Socializing losses: Trilateral takeover of Europe? …………
http://rt.com
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Published: 13 November, 2011, 19:07
Edited: 14 November, 2011, 02:17
Anti-austerity protesters hold a Greek flag reading ‘not for sale’ during a student parade in Athens, attended by the Greek minister of education (AFP Photo / LOUISA GOULIAMAKI)
The sovereign debt crisis tightening its grip on Europe has claimed the scalps of two prime ministers – those of Greece and Italy. Looking at the men poised to replace them, one cannot but ask – is this another turn of the screw for ordinary people?
Greece and Italy hold huge swathes of public debt they are unable to service unless they get massive European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund support, as a prelude to refinancing by international banks.
Greece has replaced its prime minister after he dared to say he would put a further round of harsh austerity measures to a referendum vote. The country’s new PM is Lucas Papademos, former vice president of the ECB and of Greece’s own Central Bank, and a member of David Rockefeller’s (JPMorgan Chase/Exxon) powerful Trilateral Commission.
As for Italy, instead of Silvio Berlusconi they got the former European Commissioner Mario Monti, who happens to be European chairman of the Trilateral Commission.
Whenever we hear of “sovereign debt crises” – whether in Mexico 1997, Brazil 1999, in my native Argentina in 2001/2, or today in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and (soon to come) the UK, France, or the US – what it really means is that governments cannot collect enough tax revenues from their people to pay interest and capital on debt that is mostly in the hands of private banking institutions.
Cutting through the Orwellian Newspeak* of the media, this means that the people of Greece, Italy, and Argentina must pay for the mistakes of bankers and corrupt governments, suffering higher taxes, unemployment, lower wages and pensions, and a deterioration in public healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
So, whenever there is a public debt crisis, “We the People” must pay for it.
Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina
However, when in September 2008a private debt crisis exploded due to the derivatives swindle which buried Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG and many other private institutions, the US and other governments came to the rescue of the bankers, providing bailouts for banks “too big to fail” (Newspeak for too powerful to fail). They saved the likes of CitiCorp, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs with…. taxpayers money (TARP), and by having the FED (hyper)inflate the US dollar (know in Newspeak as “Quantitative Easing I, II and III”), which means passing a huge chunk of the cost of those bailouts on to the Rest of the World using the US dollar as global currency.
So again, irrespective of whether debt collapses are public or private, it is always “We the People” who pay because, under the current system, all profits are privatized and all losses are socialized.
But let us go back to Messrs Monti and Papademos. They sit on the Trilateral Commission together with hundreds of corporate chairmen and CEOs such as Ana Botin (Bank Banesto/Santander, Spain), Peter Sutherland (Goldman Sachs/BP, UK), Michel David-Weill (Lazard Bank, France), Jurgen Fitschen (Deutsche Bank, Germany), Stephen Green (HSBC, UK), Nigel Higgins (Rothschild Group, UK), Lord Guthrie (N M Rothschild, UK), Klaus-Peter Müller (Commerzbank, Germany), Dieter Rampl (UniCredito, Italy), Otto Ruding (CitiCorp Europe), Lord Simon of Highbury (Morgan Stanley, UK), Emilio Ybarra (BBVA, Spain), Robert Kelly (Bank of NY Mellon) Lord Brittan (UBS, UK), Robert Zoellick (World Bank), plus Timothy Geithner, Henry Kissinger and many, many others…
In fact, the Trilateral Commission articulates with the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (New York), Chatham House (London) and many other think-tanks forming an intricate web of private global power-brokers bringing together key players in finance, industry, media, government, academia, intelligence and the military, who run today’s global system focusing on their interests, and clearly not on those of “We the People.”
No doubt Messrs Papademos and Monti will do everything necessary to ensure Italy and Greece do not default on their debts – but rather that their peoples endure all the hardship, undergo all the pain, and make all the sacrifices so that major bankers sitting on the Trilateral can all get their money back. Those who should never have made loans to Greece and Italy (and Argentina and Portugal…) the way they did.
Adrian Salbuchi for RT
* Newspeak – a fictional language in George Orwell’s novel “1984”.
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Ex-Bush Adviser: Germany Prints Old Currency in Case Euro Ditched ……….
By Michael Kling
“The decision has already been made by the government that leaving the euro is a possibility. I think they have already got the printing machines going and are bringing out the old deutsche marks they have left over from when the euro was introduced.”
Malmgren, co-founder of Principalis Asset Management, acknowledged that leaving the euro would be a radical move that would cause Germany’s export prices to jump, but said German industries are strong enough to handle price increases, Citywire reported.
Other countries have let currency unions before, Malmgren said, citing the report, “Checking Out: Exits from Currency Unions.”
Countries leaving currency unions are usually larger, wealthier, and more democratic and typically have higher inflation than their partners, according to the report, published by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Malmgren predicts that more eurozone countries will default, causing deep changes in society, Citywire reported. “It is important to begin preparing the public to deal with this situation.”
Malmgren isn’t the only one saying the euro is in trouble.
“The euro is nearing its ugly end,” said Stefan Homburg, head of Germany’s Institute for Public Finance, according to The Telegraph. “A collapse of monetary union now appears unavoidable.”
The Bundestag, Germany’s legislature, approved more bailout funds for Greece but the growing rescue fund is becoming increasingly unpopular in Germany. Many economists and investment professionals say the fund is not large enough to save Greece and other eurozone countries from defaulting.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s central bank reportedly is printing Ireland’s old currency in case that country leaves the eurozone. At least that’s the rumor circulating in Dublin, notes Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Bloxham stockbrokers in that city.
McQuaid, writing a guest commentary for The Guardian, says he’s not sure if the rumor is true. But he does hope Ireland has contingency plans in case the euro disintegrates.
© Moneynews. All rights reserved.
US : The True Cost Of The Wall Street Bailout
http://dailybail.com
Special report from Bloomberg — Adding It All Up
Allison Stewart from Need to Know with Bloomberg reporter Bob Ivry. None of this is new to Bail readers, though the details might surprise you. The Bloomberg total is $12.8 trillion.
We all know about TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which spent $700 billion in taxpayers’ money to bail out banks after the financial crisis. That money was scrutinized by Congress and the media.
But it turns out that that $700 billion is just a small part of a much larger pool of money that has gone into propping up our nation’s financial system. And most of that taxpayer money hasn’t had much public scrutiny at all.
According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy. The Bloomberg reporters have been following that money. Alison Stewart spoke with one, Bob Ivry, to talk about the true cost to the taxpayer of the Wall Street bailout.
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Like this:
Matt Taibbi: “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?” (Complete Interview)
found on : http://www.democracynow.org
Nobody goes to jail,” “writes Matt Taibbi in his the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine. “This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth.” Here is the complete interview from which we played an excerpt on our Feb. 22 show. Taibbi explains how the American people have been defrauded by Wall Street investors and how the financial crisis is connected to the situations in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Matt Taibbi. But before I do, let me read a sentence from a recent paper by Dean Baker, who concludes, “Most of the pension shortfall using the current methodology is attributable to the plunge in the stock market in the years 2007-2009. If pension funds had earned returns just equal to the interest rate on 30-year Treasury bonds in the three years since 2007, their assets would be more than $850 billion greater than they are today.”
And this—he quotes David Cay Johnston of tax.com: “The average Wisconsin pension is $24,500 a year, which is hardly lavish. But what is stunning is that 15% of the money contributed to the fund each year is going to Wall Street in fees,” which is why we now ask the question, “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”
Actually, that’s the title of reporter Matt Taibbi’s new article for Rolling Stone magazine. In the piece, Matt writes, quote, “Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth.”
Well, I interviewed Matt Taibbi on Sunday about his report, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!, Matt Taibbi.
MATT TAIBBI: Thanks for having me back.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re seeing these mass protests in Madison, Wisconsin, and there’s other protests that are happening. We see the working poor, the middle class, under tremendous stress, and yet they’re the ones who are being hit hardest, not Wall Street. Explain what has happened. Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, it’s an incredible story. I mean, just to back up and provide some context, I think, for this Wisconsin thing, and especially for the Ohio thing, given what their governor used to do for a living—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, he was an employee for Lehman Brothers, and he was—
AMY GOODMAN: This is Governor Kasich.
MATT TAIBBI: Governor Kasich, yeah, and he was intimately involved with selling—getting the state of Ohio’s pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers and buy mortgage-backed securities. And of course they lost all that money. And this, broadly, was really what the mortgage bubble and the financial crisis was all about. It was essentially a gigantic criminal fraud scheme where all the banks were taking mismarked mortgage-backed securities, very, very dangerous, toxic subprime loans, they were chopping them up and then packaging them as AAA-rated investments, and then selling them to state pension funds, to insurance companies, to Chinese banks and Dutch banks and Icelandic banks. And, of course, these things were blowing up, and all those funds were going broke. But what they’re doing now is they’re blaming the people who were collecting these pensions—they’re blaming the workers, they’re blaming the firemen, they’re blaming the policemen—whereas, in reality, they were actually the victims of this fraud scheme. And the only reason that people aren’t angrier about this, I think, is because they don’t really understand what happened. If these were car companies that had sold a trillion dollars’ worth of defective cars to the citizens of the United States, there would be riots right now. But these were mortgage-backed securities, it’s complicated, people don’t understand it, and they’re only now, I think, beginning to realize that they were defrauded.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the crime is. Who has profited? Who should be on trial?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, you know, again, the broad crime in all of this was just fraud. They were taking—these banks were taking, again, these subprime mortgages, and they would have these billion-dollar pools of mortgages where, in some cases, 70 or 80 percent of the loans were to people who had no identification or no jobs or who had put no money down into the mortgage. And then they were taking these loans and applying this phony baloney, hocus pocus math, these derivative instruments, and turning them into AAA-rated investments. And they were marketing, again, these securities to, say, state pension funds as AAA-rated investments, which means credit risk almost zero. So they took the stuff that they knew was very, very risky and very, very likely to default, and they were going to the state of Wisconsin, the state of Ohio, the state of New York, and saying, “Hey, this is almost as safe as—or in fact, it is as safe as United States Treasury bonds. You should buy this, and you’ll earn a little bit more than you’ll earn if you buy T-bills.” The reality was, they were just taking absolutely worthless stuff and sticking it with these people and then fleeing the scene. This is no different than drug dealers who take a bag of oregano and sell it to you as, you know, a pound of weed. That’s exactly the same scam.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about John Mack and Gary Aguirre.
MATT TAIBBI: This is an amazing story, just because it demonstrates how far above the law these people are. John Mack is one of the most powerful people on Wall Street. Right now he’s the chairman of the board at Morgan Stanley. He used to be their CEO. Way back in 2001, when he was sort of between jobs, he had left Morgan Stanley and was interviewing with Credit Suisse First Boston. He was involved in a case that was investigated by the SEC. A hedge fund called Pequot made a very suspicious investment into a company called Heller Capital, which was about to be acquired by General Electric. This hedge fund bought, you know, an enormous amount of Heller stock three weeks before this acquisition by GE of Heller. Credit Suisse First Boston was Heller’s investment banker. John Mack was interviewing for the job with Credit Suisse a few days before Pequot made its purchases, and he was in direct contact with the hedge fund guy who made those purchases. Under any normal circumstances, he would be targeted for investigation by the SEC.
AMY GOODMAN: And his name was?
MATT TAIBBI: The investigator’s name was Gary Aguirre. And Aguirre—
AMY GOODMAN: And the guy buying up?
MATT TAIBBI: Art Samberg was the name of this hedge fund manager. He was a big star on Wall Street. In fact, there are articles about, you know, how does Art Samberg manage his amazing returns year after year? Well, you know, this was sort of a clue as to how.
Anyway, this SEC investigator named Gary Aguirre wanted permission to go interview John Mack, and his superiors at the SEC told him—they basically told him that he couldn’t, and the reason they said was because Mack has, quote-unquote, “powerful political connections.” At the time, he was a Ranger, one of Bush’s fundraising Rangers. He would later become a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. So he played both sides of the fence. This, again, is very typical of Wall Street. And Aguirre, when he pressed the matter, he was fired by the SEC.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the high-level people involved, like Mary Jo White.
MATT TAIBBI: Mary Jo White was the former U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. She was basically Rudy Giuliani for a few years. This is the top cop on Wall Street, basically. And she, at the time, was representing Morgan Stanley for the defense firm Debevoise & Plimpton. Again, this is what all these investigators do. When you leave a high-ranking position from the SEC or the U.S. attorney’s office, they all jump to these lucrative partnerships at corporate defense firms, where they make, you know, $2, $3, $4 million a year. So the incentives to really prosecute these guys are all backwards. And they all leave, and they take these jobs. Mary Jo White had left the U.S. attorney’s office. She’s representing Debevoise & Plimpton. She intercedes on behalf of Mack. And one of the SEC officials that she was in contact with, Paul Berger, Aguirre’s superior, ended up working for Debevoise & Plimpton a year later. And this is a very typical situation.
AMY GOODMAN: And Aguirre is fired.
MATT TAIBBI: He’s fired. He was—
AMY GOODMAN: He’s told to investigate, and then he starts to seriously investigate, and he’s fired.
MATT TAIBBI: Right. They gave him—two days after he started work at the SEC, one of his superiors handed him Pequot, just generally. They said, you know, “Look at this company.” Within a year or so, he was onto the Samberg case, and he had targeted Mack as a clear suspect in the case. He had overwhelming evidence. I mean, there were emails, there was documentary evidence. They put Martha Stewart in jail for much, much less than they had on Mack.
AMY GOODMAN: What did they have on Mack?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, again, they had emails demonstrating that Mack had been in touch by telephone with Samberg. They had the fact that Samberg had a personal relationship with Mack. They knew that the company had never had any meetings about this Heller Capital. It was—Aguirre described it to me as though Samberg awoke one morning, and God Himself told him to start buying shares of Heller Capital. And they had the fact that Mack was clearly privy to the inside information. He had had this meeting with Credit Suisse. He would later say that he destroyed his notes of his meeting with Credit Suisse on the way home from Switzerland, after that meeting. But clearly, he was—under any normal circumstances, he would have been targeted, would have been interviewed, but he was not.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Pequot is bought up?
MATT TAIBBI: Right. Well, no, Heller was bought.
AMY GOODMAN: Heller was bought up.
MATT TAIBBI: By GE, of course.
AMY GOODMAN: By GE. And how much does Samberg make? How much does—
MATT TAIBBI: He made—Samberg made $18 million on that trade. Another important part of the story is that Mack—Samberg cut Mack into a different deal that Pequot was doing, and as a result of that deal, Mack made about $10 million. So, all the dots connect. You know, Mack comes back from Switzerland. Samberg starts buying Heller. GE acquires Heller. Samberg makes $18 million. Mack gets cut in for $10 million. This is the outlines of a classic insider trading case.
AMY GOODMAN: So you think Mack should be in jail.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, he should—absolutely he should have been on trial. I mean, you know, it’s not for me to say; I’m not a jury. But clearly, they have prosecuted on far less evidence before.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi, talk about Dick Fuld.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, Richard Fuld, whose nickname on Wall Street was “The Gorilla,” he was the head of Lehman Brothers. He was a much feared and ferocious character on Wall Street. And Fuld, again, he oversaw Lehman during this period when it was going through its death spiral, and there were a number of irregularities about Fuld that were extremely interesting.
I talked to a former Lehman Brothers lawyer named Oliver Budde, who was responsible for vetting some of Lehman’s public disclosures, and Budde discovered that Lehman had been hiding about $250 million worth of Fuld’s income from the SEC in its public disclosures. He, too, ended up having to leave his job because he was told that he couldn’t do his job. He protested the way that Lehman was doing its disclosures. He got kicked out. He went to the SEC in 2008, six months before its collapse. He gave them a huge packet of information about what Fuld was doing, and he was completely blown off by the SEC. He tried repeatedly over a period of six months to get them interested in the case. They said no.
When Fuld later testified before Congress, after the company’s collapse, he told Congress that he had only earned somewhere in the region of $350 million during his tenure at Lehman. Budde knew that the real number was more like $520 million. He told the committee members in Congress that Fuld had probably lied while he was testifying. And they weren’t interested in that, either. So here we have a situation where Roger Clemens is being investigated—you know, the state is trying to put Roger Clemens, baseball star, in jail for lying to Congress, but Dick Fuld apparently is not worth going after.
AMY GOODMAN: A man recently named the worst CEO of all time—
MATT TAIBBI: Right.
AMY GOODMAN:—by Portfolio magazine.
MATT TAIBBI: Absolutely. Again, Fuld presided over Lehman during this period where it was engaged in all sorts of irregularities. I mean, aside from this matter of hiding his own personal income, Lehman, during the last few years of its existence, was engaged in these very, very shady transactions called the “Repo 105″ transactions. This was a kind of Enron-esque accounting where they were essentially borrowing tens of billions of dollars at the end of every quarter and then booking all that money as revenue. So, if you were an investor in Lehman Brothers and you’re looking at their bottom line, you’re thinking, “Hey, they’re making a lot of money. They’re doing great.” In fact, those were all loans, and after the quarter was over they were repaying that money. And it was guys like Fuld who were cashing out while everybody else was staying in.
AMY GOODMAN: Oliver Budde, who was he?
MATT TAIBBI: He was Lehman’s lawyer. He was the guy who uncovered those irregularities about Fuld’s reporting income, and he was the guy who went to the SEC and was told that, you know, they weren’t interested in his story.
AMY GOODMAN: No regulation?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, no. I mean, clearly—you know, the interesting thing about the Fuld case is that Lehman had been taking advantage of a loophole in the SEC’s rules in the early part of the 2000s to misreport Fuld’s income. But they actually caught themselves. They noticed that this practice was very widespread, and they created a new rule specifically to target this kind of income hiding that Fuld was doing. But they created the rule, but they didn’t do anything about it. They had clear cases of this rule being misused, and they chose not to do anything about it. So, even when we do have regulation on Wall Street, the laws are really often meaningless, because you need someone who has the will to prosecute, the will to investigate, to make them real.
AMY GOODMAN: Has anyone gone to jail?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, Bernie Madoff. And clearly, he’s the only person in this whole tableau—
AMY GOODMAN: Always called the greatest swindle of all time.
MATT TAIBBI: Right. But Bernie Madoff, honestly, compared to all these other guys, he’s really small potatoes. He’s also not really representative of what went on on Wall Street during this period. He’s a garden variety Ponzi scheme artist. Of course, he did it on a much bigger scale than most Ponzi scheme artists, but this is a crime that could have happened in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s. It had nothing to do with this incredibly sophisticated, complex criminal fraud scheme involving, you know, the mortgage bubble and the sale of these phony baloney mortgage-backed securities. Madoff had nothing to do with that. He was just a garden variety criminal. And this is exactly the kind of case that the SEC and the Justice Department do prosecute: these outliers, these guys who are not part of the top echelon executives. And they make these cases, and they say, “Here’s evidence we’re doing our job.” The reality is very different.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk, Matt Taibbi, about what are the repercussions of what happened. What did the 2008 crash mean?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, it was—you know, this was the collapse of a giant bubble scheme. You know, when they did this, when they pumped the whole country full of these defective cars, which were these defective mortgages, it created a very, very dangerous situation for the entire country. They ended up essentially bankrupting or fatally wounding pension funds and insurance companies and banks all over the country. And so, now we’re all paying for those phony scams.
But the other amazing thing that they did is, you know, the banks, when they flooded the market with these phony securities, some of them were smart enough to realize that they were eventually going to blow, so they started betting against them. They went to companies like AIG, and they took out trillions of dollars of credit default swaps and pseudo-insurance policies on these mortgages. When they all blew up, you know, it blew up some of these companies, like AIG. And that’s what the bailout was really all about. The bailout wasn’t really to pay off real losses in these mortgages. It was really to pay off the bets on these mortgages. So, not only did they flood the market with a trillion dollars of defective merchandise, they got the United States taxpayer to pony up $5, $6, $7 trillion worth of bailout money to pay off their bets on all this stuff.
