Disclaimer: This site is *not* affiliated with AIPAC, Ahmed Chalabi, K Street, ClearChannel, or Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, NJ. In case you were curious. Full disclosure: I have some shares of Apple and therefore I have an Apple bias. Yum. Also got a tiny bit of gold!
"In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.... Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by `visions,' by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others."
So Kanye stands at the gateway between the corrupt world of the profane and the exclusive world of the illuminated, wearing a Horus pendant, an unmistakable symbol of the Mysteries. One might say: “Well maybe Kanye just likes Egyptian things.” Maybe so, but in the context of this video, where all details are important and extremely meaningful, Horus becomes another piece of this symbolic puzzle.
Horned Girls - The entrance of the gateway of pillars is guarded by two horned albino girls holding a staff. Their features are very reminiscent of depictions of Isis and Hathor, goddesses of ancient Egypt. Another allusion to Egyptian magic......
.......This “moving painting” is definitely a multi-layered artwork, with many levels of interpretation: the first level is a commentary on power by using timeless symbols taken from ancient art; the second level describes a Masonic initiation with a ritual murder and an imminent rebirth.
This video lasts a mere minute and forty-three seconds but it manages to give the viewers plenty to ponder on and many symbols to decode. Looking at its meaning from a pop culture point of view, it is interesting to note that this short-film, intended to be viewed by the general public (especially young people), describes the concept of power with overt Masonic symbolism and occult references. This causes the uninformed viewers to unconsciously associate those symbols with the concept of Power, while “those in the know” get the “insider’s wink” sent by this video. Power ultimately becomes another piece in the on-going process called the “Revelation of the Method,” where the true source of power gradually and subliminally reveals itself to the world and occult rituals take place right in front of the public’s eyes.
Fantastic stuff, shocking. Beat that, cults of yore!
Viktor Bout's back, baby! This is one lolcat who knows way to much about everything going on, in re Afghanistan etc.
David Icke says there is a Moon Matrix. Wow dude there wasn't too much soft sell in front of this one.
He takes the manipulation of the human race and the nature of reality to still new levels of understanding and he calls for humanity to rise from its knees and take back the world from the sinister network of families and non-human entities that covertly control us from cradle to grave.
David has moved the global cutting edge so many times since his incredible ‘awakening’ in 1990 and here he does it again - and then some.
His most staggering revelation is that the Earth and the collective human mind is manipulated from the Moon, which, he says, is not a ‘heavenly body’, but an artificial construct – a gigantic ‘spacecraft’ (probably a hollowed-out 'planetoid') – which is home to the extraterrestrial group that has been manipulating humanity for aeons.
He describes what he calls the ‘Moon Matrix’, a fake reality broadcast from the Moon which is decoded by the human body/mind in much the same way as portrayed in the Matrix movie trilogy. The Moon Matrix has ‘hacked’ into the human ‘body-computer’ system, he says, and it is feeding us a manipulated sense of self and the world 24/7.
All right here's something more serious. Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc, 2007, FAKE PFIZER ILLEGAL OPS SHELL CORPORATION... Those people at the FDA let Pfizer set up a shell company to crush for illegal operations, because they recognized Pfizer's huge illegal activities would kill them by kickin em off Medicare/Medicaid. They set up a shell for the illegal marketing of Bextra for surgical pain, at double the max approved dose, 40mg. Criminal deviants!Feds found Pfizer too big to nail, so they looked the other way on massive fraud. WOW.
It looks like the demise of the gold price suppression scheme is very close at hand. Over the years GATA has uncovered a lot of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that the Western central banks have been dishoarding gold at an unsustainable rate in order to suppress the price. This is the first concrete evidence that, just as GATA has long been predicting, the gold price is set to blow up because physical demand for gold is overwhelming the manipulators’ ability, or willingness, to provide it.
Mainstream medicine defines autism most often as a brain disorder that affects 3 critical areas of development: communication, social, and creative or imaginative play. They don’t really talk about the “sickness” part. And by sickness, I’m talking about all of the things I saw happen to my son that had nothing to do with his brain. He stopped eating. He stopped talking. He stopped interacting. He went from a chubby little toddler to skin and bones with no muscle tone. He got dark rings around his eyes and started banging his head all the time. He wasn’t born like this, something had happened to him to make him sick.
Eventually, I found out that most people on the spectrum suffer from some, or all, of the following biological issues that have nothing to do with the brain:
Digestive Issues – Diarrhea and/or constipation
Highly Selective Diet – They only eat a few foods or food types
Yeast Overgrowth – An unhealthy imbalance of good and bad yeast
Nutrient Depletion/Poor Absorption – Alarmingly low levels of certain vitamins and minerals.
Heavy Metal Toxicity – Alarmingly high levels of heavy metals in body tissue.
Body Detoxification Issues – Spectrum kids have a harder time ridding their bodies of toxins.
Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, theorized that UFOs might have a primarily spiritual and psychological basis. In his 1959 book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen In The Sky, he pointed out that the round shape of most saucers corresponds to a mandala, a type of archetypal shape seen in religiousimages. Thus the saucers might reflect a projection of the internal desires of viewers to see them. However, he did not label them as delusion or hallucination; rather he suggested something in the nature of a shared spiritual experience.
I can only apologize for not pushing the breakdown of the gold market story out more. It is finally coming loose it seems, & when this occurs it will be another giant 'discontinuity' that'll get filled up with more inflationary ripoffs. A huge basis of the system is gonna croak sometime soon...
BOMBSHELL – Whistle Blower Comes Forward With Solid Proof The Price Of Gold And Silver Is Being Manipulated By Major Financial Institutions
Published on 04-12-2010
For a long time many of us have had very serious suspicions that the prices of gold and silver were being highly manipulated. But now, thanks to the mind blowing testimony of one very brave whistle blower, the blatant manipulation of the world gold and silver markets is being blown wide open. What you are about to read below is absolutely staggering. Once the American people learn how incredibly corrupt the world financial system is, it is going to change everything. The government that we are all trusting to guard the integrity of the financial system is failing to do that job. It turns out that the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has been sitting on solid evidence that the elite banking powers have been openly and blatantly manipulating the price of gold and silver. Even though they were basically handed a "smoking gun", they have done absolutely nothing with it. But now the information has gone public and the CFTC is red-faced.
