June 2010 – Page 2 – Infinite Unknown

Matt Simmons: ‘We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states.’

June 25, 2010June 25, 2010 by Infinite

Council on Foreign Relations member Matt Simmons calls for the evacuation of the gulf states.

Don’t miss:

– Former Shell CEO John Hoffmeister On MSNBC: ‘The Whole Casing System Is Deteriorating’

Each day, another way to define worst-case for oil spill

An enduring feature of the gulf oil spill is that, even when you think you’ve heard the worst-case scenario, there’s always another that’s even more dire.

The base-line measures of the crisis have steadily worsened. The estimated flow rate keeps rising. The well is like something deranged, stronger than anyone anticipated. BP executives last month said they had a 60 to 70 percent chance of killing it with mud, but the well spit the mud out and kept blowing.

The net effect is that nothing about this well seems crazy anymore. Week by week, the truth of this disaster has drifted toward the stamping ground of the alarmists.

The most disturbing of the worst-case scenarios, one that is unsubstantiated but is driving much of the blog discussion, is that the Deepwater Horizon well has been so badly damaged that it has spawned multiple leaks from the seafloor, making containment impossible and a long-term solution much more complicated.

Video from a robotic submersible, which is making the rounds online, shows something puffing from the seafloor. Some think it’s oil. Or maybe — look again — it’s just the silt blowing in response to the forward motion of the submersible.

More trouble: A tropical wave has formed in the Caribbean and could conceivably blow through the gulf.

“We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states,” said Matt Simmons, founder of Simmons and Co., an oil investment firm and, since the April 20 blowout, the unflagging source of end-of-the-world predictions. “Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people? . . . This story is 80 times worse than I thought.”

Ron Paul on Stanley McChrystal

June 25, 2010 by Infinite

“Dr. No,” as some call him on Capitol Hill, doesn’t agree with Obama’s decision to remove Gen. Stanley McChrystal from command of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (AP)

Ron Paul thinks President Obama got it wrong yesterday when he got rid of Stanley McChrystal.

“They should have changed the policy and kept the general. Maybe that would have been better,” Paul said on Thursday. “But it’s the policymakers that are at fault, not the generals, they tried to follow the orders but the policy behind it is at fault.”

Paul, a fierce critic of the war in Afghanistan, said that the inflammatory comments made by members of McChrystal’s staff in Rolling Stone were evidence of frustration over what he says is the war’s failed policy.

“That McChrystal thing is just a symptom of what we won’t face up to, which is that it’s a totally failed policy,” Paul said. “If we were on the verge of a great success, do you think we’d fire the general? So it was an absolute confirmation of the failed policy, and yet the policy doesn’t change.”

US Predator Drones to Surveil Mexican Border

June 24, 2010 by Infinite

A Predator drone takes off on a U.S. Customs Border Patrol mission from Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department will use unmanned surveillance aircraft and other technological upgrades in its ongoing effort to protect the southern border of the United States.

The department said Wednesday it has obtained Federal Aviation Administration permission to operate unmanned planes along the Texas border and throughout the Gulf Coast region. Customs and Border Protection will base a surveillance drone at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas.

Former Shell CEO John Hoffmeister On MSNBC: ‘The Whole Casing System Is Deteriorating’

June 25, 2010June 24, 2010 by Infinite

Related interview with Matt Simmons:

– Matt Simmons on Bloomberg: There Is A Much Larger Leak, Creating A Gigantic Plume; US Military Should Take Over And Use Nuclear Weapons to Seal The Blowout

BUT there is an enormous amount of methane in the Gulf:

– US Scientist: Methane In Gulf ‘Astonishingly High’, As Much As 1 Million Times The Normal Level

What happens if methane explodes?

