Couple Ordered to Stop Holding Bible Study at Home Without Permit

Pastor David Jones and his wife Mary have been told that they cannot invite friends to their San Diego, Calif. home for a Bible study — unless they are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to San Diego County.

“On Good Friday we had an employee from San Diego County come to our house, and inform us that the Bible study that we were having was a religious assembly, and in violation of the code in the county.” David Jones told FOX News.

“We told them this is not really a religious assembly — this is just a Bible study with friends. We have a meal, we pray, that was all,” Jones said.

A few days later, the couple received a written warning that cited “unlawful use of land,” ordering them to either “stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit,” the couple’s attorney Dean Broyles told San Diego news station 10News.

But the major use permit could cost the Jones’ thousands of dollars just to have a few friends over.

For David and Mary Jones, it’s about more than a question of money.

“The government may not prohibit the free exercise of religion,” Broyles told FOX News. “I believe that our Founding Fathers would roll over in their grave if they saw that here in the year 2009, a pastor and his wife are being told that they cannot hold a simple Bible study in their own home.”

“The implications are great because it’s not only us that’s involved,” Mary Jones said. “There are thousands and thousands of Bible studies that are held all across the country. What we’re interested in is setting a precedent here — before it goes any further — and that we have it settled for the future.”

The couple is planning to dispute the county’s order this week.

If San Diego County refuses to allow the pastor and his wife to continue gathering without acquiring a permit, they will consider a lawsuit in federal court.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C522637%2C00.html

The Second Crash –

On the Way and Unstoppable

Doug Hornig
Editor, BIG GOLD
May 29, 2009

Tuesday, October 9, 2007 started as a nice day in New York City. A lovely early fall day, with the temperature still a balmy 80° at 2:00 in the morning. By evening, though, the temperature had dropped twenty degrees, the clouds had rolled in, there was thunder and rain.

As with the weather, there were some hints of trouble here and there on Wall Street. But all in all, things could not have seemed better. Little did we know, the stormy end of 10/9/07 signaled a very large bubble that had just popped.

That was the day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its historic peak. From there, it was all downhill – slowly but steadily at first, and then violently after last August – until the Dow bottomed (for now) on March 9 of this year. Over that span, the index lost 54% of its value.

It’s been a crushing blow to just about everyone. But it’s already being referred to as the crash. As if the unpleasantness were now all behind us. More likely, in the future it will be seen as, simply, the first crash.

Don’t believe it? In a moment you will, when you see the scariest graph of the year.

But let’s quickly recall what’s already happened. During the late, great housing boom, interest rates were at microscopic levels, while bankers were encouraged to grant home loans on little more than a wink and a nudge. In order to inflate their balance sheets, those bankers resorted to all sorts of gimmicky, adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), whose common feature was an interest rate that would eventually reset. That is, it would balloon somewhere down the road. And those most likely to come quickly to grief were the riskiest borrowers, who held loans known as “subprime.”

“But not to worry,” borrowers were told. “Betting on ever-rising home prices is the safest wager in the whole wide world. If you have problems with cash flow when the ARM resets, your house will be worth a lot more, so you can simply sell it and walk away with a nice chunk of change in your pocket.” Uh-huh.

The bankers themselves were a little more concerned about the deterioration of their portfolios. They took out insurance in the form of credit default swaps (CDSs). These were a brand-new invention in world financial history, allowing mortgages to be sold and resold until they were leveraged 20 times over. They became the shakiest part of a huge global derivatives market, with a nominal value in the tens of trillions of dollars.

For a while, this Ponzi scheme even worked. But then, as they had to, the ARMs began resetting, and there were defaults. Then more of them. Because at the same time, the housing market was cooling off and the economy was stalling out. More and more people were trapped in a situation where they owed more on their home than they could sell it for. Many simply mailed their keys to the bank and moved on.

All of this wreaked havoc in the derivatives market. Sellers of these exotic packages could no longer establish what they were worth. Buyers couldn’t determine a fair price and so stopped buying. As the ripples spread through the world financial system, trust disappeared and liquidity dried up.

Now consider that the base cause for all that dislocation was the subprime sector. And how big is that? Not very. Subprime mortgages account for only about 15% of all home loans. Their influence has been way out of proportion to their numbers, because of derivatives. Here’s the good news: the subprime meltdown has about run its course. These loans were resetting en masse in 2007 and the first eight months of ‘08. Now they’re pretty much done.

And the bad news? No one in the mainstream media seems to be asking what should be a pretty obvious question: What about loans other than subprime? Truth is, the banks didn’t just trick up their subprime loans. ARMs were the order of the day – across the board.

Now, here’s that frightening graph we referred to earlier.

Take a good, long look. You can see that from the beginning of 2007 through September of 2008, subprime loans (the gray bars above) were resetting like crazy. Those are the ones people were walking away from, sending a shockwave from defaults and foreclosures smack into the middle of the economy. Now they’re gone.

The ARM market got very quiet between December 2008 and March 2009, hitting a low that won’t be seen again until November of 2011. Small wonder a few “green shoots” have poked their heads above ground. But in April, resets began to increase and will reach an intermediate peak in June. After that, they tail off a little, going basically flat for the next ten months.

It’s not until May of 2010 that the next wave really hits. From there to October of 2011, the resets will be coming fast and furious. That’s 18 months of further turmoil in the housing market, and the beginning is still nearly a year away! (Although the months in between are likely to be no picnic, either.)

While it isn’t subprime ARMs that are resetting this time, neither are they prime loans. Those eligible for prime loans wisely tended to stay away from ARMs in the first place, as indicated by the relatively small space they take up on each bar.