Back in November 2009, Andrew Maguire, a former Goldman Sachs silver trader in Goldman's London office, contacted the CFTC's Enforcement Division and reported the illegal manipulation of the silver market by traders at JPMorgan Chase.
Maguire told the CFTC how silver traders at JPMorgan Chase openly bragged about their exploits - including how they sent a signal to the market in advance so that other traders could make a profit during price suppression episodes.
Traders would recognize these signals and would make money shorting precious metals alongside JPMorgan Chase. Maguire explained to the CFTC how there would routinely be market manipulations at the time of option expiries, during non-farm payroll data releases, during commodities exchange contract rollovers, as well as at other times if it was deemed necessary.
On February 3rd, Maguire gave the CFTC a two day warning of a market manipulation event by email to Eliud Ramirez, who is a senior investigator for the CFTC’s Enforcement Division.
Maguire warned Ramirez that the price of precious metals would be suppressed upon the release of non-farm payroll data on February 5th. As the manipulation of the precious metals markets was unfolding on February 5th, Maguire sent additional emails to Ramirez explaining exactly what was going on.
And it wasn't just that Maguire predicted that the price would be forced down. It was the level of precision that he was able to communicate to the CFTC that was the most stunning. He warned the CFTC that the price of silver was to be taken down regardless of what happened to the employment numbers and that the price of silver would end up below $15 per ounce. Over the next couple of days, the price of silver was indeed taken down from $16.17 per ounce down to a low of $14.62 per ounce.
Because of Maguire’s warning, the CFTC was able to watch a crime unfold, right in front of their eyes, in real time.
So what did the CFTC do about it?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Which is extremely alarming, because the size of this fraud absolutely dwarfs the Madoff or Enron scandals. In fact, this fraud is so gigantic that it is not even worth comparing to any of the other major financial scandals of recent times.
But Maguire did not give up. He sent several more emails to the CFTC detailing the open manipulation of the gold and silver markets.
The CFTC did not reply.
Finally he sent them a final email: "I have honored my commitment to assist you and keep any information we discuss private, however if you are going to ignore my information I will deem that commitment to have expired."
The reply by the CFTC?
"I have received and reviewed your email communications. Thank you so very much for your observations."
No action.
No acknowledgement that anything was wrong.
No recognition that a massive crime had been committed.
Fortunately, that was not the end of it.
On March 25th, the CFTC held a hearing on alleged manipulation in the gold market by the major banking powers.
Maguire wanted to testify during that hearing but he was not invited.
But William Murphy, chairman of Gold Anti-Trust Action (GATA), was invited to testify. GATA has been compiling data on the manipulation of the gold and silver markets for quite a long time now.
Murphy was only given five minutes to deliver his testimony. He raced through his presentation so that he could get as much information on the record as possible.
Very curiously, the live television broadcast of the CFTC hearing suffered a technical failure the minute before Murphy began his testimony. The technical failure was corrected the minute after Murphy was finished.
Coincidence?
Well, it turns out that there were are lot of coincidences surrounding this hearing.
But we'll get to that in a minute.
When Murphy finished his statement, the panel asked him for some hard proof of market manipulation. Murphy shocked the panel by revealing the name of Maguire and explaining how Maguire had informed the CFTC Enforcement Division of the market manipulation that was taking place by JPMorgan Chase. The CFTC panel seemed stunned by the revelation and seemed reluctant to learn any further and asked nothing else about it.
Video of Murphy's revelation to the panel is posted below....
In another "coincidence", Maguire and his wife were subsequently injured and hospitalized when their car was struck by a hit-and-run driver in the London suburbs.
When a bystander who saw the "accident" tried to block the other driver from getting away, the other driver accelerated directly towards the witness, forcing him to leap out of the way to avoid being hit. The hit-and-run driver’s car then hit two additional cars as he left the area.
But Maguire and his wife were fortunate.
In the past, other would-be whistle blowers that had evidence regarding the manipulation in the gold and silver markets died in "unusual accidents" before they were able to bring their evidence to light.
But there were even more "coincidences" surrounding this hearing.
A week before the hearing, the CFTC announced that they had had a fire in the room where its gold and silver records are held.
Isn't that convenient?
In addition, after the hearing was over, Murphy was contacted by a number of major media outlets for interviews.
Within 24 hours, every single interview was cancelled.
Every single one.
Is that a coincidence too?
It appears that some very powerful people do not want this information to get out.
It also shows how corrupt the mainstream media has become.
This is a story that is so much bigger than the Madoff scandal or the Enron scandal that it is not even funny.
And yet the mainstream media is avoiding it like the plague.
But there were additional bombshells that came out during the hearing as well.
During the hearing it was revealed that the gold manipulators have accumulated a huge short position in gold and that these huge short positions are "naked", which means that these positions are not hedged.
These massive short positions have put some of the largest financial institutions in the world in an extremely vulnerable position.
In addition, it has now come out that most "gold" that is traded is not backed by the actual metal itself. For years, most people have assumed that the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the world's largest gold market, had actual gold to back up the massive "gold deposits" at the major LBMA banks.
But that is not the case.
People are now realizing that there is very little actual gold in the LBMA system.
When people think they are buying "gold", they are actually just buying pieces of paper that say they own gold.
In fact, during the CFTC hearings, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group confirmed that the LBMA banks actually have approximately a hundred times more gold deposits than actual gold bullion.
Uh oh.
So what happens if everyone decides that they want actual physical delivery of their gold?
It would be such a mess that it is painful even to think about it.
The truth is that right now most of the trading activities on the London exchange are just paper for paper.
But people get into gold because they want to be in a real commodity.
In fact, there are thousands of clients around the globe who think they own huge deposits of gold bullion, and are being charged large storage fees on that imaginary bullion, but what they really own are a bunch of pieces of paper.
If there comes a time when everyone starts asking for their gold it is going to create a squeeze of unimaginable proportions.
Maguire explains this situation this way: "for 100 customers who show up there is only one guy who is going to get his gold or silver and there’s 99 who will be disappointed, so without any new money coming into the market, just asking for that gold and silver will create a default."
The truth is that it is absolutely impossible for the LBMA to ever deliver all the gold and silver owed to the owners of contracts.
Yes, it is a gigantic mess.