– History Channel Mega Disasters: Methane Explosion

Added: 24. June 2010

More:

– BP Plans To Dump All North Sea Assets In Dramatic Attempt To Cut Costs

– BP Blocking Media Access To Workers (Video)

– BP Official Admits to Damage BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR

– BP Buys Search Term ‘Oil Spill’ From Google

– BP CEO Tony Hayward sold £1.4 million of his shares weeks before Gulf blowout

– Goldman Sachs Sold 44% Of Its BP Stock 3 Weeks Before Gulf Blowout

– Feds and BP Withheld Videos Showing Massive Scope of Oil Spill

US Scientist: Methane In Gulf ‘Astonishingly High’, As Much As 1 Million Times The Normal Level

July 25, 2010June 24, 2010 by Infinite

Update: Gulf Of Mexico Water Sample EXPLODES! Other Samples Prove To Be Toxic

CHICAGO (Reuters) – As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.

Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are “astonishingly high.”

Kessler’s crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s broken wellhead.

“There is an incredible amount of methane in there,” Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing.

In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal.

“We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations” in some areas, Kessler said.

The scientists were looking for signs that the methane gas had depleted levels of oxygen dissolved in the water needed to sustain marine life.

“At some locations, we saw depletions of up to 30 percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters. At other places, we saw no depletion of oxygen in the waters. We need to determine why that is,” he told the briefing.

Recall of US Senator Robert Menendez?

June 24, 2010 by Infinite

US Senator Robert Menendez

The Outlaw Congress in Washington, DC continues to break the law everyday as if there is no U.S. Constitution. Both parties are guilty of driving this republic into financial ruin while talking out of both sides of their mouths. They will say anything for a vote as we’ve seen recently regarding Connecticut’s Attorney General’s race for the U.S. Senate.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, looking to replace outgoing Sen. Christopher Dodd, lied about his military record. He didn’t misspeak; he’s a liar, plain and simple. Not a problem for the morally and ethically bankrupt Democratic Party: “Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told reporters today that he and his committee are sticking by Richard Blumenthal, in the wake of the New York Times’ report that the Democrat running for Connecticut Senate has exaggerated his military record.”

RECALL

Eighteen states of the Union allow recall at the state level. It’s unfortunate more citizens in those states haven’t taken advantage of removing corrupt officials, but in the larger states, it can require hundreds of thousands of signatures; in some cases a million or more. But, I always say if you want something bad enough, you’ll go after it.

This November only 1/3rd of the illegal U.S. Senate is up for reelection. A group of fed up citizens in New Jersey have had it with Sen. Robert Menendez and want him gone. They also don’t want to wait until 2012 to oust him – if even possible. A recall effort began with the petition process. A three judge panel (state appeals court) ruled March 16, 2010, that the petition process could move forward, but also stated: “But noting the absence of case law and precedent, it left the ultimate question of the constitutionality of the state’s recall law and amendment to a higher court.”

This didn’t sit well with Menendez, calling the effort a publicity stunt and issuing this rant: “This is an organization trying to undemocratically and unconstitutionally overturn an election in which more than 2 million New Jerseyans voted,” said Menendez, whose term expires in 2012. “My focus continues to be on job creation legislation and delivering a successful extension of my local property tax relief bill.”

The court also said this: “The court found existing New Jersey law and the state’s constitution both allow U.S. senators to be recalled. For that reason, the appeals court said, the removal effort can proceed. “There are a host of genuine arguments and counterarguments that can be articulated and debated about whether or not the Federal Constitution would permit a United States Senator to be recalled by the voters under state law,” the appellate judges said.

Which brings us to the meat of the issue. Long ago and far away, and like many others, I wrote that the effort to enact term limits on members of Congress would be shot down by the courts. It was in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v Thornton [5] – U.S. Supreme Court – Decided May 22, 1995.

The U.S. Constitution makes specific reference to the length of time representatives and senators would serve between elections:

WHO To Tax Internet Usage To Fund Genocide Vaccines In Third-World Countries

June 24, 2010June 24, 2010 by Infinite

Don’t miss:

– Dr. Len Horowitz: Profitable Depopulation Plot Links JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to Vaccination Contaminations and Big Pharma Corruption

– Dr. Rima E. Laibow: The Globalist Depopulation Agenda:

In 2002 one of Dr. Rima E. Laibow’s patients, a head of state, told her:

“It’s almost time for the great culling to begin.”

