September 2010 – Page 4 – Infinite Unknown

Catholics, It’s You This Freemason-Satanist Pope Has Abused

February 16, 2011September 15, 2010 by Infinite

Freemason:

Pope Benedict XVI and Tony Blair

Satanist:

Picture from the Satanic Bible

This is a handsign of the devil worshippers (goat horns).

Horned Hand or The Mano Cornuto: this gesture is the Satanic salute, a sign of recognition between and allegiance of members of Satanism or other unholy groups.

More Freemasons and Satanists here:

– Australia: Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Bob Katter And The Masonic Handshake

More information about ‘Pedophile’s Paradise’ (=The Catholic Church) at the end of the following article.

How on earth is it possible that such criminals can get away with all these horrible crimes?

What would happen if an ordinary citizen would commit them?

Catholics, it’s you this Pope has abused

The Pope will visit the UK next week (The fingers of his hands form a ‘M’ for Mason.)

Some people think Ratzinger’s critics are holding him responsible for acts that were carried out before he became Pope, simply because he is the head of the institution involved. This is an error. For over 25 years, Ratzinger was personally in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the part of the Vatican responsible for enforcing Catholic canonical law across the world, including on sexual abuse. He is a notorious micro-manager who, it is said, insisted every salient document cross his desk. Hans Küng, a former friend of Ratzinger’s, says: “No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knew as much about abuse cases as this Pope.”

We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own “canon” law – which can only “punish” child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking.

Ratzinger was at the heart of this. He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican’s documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway. We know what he did. We have the paper trail. Here are three examples.

In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn’t go to the police, instead Hullermann was referred for “counselling”. The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was “untreatable [and] must never be allowed to work with children again”. Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998.

In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining that he was thinking of the “good of the universal Church” and of the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age” of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger’s statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the “good of the universal Church” – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment.

In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock Father Lawrence C Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical “trial” – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a “spiritual retreat”. He died years later, unpunished.

These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with “in absolute secrecy… completely suppressed by perpetual silence”. That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration.” The commendation was copied to all bishops.

Former Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill: ‘The Taliban are winning, we are losing’

September 14, 2010 by Infinite

Nato urged to allow partition of Afghanistan

Afghanistan should be allowed to partition along ethnic lines by pulling back Nato forces and acknowledging that the Taliban will not be defeated in their heartland, a senior former American national security adviser has warned.

Robert Blackwill said that there had been a decade of ‘innumerable errors’ in the Western approach to Afghanistan Photo: REUTERS

Robert Blackwill, who was Condolezza Rice’s deputy as National Security Adviser in 2003 to 2004, will use a speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies think tank in London on Monday to call on President Barack Obama to make drastratic changes in the war’s objectives.

He told The Daily Telegraph that the surge of forces launched last year to stabilise Afghanistan was “high likely” to fail and that the death toll in the conflict was too high a price to pay.“The Taliban are winning, we are losing,” he said. “They have high morale and want to continue the insurgency. Plan A is going to fail. We need a Plan B

“Let the Taliban control the Pashtun south and east, the American and allied price for preventing that is far too high.”

Mr Blackwill said that there had been a decade of “innumerable errors” in the Western approach to Afghanistan. Most notably American policy shifted after the atttacks on September 11, 2001 from expelling al Qaeda from its Afghan sanctuaries to crushing the Taliban and installing a democratic government in Kabul.

The result was that America now had 1,000 soldiers deployed for every one of the estimated 100 al Qaeda operatives now believed to be based in Afghanistan and was hemorraging $100 billion a year on the conflict.

Cabbagegate: County Sues Local Farmer For Growing Too Many Vegetables

September 14, 2010 by Infinite

The US government wants to destroy all local farmers:

– Interview With Gerald Celente: The Gestapo of Food

– RED ALERT: Dr. Rima E. Laibow On The Food Safety Bill (S 510): This Bill Eliminates All Local Farming, Organic Farmers and Garden Farmers

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — DeKalb County is suing a local farmer for growing too many vegetables, but he said he will fight the charges in the ongoing battle neighbors call “Cabbagegate.”

Fig trees, broccoli and cabbages are among the many greens that line the soil on Steve Miller’s more than two acres in Clarkston, who said he has spent fifteen years growing crops to give away and sell at local farmers markets.

“It’s a way of life, like it’s something in my blood,” said Miller.

In January, Dekalb County code enforcement officers began ticketing him for growing too many crops for the zoning and having unpermitted employees on site.

Miller stopped growing vegetables this summer and the charges were put on hold as he got the property rezoned.

Two weeks after approval, however, his attorney said the county began prosecuting the old charges, saying he was technically in violation before the rezoning.

“It should go away. I think it borders on harassment,” said Miller’s attorney Doug Dillard.

Miller faces nearly $5,000 in fines, but he said he plans to fight those citations in recorders court later this month.

A county spokesperson said officials can’t discuss the matter while it is in court, but neighbors were quick to come to his defense.