No, the next to go are Alt-As (the white bars), Option ARMs (green) and Unsecuritized ARMs (blue). Alt-As are loans to the folks who are a small step up from subprime. Unsecuritized loans are a 50-50 proposition; either the borrowers were good enough that they weren’t thrown into the CDS pool, or they were so risky no one would insure them.

Those two are bad enough. But Option ARMs are the real black sheep, loans with choices on how large a payment the borrower will make. The options include interest-only or, worse, a minimum payment that is less than interest-only, leading to “negative amortization” – a loan balance that continually gets bigger, not smaller. Imagine what happens with those when the piper calls.

Once the carnage begins, will it be as bad as the subprime crisis? That’s the $64K question. Perhaps not. For one thing, subprime loans were a much larger chunk of the market when they started going south. For another, there’s been a lot of refinancing as interest rates dropped; that should help ease the default rate. And the government has massively intervened, with measures designed to prop up those who would otherwise lose their homes.

On the other hand, we’re in a severe recession, which wasn’t the case when the subprime crisis started. More people will be unable to meet payments. And the housing market has continued to decline, pressuring both marginal homeowners and banks that can’t sell foreclosed properties.

Is the stock market’s next 10/9/07 on the way? Yes. Which day will it be? That’s unknowable. It could be in a week, or not for another year.

But make no mistake about it, the second crash is coming. It can’t be prevented, no matter what desperate measures Obama and his hapless financial advisors come up with. All we can hope for is that, with a little luck, it won’t be as severe as the first one. But it will last longer. We aren’t even in the middle of the woods yet, much less on the way out.

The order of the day is to be very defensive. There will be few safe havens, but they do exist. Read our report on “48 Karat Gold,” a gold-related, conservative investment that has continued going up even while the common stock market bombed. It’s not too late to profit, click here to learn more.

http://www.321gold.com/editorials/casey/casey052909.html

Israelis torture, rape applied by US military and agencies to every single detainee in US prisons or camps

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=96365&sectionid=3510203

The Zionists and Torture in Iraq: Seymour Hersh and the Missing Zionist-Israeli Connection

OBAMA IS COMPLICE OF EVERY SINGLE DEATH, RAPE AND TORTURE… FORGET ABOUT ‘USA IS NOT IN WAR AGAINST ISLAM’, RAPE PICTURES WILL BE PUBLISHED ALL OVER THE WORLD AND WAR CRIMINAL SUCH AS HIM AND PENTAGONE MONSTERS WILL PAY FOR WHAT THEY’VE DONE AND WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO COVER ! DO YOU THINK IT’S PLAYING THE GAME OF ZIONISTS IN LONDON , BARACK ?

An Exposé of an Exposé

As I read Hersh s highly publicized and influential reports in the New Yorker Magazine on torture in US occupied Iraq (1), it became increasingly apparent that this was not a thoroughly researched exposé of the higher ups responsible for the policy of torture. Hersh s reportage was a selective account guided by selected question about selected officials. As one reads through Hersh s version of events with increasing incredulity it is clear that Hersh hangs his whole argument and exposé of US officials involved in the use of torture on one person Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – (important to be sure) and not on the other top Defense officials who were extremely influential and responsible for war policy, establishing intelligence agencies and co-coordinating strategy and tactics during the occupation. Rumsfeld was part of an elite, which sanctioned and promoted torture. Throughout his exposé Hersh deliberately omits the role of the Zionists (Wolfowitz, Feith numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon) who supported and promoted the war, torture-interrogation and particularly Israeli experts who led seminars teaching the US Military Intelligence their torture-interrogation techniques of Arab prisoners based on their half-century of practice.

In looking for documentary sources of torture interrogation Hersh relies on academic texts and 20 year old CIA manuals, not Israeli practice widely disseminated by the Mossad and Shin Bet advisers presently involved in torture in neighboring Palestine and Iraq today.

Hersh is presented in the mass media as an iconoclastic, investigative journalist, a role which gives his reportages and exposés a great deal of credibility. Yet it was Seymour Hersh who publicly defended torture of suspects and their family members as a method of interrogation, citing the Israeli examples in the wake of September 11, justifying torture in the same way as the Pentagon now justifies the torture of Iraqi suspects. Instead of citing an obscure professor at the University of Chicago, Hersh should have cited the influential tract defending torture by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz (a fellow Zionist) widely read by the civilian militarists who run the Pentagon, and direct the chain of command leading to interrogation through torture.

Hersch’s account fails to provide a political context in the Pentagon and in the Middle East for the systematic use of torture. To understand the issue of the US practice of torture and violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners and civilians requires an examination of the ideological demonization of the Iraqi population the Arabs and the US unconditional political and military support for the state of Israel, the principal long-term large-scale practitioner of torture against Arabs. The most vitriolic systematic denigration of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East is found in the writings an speeches of influential US-based Zionist ideologues, like the Pipes (father and son), the Kristols (senior and junior), the Kagans, Cohens, Goldhagens and others. The first step toward justifying torture is to dehumanize the victim, to label them as untermensch (congenitally violent savages). The Zionists in the US were merely following the pronouncements of their ideological mentors in Israel who not infrequently proclaimed that the only thing the Arab understands is force (Sharon, Golda Meier, Dayan, Rabin etc&). The Zionist ideologues in the Pentagon were influential in arousing hatred of Arabs in several ways. First in their defense of Israel they deliberately distorted the nature of Israel s colonial war, blaming the Palestinian victims for the systematic violence which Israel inflicted on them. The ideologues defended every Israeli violent action: the massacre in Jenin, new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the murderous assault on Rafah, the killing of UN aid workers and peace activists, the monstrous wall ghettoizing a whole people, the mass murder of hundreds of Palestinians and destructions of thousands of homes in Gaza. Israeli violence against Palestinians made a deep impression on US Zionists who generalized and deepened their animus to Arab Muslims throughout the Middle East, but particularly in Iraq where they were in a position to implement their policies.