But this type of things is not entirely unprecedented. For example, Morgan Stanley paid out several million dollars back in 2007 to settle claims that it had charged 22,000 clients storage fees on silver bullion that did not exist.
But the scale of the fraud going on now is absolutely mind blowing. The following video contains footage from the hearing related to these issues....
So what is the bottom line?
The bottom line is that the precious metals markets are cesspools of fraud and manipulation.
The markets have been suppressed by the major financial institutions for years, and this has created the potential for a "squeeze" in the precious metals markets that could send the prices of gold and silver into the stratosphere.
You see, the reality is that there would be no gold left in the entire world if all the Gold ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) asked for physical delivery.
Are you starting to get the picture?
In fact, Maguire claims that the naked short selling scam by the major financial institutions is well into the trillions of dollars, making it by far the biggest financial fraud in history.
Maguire calls what has been going on "financial terrorism", and he accuses the financial institutions involved in this fraud of "treason" for putting national security at risk.
And national security is at risk.
Because if the true extent of this fraud comes out, it could collapse the entire financial system.
If you have never heard an interview with Andrew Maguire, we encourage you to listen to the audio interview posted below. It will really open your eyes to what is going on in the precious metals markets....
This is one of the biggest financial stories of the decade. Because it is complex, most Americans will not understand it. But the fraud and manipulation in the gold and silver markets has the potential to cause a massive economic collapse even without all of the other factors talked about on this blog.
Some very powerful people have been doing some really, really bad things. Once people understand the truth, they will never look at the financial markets the same way again. Already, faith in the major financial institutions of this country has been shaken by revelations about what has been going on over at Goldman Sachs. The American people have no more appetite for any more financial scandals or for any more Wall Street bailouts. But if the fraud and manipulation taking place in the precious metal markets ever gets totally exposed it will change the U.S. financial system forever.
Please get this information out to as many people as you can. There are a number of very powerful people who are not going to be pleased that sites like this are attempting to get the truth about this massive scandal out.
Offset Providers: Owners of title to qualifying offset projects that sequester, destroy or reduce GHG emissions. Offset Providers register and sell offsets directly on the CCX (learn more).
Offset Aggregators: Entities that serve as the administrative representative, on behalf of offset project owners, of multiple offset-generating projects. Offset projects involving less than 10,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year should be registered and sold through an Offset Aggregator (learn more). Liquidity Providers:Entities or individuals who trade on CCX for purposes other than complying with the CCX Emission Reduction Schedule, such as market makers and proprietary trading groups (learn more).
Exchange Participants:Entities or individuals who purchase Carbon Financial Instrument® (CFI®) contracts and retire them to offset emissions associated with special events or other specified activities (learn more).
There would NEVER be a bubble, short squeeze or other maneuvers from "liquidity providers". WOW.... The best move would be to get a bunch of these CCX securities with borrowed money and then find out someone else was 'canceling' a bunch of permits. You'd make a mint on the supply squeeze! Now THAT would be really, uh, green. In the cash sense.
Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs likely carbon bubble agenda using CCX:
The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utahbased firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There's also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in greentech … the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot. Will this market be bigger than the energyfutures market?
"Oh, it'll dwarf it," says a former staffer on the House energy committee.
Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won't we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe — but capandtrade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private taxcollection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it's even collected.
"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedgefund director who spoke out against oilfutures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."
*******Meanwhile, ICE has about 140 secret frickin unmarked prisons!!! America's Secret ICE Castles 2009's TOP 25 CENSORED STORIES from PROJECT CENSORED:
A strange NBC series called E-Ring, which produced 22 episodes that aired in 2005, exalted narratives of American military adventurism and featured Dennis Hopper. I only saw episode #5, "Weekend Pass," in which as Wikipedia says, "Two US Marines are accused of raping a young local woman in Suriname. JT immediately jumps to action only to find opposition from senior staff. The United States doesn't want to jeopardize aluminum interests controlled by the Surinamese government. He must navigate the political maze to discern the truth and try to save the soldiers' lives."
The other aspect of the episode was how a military coup in Suriname made a mess of things -- a lot of dialogue about who would end up controlling the bauxite mines was at the center of the story. A coup inside the Suriname 'made nice' with the Pentagon and promised to have elections later.
WMR's African sources report that the group of Guinean army officers who attempted to assassinate Guinea's President, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, were operating under orders of U.S. Special Forces assigned to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and French military intelligence personnel. Camara seized power in a coup in December 2008 after the death of Guinea's President Lansana Conte.
Camara was flown to Morocco for medical treatment after the unsuccessful assassination attempt. Guinean junta spokesman Idrissa Cherif accused the Sarkozy government in France of being behind the assassination attempt.
Camara's aide, Lieutenant Aboubacar Sidiki Diakite, fled to a safe house in Guinea after shooting Camara. Diakite reportedly worked closely with U.S. Special Forces and French military intelligence in planning the assassination of Camara.
Camara had, according to our sources, signed a deal with China for that nation to take over bauxite mining contracts from U.S. and French companies with the promise that China would refine bauxite into aluminum by building a factory in Guinea. The Americans and French had exported the bauxite to smelters abroad. The offer of the Chinese to smelter bauxite in Guinea with the promise of well-paying jobs for the impoverished nation, was too much for France and the United States and the "hit" on Camara, using assets in the Guinean military loyal to Washington and Paris, was authorized and coordinated jointly by U.S. and French forces stationed in west Africa.
******
This type of special operations affair is obviously not in America's national interests, but it is in the interest of corporatists that have performed what some call 'regulatory capture.'
AFRICOM was feared by many as a new way to run a resource control gendarme force in Africa, and schemes of this exact structure are to be expected first and foremost.
It was just another day in Switzerland during Late Capitalism. The beloved World Trade Organization, having already helped bring about a huge collapse in global trade, decided they should have a meeting somewhere widely thought of as really rich and white.
It's been ten years since wily bad kids and the labor movement crashed their last gig... what could go wrong?
MOAR: The Associated Press: Geneva: Police use tear gas on WTO protest
So they went to Switzerland and people started lighting cars on fire... posted today:
The WTO is an avid defender of killing baby seals as well - graphic video!