Dr. Rima E. Laibow:

“The WHO is a private corporation just like the Federal Reserve and receives more than two thirds of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry.”

The elite wants you to finance their genocide agenda.

(NaturalNews) The United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing hard to impose global consumer taxes to help fund its various programs, including a new proposal that would tax the internet in order to pay for vaccines and other pharmaceutical medicines for third-world countries. Yes, you read that right – WHO wants every person in the world to help pay for drugs that make Big Pharma even richer.

Consider it a reverse Robin Hood ploy: They’re stealing from the working class and giving to the ultra wealthy drug companies!

Of course this isn’t the first time the UN has petitioned governments around the world to illegally tax citizens in order to further its own agenda. This body of unelected officials tried to push “cap and trade” legislation for supposed climate change just last year (but failed to do so because many countries simply refused the idea).

In the current scheme, WHO appointed a so-called panel of “medical experts” to prepare a report highlighting various financing ideas that would fund all the projects WHO is trying to accomplish in the world. One of those ideas is to have governments tax internet usage in their countries and give the money to WHO for “medical research and development” in poorer, developing countries. (This is code-speak for unlawfully pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of Big Pharma in the name of charity).

An executive summary of the report is available at:
(http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf…)

Other ideas for funding include taxing people when they make financial transactions like paying bills online or withdrawing cash, as well as taxing the international arms trade. WHO also threw in the idea of possibly having governments voluntarily contribute (which is actually the only somewhat legitimate idea in the report, considering the U.N. has no legal power over any sovereign nation to force it to pay global taxes).

As usual, the entire proposal is blanketed in expressed concern for the health of people from poorer nations who don’t have access to the same medical treatments as people from richer nations. Although this may sound nice and good in theory, the real agenda here is to transfer wealth from the people of developed nations to the U.N. and then to either wealthy drug companies or the corrupt governments of poorer nations. The everyday people of these poor nations will receive little to no actual benefit from the tax money (other than the vaccinations that will be forced on them, if you consider that a benefit).

WHO wants to control the world’s health

On page 8 of WHO’s Executive Summary for its proposals, there’s an interesting statement about WHO’s global health agenda. When speaking about its more than 90 proposals for obtaining funding, the organization reveals that it also wants to restructure the global health system and place itself in control.

“[The proposals] include proposed structures to centralize, manage and disburse funds to health research and development,” it states, adding that in order to do this, it would need funding and certain “mechanisms” in place first.

WHO basically wants all nations to give up their sovereignty, particularly in terms of medical research and development, and hand it over to them so they can distribute “health” as they see fit. Nobody else will have a say in the matter as WHO will be the sole health care authority in the world. This matches perfectly with the UN’s agenda of world domination through other means (blue helmet military forces, for example).

Elite puppet financier George Soros tells Germany to step up to its responsibilities, or leave EMU

June 24, 2010June 24, 2010 by Infinite

– EURO ‘COLLAPSE‘ COULD DRAG EUROPE INTO CONFLICT (Express):

THE euro is on the verge of a collapse that could drag Europe into conflict, billionaire financier George Soros warned yesterday.

The veteran investor said massive budget cuts proposed by Germany could destabilise the European Union by dragging down its neighbours’ economies.

He said: “German policy is a danger for Europe. Unfortunately, a collapse of the euro and the European project cannot be ruled out.

“That would be tragic because then Europe would be threatened by the sort of conflicts between states that have shaped European history.”

And of course the Germans would be to blame for this!

So step up Germany and follow the plans of the elitists to loot the taxpayers (everywhere) until there is nothing left with unconstitutional bailouts and quantitative easing.

Legendary investor George Soros has called on Germany to leave the euro unless it is willing to embrace a growth strategy, describing Berlin’s austerity doctrine as a threat to democracy and political stability in Europe.

George Soros tells Germany to step up to its responsibilities, or leave EMU

“German policy is becoming a danger that could destroy the European Project. A collapse of the euro cannot be excluded,” he told the German weekly Die Zeit.