The Zionists and Torture in Iraq

The Pentagon s main source of intelligence and propaganda for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was in part derived from the Office of Specials Plans (OSP) and Counter-terrorism Evaluation Group established by ultra-Zionist Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense (third in the Pentagon hierarchy) with strong support from Wolfowitz, Abrams and Rumsfeld. Feith put fellow Zionist, Abram Shulsky in charge of OSP. The Special Group bypassed normal CIA and military intelligence agencies and secured its own intelligence prior to the war and was involved in securing intelligence during the first stages of the occupation (before it was dismantled). As the Iraqi resistance increased its effectiveness and the US justification for the war (weapons of mass destruction) was proven to be a total fabrication of the Special Group, the top echelon of the Pentagon, Rumsfeld and the Zionists grew desperate they collectively passed the orders to intensify and extend torture to all Iraqi suspects in all the prisons. It is a gross simplification to say that the line of command was limited to Rumsfeld, when Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams were also intimately involved in everyday policies prosecuting the war, defending the occupation and controlling intelligence.

Even more than Rumsfeld, the Zionist zealots in the Pentagon were the most ardent promoters of introducing Israeli methods of torturing and humiliating Arab suspects, lauding Israeli successes in dealing with the Arabs . They, not military intelligence, promoted the use of Israeli experts in interrogation; they encouraged Israeli led seminars in urban warfare and interrogation techniques for the US military intelligence officers and private contractors.

Nothing about the responsibility of the Pentagon Zionists in the torture of Iraqis appears in Hersh s expose . The glaring omissions are deliberate as they are obvious form a systematic pattern and serve the purpose of exonerating the Pentagon Zionists and Israel and hanging the entire responsibility for war crimes on Rumsfeld.

A Close Look at Hersh s Method

A close reading of Hersh’s series of articles in the New Yorker reveals his premises and political perspectives, none of which have anything to do with democratic values or concern with human rights.

Hersh s principal concern is that Rumsfeld’s blanket order to use torture disrupted the operations of an elite group made up of professional commandos involved in a secret special access program designed to murder, kidnap, torture terror suspects throughout the world. In other words by involving thousands of everyday US soldiers (referred to by one of Hersh s sources as hillbillies ) as torturers in Iraq Rumsfeld was endangering the operation of professional killers throughout the world. Hersh s second major concern was that the discovery of the torture would hurt America s (sic) prospects in the war on terror in other words a tactic he attributed (solely and wrongfully) to Rumsfeld was endangering the US empire-building capacity. Hersh s empire-centric view refuses to recognize the elementary rights of self-determination and international law. Hersh s third apparent concern is with Rumsfeld s bypassing the CIA and other intelligence agencies and attempt to monopolize intelligence. This is a bit ingenuous. Wolfowitz and Feith set up the special intelluigence agency that fed Rumsfeld the fabricated intelligence, they promoted Chalabi (known throughout Washington intelligence circles as totally unreliable) as an impeccable source of inside information , in Saddams non-existent weapons of mass destruction knowing in advance that they were passing phony data . As Wolfowitz latter cynically admitted the decision to launch the US invasion over banned weapons was because it was the only issue they could agree upon.

Hersh is not stupid, he knows what everyone else in Washington and out of government knows: the Zionists in the Pentagon were pushing for war with Iraq before 9/11 (even before they took office in Washington and were working with the Israeli state) and were intent on having the US destroy Iraq, at any price including the loss of American lives, budget busting deficits, imperiling oil interests and jeopardizing US global imperial interests.

They launched the invasion bypassing the military central command by deliberately falsifying the response of the conquered Iraqi people ( they will welcome us as liberators Wolfowitz and Perle) and intent on destroying civil and state structures (the so-called de-Baathification purges) in order to forever undermine Iraq s capacity to challenge Israel s domination of the Middle East.

None of Hersh s questions explore these well known facts about who is responsible for the atrocities against Iraqis. He didn t have to cite unnamed intelligence or Pentagon sources General Anthony Zinni and many non-Zionists insiders, as well as the CIA and Central Command knew about the Zionist promoters, plans and moreover knew the role Feith played in pushing for harsher interrogation techniques. But Hersh ignored these questions, those Zionists and their ideological supporters and advisers who did everything possible to undermine any Iraqi economic recovery and capacity to run their own education, health and electoral systems. De-Baathification was meant to turn Iraq into a backward tribal, divided desert country run by their protégé Chalabi, the only candidate who would recognize Israel, supply it with oil and support Mid-East integration under Israeli hegemony. The Zionist Pentagonistas succeeded in securing the war, they succeeded in destroying basic Iraqi social services, they destroyed the state (courts, military, civil services). However in their blind subservience to Israel they overlooked the fact that the disbanded professional soldiers and purged civil leaders and professionals would become part of an experienced armed resistance, that Iraq would become ungovernable, that US rule would crumble, that the US would become bogged down in a politically lost war, that its puppet regime would have neither legitimacy nor popular support. The Zionist did what they thought was best for Israel, even if it provoked greater opposition world-wide, including in the US, where a majority have turned against the occupation by May 2004. Only the Israeli transmission belt, AIPAC would cheer Bush and his continuation of the occupation and pledge allegiance to the Israeli war against Palestinians. When their self-serving prediction of an Iraqi welcoming committee turned into a valiant popular anti-colonial war, Feith and his underlings called for greater use of more forceful interrogation methods Rumsfeld and Feith encouraged Israeli type torture to humiliate the Arabs . Meanwhile Kagan s call to bomb the Arab street was tried and failed to intimidate the Iraqi resistance.

