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Don’t Mess with Iran’s Evolutionary Process

2009/06/30 in Elections, Globalization, Government, Obama, Politics, Ron Paul by John Adlai | 3 comments

By Philip Giraldi | Published 06/26/09

Iran Protest

Everyone is looking for something to say about Iran. The neo-conservatives are predictably hailing the march of democracy on the streets of Tehran for reasons of their own, while hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham are calling on the Obama Administration to do something to help anyone tagged as a reformer. More moderate voices are generally supporting President Barack Obama’s initial show of restraint — avoiding any open support of either side — and only condemning the violence because it is disproportionate due to the suffering it has caused. Still others are calling on the United States to avoid any interference of any kind. The non-interventionists themselves fall into two camps: the constitutionalists and libertarians believe that interfering in other people’s quarrels is intrinsically problematical because as John Quincy Adams said, “America does not need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Realists argue that interventions by the United States rarely turn out well, citing the cases of Vietnam, Bosnia, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, and more.

Having spent much of my working life as an intelligence officer on the street in places like Istanbul, I am astonished at what passes for expertise in the debate over what to do about Iran. It is clear that even the few genuine experts on Iran don’t really know what is going on there because they are slaves to their sources of information, which tend to reflect their own philosophical viewpoints and are, in any event, narrowly based. It is conventional wisdom in most of the US media that the Iranian election was stolen, the result of massive fraud. But was it? Opinion polls conducted by a US based organization several weeks before the polling predicted an Ahmadinejad victory. The president is hugely popular among poor rural Iranians and also enjoys overwhelming support for his defense of Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. Elections are very complex affairs and how a talking head sitting in Washington, breathlessly interpreting grainy texting images, can even pretend to understand what is going on in Iran and why defies all logic, particularly if the expert in question speaks no Farsi and probably would have difficulty in locating Isfahan on a map.

Mir Hossein Mousavi is a reformer and modernist, isn’t he? Perhaps not. He has always been extremely conservative in his political alignments. As Prime Minister in 1981-9, he was regarded as a hardliner. He started Iran’s nuclear program, helped found Hezbollah and may have directed the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. He is, in reality, a defender of extremely corrupt vested interests. That he has attracted the support of the so-called “Gucci crowd” of twentyish twitterers does not mean that he has embraced western values. As president, he would not abandon nuclear energy and would not immediately begin to talk nice to Barack Obama. His reformer credentials are pretty much non-existent, the creation of a media and an engaged punditry that wants to explain the Iran crisis in terms that a European or American audience would find comfortable.

And then there is the corruption issue, Iran’s six hundred pound gorilla. Mousavi is heir to the corrupt Iran of the post-revolutionary period when the country was looted by the senior clerics cooperating with the business class, the bazaaris. Some intelligence sources believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been demonized by the western media, is actually the reformer in that he has taken on the country’s pervasive corruption with the full support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Massive corruption has been business as usual in Iran, frequently managed by politicians who have called themselves reformers. Another so-called reformer, who is the money man behind Mousavi, is former Iranian Majlis speaker Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, nicknamed “the Shark.” Rafsanjani is a billionaire who controls large sectors of the country’s economy, to include a chain of private universities which became the source of the young organizers who brought the twitterers out on the street.

If there was one thing I learned from twenty years of experience as a military intelligence and CIA officer it is that nothing is ever what it seems. If a situation appears to be clear cut, with good guys and bad guys arrayed against each other it is probably anything but. So maybe black and white comes out gray. All the more reason to step back. The interventionists from both left and right do not make it clear what the United States should do to help the “reformers.” Perhaps that is just as well as the only options would be to hurl empty threats, start bombing, or initiate yet another CIA covert action to destabilize the regime, ignoring the lessons of the CIA’s 1953 debacle, and with the predictable and contrary result of actually strengthening the clerics and their rule.

Change by evolution is better than by revolution. Both metamorphoses are underway in Iran: one is immediate and reactionary and, perhaps necessarily, more graphic and even grim. The other suggests the possibility that long-lasting change might happen in Tehran — if outside influences do not upset the sensitive process of transformation. As is frequently the case, those who would do nothing probably have it right, whether arguing for constitutional reasons or as realists. Iran and its elections are issues that we do not and cannot understand and they are ultimately issues that have to be decided by the Iranian people. Rightly or wrongly, outside interference in what is taking place on the streets of Tehran will be exploited by the regime to deflect any legitimate criticism, making any change even less likely. The old Hippocratic advice to doctors to “do no harm” should perhaps be the best advice for the American political chattering classes and the media. Doing no harm regarding events in Iran is to stay out of it.