AMY GOODMAN: Which brings in the Obama administration. You talk about a lot of this happening under President Bush, but talk about what the Obama administration, what Geithner—talk about also Alan Greenspan, through the Bush years.
MATT TAIBBI: Right. Well, the most important thing to get from the Obama administration is that its economic policy represented absolute continuity with the policy of the previous administration. Timothy Geithner was the principal architect of Bush’s bailouts, and he was retained. Ben Bernanke, who was the head of the Fed under Bush, stayed on under Obama.
And they essentially continued the same bailout policy, which, again, was essentially to tell Wall Street that we’re going to make you whole again. You know, after they flooded the entire international economy with all these toxic debt instruments, their policy was to get Wall Street well again, and ostensibly they were supposed to reinvest in the economy and put people back to work. But instead, they just kept the money. And, I mean, they literally went from being completely insolvent to, you know, making $150 billion bonus pools every year, and that money is all public money. It’s pure bailout gift from the taxpayer.
AMY GOODMAN: Is Obama doing this because he’s got to raise a billion dollars in 2012 for the presidential race, and he’s going to turn to Wall Street for this?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, clearly. You know, look, Barack Obama’s number one private campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs. He took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate in history. He was heavily influenced by Wall Street guys. When he was elected, he immediately put Citigroup executives in charge of his economic transition team. I remember when I was covering his campaign how he promised never to bring a registered lobbyist into his cabinet. And one of the first things he did was put Mark Patterson, Goldman Sachs’s lobbyist, in the number two job at the Treasury. He’s got a JPMorgan Chase executive, who has $8 million in Chase stock, as the chief of staff right now. He’s been incredibly friendly to Wall Street. These guys have remained the architects of his economic policy.
AMY GOODMAN: And Jeffrey Immelt, head of GE?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, yeah. I mean, obviously he was a key player, as well. Again, its continuity with the previous administration is the key thing to focus on.
AMY GOODMAN: Alan Greenspan?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, Greenspan—I think what people don’t understand about the Fed is what an important role the Fed plays in this entire mess. Going back, you know, 20, 25 years, every time Wall Street gets in a lot of trouble, the Fed has been there to bail them out. They even had a term for it on Wall Street called the “Greenspan Put,” which essentially meant that every time the banks blew up a speculative bubble, they could go back to the Fed and borrow money at zero or one or two percent, and then start the game all over again.
After the crash in 2008, interest rates were slashed to basically nothing. The banks could go to the Fed and get money for free, and then they’re out lending it to us at five, six, seven—I mean, how much is your interest on your credit cards? It’s 15, 20 percent. It’s almost impossible not to make money in banking if your cost of capital is zero. That’s what banking is all about. And that’s what the Fed has done. It’s provided a massive subsidy system for the banks on Wall Street.
AMY GOODMAN: You say in your article that the justice system has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals, not just not prosecuting them, but protecting them.
MATT TAIBBI: Right. Well, one of the things that I found out when I was interviewing former SEC officials and whistleblowers, people who had been involved in some of these cases, is, you know, when you look at the revolving door situation with all these—the Mary Jo Whites and the Gary Lynches and the Linda Thompsons, these former high-ranking financial cops who leave government service and they go to work in these millionaire partnerships on Wall Street, it creates this collegial atmosphere where it’s just a few—a small group of lawyers who all know each other, and they’re in this constant merry-go-round, from government, back to private service, back to government again, and they’re really in this—it’s far too collegial.
There’s a scene in my story where the current head of the SEC enforcement, Robert Khuzami, is giving a speech to all these lawyers, and he’s saying, you know, “We have a new policy now where if you’re a defendant or if you’re a company that’s being investigated, you can come to the SEC, and we will get you answers as to whether or not the Department of Justice has a criminal interest in your case.” So, essentially, the SEC is now acting as a middleman for these companies, so they can go and find out whether they’re going to be criminally prosecuted. Then, once they get that information, they can make a decision about whether or not to settle financially with the SEC. And they pay a settlement. Nobody gets criminally prosecuted. No individuals ever get fined. They pay these fines, and they almost always have a little section in there that says that they do not admit wrongdoing. So, they don’t even have to say they’re sorry, essentially. These companies go and they pay their fines. No individuals have to suffer at all. And it’s all done in a very collegial way.
AMY GOODMAN: You suggest in your piece that Bernie Madoff went to jail because it was rich people who were the victims.
MATT TAIBBI: Absolutely. Every single former investigator or current investigator that I talked to said the same thing: Madoff went to jail because the wrong people suffered. You know, it was famous actors. It was, you know, the glitterati in New York. If these were teachers and firemen and all the usual suspects—you know, look at the—we have a million people in foreclosure in this country right now, and a lot of them are there because of predatory lending and because of this fraud scheme, but there are no criminal prosecutions. I think that’s the reality now, is that we don’t see anybody being criminally targeted unless their victims were powerful people themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Lynn Turner, the former chief accountant for the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission.
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, Lynn Turner was the guy that I talked to, the former chief accountant—the chief accountant’s job at the SEC is actually an investigatory position. What they do is they look at disclosure violations, which means, you know, when companies issue their SEC quarterly reports, they have to make sure that everything that they say in those reports are accurate. That’s the chief accountant’s job. And Turner told me that, you know, that was his job, and in his experience, he saw case after case in which they had good evidence against companies that were involved in very shady dealings, and these cases were either slowed down or not pursued at all.
He gave me an example, you know, the Rite Aid case, which of course turned into—there were many cases like Rite Aid, that, you know, they had this case years before the Enron case blew up. They maybe could have done something about Enron if they had proceeded fast enough.
AMY GOODMAN: And the Rite Aid case was?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, Rite Aid was a company that was hiding billions of dollars in losses. It’s similar to the Lehman Brothers situation. They were trying to make their bottom line look better for shareholders, so they created, you know, these little cookie jar companies to hide their losses in. This is very similar to what Enron was doing, very similar to what WorldCom was doing. They had plenty of evidence on this case, but the case went nowhere for seven, eight years. And this is the typical MO of the SEC. They just do not act fast enough.
AMY GOODMAN: You mention that before the corruption starts, the state is at a disadvantage because policing Wall Street requires serious intellectual firepower, and the banks seize a huge advantage from the start by hiring away the top talent.
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, you know, one lawyer I talked to put it to me this way. He said everybody knows that the top 80 percent of all the graduating classes of all the best law schools, they go to Wall Street. They go to these corporate defense firms where they get the real money-making jobs. The bottom 20 percent, he says, go to the SEC. That’s the way this works. And, you know, the way he described it, he says, “It’s just such a mismatch, it’s not even funny.” And even that 20 percent, of course, they get roped into the revolving door situation, so if any talent rises from that pool into positions of responsibility, they get lured away by the million-dollar partnerships.
So what your left is—you know, not to insult the people who work at the SEC, but clearly, the very best and brightest lawyers are working for these banks, where they continually come up with these very fiendish and almost brilliant defenses for the schemes that their companies are involved with. They always find a way to claim that what we did was legal, and they come up with these elaborate justifications. And some of these lawyers are really overwhelmed by these justifications, and they end up, you know, not having the gumption to prosecute or move forward with cases.
AMY GOODMAN: You think of the thousands of people who have been deported in the last years?
MATT TAIBBI: Three hundred and ninety-three thousand last year.
AMY GOODMAN: You think of the people who have gone to prison and what they’ve gone to prison for.
MATT TAIBBI: Right, right. You know, it’s incredible. I mean, there was a case in Ohio that somebody forwarded to me, where a woman, a single—a black single mother of two children, she lied about where she was living so that her two kids could get into a better school system. And the state of Ohio actually prosecuted her for fraud, and the judge in that case insisted—they sentenced her to, actually, I think it was five years in jail, but they insisted that she actually do 15 days. And the judge’s quote in that case was that if she didn’t do real jail time, that would demean the seriousness of the offense. And so, I mean, the case was ultimately commuted because of the public outcry, but this, to me, is symptomatic of what we’re dealing with here.
You have people in this country who—we have two-and-a-half million people in jail this country, you know, more than a million who are in jail for nonviolent crimes. And yet, we couldn’t find a single person on Wall Street to do even a day in jail for losing 40 percent of the world’s wealth in a criminal fraud scheme? And that tells you that we have—this goes beyond the cliché that rich people have better lawyers and they have an advantage. This is a step beyond that. This is a situation where the system is completely corrupted, and it’s true regulatory capture. The SEC and the Justice Department are essentially subsidiaries of Wall Street.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you mentioned Obama’s chief of staff, Bill Daley, newly appointed. What, $20 million he made last year, mainly from Chase.
MATT TAIBBI: Right, right. I mean, it’s—
AMY GOODMAN: What about the media coverage, when people are being appointed, when these deals are made, talking about just basic tenets of good journalism, following the money, talking about who’s profiting where and who’s surrounding those who are making these decisions?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, it’s funny. The general narrative with political journalism in this country—and I know, because I was one of these people for a long time. I covered presidential campaigns and presidential politics. A lot of the reporters who cover the stuff don’t know a whole lot about economics, and so they believe this sort of general notion that the guys on Wall Street are the experts; if you want to have somebody running your economy, you have to go to the experts; so it makes perfect sense that the President would want to surround himself with executives from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. And I think that their thinking doesn’t really get any more sophisticated than that. And so, a lot of these guys get a pass. Then people don’t really look at what these companies have been up to, what kind of influence they might have over the President’s decision making. And so, I think there isn’t very much coverage. There isn’t enough debate about what these appointments mean.
AMY GOODMAN: If you were president, what would you do right now?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, I would certainly get rid of all those guys, you know, from Wall Street. I think there needs to be a freeze on foreclosures. I mean, there’s all kinds of things that need to be done. But the most important thing is we have to, you know, get the right people into bodies like the SEC and the Justice Department. Everybody I talked to said the same thing. The existing laws we have, you know, they’re not perfect, but they’re probably good enough to do some real good. It’s just that we don’t have the right people in the jobs, and the will isn’t there to do these prosecutions. So, I think we’ve just got to get the right people in the right jobs.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi, his latest piece, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?” It’s in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Thanks so much.
MATT TAIBBI: Thank you, Amy.
“CIA spy” Davis was giving nuclear bomb material to Al-Qaeda, says report
found on : http://in.news.yahoo.com
London, Feb 20(ANI): Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with “nuclear fissile material” and “biological agents,” according to a report.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned “grave” as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.
The SVR warned in its report that the apprehension of 36-year-old Davis, who shot dead two Pakistani men in Lahore last month, had fuelled this crisis.
According to the report, the combat skills exhibited by Davis, along with documentation taken from him after his arrest, prove that he is a member of US’ TF373 black operations unit currently operating in the Afghan War Theatre and Pakistan’s tribal areas, the paper said.
While the US insists that Davis is one of their diplomats, and the two men he killed were robbers, Pakistan says that the duo were ISI agents sent to follow him after it was discovered that he had been making contact with al Qaeda, after his cell phone was tracked to the Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan, the paper said.
The most ominous point in this SVR report is “Pakistan’s ISI stating that top-secret CIA documents found in Davis’s possession point to his, and/or TF373, providing to al Qaeda terrorists “nuclear fissile material” and “biological agents”, which they claim are to be used against the United States itself in order to ignite an all-out war in order to re-establish the West’s hegemony over a Global economy that is warned is just months away from collapse,” the paper added. (ANI)
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Federal deficit on track for a record this fiscal year
http://www.washingtontimes.com
Government debt to exceed U.S. economy
President Obama‘s budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government’s overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.
Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.
And the budget projects the government will run a deficit of $1.645 trillion this year, topping 2009’s previous record by more than $230 billion. By contrast, 2007’s deficit was just $160 billion altogether.
Still, amid the other staggering numbers in the budget Mr. Obama sent to Congress on Monday, the debt stands out because Congress will need to vote to raise the debt limit later this year, and because the numbers are so large.
In one often-cited study, economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have argued that when a nation’s gross debt passes 90 percent it hinders overall economic growth. The government measures debt several ways. Debt held by the public includes the money borrowed from Social Security’s trust fund.
President Obama speaks Monday at Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology in Parkville, Md. At right is Jacob Lew, Office of Management and Budget Director. (Associated Press)Actual debt held by the public will reach 72 percent of GDP in 2011 and will climb as the Social Security trust fund’s finances continue to deteriorate.
Republicans argued Monday that the Obama administration‘s new budget fails to appreciate the depth of the country’s fiscal plight.
“I still don’t see a sense of urgency from the president about the massive federal debt,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican. “His budget calls for too much government borrowing — even though the debt is already at a level that makes it harder to create private-sector jobs.”
White House budget Director Jacob “Jack” Lew said the goal was to get to a point where the debt is at least stabilized by the middle of the decade.
“The government will no longer be adding to our debts, and as a share of the economy, we’re going to stabilize the deficit,” he told reporters. “We’ll, in short, be paying for what we spend every year. The goal, to put it simply, is for the deficit to be in the range of 3 percent of our economy by the middle of the decade.”
When Irish Eyes Are Crying
found on : http://dailybail.com
org. source : http://www.vanityfair.com
First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?
CRASH COURSE
University College Dublin professor Morgan Kelly, in Hogans pub, in Dublin. He predicted the Irish Crash in 2006.
When I flew to Dublin in early November, the Irish government was busy helping the Irish people come to terms with their loss. It had been two years since a handful of Irish politicians and bankers decided to guarantee all the debts of the country’s biggest banks, but the people were only now getting their minds around what that meant for them. The numbers were breathtaking. A single bank, Anglo Irish, which, two years before, the Irish government had claimed was merely suffering from a “liquidity problem,” faced losses of up to 34 billion euros. To get some sense of how “34 billion euros” sounds to Irish ears, an American thinking in dollars needs to multiply it by roughly one hundred: $3.4 trillion. And that was for a single bank. As the sum total of loans made by Anglo Irish, most of it to Irish property developers, was only 72 billion euros, the bank had lost nearly half of every dollar it invested.
The two other big Irish banks, Bank of Ireland and, especially, Allied Irish Banks (A.I.B.), remained Ireland’s dirty little secrets. Both older than Ireland itself (the Bank of Ireland was founded back in 1783; A.I.B. is made up of three banks founded in the 19th century), both were now also obviously bust. The Irish government owned big chunks of the two ancient banks but revealed less about them. As they had lent vast sums not only to Irish property developers but also to Irish homebuyers, their losses were also obviously vast—and similar in spirit to the losses at the upstart Anglo Irish.
Even in an era when capitalists went out of their way to destroy capitalism, the Irish bankers set some kind of record for destruction. Theo Phanos, a London hedge-fund manager with interests in Ireland, says that “Anglo Irish was probably the world’s worst bank. Even worse than the Icelandic banks.”
Ireland’s financial disaster shared some things with Iceland’s. It was created by the sort of men who ignore their wives’ suggestions that maybe they should stop and ask for directions, for instance. But while Icelandic males used foreign money to conquer foreign places—trophy companies in Britain, chunks of Scandinavia—the Irish male used foreign money to conquer Ireland. Left alone in a dark room with a pile of money, the Irish decided what they really wanted to do with it was to buy Ireland. From one another. An Irish economist named Morgan Kelly, whose estimates of Irish bank losses have been the most prescient, made a back-of-the-envelope calculation that puts the losses of all Irish banks at roughly 106 billion euros. (Think $10 trillion.) At the rate money currently flows into the Irish treasury, Irish bank losses alone would absorb every penny of Irish taxes for at least the next three years.
In recognition of the spectacular losses, the entire Irish economy has almost dutifully collapsed. When you fly into Dublin you are traveling, for the first time in 15 years, against the traffic. The Irish are once again leaving Ireland, along with hordes of migrant workers. In late 2006, the unemployment rate stood at a bit more than 4 percent; now it’s 14 percent and climbing toward rates not experienced since the mid-1980s. Just a few years ago, Ireland was able to borrow money more cheaply than Germany; now, if it can borrow at all, it will be charged interest rates nearly 6 percent higher than Germany, another echo of a distant past. The Irish budget deficit—which three years ago was a surplus—is now 32 percent of its G.D.P., the highest by far in the history of the Eurozone. One credit-analysis firm has judged Ireland the third-most-likely country to default. Not quite as risky for the global investor as Venezuela, but riskier than Iraq. Distinctly Third World, in any case.
Yet when I arrived, in early November 2010, Irish politics had a frozen-in-time quality to it. In Iceland, the business-friendly conservative party had been quickly tossed out of power, and the women booted the alpha males out of the banks and government. (Iceland’s new prime minister is a lesbian.) In Greece the business-friendly conservative party was also given the heave-ho, and the new government is attempting to create a sense of collective purpose, or at any rate persuade the citizens to quit cheating on their taxes. (The new Greek prime minister is not merely upstanding, but barely Greek.) Ireland was the first European country to watch its entire banking system fail, and yet its business-friendly conservative party, Fianna Fáil (pronounced “Feena Foil”), would remain in office into 2011. There’s been no Tea Party movement, no Glenn Beck, no serious protests of any kind. The most obvious change in the country’s politics has been the role played by foreigners. The Irish government and Irish banks are crawling with American investment bankers and Australian management consultants and faceless Euro-officials, referred to inside the Department of Finance simply as “the Germans.” Walk the streets at night and, through restaurant windows, you see important-looking men in suits, dining alone, studying important-looking papers. In some new and strange way Dublin is now an occupied city: Hanoi, circa 1950. “The problem with Ireland is that you’re not allowed to work with Irish people anymore,” I was told by an Irish property developer, who was finding it difficult to escape the hundreds of millions of euros in debt he owed.
Ireland’s regress is especially unsettling because of the questions it raises about Ireland’s former progress: even now no one is quite sure why the Irish suddenly did so well for themselves in the first place. Between 1845 and 1852, during the Great Potato Famine, the country experienced the greatest loss of population in world history—in a nation of eight million, a million and a half people left. Another million starved to death or died from the effects of hunger. Inside of a decade the nation went from being among the most densely populated in Europe to the least. The founding of the Irish state, in 1922, might have offered some economic hope—they could now have their own central bank, their own economic policies—but right up until the end of the 1980s the Irish failed to do what economists expected them to: catch up with their neighbors’ standard of living. As recently as the 1980s one million Irish people—a third of the population—lived below the poverty line.
What has occurred in Ireland since then is without precedent in economic history. By the start of the new millennium, the Irish poverty rate was under 6 percent and by 2006 Ireland was one of the richest countries in the world. How did that happen? A bright young Irishman who got himself hired by Bear Stearns in the late 1990s and went off to New York or London for five years returned feeling poor. For the better part of a decade there has been quicker money to be made in Irish real estate than in investment banking. How did that happen?
For the first time in history, people and money longed to get into Ireland rather than out of it. The most dramatic case in point are the Poles. The Polish government keeps no comprehensive statistics on the movement of its workforce, but its foreign ministry guesstimates that, since the country’s admission to the European Union, more than a million Poles have left Poland to work elsewhere. At the peak, in 2006, as many as a quarter-million of them were in Ireland. For the United States to achieve a proportionally distortive demographic effect, it would need to hand green cards to 17 million Mexicans.
How did any of this happen? There are many theories: the elimination of trade barriers, the decision to grant free public higher education, the persistent lowering of the corporate tax rate, beginning in the 1980s, which turned Ireland into a tax haven for foreign corporations. Maybe the most intriguing was offered by a pair of demographers at Harvard, David E. Bloom and David Canning, in a 2003 paper called “Contraception and the Celtic Tiger.” Bloom and Canning argued that a major cause of the Irish boom was a dramatic increase in the ratio of working-age to non-working-age Irish brought about by a crash in the Irish birthrate. This had been driven mainly by Ireland’s decision, in 1979, to legalize birth control. That is, a nation’s fidelity to the Vatican’s edicts was inversely proportional to its ability to climb out of poverty: out of the slow death of the Catholic Church arose an economic miracle.