Hersh s exposé of Rumsfeld as the only top culprit turns up at a convenient moment: when US policy has failed and most knowledgeable officials are moving closer to identifying the role of the Pentagon Zionists. It was clever by half: Rumsfeld was universally despised in Congress, among the professional military and a host of others for his policies and arrogant public face. Even in exposing Rumsfeld however Hersh is careful to do so in a fashion that allows his Zionist colleagues to continue in office unscathed.

Hersh justifies some of Rumsfeld s acts of illegal terror by describing legalistic obstacles to eliminating terrorists. Hersh s support for Rumsfeld s resort to unaccountable commandos engaging in assassination, kidnapping and torture of suspects around the world is in effect a way to condone those tactics after Rumsfeld leaves office. If Rumsfeld resigns, torture will continue under colleagues Feith and Wolfowitz. Hersh drags in a fifth level functionary working under Feith, Stephan Cambone, who he tells us was deeply involved in the torture of prisoners more involved than his Zionist superiors? We might ask the peerless investigatory journalist: How is it that Hersh blames those above above (Rumsfeld) and those below (Cambone) but never focuses on Feith and Wolfowitz who designed and directed policy?

In setting up Cambone for the exposé, Hersh profiles Cambome in terms that fit with greater pertinence the Zionists: He advocated war with Iraq (following Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle and Abrams); he disdained the CIA who the Pentagon Zionists viewed as too cautious ; he attacked the CIA for not finding WMD. Since Cambone functioned under Wolfowitz and Feith he was simply repeating what his bosses wanted to hear and perhaps that s why they entrusted him with the relevant dirty tasks of extracting intelligence via torture.

Hersh tries to link Cambone with the extension of the torture practiced selectively by the Special Agency Program. SAP was already operative before Cambone took office and its operations were under the direction of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams. Hersh s dating of the torture in August 2003 with Cambone and Major General Miller (from Guantanamo) assignment is false. It started earlier under the SAP and with Israeli trained interrogators. Moreover the Pentagon headed by the same three (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith) ordered Miller s use of torture on suspects at Guantanamo who moved him to Iraq as a reward for exemplary work. Hersh does not explore Miller s links with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith before going to Iraq. He simply aborts the analysis looks at the middle and lower levels of power: Cambone, Miller, interrogators, and enlisted soldiers. Out of this framework Hersh comes up with a detailed piece of selective investigatory journalism. Hersh exposes some but covers up for those most actively involved in invoking the war and directing it in a way that served Israeli interests. The cost in US lives and the degradation of young US servicemen forced to assume the role of torturers is of little concern to the Pentagon Zionists. Even after all the exposés of torture, killings and rapes, major Zionist ideologues like Kristol, Krauthammer, Rubin, Perle, Kagan and Frum have launched attacks on Bush for backing off from the war.

The Pentagon s Zionists are under attack. In the face of the US debacle in Iraq, the anti-Zionist coalition found in the State Department, the Military, the CIA and elsewhere have launched a counter-offensive. Marine General Anthony Zinni, Senator Fritz Hollings and other prominent political, diplomatic and military leaders have openly identified the role of the Pentagon Zionists in launching and directing the war to favor Israel. The most recent and visible move was the marginalization of the pro-Israel Chalabi the protégé of Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams. The raid on his house and the carting off of his records, ostensibly to investigate financial irregularities is a symbolic setback. So is the US abstention in the Security Council on Israel s rape of Rafah much to the chagrin of the Israel First crowd at the AIPAC convention. In response all the major Jewish organizations and publications from the Forward, Anti-Defamation League, AJC and others have denounced the critics of the Pentagon Zionists.

Hersh attempts to head off the anti-Zionist headhunting coalition by focusing on the two Goyim Rumsfeld and Cambone has been to no avail. The knives are drawn. Because of Zionist power in and out of the government, the anti-Zionist coalition and their supporters use code words, the most common of which is neo-conservative , which everyone now knows means Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and other Zionists in and out of the government. AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and other Israel Firsters sensing the danger to their co-thinkers have turned to labeling critics of the neo-conservative militarists anti-Semites and arousing Congress members, the media and their propaganda machine into silencing the coalition into submission..

But the Coalition is gaining influence Bush is insisting on handing over symbolic power to Iraqi Shias in a subtle game of cooption promoted by the State Department. Already the Zionists led by Kagan and Kristol have all but called Bush a traitor and coward for retreating.

The photos of torture, which have discredited the war policy, threaten to isolate the Zionist zealots. Faced with the indignation of the whole civilized world at the war crimes, the progressive Zionist apologists, like Hersh, take to isolating blame on Cambone and Rumsfeld and minimizing the responsibility to a few soldiers in a cell block , as did Senator Lieberman while the AIPAC elite cheer Bush on with the war ignoring the muck and blood of torture.

Rumsfeld has shrewdly tied his future to his Zionist partners in the Pentagon and outside, counting on riding on their coat tails and reaping the support of the powerful Jewish lobby and their leaders in the Israeli state, who stand behind them. He has few other influential allies.

Conclusion

In the final analysis even if Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Rubin, Libby and the current crop of Zionist Pentagonistas are forced to resign it will only be a temporary setback. The Zionist political organizations remain intact, their influence over Congress remains overwhelming and they have pledges from both major presidential candidates that Israel s cause is America s cause (Bush and Kerry). The Zionist juggernaut grinds on, securing sanctions against Syria and calling for the bombing of Iran s supposed nuclear facilities. If you can t find a real threat to the US maybe the next crop of Zionists in power will cook up another consensual pretext . Holbrooke and Sandy Berger can tutor the US on multi-lateral wars of aggression.

