Barack Obama said the legislation would end such industry practices.

But many critics worry the new law will not lead to an end of these practices. Some state and federal regulators — as well as investigators, congressional staffers and academic experts — say the health care legislation lacks teeth, at least in terms of enforcement or regulatory powers to either stop or even substantially reduce rescission.

“People have this idea that someone is going to flip a switch and rescission and other bad insurance practices are going to end,” says Peter Harbage, a former health care adviser to the Clinton administration. “Insurers will find ways to undermine the protections in the new law, just as they did with the old law. Enforcement is the key.”

Read moreExclusive: WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients, cancelling their health insurance

Computerized Front-Running: How a Computer Program Designed to Save the Free Market Turned Into a Monster

Ellen Brown is the author of Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. She can be reached through her website.


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By ELLEN BROWN

Market commentators are fond of talking about “free market capitalism,” but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more.  It has morphed into what his TV co-host Stacy Herbert calls “rigged market capitalism”: all markets today are subject to manipulation for private gain.

Keiser isn’t just speculating about this.  He claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging.  Not that that’s what he meant to invent.  His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets.  It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating “front running” – brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients.  The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts.  But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running.

Also called High Frequency Trading (HFT) or “black box trading,” automated program trading uses high-speed computers governed by complex algorithms (instructions to the computer) to analyze data and transact orders in massive quantities at very high speeds.  Like the poker player peeking in a mirror to see his opponent’s cards, HFT allows the program trader to peek at major incoming orders and jump in front of them to skim profits off the top.  And these large institutional orders are our money — our pension funds, mutual funds, and 401Ks.

When “market making” (matching buyers with sellers) was done strictly by human brokers on the floor of the stock exchange, manipulations and front running were considered an acceptable (if morally dubious) price to pay for continuously “liquid” markets.  But front running by computer, using complex trading programs, is an entirely different species of fraud.  A minor flaw in the system has morphed into a monster.  Keiser maintains that computerized front running with HFT has become the principal business of Wall Street and the primary force driving most of the volume on exchanges, contributing not only to a large portion of trading profits but to the manipulation of markets for economic and political ends.

The “Virtual Specialist”: the Prototype for High Frequency Trading

Until recently, most market making was done by brokers called “specialists,” those people you see on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange haggling over the price of stocks.  The job of the specialist originated over a century ago, when the need was recognized for a system for continuous trading.  That meant trading even when there was no “real” buyer or seller waiting to take the other side of the trade.

Read moreComputerized Front-Running: How a Computer Program Designed to Save the Free Market Turned Into a Monster

Mike Krieger: Goodbye Disneyland! – The Neo-Feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy Has Already Begun

Mike Krieger, formerly a macro analyst at Bernstein, and currently running his own fund, KAM LP, summarizies the pretend reality we are all caught in now, knowing full well America is set on a crash course with reality at some point, yet sticking our collective heads in the sand, as the collapse will be some time in the “indefinite” future. In the meantime, banks will continue to boost US GDP by peddling “financial innovation” and restructuring advice to countries like Greece… and nothing else.


Goodbye Disneyland, by Mike Krieger

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.  It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.  Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.  The heresy of heresies was common sense.  And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.  For, after all how do we know that two and two make four?  Or that the force of gravity works?  Or that the past is unchangeable?  If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
– Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
– Thomas Jefferson

We Must Move to a Free Market and Shun the Welfare-Warfare State or all will be Lost