The Harvard demographers admitted their theory explained only part of what had happened. At the bottom of the success of the Irish there remains, even now, some mystery. “It appeared like a miraculous beast materializing in a forest clearing,” writes the pre-eminent Irish historian R. F. Foster, “and economists are still not entirely sure why.” Not knowing why they were so suddenly so successful, the Irish can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing exactly how successful they were meant to be. They had gone from being abnormally poor to being abnormally rich, without pausing to experience normality. When, in the early 2000s, the financial markets began to offer virtually unlimited credit to all comers—when nations were let into the dark room with the pile of money and asked what they would like to do with it—the Irish were already in a peculiarly vulnerable state of mind. They’d spent the better part of a decade under something very like a magic spell.
A few months after the spell was broken, the short-term parking-lot attendants at Dublin Airport noticed that their daily take had fallen. The lot appeared full; they couldn’t understand it. Then they noticed the cars never changed. They phoned the Dublin police, who in turn traced the cars to Polish construction workers, who had bought them with money borrowed from Irish banks. The migrant workers had ditched the cars and gone home. Rumor has it that a few months later the Bank of Ireland sent three collectors to Poland to see what they could get back, but they had no luck. The Poles were untraceable: but for their cars in the short-term parking lot, they might never have existed.
True Love’s First Kiss
Morgan Kelly is a professor of economics at University College Dublin, but he did not, until recently, view it as his business to think much about the economy under his nose. He had written a handful of highly regarded academic papers on topics (such as “The Economic Impact of the Little Ice Age”) considered abstruse even by academic economists. “I only stumbled on this catastrophe by accident,” he says. “I had never been interested in the Irish economy. The Irish economy is tiny and boring.” Kelly saw house prices rising madly and heard young men in Irish finance to whom he had recently taught economics try to explain why the boom didn’t trouble them. And they troubled him. “Around the middle of 2006 all these former students of ours working for the banks started to appear on TV!” he says. “They were now all bank economists, and they were nice guys and all that. And they were all saying the same thing: ‘We’re going to have a soft landing.’ ”
The statement struck him as absurd: real-estate bubbles never end with soft landings. A bubble is inflated by nothing firmer than expectations. The moment people cease to believe that house prices will rise forever, they will notice what a terrible long-term investment real estate has become and flee the market, and the market will crash. It was in the nature of real-estate booms to end with crashes—just as it was perhaps in Morgan Kelly’s nature to assume that, if his former students were cast on Irish TV as financial experts, something was amiss. “I just started Googling things,” he says.
Googling things, Kelly learned that more than a fifth of the Irish workforce was employed building houses. The Irish construction industry had swollen to become nearly a quarter of the country’s G.D.P.—compared with less than 10 percent in a normal economy—and Ireland was building half as many new houses a year as the United Kingdom, which had almost 15 times as many people to house. He learned that since 1994 the average price for a Dublin home had risen more than 500 percent. In parts of the city, rents had fallen to less than 1 percent of the purchase price—that is, you could rent a million-dollar home for less than $833 a month. The investment returns on Irish land were ridiculously low: it made no sense for capital to flow into Ireland to develop more of it. Irish home prices implied an economic growth rate that would leave Ireland, in 25 years, three times as rich as the United States. (“A price/earning ratio above Google’s,” as Kelly put it.) Where would this growth come from? Since 2000, Irish exports had stalled, and the economy had been consumed with building houses and offices and hotels. “Competitiveness didn’t matter,” says Kelly. “From now on we were going to get rich building houses for each other.”
The endless flow of cheap foreign money had teased a new trait out of a nation. “We are sort of a hard, pessimistic people,” says Kelly. “We don’t look on the bright side.” Yet, since the year 2000, a lot of people had behaved as if each day would be sunnier than the last. The Irish had discovered optimism.
Their real-estate boom had the flavor of a family lie: it was sustainable so long as it went unquestioned, and it went unquestioned so long as it appeared sustainable. After all, once the value of Irish real estate came untethered from rents there was no value for it that couldn’t be justified. The 35 million euros Irish entrepreneur Denis O’Brien paid for an impressive manor house on Dublin’s Shrewsbury Road sounded like a lot until a trust controlled by the real-estate developer Sean Dunne’s wife reportedly paid 58 million euros for a 4,000-square-foot fixer-upper just down the street. But the minute you compared the rise in prices to real-estate booms elsewhere and at other times, you re-anchored the conversation; you biffed the narrative. The comparisons that sprung to Morgan Kelly’s mind were with the housing bubbles in the Netherlands in the 1970s and Finland in the 1980s, but it almost didn’t matter which examples he picked: the mere idea that Ireland was not sui generis was the panic-making thought. “There is an iron law of house prices,” he wrote. “The more house prices rise relative to income and rents, the more they subsequently fall.”
The problem for Kelly, once he had these thoughts, was what to do with them. “This isn’t my day job,” he says. “I was working on medieval-population theory.”
By the time I got to him, Kelly had angered and alienated the entire Irish business and political establishments, but he himself is neither angry nor alienated, nor even especially public. He’s not the pundit type. He works in an office built when Irish higher education was conducted on linoleum floors, beneath fluorescent lights, surrounded by metal bookshelves, and generally felt more like a manufacturing enterprise than a prep school for real estate and finance—and he likes it. He’s puckish, unrehearsed, and apparently—though in Ireland one wants to be careful about using this word—sane. Though not exactly self-effacing, he is clearly more comfortable talking and thinking about subjects other than himself. He spent years in graduate school, collecting a doctorate from Yale, and yet somehow retained an almost child-like curiosity. “I was in this position—sort of being a passenger on this ship,” he says. “And you see a big iceberg. And so you go and ask the captain: Is that an iceberg?”
His warning to his ship’s captain took the form of his first-ever newspaper article. Its bottom line: “It is not implausible that [Irish real-estate] prices could fall—relative to income—by 40 to 50 per cent.” (They did.) He sent his piece to the small-circulation Irish Times. “It was a whim,” he says. “I’m not even sure that I believed what I was saying at the time. My position has always been ‘You can’t predict the future.’ ” As it happened, Kelly had predicted the future with uncanny accuracy, but to believe what he was saying you had to accept that Ireland was not some weird exception in human financial history. “It had no impact,” Kelly says of his piece. “The response was general amusement. It was What will these crazy eggheads come up with next? sort of stuff.”
What the crazy egghead came up with next was the obvious link between Irish real-estate prices and Irish banks. After all, the vast majority of the construction was being funded by Irish banks. If the real-estate market collapsed, they would be on the hook for the losses. “I eventually figured out what was going on,” says Kelly. “The average value and number of new mortgages peaked in summer 2006. But lending standards were clearly falling after this.” The banks continued to make worse loans, but people borrowing the money to buy houses were growing wary. “What was happening,” says Kelly, “is that a lot of people were getting cold feet.” The consequences for Irish banks—and the economy—of the inevitable shift in market sentiment would be catastrophic. The banks’ losses would lead them to slash their lending to actually useful businesses. Irish citizens in hock to their banks would cease to spend. And, perhaps worst of all, new construction, on which the entire economy was now premised, would cease.
Kelly wrote his second newspaper article, more or less predicting the collapse of the Irish banks. He pointed out that in the last decade they and the economy had fundamentally changed. In 1997 the Irish banks were funded entirely by Irish deposits. By 2005 they were getting most of their money from abroad. The small German savers who ultimately supplied the Irish banks with deposits to re-lend in Ireland could take their money back with the click of a computer mouse. Since 2000, lending to construction and real estate had risen from 8 percent of Irish bank lending (the European norm) to 28 percent. One hundred billion euros—or basically the sum total of all Irish public bank deposits—had been handed over to Irish property developers and speculators. By 2007, Irish banks were lending 40 percent more to property developers than they had to the entire Irish population seven years earlier. “You probably think that the fact that Irish banks have given speculators €100 billion to gamble with, safe in the knowledge that taxpayers will cover most losses, is a cause of concern to the Irish Central Bank,” Kelly wrote, “but you would be quite wrong.”
This time Kelly sent his piece to a newspaper with a far bigger circulation, the Irish Independent. The Independent’s editor wrote back to say he found the article offensive and wouldn’t publish it. Kelly next turned to The Sunday Business Post, but the editor there just sat on the piece. The journalists were following the bankers’ lead and conflating a positive outlook on real-estate prices with a love of country and a commitment to Team Ireland. (“They’d all use this same phrase, ‘You’re either for us or against us,’ ” says a prominent bank analyst in Dublin.) Kelly finally went back to The Irish Times, which ran his article in September 2007.
A brief and, to Kelly’s way of thinking, pointless controversy ensued. The public-relations guy at University College Dublin called the head of the department of economics and asked him to find someone to write a learned attack on Kelly’s piece. (The department head refused.) A senior executive at Anglo Irish Bank, Matt Moran, called to holler at Kelly. “He went on about how ‘the real-estate developers who are borrowing from us are so incredibly rich they are only borrowing from us as a favor.’ I wanted to argue, but we ended up having lunch. This is Ireland, after all.” Kelly also received a flurry of worried-sounding messages from financial people in London, but of these he was dismissive: “I get the impression there’s this pool of analysts in the financial markets who spend all day sending scary e-mails to each other.” He never found out how much influence his little newspaper piece exerted on the minds of people who mattered.
It wasn’t until almost exactly one year later, on September 29, 2008, that Morgan Kelly became the startled object of popular interest. The stocks of the three main Irish banks, Anglo Irish, A.I.B., and Bank of Ireland, had fallen by between a fifth and a half in a single trading session, and a run on Irish bank deposits had started. The Irish government was about to guarantee all the obligations of the six biggest Irish banks. The most plausible explanation for all of this was Morgan Kelly’s narrative: the Irish economy had become a giant Ponzi scheme and the country was effectively bankrupt. But it was so starkly at odds with the story peddled by Irish government officials and senior Irish bankers—that the banks merely had a “liquidity” problem and that Anglo Irish was “fundamentally sound”—that the two could not be reconciled. The government had a report thrown together by Merrill Lynch, which declared that “all of the Irish banks are profitable and well capitalised.” The difference between this official line and Kelly’s was too vast to be split. You believed either one or the other, and until September 2008, who was going to believe this guy holed up in his office wasting his life writing about the impact of the Little Ice Age on the English population? “I went on TV,” says Kelly. “I’ll never do it again.”
Kelly’s colleagues in the University College economics department watched his transformation from serious academic to amusing crackpot to disturbingly prescient guru with interest. One was Colm McCarthy, who, in the Irish recession of the late 1980s, had played a high-profile role in slashing government spending, and so had experienced the intersection of finance and public opinion. In McCarthy’s view, the dominant narrative inside the head of the average Irish citizen—and his receptiveness to the story Kelly was telling—changed at roughly 10 o’clock in the evening on October 2, 2008. On that night, Ireland’s financial regulator, a lifelong Central Bank bureaucrat in his 60s named Patrick Neary, came live on national television to be interviewed. The interviewer sounded as if he had just finished reading the collected works of Morgan Kelly. Neary, for his part, looked as if he had been dragged from a hole into which he badly wanted to return. He wore an insecure little mustache, stammered rote answers to questions he had not been asked, and ignored the ones he had been asked.
A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will. Two weeks earlier the collapse of Lehman Brothers had cast doubt on banks everywhere. Ireland’s banks had not been managed to withstand doubt; they had been managed to exploit blind faith. Now the Irish people finally caught a glimpse of the guy meant to be safeguarding them: the crazy uncle had been sprung from the family cellar. Here he was, on their televisions, insisting that the Irish banks were “resilient” and “more than adequately capitalized” … when everyone in Ireland could see, in the vacant skyscrapers and empty housing developments around them, evidence of bank loans that were not merely bad but insane. “What happened was that everyone in Ireland had the idea that somewhere in Ireland there was a little wise old man who was in charge of the money, and this was the first time they’d ever seen this little man,” says McCarthy. “And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That’s when everyone panicked.”
The Drinks Cabinet
On the morning in early November when the Irish government planned to unveil a brutal new budget, I take my seat in the visitors’ gallery of the Irish Parliament. Beside me sits an aide to Joan Burton, who, as the Labour Party’s financial spokesperson, was at the time a fair bet to become the next minister of finance, the unnatural heir to an unholy mess. Down on the floor the seats are mostly empty, but a handful of politicians, Burton included, discuss what they have been discussing without intermission for the past two years: the nation’s financial crisis.
The first thing you notice when you watch the Irish Parliament at work is that the politicians say everything twice, once in English and once in Gaelic. As there is no one in Ireland who does not speak English and a vast majority who do not speak Gaelic, this comes across as a forced gesture that wastes a great deal of time. I ask several Irish politicians if they speak Gaelic, and all offer the same uneasy look and hedgy reply: “Enough to get by.” The politicians in Ireland speak Gaelic the way the Real Housewives of Orange County speak French. To ask “Why bother to speak it at all?” is of course to miss the point. Everywhere you turn you see both emulation of the English and a desire, sometimes desperate, for distinction. The Irish insistence on their Irishness—their conceit that they’re more devoted to their homeland than the typical citizen of the world is—has an element of bluster about it, from top to bottom. At the top are the many very rich Irish people who emit noisy patriotic sounds but arrange officially to live elsewhere so they don’t have to pay tax in Ireland; at the bottom, the waves of emigration that define Irish history. The Irish people and their country are like lovers whose passion is heightened by their suspicion that they will probably wind up leaving each other. Their loud patriotism is a cargo ship for their doubt.
On this day, in addition to awaiting word on the budget, the Dáil (pronounced “Doyle”), as the Irish call their House of Commons, has before it a vote on whether to hold elections to fill its four empty seats. The ruling party, Fianna Fáil, holds a slim majority of two seats and, because they are universally believed to have created a financial catastrophe, an approval rating of 15 percent. If the elections were held today, they’d be tossed from power—in itself a radical idea, as they have more or less ruled Ireland since its founding as an independent state. Yet they have successfully resisted the call to fill the empty seats.
A bell rings for a vote, and Irish politicians stream in. A few minutes before the vote, the doors to their chamber will be closed and guarded. A politician who is late is a politician who cannot vote. A glass barrier separates the visitors’ gallery and the floor: I ask my tour guide about it. “It’s not to stop people from throwing things at their government,” she says, then goes on to explain. Some years ago an Irish politician came late, after the doors had been locked. He ran up to the visitors’ gallery, jumped down from it into the press gallery, 10 feet below, and from there rappelled down the wall to the floor. They allowed the vote, but put up the glass barrier. They disapproved of the loophole, but rewarded the guy with the wit to exploit it. This, she claims, is very Irish.
The first to take his seat is Bertie Ahern, the prime minister from June 1997 until May 2008 and Political Perp No. 1. Ahern is known both for a native shrewdness and for saying lots of spectacularly dumb-sounding things that are fun to quote. Tony Blair had credited him with a kind of genius in how he brokered the Northern Ireland peace negotiations; on the other hand, seeking to explain the financial crisis, he actually said, “Lehman’s was a world investment bank. They had testicles everywhere.” Ahern spent his last days in office denying he’d accepted bribes from property developers, at least in part because so much of what he did in office seemed justified only if he were being paid by property developers to do it. But Bertie Ahern too obviously believed in the miracle of Irish real estate. After Morgan Kelly published his article predicting the collapse of the Irish banks, for instance, Ahern famously responded to a question about it on national radio by saying, “Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don’t know how people who engage in that don’t commit suicide.”
Now Ahern is just another Irish backbencher, with a hangdog slouch and a face mottled by broken capillaries. To fill the empty hours, he’s taken a job writing a sports column for the Rupert Murdoch tabloid News of the World, which might just be the least respectable job in global journalism. Ahern’s star, such as it was, has fallen.
When the Irish land boom flipped from miracle to catastrophe, a lot of important people’s status, along with perhaps their sense of themselves, flipped with it. An Irish stockbroker told me that many former bankers, some of whom he counts as clients, “actually physically look different.” He’d just seen the former C.E.O. of A.I.B., Eugene Sheehy, in a restaurant, being heckled by other diners. Sheehy once had been a smooth and self-possessed character, whose authority was beyond question. “If you saw the guy now,” says my stockbroker friend, “you’d buy him a cup o’ tea.”
The Irish real-estate bubble was different from the American version in many ways: it wasn’t disguised, for a start; it didn’t require a lot of complicated financial engineering beyond the understanding of mere mortals; it also wasn’t as cynical. There aren’t a lot of Irish financiers or real-estate people who have emerged with a future. In America the banks went down, but the big shots in them still got rich; in Ireland the big shots went down with the banks. Sean Fitzpatrick, a working-class kid turned banker, who built Anglo Irish Bank more or less from scratch, is widely viewed as the chief architect of Ireland’s misfortune: today he is not merely bankrupt but unable to show his face in public. Mention his name and people with no interest in banking will tell you with disgust how he disguised millions of euros in loans made to himself by his own bank. What they don’t mention is what he did with the money: invested it in Anglo Irish bonds! When the bank failed Fitzpatrick was listed among its creditors, having (in April 2008!) purchased five million euros of Anglo Irish subordinated floating-rate notes.
The top executives of the three big banks all operated in a similar spirit: they bought shares in their own companies right up to the moment of collapse, and continued to pay dividends, as if they had capital to burn. Virtually all of the big Irish property developers who behaved recklessly signed personal guarantees for their loans. It’s widely assumed that they must be hiding big piles of money somewhere, but the evidence thus far suggests that they are not. The Irish Property Council has counted at least 29 suicides by property developers and construction workers since the crash—in a country where suicide often goes unreported and undercounted. “I said to all the guys, ‘Always take money off the table.’ Not many of them took money off the table,” says Dermot Desmond, an Irish billionaire, who made his fortune from software in the early 1990s, and so counts here as old money.
The Irish nouveau riche may have created a Ponzi scheme, but it was a Ponzi scheme in which they themselves believed. So too for that matter did some large number of ordinary Irish citizens, who bought houses for fantastic sums. Ireland’s 87 percent rate of home-ownership is among the highest in the world. There’s no such thing as a non-recourse home mortgage in Ireland. The guy who pays too much for his house is not allowed to simply hand the keys to the bank and walk away. He’s on the hook, personally, for whatever he borrowed. Across Ireland, people are unable to extract themselves from their houses or their bank loans. Irish people will tell you that, because of their sad history of dispossession, owning a home is not just a way to avoid paying rent but a mark of freedom. In their rush to freedom, the Irish built their own prisons. And their leaders helped them to do it.
Just before the closing bell, the two men who sold the Irish people on the notion that they, the people, were responsible not merely for their own disastrous financial decisions but also for the ones made by their banks arrive in the chamber: Prime Minister Brian Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan. Along with the leader of the opposition, and the second in command of their own party, both are offspring of politicians who died in office: Irish politics is a family affair. Cowen happens also to have been the minister of finance from 2004 until mid-2008, when most of the bad stuff happened. He is not an obvious Leader of Men. His movements are sullen and lumbering, his face numbed by corpulence, his natural resting expression a look of confusion. One morning a few weeks before, he went on national radio sounding, to well-trained Irish ears, drunk. To my less trained ones he sounded merely groggy, but the public is in no mood to cut him a break. (Four different Irish people told me, on great authority, that Cowen had faxed Ireland’s 440-billion-euro bank guarantee into the European Central Bank from a pub.) And the truth is, if you were to design a human being to maximize the likelihood that people would assume he drank too much, you’d have a hard time doing better than the Irish prime minister. Lenihan, who follows on Cowen’s bovine heels, comes across, by comparison, as a decathlete in peak condition.