Meantime among those who still deny Zionist power in US foreign policy, one only has to read the accounts of the AIPAC conference in Washington in May 2004. At a time when Israel was killing children in the streets of Rafah and destroying hundreds of homes under the horrified eyes of the entire civilized world, when an indignant UN Security Council finally rose to its feet and unanimously condemned Israel, US Congressional leaders and the two major Presidential candidates pledged unconditional support to Israel, evoking the bloodthirsty cheers of investment brokers, dentists, doctors, lawyers the cream of the cream of American Jewish society. The cause of Israel is the cause of America rings out from the mouth of every candidate as the Israelis bulldoze homes and snipers shoot small girls on their way to buy candy. Its almost as if Sharon wanted to demonstrate the power of the Zionists in the US, timing the vile destruction of Rafah to coincide with the AIPAC convention and the disgusting appearance of the spineless American politicians supporting ongoing crimes against humanity. Not one voice was raised in even meek protest. To those who claim that the Zionist are just one of a number of influential lobbies try explaining the unconditional support for Israel s genocide of the Palestinian people by the most powerful politicians in the US.

It is almost a perverse pleasure to watch Sharon smear the muck and gore of Rafah on the groveling faces of US politicians they deserve each other. But for those of us who support a democratic anti-imperialist foreign policy this is one of the most humiliating moments in US history. Something we won t read in the exposés of Hersh or the erudite Zionist treatises in defense of endless wars.

(1) Seymour Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far does responsibility go?, New Yorker, May 10, 2004; The Gray Zone: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, New Yorker, May 25, 2004, and Mixed Messages: Why the government didn t know what it knew, New Yorker, June 3, 2004

Global systemic crisis: June 2009 -

When the world steps out of a

sixty-year old referential framework

failure of the two major economic stimulus plans:

namely the Chinese and American plans

The financial surrealism which has been at the heart of stock market trends, financial indicators and political commentaries in the past two months, is in fact the swan song of the referential framework within which the world has lived since 1945.

Just as in January 2007, the 11th edition of the GEAB described that the turn of the year 2006/07 was wrapped in a « statistical fog » typical of an entry into recession and designed to raise doubts among passengers that the Titanic was really sinking (1), our team today believes that the end of Spring 2009is characterized by the world’s final stepping out of the referential framework used for sixty years by global economic, financial and political players in making their decisions, in particular of its “simplified” version massively used since the fall of the communist bloc in 1989 (when the referential framework became exclusively US-centric). In practical terms, this means that the indicators that everyone is accustomed to use for investment decisions, profitability, location, partnership, etc … have become obsolete and that it is now necessary to find new relevant indicators to avoid making disastrous decisions.

This process of obsolescence has increased dramatically over the past few months under pressure from two trends:

. first, the desperate attempts to rescue the global financial system, particularly the American and British systems, have de facto “broken navigational instruments” as a result of all the manipulation exerted by financial institutions themselves and by concerned governments and central banks. Among those panic-stricken and panic-striking indicators, stock markets are a perfect case as we shall see in further detail in this issue of the GEAB. Meanwhile, the two charts below brilliantly illustrate how these desperate efforts failed to prevent the world’s bank ranking from experiencing a major seism (it is mostly in 2007 that the end of the American-British domination in this ranking was triggered).

. secondly, astronomical amounts of liquidity injected in one year into the global financial system, particularly in the U.S. financial system, led all financial and political players to a total loss of touch with reality. Indeed, at this stage, they all seem to suffer from a syndrome of diver’s nitrogen narcosis – impairing those affected and leading them to dive deeper instead of surfacing. Financial nitrogen narcosis has the same effects than its aquatic counterpart.

Destroyed or perverted sensors, loss of orientation among political and financial leaders, these are the two key factors that accelerate the international system’s stepping out of the referential framework of the past few decades.

Top 20 financial institutions by market capitalization in 1999 (USD billions) – Source: Financial Times, 05/2009

Top 20 financial institutions by market capitalization in 2009 (USD billions) – Source: Financial Times, 05/2009

Bank of England official interest rate since its creation in 1694 – Source: Bank of England, 05/2009

Breaking News: Algerian daily confirms

Israel training camps for ‘Al Qaeda’

http://islamic-intelligence.blogspot.com/

——————————

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21328

ISTO, Super-secret clandestine organization

remains elusive as ever

UK swine flu toll is really 30,000, says leading scientist

True extent of the outbreak is claimed to be 300 times worse than government agency admits

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Thirty thousand people in Britain are likely to have been already infected by swine flu, one of the country’s leading authorities has told The Independent on Sunday. This would mean that the virus is 300 times more widespread than the Health Protection Agency (HPA) admits.

The startling estimate by top virologist Professor John Oxford comes as leading scientists are warning that the agency’s announcements on the spread of the disease are “meaningless” and hiding its true extent. And it tallies with official estimates made in the United States.

Yet the World Health Organisation (WHO) late last week changed its rules in order to avoid declaring that the flu has become a pandemic after pleas from governments, led by Britain.

Professor Oxford, of Queen Mary, University of London, believes that thousands of people have caught the virus and suffered only the most minor symptoms, or none at all, over the past weeks, as the new strain of H1N1 has spread nationwide – welcome testimony to the mildness of the epidemic to date.

He also thinks that some 100,000 people will have been infected in the US – the same number as is being privately estimated by experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – and another 30,000 in Japan, where swine flu was spreading rapidly last week.

This contrasts with the number of officially tested and confirmed cases recorded by the WHO, which now stands at 11,168 in 42 countries on every continent except Africa. So far just 86 deaths have been ascribed to the disease, all of them in North and Central America, including 75 in Mexico.

Britain has the most official cases in Europe, at 122, with another 169 under investigation. But the figure, put out by the HPA, is increasingly coming to be seen as unrealistic. And it is certainly rising extraordinarily slowly, merely increasing from 82 a week ago and 39 the week before that, while normally the numbers affected by an infectious disease multiply rapidly.