“When he moved here and I found out what he was doing I said, ‘Steve, you’re the best thing that ever happened to Cimarron Drive. And I still say that,” said neighbor Britt Fayssoux.

Life on this Earth Just Changed: The North Atlantic Current is Gone

December 28, 2010September 14, 2010 by Infinite

Update:

– Naval Research Laboratory Charts Show Damaged Loop Current

– Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: ‘Gulf Coast Oil Spill’

– Europe: Coldest Winter in 1,000 Years On Its Way, Connected To Gulf Stream Changes, Say Scientists

– Global Cooling and the New World Order:

The Bilderberg group discussion agenda in 2010:

“The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.”

Global Cooling!

I am not saying that you should panic now.

I was thinking for a few days about whether I should post this article or not.

This is just for your information.

(Click on images to enlarge)

The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet’s heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others.

This ‘river’ of warm water that moves through the Atlantic Ocean is called, in various places, the South Atlantic Current, the North Brazil Current, the Caribbean Current, the Yucatan Current, the Loop Current, the Florida Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current (or North Atlantic Drift) and the Norway Current.

The thermohaline circulation is sometimes called the ocean conveyor belt, the great ocean conveyor, or the global conveyor belt.

It is a university level physics experiment to use a tub of cool water and inject a colored stream of warm water into it. You can see the boundary layers of the warm water stream. If you add oil to the tub it breaks down the boundary layers of the warm water stream and effectively destroys the current vorticity . This is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean.

The entire ‘river of warm water’ that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil, that has gushed for months from the BP wellhead and nearby sites, to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has helped to effectively hide much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster. However, there is no current way to effectively ‘clean up’ the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil. Additionally, the oil has flowed up the East Coast of America and into the North Atlantic Ocean, and there is no way to effectively clean up this ‘sea bottom oil’. It is likely, based on numerous reports, that the oil is still flowing in massive amounts from multiple places on the seabed floor. This effectively means, that even if we had the technology in place to somehow clean up the free flowing thick crude oil deep in the ocean, it would likely not be enough to reverse the damage to the Thermohaline Circulation System in the Atlantic Ocean.

UK: Tax inspectors get police-like powers to access people’s bank statements, address books, payslips and even diaries

September 14, 2010 by Infinite

Tax inspectors have been given police-like powers to access people’s bank statements, address books, payslips and even diaries, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

The revenue has said it plans to recover the unpaid tax when they complete their self-assessment forms by January 2012 Photo: ALAMY

The inspectors can now turn up at people’s homes or businesses unannounced and examine their records if they believe not enough tax has been paid.

The news comes at the end of a week in which HM Revenue & Customs was accused of incompetence because of failings in the ‘pay-as-you-earn’ (PAYE) system. About 1.4 million people are now facing tax demands because of HMRC errors.

The scale of the new powers for tax inspectors, which were first introduced last year under the Finance Act 2008, have only become apparent after HMRC started to publish redacted versions of their training manuals on the internet.

Gary Ashford, head of tax risk, disputes and investigations at accountancy firm RSM Tenon, said that the powers under civil law made tax inspectors more powerful than the police.

Cancer: A Historical Perspective

September 14, 2010September 14, 2010 by Infinite

“An organism similar to the mycobacterium described here has been isolated and cultured from tumors and blood of tumerous mammals, including man, and when injected into mice and guinea pigs, has been reported to yield a chronic granulomatous disease, neoplasm (cancer), or some intergrade.”
– Inoue and Singer, 1970

Commentary:

There are diagnostic methods developed by Dr. med Alfons Weber and others that can diagnose cancer at a very early stage and can tell you exactly in what stage a patient is right now.

The causes of cancer and the cures for cancer are known for many, many years and nothing changed.

I have seen cancer patients getting cured (or better cure themselves) with alternative medicine. It works.

Only cancer patients in the very last stage are difficult to treat, because of all the toxic substances that the body has to remove, especially when the cancer tumors slowly dissolve.

But since lethal Big Pharma cancer drugs, radiation and operations earn lots of billions more than the ridiculous cheap cure the slaughter continues. (It is also not intended by the elite that people live a long and healthy life.)

By Lawrence Broxmeyer MD

Hodgkin’s cancer under attack

When Virginia Livingston was a student at Bellevue Medical College her pathology teacher mentioned, rather disparagingly, that there was a woman pathologist at Cornell who thought Hodgkin’s disease (a form of glandular cancer) was caused by avian tuberculosis [1]. This lady had published, but no one had confirmed her findings. Afterwards, Livingston compared slides of both. In Hodgkin’s, the large multinucleated giant cells were called Reed-Sternberg cells. They were similar to the giant cells of tuberculosis, which formed to engulf the tubercle bacilli. Livingston stored away in her memory that this lady pathologist was probably right but she would have a difficult time in gaining acceptance.