Unfortunately for all of us, the primary economic policy of the U.S. government as well as many others around the world is an extend and pretend strategy that is economic suicide primarily in that it keeps the irresponsible in their assets and it makes the responsible shudder and shun productive investments.  Whether it be a homeowner that is subsidized to stay in a home that he cannot afford or a bank that doesn’t want to come clean on the extent of its bad assets, the result is the same.  Complete economic inertia.  Now of course there has been a rebound in demand, but my argument has been and continues to be that this is the most unproductive rebound in aggregate demand that perhaps the world has ever seen.  Whether it be in the U.S. or China, the demand is taking away spare capacity in many areas indeed but we must question the methods.  This is where the whole idea of inflation comes into play.  The whole reason why printing a million dollars and giving it to everyone doesn’t work is because this “liquidity” is not created through a productive process.  It is purely an injection of new dollars into the economy.  The basic rule of supply/demand kicks in.  In the average person’s pocket, this money is unlikely to be “invested” in productive capital endeavors, rather the vast majority of it will simply be spent to consume the resources of that which can be supplied by the already existing capital stock.  So in many ways it isn’t that the creation of the money itself that is the biggest problem, it is the distribution channel of that money.  Only a small percentage of the population that receives the million dollars has the ability, drive and discipline to invest the money into something that will create economic value for the society at large rather than just blow it on a flat screen television.  This is the entire premise of why a free market economy works when it is allowed to work (which I would argue is not possible under the current Federal Reserve system).  The Fed is a socialist organization that SETS the most important price in the economy, the price of money.  Even worse, when they set that price at say 0% as is basically the case today that 0% or anything close to it is not offered to all the small businessmen or potential entrepreneurs out there.  It might not even be so bad if the low interest rates weren’t simply being used to gamble or play a carry trade with treasuries.  Of course, the banks or anyone else for that matter playing a spread by borrowing at near zero to buy long-term treasuries is doing irreparable harm to this nation.  They are complicit in the gross misallocation of capital to the government, capital that can then be doled out at will to favored interests.  So all we have today is essentially a creation of money and credit out of thin air that is allocated to two major constituents.  First, it has primarily been used to maintain the people of wealth, power and political connections (on both sides of the isle) before the crash entrenched in their socioeconomic roles.  Second, is to pay off political favors.  Those who supported the President in his campaign have been paid back handsomely and are today much more powerful and secure than before whether we are talking unions or the oligopoly banks.  If we wish to have any hope of a sustainable recovery preventing the inevitable social unrest to come from truly getting dangerous we must restore the free market and end the union of big business and government, which historically has presented an extremely dangerous situation.  For those that are in big business and think they have made a great move by joining forces with the state I suggest you go back and read your history.  You never will possess the ultimate power, you will be seduced into thinking you do and then when the time is right government can eliminate you and your fortune with the stroke of a pen.  Power is granted to you by this authority when you engage in this unholy union and it can be taken away on whim and your wealth confiscated. Selling out freedom and your fellow citizens for some extra money or government contracts will come back to haunt you.  Your legacy to the United States will be a neo-feudalistic, gulag casino economy that has already begun. Below is a link to an excellent interview with Bill Moyers on PBS about our financial oligarchy (I believe many industries here are becoming oligarchies but the financial one is the most powerful) and the need to stop its cancerous growth.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/watch.html

There Will be Surplus…In 2050!

Read moreMike Krieger: Goodbye Disneyland! – The Neo-Feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy Has Already Begun

IRS Agent Didn’t Report $41,842 in EBay Sales

🙂


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Douglas Schulman, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, speaks during a news conference in Washington in this file photo. Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — An Internal Revenue Service agent was found liable for back taxes and penalties for not reporting income on nearly 2,000 transactions on EBay Inc., the online auction site, according to the U.S. Tax Court.

Andrea Fabiana Orellana failed to report $41,842 in income in 2004 and 2005 from sales of designer clothing, shoes and other items, according to a Tax Court summary opinion. Orellana is liable for $12,428 in unpaid taxes and $2,486 in penalties.

Orellana, who represented herself, sold items under several names, including “BlackTheRipper,” the court document said. She could not be reached for comment.

Read moreIRS Agent Didn’t Report $41,842 in EBay Sales

New Airborne Killer Fungus (Cryptococcus gattii) Found in US, Has Already Killed Six

Killer fungus seen in Pacific Northwest (CNN)


Infections from a new strain are unpreventable-and the strain is spreading.