Source: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=121

Giraldi

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D. is the Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance (www.ACDAlliance.org) and a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer.
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative Defense Alliance

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Strange Inconsistencies in the $134.5 Billion Bearer Bond Mystery

2009/06/17 in E.U., Economy, Eurasia, Federal Reserve, Finance, Government, NWO, U.S. by John Adlai | Comments closed

Here’s yet another huge financial story that has been virtually blacked out by the E.U. financial media. Although on the surface, this story appears to be a non-event, if we consider some of the released facts about this case, you will understand why I consider it to be a huge story. On June 8th, the Asia News reported the following story:

“Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollars each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.”

Picture of the seized "bonds", via E.U. site Adnkronos.

Picture of the seized "bonds", via E.U. site Adnkronos.

Here are just a few fascinating facts about this case (at least they are being reported as “facts” at this current time):

(1) Though the smugglers have been identified in the press as “Japanese nationals” there has yet to be any confirmation if the smugglers were indeed Japanese or of some other ethnicity. How difficult is it to confirm the ethnicity of the smugglers and why is this information being kept secret?

(2) According to a brief Bloomberg article regarding this story, the seized bearer bonds allegedly were dated as of 1934. Since bearer bonds in denominations of $500 million did not exist in 1934, the bonds were deduced as fake, though the Italian police are still waiting for a declaration regarding the bonds’ authenticity from the SEC. There is something truly “off” about this declaration. How can the quality of the forged bearer bonds be so meticulous that they “are indistinguishable from the real ones”, yet the people involved in the alleged forgery so ill-informed as to not date the bearer bonds with a more recent year that would not immediately identify them as fraudulent? How hard would it have been to date the bearer bonds with a more recent year? An equivalent analogy would be if an expert art forger meticulously re-created a Picasso oil canvas and then erroneously signed the work with the wrong artist’s name. This story just does not add up.

(3) The Bloomberg story also reported that there is no known existence of the alleged 10 Kennedy bonds that were discovered in the smuggler’s suitcases, each with a denomination of $1 billion. Again, this discovery defies any logical explanation. Why would expert counterfeiters make 249 bearer bonds with denominations of $500 million apiece, each indistinguishable from the real thing, and then instead of just making 20 more such bonds, decide to make 10 bonds in denominations of $1 billion a piece in a bearer bond design that has never existed? Were the alleged counterfeiters just too lazy to confirm if Kennedy bearer bonds were ever a legitimately issued security? Again, this story makes no sense.

(4) On March 30, 2009, the US Treasury Department announced that USD $134.5 billion remained in its Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]. The stated amount of seized bearer bonds was $134.5 billion. Coincidence?

(5) The two well-dressed Japanese men opted to travel to Chiasso on a local train normally full of Italian manual laborers commuting to Switzerland. If they were really intent on successfully smuggling these bonds, counterfeit or real, why would they not take more care to select a travel route in which it was literally impossible for them not to stick out like two sore thumbs? Again, this part of the story defies all logic.

(6) The bearer bonds were discovered in a hidden briefcase compartment after a customs inspection. Again, if the bonds were indeed authentic and owned by a nation state, they could have been transported in a diplomatic pouch exempt from customs searches that would have guaranteed transport without detection.
Thus, all of the above irreconcilable and illogical points, other than the coincidence of the amount of the bearer bonds exactly matching the remaining TARP fund amount declared on March 30th, seem to indicate that not only were the seized bearer bonds counterfeit, but also that the smugglers were intent on being caught.
Before I continue, let’s review the purpose of bearer bonds.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of bearer bonds:

“A bearer bond is a debt security issued by a business entity, such as a corporation, or by a government. It differs from the more common types of investment securities in that it is unregistered – no records are kept of the owner, or the transactions involving ownership. Whoever physically holds the paper on which the bond is issued owns the instrument. This is useful for investors who wish to retain anonymity. The downside is that in the event of loss or theft, bearer bonds are extremely difficult to recover.”