In Japan – which now has the most confirmed cases outside North America – the official numbers have shot up from four to 294 in a week.

Professor Andrew Pekosz, of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, in the US, told the Associated Press late last week: “It’s odd that we have not seen more cases in Britain,” adding that after the first ones “a relatively wide outbreak” would be expected.

“The numbers in Britain are not really telling the story,” added Professor Michael Osterholm, one of the world’s top flu experts and an adviser to the US government. He called the official figures “meaningless” and said that, while the authorities were not hiding cases, they were not hunting very hard for H1N1.

The agency says that the numbers are low because it has been successful in containing the spread of the disease by giving the antiviral drug Tamiflu to all those in contact with anyone found to have it.

But Professor Osterholm says that the disease spreads too fast for this to work, adding: “It’s like trying to maintain the integrity of a submarine with screen doors.”

Britain may be missing cases because it is testing people with flu-like symptoms only if they have been in Mexico and the US in the previous week or have been in contact with a “probable or confirmed case” of the disease.

The spread of H1N1 in Japan, after the Americas, would normally have been enough to justify the WHO declaring a pandemic, under criteria established in April this year. But Britain, Japan and other countries last week persuaded it not to do so, in order to prevent panic, border closures and disruption to trade.

However, the UN body continues to warn that the disease may come back in a much more deadly form in the autumn.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/uk-swine-flu-toll-is-really-30000-says-leading-scientist-1690130.html

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Swine Flu Is Spreading Wider Than Official Data Show

Swine flu is spreading more widely than official figures indicate, with outbreaks in Europe and Asia showing it’s gained a foothold in at least three regions.

One in 20 cases is being officially reported in the U.S., meaning more than 100,000 people have probably been infected nationwide with the new H1N1 flu strain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the U.K., the virus may be 300 times more widespread than health authorities have said, the Independent on Sunday reported yesterday.

Japan, which has reported the most cases in Asia, began reopening schools at the weekend after health officials said serious medical complications had not emerged in those infected. The virus is now spreading in the community in Australia, Jim Bishop, the nation’s chief medical officer, said yesterday.

“I think we will see the number rise,” Bishop told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio today after confirming the nation’s 17th case and saying test results are pending on 41 others. “This is going to be a marathon rather than a sprint.”

Forty-six countries have confirmed 12,515 cases, including 91 deaths, according to the World Health Organization’s latest tally. Almost four of every five cases were in Mexico and the U.S., where the pig-derived strain was discovered last month. Most of those infected experience an illness similar to that of seasonal flu. The main difference is that the new H1N1 strain is persisting outside the Northern Hemisphere winter.

Summer Disease?

“While we are seeing activities decline in some areas, we should expect to see more cases, more hospitalizations and perhaps more deaths over the weeks ahead and possibly into the summer,” Anne Schuchat, CDC’s interim deputy director for science and public health program, told reporters on a May 22 conference call.

The U.S. has officially reported 6,552 probable and confirmed cases, Schuchat said. “These are just the tip of the iceberg. We are estimating more than 100,000 people probably have this virus now in the U.S.”

There have been nine deaths and more than 300 known hospitalizations, she said. The fatalities exclude a woman in her 50s who died in New York over the weekend.

China reported cases today in Shanghai and the eastern province of Zhejiang, taking its tally of confirmed infections to 12. Taiwan confirmed the island’s first domestically transmitted case and reported two imported infections, giving it nine. South Korea confirmed 12 more cases, bringing its total to 22, while the Philippines confirmed a second infection today.

Caribbean Honeymoon

Russia’s health ministry confirmed the country’s second case, in a man who honeymooned in the Dominican Republic. He returned from the Caribbean May 18 and was hospitalized two days later in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow, Gennady Onishchenko, head of the ministry’s public health department, said on state television today. His wife wasn’t infected.

Japan has the most cases outside North America, with 345 as of today, according to the health ministry. Chile’s tally reached 74 after 19 cases were recorded yesterday, while Argentina’s total increased by three to five.

Eighteen European countries have confirmed 349 cases, a third of whom were probably infected in their home country, the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a report yesterday. The U.K. and Spain have the most reported cases, with 133 each. About 60 percent of cases in the U.K. are linked to “in-country transmission,” ECDC said.

Thousands of people have caught the virus in the U.K. and suffered mild symptoms, or none at all, over the past weeks, John Oxford, professor of virology at the University of London, told the Independent.

Already a Pandemic

Community spread of the new virus in a second region means WHO’s criteria for a pandemic has been met, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy of the University of Minneapolis.

Britain’s Health Secretary Alan Johnson told WHO Director- General Margaret Chan at the organization’s annual meeting last week that disease severity and other determinants besides geographic spread need to be considered before the pandemic alert is raised to the highest of WHO’s 6-level scale.

“The move to phase 6 means that emergency plans are instantly triggered around the globe, and in the U.K. this would mean increased vigilance and activation of the UK’s own ‘inter- pandemic’ phases,” the U.K.’s Department of Health said in a May 18 statement.

At phase 6, many pharmaceutical companies would switch from making seasonal flu shots to pandemic-specific vaccine, potentially creating shortages of an immunization to counter the normal winter flu season, the department said.

‘Risk of Harm’

WHO is reviewing its pandemic response plans, including the prerequisites for a pandemic, in the wake of the swine flu threat, said Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director- general of health security and environment. A move to phase 6 would “signify a really substantial increase in risk of harm to people,” Fukuda told reporters during a May 22 briefing.

Some of the guidelines were prepared in anticipation of a pandemic sparked by the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which killed 61 percent of 429 people confirmed to have contracted that virus, Chan told the World Health Assembly on May 18. “This has left our world better prepared, but also very scared,” she said.