“Unless Germany changes policy, its withdrawal from the currency union would be helpful for the rest of Europe. At the moment Germany is pushing its neighbours into deflation: this threatens a long phase of stagnation, leading to nationalism, social unrest, and zenophobia. It endangers democracy,” he said.

Mr Soros saw the political effects of wage cuts first-hand during the Great Depression, and narrowly survived the Holocaust as a Jewish boy in Nazi-controlled Budapest. He has since dedicated much of his wealth to philanthropic works promoting freedom and pluralism (ROFL!) across the globe, mostly through Open Society institutes.

Philanthropic works: Top billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation (Times)

His comments reflect growing alarm in influential circles on both sides of the Atlantic over the 1930s-style policies of wage cuts and debt-deflation being imposed up the Club Med bloc, Ireland, and parts of Eastern Europe by the EU authorities, at the behest of Berlin.

History Channel Mega Disasters: Methane Explosion

June 24, 2010June 24, 2010 by Infinite

Added: 11. May 2010

US: New Home Sales Plummet to Record Low

June 23, 2010 by Infinite

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — New home sales plummeted to a record low in May, the first month following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit. This snapped a two-month streak of gains.

New home sales declined 32.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000 last month, down from an downwardly revised 446,000 in April, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Sales year-over-year fell 18.3%.

This is the slowest sales pace since the Commerce Department began tracking data in 1963. The prior record was set in September 1981, when new homes sold at an annual rate of 338,000.

Rahm Emanuel ‘traded political favour with Rod Blagojevich’

June 23, 2010 by Infinite

Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, traded political favours with Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, in 2006 while he was a congressman, according to leaked emails.

White House Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel

Mr Emanuel published an endorsement of Mr Blagojevich in the Chicago Tribune in exchange for $2 million (£1.3 million) in school funding to his district, according to the emails, which were released on Monday. The newspaper had recently claimed in an editorial that Mr Blagojevich used public funds to support his re-election campaign.

Mr Blagojevich, who was re-elected in 2006 but resigned in 2009, is currently on trial in Illinois on corruption charges. He is alleged to have attempted to sell Mr Obama’s former Senate seat.

The emails detailing the deal, revealed by the Associated Press, apparently were exchanged between Mr Emanuel, his staff and Mr Blagojevich’s chief aide, Bradley Tusk.

Senior Democrats have told the Telegraph that Mr Emanuel is preparing to stand down after the mid-term congressional elections in November.

McDonald’s to be sued for ‘enticing children with toys’

June 23, 2010 by Infinite

‘McDonald’s use of these techniques raises troubling questions, for health professionals, parents, and policy makers.’

Slammed: U.S. consumer group says using popular characters to promote unhealthy food is ‘creepy and predatory’

As far as many children are concerned, they are the most appealing things on the menu.

But not everyone is so keen on the merchandising toys used by McDonald’s to entice youngsters to buy its Happy Meals.

A powerful American consumer group is threatening a lawsuit and has given the chain 30 days to drop the ‘creepy and predatory’ ploy it says undermines the efforts of parents to encourage a healthy diet.

The merchandise, which is also given to customers in Britain, includes toys related to the latest Shrek movie. Earlier this year it also had tie-ups with Alvin and the Chipmunks and Scooby Doo.

The Centre for Science in the Public Interest says using the items to promote its Happy Meals is ‘unfair, deceptive and illegal’ under American state laws.

Germany Takes Stand against Patents on Plants and Animals: ‘Limits We Should Not Cross’

June 23, 2010 by Infinite

The problem started with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980). Suddenly it was 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.

Should conventional breeding techniques be patentable?

German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner has spoken out against the patenting of varieties of livestock and plants. Her comments come as the European Patent Office prepares to rule in a test case with far-reaching implications for biological patents in Europe.

The German government wants to prevent the patenting of agricultural livestock and plants. “There are limits that we should not cross,” Germany’s Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection Ilse Aigner told SPIEGEL. In order to preserve genetic variety, farmers and breeders should not be handcuffed by biological patents, she argues.