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The new
Cryptococcus gattii fungus strain, magnified.

A new strain of hypervirulent, deadly fungus has been discovered in the United States, a new study says.

The outbreak has already killed six people in Oregon, and it will likely creep into northern California and possibly farther, experts say.

The new strain is of the species Cryptococcus gattii, an airborne fungus native to tropical and subtropical regions, including Papua New Guinea, Australia, and parts of South America. An older strain of the fungus was frst detected in North America in British Columbia, Canada, in 1999.

No one knows how the species got to North America or how the fungus can thrive in a temperate region, experts say.

Read moreNew Airborne Killer Fungus (Cryptococcus gattii) Found in US, Has Already Killed Six

Illinois man is suing the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI for covering up sexual abuse

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Pope Benedict XVI is named in a suit filed by an Illinois man alleging that the Vatican covered up sexual abuse by a priest.

(CNN) — An Illinois man is suing the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI for allegedly covering up sexual abuse by a priest at a Catholic school in Wisconsin.

The lawsuit demands the Vatican release the names of thousands of Catholic priests that the suit says have “credible allegations of sexual misconduct” against them.

The alleged victim, who is now an adult, says he was molested by Father Lawrence Murphy while a student at St. John’s School for the Deaf, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“The defendant, [the] Holy See, has known about the widespread problem of childhood sexual abuse committed by its clergy for centuries, but has covered up that abuse and thereby perpetuated the abuse,” the suit says.

Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, declined to comment on the case.

Pope Benedict XVI was named as a defendant because he has the ultimate authority to remove priests and because of his involvement in reviewing sex abuse cases when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the suit says.

Read moreIllinois man is suing the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI for covering up sexual abuse

Washington: ‘Toxic stew’ of chemicals causes more than 80% of male fish to exhibit female traits

See also: US: Gender-Bending Chemical Atrazine Contaminates Public Water Supply (Chicago Tribune)


Intersex fish, found across the US, result from a mix of drugs that mimic natural hormones, say scientists

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US male bass fish are showing female traits such as egg production because of ‘toxic stew’ of chemicals in water. Photograph: Rob Heimplaetzer/Potomac Conservancy

More than 80% of the male bass fish in Washington’s major river are now exhibiting female traits such as egg production because of a “toxic stew” of pollutants, scientists and campaigners reported yesterday.

Intersex fish probably result from drugs, such as the contraceptive pill, and other chemicals being flushed into the water and have been found right across the US.

The Potomac Conservancy, which focuses on Washington DC’s river, called for new research to determine what was causing male smallmouth bass to carry immature eggs in their testes. “We have not been able to identify one particular chemical or one particular source,” said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist with the US geological survey. “We are still trying to get a handle on what chemicals are important.”

But she said early evidence pointed to a mix of chemicals – commonly used at home as well as those used in large-scale farming operations – causing the deformities. The suspect chemicals mimic natural hormones and disrupt the endocrine system, with young fish being particularly susceptible.

The chemicals could include birth control pills and other drugs, toiletries especially those with fragrances, products such as tissues treated with antibacterial agents, or goods treated with flame retardants that find their way into waste water. However, Blazer also pointed to runoff from fertilisers and pesticides from agricultural areas.

About 5 million people live in the greater Washington area, and 90% of them get their drinking water from the Potomac.

Read moreWashington: ‘Toxic stew’ of chemicals causes more than 80% of male fish to exhibit female traits

China: Forced sterilisations of 10,000 parents who have violated one-child rule, government detains relatives of those who resist

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise – by force if necessary – almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.

Zhang Lizhao, 38, the father of two sons, aged 6 and 4, said that he rushed home late last night from buying loquats for his wholesale fruit business to undergo sterilisation after his elder brother was detained. His wife had already returned so that the brother would be freed.

Mr Zhang said: “This morning my wife called me and said they were forcing her to be sterilised today. She pleaded with the clinic to wait because she has her period. But they would not wait a single day. I called and begged them but they said no. So I have rushed back. I am satisfied because I have two sons.”

Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families.

Read moreChina: Forced sterilisations of 10,000 parents who have violated one-child rule, government detains relatives of those who resist

US: Gender-Bending Chemical Atrazine Contaminates Public Water Supply

Atrazine can’t be sprayed in Europe because it contaminates groundwater, but it remains widely used in the U.S., where the EPA endorsed its continued use as recently as 2006, based on a scientific review from 2003. Federal records show the review was heavily influenced by industry and relied on studies financed by Syngenta, a Swiss-based company that manufactures most of the atrazine sprayed in the U.S.


Alarmed by latest research, the Obama administration is conducting a broad review of toxic weed killer atrazine that could lead to tighter restrictions

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John Kiefner prepares his boom sprayer for cleaning on his Manhattan, Ill., farm. (Chicago Tribune)

Despite growing health concerns about atrazine, an agricultural weedkiller sprayed on farm fields across the Midwest, most drinking water is tested for the chemical only four times a year — so rarely that worrisome spikes of the chemical likely go undetected.

High levels of the herbicide can linger in tap water during the growing season, according to more frequent tests in some agricultural communities.

Spread heaviest on cornfields, atrazine is one of the most commonly detected contaminants in drinking water. Studies have found that exposure to small amounts of the chemical can turn male frogs into females and might be more harmful to humans than once thought.

Read moreUS: Gender-Bending Chemical Atrazine Contaminates Public Water Supply

Greece Faces Bond Rout as Budget Deficit Worsens, Greek Workers Strike

See also:

– Portugal, Not Greece, Poses The Greater Existential Threat To Europe’s Monetary Union (Telegraph)

CDS Traders Are Betting That France Is Next Up For A Sovereign Shakedown (As Are Spain And Portugal) (ZeroHedge)

Q&A With Billionaire Jim Chanos Part I: ‘Greece Is A Prelude’ (Business Insider)


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Protestors stand in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens, on April 22, 2010. (Bloomberg)

April 22 (Bloomberg) — The European Union said Greece’s budget deficit last year was worse than previously forecast and may top 14 percent of gross domestic product, fueling investor concern about a default and sending its bond yields soaring.

The EU’s statistics office said Greece’s deficit was 13.6 percent of GDP last year, topping the government’s two-week-old forecast of 12.9 percent and the EU’s November prediction of 12.7 percent. “Uncertainties” about the quality of the Greek data may lead to a further revision of as much of 0.5 percentage point, Luxembourg-based Eurostat said.

Greece’s benchmark 10-year bond yield rose to 8.49 percent, the highest since 1998 and more than twice the comparable German rate. The cost of insuring government debt against default climbed to a record today.

Greece’s widening deficit and questions about the accuracy of its economic data have undermined the credibility and enforcement of the EU’s budget rules and contributed to the 6.9 percent slide in the euro this year. The EU and the International Monetary Fund offered Greece as much as 45 billion euros ($60 billion) in emergency loans to assure investors the country can make its debt payments and shore up the euro.

Breaking the Rules

“They have played against the rules and now they’re getting the bill,” said Sylvain Broyer, chief European economist at Natixis in Frankfurt. “It’s a very uncomfortable situation for the Greek government. Greece has very much benefited from the currency region, but ignored the rules.”

Read moreGreece Faces Bond Rout as Budget Deficit Worsens, Greek Workers Strike

Experts Warn of Impending Phosphorus Crisis

Just four countries – Morocco, China, South Africa and Jordan – control 80 percent of the world’s reserves of usable phosphate.

Experts Warn of Impending Phosphorus Crisis
Phosphorus is essential to agriculture, but experts warn reserves are starting to run out.

The element phosphorus is essential to human life and the most important ingredient in fertilizer. But experts warn that the world’s reserves of phosphate rock are becoming depleted. Is recycling sewage the answer?