If you recall the Michael Mann movie “Heat”, starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, during a daring daytime armored car robbery, the criminals specifically targeted millions of dollars of bearer bonds for theft precisely because of the above qualities of bearer bonds that make them very difficult to trace. Again, due to the properties of bearer bonds, it seems highly unlikely that $134.5 billion of bearer bonds would be transported, if they were real, by two men with no security, since theft almost guarantees that they would be lost forever.

Thus far, about the only piece of information that appears to be reliable as reported by various news sources regarding this huge mystery is the remarkable authenticity of the 249 seized bearer bonds in denominations of USD $500 million. If any of the other facts, as they are being reported, are remotely accurate, then the bearer bonds were likely counterfeit. Still, the interesting part of this story, at least to me, is that the smugglers seemed intent on being caught with the counterfeit bonds. This leads me back to my previous question. What possible reason would the smugglers have for wanting to be caught? One of the quickest ways to sabotage and usher in the death of a currency is to raise legitimate questions about its ability to withstand counterfeiting efforts. Prove that counterfeiting is not only possible but highly likely, and the world’s confidence in the sabotaged currency will undoubtedly plummet.

In fact, this very tactic was applied during World War II when the Nazis launched Operation Bernhard in an attempt to crash the British economy by producing, by 1945, 132 million expertly counterfeited British pounds, a figure that represented roughly 15% of all real British pounds in circulation at the time. The counterfeit pounds were produced by expert printers and engravers supervised by an SS officer named Bernhard Krueger. As well, historical evidence exists that the Allies considered launching a counter-counterfeit plan against the Nazis as well. During this time, it was also alleged that the Bank of Italy counterfeited their own money by issuing the same securities twice with identical registered numbers and codes in order. The purpose of this counterfeiting was to secretly expand monetary supply without public transparency or accountability. Perhaps then, this $134.5.billion bearer bond mystery was an attempt of a nation state to shake the world’s confidence in the position of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

There should be little debate that the world’s emerging economies in Russia, Brazil, China and certain Gulf Nations are at economic war today with the world’s Western nations and their economic allies. The currency war being fought today is sure to get much uglier in the foreseeable future, in both open tactics as well as secretly executed tactics. Currently, if the currency war were the world series of poker, the US and the UK would be holding a pair of 2s and relying on nothing but bluffs to keep the rest of the world at bay. Conversely, the Chinese and other emerging nations with large surpluses would be holding straight or royal flushes, and likely quietly maneuvering to go “all in” at some point.

Given that the discovery of $134.5 billion of bearer bonds in the suitcases of two Japanese nationals in Chiasso, Italy on the border of Switzerland qualifies as one of the largest smuggling operations in history, and given the various implications of such an act and the possible players involved, the silence regarding this huge story is simply stunning. It is not a huge story, per se, because of the counterfeiting operation, because accusations and revelations of massive money counterfeiting operations have occured in the past. It is a huge story, rather, due to all the inconsistencies of the story and the potential explanations that could explain these inconsistencies. The larger story at hand is, who are the players (nations) involved, and what was the intention of this likely counterfeiting operation? Maybe the future will reveal the answers to these questions. But maybe not.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/143462-strange-inconsistencies-in-the-134-5-billion-bearer-bond-mystery

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Is Swine Flu A Biological Weapon?

2009/04/30 in E.U., Globalization, Government, NWO, Obama, Politics, Tyranny, U.K., U.S. by John Adlai | Comments closed

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, April 27, 2009

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There are some factors that suggest the swine flu killing people in Mexico may be a biological weapon, but obviously no such conclusion can be drawn at this time. The World Health Organization and the U.S. government have been quick to deny such claims.

The swine flu virus is described as a completely new strain, an intercontinental mixture of human, avian and swine viruses. Tellingly, there have been no reported A-H1N1 infections of pigs.

According to a source known to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, “A top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.

Madsen claims that his source, and another in Indonesia, “Are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.”

However, it’s important to stress that it is far too early to make this assumption. We have to bear in mind that the number of victims has been comparatively low when one considers the fact that hundreds of thousands in Mexico contract infectious diseases every year related to poverty like tuberculosis and malaria.

 

Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Command installation that was the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks, is again attracting suspicion in light of the swine flu panic after it was revealed that criminal investigators are probing whether virus samples recently went missing from its biolabs.

“Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases,” reports The Frederick News.

In February, USAMRIID halted their work when virus samples were discovered that were not listed in its inventory. Criminal investigators from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade are now probing whether virus samples are missing from the Army’s top biolab, which also studies pathogens including ebola, anthrax and plague.