Until recently, TiO2 nanoparticles have been labeled non-toxic because they do not cause chemical reactions. But new research just published in the journal Cancer Research demonstrates that it is the surface interaction the nanoparticles produce inside a body that causes genetic damage. Bottom line: the study conducted by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has revealed for the first time that TiO2 nanoparticles induce single and double-strand DNA breaks and cause chromosomal damage, as well as inflammation, all of which increase the risk of cancer.
In a statement to the media, senior study author Robert Schiestl, a UCLA professor of pathology, radiation oncology and environmental health sciences, stated these nanoparticles wander throughout the body causingoxidative stress, which can result in cell death. Once inside the body, the TiO2 nanoparticles accumulate in different organs because there is no way to eliminate them internally. And because the particles are so tiny, they can literally go anywhere -- even glide through cells to potentially disrupt body functions on a sub-cellular level.
Taliban cash! In other marketing news, threat construction is still a hot industry in Washington: How the US Funds the Taliban via The Nation.
Kokesh gets hits: "The Federal Reserve is destroying America!" This guy Adam Kokesh is running for Congress under the hard right 'screw the fascists' sort of libertarian platform in New Mexico's 3rd CD. Yr typical liberals are upset with his style, here's a video with an ominous black balloon arc. This video from last October kind of captures the edgy somewhat PTSD/survivalism anti-fascist style, at, where else, a 9-11 Truth forum: "We're building a GI resistance movement" etc... Kokesh is against the Federal Reserve and central banking, but pro-real 'capitalism' whatever that means these days. Kokesh, an Iraq/Fallujah veteran got arrested and has been with IVAW protests. Oh yea Wikipedia says he talked at Ron Paul's 2008 counter-RNC rally saying ""While it is our responsibility now to resist tyranny civilly, while we still can, there may come a time when we will say to the powers that be, be it with your blood or ours we have come to water the tree of liberty … who will stand with me?" So that kind of thing... If there were like fifty of these guys running for Congress would be nifty. On the other hand, the NM 3rd is very Democratic so it will be really hard for him to actually beat the incumbent there.
Vitaly Citovsky is a professor of molecular and cell biology at Stony Brook University in New York (SUNY). He is a world authority on the genetic modification of cells by Agrobacterium, a soil bacterium causing crown gall disease in plants, that has been widely used in creating genetically modified (GM) plants since the 1980s because of its ability to transfer a piece of its genetic material, the T-DNA on its tumour-inducing (Ti) plasmid to the plant genome (see later for details).
Citovsky’s team took scanning electron microscope pictures of the fibres in or extruding from the skin of patients suffering from Morgellons disease, confirming that they are unlike any ordinary natural or synthetic fibres (see Fig. 1, assembled from Citovsky’s website [8]).
Figure 1. Scanning electron microscope images of fibres from skin biopsies of patients with Morgellons Disease - a, white fibre with calcite, scale bar 10 mm; b, green fibre with alumina ‘rock’ protruding, scale bar 20 mm; c, various ribbon-like, cylindrical and faceted fibres all coated with minerals, scale bar 10 mm; d, skin lesion with fibres stabbing through the epidermis, scale bar 300mm
They also analysed patients for Agrobacterium DNA. Skin biopsy samples from Morgellons patients were subjected to high-stringency polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for genes encoded by theAgrobacterium chromosome and also for Agrobacterium virulence (vir) genes and T-DNA on its Ti plasmid. They found that “all Morgellons patients screened to date have tested positive for the presence of Agrobacterium, whereas this microorganism has not been detected in any of the samples derived from the control, healthy individuals.” Their preliminary conclusion is that “Agrobacteriummay be involved in the etiology and/or progression” of Morgellons Disease.
.......San Francisco physician, Raphael Stricker, one of only a few doctors who believe the disease is real, said [9]. “There’s almost always some history of exposure to dirt basically either from gardening or camping or something.” He is one of the co-authors on the Agrobacterium research done in SUNY, which reported finding Agrobacterium DNA in all 5 Morgellons patients studied. Stricker suggests it is transmitted by ticks, like Lyme disease, and in a recent survey of 44 Morgellons patients in San Francisco, 43 of them also tested positive for the bacterium causing Lyme disease. Another factor consistent with Agrobacterium being a causative agent, if not the causative agent, is that when patients are treated with antibacterials for their Lyme disease, remission of Morgellons symptoms is seen in most of them [6].
Stricker also told his audience that Agrobacterium lives in the soil, and is known to cause infections in animals and human beings with compromised immune systems. It can cause skin lesions when injected into Swiss mice, a strain that is immune deficient, he said.
At this point, the findings on the Agrobacterium connection are still preliminary, as only seven patients have been studied. Nevertheless, the implications are far-reaching if this connection is confirmed, as existing evidence (reviewed below) suggests a link between Agrobacterium and genetic engineering in the creation of new disease agents, and it is paramount for the CDC investigation to include this aspect, if only to rule it out.
Agrobacterium and the genetic engineering connection
Agrobacterium not only infects human and other animal cells, it also transfers genes into them. It was SUNY professor Citovsky and his team that made the discovery some years ago [10]. Until then, the genetic engineering community had assumed that Agrobacterium did not infect animal cells, and certainly would not transfer genes into them.
Agrobacterium was found to transfer T-DNA into the chromosomes of human cells.
In stably transformed HeLa cells, the integration occurred at the right border of the T-DNA, exactly as would happen when it is being transferred into a plant cell genome, suggesting thatAgrobacterium transforms human cells by a mechanism similar to that involved in transforming plants cells (see Box 1). Human cancer cells, neurons and kidney cells were all transformed with theAgrobacterium T-DNA. Commenting on this research in 2001, Joe Cummins had warned of hazards to laboratory and farm workers [11] (i-sis news11/12)
The Agrobacterium vector system for gene transfer
Since the discovery in the 1970s that Agrobacterium can transfer genes into plants causing crown gall disease, the soil bacterium has been developed into a vector for inserting desirable genes into the plant genome to create transgenic (GM) plants [12].
I was a bit surprised to see the New York Times report this evening that embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother has been taking mad CIA cash for some time. [Or rather, the three journalists who did the story are oddly emphasized, 'compartmentalized' on this risky exposure.]
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Obama Presidential agenda is how little anyone has questioned in the media or elsewhere why at all the United States Pentagon is committed to a military occupation of Afghanistan. There are two basic reasons, neither one of which can be admitted openly to the public at large.