On this day, incredibly yet predictably, the Parliament decides not to hold a vote to fill three of the four empty seats. Then they adjourn, and I spend an hour with Joan Burton. Of the major parties in Ireland, Labour offers the closest thing to a dissenting opinion and a critique of Irish capitalism. As one of only 18 members of the Dáil who voted against guaranteeing the banks’ debts, Burton retains rare credibility. And in an hour of chatting about this and that, she strikes me as straight, bright, and basically good news. But her role in the Irish drama is as clear as Morgan Kelly’s: she’s the shrill mother no one listened to. She speaks in exclamation points with a whiny voice that gets on the nerves of every Irishman—to the point where her voice is parodied on national radio. When I ask her what she would do differently from what the Irish government is doing, even she is stumped. Like every other Irish politician, she is now at the mercy of forces beyond her control. The Irish bank debt is now Irish government debt, and any suggestion of default will only raise the cost of borrowing the foreign money they now can’t live without. “Do you know that Irish people are now experts on bonds?” says Burton. “Yes, they now say 100 basis points rather than 1 percent! They have developed a new vocabulary!”
As the scope of the Irish losses has grown clearer, private investors have been less and less willing to leave even overnight deposits in Irish banks and are completely uninterested in buying longer-term bonds. The European Central Bank has quietly filled the void: one of the most closely watched numbers in Europe has been the amount the E.C.B. has loaned to the Irish banks. In late 2007, when the markets were still suspending disbelief, the banks borrowed 6.5 billion euros. By December of 2008 the number had jumped to 45 billion. As Burton spoke to me, the number was still rising from a new high of 86 billion. That is, the Irish banks have borrowed 86 billion euros from the European Central Bank to repay private creditors. In September 2010 the last big chunk of money the Irish banks owed the bondholders, 26 billion euros, came due. Once the bondholders were paid off in full, a window of opportunity for the Irish government closed. A default of the banks now would be a default not to private investors but a bill presented directly to European governments. This, by the way, is why there are so many important-looking foreigners in Dublin, dining alone at night. They’re here to make sure someone gets his money back.
One measure of how completely the Irish can’t imagine offending their foreign financial rulers is how quickly Burton declines to contemplate such a default. She bears no responsibility for the banks’ private debts, and yet, when we creep up on the possibility of simply walking away from them, she veers off. Actually, she ups and leaves. “Oh, I have to go,” she says. “I have to meet the finance minister with the bad news.” Brian Lenihan has called a private meeting with the opposition, so that its leaders will be the first to hear of the Draconian new Irish budget. This meeting is held not inside the Parliament, where the media can be kept at arm’s length, but in a nearby building, where the media are allowed to congregate. “We tried to have it in here, but he moved it outside,” says Burton. “He’s taken to bringing us in to tell us the bad news first so that when we walk out we’re the ones announcing it to the media.” She smiles. “He’s tricky that way.”
Ireland’s Choice
Brian Lenihan is the last remaining Irish politician anywhere near power whose mere appearance does not cause people on the streets of Dublin to explode with either scorn or laughter. He came to the job just months before the crisis and so escapes blame for its origins. He’s a barrister, not a financial or real-estate person, with a proven ability to earn a good living without being bribed by property developers. He comes from a family of political people who are thought to have served honorably, or at any rate not used politics to enrich themselves. And in December 2009 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Anyone who has been anywhere near an Irish Catholic family knows the member who has had the most recent run of bad luck enjoys exalted status—the right to do pretty much whatever he wants, while everyone else squirms in silence. Since news of Lenihan’s illness broke—just days after he’d learned of it himself, rushing him into telling his children—he has minimized his suffering. Underlying the public-opinion polls that show the Irish feel a lot better about the minister of finance than they do about other politicians in his party is a common, unspoken understanding of his bravery.
Brian Lenihan is also, as Joan Burton points out, tricky. It’s racing up on eight in the evening when I meet him in a Department of Finance conference room. He has spent most of his day defending the harshest spending cuts and tax hikes in Irish history to Irish politicians, without offering any details about who, exactly, will pay for the banks’ losses. (He’s waiting to do that until after the single by-election the Dáil authorized is held.) He smiles. “Why is everyone so interested in Ireland?” he asks almost innocently. “There’s really far too much interest in us right now.”
“Because you’re interesting?” I say.
“Oh no,” he says seriously. “We’re not, really.”
He proceeds to make the collapse of the Irish economy as uninteresting as possible. This awkward social responsibility—normalizing a freak show—is now a meaningful part of the job of being Ireland’s finance minister. At just the moment the crazy uncle leapt from the cellar, the drunken aunt lurched through the front door and, in front of the entire family and many important guests, they carved each other to bits with hunting knives. Daddy must now reassure eyewitnesses that they didn’t see what they think they saw.
But the physical evidence that something deeply weird just happened in Ireland is still too conspicuous. A mile from the conference table where we take our seats is a moonscape of vast, two-year-old craters from which office parks were once meant to rise. There are fully finished skyscrapers that sit empty, water pooling on their lobby floors. There’s a skeleton of a tower, cranes resting on either side like parentheses, which was meant to house Anglo Irish Bank. There’s a city dump for which a developer paid 412 million euros in 2006—and which is now, when you include the cleanup costs, valued at zero. “Ireland is very unusual,” says William Newsom, who has more than 30 years of experience valuing commercial real estate for Savills in London. “There are whole swaths of either undeveloped land with planning permission or even partially developed sites which, I believe, for practical purposes have zero value.” The peak of the Irish madness is frozen in time, for all to see. There’s even an empty Starbucks, in the heart of what was meant to be a global financial center to rival London’s, where a carton of low-fat milk curdles beside a silver barista pitcher. The finance minister might as well be standing in Pompeii and saying that actually the volcano wasn’t really worth mentioning. Just a little lava!
“This isn’t Iceland” is what Lenihan actually says. “We’re not a hedge fund that’s populated by 300,000 farmers and fishermen. Ireland is not going back to the 80s or the 90s. This is all in a much narrower band.” And then he goes off on a soliloquy, the main point of which is: Ireland’s problems are solvable, and I am in control of the situation.
Back in September 2008, however, there was evidence that he wasn’t. On September 17 the financial markets were in turmoil. Lehman Brothers had failed two days earlier, shares of Irish banks were plummeting, and big corporations were withdrawing their deposits from them. Late that evening Lenihan phoned David McWilliams, a former senior European economist with UBS in Zurich and London, who had moved back home to Dublin and turned himself into a writer and media personality. McWilliams had been loudly skeptical about the Irish real-estate boom. Two weeks earlier he had appeared on a radio show with Lenihan, and Lenihan appeared to him entirely untroubled by the turmoil in the financial markets. Now he wanted to drive out to McWilliams’s house and ask his advice on what to do about the Irish banks.
The peculiar scene is described in McWilliams’s charmingly indiscreet book, Follow the Money. Lenihan arrives at the McWilliams residence, a 45-minute drive from Dublin, marches through to the family kitchen, and pulls a hunk of raw garlic out of his jacket pocket. “He kicked off by saying if his officials knew he was here in my house, there’d be war,” writes McWilliams. The finance minister stayed until two in the morning, drinking tea and anxiously picking McWilliams’s brain. McWilliams came away with the feeling that the minister didn’t entirely trust the advice he was getting from the people around him—and that he was not merely worried but confused. McWilliams told me that he sensed that the mental state of the Department of Finance was “complete chaos.”
A week later the department hired investment bankers from Merrill Lynch to advise it. Some might say that if you were asking Merrill Lynch for financial advice in 2008 you were already beyond hope, but that is not entirely fair. The bank analyst who had been most prescient and interesting about the Irish banks worked for Merrill Lynch. His name was Philip Ingram. In his late 20s, and a bit quirky—at the University of Cambridge he had studied zoology—Ingram had done something original and useful: he’d shined a new light on the way Irish banks lent against commercial real estate.
The commercial-real-estate loan market is generally less transparent than the market for home loans. Deals between bankers and property developers are one-offs, on terms unknown to all but a few insiders. The parties to any loan always claim it is prudent: a bank analyst has little choice but to take them at their word. But Ingram was skeptical of the Irish banks. He had read Morgan Kelly’s newspaper articles and even paid Kelly a visit in his university office. To Ingram’s eyes, there undoubtedly appeared to be a vast difference between what the Irish banks were saying and what was really happening. To get at it he ignored what they were saying and went looking for knowledgeable insiders in the commercial-property market. He interviewed them, as a journalist might. On March 13, 2008, six months before the Irish real-estate Ponzi scheme collapsed, Ingram published a report, in which he simply quoted verbatim what British market insiders had told him about various banks’ lending to commercial real estate. The Irish banks were making far riskier loans in Ireland than they were in Britain, but even in Britain, the report revealed, they were the nuttiest lenders around: in that category, Anglo Irish, Bank of Ireland, and A.I.B. came, in that order, first, second, and third.
For a few hours the Merrill Lynch report was the hottest read in the London financial markets, until Merrill Lynch retracted it. Merrill had been a lead underwriter of Anglo Irish’s bonds and the corporate broker to A.I.B.: they’d earned huge sums of money off the growth of Irish banking. Moments after Phil Ingram hit the Send button on his report, the Irish banks called their Merrill Lynch bankers and threatened to take their business elsewhere. The same executive from Anglo Irish who had called to scream at Morgan Kelly called a Merrill research analyst to scream some more. Ingram’s superiors at Merrill Lynch hauled him into meetings with in-house lawyers, who toned down the report’s pointed language and purged it of its damning quotes from market insiders, including its many references to Irish banks. And from that moment everything Ingram wrote about Irish banks was edited, and bowdlerized by Merrill Lynch’s lawyers. At the end of 2008, Merrill fired him. One of Ingram’s colleagues, a fellow named Ed Allchin, was also made to apologize to Merrill’s investment bankers individually for the trouble he’d caused them by suggesting there was still money to be made on shorting Irish banks.
It would have been difficult for Merrill Lynch’s investment bankers not to know, at some level, that in a reckless market the Irish banks had acted with a recklessness all their own. But in the seven-page memo to Brian Lenihan—for which the Irish taxpayer forked over to Merrill Lynch seven million euros—they kept whatever reservations they may have had to themselves. “All of the Irish banks are profitable and well capitalised,” wrote the Merrill Lynch advisers, who then went on to suggest that the banks’ problem wasn’t at all the bad loans they had made but the panic in the market. The Merrill Lynch memo listed a number of possible responses the Irish government might have to any run on Irish banks. It refrained from explicitly recommending one course of action over another, but its analysis of the problem implied that the most sensible thing to do was guarantee the banks. After all, the banks were fundamentally sound. Promise to eat all losses, and markets would quickly settle down—and the Irish banks would go back to being in perfectly good shape. As there would be no losses, the promise would be free.
What exactly was said in meetings on the night of September 29, 2008, remains, amazingly, something of a secret. The government has refused Freedom of Information Act-type requests for records. But gathered around the conference tables inside the prime minister’s offices was an array of top government and finance officials, including Lenihan, Cowen, the attorney general, and bank officials and regulators. Eventually they brought in the heads of the two yet-to-be-disgraced big Irish banks: A.I.B. and Bank of Ireland. Evidently they either lied to Brian Lenihan about the extent of their losses or didn’t know themselves what those were. Or both. “At the time they were all saying the same thing,” an Irish bank analyst tells me. “ ‘We don’t have any subprime.’ ” What they meant was that they had avoided lending to American subprime borrowers; what they neglected to mention was that, in the general frenzy, all of Ireland had become subprime. Otherwise sound Irish borrowers had been rendered unsound by the size of the loans they had taken out to buy inflated Irish property. That had been the strangest consequence of the Irish bubble: to throw a nation which had finally clawed its way out of centuries of indentured servitude back into it.
The report from Merrill Lynch, which touted the banks as fundamentally sound, buttressed whatever story they told the finance minister. Ireland’s financial regulator, Patrick Neary, had echoed Merrill’s judgment. Morgan Kelly was still viewed as a zany egghead; at any rate, no one who took him seriously was present in the room. Anglo Irish’s stock had fallen 46 percent that day; A.I.B.’s had fallen 17 percent; there was a fair chance that when the stock exchange reopened one or both of them would go out of business. In the general panic, absent government intervention, the other banks would have gone down, too. Lenihan faced a choice: Should he believe the people immediately around him or the financial markets? Should he trust the family or the experts? He stuck with the family. Ireland gave its promise. And the promise sank Ireland.
Even at the time, the decision seemed a bit odd. The Irish banks, like the big American banks, managed to persuade a lot of people that they were so intertwined with their economy that their failure would bring down a lot of other things, too. But they weren’t, at least not all of them. Anglo Irish Bank had only six branches in Ireland, no A.T.M.’s, and no organic relationship with Irish business except the property developers. It lent money to people to buy land and build: that’s practically all it did. It did this mainly with money it had borrowed from foreigners. It was not, by nature, systemic. It became so only when its losses were made everyone’s.
In any case, if the Irish wanted to save their banks, why not guarantee just the deposits? There’s a big difference between depositors and bondholders: depositors can flee. The immediate danger to the banks was that savers who had put money into them would take their money out, and the banks would be without funds. The investors who owned the roughly 80 billion euros of Irish bank bonds, on the other hand, were stuck. They couldn’t take their money out of the bank. And their 80 billion euros very nearly exactly covered the eventual losses inside the Irish banks. These private bondholders didn’t have any right to be made whole by the Irish government. The bondholders didn’t even expect to be made whole by the Irish government. Not long ago I spoke with a former senior Merrill Lynch bond trader who, on September 29, 2008, owned a pile of bonds in one of the Irish banks. He’d already tried to sell them back to the bank for 50 cents on the dollar—that is, he’d offered to take a huge loss, just to get out of them. On the morning of September 30 he awakened to find his bonds worth 100 cents on the dollar. The Irish government had guaranteed them! He couldn’t believe his luck. Across the financial markets this episode repeated itself. People who had made a private bet that went bad, and didn’t expect to be repaid in full, were handed their money back—from the Irish taxpayer.
In retrospect, now that the Irish bank losses are known to be world-historically huge, the decision to cover them appears not merely odd but suicidal. A handful of Irish bankers incurred debts they could never repay, of something like 100 billion euros. They may have had no idea what they were doing, but they did it all the same. Their debts were private—owed by them to investors around the world—and still the Irish people have undertaken to repay them as if they were obligations of the state. For two years they have labored under this impossible burden with scarcely a peep of protest. What’s more, all of the policy decisions since September 29, 2008, have set the hook more firmly inside the mouths of the Irish public. In January 2009 the Irish government nationalized Anglo Irish and its 34-billion-euro (and mounting) losses. In late 2009 they created the Irish version of the tarp program, but, unlike the U.S. government (which ended up buying stakes in the banks), they actually followed through on the plan and are in the process of buying 70 billion euros of crappy assets from the Irish banks.
A single decision sank Ireland, but when I ask Lenihan about it he becomes impatient, as if it isn’t a fit topic for conversation. It wasn’t much of a decision, he says, as he had no choice. The Irish financial markets are governed by rules rooted in English law, and under English law bondholders enjoy the same status as ordinary depositors. That is, it was against the law to protect the little people with deposits in the bank without also saving the big investors who owned Irish bank bonds.
This rings a bell. When U.S. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson realized that allowing Lehman Brothers to fail was viewed not as brave and principled but catastrophic, he, too, claimed he’d done what he’d done because the law gave him no other option. But in the heat of the crisis, Paulson had neglected to mention the law just as Lenihan didn’t bring up the law requiring him to pay off the banks’ private lenders until long after he’d done it. In both cases the explanation was legalistic: narrowly true, but generally false. The Irish government always had the power to impose losses on even the senior bondholders, if it wanted to. “Senior people have forgotten that the government has certain powers,” as Morgan Kelly puts it. “You can conscript people. You can send them off to certain death. You can change the law.”
On September 30, 2008, in the heat of the moment, Lenihan gave the same reason for guaranteeing the banks’ debts that Merrill Lynch had given him: to prevent “contagion.” Tell financial markets that a loan to an Irish bank was a loan to the Irish government and investors would calm down. For who would doubt the credit of the government? A year and a half later, when suspicions arose that the banks’ losses were so vast they might bankrupt the government, Lenihan offered a new reason for the government’s gift to private investors: the bonds were owned by Irishmen. Up until then the government’s line had been that they had no idea who owned the bank’s bonds. Now they said that, if the Irish government didn’t eat the losses, Irish credit unions and insurance companies would pay the price. The Irish, in other words, were simply saving the Irish. This wasn’t true, and it provoked a cry of outrage from the credit unions, which said that they owned hardly any of the bonds. A political investigative blog called Guido Fawkes somehow obtained a list of the Anglo Irish foreign bondholders: German banks, French banks, German investment funds, Goldman Sachs. (Yes! Even the Irish did their bit for Goldman.)
Across Europe just now men who thought their title was “minister of finance” have woken up to the idea that their job is actually government bond salesman. The Irish bank losses have obviously bankrupted Ireland, but the Irish finance minister does not want to talk about that. Instead he mentions to me, several times, that Ireland is “fully funded” until next summer, which is to say that the Irish government has enough cash in the bank to pay its bills until next July. It isn’t until I’m on my way out the door that I realize how trivial this point is. The blunt truth is that, since September 2008, Ireland has been, every day, more at the mercy of her creditors. To remain afloat, Ireland’s biggest banks, which are now owned by the Irish government, have taken short-term loans from the European Central Bank amounting to 86 billion euros. Two weeks later Lenihan will be compelled by the European Union to invite the I.M.F. into Ireland, relinquish control of Irish finances, and accept a bailout package. The Irish public doesn’t yet know it, but, even as we sit together at his conference table, the European Central Bank has lost interest in lending to Irish banks. And soon Brian Lenihan will stand up in the Irish Parliament and offer a fourth explanation for why private investors in Ireland’s banks cannot be allowed to take losses. “There is simply no way that this country, whose banks are so dependent on international investors, can unilaterally renege on senior bondholders against the wishes of the E.C.B.,” he will say.
But there was once a time when the wishes of the E.C.B. didn’t matter to Ireland. That time was before the Irish government used E.C.B. money to pay off the foreign bondholders in Irish banks.
Bring Me a Little Ire
Once a decade I experiment with driving on the wrong side of the road, and wind up destroying dozens of side-view mirrors on cars parked on the left. When I went looking for some Irish person to drive me around, the result was a fellow I will call Ian McRory (he asked me not to use his real name in this article), who is Irish, and a driver, but pretty clearly a lot of other things, too. Ian has what appears to be a military-grade navigational system, for instance, and surprising knowledge about abstruse and secretive matters. “I do some personal security, and things of that nature,” he says, when I ask him what else he does other than drive financial-disaster tourists back and forth across Ireland, and leaves it at that. Later, when I mention the name of a formerly rich Irish property developer, he says, casually, as if it were all in a day’s work, that he had let himself into the fellow’s vacation house and snapped photographs of the interior, “for a man I know who is thinking of buying it.”
Ian turns out to have a good feel for what I, or anyone else, might find interesting in rural Ireland. He will say, for example, “Over there, that’s a pretty typical fairy ring,” and then explain, interestingly, that these circles of stones or mushrooms that occur in Irish fields are believed by local farmers to house mythical creatures. “Irish people actually believe in fairies?,” I ask, straining but failing to catch a glimpse of the typical fairy ring to which Ian has just pointed. “I mean, if you walked right up and asked him to his face, ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ most guys will deny it,” he replies. “But if you ask him to dig out the fairy ring on his property, he won’t do it. To my way of thinking, that’s believing.” And it is. It’s a tactical belief, a belief that exists because the upside to disbelief is too small, like the former Irish belief that Irish land prices would rise forever.