By 1931, Pathologist Elsie L’Esperance was seeing ‘acid fast’ tuberculosis-like bacteria riddling her Hodgkin’s cancer tissue samples. And that germ, once injected into guinea pigs, caused them to come down with Hodgkin’s too, fulfilling Koch’s postulates. L’Esperance brought her stained slides to former teacher and prominent Cornell cancer pathologist James Ewing. Ewing initially confirmed that her tissue slides were indeed Hodgkin’s. But when he found out that her slides came through guinea pig inoculation of the avian (fowl) tuberculosis she had found in humans with Hodgkin’s, Ewing, visibly upset, said that the slides then could not be cancer.

It betrayed his checkered history of high-placed medical politician. In 1907, you could have approached Dr. James Ewing about a cancer germ, and he would have embraced you over it. At that time, both for he and the rest of the nations medical authorities, it was not a question of whether cancer was caused by a germ, but which one. Was not it Ewing, at one time, who had proclaimed that tuberculosis followed Hodgkin’s cancer “like a shadow”?

But shortly after, James Ewing, “the Father of Oncology”, sent a sword thru the heart of an infectious cause of cancer with “Neoplastic Diseases” [2], becoming an ambitious zealot for radiation therapy with the directorship of what would one day be called Sloan-Kettering squarely on his mind. His entry lay in prominent philanthropist James Douglas. A vote for Ewing, Douglas knew, was a vote for continued radiation and James Douglas began sizeable uranium extraction operations from Colorado mines thru his company, Phelps Dodge, Inc.[34].

Soon Sloan became known as a radium hospital and went from an institution with a census of less than 15% cancer patients, separated by partition, lest their disease spread to others, to a veritable cancer center. But the very history of radiation revealed its flaws, and by the early 1900s nearly 100 cases of leukemia were documented in radium recipients and not long thereafter it was determined that approximately 100 radiologists had contracted that cancer in the same way [3].

Still, Ewing, by now an Honorary Member of the American Radium Society, persisted.

New Drug-Resistant NDM-1 Superbugs Found In 3 US States

September 14, 2010September 14, 2010 by Infinite

Commentary:

A healthy body with a functioning(!) immune system cannot be conquered by a virus or bacteria..

It is impossible for any virus or bacteria to cause any harm at all.

A healthy body cannot be attacked because a fully charged cell does not allow any virus or bacteria to enter into it.

This is like a computer virus that was designed for Windows that finds itself in a Linux environment and nothing happens.

Nothing!

That has been proven also by experiments done by Stalin, Hitler and Mao in the forties.

One experiment goes like this:

1. The first group of ‘participants’ drank a glass of water totally contaminated with cholera and were told about what they just drank.
Result: All died.

2. The second group wasn’t told that they just drank a glas of water that has been totally contaminated with cholera.
Result: Not one died.

3. The third group were told that they just drank a glass of water that has been contaminated with cholera, although they drank the purest well water.
Result: 50% died !!!

Horrible experiments, but if you know about them, then they can save your life now.

Yes, people who eat processed or junk food containing MSG, Aspartame or Fluoride or have been vaccinated just once (!) do not have a 100% functioning immune system anymore and in most cases it is already barely functioning, because the body has been poisoned for all these years.

BUT even more important is the fact that if you get scared and by into mass media fear mongering you are already about ‘50% dead’!

I recommend you stay relaxed and healthy instead. 🙂

And even if you get sick alternative medicine has the cure for any disease (incl. cancer).

Also learn to harness the power of your soul, mind and spirit to stay healthy.

Serious public health risks due to a lack of new antibiotics at a time of rising antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” will be the main focus of a top microbiology conference in Boston that starts Sunday. (AFP/HO/File)

BOSTON – An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.

How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.

Scientists have long feared this – a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance, creating dangerous “superbugs.”

“It’s a great concern,” because drug resistance has been rising and few new antibiotics are in development, said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “It’s just a matter of time” until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person, he said.

Grayson heads an American Society for Microbiology conference in Boston, which was buzzing with reports of the gene, called NDM-1 and named for New Delhi.

Cuba to lay off at least 500,000 state workers in 6 months, allow private jobs

September 13, 2010 by Infinite

Cuban barbers, like this one working in Havana last month, became self-employed in April.

Havana, Cuba (CNN) — Cuba announced on Monday it would lay off “at least” half a million state workers over the next six months and simultaneously allow more jobs to be created in the private sector as the socialist economy struggles to get back on its feet.

The plan announced in state media confirms that President Raul Castro is following through on his pledge to shed some one million state jobs, a full fifth of the official workforce — but in a shorter timeframe than initially anticipated.

“Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities and services with inflated payrolls and losses that damage our economy and result counterproductive, create bad habits and distort workers’ conduct,” the CTC, Cuba’s official labor union, said in newspapers.

Castro had announced layoffs in August, but said they would occur over the next five years.

Canada: 59% Would Be In Trouble If Their Pay Was Delayed By A Week

September 13, 2010September 13, 2010 by Infinite

59% of Canadians would be in trouble if their pay was delayed by a week: poll

The recession may be officially over, but six in 10 Canadians are still surviving from paycheque to paycheque, a national survey showed Monday.