Behind all the deceptive official debate over how many troops are needed to “win” the war in Afghanistan, whether another 30,000 is sufficient, or whether at least 200000 are needed, the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured.
Even during the 2008 Presidential campaign candidate Obama argued that Afghanistan not Iraq was where the US must wage war. His reason? Because he claimed, that was where the Al Qaeda organization was holed up and that was the “real” threat to US national security. The reasons behind US involvement in Afghanistan is quite another one.
The US military is in Afghanistan for two reasons. First to restore and control the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and to use the drugs as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. That control of the Afghan drug market is essential for the liquidity of the bankrupt and corrupt Wall Street financial mafia.
Sadly a bunch of DEA agents also got killed in some helicopter incident/accident, having arrived to perform some sort of political control upon the local opiate-oriented economy. Their deaths are yet another travesty from this terrible situation -- and we can only hope it will soon draw to a close.
DEA Identifies Special Agent Casualties
OCT 27-- WASHINGTON, DC– It is with great sadness that the Drug Enforcement Administration announces the deaths of three Special Agents who were supporting counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan.
The following Special Agents died on Oct. 26:
Special Agent Chad L. Michael, 30, of Quantico, VA.
Special Agent Forrest N. Leamon, 37, of Woodbridge, VA.
Special Agent Michael E. Weston, 37, of Washington, D.C.
Special Agents Leamon and Michael were members of DEA’s FAST (Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams); and Special Agent Weston was assigned to DEA’s Kabul Country Office.
The encrypted document, which is dated October 6, and believed to be
current, can be found on the Pentagon Central Command (CENTCOM) website
oneteam.centcom.mil. [UPDATE: Fri Feb 27 15:18:38 GMT 2009, the entire Pentagon site is now down--probably in response to this editorial, parts of the site can still be seen in Google's cache ]
The encryption password is progress, which perhaps reflects the
Pentagon's desire to stay on-message, even to itself.
Among the revelations, which we encourage the press to review in
detail, is Jordan's presence as secret member of the US lead occupation
force, the ISAF.
Jordan is a middle eastern monarchy, backed by the US, and historically the
CIA's closest partner in its extraordinary rendition program.
"the practice of torture is routine" in the country, according to a January
2007 report by UN special investigator for torture, Manfred Nowak.[1]
The document states NATO spokespersons are to keep Jordan's
involvement secret. Publicly, Jordan withdrew in 2001 and the
country does not appear on this month's public list of ISAF
member states.[2]
Some other notes on matters to treat delicately are:
Any decision on the end date/end state will be taken by the respective national and/or Alliance political committee. Under no circumstances should the mission end-date be a topic for speculation in public by any NATO/ISAF spokespeople.
The term "compensation" is inappropriate and should not be used because it brings with it legal implications that do not apply.
Any talk of stationing or deploying Russian military assets in Afghanistan is out of the question and has never been the subject of any considerations.
Only if pressed: ISAF forces are frequently fired at from inside Pakistan, very close to the border. In some cases defensive fire is required, against specific threats. Wherever possible, such fire is pre-coordinated with the Pakistani military.
Altogether four classified or restricted NATO documents on the
Pentagon Central Command (CENTCOM) site were discovered to share the 'progress' password. Wikileaks
has decrypted the documents and released them in full:
It seems that our two abstract, endless Orwellian wars --- the War on Drugs and the War on Terror --- have officially merged. And the complications stemming from that decision are going to be immense. What are we fighting for again?
As the Obama administration ramps up the Drug Enforcement Administration's presence in Afghanistan, some special-agent pilots contend that they're being illegally forced to go to a combat zone, while others who've volunteered say they're not being properly equipped.
In interviews with McClatchy, more than a dozen DEA agents describe a badly managed system in which some pilots have been sent to Afghanistan under duress or as punishment for bucking their superiors.
Such complaints, so far mostly arising from the DEA's Aviation Division, could complicate the Obama administration's efforts to send dozens of additional DEA agents to Afghanistan as part of a civilian and military personnel "surge" that aims to stabilize the country.
This article is by Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.
The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.
[........]A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.
“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman. [Adding LOLOLOL] Now, with more American lives on the line, the relationship with Mr. Karzai is setting off anger and frustration among American military officers and other officials in the Obama administration. They say that Mr. Karzai’s suspected role in the drug trade, as well as what they describe as the mafialike way that he lords over southern Afghanistan, makes him a malevolent force.
These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it,” a senior American military officer in Kabul said. Like most of the officials in this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the information.
....A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned. Any connections Mr. Karzai might have had to the drug trade mattered little to C.I.A. officers focused on counterterrorism missions, the officer said.
“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”
The debate over Ahmed Wali Karzai, which began when President Obama took office in January, intensified in June, when the C.I.A.’s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar’s provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, in a still-unexplained shootout at the office of a local prosecutor.
Senior Afghan investigators say they know plenty about Mr. Karzai’s involvement in the drug business. In an interview in Kabul this year, a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official familiar with Afghan counternarcotics operations said that a major source of Mr. Karzai’s influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar.
The former Interior Ministry official said that Mr. Karzai was able to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.
But the former officials said it was impossible for Afghan counternarcotics officials to investigate Mr. Karzai. “This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice,” the former official said.
Some American counternarcotics officials have said they believe that Mr. Karzai has expanded his influence over the drug trade, thanks in part to American efforts to single out other drug lords.
In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Hajji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison this year.
Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of Parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai’s arrest.
[How many hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are moving through the southern region of Manhattan?!]
It certainly appears on the surface that the death of these three DEA agents flushed the CIA hypocrisy on the "war on rival drug traffickers" to the surface! My condolences to everyone involved in this tragedy. Best of luck to all of you....
Gold busted up and out of the old confines as good ol' snarly British antiwar journalist Robert Fisk broke the big news: the Petrodollar cycling system is finally going off the rails as the world's central bankers start digging for a new solution. [This Petrodollar system was the big achievement of the Bush-Kissinger-era big players, they just can't cook stuff up that good anymore. Sorry guys...]