Obviously, in light of the current swine flu scare, and the new strain’s possible synthetic origin, the fact that virus samples may have gone missing from the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released is extremely disturbing.

A 2008 FBI and DOJ investigation concluded that Bruce Edwards Irvins, a microbiologist, vaccinologist, and senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible for mailing anthrax to members of Congress and the media in September and October 2001.

The fact that Irvins apparently committed suicide shortly before the announcement led many to suspect that he was a patsy in a wider plot. Despite the suspicious circumstances, no autopsy was carried out on Irvins’ body. His attorney was certain that Irvins, who had cooperated with the 6-year investigation, was innocent of the five anthrax deaths.

The Department of Justice initially considered Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill to be a strong suspect in the anthrax attacks, but he later sued the government and won $5.8 million in damages. A New York Times piece on Irvins’ suicide asked the hypothetical question: “What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead?”

Fears that a mass pandemic was being readied as a biological attack have rumbled on in the conspiracy community ever since 9/11. Investigators point to the highly unusual number of deaths of top microbiologists to suggest that people with knowledge of the program are being eliminated.

Source: http://www.infowars.com/is-swine-flu-a-biological-weapon/

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4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet

2009/04/07 in California, Internet by John Adlai | Comments closed

The most powerful people on the Internet don’t work for Microsoft, Google or the government. Rather, they’re a bunch of antisocial, foul-mouthed, clever nerds who congregate at a largely unknown Web site called 4chan.org.

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Ever get your MySpace page hacked into? Chances are it was 4chan’s fault.

Surfing YouTube and suddenly find yourself watching an old Rick Astley music video? You were “rickrolled” by 4chan.

Enjoy reading Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail? She’s got 4chan to thank for that.

Hear someone shout out the ending of the latest Harry Potter book while you’re in line at Barnes and Noble? 4chan strikes again.

4chan.org is the self-proclaimed Internet home for people who lack a social conscience, a Web site that’s become a surreptitious cultural powerhouse.

It’s responsible for launching several successful Web-based trends, from the wildly popular “lolcat” phenomenon to the surprise comeback of ’80s one-hit wonder Rick Astley.

But what the heck IS 4chan?

Welcome to a new world, filled with terminology and conventions that the average person — or even the average nerd — may not know about.

4chan is a no-frills discussion Web site that features dozens of message boards and “image boards” within six broad categories, stemming from Japanese animation to travel, and given semi-random names ranging from “/a/”‘ to “/trv/.”

That sounds harmless enough, except that within 4chan lurks the “/b/” board, dedicated to “random” images and topics, and its 5.3 million users, known as the “/b/tards.”

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The /b/ board, or just /b/ to its loyal visitors, is by far the site’s most popular. Users fill the board with vile material, from pornographic images to incredibly racist and misogynistic comments.

It thrives on competition and users write “moar” to challenge each other to post further loathsome material throughout the day and long into the night.

What makes 4chan unique among message boards is its reliance on anonymity, a vast difference from most sites, which make users sign up with at least a verifiable e-mail address.

On 4chan, one can post anonymously using a nickname or a “tripcode,” a system that uses an algorithm to give users unique coded nicknames.

Anonymously, /b/tards create alliances to plan their next big exploits.

In 2008, they bombarded MTV with votes to clinch Rick Astley the fan-picked “Best Act Ever” award at the MTV Europe Music Awards — which helped Astley get a slot performing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Recurring jokes on 4chan sometimes spread out into the wider Web to become Internet “memes,” a pseudo-sociological term for jokey phenomena passed from person to person.

Remember the Hamster Dance and the lonely heart Mahir “I kiss you!” Cagri? Those were two early pre-4chan memes.

Aside from Astley, 4chan’s most successful meme has been the “lolcats,” photos of cats accompanied by goofy captions written in 4chan dialect, phonetically-spelled words using childlike grammar — for example, a hungry-looking feline with the words “I Can Haz Cheezburger?”

And the 2007 YouTube stardom of Tay Zonday and his song “Chocolate Rain” was due to 4chan users who found his amateurism charming and decided to artificially boost his viewing numbers.

But the antics of the /b/tards also have a dark side far from cute cats. They’ve been suspected of replacing people’s MySpace profile photos with pornographic images. /b/tards have even gathered together to drive past bookstores with megaphones, shouting the ending of new Harry Potter books.