Fifty-nine per cent of Canadian workers say they would be in financial trouble if their paycheque was delayed by just a week – the same proportion as last year when the economy was still mired in a downturn, according to a poll of 2,766 people by the Canadian Payroll Association.

The survey comes as the OECD today warned that record high debt levels have left many Canadians vulnerable “to any future adverse shocks.” Also Monday, a Statistics Canada report showed household net worth fell 0.6 per cent in the second quarter, largely due to falling stock markets. Liabilities of households increased, meantime, led by mortgages and consumer credit.

Interview With Gerald Celente: The Gestapo of Food

September 13, 2010 by Infinite

On S 501:

– RED ALERT: Dr. Rima E. Laibow On The Food Safety Bill (S 510): This Bill Eliminates All Local Farming, Organic Farmers and Garden Farmers

More with Gerald Celente:

– Overdose – The Next Financial Crisis (Documentary)

– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: And Now We’re Headed For The GREATEST Depression

– Judge Napolitano on Freedom Watch With Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo And Gerald Celente

Off The Grid Radio
Ep013
Released: September 10, 2010

On today’s edition of Off the Grid Radio, Bill Heid interviews renowned trend analyst and forecasting expert Gerald Celente. Mr. Celente uncovers the latest conspiracy to control the food supply and explains how the coming war with Iran will destroy the economy…and the soul of our country. This is one episode you absolutely MUST hear!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:58 – 23.6MB)

(Music playing)

Welcome to Off The Grid radio. Better ideas to bust you and your family out of today’s global control grid. Now, here is today’s show.

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again as the announcer says to Off The Grid News and our little radio version of Off the Grid News here at offthegridnews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy as always along with Mr. Bill Heid. Bill, big, big news today about the guest that we have coming up.

Robert Fisk: Nine years, two wars, hundreds of thousands dead – and nothing learnt

September 12, 2010 by Infinite

Divide et impera!

Did 9/11 make us all mad? Our memorial to the innocents who died nine years ago has been a holocaust of fire and blood . . .

The World Trade Center site with memorial footprints of the twin towers visible

Did 9/11 make us all go mad? How fitting, in a weird, crazed way, that the apotheosis of that firestorm nine years ago should turn out to be a crackpot preacher threatening another firestorm with a Nazi-style book burning of the Koran. Or a would-be mosque two blocks from “ground zero” – as if 9/11 was an onslaught on Jesus-worshipping Christians, rather than on the atheist West.

But why should we be surprised? Just look at all the other crackpots spawned in the aftermath of those international crimes against humanity: the half-crazed Ahmadinejad, the smarmy post-nuclear Gaddafi, Blair with his crazed right eye and George W Bush with his black prisons and torture and lunatic “war on terror”. And that wretched man who lived – or lives still – in an Afghan cave and the hundreds of al-Qa’idas whom he created, and the one-eyed mullah – not to mention all the lunatic cops and intelligence agencies and CIA thugs who failed us all – utterly – on 9/11 because they were too idle or too stupid to identify 19 men who were going to attack the United States. And remember one thing: even if the Rev Terry Jones sticks with his decision to back down, another of our cranks will be ready to take his place.

Indeed, on this grim ninth anniversary – and heaven spare us next year from the 10th – 9/11 appears to have produced not peace or justice or democracy or human rights, but monsters. They have prowled Iraq – both the Western and the local variety – and slaughtered 100,000 souls, or 500,000, or a million; and who cares? They have killed tens of thousands in Afghanistan; and who cares? And as the sickness has spread across the Middle East and then the globe, they – the air force pilots and the insurgents, the Marines and the suicide bombers, the al-Qa’idas of the Maghreb and of the Khalij and of the Caliphate of Iraq and the special forces and the close air support boys and the throat-cutters – have torn the heads off women and children and the old and the sick and the young and healthy, from the Indus to the Mediterranean, from Bali to the London Tube; quite a memorial to the 2,966 innocents who were killed nine years ago. All in their name, it seems, has been our holocaust of fire and blood, enshrined now in the crazed pastor of Gainesville.

This is the loss, of course. But who’s made the profit? Well, the arms dealers, naturally, and Boeing and Lockheed Martin and all the missile lads and the drone manufacturers and F-16 spare parts outfits and the ruthless mercenaries who stalk the Muslim lands on our behalf now that we have created 100,000 more enemies for each of the 19 murderers of 9/11. Torturers have had a good time, honing their sadism in America’s black prisons – it was appropriate that the US torture centre in Poland should be revealed on this ninth anniversary – as have the men (and women, I fear) who perfect the shackles and water-drowning techniques with which we now fight our wars. And – let us not forget – every religious raver in the world, be they of the Bin Laden variety, the bearded groupies in the Taliban, the suicide executioners, the hook-in the arm preachers, or our very own pastor of Gainesville.