Aigner, who is a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, wants to make European rules regarding biological patents more precise. Although the agriculture minister does not oppose the patenting of new breeding procedures, she argues that the resulting whole organisms should not be patentable.

She is supported in her position by the parliamentary group of the opposition center-left Social Democrats (SPD). The SPD even goes one step further, arguing that neither conventional breeding methods nor whole organisms should be patentable.

‘Climate change sceptics have smaller members, uglier wives, dumber kids’ says new study made up by warmists

June 23, 2010June 23, 2010 by Infinite

See also: Cap and Trade Is a Gigantic Scam

Are there really no depths to which ManBearPig-worshippers will not stoop in order to shore up their intellectually, morally and scientifically bankrupt cause?

Apparently not, as we see from the latest “study” – based on a petty, spiteful, Stasi-like blacklist produced by an obscure Canadian warmist – outrageously aggrandised by being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

The study examined 1,372 scientists who had taken part in reviews of climate science or had put their name to statements regarding the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Scientists were grouped as “convinced” or “unconvinced”, and researchers examined how many times they had published papers on the climate.

The results showed that “unconvinced” scientists accounted for just three of the 100 most prolific authors on the subject, while papers by “convinced” scientists were more frequently cited in other research.

Well, no s***, Sherlock. And might this have anything to do, perchance, with the fact that – as the Climategate emails made abundantly clear – “unconvinced” scientists were deliberately shut out of the peer-review process by the “convinced” ones?

And how many scientists, with bachelor of science degrees or higher, have signed the Oregon Petition expressing doubts about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)? 31,000 plus.

And how many of the supposed 2500 climate scientists responsible for the IPCC “consensus” were actively involved in the sections to do with AGW? 53.

And how many scientists does it require to successfully falsify – ie prove wrong – a shabby, tired old theory like “Phlogiston”, or “Geocentrism”, or “Dangerous, unprecedented Man Made Global Warming?” One.

But guess how BBC Radio 4 reported the story this morning? Yep. “98 per cent of scientists support global warming theory.” (Hat tip: Nick Mabbs)

Then again, since when did we expect any kind of honesty or decency from the Warmists? Have a look, for example, at this great analysis by the National Post’s Lawrence Solomon on how Warmist propagandists are using their useful idiots in the MSM to exaggerate the level of public credulousness in AGW.

Peru overtakes Colombia as world’s leading producer of coca leaf, produces over 45% of coca in the world

June 23, 2010June 23, 2010 by Infinite

Peru has overtaken Colombia to became the world’s leading producer of coca leaf, the plant that is used to make cocaine.

Coca leaf is used to make cocaine Photo: PA

Just over 45 per cent of coca in the world comes from Peru, while 39.3 per cent is grown in Colombia and 15.3 per cent in Bolivia, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“Peru has surpassed Colombia as the world’s leading coca leaf producer,” Aldo Lale, the UNODC representative in Bogota, said at a press conference.

Peru produced 119,000 metric tonnes of coca leaf in 2009, while Colombia produced 103,000 tonnes during the same period, Mr Lale said.

Colombia remains the largest source for processed cocaine, although its production has fallen dramatically from 600 tonnes in 2007 to 410 tonnes in 2009.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange emerges from hiding, next big leak to be of the ‘calibre’ of publishing information about the way the top secret Echelon system had been used

June 22, 2010 by Infinite

WikiLeaks founder drops ‘mass spying’ hint

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. (Colbert Report)

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has given his strongest indication yet about the next big leak from his whistleblower organisation.

There has been rampant speculation about WikiLeaks’ next revelation following its recent release of a top secret military video showing an attack in Baghdad which killed more than a dozen people, including two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Bradley Manning, a US military intelligence officer based in Iraq, has been arrested on suspicion of leaking the video but it is also claimed that Manning bragged online that he had handed WikiLeaks 260,000 secret US State Department cables.

In an interview with the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, Mr Assange said cryptically of WikiLeaks’ current project:

“I can give an analogy. If there had been mass spying that had affected many, many people and organisations and the details of that mass spying were released then that is something that would reveal that the interests of many people had been abused.”