One of the most serious allegations against the /b/tards concerns the invasion of hip-hop Web site SOHH.com in June 2008, where much of the site’s content was replaced with racist photos and slurs.

Fellow hip-hop site AllHipHop.com shut down its own forums as the invasion spilled over into them, a stunt that AllHipHop’s managers deemed an “unprovoked racist attack” by “cyber terrorists.”

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Since users are anonymous, it’s never proven that /b/tards are the culprits, but online communities often point fingers to 4chan for causing much of the chaos in (and sometimes out) of cyberspace.

/b/tards retaliate by saying that all original Web content stems from something they once posted on 4chan.

As long as users play by 4chan’s carefully listed rules, created by the site’s founder “moot,” they don’t get in trouble with the outside world and mainly stay unnoticed.

The rules are few and simple: Invasions of other sites are not tolerated, the SOHH incident notwithstanding, child pornography and illegal material are prohibited and no one under 18 is allowed.

Moot — he insists on the lowercase “m” — is reportedly Christopher Poole, a college dropout in his early 20s who lives in New York with his mother and is looking for more active employment.

Since 4chan is anonymous, it’s unclear if Poole is truly his identity and whether it’s true that he began 4chan in 2003 while in high school using his mother’s credit cards or that he’s still deeply in debt as the site continues to lose money.

4chan has been moot’s main focus since he was 15 years old, which he began with one “anime/random” board.

Since those early days of 4chan, the boards have grown from something small and slightly elite to a site that moot says is now mainstream.

“4chan ceased to be a ’secret clubhouse’ ages ago. We serve over 15 million users per quarter, and are larger than 99 percent of other sites on the Web,” moot told FoxNews.com.

Moot says the growth of 4chan has kept things interesting. In just a few months, figures have increased to 450,000 posts a day.

Users tend to push the envelope as far as they can without breaking the site’s rules — including a vague “rule” known on /b/ eloquently coined, “Don’t mess with football.”

That rule was made famous in 2005 when 23-year-old Jake Brahm posted bomb threats to major football stadiums across the country during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on 4chan.

What resulted was a media storm — and what may have began as a practical joke turned into Homeland Security’s arrest of Brahm. He was sentenced in June to six months of prison and $26,750 in restitution.

“If you want to post illegal things to 4chan, I would highly discourage it, unless you want to end up in federal prison,” moot said at a Web conference.

Another controversy to hit 4chan was the “invasion” of the teen-centric online social site Habbo Hotel. At this online “hotel,” users create avatars that walk into various virtual rooms and chat with other users.

In 2006, /b/tards swarmed the site, created avatars of men with Afros and Armani suits and blocked the hotel’s swimming pool and shut it down, due to “AIDS in the water.” After this incident, moot added “no invasions” to the rules.

The September 2008 hack of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Yahoo e-mail was more muddled.

While some users applauded the /b/ newbie who claimed to have done it, others derided him as an idiot and amateur who would get the entire site in trouble — and quickly discovered his true identity long before the FBI figured it out.

Some see 4chan as a site filled with bored teenagers who like to push the limits on what they can do online. Others see users as part of an “Internet hate machine” filled with calls for domestic terrorists to bomb stadiums.

But it’s hard to call someone a terrorist who posts photos of cats with captions in 4chan language every Saturday, or what /b/tards like to refer to as “Caturday.”

The “lolcats” — Laugh Out Loud cats — became so popular that one user launched the images on his own blog, icanhazcheezburger.com, a site that has since been acquired for $2 million and spawned at least one book.

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But why cats?

“At the end of the day, /b/tards are still human,” says moot. “Cute cat pictures appeal to most people.”

In an atmosphere were anything goes, the only thing that seems to truly rile a /b/tard is the abuse of a cat.

In February, a user documented abuse to his pet cat, Dusty, as a friend rolled tape. The video surfaced on YouTube and was viewed over 30,000 times.

In a rare 4chan moment, /b/tards created an alliance to do good and tracked down the cat abuser, Kenny Glenn, and alerted police.

Moot believes that 4chan has the ability to grow into something more powerful than a generator of memes.

During the past year, “Project Chanology,” created by an amorphous 4chan-associated group calling itself “Anonymous,” has become an organized effort against the legal and cultural power of the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous members, often wearing masks depicting the main character in the politically charged comic book and movie “V for Vendetta,” protest across the country, claiming the religion endorses Internet censorship.