And God? Where does he fit in? An archive of quotations suggests that just about every monster created in or after 9/11 is a follower of this quixotic redeemer. Bin Laden prays to God – “to turn America into a shadow of itself”, as he told me in 1997 – and Bush prayed to God and Blair prayed – and prays – to God, and all the Muslim killers and an awful lot of Western soldiers and Dr (honorary) Pastor Terry Jones and his 30 (or it may be 50, since all statistics are hard to come by in the “war on terror”) pray to God. And poor old God, of course, has had to listen to these prayers as he always sits through them during our mad wars. Recall the words attributed to him by a poet of another generation: “God this, God that, and God the other thing. ‘Good God,’ said God, ‘I’ve got my work cut out’.” And that was just the First World War…

Fidel Castro: Cuba’s Communism Doesn’t Work

September 12, 2010 by Infinite

Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro greets students before delivering a speech outside Havana’s University in Havana, Cuba, Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. Castro dusted off his military fatigues for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a Communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.(AP Photo/Javier Galeano) (Javier Galeano – AP)

HAVANA — Cuba’s communist economic model has come in for criticism from an unlikely source: Fidel Castro.

The revolutionary leader told a visiting American journalist and a U.S.-Cuba policy expert that the island’s state-dominated system is in need of change, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has taken pains to steer clear of local issues since illness forced him to step down as president four years ago.

The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel’s brother Raul, the country’s president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba’s 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked Castro if Cuba’s economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg’s account.

Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations who accompanied Goldberg on the trip, confirmed the Cuban leader’s comment, which he made at a private lunch last week.

She told The Associated Press she took the remark to be in line with Raul Castro’s call for gradual but widespread reform.

“It sounded consistent with the general consensus in the country now, up to and including his brother’s position,” Sweig said.

In general, she said she found the 84-year-old Castro to be “relaxed, witty, conversational and quite accessible.”

“He has a new lease on life, and he is taking advantage of it,” Sweig said.

Castro stepped down temporarily in July 2006 due to a serious illness that nearly killed him.

He resigned permanently two years later, but remains head of the Communist Party. After staying almost entirely out of the spotlight for four years, he re-emerged in July and now speaks frequently about international affairs. He has been warning for weeks of the threat of a nuclear war over Iran.

China Blacks Out Towns To Meet Energy Goal

September 12, 2010 by Infinite

BEIJING — Chinese steel mills and mobile phone factories are being idled and thousands of homes in one area are doing without electricity as local governments order power cuts to meet energy-saving targets set by Beijing.

Rolling blackouts and enforced power cuts are affecting key industrial areas. The prosperous eastern city of Taizhou turned off street lights and ordered hotels and shopping malls to cut power use. In Anping County southwest of Beijing, an area known as China’s wire-manufacturing capital, thousands of factories and homes have endured daylong blackouts over the past two weeks.

“We can’t meet deadlines for some orders and will have to pay penalties,” said Han Hongmai, general manager of Anping’s Jintai Metal Wire Co. “At home we can’t use the toilet” on blackout days due to lack of power for water pumps, he said.

While the U.S. and Europe struggle with flagging economies, the power outages are symptomatic of China’s torrid growth and officials’ capricious use of their powers to meet the authoritarian government’s goals.

China’s economic expansion, which hit 10.3 percent in the latest quarter, blew holes in government efforts to curb surging energy demand, pollution and emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases. Beijing told local leaders to clamp down and stepped up pressure by sending inspectors to see the order was carried out.

“You could say local governments are trying to blackmail the central government: If you order me to do something I can’t deliver, I will pass on the pressure to ordinary people,” said Yang Ailun, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace China.

Greece: Beyond $1.2 Trillion Debt, $250,000 Per Working Adult

September 12, 2010 by Infinite

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

VOW OF PROPERTY
Father Arsenios at the Vatopaidi monastery, overlooking the Aegean Sea, in Mount Athos, Greece. He is considered by many to be Vatopaidi’s C.F.O., “the real brains of the operation.”

As Wall Street hangs on the question “Will Greece default?,” the author heads for riot-stricken Athens, and for the mysterious Vatopaidi monastery, which brought down the last government, laying bare the country’s economic insanity. But beyond a $1.2 trillion debt (roughly a quarter-million dollars for each working adult), there is a more frightening deficit. After systematically looting their own treasury, in a breathtaking binge of tax evasion, bribery, and creative accounting spurred on by Goldman Sachs, Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.

After an hour on a plane, two in a taxi, three on a decrepit ferry, and then four more on buses driven madly along the tops of sheer cliffs by Greeks on cell phones, I rolled up to the front door of the vast and remote monastery. The spit of land poking into the Aegean Sea felt like the end of the earth, and just as silent. It was late afternoon, and the monks were either praying or napping, but one remained on duty at the guard booth, to greet visitors. He guided me along with seven Greek pilgrims to an ancient dormitory, beautifully restored, where two more solicitous monks offered ouzo, pastries, and keys to cells. I sensed something missing, and then realized: no one had asked for a credit card. The monastery was not merely efficient but free. One of the monks then said the next event would be the church service: Vespers. The next event, it will emerge, will almost always be a church service. There were 37 different chapels inside the monastery’s walls; finding the service is going to be like finding Waldo, I thought.