The highway out of Dublin runs past abandoned building sites and neighborhoods without people in them. “We can stop at ghost estates on the way,” says Ian, as we clear the suburbs of Dublin. “But if we stop at every one of them, we’ll never get out of here.”
We pass wet green fields carved by potato farmers into small plots, and every now and then a small village, but even the inhabited places feel desolate. The Irish countryside remains a place people flee. Among its drawbacks, from the outsider’s point of view, is the weather. “It’s always either raining or about to rain,” says Ian. “I drove a black guy from Africa around the country once. It’s raining the whole time. He says to me, ‘I don’t know why people live here. It’s like living under an elephant.’ ”
The wet hedgerows cultivated along the highway to hide the wet road from the wet houses now hide the wet houses from the wet road. picture of the village of the future, reads a dripping billboard with a picture of a village that will never be built. Randomly selecting a village that appears to be more or less finished, we pull off the road. It’s an exurb, without a suburb. GLEANN RIADA, reads the self-important sign in front. It’s a few dozen houses in a field, attached to nothing but each other, ending with unoccupied slabs of concrete buried in weeds. You can see the moment the money stopped flowing from the Irish banks, the developer folded his tent, and the Polish workers went home. “The guys who laid this didn’t even believe it was supposed to be finished,” says Ian. The concrete slab, like the completed houses, is riven by the kind of cracks you see in a house after a major earthquake, but in this case are caused by carelessness. Inside, the floors are littered with trash and debris, the fixtures have been ripped out of the kitchen, and mold spreads spider-like across the walls. The last time I saw an interior like this was in New Orleans after Katrina.
In October, Ireland’s Department of the Environment published its first audit of the country’s new housing stock after inspecting 2,846 housing developments, many of them called “ghost estates” because they’re empty. Of the nearly 180,000 units that had been granted planning permission, the audit found that only 78,195 were completed and occupied. Others are occupied but remain unfinished. Virtually all construction has now ceased. There aren’t enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses; there were never enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses. Ask Irish property developers who they imagined was going to live in the Irish countryside, and they all laugh the same uneasy laugh and offer up the same list of prospects: Poles; foreigners looking for second homes; entire departments of Irish government workers, who would be shipped to the sticks in a massive, planned relocation that somehow never materialized; the diaspora of 70 million human beings with a genetic link to Ireland. The problem that no one paid all that much attention to during the boom was that people from outside Ireland, even those with a genetic link to the place, have no interest in owning houses there. “This isn’t an international property market,” says an agent at Savills’s Dublin branch named Ronan O’Driscoll. “There aren’t any foreign buyers. There were never foreign buyers.” Dublin was never London. The Irish countryside will never be the Cotswolds.
Which way entire nations jumped when the money was made freely available to them obviously told you a lot about them: their desires, their constraints, their secret sense of themselves. How they reacted when the money was taken away was equally revealing. In Greece the money was borrowed by the state: the debts are the debts of the Greek people, but the people want no part of them. The Greeks already have taken to the streets, violently, and have been quick to find people other than themselves to blame for their problems: monks, Turks, foreign bankers. Greek anarchists now mail bombs to Angela Merkel and hurl Molotov cocktails at their own police. In Ireland the money was borrowed by a few banks, and yet the people seem not only willing to repay it but to do so without a peep of protest. Back in October 2008, after the government threatened to means-test for medical care, the old people marched in the streets of Dublin. A few days after I’d arrived the students followed suit, but their protest was less public anger than theater, and perhaps an excuse to skip school. (DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING, read one of the students’ signs.) I’d tapped two students as they stumbled away from the event to ask why they had all painted yellow streaks on their faces. They looked at each other for a beat. “Dunno!” one finally said and burst out laughing. Other than that … silence. It’s more than two years since the Irish government foisted the losses of the Irish banks on the Irish people, and in that time there have been only two conspicuous acts of social unrest. In May 2009, at A.I.B.’s first shareholder meeting after the collapse, a senior citizen hurled rotten eggs at the bank’s executives. And early one morning in September 2010, a 41-year-old property developer from Galway named Joe McNamara, who had painted his cement mixer with anti-banker slogans, climbed inside the cab, drove through Dublin, and, after cutting the brake lines, stalled the machine up against the gates of the Parliament. The elderly egg thrower was a distant memory, but McNamara was still, more or less, in the news: declining requests for interviews. “Joe is a private person,” his lawyer told me. “He feels like he’s made his point. He doesn’t want any media attention.”
Before he’d parked his cement mixer in the Parliament’s driveway, McNamara had been a small-time builder. He’d started out laying foundations, and like a lot of rural tradesmen, he’d been given a loan by the Anglo Irish Bank. Thus began his career as a property developer. He’d moved to Galway, into a tacky new development beside a golf course, but the real source of his financial distress lay an hour or so beyond the city, in a resort hotel he’d tried to build on a remote island called Achill, in the tiny village in which he’d grown up, called Keel. “Achill,” says Ian after I tell him that’s where I’d like to go, then goes silent for a minute, as if giving me time to reconsider. “This time of year Achill’s going to be fairly bleak.” He thinks another minute. “Mind you, in the summer it can be fairly bleak as well.”
It’s twilight as we roll across the tiny bridge and onto the island. On either side of the snaking single-lane road peat bogs stretch as far as the eye can see. The feel is less “tourist destination” than “end of the earth.” (“The next stop is Newfoundland,” says Ian.) The Achill Head Hotel—Joe’s first venture, still run by his ex-wife—was closed and dark. But there, smack in the middle of the tiny village of Keel, was the source of all of Joe McNamara’s financial troubles: a giant black hole, surrounded by bulldozers and building materials. He’d set out in 2005 to build a modest one-story hotel, with 12 rooms. In April 2006, with the Irish property market exploding, he’d expanded his ambition and applied for permission to build a multi-story luxury hotel. At exactly that moment, the market turned. “We went away in June of 2006,” Ronan O’Driscoll, the Savills broker, had told me. “We came back in September and everything had just stopped. How does everyone decide at once that it is time to stop—that it’s become mad?” For the past four years the hotel’s site had scarred the village. But it wasn’t until early 2010 that Anglo Irish Bank, which had lent McNamara the money to develop it, threatened to force him into receivership. Irish bankruptcy laws were not designed for spectacular failure, perhaps because the people who wrote them never imagined spectacular success. When a bank forces an Irish person into receivership, a notice is published in a national and a local newspaper—ensuring the bankrupt’s widespread shame. For as many as 12 years the person is not permitted to take out a loan for more than 650 euros without disclosing his bankruptcy status or own assets amounting to more than 3,100 euros, and part of whatever he earns may pass to his creditors at the discretion of the court. “It’s not like the United States, where being bankrupt is almost a badge of honor,” says Patrick White, of the Irish Property Council. “Here you are effectively disbarred from commercial life.”
There is an ancient rule of financial life—that if you owe the bank five million bucks the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank five billion bucks you own the bank—that newly applies to Ireland. The debts of its big property developers—now generally defined as anyone who owed the bank more than 20 million euros—are being worked out behind closed doors. In exchange for helping the government to manage or liquidate their real-estate portfolios, the biggest failures are hoping to be spared bankruptcy. Smaller developers, like McNamara, are in a far harder place, and while no one seems to know how many of these people exist, the number is clearly big.
Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (its tarp) controls roughly 70 billion euros of commercial-property loans. It is believed that smaller Irish property-related loans amount to another 85 billion euros. Some very large number of Irish former tradesmen are in exactly Joe McNamara’s situation. Some very large number of Irish homeowners are in something very like it.
The difference between McNamara and everyone else is that he complained about it publicly. But then, apparently, thought better of it. I’d tracked down and phoned his ex-wife, who just laughed and told me to get lost. I finally reached McNamara himself, ambushing him on his cell phone. But he just muttered something about not wanting to draw further attention to himself, then hung up. It was only after I texted him to say I was en route to his hometown that he became sufficiently aroused to communicate. “What are you doing in Keel????” he hollered by text message, more than once. “Tell me Why are you going to Keel???” Then, once again, he fell silent. “The problem with the Irish people,” Ian says, as we drive away from the black hole that ruined Joe McNamara, “is that you can push them and push them and push them. But when they break they go wacko.” A month later, after a period of silence, McNamara would reappear, blasting the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from the top of a cherry-picker crane that he had parked, once again, in front of the Parliament.
Two things strike every Irish person when he comes to America, Irish friends tell me: the vastness of the country, and the seemingly endless desire of its people to talk about their personal problems. Two things strike an American when he comes to Ireland: how small it is and how tight-lipped. An Irish person with a personal problem takes it into a hole with him, like a squirrel with a nut before winter. He tortures himself and sometimes his loved ones too. What he doesn’t do, if he has suffered some reversal, is vent about it to the outside world. The famous Irish gift of gab is a cover for all the things they aren’t telling you.
So far as I could see, by November 10, 2010, the population of Irish people willing to make a stink about what has happened to them has been reduced to one: the elderly egg thrower. The next day we pull up outside his home, a modest old semi-detached house on the outskirts of Dublin. The cheery gentleman who opens the door in a neat burgundy sweater and well-pressed slacks has, among his other qualities, fantastically good manners. He has the ability to seem pleased even when total strangers ring his doorbell, and to make them feel welcome. On the table in Gary Keogh’s small and tidy dining room is a book, created by his grandchildren, dated May 2009, called “Granddad’s Eggcellent Adventure.”
In the months after Lenihan’s bank bailout, Keogh began to pay attention to the behavior of Irish bankers. His own shares in A.I.B., once thought to be as sound as cash or gold, were rapidly becoming worthless. But the bank’s executives exhibited not the first hint of remorse or shame. A.I.B. chairman Dermot Gleeson and C.E.O. Eugene Sheehy troubled Keogh the most. “The two of ’em stood up, time and again, and said, ‘Our bank is 100 percent sound,’ ” he says. “As if nothing at all was the matter!” He set out to learn more about these people in whom he had always placed blind trust. And what he found—high pay, corporate boondoggles—outraged him further. “The chairman paid himself 475,000 [euros] to chair 12 meetings!” Keogh still shouts.
What Keogh learned remains both the most shocking and the most familiar aspect of the Irish catastrophe: how easily ancient financial institutions abandoned their traditions and principles. An upstart bank, Anglo Irish, had entered their market and professed to have found a new and better way to be a banker. Anglo Irish made incredibly quick decisions: an Irish property developer who was an existing client could walk into its office in the late afternoon with a new idea and walk out with a commitment of hundreds of millions of euros that night. Anglo Irish was able to shovel money out its door so quickly because it had turned banking into a family affair: if they liked the man, they didn’t bother to evaluate his project.
Rather than point out the insanity of the approach, the two old Irish banks simply caved to it. An Irish businessman named Denis O’Brien sat on the board of the Bank of Ireland in 2005, when it was faced with the astonishing growth of Anglo Irish, which was about to double in size in just two years. “I remember the C.E.O. coming in and saying, ‘We’re going to grow at 30 percent a year,’ ” O’Brien tells me. “I said, How the fuck are you going to do that? Banking is a 5-to-7-percent-a-year-growth business at best.”
They did it by doing what Anglo Irish had done: writing checks to Irish property developers to buy Irish land at any price. A.I.B. even opened a unit dedicated to poaching Anglo’s biggest property-developer clients—the very people who would become the most spectacular busts in Irish history. In October 2008, the Irish Independent published a list of the five biggest real-estate deals in each of the past three years. A.I.B. lent the money for 6 of the 15, Anglo Irish for just 1, as a co-lender with A.I.B. On Irish national radio recently, the insolvent property developer Simon Kelly, whose family’s real-estate portfolio has run up bad debts of 2 billion euros, confessed that the only time in his career a banker became upset with him was when he repaid a loan, to Anglo Irish, with money borrowed from A.I.B. The former Anglo Irish executives I interviewed (off the record, as they are all in hiding) speak of their older, more respectable imitators with a kind of amazement. “Yes, we were out of control,” they say, in so many words. “But those guys were fucking nuts.”
Gary Keogh thought about how Ireland had changed from his youth, when the country was dirt-poor. “I used to collect bottles. Now the health service doesn’t even bother to take back crutches anymore? No! We’re far too wealthy.”
Unlike most people he knew, he had no debts. “I had nothing to lose,” he says. “I didn’t owe anyone any money. That’s why I could do it!” He’d also just recovered from a serious illness, and so, emotionally, felt a bit as if he were playing with house money. “I had just got a new kidney and I was very pleased with it,” he says. “But I think it must have been Che Guevara’s kidney.” He describes his elaborate plot the way an assassin might describe the perfect hit. “I only had two rotten eggs,” he says, “but by God they were rotten! Because I kept them six weeks in the garage!”
The A.I.B. shareholders’ meeting of May 2009 was the first he’d ever attended. He was, he admits, a bit worried something might go wrong. Worried that parking might be a problem, he took the bus; worried that his eggs might break, he used a container to protect them; worried that he didn’t even know what the room looked like, he left himself time to case the meeting hall. “I got to the front door early and had a little recce,” as he puts it, “just to see what was going to happen.” His egg container was too large to sneak inside, so he ditched it. “I had one egg in each jacket pocket,” he says. Worried that his eggs might be too slippery to grip and throw, he’d put Band-Aids on them. “I positioned myself four rows back and four seats in,” he says. “Not too close but not too far.” Then he waited for his moment.
It came immediately. Right after the executives took their places at the dais, a shareholder stood up, uninvited, with a point of order. Gleeson, A.I.B.’s chairman, barked, “Sit down!”
“He thought he was a dictator!” says Keogh, who had heard enough.
He rose to his feet and shouted, “I’ve listened to enough of your crap! You’re a fucking git!” And then he began firing.
“He thought he had been shot,” he says now with a little smile, “because the first egg hit the microphone and went POW!” It splattered onto the shoulder pad of Gleeson’s suit. The second egg missed the C.E.O. but nailed the A.I.B. sign behind him.
Then the security guards were on him. “I was told I would be arrested and charged, but I never was,” he says. Of course he wasn’t: this was at bottom a family dispute. The guards wanted to escort him out, but he left the place on his own and climbed aboard the next bus home. “The incident happened at 10 past 10 in the morning,” he says. “I was home by 10 to 11. At 10 past 11 the phone rang. And I was on the radio for an hour.” Then, but briefly, all was madness. “The press descended on the house and they wouldn’t get out,” he says. It didn’t really matter; he wasn’t sticking around. He’d done exactly what he’d planned to do, and saw no need to make a further fuss. He flew out of Dublin Airport at seven the next morning, for a long-planned Mediterranean cruise.
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Pic’n post : Old Palestinian man in front of his house demolished by Israel
music: playing now : Pink Floyd – Meddle [Full Album]
The Hidden Evil (The financial elite’s covert war against the civilian population)
Isn’t she beautiful ?
……………………
The American Dream By The Provocateur Network
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Libya: visit to Sirte what’s left of it!
Foreign Snipers in Syria beaten by an angry mob
Vaccines: ALL are Contaminated – Every Last One of Them
CELAC Historic Birth in Caracas
Battlefield Earth: Resist NWO Tyranny or Die Under It
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The Most Dangerous Cult in The World!
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Energy News (enews.com)- *WSJ* Reporter asks: What plans do you have in case Unit 4 pool does come down? — Gov’t official “evaded or wouldn’t answer” May 21, 2012 ENENews
- Gundersen on Plutonium: I believe fragments of nuclear fuel are in the ocean — From explosions at Unit 3 AND Unit 1 (VIDEO) May 21, 2012 ENENews
- Work at Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 “being handled like a construction project and that’s unfortunate to say the least” — “There is no international effort” (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- “Pacific Ocean will continue to be contaminated, kind of for the rest of time” — Containment vessels continuously leaking into sea (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Trillions of becquerels per day still being emitted from Fukushima Daiichi — Radioactive steam continues (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Former Senior Reactor Operator: You can get a recriticality in Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — “Never ending fountain of particulates and gas” (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- M6.2 quake and several above M5.0 hit off Northeast Japan in last day — UPDATED May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Gundersen: Recent hydrogen build up inside Fukushima reactor “worrisome” (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Reporter at Fukushima Daiichi: Reactors seemed terribly threatened by the slightest movement or upheaval of heaven and of earth May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Again: Three strong quakes in 15 minutes hit near same area as on 3/11 — M5.8, M5.0, M4.8 (MAPS) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- dprogram.net (US)
- Max Igan on Through the Looking Glass – May 20, 2012 May 21, 2012(SurvivingTheMatrix) – Part 1 of 4 Part 2 of 4 Part 3 of 4 Part 4 of 4 Related posts: Max Igan – Radio SkidRow – Jan16th, 2012 Max Igan on Vinny Eastwood Show – April 5th, 2012 Max Igan – Truth Frequency Interview – Jan 14th, 2012 Related posts: Max Igan – Radio SkidRow – Jan16th, 2012 Max Igan on Vinny Eastwoo […]sakerfa
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- Operation Midnight Climax: Sex, Drugs and the CIA May 21, 2012(MediaRoots) – The feverish hysteria of the “red scare” during the 1950s and 1960s prompted the Central Intelligence Agency to do some dirty deeds, not the least of which was a pet project called Operation Midnight Climax. The C.I.A. conducted the operation in the hopes of finding a truth serum by dosing civilians with psychotropic [...] Related posts […]sakerfa
- Journalist, Plaintiff Chris Hedges Hails “Monumental” Ruling on NDAA Indefinite Detention May 21, 2012(DemocracyNow) – In a rare move, a federal judge has struck down part of a controversial law signed by President Obama that gave the government the power to indefinitely detain anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial — including U.S. citizens. Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District [...] Rel […]sakerfa
- Max Igan on Through the Looking Glass – May 20, 2012 May 21, 2012
- Voltairenet.org (Int.)