It all began in January of 2008 after the Church of Scientology tried and failed to purge the Web of a leaked Tom Cruise promotional Scientology video.

What the /b/tards may do next is anyone’s guess. As moot says, if he had an idea for the next idea, he certainly wouldn’t tell the media.

“4chan, both the site and its memes, has touched the lives of tens of millions of people from around the world, in one way or another, for better or worse,’ he says. “I’d say that’s culturally powerful.”

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512957,00.html

Links: http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html

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Ron Paul on the Budget and the G20

2009/04/03 in E.U., Globalization, Government, Politics, Ron Paul, U.S. by John Adlai | Comments closed

On Thursday, Dr. Paul sat down with legislative assistant Paul-Martin Foss to give his thoughts on the budget, global economic regulation, and the gold standard.

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EU presidency: US economic plans ‘a way to hell’

2009/03/25 in E.U., Finance, Government, Obama, Politics, U.S. by John Adlai | Comments closed

(03-25) 06:10 PDT STRASBOURG, France (AP) –

A top European Union politician on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as “a way to hell.”

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President of the United States of Europa (Czech State Governor) Mirek Topolanek, whose state currently holds the EU presidency, told the European Parliament that President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout “will undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

A day after his government collapsed because of a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, Topolanek took the EU presidency on a collision course with Washington over how to deal with the global economic recession.

Most European leaders favor tighter financial regulation, while the U.S. has been pushing for larger economic stimulus plans.

Topolanek’s comments are the strongest criticism so far from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from recent U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand.

They also pave the way for a stormy summit next week in London between leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized countries.

The host of the summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, praised Obama on Tuesday for his willingness to work with Europe on reforming the global economy in the run-up to the G-20 summit.

The United States plans to spend heavily to try and lift its economy out of recession with a $787 billion economic stimulus plan of tax rebates, health and welfare benefits, as well as extra energy and infrastructure spending.

To encourage banks to lend again, the government will also pump $1 trillion into the financial system by buying up treasury bonds and mortgage securities in an effort to clear some of the “toxic assets” — devalued and untradeable assets — from banks’ balance sheets.

Topolanek bluntly said that “the United States did not take the right path.”.

He slammed the U.S.’ widening budget deficit and protectionist trade measures — such as the “Buy America” — and said that “all of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell.”

“We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way,” he said.

“Americans will need liquidity to finance all their measures and they will balance this with the sale of their bonds but this will undermine the stability of the global financial market,” said Topolanek.

Obama insisted Tuesday that his massive budget proposal is moving the nation down the right path and will help the ailing economy grow again. “This budget is inseparable from this recovery,” he said, “because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.”

Obama also claimed early progress in his aggressive campaign to lead the United States out of its worst economic crisis in 70 years and declared that despite obstacles ahead, the U.S. is “moving in the right direction.”

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/25/financial/f041709D32.DTL&feed=rss.business

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Clinton sees US and EU leading the world

2009/03/10 in E.U., Eurasia, Globalization, Government, U.S. by John Adlai | Comments closed

There is a leadership crisis in the world and America and the European Union must take the lead in addressing it, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience of young Europeans in Parliament today (6 March).

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In an invitation-only event entitled ‘The next generation takes the floor’, at which most participants appeared to be young employees or trainees of the EU institutions, Clinton complimented Europe on its integration, calling it an “extraordinary international effort”.

“Europe today is viewed by many as a miracle,” said Clinton, stressing that the EU is experiencing its “longest period of peace since the Roman Empire,” while the countries of the Union have never been more prosperous or more secure.

Speaking for her country, the head of the US diplomacy insisted that despite difficult problems ahead, the new administration is optimistic and “up to the task”.

Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering, who described Clinton as a “leader of vision” at a time that the world needs such leaders, also hinted that a new era is beginning in EU-US relations.

“Let us work as equal partners to build a better future,” Pöttering said.

In a carefully staged question-and-answer session, Clinton touched upon climate change, the fight against terrorism, the situation in the Middle East, relations with Russia, Darfur and gay rights.