“Which church?” I asked the monk.

“Just follow the monks after they rise,” he said. Then he looked me up and down more closely. He wore an impossibly long and wild black beard, long black robes, a monk’s cap, and prayer beads. I wore white running shoes, light khakis, a mauve Brooks Brothers shirt, and carried a plastic laundry bag that said eagles palace hotel in giant letters on the side. “Why have you come?” he asked.

How on earth do monks wind up as Greece’s best shot at a Harvard Business School case study? I work up the nerve to ask.

Europe: Meat From Cloned Animals to Enter The Food Chain ‘Through An Open Door’

September 11, 2010 by Infinite

Cloned meat: Britain and Europe set for another clash

Europe is allowing meat from cloned animals to enter the food chain “through an open door”, according to MEPs.

Demonstrators wearing masks depicting Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, protest against cloning animals for food, in London Photo: REUTERS

They have called for an immediate measures to stop the importing of meat from America, South America or Japan without some safeguards or a new labelling regime put in place.

Their comments came after the European Commission reconfirmed this week that it believed meat, milk, cheese or any other product from the offspring of a cloned animal was perfectly legitimate and needed no special licence to be sold.This position puts Europe at direct loggerheads with the Food Standards Agency, whose board is meeting next week to discuss cloned animals.

The FSA has always stated that any products from the offspring of a cloned animal, even three generations down the line, had to have a licence before they can be sold.

The row between Europe and the FSA has been simmering after the FSA discovered last month that meat from the offspring of a cloned cow had been unwittingly sold in butcher’s shops in Britain, without a licence being obtained.

The discovery that such meat, for the first time had been eaten by consumers, triggered an often ill-tempered debate into the ethics of cloning animals.

UK Defence Spending: Tens of Thousands of Troops to Be Cut

September 11, 2010 by Infinite

Tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen face the axe after ministers concluded that reducing the number of uniformed personnel in the Armed Forces was the best way to save money.

The cuts will lead to a substantial reduction in the size of the Army

The cuts, which are part of the strategic defence review, will lead to a substantial reduction in the size of the Army, which will also have to give up many of its tanks and armoured vehicles. Soldiers could also be ordered to serve longer on the front line in Afghanistan, and be given less time to recuperate between tours.

Senior ministers are poised to make the first painful decisions on cuts next week as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review. The Daily Telegraph has learnt that deep cuts to military manpower are high on the agenda.

The Armed Forces have about 180,000 uniformed personnel, but can keep a fighting force in the field of barely one twentieth of that. Paying for housing and supporting uniformed personnel is one of the biggest drains on the £36?billion Ministry of Defence budget.

UK Police Earthquake Training For ‘Extremely Unlikely Crisis’ Costs £826,000

September 11, 2010 by Infinite

Just a waste of money or do they know something that you don’t?

Hundreds of police officers undertook a three-day course on how to deal with powerful earthquakes even though Britain has never experienced any such event.

Fire and rescue crews from across Europe and the Middle East took part in a major exercise simulating an earthquake hitting

Britain endures its fair share of elemental hardships: floods, storms, and even the occasional tornado. It is not, however, known for its high risk of catastrophic earthquakes.

But that did not stop police officers undertaking a three-day course training them to deal with a devastating tremor.

Officers from four British forces participated in the £826,000 exercise that simulated the consequences from a tremor measuring eight on the Richter scale hitting the country – something that has never happened and probably never will.

The teams were called in to work with European and Middle Eastern officials for the “extremely unlikely” crisis.

Hundreds of actors were also employed to recreate the mock disaster scenes across the country.

Critics suggested the three day exercise, one of the largest ever undertaken, was a waste of valuable resources as it would almost never occur in Britain.

Senior officials, however, felt it “necessary” to be prepared for such an “unthinkable” event despite just 11 people dying from earthquakes in Britain over the past 1000 years.

Florida Pastor Terry Jones Calls Off Koran Burning

September 11, 2010 by Infinite

The Rev. Terry Jones faces reporters’ questions Friday at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Jones arrived in New York on Friday night
He wants to meet with imam heading Islamic center plan
The planned Quran burning sparked international condemnations

(CNN) — The pastor of a Florida church says his congregation has decided to call off the burning of the Quran that was to be held Saturday — the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States by the al Qaeda terror network.

“We will definitely not burn the Quran,” the Rev. Terry Jones told NBC’s “Today” on Saturday “Not today, not ever.” The burning had been planned for 6 p.m.

Jones arrived in New York late Friday night and was working to set up a meeting with the imam in charge of the Islamic center planned near ground zero. The planned meeting, Jones had said, helped persuade him to halt the burning.