They sift the powder through their fingers, smell it and admire its soft, brownish shimmer. The members of the delegation from Japan, dressed in black suits and yellow helmets, stand attentively in a factory building in Leoben, Austria, marveling at a seemingly miraculous transformation, as stinking sewage sludge is turned into valuable ash.

Nothing suggests that the brown dust comes from a cesspool. It doesn’t smell, is hygienic and is as safe as sand in a children’s sandbox. It’s also valuable. The powder has a phosphate content of around 16 percent. Phosphate, the most important base material in mineral fertilizer, is currently trading at about €250 ($335) a ton.

Untreated sewage sludge was once dumped onto fields as liquid manure, until it became apparent how toxic it is. Human excretions are full of heavy metals, hormones, biphenyls — and drugs. New processing plants are designed to remove these toxins far more effectively than before, thereby paving the way for the use of sewage sludge in safe, human fertilizer. Ash Dec, the company that operates the pilot plant in Leoben, has dubbed the program “Ash to Cash.”

This unconventional approach could be important for all of mankind. While the term “peak oil” — the point at which production capacity will peak before oil wells gradually begin to run dry — is well known, fewer people know that phosphate reserves could also be running out. Experts refer to this scenario as “peak phosphorus.”

Read moreExperts Warn of Impending Phosphorus Crisis

Goldman Sachs taps President Obama’s former White House counsel, Gregory Craig

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In Greg Craig, Goldman Sachs will have help from a lawyer with deep connections in Democratic circles.

Goldman Sachs is launching an aggressive response to its political and legal challenges with an unlikely ally at its side — President Barack Obama’s former White House counsel, Gregory Craig.

The beleaguered Wall Street bank hired Craig — now in private practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — in recent weeks to help in navigate the halls of power in Washington, a source familiar with the firm told POLITICO.

“He is clearly an attorney of eminence and has a deep understanding of the legal process and the world of Washington,” the source said. “And those are important worlds for everybody in finance right now.”

They’re particularly important for Goldman.

On Friday, the SEC charged the firm with securities fraud in a convoluted subprime mortgage deal that took place before the collapse of the housing market. Next week, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein will face questions from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is looking into the causes of the housing meltdown, the source said.

In Craig, Goldman Sachs will have help from a lawyer with deep connections in Democratic circles.

Read moreGoldman Sachs taps President Obama’s former White House counsel, Gregory Craig

President Obama Repaying His Masters At Goldman Sachs

elite-puppet-president-obama

President Obama is sponsoring a bill by the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd(D-CT) that would reward the Financial Firm Goldman Sachs with up to Billions of Dollars. The bill implements a $50 billion resolution fund to the firms creditors through fees that would come from banks and other businesses, which the bill calls a “nonbank financial company.” Critics are calling it a “backdoor bailouts” to Goldman Sachs who was already payed $12.9 billion in tax dollars through the bailout of AIG.

Supporters are denying the bill is a bailout because its demands the removal of some management positions but Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission member Peter Wallison said “that act – paying off the creditors when the government takes over a failing firm – is a bailout. It doesn’t matter that the management lose their jobs, or that the shareholders get nothing. When the creditors are aware that they will get a better deal with the failure of a large company than they will get with a small one that goes the ordinary route to bankruptcy, that is a bailout.”

Read morePresident Obama Repaying His Masters At Goldman Sachs

Climategate: Dr. Michael Mann Threatens Lawsuit Over Satirical YouTube Video

YouTube has already almost completely removed the video ‘Hide The Decline’ (right now there is only one uploaded video left) and ‘Hide the Decline II’  has been removed completely.

Climategate: Hide The Decline – the video

Just in case that this last video will also be removed:

Climategate: Hide The Decline – the video


Climate Experts Square Off Over Video

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Dr. Michael Mann

Experts on opposing sides of the global-warming debate are now squaring off against each other over a satirical Internet video.

On one side is Dr. Michael Mann, professor of Meteorology at Penn State University, who has been ensnared in the Climategate scandal. He is threatening to sue Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) after the group produced a satirical video called “Hide the Decline,” which features Mann’s face and makes fun of his scientific findings, and accuses him of covering up evidence of an apparent decline in temperatures over the past decade.