He agreed it would be of the “calibre” of publishing information about the way the top secret Echelon system – the US-UK electronic spying network which eavesdrops on worldwide communications traffic – had been used.

Mr Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks has a copy of a video showing a US military bombing of a western Afghan township which killed dozens of people, including children.

He noted, though, it was a very intricate case “substantially more complex” than the Iraq material WikiLeaks had released – referring to the gunship video.

General Stanley McChrystal Recalled To Washington Over Rolling Stone Article

June 22, 2010 by Infinite

US commander in Afghanistan apologises for magazine article in which he criticises Barack Obama and ambassador to Kabul

President Barack Obama meets General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, late last year. (AP)

General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of all Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, has been recalled to Washington after he criticised Barack Obama’s administration in a magazine profile due to be published later this week.

A Nato official confirmed that McChrystal would travel to Washington tomorrow to explain the Rolling Stone article, in which he said that he felt betrayed by the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry. One of his aides told the magazine that McChrystal was disappointed by his first meeting with an “unprepared” Obama.

The official was unable to say how long the general would be away, but did say that McChrystal believed he had largely “sorted” the situation after immediately calling the people he had attacked in the profile to apologise.

Earlier today, McChrystal attended a meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, Eikenberry and Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative who McChrystal also belittled in the magazine article.

A US diplomat said that while “the story sucked” and that McChrystal “running amok” was embarrassing, the row would not affect policy or the way the men worked together.

McChrystal issued a statement offering his “sincerest apology” for the comments and the article. “It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened,” he said.

“Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honour and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard.”

According to the article, due to be published on Friday, although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two didn’t get on from the start.

Obama felt McChrystal was too outspoken last autumn when he called for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan.

“I found that time painful,” McChrystal admitted in the article. “I was selling an unsellable position.”

Brazil Floods: 1,000 Missing, 39 Dead, 100,000 Homeless

June 22, 2010 by Infinite

Floods after days of driving rain have killed at least 39 people in northeastern Brazil, and left 1,000 unaccounted for and another 100,000 people homeless.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called a crisis cabinet meeting and said the government would make federal funds available to help the homeless.

“Up until the early afternoon we had 26 confirmed dead in Alagoas and more than 1,000 people missing,” Teotonio Vilela Filho, the Alagoas Governor, said.

“We are praying for the missing to be found alive. But we are very worried because bodies are starting to turn up on beaches and on riverbanks,” Mr Vilela said.

Civil defence officials in devastated Alagoas state said the Mundau River burst its banks in the town of Uniao dos Palmares, leaving at least 500 people unaccounted for there.

“Pernambuco state’s rivers all run out through Alagoas. Swollen as they were they devastated cities,” Mr Vilela said. Thirteen people have been confirmed dead so far in Pernambuco, officials said.

The torrents swept away more than 40,000 houses, entire bridges and streets, as well as rail lines in 22 towns across Alagoas, Vilela said.

Lord Rothschild fund invests £12.5 million into BullionVault

June 22, 2010 by Infinite

Again: Only physical gold (held by you) is real, everything else is an illusion.

Is it safe in a bank?

– James G. Rickards: Possible Run on the Gold Bank, Fed Insolvent, Currency Endgames in US Debt Crisis:

Holding your gold in a bank correlates you to the banking system, the very risks which you are trying to avoid

I would get out of BullionVault NOW and buy real gold instead.

This is not an investment advice!

£12.5m is NOTHING (but a red herring to make people – that don’t know anything about Lord Rothschild – believe that their investment is safe).

An investment fund backed by Lord Rothschild has joined the World Gold Council to put £12.5m into BullionVault, the online gold investment platform.

Investment demand for gold has risen on concerns that sovereign debt problems could spread

Tim Levene of Augmentum Capital, a fund backed by Lord Rothschild’s RIT Capital Partners, said the investment was not a bet on the gold price but on “the future growth of the BullionVault platform”, which stores physical gold for private clients in London, New York and Zurich. RIT currently has 9pc of its assets in physical gold.