The US secretary of state recognised that it will be difficult to get China, India, Indonesia and other countries to back an agreement at UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

Moving on to a pet topics of the Bush administration, Clinton said her country’s ambition is to move towards a time when there is no fertile ground for terrorism, and clearly spoke in favour of establishing a viable Palestinian state. As for the situation in Africa, she stressed the need to build capacities within the continent that are capable of solving its many problems.

As for Russia, Clinton expressed satisfaction with yesterday’s decision by NATO to “re-energise” the NATO-Russia Council, which was frozen following the brief war in Georgia in August 2008.

She added that the US and Russia still strongly disagree on some areas, mentioning Georgia, the use by Moscow of energy “as a tool for intimidation” and the assumption by Russia that it has “spheres of influence” or veto rights over the NATO membership candidacies of Ukraine and Georgia.

Source: http://www.euractiv.com/en/opinion/clinton-sees-us-eu-leading-world/article-180031

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GUOMBYFC, not for the youth but this is my kinda activism!

2009/03/08 in E.U., Finance, Government, U.K. by John Adlai | Comments closed

Source: http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Find-Freedom.htm?EdNo=001&At=046888

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California Republic as ”Partner State 2009”

2009/03/02 in California, E.U., Eurasia by John Adlai | Comments closed

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger goes farther afield than usual this week to promote the California Republic. 15081

The governor is in Hannover, Germany, for what’s billed as the world’s largest technology trade fair, CeBIT.

Today, he signs both the city’s and the trade fair’s official guestbooks. Those events — read “photo op” — are open to the press. So are his remarks at the opening ceremony tonight.

What’s closed to the press: His meetings scheduled with Lower Saxony Minister President Christian Wulff (now that’s a long title) and with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

What he’s missing in Sacramento: The California School Employees Association is holding a save-our-schools budget rally on the north steps of the Capitol.

What he’s also missing: A joint informational hearing that the Assembly Natural Resource and Utilities and Commerce committees are holding on air emission credits and electrical generation.

Schwarzenegger won’t be rushing back. He’ll deliver remarks Tuesday at a Germany-California summit.

And he can’t leave before he gets his 2009 Transatlantic Partnership Award at the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany luncheon.

FUNDRAISERS: Assemblyman Jim Nielsen will be at the Citizen Hotel’s Scandal Bar tonight. Tickets, $1,500. Added bonus: Bee cartoonist Rex Babin’s scandalous drawings grace the bar walls.

Compiled by Micaela Massimino

Source http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/capitolalertlatest/020188.html

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The focus will be on environmentally-friendly technologies - a topic that played a key role at CeBIT 2008, where Green IT was specially featured. The star attraction of the Partner State program will be the flanking German-Californian ICT Summit. The two countries will both be keen on using this opportunity to step up collaboration and stimulate more bilateral business.

Prof. Dr. August-Wilhelm Scheer, President of BITKOM:
“The California Republic is not only an important trading partner. California’s Silicon Valley is also a textbook example of successful business development driven by inward investment. We are hoping to learn from the Californians and get some useful input into our own strategy planning.”

Specials:

Source www.bitkom.org/california.

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California unemployment rate tops 10 percent

2009/02/27 in California, Finance, Government by John Adlai | Comments closed

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 27 (Reuters) – California’s unemployment rate rose to 10.1 percent in January, the highest level in a quarter century, as recession tightened its grip on the most populous U.S. state.

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Weakness in the housing and consumer sectors helped drive the jobless rate up from a revised 8.7 percent in December and 6.1 percent in January 2008, state officials said on Friday.

Economists had expected the jobless rate to climb into double-digits and be well above the national January average of 7.6 percent.

Consumer spending across the state has plunged in the wake of Wall Street’s turmoil and payrolls have been thinned at a rapid pace in recent months. The state, the world’s eighth largest economy, is also suffering from a prolonged housing downturn.

“There is continued weakness in housing-related sectors and we’re also seeing weakness in consumer-related sectors,” said Kevin Callori, a spokesman for the state’s Employment Development Department. “The credit crunch is making consumers less confident so that’s affecting businesses in wholesale and retail trades.”

“Basically about a third of the losses (over the past year) have been in consumer-oriented industries,” Callori said. “Another third have been in housing and housing-related industries like construction and financial services.”

State officials said California lost 79,300 nonfarm payroll jobs in January from December and a total of 494,000 nonfarm jobs from a year earlier, or 3.3 percent of the state’s nonfarm payrolls. (Reporting by Jim Christie; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2736393720090227

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