Rather than redefine what constitutes a pandemic, health officials should help people understand the current threat may resemble the 1957 or 1968 pandemics, in which fewer than 4 million people died, rather than the 1918 Spanish flu, blamed for killing about 50 million, said Osterholm at the University of Minneapolis.

“The bigger problem is scientific integrity,” he said. “If they want to change the definition, then go ahead. But don’t say that we are not in phase 6 right now because we don’t want to go there.”

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=agHVPFaC5R.M&refer=home

Dr. Laibow – H5N1 DNA In Flu Vaccine – Mystérieuse maladie hémorragique découverte en Afrique du Sud

‘I feared I’d end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly,’ says biological warfare expert who criticised Britain and U.S.

America’s Germ Warfare Capabilities developed in secret in US Corporate Labs

Wright: U.S. ‘Capable’ of Inventing HIV for Genocide

New Instruments of Surveillance and Social Control: Wireless Technologies which Target the Neuronal Functioning of the Brain

A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation

The US-NATO Preemptive Nuclear Doctrine: Trigger a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust to Defend “The Western Way of Life”

Eldib

Where have all our birds gone?

People have been listening to skylarks singing in Britain for 10,000 years. But now they, and many other much-loved species, are vanishing fast.

David Adam finds out why

The B1042 that winds from the Bedfordshire town of Sandy towards the village of Potton is a difficult road to cross. Fast and twisty, there are several blind bends where pedestrians must take their lives into their hands. That is trickier than it sounds, for most pedestrians who cross the B1042 already have a pair of binoculars in their hands.

The road separates the grand headquarters of the RSPB, home to hundreds of birdwatchers, from some unkept fields, home to hundreds of watchable birds – hence the regular skips across the tarmac.

The skips, though, are now less regular for many RSPB staff, for the star attraction of the neighbouring fields has flown. Until a year ago, a clutch of woodlark nested there, one of Britain’s rarest birds with just 1,000 or so thought to remain. Then their home was ploughed up and replaced with a giant field of swaying hemp plants. The woodlark have not been seen since.

It is not just the professional birdwatchers of the RSPB who have seen their local landscape transformed. Across Britain, and with little fanfare, the face of the countryside has subtly changed in recent years. Farm fields that stood idle for years under EU schemes to prevent overproduction, such as the one across the road from the RSPB, have been conscripted back into active service. The uncultivated land, previously a haven for wildlife, has been ploughed, and farmers have planted crops such as wheat and barley, with occasional hemp for use in paper and textiles.

As a result, the amount of land available for birds such as the woodlark has halved in the last two years. Without efforts to stem this loss of habitat, conservation experts warn that the countryside of the future could look and sound very different.

Starved of insects in the spring and seeds through the winter, the metallic-sounding corn bunting and plump grey partridge, formerly one of the most common birds on UK shores, are on the brink. And the skylark, whose twittering has provided the soundtrack to millions of countryside walks and inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Ode to a Skylark, to praise its “profuse strains of unpremeditated art”, is struggling and could soon vanish from many areas. Numbers fell 53% from 1970 to 2006. “This is not just about birdwatchers. These birds are part of our common heritage,” says Gareth Morgan, head of agriculture policy at the RSPB.

Government figures show that populations of 19 bird species that rely on farmland have halved since serious counting started in the 1970s – a decline conservationists blame on intensive farming methods, with insecticide and herbicide sprayed on to monoculture fields shorn of vibrant hedges. The unmistakable yellowhammer, which likes to sing while perched as a dash of colour on hedges and bushes, has steadily disappeared with the hedges and bushes. And a startling 80% drop across England in 40 years has diluted the shifting Rorschach blots painted on the dusk sky by massed flocks of starling – though urban changes are blamed for this too.

Farmland birds may sound a niche problem, and you may think that the rest of the countryside is doing OK, but for most people, farmland is the British countryside. About 75% of Britain is farmed, and about half of that is arable fields. Take a train between two UK towns, particularly in eastern counties, and almost all of the countryside you see is farmland.

As Simon Gillings of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) puts it: “For most people, farmland is the countryside and farmland birds are the birds they see.” If birds are struggling, then it is a fair bet that other wildlife is too. “Birds are indicative of other things,” Gillings says. “If birds are declining then what does that say about the plants and insects they rely on? It’s all linked together.”

Despite the long-term decline, things had been looking better for many farmland birds until recently. To understand why, we must enter the shadowy domain of the EU and its infamous Common Agricultural Policy.

During the 1980s, farmers were paid a guaranteed price for crops such as wheat and barley, a policy that led to massive oversupply and the infamous grain mountains. Faced with the soaring costs of storing all the spare food, EU officials worked out it would be cheaper to pay the farmers not to produce it in the first place. Thus began the voodoo economics of the “set-aside” scheme, under which subsidies to arable farmers across Europe were paid only if they agreed to leave some of their land unfarmed – between 8% and 15% each year. Amid repeated hostile jibes at farmers being paid not to do anything, the requirement continued for two decades until 2007, when the EU dropped it after poor harvests and rising food prices. Food was needed, lots of it, and farmers across the UK exploited the rule change and pressed fields of set-aside land back into production. The change was sudden and dramatic. From 424,000 hectares left unfarmed in 2007, just 159,000 hectares remained a year later.

Yet, food is not the only thing that grows on farmland. For those two decades, something stirred in the set-aside. Spared regular drenchings in toxic chemicals and disturbance by machinery, weeds, grubs and bugs all thrived. Stubble from harvested cereal crops left to rot over the subsequent winter offered seeds. Set-aside land became, totally by accident, a giant bird table. The effects were not universal: some areas and different set-aside options assisted some species more than others; the small, graceful yellow wagtail appeared to gain the least because they sometimes nest in winter-grown cereal, which was a common casualty of set-aside. But, in general, the uncultivated land was a conservation godsend.