- AFP rewrites the Lockerbie caseAbdel Basset al-Megrahi died on 20 May 2012 of cancer at the age of 60. He was the only person convicted of the bombing of PanAm flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people. Taking advantage of the vacuum left by NATO's annihilation of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Agence France Presse has written: "In 2003, the […]
- Massive anti-NATO protests in ChicagoThousands of people rallied in Chicago against NATO on the opening day of its Summit meeting. The massive anti-NATO demonstrations aim to boycott the event. Thousands of peaceful protesters, including peace activists and war veterans, have marched through the second largest city in the U.S. carrying banners against NATO and demanding the dissolution of the A […]
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- Israel developing 'spy-butterfly' for indoor surveillanceThe future is here and this is not a butterfly on your wall, as Israeli drones are getting tiny. Their latest project – a butterfly-shaped drone weighing just 20 grams - the smallest in its range so far – can gather intelligence inside buildings. The new miniscule surveillance device can take color pictures and is capable of a vertical take-off and hover fli […]
- The NSA can spy on Google and moreThe National Security Agency is under no obligation to disclose the nature of its relationship with Google, confirmed a Washington D.C. federal appeals court on 11 May 2012. A three-judge panel ruled that in view of NSA's special status, any arrangement with the Internet giant can remain secret. "Any information relating to the relationship between […]
- May 2012-05-18, Syrian Crisis UpdatedCeasefire violations Anti-government activists talk about bombardments by Syrian Arab Army in Al-Sultanieh and Jobar neighborhoods and in Rastan area of Homs Explosions are heard in several neighborhoods of Homs this morning including Rastan area of Homs countryside. News says one shell is fired on the electronic bakery in Rastan area Ahmad Al-Qaai gets kill […]Syrian Center for Documentation
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- Kelly Thomas, victim of police brutalityOn July 5 last year Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old schizophrenic homeless man, was so badly beaten and stun-gunned by Fullerton California police officers that he was left unrecognizable. He died 5 days later from blunt force trauma to the head. Up to 5 police officers assault him with batons, tasers and fists. When the unconscious and bloodied body of Thomas w […]
- May 2012-05-17, Syrian Crisis UpdatedCeasefire violations Anti-government activists say that a mortar shell was fired on Douma area which killed 5 members of Al-Shanwani family. Clashes between the Syrian Army and insurgents took place last night in Daraya and continued on this evening; anti-government activists talk about causalities. Gunmen assassinated last night Sergeant Imad Shkaira in Al- […]Syrian Center for Documentation
- Shale gas: Halliburton's weapon of mass devastationAcross the United States the exploitation of gas and oil from shale rocks using Halliburton's hydraulic fracturing technology continues amid rising disasters. Unregulated drilling practices, rendered legal by the "Halliburton Loophole" engineered in 2005 by Vice President Dick Cheney, have had staggering health and environmental effects. Lured […]F. William Engdahl
- AFP rewrites the Lockerbie case
- Signs of the times (www.Sott.net)
- Facebook's Overnight Millionaires Begin Lavish Spending Spree May 21, 2012Facebook's $104 billion initial public offering on Friday transformed thousands of young people into instant millionaires - as well as a few billionaires - and already the booming luxury market in Silicon Valley is experiencing an upswing. Multi-million dollar mansions and $100,000 Porsches are flying off local shelves in the Palo Alto, Santa Clara and […]
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- Monsanto Funds College Research: Big Ag 101 - Playing at a Campus Near You May 21, 2012When government officials insist on making science-based decisions in food and agricultural policy, what happens when the research is increasingly funded by huge corporations with a vested interest in the results? According to a new report by GAP coalition partner Food & Water Watch, almost 25 percent of agricultural research funding at land-grant univer […]
- M6.2 quake and several above M5.0 hit off Northeast Japan in last day May 21, 2012Earthquake Information Japan Meteorological Agency 17:50 JST 20 May 2012 17:42 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.1 2 17:27 JST 20 May 2012 17:21 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.4 2 16:54 JST 20 May 2012 16:49 JST 20 May 2012 Ibaraki-ken Hokubu M3.3 1 16:38 JST 20 May 2012 16:28 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.7 2 16:32 JST 20 May 2012 16:20 JST 20 May 2012 Sanrik […]
- Marijuana Oil Helps 3-Year-Old Son Beat brain Cancer, Dad Says May 21, 2012What would you do if your 3-year old son was stricken with brain cancer? Most parents wouldn't think twice about bringing their child to a mainstream doctor, only to undergo modern-day cancer 'treatments' such as chemotherapy. This is what one father, Mike Hyde, from Montana did when his 3 year old was diagnosed with brain cancer, but the fath […]
- Terror charges ahead of Chicago NATO summit for beer-making kit May 21, 2012Trio accused of making petrol bombs and plotting attacks, but supporters say suspect materials were beer-making kit. Three protesters arrested in a late-night raid days before the start of this weekend's 60-nation NATO summit in Chicago have been charged with terrorism for possession of explosive devices, police and their attorney have said. The men hav […]
- Great-grandma: Ready to 'lose' my life protesting May 21, 2012Chicago, Illinois -- Nan Wigmore brought her walker and packed her sign, "Grateful Great Grandmas Circle The Wagons, Support Occupy," and rode on a bus for some three days, sleeping in the same clothes, to make it to the NATO protests in Chicago. The 75-year-old from Portland, Ore., says she couldn't imagine being anywhere else despite the dis […]
- Worldwide Protest Movements: Are They Helping or Hurting? May 21, 2012Are the worldwide protests helping or hurting? That is the question. As Alexander Haig once stated "they can protest all they want so long as they pay their taxes". This statement is pretty telling in my opinion. Now accompany that statement with the question, has protesting and hitting the streets really brought any change in policy, banking, wars […]
- The Framework For Suppressing Information: Public Opinion in America's 21st Century Police State May 21, 2012The police state's framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the "war on terror" continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments' actual enemy is the capacity for a people to ex […]
- Occupy Journalists Stopped, Searched, Handcuffed & Interrogated at Gunpoint May 21, 2012Under cover of the night around twelve police cars stopped five journalists when they were heading back to where they are staying in Chicago during the NATO summit. All five have been covering protests against the NATO summit for the past few days. The five journalists included Luke Rudkowksi, who streams as @Lukewearechange, Tim Pool, who streams as @Timcas […]
- Facebook's Overnight Millionaires Begin Lavish Spending Spree May 21, 2012
- Alternet.org (US)
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement May 21, 2012Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.Gar Alperovitz, AlterNet
- The Terrifying Ways Google Is Destroying Your Privacy May 21, 2012 David Rosen, AlterNet
- 826 Valencia: Transforming a Community, One Student at a Time May 21, 2012826 has blossomed from a noble experiment into one of the top innovators and influencers in the education field.Theresa Ralston, AlterNet
- The Enviro Disaster You Know Nothing About: The Eco-Devastating Quest for "Frac Sand" in Rural America May 21, 2012Midwestern rural communities are being devastated by energy companies searching for a form of sand to use in their destructive fracking operations elsewhere in rural America.Ellen Cantarow, TomDispatch.com
- Attachment Parenting: More Guilt for Mother May 21, 2012Not only is 'attachment parenting' bad for women; it's not necessarily good for children, either.Katha Pollitt, The Nation
- Oregon Activists Pick Up "Health Care as a Human Right" Campaign for Real Universal Care May 21, 2012 Peter Shapiro, Labor Notes
- Why Mobility In America is in the Dumpster May 21, 2012 Tina Dupuy, TinaDupuy.com
- Why Do Sex Scandals Destroy Democrats But Not Republicans? May 21, 2012Not all politicians are created equal. And not all are treated equally. Therein lies an issue deserving a closer look: whether vulnerable Democrats are targeted for destruction.Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com
- NATO Comes to Chicago, Highlights Violence and Inequality at the Heart of the System May 21, 2012Much like the NATO summit, the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it.Gary Younge, Comment Is Free
- Are JPMorgan’s Losses A Canary in a Coal Mine? May 21, 2012Bill Moyers talks to Simon Johnson, once chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now MIT professor, about the (possible) fall of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan.Bill Moyers, BillMoyers.com
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement May 21, 2012
- Antiwar.com (US)
- Obama or Anarchy? May 21, 2012Rahm Emanuel runs Chicago like he ran the Obama White House: with an iron fist and a foul mouth – and the NATO summit, being held in the Windy City, is the perfect occasion for him to demonstrate just how “tough” he can be. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean [...]Justin Raimondo
- Baghdad Judges Refuse To Hear Evidence That Could Clear Iraq VP of Terrorism Charges May 21, 2012A three-judge panel has rejected evidence that could help clear Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi of terrorism charges, causing Hashemi's team of lawyers to quit the case in protest. Meanwhile, at least two Iraqis were killed and eight more were wounded.Margaret Griffis
- Six Killed in Iraq Violence May 20, 2012At least six Iraqis were killed and six more were wounded in light violence.Margaret Griffis
- The Serbian Job May 19, 2012Nebojsa Malic on stealing an electionNebojsa Malic
- Applying the Six-Day War to Iran May 19, 2012Ray McGovern on the mythical Six-Day WarRay McGovern
- Iran Hawks in Congress in Some Disarray May 19, 2012Hopes by Iran hawks here to get the U.S. Congress to wield the threat of a U.S. military attack on the Islamic Republic on the eve of next week’s critical negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program appear to have fallen unexpectedly short. While the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reject "any U.S. policy that [...]Jim Lobe
- 15 Killed, 72 Wounded at Baghdad Pet Market, Restaurant and Home May 19, 2012In the capital, multiple attacks harkened back to the height of sectarian tensions. At least 15 Iraqis were killed and 67 more were wounded.Margaret Griffis
- What Does Ron Paul Want? May 18, 2012A movement primed for victory, says Justin RaimondoJustin Raimondo
- Dangerous Legislation May 18, 2012I strongly oppose H Res 568, a resolution "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of preventing the Government of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability." Once again we see on the "suspension" calendar, which is customarily reserved for non-controversial legislation, a resolution designed t […]Rep. Ron Paul
- Walk to the NATO Summit: Striding Toward Peace May 18, 2012On what is now the 17th day of our walk from Madison to Chicago, the number 165 does not seem to encapsulate all the progress we have made. We are 17 days and 165 miles away from the day I drove into Madison, where news arrived that Air Force One had descended on pre-dawn Kabul [...]Buddy Bell
- Obama or Anarchy? May 21, 2012
- Human Rights Investigations.org
- The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya March 11, 2012The Report of the The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya has been issued and provides some interesting reading. A few initial comments: Tawerghans – to be ‘wiped off the face of the planet’ The report supports Human Rights Investigation’s position regarding the crimes committed against the Tawerghans. The report confirms our […]HRI Mark
- Responsibility to protect: the liberation of Sirte October 27, 2011According to NATO figures, coalition aircraft delivered 415 key strikes on the town of Sirte between Sunday 28th August and Thursday 20th October. We have compared this to the bombing of Guernica and other comparisons have been made to the widely condemned levelling of Grozny. In addition, the rebels, described in NATO circles as a [...]HRI Mark
- Colonel Gaddafi captured and killed October 20, 2011Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi was reportedly captured and shot dead 20 October. As the evidence below shows the Libyan leader and his son Mutassim were summarily executed by the rebels, sharing the fate of so many Libyans in this conflict. NATO involvement NATO have said that a French jet bombed 2 military vehicles in a convoy leaving the area [...]HRI Mark
- التطهير الُعرقيّ والإبادة الجماعيّة والتورخا October 20, 2011التطهير الُعرقي و الإبادة الجماعيّة و التورخا هيومن رايتس إينفستيخاشيون (HRI) تُتابٍع عن كثب الوضع في منطقة ا”لتورخا”، وهنا نلفتُ معاً المعلومات، ونجِدُ، ، استناداً إلى تقارير الشهود والصحافيين والعاملين في مجال حقوق الإنسان ، بأنّ حالة ا”لتورخا” ليست مُجرد حالة تطهير عُرقي ولكن وفقاً للتعريف القانوني، إِبادة جماعيّة. HRI لديها مخاو […]HRI Mark
- William Hague’s deportation of Malyshevs to torture in Uzbekistan October 20, 2011Below is a repost from Craig Murray’s excellent blog . Craig, has a very clear knowledge of the Karimov regime as he was British Ambassador there from 2002 to 2004. Uzbekistan is a state with widespread torture, kidnapping, murder, rape by the police, financial corruption, religious persecution, censorship, and other human rights abuses. In 2002, accor […]HRI Mark
- Sarkozy, Cameron, Obama, Al-Thani and the suffering of the children of Sirte October 11, 2011The background to the video and image below is the ongoing bombardment of Sirte by NATO aircraft in support of the rebel brigades who are indiscriminately firing tank, mortar and artillery shells into this urban, civilian-populated area. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has refused to comment on why NATO is not fulfilling its UN mandate [...]HRI Mark
- Nobel Peace Prize winners: Tawakul Karman, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf October 7, 2011The Nobel Peace Prize has long been a nonsense and has been accused of being a kind of tool of Norwegian foreign policy. Who can forget the farcical scenes as Barack Obama was awarded the prize (about which Martin Luther King would have had a few things to say) or that it was once awarded to Henry Kissinger, or that Mahatma [...]HRI Mark
- Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International fan the flames of conflict in Syria October 6, 2011A major thread running through the story of the Libyan conflict has been the information war – propaganda spread by intelligence agencies, military, media and political groups designed to encourage hatred, conflict, war, foreign intervention, death and destruction. One sad aspect of the propaganda war has been the role played by Amnesty International a […]HRI Mark
- NATO ‘protection of civilians’ – propaganda and pretence to escape war crimes trials October 4, 2011As is now well documented, the rebellion in Libya began with violent attacks on police stations, such as this one in Al-Bayda where people locked inside were reportedly burnt to death: An intensive propaganda campaign systematically distorted the facts on the ground, including in particular allegations that the Libyan airforce was bombing peaceful protestors […]HRI Mark
- Ethnic cleansing, genocide and the Tawergha September 26, 2011Human Rights Investigations has been following the situation of the Tawergha closely and here we draw the information together and find, based on the reports of witnesses, journalists and human rights workers, the situation of the Tawergha is not just one of ethnic cleansing but, according to the legal definition, genocide. HRI has grave concerns, not only f […]HRI Mark
- Will Obama veto ‘the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own?’ September 24, 2011President Barack Hussein Obama made a speech in Cairo in June 2009, which was widely hailed as marking a new beginning; as the great speech of a true humanitarian and worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Here are some key passages from that profound, deep and moving speech, which gave hope to the people of [...]HRI Mark
- High treason, barbarity and the importance of the Geneva Conventions in Libya September 22, 2011On Saturday 17th September, as reported by Al Jazeera, Ahmed Bani, the interim government’s military spokesman, said gave army personnel still loyal to Gaddafi a last chance to join the ranks of former rebel fighters: “The soldiers and officers who will not heed this last call will be accused of high treason.” The invocation of [...]HRI Mark
- The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya March 11, 2012
- Uruknet.info (middle east)
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Mathaba News ( Libya)
- Chicago Under Siege May 21, 2012NATO arrives everywhere violently. Chicago was no exception. During summit activities, city cops are enforcers. They specialize in serving wealth, power, and imperial interests. more...
- Life in Occupied Chicago May 21, 2012Through Monday, downtown residents live in occupied Chicago. Mathaba Analyst Stephen Lendman reports from the city. more...
- Green Charter Movement Activist Contest - Entry 11 May 21, 2012Another entry from USA in The GREEN WALL Activist Contest 2012. Write in a public place WWW.GREENCHARTER.COM and send us photos of evidence showing before and after, and we will publish it here more...
- Chicago Militarized for NATO May 20, 2012more...
- Israeli Police State Crimes May 20, 2012more...
- Chicago Police Crack Down on Public Ahead of NATO Summit May 20, 2012Photo: Police hit and run a man as wide spread police violence against peaceful anti-war protesters takes shape ahead of NATO military summit in Chicago more...
- Former Malaysia PM Dr Mahathir: What a `toothless` tribunal can do May 20, 2012Failure to uphold international laws has allowed nations like the US to get away with crimes against humanity, writes Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia (photo, right, with Mathaba News founder and editor, left) more...
- Homenagem à Identidade Lusa May 20, 2012Rainer Daehnhardt com o elmo de D. Sebastião more...
- Israel`s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons May 20, 2012Israel`s long known open secret is its formidable nuclear arsenal. Less is known about its chemical and biological weapons (CBW) capability. Mathaba Analyst Stephen Lendman takes a look. more...
- Ziyad Yaghi: Guilty of Being Muslim in America May 19, 2012more...
- Chicago Under Siege May 21, 2012
- Syrian Arab News Agency (sana.sy)
- Russia Dedicates Majority of Its Contribution to WFP for SyriaDAMASCUS, (SANA) – Russia, as a creditor of the UN World Food Program, decided to dedicate the majority of its remaining contributions to the Program for sending urgent humanitarian relief to Syria
- Al-Nusra Front Claims Responsibility for Suicide Bombing in Deir Ezzor DUBAI, (SANA)- A militant group called 'al-Nusra Front', which is connected with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing which targeted the city of Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria, that killed nine people and injured more than 100 others
- Syrian Community in Russia: Terrorist Attacks in Syria will not Defeat Syrian PeopleMOSCOW, (SANA) – The Syrian community in Russia condemned on Sunday the terrorist attacks witnessed in Syria, the latest of which was the terrorist bombing in Deir Ezzor province, stressing that these attacks will not defeat the determination of the Syrian people.
- Ryabkov: Situation in Syria Cannot Be Resolved by Pressuring Its GovernmentMOSCOW, (SANA) – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that during the G8 Summit in Camp David, Russia adhered to its stance which states that the situation in Syria cannot be resolved through exerting pressure via force or otherwise on the Syria government
- G8 Calls for Halting Violence in Syria, Condemns Latest Terrorist Attacks CAMP DAVID, U.S, (SANA)- The Group of 8 Summit called on all sides in Syria to immediately halt violence and carry out the plan of the UN envoy Kofi Annan
- Health Cooperation between Syria and Iran Discussed TEHRAN, SANA_ Syria and Iran on Saturday reviewed means of strengthening bilateral cooperation in health filed.