On the other side is Dr. Patrick Michaels, a contributing author and reviewer on the U.N.’s 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a well-known skeptic of global-warming alarmism. At a National Press Club press conference Tuesday, Michaels criticized Mann for having “very, very, very thin skin.”

The notion that a professor would file a lawsuit over a satirical video “is just quite shocking,” said Dr. Michaels.

Dr. Mann is perhaps most famous for his “hockey stick graph” which showed that mean global temperature changes, which had remained stable for the past millennium, spiked dramatically during the 20th Century. Mann was also involved in controversial e-mails between climate experts, which sat at the center of the Climategate scandal.

“Makin’ up data the old hard way, Fudgin’ the numbers day by day, Ignoring the snow and the cold and a downward line, Hide the decline (hide the decline),” reads the song in the video’s background, critical of Dr. Mann’s alleged manipulation of climate data.

The “Hide the Decline” video garnered more than 500,000 viewers and was featured on the CBS Evening News as well as on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.

Read moreClimategate: Dr. Michael Mann Threatens Lawsuit Over Satirical YouTube Video

Catholic priest, 84, receiving oral sex from a choirboy in front of a local church altar caught on video

(AFP) — An 84-year-old Brazilian priest caught on camera in a sex act with a choirboy has been arrested and put in detention.

The 30-day detention was ordered by a judge to prevent the priest, Luiz Marques Barbosa, fleeing pending the outcome of a criminal investigation for pedophilia, a spokesman for the police unit in the town of Arapiraca said.

“As Father Barbosa was chaplain for Sao Paulo’s military police, he has the privilege of being detained in our barracks instead of going to jail,” the spokesman said.

Barbosa’s case, which adds to a pedophile scandal tarnishing the Catholic Church, came to light a month ago when a Brazilian television channel broadcast video footage of the priest receiving oral sex from a choirboy in front of a local church altar.

The incident scandalised Brazil, where 74 per cent of the 190-million strong population is Catholic.

Read moreCatholic priest, 84, receiving oral sex from a choirboy in front of a local church altar caught on video

Al Gore takes cash for ‘Life Earth’ water campaign from Dow Chemical

Al Gore is an elite puppet like Bush and Obama. He has been selected by the elite to brainwash the people with the global warming scam in order to push through with the elite agenda of world government, the ‘New World Order’.

It’s all about money, power and control.

Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire


Environmentalists condemn former vice-president for letting controversial company fund Life Earth

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Shyam Babu, 10, lives close to the Dow-owned Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal, India

Al Gore, the self-styled squeakiest-clean and deepest-green politician in American history, has some explaining to do this weekend. His environmental organisation has taken money to raise awareness about the need for clean water from a controversial chemicals company.

Dow Chemical, the US firm, is sponsoring Life Earth events in 150 cities today. The event aims to raise money for clean water programmes. Research by environmental organisations has found dangerous levels of highly toxic chemicals in rivers, lakes and other water supplies close to several other factories owned by Dow and its subsidiaries in countries including the United States, Brazil and South Africa.

Dow’s factories at its global headquarters in Midland, Michigan, have been accused of contaminating the region, including the Tittabawassee River floodplains, with high levels of dioxin – one of the “dirty dozen” most dangerous chemicals. In 2007, the highest level of dioxin contamination ever measured by the US Environmental Protection Agency was found in the Michigan Saginaw River. Residents are advised to avoid contact with river sediments and not to eat locally caught fish.

Campaigners are outraged by what they call Dow’s “blatant attempt” to paint itself as a green company and divert attention from the Bhopal scandal, where 25 years after the 1984 disaster at the plant (then owned by Union Carbide) thousands of villagers are still forced to use contaminated water which causes birth defects, cancer and skin disorders.