These people are in no mood for all their oil dollars to get devalued by the inflation disaster cooking in the Federal Reserve System, so why not make a new basket currency?! I kind of thought that the "COMEX paper gold" racket would unravel before Petrodollars. Shows what I know :-P
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.
......The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."
Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.
The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.
"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."
Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan the UN Mission is breaking up & having mass epic fail resignations over the failure of a massive election fraud coverup, which was necessary to continue the fiction of Hamid Karzai's 'widespread popularity.' So sad! No, really, though, a lot of people have died to bring things to where they are today -- now the 'State,' such as it was, is further hobbled & ready to be displaced by the Islamic Sharia structure & local ethnic warlords that has only gotten stronger in the region since 1979.
[If the U.S. banking system loses its grip on the opium money, another nail in the coffin there as well.]
The head of the UN mission in Afghanistan has been accused by his former deputy of ordering a
In an attack on the role of the UN in the elections on August 20, Peter Galbraith, who was sacked as Deputy Special Representative to the UN mission in Kabul last week, says that Kai Eide ordered him not to reveal evidence of fraud or to pass it to the authorities.
As a result, he said, the elections had handed the Taleban “its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners”.
He says that the UN collected evidence that a third of Mr Karzai’s votes were fraudulent.If the claim was found to be true it would push Mr Karzai below the 54 per cent that the preliminary election results give him, necessitating a second round of voting.
Some scientists are suggesting that the slow return to a more active phase of the solar cycle may portend a general decline in solar activity. If sunspots shut down, does that mean that we could stop worrying about climate change?
Over the weekend, a paper published in the American Geophysical Union's journal Eos attracted a lot of attention, as it suggested that the levels of magnetic activity associated with recent sunspots indicated that the sun might be returning to a state of low activity, similar to that of the Maunder Minimum, which occurred in the late 17th century. That change in solar activity was notable for setting off what's called the Little Ice Age, which plunged Europe into a deep chill. Left undiscussed is what that might mean in a world where greenhouse gas changes are threatening a period of extended high temperatures.
To understand how a significant change in sunspot levels might be felt in the Earth's climate, we'll back up and look at how sunspots relate to solar output, how that output gets felt on Earth, and how it interacts with changing levels of greenhouse gasses. The answer appears to be that it could reverse the climate change that occurred during past century, but would only delay the changes expected by the end of this century.
Maybe it's because summer was so amazing. Yes, it was a couple degrees cooler than average (I blame the damn sunspots, or lack thereof) but we still had a blast.
At the risk of getting in trouble, has anyone had a cold summer? We sure have here. Some people are saying that the roughly 11-year sunspot cycle is becoming much quieter than usual.
While atmospheric CO2 measurement is a recent development (altho of course we can get ice cores for now), sunspot observation has been going on for centuries. Interestingly, the Little Ice Age corresponded to a period of very low sunspot activity, with the Hudson River in NY/NJ and the Thames freezing over for extended periods. (Some other people theorize that it was because an oceanic current loop halted for a while.)
Anyway it seems to me that CO2 is a coefficient for trapping heat. OK. It is not as effective by weight as many other pollutants/components of the atmosphere but it certainly has an effect.
However there are basically three thermal inputs to the whole system. One is the level of solar energy and the other would be whatever geothermal heat bleeds out of the earth's core. (a moderate amount but whatever steam you see coming off a hot spring is part of this). The third would be the heat generated by civilization itself. (not the CO2)
Sooo... if it's true that the sunspots and thermal-type solar energy are linked, then that would seem to be a way bigger deal to the whole system than the CO2 level. People were wigging out about global cooling in the '70s and also proposing overarching powerful political structures to react to the problem.
If people were presented a clear mathematical model considering the sunspot & solar side as well as the atmospheric coefficients then that seems like it would be more intellectually honest than the current PR campaign which seems to be a policy agenda oriented exclusively around carbon.
Check out this lil gem from the Internet Wayback Machine on the Alliance for Climate Protection site: (It's been deleted for some time, but I found it awesome when I spotted it originally):
Our Mission
Americans have always risen to meet the most important challenges to our nation’s and the world’s future. Our mission is to persuade the American people — and people elsewhere in the world – of the importance and urgency of adopting and implementing effective and comprehensive solutions for the climate crisis. The Alliance for Climate Protection is undertaking an unprecedented mass persuasion exercise based on scientific facts.
Through a new combination of non-partisan alliances with Americans from all walks of life and innovative and far-reaching communication techniques the Alliance will focus on presenting the facts about climate change and its solutions to the general public in an accurate, clear and compelling manner.
Americans have always risen to meet the most important challenges to our nation’s and the world’s future. Together, we can address the climate challenge domestically and provide a robust economy for now and for our children.
Say what you will about Darwin, he didn't have a bunch of PR flacks doing an 'unprecedented mass persuasion exercise,' which frankly is Rendon Group-style jargon.
And also I don't see how you can measure carbon I/O on farms -- it would take a whole staff of Goldman Sachs minions to figure out how much to pay for one farm, which appears to be precisely the whole idea of 'carbon trading.'
Matt Taibbi nailed how the almighty Carbon Market is going to Suck: The Great American Bubble Machine : Rolling Stone
And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade.
The new carboncredit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
...... The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the "cap" on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison's sake, the annual combined revenues of all electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.
Goldman wants this bill. The plan is (1) to get in on the ground floor of paradigmshifting legislation, (2) make sure that they're the profitmaking slice of that paradigm and (3) make sure the slice is a big slice. Goldman started pushing hard for cap and trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues.
......[Buying into renewables...] is convenient, considering that Goldman made early investments in wind power (it bought a subsidiary called Horizon Wind Energy), renewable diesel (it is an investor in a firm called Changing World Technologies) and solar power (it partnered with BP Solar), exactly the kind of deals that will prosper if the government forces energy producers to use cleaner energy. As Paulson said at the time, "We're not making those investments to lose money."
The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utahbased firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There's also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in greentech … the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot. Will this market be bigger than the energyfutures market?
"Oh, it'll dwarf it," says a former staffer on the House energy committee.
Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won't we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe — but cap and trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private taxcollection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer moneybefore it's even collected.
"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil futures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."