Investment demand for the metal has risen on concerns that sovereign debt problems could spread and the value of currencies plunge. The gold price hit a new nominal all-time high above $1,260 on Friday and analysts expect the price will continue to rise.

In return for the £12.5m investment, the World Gold Council and Augmentum will receive an equity stake in BullionVault.

Americans buying their own health insurance face an average 20 percent increase in premiums

June 22, 2010June 22, 2010 by Infinite

Change we can believe in!

See also: Obama exempt from Obamacare (Washington Times)

Americans buying their own health insurance face an average 20 percent increase in premiums, driving some toward cheaper plans with fewer benefits, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

An estimated 14 million U.S. individuals under age 65 purchase coverage themselves, rather than through an employer, according to a Kaiser report released today. About 77 percent of them got a premium increase, said the Menlo Park, California- based nonprofit, which surveyed 1,038 buyers of their own individual and family health insurance between March 19 and April 2.

What’s driving up costs and how much is a fair rate increase are issues of debate among regulators and insurers, said Drew Altman, Kaiser’s chief executive officer and president. “If you’re being hit with a 20 percent increase and inflation is negligible and your wages aren’t going up, that on its face is an unreasonable increase,” Altman said. “You will never convince a consumer that’s a reasonable increase when wages and inflation are flat.”

About 60 percent of policyholders paid the higher bills, while 16 percent switched to a less expensive plan, according to Kaiser. Of those who changed coverage, nearly half said their new policy offered fewer benefits.

Costs Increase

“Health insurance premiums are rising because medical costs continue to soar and because younger and healthier people are choosing to drop their insurance during a weak economy,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group based in Washington. “That’s driving up costs for everyone else.”

Scientists create nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand

June 22, 2010June 22, 2010 by Infinite

BOSTON, Mass. (June 20, 2010) – By emulating nature’s design principles, a team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand. In contrast to existing nanotechnologies, these programmable nanodevices are highly suitable for medical applications because DNA is both biocompatible and biodegradable.

The work appears in the June 20 advance online Nature Nanotechnology.

Built at the scale of one billionth of a meter, each device is made of a circular, single-stranded DNA molecule that, once it has been mixed together with many short pieces of complementary DNA, self-assembles into a predetermined 3D structure. Double helices fold up into larger, rigid linear struts that connect by intervening single-stranded DNA. These single strands of DNA pull the struts up into a 3D form-much like tethers pull tent poles up to form a tent. The structure’s strength and stability result from the way it distributes and balances the counteracting forces of tension and compression.

This architectural principle-known as tensegrity-has been the focus of artists and architects for many years, but it also exists throughout nature. In the human body, for example, bones serve as compression struts, with muscles, tendons and ligaments acting as tension bearers that enable us to stand up against gravity. The same principle governs how cells control their shape at the microscale.

“This new self-assembly based nanofabrication technology could lead to nanoscale medical devices and drug delivery systems, such as virus mimics that introduce drugs directly into diseased cells,” said co-investigator and Wyss Institute director Don Ingber. A nanodevice that can spring open in response to a chemical or mechanical signal could ensure that drugs not only arrive at the intended target but are also released when and where desired.

US Supreme Court Lifts Ban On Monsanto’s GM Alfalfa

June 21, 2010 by Infinite

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP) – The Supreme Court lifted Monday a four-year ban on the sale in the United States of genetically modified alfalfa, which farmers fear contaminates others crops.

A district court judge in California in May 2007 blocked the US biotech giant Monsanto from selling alfalfa seeds that it had genetically modified to resist its Roundup weed killer.

Saudi Arabia: Gold Reserves Over Twice Previous Estimate

June 21, 2010 by Infinite

Surprise!

AP Business Writer= CAIRO (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s central bank holds more than twice the amount of gold previously estimated, a shift that analysts said reflected more of an accounting adjustment than an indication the oil rich nation was veering away from its conservative reserve policy.

A June report by the World Gold Council, an industry group that tracks gold bullion holdings by nations the world over, showed the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency’s gold reserve figure climbed to 322.9 tons compared to 143 tons reported in March.