- Russia Condemns Targeting the International Observers in Syria and the Opposition's Pursuit for ArmingMOSCOW, (SANA)- Russia on Friday expressed condemnation of the terrorist attempt that targeted the international observers in Syria, saying it was aimed at foiling the plan of the UN envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan
- Gen. Mood: We Are to Find Successful Way for Deployment in Syria Thanks to Syrian Government and UN's CooperationPROVINCES, (SANA)- Head of the UN observer mission to Syria, Gen. Robert Mood, said on Friday the mission is working at finding a successful way to be deployed in Syria thanks to the advanced level of cooperation by the Syrian government, the UN Presidency and the contributor countries
- President of the European Council Stresses Important of Russia's Role in Settling the Crisis in SyriaMOSCOW, (SANA)- President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy stressed the key role Russia is playing to settle the crisis in Syria
- Tunisian Authorities: Tunisian Citizens Within Armed Terrorist groups in SyriaTUNIS, (SANA) – Tunisian authorities on Friday admitted that there are Tunisian citizens who were killed or arrested in Syria, and that they were members of the armed terrorist groups
- Russia Dedicates Majority of Its Contribution to WFP for Syria
- Occupied Palestine
- Settlers, amongst soldiers, fire live ammunition on Palestinians – Videos May 21, 2012Maan News Agency | May 21, 2012 (updated) BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli human rights group released footage on Sunday of settlers firing on Nablus-village a day earlier, and called on Israel’s military to investigate the assailants, as well as the army’s role. Settlers entered Asira al-Qibliya on Saturday and threw rocks at propertie […]occupiedpalestine
- PALESTINE NEWS | May 21, 2012 May 21, 2012LIVE BLOG ▶ PALESTINIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE | #PalHunger LIVE BLOG ▶ Commemorating 64 Years of Catastrophe in Palestine | #Nakba64 LIVE BLOG ▶ Israel Attacks Gaza May 17, 2012 & lies about it | #GazaUnderAttack continuous updated آخر الأخبار والتحديثات May 21, 2012 | 23382 Days Since Al-Nakba & Gaza has been under siege [...]occupiedpalestine
- A conference held in Netherlands to mark Nakba anniversary May 21, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 08:45 PM ] THE HAGUE (PIC)– The Palestinian community in the Netherlands held, on Saturday, a conference to mark the 64th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba in the capital Amsterdam, with the participation of the former PM of Netherlands, Dries van Agt, and with a large presence of the Palestinian community [...]occupiedpalestine
- “We hope 4th generation returns to free country” May 21, 2012Al-Qassam Website | 21-05-2012,08:37 Al Qassam website (PressTV) – Palestinian refugees want their next generation to go back home to a free “Palestinian state” and to build their country themselves, a young Palestinian refugee tells Press TV. The comment comes as Palestinians commemorated the 64th anniversary of Nakba Day on May 15; when over 750,000 […]occupiedpalestine
- Palestinian Seriously Wounded, Kept On The Ground As Soldiers Stepped on His Palms May 21, 2012Monday May 21, 2012 03:31 by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC Palestinian medical sources reported Sunday that a Palestinian youth was injured near the Etzion Israeli settlement, between Bethlehem and Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The soldiers then stepped on his palms to pose for pictures as the resident continued to bleed. Salah Sghayyar – [...]occupiedpalestine
- A researcher: 66% of Jerusalemites threatened with displacement May 20, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 08:06 PM ] OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC)– A Palestinian researcher revealed that more than two thirds of Jerusalemites owe money to the Israeli occupation’s different organs and departments. The Jerusalemite activist and researcher, Fakhri Abu Diab, said that Israeli official data showed that there are over 43 thousand debt files in […]occupiedpalestine
- PALESTINE NEWS | May 20, 2012 May 20, 2012LIVE BLOG ▶ PALESTINIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE | #PalHunger LIVE BLOG ▶ Commemorating 64 Years of Catastrophe in Palestine | #Nakba64 LIVE BLOG ▶ Israel Attacks Gaza May 17, 2012 & lies about it | #GazaUnderAttack continuous updated آخر الأخبار والتحديثات May 20, 2012 | 23381 Days Since Al-Nakba & Gaza has been under siege [...]occupiedpalestine
- Two youths injured in IOF shooting one seriously May 20, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 05:44 PM ] AL-KHALIL, (PIC)– A Palestinian teen was seriously injured near Gush Etzion settlement to the north of Al-Khalil after Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired at him. Medical sources said that the 17-year-old youth Salah Zaghir was seriously wounded in his abdomen after an Israeli soldier fired at him near [...]occupiedpalestine
- Barhoum champions third intifada to protect Aqsa and holy shrines May 20, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 05:52 PM ] GAZA, (PIC)– Spokesman of Hamas in Gaza Fawzi Barhoum has charged that the Jewish settlers’ storming of the Aqsa mosque on Sunday fell in line with the religious war waged by the Israeli occupation government against the Palestinian people. Barhoum told the PIC that the repeated visits by [...]occupiedpalestine
- Medics: Farmer shot in south Gaza, moderately injured May 20, 2012Maan News Agency | May 20, 2012 GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A young Palestinian farmer was shot by Israeli soldiers while working on his land in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, a medical official said. Waheed, 22, is in a moderate condition in Nasser hospital after suffering a bullet wound in the thigh, emergency [...]occupiedpalestine
- Settlers, amongst soldiers, fire live ammunition on Palestinians – Videos May 21, 2012
- IRNA (Iran)
- India-Iran cultural relations “extensive”: Indian Scholar May 21, 2012New Delhi, May 21, IRNA – Terming the cultural relations between India and Iran as “extensive” and “uninterrupted”, an Indian scholar Monday emphasized the need to further strengthen the ties between the two nations.-1391/03/01-16:06
- Visa not required for Bolivians willing to visit Iran for 30 days May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA - The Iranian Government has dropped visa requirement for Bolivian nationals willing to visit Iran for 30 days.-1391/03/01-16:00
- Iranian nation capable of reaching scientific peaks, president May 20, 2012Mahshahr, Khuzestan Prov, May 21, IRNA – Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here on Monday that the Iranian nation is well capable of reaching the industrial and scientific peaks in the world.-1391/03/01-13:17
- Turkish economic delegation in Iran May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – A high-ranking Turkish economic delegation arrived in Tehran on Monday.-1391/03/01-11:55
- Iran’s Red Crescent to dispatch humanitarian aid to Syria May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – Head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society Abolhassan Faqih said Iran will shortly send humanitarian aid to Syria.-1391/03/01-11:46
- Ban underlines need to preserve marine biodiversity May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message on the International Day for Biological Diversity, May 22, 2012, while warning that between 30 and 35 per cent of critical marine environments are estimated to have been destroyed called for national and international actions to preserve marine biodiversity.-1391/03/01-11:24
- Headlines in major Iranian newspapers May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – The following headlines appeared in major Iranian dailies on Monday:-1391/03/01-09:52
- Amano arrives in Tehran May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA -- Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, arrived in Tehran on Monday.-1391/03/01-06:30
- President: No distance between govt., Majlis May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says there is no distance between Majlis and government.-1391/03/01-00:47
- Amano positive about Tehran visit May 21, 2012Vienna, May 21, IRNA -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, says he is positive about visiting Iran.-1391/03/01-00:25
- India-Iran cultural relations “extensive”: Indian Scholar May 21, 2012
- Press Tv
- 'Iran's Army to stage drill in Isfahan' May 21, 2012Commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan has announced the army’s plans for a military drill in the central province of Isfahan.
- Olympics made no boon to UK small firms May 21, 2012Small British companies say the government is shutting them out of the Olympics trade boost despite earlier ‘selling’ the games to taxpayers as an economic boon.
- China's oil imports from Iran up 53.2 pct May 21, 2012China's oil imports from Iran have increased by 53.2 percent in April to 388,034 barrels per day (bpd) from 253,302 bpd a month earlier, Chinese customs data shows.
- US military trainers attacked in Yemen May 21, 2012Gunmen have attacked three US Coast Guard trainers in western Yemen, injuring one, Yemeni security officials say.
- China urges trust-building in P5+1 talks May 21, 2012China has urged all parties involved in the upcoming talks between Iran and six major world powers in Baghdad to make efforts to “build up mutual trust.”
- Chemicals risk at UK air base uncovered May 21, 2012Military authorities at Britain’s RAF Kinloss army base in Scotland have kept silent on the risk of chemical weapons contamination at the base, which is shortly to host more than 900 army personnel.
- Iran rally slams KSA-Bahrain merger bid May 21, 2012Hundreds of Iranian university students have staged a rally to protest against a bid for the merger of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Press TV reports.
- Brotherhood candidate tops expat polls May 21, 2012The Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate in Egypt, Mohammed Mursi, sweeps the country's expatriates votes, securing 40 percent of the ballot.
- ‘Warmonger’ cries disrupt Blair speech May 21, 2012Protesters have interrupted a commencement speech by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Colby College in Maine, the US, where he was advising audience to serve others.
- 96 Yemeni people killed in Sana’a May 21, 2012At least 96 Yemeni people, including soldiers, have been killed in a bomb attack carried out in the capital, Sana’a.
- 'Iran's Army to stage drill in Isfahan' May 21, 2012
- Globalresearch (US)
- The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III July 14, 2012The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.
- Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation May 28, 2012The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination... Eventually all major regions of the World will be affected.
- SUPERPOWER: Behind the Scenes of America’s National Security Apparatus May 24, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Down but Not Defeated: Why the Truth Must be Told May 23, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Chicago: cops start preemptive arrests on the eve of NATO Summit May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Police violence in Chicago May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Chicago NATO Protests May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- NATO. "1984" Revisited. When "War is Peace" May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Social Nightmare Foretold if Greece Heads for Euro Exit May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Islamophobia: Washington’s "New Colonialism" May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III July 14, 2012
- Globalresearch TV
- Appelle à réfléchir à la désobéissance civile contre la Loi matraque May 18, 2012 grtv
- Montréal: Quelle place pour les médias? What is the Role of Media? May 17, 2012 grtv
- Pentagon Talks Peace, Then Arms Syria Rebels Via Gulf Allies May 17, 2012 grtv
- Toronto 9/11 Hearings: Uncovering 10 Years of Deception (Trailer) May 16, 2012 grtv
- Home Not So Sweet: Foreclosure & Debt Push Americans to Extremes May 16, 2012 grtv
- Alex Jones Infowars
- Teacher Yells At Student: Criminal Offense to Criticize Obama May 21, 2012Paul Joseph Watson | Disturbing trend of Obama cult of personality in school system continues.paul
- As The Elite Fences Itself In, Kissinger Announces Order Out Of Chaos May 21, 2012Jurriaan Maessen | Kissinger: social upheaval and mass civil unrest to be used as a means of merging the US into an “international system”.kurtnimmo
- Homeland Security in the Land of the Free May 21, 2012Sartre | Remember Tiananmen Square before yet another Kent State becomes routine.kurtnimmo
- Recovery or Collapse? Bet on Collapse May 21, 2012Paul Craig Roberts | The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.steve_watson
- Jim Cramer Is Predicting Bank Runs In Spain And Italy And Financial Anarchy Throughout Europe May 21, 2012The Economic Collapse | During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that "financial anarchy" is coming to Europe.steve_watson
- Why Mankind Is Screwed: The People Are Children, And Leaders Are Fathers May 21, 2012Saman Mohammadi | Barack Obama is a Father Figure to his naive, blind, and delusional followers.steve_watson
- The Top 50 Excuses For Not Prepping May 21, 2012The American Dream | With the way that things are heading in this country, it is not surprising that there are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today.steve_watson
- Obama: The Groomed from Birth Dictator May 21, 2012Infowars.com | Alex talks about the continued and long overdue outing of Kenyan-born Obama the imposter.steve_watson
- Barack Obama: A Foundation Operative! May 21, 2012Infowars.com | Alex covers the global elite on the run as the establishment media is forced to report on the Bilderbergers.steve_watson
- Judge in 9/11 Case at Guantanamo Weighs Splitting up Defendants and Holding Multiple Trials May 21, 2012NY Daily News | Ten years later, still trying to pretend that the government didn't stage the attacks.undergrowth
- Teacher Yells At Student: Criminal Offense to Criticize Obama May 21, 2012
- Veteranstoday.com (US)
- Homeland Security in the Land of the Free May 21, 2012The horror stories about the Transportation Security Administration are indisputable. In the post 911 environment, civil liberties routinely ignored or eliminated, become a mere memory in a country that once prided itself as the beacon of freedom for the entire world. The TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA, the Federal Emergency [...]SARTRE
- Hafez Aladdeen is an Israeli Patriot May 21, 2012When Cohen attempts to bond with his protagonist Dictator Aladeen, he actually speaks in his mother tongue, Hebrew. Cohen speaks Hebrew because Aladeen is not an Arab dictator, he is actually an Israeli patriot like Cohen himself.Gilad Atzmon
- US Declares ‘Total War’ on Islam May 21, 2012By Dr. Ismail Salami In an organized act of brutality, a number of US soldiers went on a house-to-house shooting spree in Zangabad village, Kandahar in March and massacred 16 people including nine children while they were sleeping and all Washington had to say were a few words of condolence and apology nonchalantly strung together [...]Dr. Ismail Salami
- Cross Talk : Farewell Israel? May 21, 2012Is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end?Veterans Today
- NATO – Rogue Arm Of America’s War Machine Must Be Dismantled May 20, 2012There is much to both question and criticize about NATO but primary is the fact that America has created an international organization that is not answerable to international or constitutional laws and is still mired in a cold war mentality.Allen L Roland
- Life in Occupied Chicago May 20, 2012Secret Service agents, NORTHCOM and National Guard forces, as well as thousands of state and local police seem everywhere.Stephen Lendman
- Screw Religion! Go With God May 20, 2012This is another column exploring the evil sway of scientism, not science, that dominates worldwide behavior.Tom Valentine
- 9/11 and Islamophobia May 20, 2012My Recent Comment on Prof. Richard Falk's Blog Highlighting the Failures of the Mainstream Media to Cover the Hunger Strike Aimed a Calling Attention to Israel's Violations of the Universal Human Rights of Palestinians.Anthony Hall
- NATO Vulture Culture May 20, 2012Russian Aurora has discharged a preemptive salvo against the Atlantic freedom vultures in America, which have camped out at sweet home Chicago. No, it wasn’t another Bolshevik mutiny at the legendary cruiser in St Petersburg; it was an audacious Russian think tank, Institute for Foreign Policy Research & Initiatives, www.invissin.ru that boarded ritzy Ma […]Col. Eugene Khrushchev
- Evil, Madness, and Blind Spots: Two New Books on Psychopathy Leave their Selective Empathy Showing May 20, 2012So let us ask Dr. Baron-Cohen: What part of the Jewish brain is malfunctioning to produce this widespread empathy-deficit disorder?Kevin Barrett
- Homeland Security in the Land of the Free May 21, 2012
- The Daily Bail ( US )
- VIDEO - Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Commercial: "It's Halftime in America" February 7, 2012 DailyBail
- Fed Prez Who Owns Over $1 Million in Gold, Greek Bailout May Have To Be $19.7 Billion Higher, How The Government Manufactures Low Unemployment Numbers (LINKS) February 6, 2012Fed Prez Who Owns Over $1 Million in Gold Greek Bailout May Have to Be $19.7 Billion Higher Greece misses another bailout deadline - Reuters Foreclosure deal deadline arrives, not all states are...DailyBail
- VIDEO - Rand Paul Introduces Amendment To Force Former Elected Officials To Forfeit ALL Benefits If They Become Lobbyists February 4, 2012Video - Sen. Rand Paul on the Senate Floor - Jan. 31, 2012 This law is approximately 40 years overdue, and it took a neophyte Senator to be the first to propose such legislation in the history of...DailyBail
- Nigel Farage: 'For Greece It's Diplomacy At Gunpoint, And Portugal Is Next' February 4, 2012Video - Nigel Farage - Feb. 1, 2012 Transcript "Well, Congratulations everybody. Davud Cameron had you worried for a bit. You thought he was even a eurosceptic. But it's okay, you had a quiet word...DailyBail
- Bailout Battle - The IMF vs. Germany, Banking Giant HSBC Accused Of Laundering Billions, Yale Discovers A Fungus That Eats Plastic (LINKS) February 4, 2012Counterfeit Value Derivatives: Follow the Bouncing Ball Bailout Battle - The IMF vs. Germany Summary of Bernanke's testimony before Congress Bernanke: Deficit reduction must be top priority 47...DailyBail
- Alexander Higgins Blog
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- Asian Times
- Riddle of the Scarborough Shoals May 18, 2012In the matter of the Scarborough Shoal mess, the Philippines started it and the infamous Chinese nine-dash line encompassing almost the entire South China Sea looks like an audacious claim drawn from an appetite for aggression. A closer look reveals that there is some genuine method to Beijing's madness, and a chance that gas and greed, rather than inte […]
- THE ROVING EYE : NATO occupies sweet home Chicago May 18, 2012The North Atlantic Treaty Organization hopes that If you can't beat them in Pashtunistan, you can at least corral them in the home of the blues, with NATO's Chicago summit planned to instill in members the "common values" behind drone warfare and base expansion. As riot police lock down the city, some partners likely fear they've mar […]
- US Iran hawks in some disarray May 18, 2012Hopes by Iran hawks for the United States Congress to provide enough ammunition to threaten Iran with a military strike on the eve of critical talks over Tehran's nuclear program have fallen unexpectedly short. The House has retracted its talons, while over in the Senate a new sanctions bill was blocked by Republicans because it wasn't sufficiently […]
- Tehran: To talk or not to talk May 18, 2012The possibility of direct talks between the United States and Iran emerged in January when new sanctions gave the White House political cover to revert to a policy of engagement. However, Tehran's profound mistrust of American sincerity hampers progress. The only sensible way forward is to let bygones be bygones and work through an intermediary such as […]
- The 'illogic' of China's North Korea policy May 18, 2012China's refusal to use its leverage as North Korea's friend and protector to halt its provocations strengthens the United States alliance system that Beijing considers a tool of encirclement. As Pyongyang blithely continues with missile launches and other acts that undermine China in the international arena, it seems hard to image a policy more dam […]
- BOOK REVIEW : Cherry-picking from China's success May 18, 2012What the US Can Learn from China by Ann Lee This book forces the reader to confront China's growth in the midst of America's decline, drawing attention to the reasons US politics became too self-serving, too short-sighted and too partisan. The author doesn't argue the Chinese approach is flawless, but she does hold up China's single-minde […]
- SPEAKING FREELY : Nepal's constitution: Respect the dissenters May 18, 2012The transition to a new constitution and the rule of law cannot be achieved overnight (South Africa's model constitution was seven years in the making). Yet the rush to get Nepal's new code into shape has been seemly, with the result that it will not have legitimacy, simply because politicians have failed to hear the dissenting voices of the people […]
- China's start-ups hold global potential May 18, 2012Western opinion has largely greeted China's early attempts at innovation with skepticism. Yet companies such as Tsing Capital and Chrysalix Venture Capital are discovering entrepreneurs whose concepts represent a potential next wave of innovative technologies that could impact the world. - Benjamin A Shobert
- US gives green light to investment in Myanmar May 18, 2012The United States is to permit investment by US companies in Myanmar, while a ban will remain on imports from the still largely military-run country. Critics say the move is too early, with armed conflict still raging in the north, and will inevitably benefit human-rights abusers.- Carey L Biron
- IT WORLD : Facebook floats May 18, 2012Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now officially worth close to US$20 billion after successfully bringing off the initial public offering for his young social network site. Fans keen to grab a piece of the company may have to pay 50% more than the initial price when the shares start trading Friday. Martin J Young surveys the week's developments in com […]
- Riddle of the Scarborough Shoals May 18, 2012
- RT (Russia today)
- Assange Episode 6: Ecuador’s fight against its media vultures May 21, 2012 RT
- Princess grieves Russian millionaire toy boy’s death May 21, 2012 RT
- Facebook IPO gains to exceed commodity profits of Russian moguls May 21, 2012 RT
- New ‘network’ party aims to replace United Russia May 21, 2012 RT
- Russian government approved, only quarter of ministers stay May 21, 2012 RT
- Cut oil dependency before too late - former Finance Minister Kudrin May 21, 2012 RT
- Tragedy: Robin Gibb loses cancer battle May 21, 2012 RT
- Transgender beauty drops out of contest still a winner May 21, 2012 RT
- Russians dedicate ice hockey world gold to late Yaroslavl team May 21, 2012 RT
- Olympic movement – not! Gridlocked London puts brakes on Games May 21, 2012 RT
- RIA Novosti ( World News Russia )
- Azerbaijan Responds to Iran Eurovision Criticism May 21, 2012
- Turkish Intelligence Foils Kidnapping of Syrian Opposition Army Chief May 21, 2012
- Defects Spotted in Ukrainian Armored Vehicles for Iraq May 21, 2012
- Search for SuperJet Black Box Goes On – UAC May 21, 2012
- Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash in Indonesia May 21, 2012
- Suicide Bomber Kills 96 at Yemen Military Parade May 21, 2012
- G8 Join Efforts to Cut Short-Lived Climate Pollutants May 21, 2012
- G8 Summit at Camp David 2012 May 21, 2012
- Myanmar to Rebuild 'Death Railway' May 21, 2012
- Viktor Bout case May 21, 2012
- American free press.net
- Foreign Wars Could Send Hoards of Third Worlders to our Shores in Coming Decades May 14, 2012News Item...
- Middle Class at a Crossroads May 14, 2012News Item...
- Students Living the American Nightmare May 14, 2012News Item...
- All the Terrorism That’s Fit to Invent May 7, 2012News Item...
- Inside the Murky World of International Arms Smuggling May 7, 2012News Item...