Cap-and-trade is going to happen. Or, if it doesn't, something like it will. The moral is the same as for all the other bubbles that Goldman helped create, from 1929 to 2009. In almost every case, the very same bank that behaved recklessly for years, weighing down the system with toxic loans and predatory debt, and accomplishing nothing but massive bonuses for a few bosses, has been rewarded with mountains of virtually free money and government guarantees — while the actual victims in this mess, ordinary taxpayers, are the ones paying for it.
In a stunning surprise, apparently the New Zealand mobile phone system is a complete racket, wherein grumpy ministers set the pay rate and thereby influence the balance of corporate power. Or something.
In any case, New Zealand's version of the Man officially censored this article about the stupid hustle upon which people's cellphone billing rests. It's interesting because it just shows how arbitrary determinations are used to control the market, particularly telecommunications.
Plus, this sort of censorship is exactly the thing that is lame about British Commonwealth nations and law. The truth should be an absolute defence against libel or in this case arbitrary censorship.
The rights of the Press is inscribed on the First Amendment around here partly because the Brits love to BS about stuff like this! Everyone knows it's a hustle, but they get extra powers to gag people. Saudi prince type guys abuse British press law all the damn time and get away with it.
They need to erase this article because there is no free market cell phone system in New Zealand. Boooo hoooo....
WIKILEAKS! Censored story from the National Business Review of New Zealand on Vodafone interconnection deal, 5 Aug 2009
"This is the text to a National Business Review (nbr.co.nz) article written by Chris Keall, detailing a secret interconnection deal ordered by former Labour Minister of Communications, David Cunliffe, between Vodafone New Zealand and mobile operator 2 Degrees.
The file contains information that directly affects public policy (telecommunications regulation). However, the regulator, the New Zealand Commerce Commission, has used its powers under section 100 of the Commerce Act to suppress the story, and have ordered New Zealand media not to publish any details of the deal. NBR was forced to take down the story as a result of this state censorship.
The New Zealand public that needs to know how telecommunications industry regulation is done."
Revealed: Vodafone’s secret deal with 2degrees
Wednesday August 5 2009 - 03:02pm
In November 2008, in the dying days of the last Labour government, communications and IT minister was determined to clear the path for 2degrees’ launch.
A source says that at the climax of discussions, a fed up Mr Cunliffe gave Vodafone just more hour to reach a mobile termination rate agreement with 2degrees - or face a fresh investigation on the issue from the Commerce Commission (mobile termination rates - MTR - are what one telco pays another when a call terminates - is received - on another’s network).
The two mobile operators duly stitched up an MTR agreement, which has remained confidential ever since - to the infuriation of Vodafone, which has maintained that 2degrees has complaining loudly about MTR, while in reality knowing it was in line for sweetheart rates.
The source says that at the time, “2degrees thought the deal was the best thing since sliced bread”. Yet, to Cunliffe’s dismay, the new carrier failed to launch by the end of the year. And when National came to power, 2degrees saw the chance to push its MTR luck further.
The Commerce Commission - which under the new government is investigating MTR a third time, regardless of Mr Cunliffe’s promise (again, to Vodafone’s chagrin) - has told NBR it has no issue with the deal being made public.
However, 2degrees said no dice. “We respect the confidentiality of our agreements,” said head of corporate communications Bryony Hilless.
Terms revealed
Now, NBR has obtained the terms of the secret MTR deal.
There are three key elements.
One, Vodafone gives 2degrees a “new entrant” discount of around 33%.
For mobile-to-mobile calls, Vodafone charges other telcos 15 cents a minute, but 2degrees will only have to pay 10.75 cents per minute.
For txt, Vodafone’s MTR is 9.13 cents per message. 2degrees is charged 6.25 cents.
The second element is asymmetry: 2degrees will pay 10.75 cents a minute. But when as call terminates on Vodafone’s network, it will pay 2degrees the full whack: 15 cents. The same applies to txt, with Vodafone paying 146% of 2degrees’ rate.
The third is that MTR is charged by the second, from the first second - which, says one source, makes it pretty rich that 2degrees charges by the minute.
Vodafone wants the Commerce Commission - which has so far based its MTR sums on Vodafone’s headline rate - to take its 2degrees deal into account when weighing whether market termination rates are competitive.
The commission recently recommended that MTR be reduced to 7.2 cents per minute immediately for voice calls, and 3.8 cents per txt, with a series of further cuts through to 2015. A review and consultation process is now underway, with communications minister Steven Joyce likely to make a decision on the matter in the New Year.
Many independent observers, including Tuanz, representing 500 corporate customers, have strongly backed the commission’s call for voice MTR of 7.5 cents or below.
For its part, Telecom has challenged all carriers to agree to a voice MTR of 7 cents a minute - though by 2015, rather than immediately as the commission is angling.
A wise ol friend of mine back at Macalester told me he was voting to re-elect George W. Bush, despite his own Marxist outlook.
"Why!?" I earnestly wanted to know -- it could hardly help advance anyone's interests!
Why vote for Bush? I got my answer: Because.... Bush would accelerate the contradictions in capitalism - further advancing its collapse!
*****
Talk about a hat tip. This guy was right on: Bush managed to finally shatter the great classic American 'late capitalist' financial system in just four years!
Say what you will, all the damn hippie college professors and bad kids never pulled that one off. Everyone has to give some deference to our Marxist-in-chief, who has systematically collapsed every institution we thought they were dedicated to protecting.
Strange times... it's hard for me to write about the whole thing, due to the incredible variety of fucked-up scenarios unfolding right now.
It's cool that the country wants to get serious and shift to the left, get some shit done. But the problem is that the problems with the financial system have been leveraged by the perpetrators to infest and steal everything they touch. Now the Democrats are left to clean up the mess & try to patch things over.
*****
So it will be fun to see some New Politics in the New Year - I remember when I thought that 2005 would be that year, before all our hopes got squished. But the material and structural problems will really fuck over a lot of people who had no part in this, and it's frightening to imagine where this road is really leading.
Obama's started hiring on the people that I think of as 'the usual suspects': Paul Volcker, Larry Summers, other people you've only heard about from trolling unhappy sectors of history. Rahm Emanuel perhaps has the right style for our times, but he's shady and will probably fuck things up, too.
It's pretty weird now, and I just smell that trillions are getting stolen & otherwise hitting the bottom, so I don't really feel a great deal of optimism.