Earlier Friday, Jones gave mixed messages about whether he intends to carry out his plans, which have sparked international controversy and protests in the Muslim world. U.S. military leaders said the event would imperil the lives of troops abroad.

UK Food Inflation Could Hit 7 Percent By Year’s End

October 15, 2010September 11, 2010 by Infinite

– UK Food Prices Soar Up To 58 Percent In Just 3 Years (Daily Mail)

– UK: Food Inflation May Rise 10 Percent Before Christmas (Telegraph)

– Bank of England’s Mervyn King Warns Over High Inflation (Telegraph)

Annual food inflation could reach 7 per cent later this year, a leading City economist has warned.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation food index, which measures prices of meat, dairy products, cereals, oils and fats, and sugar on a monthly basis, rose 22pc in August.

The jump, from 1.7 per cent in June, is likely if global food commodity prices continue to rise, said Simon Ward, chief economist at Henderson.

Rising food costs could have the effect of pushing up the consumer prices index (CPI), the official measure of inflation, to 4 per cent – double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target, warned Mr Ward.

The impact on household budgets could even persuade the Coalition to cancel its planned rise in VAT, he added.

“Such an increase [in food prices] would hit consumer spending and recovery prospects and could destabilise inflationary expectations,” said Mr Ward.

“This could warrant postponing or cancelling the coming VAT hike.”

The Food and Agriculture Organisation food index, which measures prices of meat, dairy products, cereals, oils and fats, and sugar on a monthly basis, rose by an annual 22 per cent in August, the fastest rate since September 2008.

Food prices have increased further in September, Mr Ward said.

The Karzai Empire With Villas In Dubai Worth £90 Million

September 11, 2010September 11, 2010 by Infinite

Flashback:

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

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

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

Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built.

“There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, it’s about oil, it’s not about democracy.”

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is slated to be completed in 2014, with $7.6 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank.

The family of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has been linked to more than a dozen expensive homes in the Gulf, raising fears that Western aid money sent to Afghanistan is being misused.

The centrepiece of the holdings is a portfolio of 14 villas on the Palm Jumeirah Photo: GOOGLE EARTH

The Daily Telegraph today reveals a property empire in Dubai assembled at a cost of £90 million that is owned or occupied by close relatives and associates of Mr Karzai.

The property holdings emerged as Mr Karzai, who leads one of the world’s poorest and most deprived countries, has struggled to salvage Afghanistan’s biggest private bank, Kabul Bank, which bankrolled the purchases.

The centrepiece of the holdings is a portfolio of 14 villas on the Palm Jumeirah, Dubai’s showpiece property development, registered in the name of Sher Khan Farnood, the former chairman of Kabul Bank. Kabul Bank also owns an apartment, two business plots and a loss-making airline, Pamir Airlines, in Dubai.

Mahmoud Karzai, President Karzai’s brother and the third-largest shareholder in the bank, like Mr Farnood, 46, occupies a “Signature” villa valued at up to £4?million. Other properties are valued between £3?million and £1?million.

He also made a £500,000 profit following the sale of a Dubai bought with a loan from Kabul Bank.

China Has Enough Vacant Properties To House Over Half Of America

December 18, 2010September 10, 2010 by Infinite

Property stocks in China were weak today due to media reports that the Beijing and Shanghai authorities were investigating the high vacancy rate for Chinese property. Markets are worried they’ll be shocked by what they discover and clamp down on speculation even harder than they have.

How large might the vacancy problem be? Here’s a taste:

Finance Asia:

Recent statistics show that there are about 64 million apartments and houses that have remained empty during the past six months, according to Chinese media reports. On the assumption that each flat serves as a home to a typical Chinese family of three (parents and one child), the vacant properties could accommodate 200 million people, which account for more than 15% of the country’s 1.3 billion population. But instead, they remain empty. This is in part because many Chinese believe that a home is not a real home unless you own the flat.

And so people prefer buying to renting, and as a result, the rental yield is relatively low.

Why would so many properties be held vacant? They’re seen as long-term investments, even if renters aren’t available. This is due to the dearth of investment options available to most Chinese, butting up against their rapid wealth creation.

They need to put their money somewhere, but the stock market is under pressure and bank interest doesn’t cover inflation. So they plunk their money into a new property, just as a place to store their wealth, even if they don’t intend to live in the place and can’t find renters.

Multiply this behavior by a few hundred million, and the result is enough vacant properties to house over half of America.

Vincent Fernando, CFA | Sep. 8, 2010, 6:34 AM

Source: The Business Insider

Max Keiser on the Middle Class And Revolution

September 10, 2010 by Infinite

Added: 8. September 2010

Pentagon to Buy and Destroy All 10,000 Copies of a Memoir by Former Defense Intelligence Agency Officer Anthony Shaffer

September 10, 2010 by Infinite

From the article:

“Shaffer was previously known for alleging before the 9/11 Commission and Congress that a covert Pentagon task force called “Able Danger” had identified Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, before the assaults on New York and the Pentagon. Shaffer’s claim was later rejected by congressional investigators, among others. But he repeats the assertion in the book.”