The 2007 EU decision to scrap set-aside threatens to undo much of the good work. Last winter, the BTO surveyed some 2,000 fields across the country and found that 72% offered no winter stubble for birds to feed on. In some areas, the figure was as high as 80%. When the same fields were checked in 2003, some 60% were found to offer seed-giving stubble. It is too early to know what impact the shift has had on birds and other wildlife, but it is unlikely to be positive. The BTO is trying to find out and is expected to publish the findings later this year.

The decline in cereal prices last year seems to have calmed the rush to crop previously unfarmed fields, and the amount of land left uncultivated in Britain is expected to rise slightly this year – but with the EU set-aside requirement removed, another price spike could see it ploughed up and cropped, with serious consequences for vulnerable wildlife.

The government is so concerned that in February, the environment secretary, Hilary Benn, announced plans to reintroduce set-aside requirements as a condition of farming subsidies. The department for the environment, Defra, is consulting on whether such a move should be compulsory. The consultation, which ends this month, has exposed traditional divisions – while conservation groups such as the RSPB are pushing for a mandatory 4-5% of farmland to be kept out of production, farmers are lobbying hard to be given the choice.

“The best people to understand conservation work on farmland are farmers. If you make farmers do things then they don’t really take it to heart,” says Guy Smith, who runs a 500-hectare farm in Essex. “I really think farmers can be trusted with conservation work. I can’t see farmers going back to planting wall-to-wall wheat. We’re not hedge grabbers, we’re hedge planters. The callouses on our hands come from setting rabbit guards around new hedges, not shovelling wheat.”

More than 60% of farmland in Britain is managed under environmental schemes to protect field margins, streams and ditches, he says.

The National Farmers’ Union wants the government to give farmers a few years to show they can provide conservation benefits, with compulsory set-aside regulations only tied to subsidy payments as a last resort.

Anyone in doubt that farmers can rise to the challenge should visit the farm of John Cousins in Hadleigh, near Ipswich. Cousins, also head of agricultural policy for the Wildlife Trusts, has 135 hectares and grows wheat and barley on two-thirds of it. But some 100 acres is not cropped. And those 40 hectares are currently the most profitable. “I go for all the [environmental] grants I can,” he explains as we drive around the scruffy edge of a giant field planted with barley. “You paid for that fence. Well, the taxpayer did. And that one.”

Cousins gets up to £240 each year from the public purse for every acre he dedicates to conservation. Growing wheat, he estimates, would yield just £130 profit per acre at today’s prices. As a result, his farm is a showcase of the environmental measures possible on farmland. New hedges divide fields, and strips of wild set-aside land run alongside. The chatter of birdsong fills the air. Skylarks flutter overhead, while deer and a weasel dart from the undergrowth. Cousins has joined up unfarmed areas to provide a wildlife corridor across his land, while giant plots of ploughed earth wait for nothing more than mustard, sunflower and millet that will be planted purely to die and offer seeds for birds over the next winter. “Farmers get public money and I think we should give something back,” he says. Those who are opposed to conservation conditions imposed by the government are under no obligation to accept the attached subsidy, he points out.

Other farmers question the wisdom of cordoning off fertile land for wildlife as the world faces what the government’s chief scientist, John Beddington, has called a coming “perfect storm” of problems, including food shortages. Smith, over in Essex, says: “If we just abandon great swaths of Britain and leave it to the birds, that is not an efficient or moral use of land.” Conservation measures, he says, must be done in a “measured manner that is species specific.” Rather than needing to keep 5% of land unfarmed, he suggests, 1% could offer the same benefit if it was selected and targeted properly.

Morgan at the RSPB says the food shortage argument is “threadbare”, although he accepts that the situation could worsen in future. He says: “The problem is far more complicated than saying some people don’t have enough to eat so we need to farm every square inch of the UK right now.” Food is being turned into biofuel, he says, while grain is fed wastefully to animals. “We’re just not that short of food.”

The RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts and others insist that we have more pressing problems on our plate. “People have been listening to skylarks singing in Britain since 10,000 years ago,” Morgan says. “And they should be able to do so in 50 years’ time. At what point do we say it is not acceptable for people to walk and not hear a bird that people have been writing about for hundreds of years?” As the poet Shelley added: “We look before and after, and pine for what is not”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/25/birds-wildlife-conservation

Israel to ignite all-out regional war?

The Israeli military holds its most extensive nationwide drill, signaling its intentions for a possible attack on Iran which they admit can ignite an all-out war in the region.

The nationwide exercise “Turning Point 3″ will begin on May 31 and will last five days, Ynetnews reported.

During the drill, Israeli forces and civilians will exercise a war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and will also practice counterinsurgency tactics against Israeli Arabs.

Last week, Israel’s Air Force held a three-day drill to exercise possible missile and air strikes by regional countries — a clear warning to regional foes such as Syria and Iran.

Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sunday’s cabinet meeting tried to placate Israel’s regional countries, saying “this is a routine drill, which was planned several months ago and is held every year in order to coordinate between civil and military systems.”

Tel Aviv accuses Tehran of nuclear weapons development – a charge rejected by both Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog, which has so far made over 14 snap inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities.

This is while Tel Aviv is widely regarded as the sixth-largest nuclear power in the world and the sole possessor of an atomic arsenal in the Middle East.

In the early 1970s, Israel had already developed missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to most countries in the region, including Iran and Russia.

Moreover, Israel reportedly houses at least 100 bunker-busting bombs, which come in the form of laser-guided mini-nukes with the ability of penetrating underground targets.

The right-leaning government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s enrichment facilities out of existence.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=95915&sectionid=351020202