Then again, I'm so used to hanging the roots on my own discontent on the nasty old leaders, it's kind of a deprivation when We Won't Have Nixon To Kick Around Anymore.
*****
In any case, the Malign Masters of the World are actually launching "Bretton Woods 2" to restructure the financial system at firesale prices. As a bonus, a true Sword Of Damocles has been installed over Obama's Oval Office; all he's got to do is stave off total collapse, carried out by the usual suspects and corrupt Baby Boomers... CBS columnist spells it out, you damn well better listen! (h/t Cryptogon)
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- So you thought Barack Obama's victory signaled the death of Reaganomics? Wrong, wrong: Reaganomics is very much alive.
In a subtle, bloodless coup, the Reaganomics ideology magically pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat in the meltdown. The magic happened fast and quietly, in the shadows, while you were in a trance, distracted by the election drama.
Recently Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," framed the issue perfectly: "Has the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the other way around?" The question was rhetorical, the answer painfully clear. In a few weeks Wall Street did the old bait and switch, emerging from an economic and market disaster with new powers, in total control of America.
And thanks to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's brilliant bailout coup, Reaganomics is now the new "sleeper cell" quietly hidden inside the Obama White House and America's Treasury, where it will be for a long time to come, armed with what Warren Buffett calls financial weapons of mass destruction, guaranteed to sabotage the new president, taxpayers and the future of America.
Listen closely folks: You and your government are and will continue being conned out of trillions. Better that we should have taken care of ourselves first and cleaned house, not bailed out Wall Street financiers -- let them pay for their sins and feel the pain.
Unfortunately, while you were distracted by the election, Wall Street gained control of our Treasury using a Trojan Horse, Hank Paulson, who filled Treasury with Goldman Sachs alums and pulled off one of the greatest inside heists in the history of the world.
While you were distracted, Wall Street privatized the U.S. Treasury, got the keys to Fort Knox and will be stealing trillions for years to come, through a secret "sleeper cell," a "virus" installed in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. They're laughing: All you got was a heavily discounted paper IOU for you, your kids and generations to pay off. The winners: Paulson, Goldman, Wall Street banks and Reaganomics. The losers: America.
Wall Street and its buddies in Washington (all those politicians bankrolled by 41,000 lobbyists) know two things the voters never, never learn: that no matter how incompetent they are -- how greedy, how stupid and how destructive -- America's naive voters will always bail them out of a crisis
At the trough
Klein further exposed this insanity in a recent Rolling Stone article, "The New Trough: The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq, a 'free-fraud zone' where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create." Paulson's privatization, outsourcing and management of the $700 billion bailout has the exact same Reaganomics ideological, strategic and deceptive footprints that President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to privatize, outsource and mismanage the costly Iraq War blunder. Yes, Paulson is America's new Rumsfeld!
The American taxpayer is being royally screwed by the Wall Street bailout giveaway. According to Klein, they're adding insult to injury, rubbing salt in our wounds:
"Many of the banks appear to have no intention of wasting the money on loans."
Merrill CEO John Thain said "it's just going to be a cushion."
Citigroup CFO Gary Crittenden "hinted that his company would use its share of the cash, $25 billion, to buy up competitors and swell even bigger," giving them the "possibility of taking advantage of opportunities that might otherwise be closed to us."
And my old colleagues at Morgan Stanley are "planning to pay themselves $10.7 billion this year, much of it in bonuses." So screw the taxpayers and Main Street homeowners.
Want to know how badly America's taxpayers are getting screwed? Listen as Klein compares the American bailout to the British bailout which was negotiated just five days before Paulson "negotiated" our historic $125 billion deal with nine Wall Street banks:
United Kingdom. Prime Minister Gordon Brown negotiated "meaningful guarantees for taxpayers -- voting rights at the banks, seats on their boards, 12% in annual dividend payments to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, and a legal requirement that the banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses." Brown took advantage of his negotiation position of strength.
United States. What did the American taxpayers? A bad deal negotiated by a former Wall Street CEO loaded with conflicts of interest: We got "no controlling interest, no voting rights, no seats on the bank boards and just 5% in dividend payouts to the government, while [bank] shareholders continue to collect billions in dividends every quarter. What's more, golden parachutes and bonuses already promised by the banks will still be paid out to executives -- all before taxpayers are paid back. No wonder it took just one hour for Paulson to convince all nine CEOs to accept his offer, less than seven minutes per bank for one of the sweetest taxpayer giveaways in history.
Our pain, Wall Street's gain
It gets even worse: The day after Paulson's nine-bank deal, he announced his selection of Bank of New York Mellon as the "master custodian" coordinating all phases of the Wall Street bank bailout. BNYM's role as "the contractor of contractors" is to the $700 billion bailout what Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm Halliburton was to all the mercenary and private contractor operations in Iraq. Plus the new president's locked into a three-year contract.
BNYM's boss can outsource to friendly Wall Street "subcontractors," handing out billions of taxpayer money with little oversight much as Halliburton did in Iraq. They will "purchase toxic debts from Wall Street, service them and auction them off in the future." BNYM's boss called this plum "the ultimate outsourcing." An opportunity for his bank, because there's "a lot of new business that's going on even in this chaotic marketplace."
Main Street's suffering because of Wall Street's "sins," and Wall Street sees our pain as just an "opportunity" for them. That's textbook "disaster capitalism."
So now you know the truth: The Treasury did not nationalize America's banks. The fact is, Wall Street privatized the U.S. Treasury with a $700 billion rescue plan being controlled by the very banks that created the mess. You were distracted by the election, hoping for a savior, while Wall Street was turning defeat into victory using a classic "disaster capitalism" strategy.
That's right, Wall Street's Trojan Horse, Hank Paulson, operated quietly inside Treasury, protecting his old Wall Street buddies before they'd go bankrupt. He pulled the classic "disaster capitalism" stunt relieving the banks of the pain of their "sins." Ironically, that only leads to more "sinning," faster, bigger, sooner.
That's classic "moral hazard" and with Wall Street's new "business as usual" attitudes about mergers, bonuses, CEO pay and cash cushions, you just know those Reaganomics "financial WMDs" that Paulson's leaving behind in the bailout funds "sleeper cell" will ultimately trigger an even bigger financial meltdown soon, by 2011.
Morgellons update!
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