The council said its gold data was “modified from the first quarter 2008 as a result of the adjustment of the SAMA’s gold accounts.”

Analysts said the change either signaled an accounting revision or that the kingdom, which sits atop the world’s largest proven reserves of conventional crude oil, had stepped up buying gold in 2008 as the metal’s value took a frequent beating during the global economic meltdown.

The same financial downturn also pummeled the price of oil, Saudi Arabia’s chief export.

Gold prices have gained steadily this year, settling Friday at a record $1,258.30 an ounce.

At that level, SAMA’s total official holdings of the precious metal are worth about $14.33 billion, or roughly 3.5 percent of the country’s total $413 billion in foreign assets.

“The only reason (for the change) beside the accounting of a larger portion of gold as SAMA assets, was they could have bought more gold in 2008,” said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at the Riyadh-based Banque Saudi Fransi-Credit Agricole Group.

“I think it was purely a buying opportunity in 2008,” he said. “There isn’t a shift away from their conservative approach of managing their foreign assets — being liquid, low risk and very long-term based.”

But those increases, recorded in SAMA’s April Monthly Statistical Bulletin, fail to even remotely explain the more than doubling of its gold reserves, as reported by the World Gold Council.

Saudi figures show that gold holdings by the country climbed by 867 million riyals ($231.2 million) in 2008 from the previous year.

Gold Reclaims Currency Status As Global System Unravels

June 21, 2010 by Infinite

Gold is the money of the elite and the rest is worthless paper backed by nothing.

We already know that the eurozone money markets seized up violently in early May as incipient bank runs spread from Greece to Portugal and Spain, threatening the first big sovereign default of our era.

Last week gold surged to an all-time high

Jean-ClaudeTrichet, the president of the European Central Bank (EC), talked days later of “the most difficult situation since the Second World War, and perhaps the First”.

The ECB‘s latest monthly bulletin gives us some startling details. It reveals that the bank’s “systemic risk indicator” surged suddenly to an all-time high on May 7 as measured by EURIBOR derivatives and stress in the EONIA swaps market, exceeding the strains at the height of the Lehman Brothers crisis in September 2008. “The probability of a simultaneous default of two or more euro-area large and complex banking groups rose sharply,” it said.

This is a unsettling admission. Which two “large and complex banking groups” were on the brink of collapse? We may find out in late July when the stress test results are published, a move described by Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann as “very, very dangerous”.

And are we any safer now that the EU has failed to restore full confidence with its €750bn (£505bn) “shock and awe” shield, that is to say after throwing everything it can credibly muster under the political constraints of monetary union? This is the deep angst that lies behind last week’s surge in gold to an all-time high of $1,258 an ounce.

The World Gold Council said on Friday that the central banks of Russia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Venezuela have been buying gold, and Saudi Arabia’s monetary authority has “restated” its reserves upwards from 143m to 323m tonnes. If there is any theme to the bullion rush, it is fear that the global currency system is unravelling. Or, put another way, gold itself is reclaiming its historic role as the ultimate safe haven and benchmark currency.

Energy Firms Paid To Shut Down Wind Farms During Wind

June 21, 2010June 21, 2010 by Infinite

Britain’s biggest wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing.

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.

Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK’s energy needs in the future. They claim that the ‘intermittent’ nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.

The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.

The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution – known as the ‘balancing mechanism’ – is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.

The system is already used to reduce supply from coal and gas-fired power stations when there is low demand. But shutting down wind farms is likely to cost the National grid – and ultimately consumers – far more. When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative ‘green’ subsidies for that electricity.

The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.

Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.

It raises the prospect of hugely profitable electricity suppliers receiving large sums of money from the National Grid just for switching off wind turbines.

Dr Lee Moroney, planning director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank opposed to the widespread introduction of wind farms, said: “As more and more wind farms come on stream this will become more and more of an issue. Wind power is not controllable and does not provide a solid supply to keep the national grid manageable. Paying multinational companies large sums of money not to supply electricity seems wrong.”

Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.