The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing – 10,000 copies – of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources.

“Operation Dark Heart,” which was scheduled to be published this month by St. Martin’s Press, recounts the adventures and frustrations of an Army reservist, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who served in Afghanistan in 2003, a moment when the attention of Washington and the military had shifted to Iraq.

Shaffer, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, describes a number of planned covert operations, including an aborted cross-border surveillance operation using sophisticated eavesdropping technology that targeted high-level al-Qaeda operatives based in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The operation was shut down by military officials concerned about offending Pakistan, according to Shaffer’s account.

Shaffer’s book was reviewed and cleared in writing by the Army Reserve earlier this year, but this summer the Defense Intelligence Agency objected to the use of the names of American intelligence officers, among other issues.

A senior Pentagon official said that the DIA obtained a copy of the manuscript in mid-July, adding that the agency “did a quick review” and found “some issues we were very concerned with.” The agency then referred the matter to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which distributed the manuscript to other agencies, presumably including the CIA, “all of whom had major objections to things in the book,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official said the Defense Department “sent up a team to talk with the publisher some time ago,” and has been negotiating an agreement that might allow the Pentagon to purchase already printed copies of the book and permit a subsequent version to go forward as long as it complies with U.S. government requests.

Both sides now appear to have agreed on the contents of the second printing, but negotiations are focused on what to with the 10,000 copies already published.

The Pentagon is now negotiating with Shaffer’s publisher to buy the entire first print run, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The Pentagon’s plan to destroy all 10,000 copies of the initial printing was first reported Thursday night by the New York Times.

Spectacular Northern Lights Display Pictured After Violent Solar Storm Hits Earth

September 10, 2010 by Infinite

A spectacular Northern Lights display has been photographed over the skies of northern Europe, after Nasa scientists reported a powerful space storm buffeting Earth.

(Click on image to enlarge!) Experts said stargazers could expect to see another spectacular display on Thursday night as the solar wind stream continued to hit Earth’s magnetic field Photo: ØYSTEIN LUNDE INGVALDSE/ SPACESTORIES.COM

A picture taken by the sun observation satellite Solar Dynamics Observatory SDO shows an exceptionally heavy plasma eruption on the surface of the sun Photo: EPA

The stunning auroras, witnessed on Wednesday night, are the first of the season following the area’s light summer nights.

The displays were created from bursts of activity on the Sun earlier this week.

The subsequent magnetic activity, above a sunspot numbered 1105, produced an explosive flare that was recorded by Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

The flare then sent a stream of charged particles racing towards Earth at 250 miles per second.

After the sunspot rotated away from Earth, the explosive region erupted once more, creating a second solar flare, a fantastic prominence that sent a coronal mass ejection into space.

Nasa said because the Sun had already rotated the flares the flares did not pose any threat to the Earth. Images taken by the space agency show the prominence flaring from the sun.

The auroral lights’ colours were created through a series of reactions between atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The green colours stem from oxygen molecules while the more unusual purple colour is derived from molecular nitrogen.

Experts said stargazers could expect to see another spectacular display on Thursday night as the solar wind stream continued to hit Earth’s magnetic field.

Another series of spectacular auroras were witnessed by photographer by (MUST SEE!) Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen, a Norwegian musician.

Alex Jones To Rev. Ted Pike – ‘Don’t Criticize Jews’

September 10, 2010 by Infinite

AIPAC rules America

– Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘America is something that can easily be moved.’ ‘The world won’t say a thing.’ ‘The world will say we’re defending.’

– Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts: ‘AIPAC Owns The US Puppet Government’

By Rev. Ted Pike

Last year, prior to passage of the federal hate crimes bill, Alex Jones, after years of ignoring my requests to allow me to warn his huge audience of the hate bill threat, finally put me on his June 8th program.

As I was waiting to begin the broadcast, Jones told me off the air that he had heard me the previous morning on Joyce Riley’s program criticizing Jewish supremacists as authors of the hate bill. He said what he was about to tell me was “off the record.” He said his broadcasting empire has “gotten so big” with many mainline affiliates that he cannot afford to lose those stations by criticizing Jews. “But I’ve got to mention ADL behind the hate bill!” I objected. “ADL is okay,” he said. “Talk about ADL all you want, but we can’t talk about Jews specifically.”

He then told me that, with this understanding, there would be many opportunities for me to be on his program, especially as new legislative threats emerged. Having said that, we were on the air. I did go after ADL and, fortunately, did not encounter any time in which I would have been morally bound to become more specific.

Yet I felt violated. I had experienced raw censorship in action, by a national talk show host who touts himself (and is believed by millions) as delivering only the truth — whatever the cost or controversy.

Jones put me on again Oct 14th for fifteen minuntes. Yet, he was not true to his promise of future interviews, even as I repeatedly left him messages warning of more ADL legislation, such as ENDA and the cyber-bullying bill. Evidently, Jones was as uneasy about having me on as I was about operating under his gag order.