Live Earth, which has accumulated celebrity supporters and thousands of activists worldwide since its climate change concert in 2007, has been criticised by campaigners for joining forces with a company which has a track record of, at best, being slow to clean up toxic spills that pollute water, damage ecosystems and endanger lives.

Three weeks ago, Amnesty International asked Live Earth to reconsider the sponsorship unless Dow publicly agreed to clean up Bhopal. Live Earth did not respond.

Read moreAl Gore takes cash for ‘Life Earth’ water campaign from Dow Chemical

Police fired 50,000-volt stun gun into man with a major epileptic seizure

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(The Times)

Police officers fired a 50,000-volt stun gun charge into a man who had collapsed with a major epileptic seizure, the policing complaints watchdog said yesterday.

The man, 40, who has accused police of being negligent and using excessive force, claims that he was Tasered five times despite police being told about his medical condition.

He spent more than two weeks in hospital after the incident, which is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Sophie Khan, the man’s solicitor, said her client had been in a gym when the seizure occurred. “The officers were made aware by the ambulance staff and the gym staff that he was suffering from an epileptic seizure but they continued to Taser him in the stomach and forcibly restrain him in a manner that has caused him long-term nerve damage to his wrists and back,” she said.

Read morePolice fired 50,000-volt stun gun into man with a major epileptic seizure

Marriage Penalties Increase Dramatically Under ObamaCare

taxanalysts

Diana Furchtgott-Roth (Hudson Institute) has published Marriage Penalties Under the New Healthcare Law, 127 Tax Notes 349 (Apr. 19, 2010). Here is the abstract:

This article describes the marriage penalties in the new healthcare laws. …  Single earners below 400% of the poverty line who receive premium credits to help them afford health insurance will see the credits shrink rapidly or disappear when they marry. Upper-income earners will face disincentives to marry and work based on the new Medicare taxes, which apply to singles earning $200,000 and joint filers earning $250,000.

For a bill that is supposed to make Americans healthier, the disincentives for marriage and work under the new healthcare law are truly startling. Beginning in 2013, when many of the bill’s provisions take effect, Americans will find it more advantageous to stay single than to marry, even more so than under the current tax code. And women will face greater incentives to leave the workforce.

Read moreMarriage Penalties Increase Dramatically Under ObamaCare

New Speed Surveillance Cameras Trap Motorists From Space

A new type of speed cameras which can use satellites to measure average speed over long distances are being tested in Britain.

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Satellites could track motorists from space if trials prove successful Photo: AFP

The cameras, which combine number plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver, are similar to those used in roadworks.

The AA said it believed the new system could cover a network of streets as opposed to a straight line, and was “probably geared up to zones in residential areas.”

The Home Office is testing the cameras at two sites, one in Southwark, London, and the other A374 between Antony and Torpoint in Cornwall.

The ‘SpeedSpike’ system, which calculates average speed between any two points in the network, has been developed by PIPS Technology Ltd, an American-owned company with a base in Hampshire.

Read moreNew Speed Surveillance Cameras Trap Motorists From Space

US Foreclosure Rates Surge, Biggest Jump In 5 Years; ‘More Than 1 Million Bank Repossessions This Year’

There is no recovery!


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LOS ANGELES (AP) – A record number of U.S. homes were lost to foreclosure in the first three months of this year, a sign banks are starting to wade through the backlog of troubled home loans at a faster pace, according to a new report.

RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday that the number of U.S. homes taken over by banks jumped 35 percent in the first quarter from a year ago. In addition, households facing foreclosure grew 16 percent in the same period and 7 percent from the last three months of 2009.

More homes were taken over by banks and scheduled for a foreclosure sale than in any quarter going back to at least January 2005, when RealtyTrac began reporting the data, the firm said.

“We’re right now on pace to see more than 1 million bank repossessions this year,” said Rick Sharga, a RealtyTrac senior vice president.

Read moreUS Foreclosure Rates Surge, Biggest Jump In 5 Years; ‘More Than 1 Million Bank Repossessions This Year’