- Foreign Wars Could Send Hoards of Third Worlders to our Shores in Coming Decades May 14, 2012
- Gerald Celente.com(US) financial research
- Gerald Celente – The Gary Null Show – May 18, 2012 May 18, 201218 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – Morning news with Tony Cruise – May 16, 2012 May 16, 201216 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – Goldseek Radio – May 16, 2012 May 16, 201216 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – Brian Sussman KFSO – May 15, 2012 May 15, 201215 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente — Capital Account — 14 May 2012 May 14, 201214 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – The Gary Null Show – May 18, 2012 May 18, 2012
- Middle East Monitor (UK)
- Arab League head visits Sudan to discuss crisis with the South and Darfur developments May 21, 2012The Secretary General of the Arab League, Dr. Nabil Al-Arabi, arrived in Sudan on Sunday for discussions with President Omar Al-Bashir and senior Sudanese officials. The agenda will cover the crisis with South Sudan and the latest political and security developments in Darfur. A press release from the Arab League revealed that Al-Arabi had a meeting on Frida […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- SA university pulls plug on Israeli Embassy May 21, 2012South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) has pulled the plug on the Israeli deputy ambassador to South Africa, Yaakov Finkelstein. This is yet another blow to Israel-South Africa relations that have recently become tense. Finkelstein was due to speak at UKZN later on today, Monday (21 May 2012), but yesterday afternoon, UKZN's Deputy Vice […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Nablus schoolgirls display handicrafts May 19, 2012EXCLUSIVE PICTURES Schoolgirls from the Muhammad Tufaha School in Nablus have held a craft exhibition under the title "Flowers of Spring", which featured their work from across the academic year. The exhibition was supervised by craft instructor Maha Al-Qadomi and was attended by local officials, parents and students. Many of the exhibits underline […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Egypt's new role in the future of Palestine May 18, 2012Recently, millions of Egyptians crowded round TV sets in Cairo to watch two presidential candidates debate their country's future. For citizens more used to having a political system imposed on them than joining in the discussion, they seem to have adapted quickly. Cheers and applause broke out as the candidates each exploited their opponent's weak […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Amelia Smith)
- Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails: Their legal status and their rights May 18, 2012Introduction The status of prisoners of war is a very complicated issue in international humanitarian law. Many people think - wrongly - that all of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are to be considered as prisoners of war. International humanitarian law, in particular the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and its protocols, gives a very precise defi […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Dr Abdulrahman Muhammad Ali)
- Why the BBC must change May 18, 2012Love it or hate it, the BBC is perhaps the most powerful media institution in the world. Not even the Murdoch empire in its heyday matched the scale and impact of the BBC's operations. Yet, in the last week, it has suffered two embarrassing setbacks in the aftermath of which its funders, the British public, are entitled to a change of policy. For almost […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Dr. Daud Abdullah)
- Jewish settlers break into Al-Aqsa with government minister and Knesset members May 18, 2012A group of illegal Jewish settlers, accompanied by an Israeli government minister and a number of members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), broke into the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday morning, 17 May, amid a state of alert and while being heavily guarded by Israeli occupation forces. Mahmoud Abu Atta, a spokesman for the Al-Aqsa for Endowment […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- BBC poll ranks Israel third in list of worst countries worldwide May 18, 2012A poll conducted by the BBC World Service has ranked Israel in third place among the worst countries in the world, keeping company with North Korea and only just ahead of Iran and Pakistan. The results of the global poll, organised by the BBC and covering 22 countries, showed that Israel stands among the countries with the most negative influence on the worl […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Growing racism in Israel May 18, 2012A report on Israel radio has revealed that manifestations of racial discrimination are widespread across Israeli society. The racism is particularly evident between Jews and Arabs, but there is also evidence of racism between Jews themselves and against African refugees who come to work in Israel. The report noted instances of attempted arson attacks on buil […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Knesset bill will prohibit Nakba Day ceremonies in educational institutions May 17, 2012Hebrew media sources have revealed the extent of support in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, for a law which would ban the commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) in Israeli universities and educational institutions. Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the Chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, Alex Miller, is behind the introduction of t […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Arab League head visits Sudan to discuss crisis with the South and Darfur developments May 21, 2012
- Commondreams.com (US)
- Nearly 100 Soldiers Dead, 300 Wounded in Yemen Blast May 21, 2012Reports indicate a single suicide bomber who detonated powerful explosives amid a crowd of soldiers rehearsing for an upcoming parade in Yemen's capital city of Sanaa left at least 96 dead and perhaps 300 or more wounded. "We are hearing reports that 96 people were killed and many more injured. There have been requests for blood donations and the d […]jon
- Drones of Its Own: NATO Signs Deal with Northrup Grumman for 'Global Surveillance Capabilities' May 21, 2012 jon
- NAACP Endorses Same-Sex Marriage May 20, 2012The NAACP on Saturday resolved to support same-sex marriage by voting to affirm marriage equality as a civil right. (photo: sushiesque) read moreandrea
- Shut Down the War Marchine!: Thousands in Anti-NATO Rally May 20, 2012 andrea
- At G8 France's Hollande Pushes Against the Austerity Drive May 20, 2012 andrea
- Chicago Police Hold Occupy Activists on State Terrorism Charges With Dubious Evidence May 19, 2012The City of Chicago has filed charges against three Occupy activists, Jared Chase, Brent Beterly, and Brian Jacob Church, including possession of explosives or incendiary devices, material support for terrorism, and conspiracy. Chicago police during anti-NATO protests. (photo: Mikasi) read moreandrea
- 25,000 Rally Against Austerity in Germany May 19, 2012 andrea
- How Twitter Mapped a ‘Covert’ US Drone Operation in Yemen May 19, 2012The local press was quickly at the scene but Twitter broke the story first. Though the hour was late, Yemen’s social media was still very much awake. A US drone’s missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants. read moreandrea
- 'An Economy for the 99%': People's G8 Demands 'Robin Hood Tax' May 18, 2012See below for livestream and Twitter updates... Thousands of protesters are in Chicago today for a "People's G8" in a call led by National Nurses United (NNU) to demand an economy for the 99% and heal the "financial traumas faced by real people at the hands of Wall Street." read more […]andrea
- The Organic Watergate: Alarming Report Reveals USDA's Cozy Relationship with Corporate Agribusinesses in 'Organics' May 18, 2012Today, the Cornucopia Institute released a report titled The Organic Watergate, revealing widespread corruption in the USDA's organic food monitoring panel -- the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). read morejacob
- Nearly 100 Soldiers Dead, 300 Wounded in Yemen Blast May 21, 2012
- surgar.net ( Afghanistan)
- Iran finance minister: 'Rest assured' record oil prices over nuclear sanctions May 21, 2012
- Al-Qaeda attack' on Yemen army parade causes carnage May 21, 2012
- Suicide blast 'kills 10' at Afghan checkpoint in Khost May 19, 2012
- SpaceX Dragon ship aborts launch May 19, 2012
- Dubai Customs foils 19 smuggling bids May 16, 2012
- Washington Independent.com
- Navigating anti-abortion online strategy February 7, 2012Updated: 6:15 p.m. EST with a clarified quote*. In the seemingly endless war over abortion rights in America, battles are waged in legislatures, in courts and, most recently, on the Internet. The strategy of using abortion-related keywords to send a woman searching the web for abortion information More...Sofia Resnick
- FCC to modernize low-income broadband Internet access program January 10, 2012On Monday, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski announced changes that would modernize the agency’s Lifeline program to give greater broadband Internet access to low-income Americans. Lifeline has traditionally provided “discounts on one basic monthly telephone service (wireline or wireless) for qualified subscribers.” While announci […]Marcos Restrepo
- Local Michigan county wants to force meds on HIV criminal suspect January 10, 2012Sangeeta Ghosh, assistant corporate counsel for Kent County, Mich., says should the 51-year-old man charged in two cases of failing to disclose his HIV-positive status to sexual partners make bail, the county is prepared to ask a court to force him to take antiretroviral medications. “The county is More...Todd Heywood
- Michigan Rep. Hoogendyk preparing to challenge Upton in 6th Congressional District? January 10, 2012Former Michigan state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk is likely to announce next week that he will challenge Congressman Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph) in the GOP primary in August. Hoogendyk unsuccessfully challenged Upton for the seat two years ago, when he was able to garner only 43 percent of the vote, More...Todd Heywood
- Right-wing think tank leaks salaries of Florida public employees via new website January 9, 2012The Foundation for Government Accountability debuted a new website Monday — an online database of the salaries of Florida’s public employees: FloridaOpenGov.org. The website is almost a replica of a project by Foundation President Tarren Bragdon at his last place of employment, the Maine Heritage Policy Center. More...Ashley Lopez
- Ski industry exploited ‘lax regulatory environment’ under Bush, says former Forest Service official January 9, 2012Going to court may be “the best way” to resolve a dispute over water rights between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Ski Areas Association, according to a former Forest Service ski area permit coordinator. “Frankly, litigation may be the best way forward on this issue,” Ed Ryerson More...Troy Hooper
- Arkansas AG stops anti-abortion group from introducing ‘personhood’ bill January 9, 2012Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has blocked the state’s Personhood affiliate from introducing a bill that would define life from the moment of conception, on the grounds that it is “too vague” as written. Though “fetal personhood” measures across the country have been criticized for that very reason, Personhood Arkansas More...Virginia Chamlee
- New Florida bill would outlaw gender- and race-based abortions January 9, 2012With the beginning of session only days away, Florida legislators have been busy filing a slew of anti-abortion bills. Add yet another to the list: a measure outlawing race- and gender-based abortions. The bill was filed by state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood. House Bill 1327, or the “Susan B. More...Ashley Lopez
- News anchor, anti-abortion activist to be the ‘face’ of Minnesota anti-gay marriage amendment January 9, 2012Kalley King Yanta, a former anchor for a Minneapolis-based television station and an anti-abortion-rights activist, has joined the Minnesota for Marriage group to anchor videos intended to convince Minnesotans to vote for the anti-gay-marriage amendment on the ballot in 2012. The videos — and Yanta — have come under More...Andy Birkey
- Media analysis: Grand Rapids HIV criminal case spurs ‘sensationalist’ reporting January 9, 2012An alleged admission by a 51-year-old Comstock Park, Mich., man that he attempted to infect hundreds of people with HIV through unprotected sexual activity and needle-sharing has sparked a media feeding frenzy, which HIV activists and legal experts have roundly censured as “sensationalist.” In spite of the national condemnation, More...Todd Heywood
- Navigating anti-abortion online strategy February 7, 2012
- AllAfrica news
- Africa: G8 to Poor Countries - It's Not You, It's Me May 21, 2012[Oxfam] As the Camp David G8 Summit winds down, international agency Oxfam criticized G8 leaders for failing to renew measurable funding and policy commitments to help address global food security. Leaders were unwilling to continue current efforts to invest in developing country agriculture, even as they set a new goal of helping 50 million people lift them […]
- Somalia: Multiple Explosions in Mogadishu Kill 8 May 21, 2012[Garowe Online] Mogadishu - Multiple explosions in Mogadishu's busy Bakara market and another blast in east Mogadishu killed 8 and injured more than 15 on Saturday, Radio Garowe reports.
- Tanzania: NGOs Push for More Budget On Maternal Health May 21, 2012[Daily News] SOME 35 NGOs have teamed up to petition the government, urging it to allocate adequate budget for maternal and newborn health during the 2012/2013 financial year.
- Egypt: Pro-Revolution Candidates Fail to Unite May 21, 2012[Aswat Masriya] Cairo - Campaign of presidential candidate Hisham Bastawisi denied reports that he may withdraw for another candidate, insisting on his intention to run the race until the end.
- Somalia: Violent Clashes Erupt in Somaliland May 20, 2012[UN News] The United Nations envoy in Somalia, Augustine P. Mahiga, today expressed concern over recent violent clashes in the northern city of Hargeisa, located in Somaliland, between Somaliland security forces and citizens which allegedly resulted in the deaths on both sides.
- Sudan: Security First, Bashir Tells Mbeki May 20, 2012[Sudan Tribune] Khartoum - The chairman of the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) saw little change in Khartoum's position regarding the resumption of negotiations with Juba during his talks today with Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir.
- Ethiopia: How Meles Rules The Country May 21, 2012[African Arguments] Meles Zenawi is the cleverest and most engaging president in Africa - at least when he talks to visiting outsiders. When he speaks to his fellow Ethiopians, he is severe and dogmatic.
- South Sudan: Juba Calls for 'Steep' Sanctions On Sudan Over Abyei May 21, 2012[Sudan Tribune] Juba - South Sudan on Sunday said it is time the international community imposes "steep sanctions" on the government of neighbouring Sudan for its "deliberate" failure to comply with a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for an end to hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of troops from the contested region of […]
- South Africa: Secrecy Bill Amendments On the Cards May 21, 2012[West Cape News] MPs are set to invite the Department of State Security to debate proposed changes made by political parties to the controversial Protection of State Information Bill.
- Libya: Nation Votes for the First Time in Four Decades May 21, 2012[AEP] Libyans are scheduled to go to the polls in June 2012 to elect 200 members of the National Public Conference in the country's first democratic elections since Col. Muammar Gaddafi took the reign of power in 1969.
- Africa: G8 to Poor Countries - It's Not You, It's Me May 21, 2012
- The Jakarta Post.com (Indonesia)
- Michelle Obama, NATO spouses visit youth center May 21, 2012At the tender age of 11, Cecilia Moseley already appears versed in the virtues of fitness. But she was left star-struck Sunday after first lady Michelle Obama and an audience of global leaders ...
- US prison riot leaves guard dead, 8 hurt May 21, 2012Authorities say a guard was killed and, at one point, hostages were taken during a riot at a Mississippi prison that holds illegal immigrants.The Sunday riot at the privately run prison in southwest ...
- Italy quake victims wake in cars, tents, schools May 21, 2012Residents of a quake-struck area of northeast Italy woke up in their cars, tents and in school gyms Monday as aftershocks continued following a magnitude-6.0 earthquake that killed seven people and ...
- Italian dad throws kids off balcony, jumps; 3 dead May 21, 2012Police in northern Italy say a father has thrown his two young children to their deaths from a sixth floor apartment balcony before jumping to his death.Brescia police spokeswoman Nicoletta Di Maio ...
- Late Bee Gee Robin Gibb hailed in Britain May 21, 2012One day after he succumbed to cancer, Bee Gee Robin Gibb was hailed in his native Britain Monday as a master musician whose interests went far beyond the recording studio.The distinctive singer, who ...
- Indonesia to send spa therapists to Italy May 21, 2012Indonesia will send spa therapists to work in Italy's tourist industry, with Arbatax Park Resort, an Italian business, agreeing to pay 1,000 euros per month (US$1272) to each Indonesian spa worker it ...
- AJI to bring murder case to UN May 21, 2012The Independent Journalists Alliance (AJI) is planning to report the murder case of Bernas daily journalist Fuad Muhammad Syarifuddin, also known as Udin, to the United Nations.“Should the case ...
- Russian leader Putin names new Cabinet May 21, 2012Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a new Cabinet, warning that it will have to fulfill its duties in a difficult global economic climate.Putin, who won a third term in March's election, ...
- Al-Jazeera to launch 2 sports channels in US May 21, 2012Al-Jazeera says it will launch two sports channels in the United States in August.The Qatar-based broadcaster says it plans to show league football from Spain, France and Italy as well as the Copa ...
- NTT parents protest scholarship cuts May 21, 2012Parents are protesting a decision by SDN Mutis state elementary school in Timor Tengah Utara, East Nusa Tenggara, to reduce its scholarship stipends for underprivileged students.SDN Mutis principal ...
- Michelle Obama, NATO spouses visit youth center May 21, 2012
- todayszaman.com (Turkey)
- Israel denies plans to deploy commandos to Greek Cyprus May 20, 2012A spokesperson from the Israel Foreign Ministry refuted an Anatolia news agency news report which said the Israeli president has requested permission to deploy at least 20,000 soldiers to Greek Cyprus in exchange for building a gas terminal on the island.todayszaman.com
- Suicide bomber kills at least 63 Yemeni soldiers in Sanaa May 20, 2012A suicide bomber killed 63 soldiers at a military parade rehearsal in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Monday, a police source said.AP/REUTERS
- Public bus attacked with Molotov cocktail in İstanbul May 20, 2012A group of masked assailants threw a Molotov cocktail onto a public bus along the Taksim-Osmanbey route when the bus stopped at a red light near the Okmeydanı Şark Kahvesi, setting the bus on fire, in İstanbul's Şişli district on Sunday.Today's Zaman
- Six İskenderun students drown during picnic event May 20, 2012Six teenagers attending a picnic organized by a district Quran course drowned over the weekend in İskenderun, Hatay, when they were swept away by strong currents after going for a swim in the sea.Today's Zaman
- Protesters threaten to attack Turkish firms if Hashemi not handed over May 19, 2012Turkish-Iraqi ties have been further strained after the burning of a Turkish flag during a protest near the Turkish Consulate General in Basra on Saturday and threats by protesters against Turkish firms operating in the city.Today's Zaman
- Clashes in Beirut after army kills anti-Assad group members May 20, 2012Residents of a Beirut suburb fired heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at each other on Sunday, the latest violence to raise fears that Syria's turmoil was spilling over the border into its neighbour.Reuters
- One officer killed, five wounded in clashes with PKK May 20, 2012A special ops team officer was killed and five other security personnel were wounded in a clash with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Kulp district of Diyarbakır province on Monday.todayszaman.com
- Turkish police detain three for plotting to abduct Syrian defector May 20, 2012Turkish police on Monday detained three people, including two Turks, for their suspected involvement in a plot to abduct a defected Syrian colonel who fled to Turkey.todayzaman.com
- Turkish prime minister arrives in Pakistan for talks May 20, 2012Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad late on Sunday as the formal guest of his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani.todayszaman.com
- Syria briefly shuts down border gate with Turkey over clashes May 19, 2012Syria briefly closed its Bab al-Hawa border gate with Turkey on Saturday, apparently because of a military operation carried out by Syrian troops against a village near the border.Aydın Albayrak
- Israel denies plans to deploy commandos to Greek Cyprus May 20, 2012
- hurriyetdailynews.com (Turkey)
- May 19 celebrations are better this way May 18, 2012We used to watch the ceremonies on May 19, the Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day with much interest and enjoyment.
- Space camp a favorite among world’s children May 20, 2012One of three space camps in the world, Space Camp Turkey in İzmir is already booked full for this summer...
- Bardo museum reopens in Tunis May 20, 2012The Bardo Museum in Tunisia’s capital, renowned for its exceptional collection of ancient mosaics...
- Di Matteo enjoys his glory night - it might be his last May 20, 2012Caretaker coach Roberto Di Matteo leads Chelsea to the club’s first-ever Champions League title...
- ‘The Dictator’: When racist replaces racy May 21, 2012Once one of the best comedians in the world and a crusader fighting the ignorance ...
- Egypt expats favor mild Islamist May 20, 2012Former member of the Egyptian Brotherhood Abolfotoh leads in the presidential elections held by Egyptian embassies abroad, according to partial results.
- Uludere and politics as a conspiracy May 20, 2012Uludere was a terrible event and has been a controversial issue from the beginning. Now, there is a new controversy concerning U.S. involvement ...
- The wrong guys did something good again! May 20, 2012Saturday was May 19, the 93rd anniversary of the beginning of Turkey’s War of Liberation by the country’s visionary founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
- Inflation risk is not an illusion May 20, 2012Shall the world economy be able to return to reasonable growth rates again without entering a new inflationary era?
- A new political face for Greece? May 20, 2012The results of the Greek general elections of May 6 produced no clear winner and the negotiations among the parties that entered ...
- May 19 celebrations are better this way May 18, 2012
- Buenos Aires Herald
- European shares bounce back from five-month lows May 21, 2012European shares bounced back from five-month lows today as investors bought into some stocks and sectors that had been particularly badly hit in the previous week's sell-off.
- Aftershocks rattle Italy, residents sleep outdoors May 21, 2012Thousands of people in northern Italy slept in tents and cars overnight as more than 100 aftershocks rocked the area hit by a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that killed seven people and inflicted heavy damage to centuries-old cultural sites.
- Strauss-Kahn investigators open group rape inquiry May 21, 2012French prosecutors said today they had opened an inquiry into allegations of group rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and three friends, as part of an investigation into his ties to a suspected prostitution ring in the northern city of Lille.
- Euro area bonds to be discussed at informal EU summit May 21, 2012French President Francois Hollande and like-minded euro zone leaders are expected to promote the idea of mutualised European debt at an informal summit in Brussels this week, increasing pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to drop her opposition to the proposal.
- Italy vote to tap austerity anger, gauge political shift May 21, 2012Italy is likely to register a strong protest vote against belt-tightening in local elections that will provide a fresh snapshot of Europe's changing political landscape a year ahead of a national ballot.
- Scioli rejects rumours of 'rifts' with CFK, says he is not campaigning May 20, 2012
- British nuke sub on her way to Malvinas, UK newspaper May 20, 2012British nuke submarine HMS Talent was dispatched last night to the Malvinas Islands with Tomahawk warheads on what could be a warning signal to Argentina, according to UK’s sensationalist tabloid The Sun.
- Spain: Companies 'need to think twice before investing in Argentina' May 20, 2012
- UN seeks Iran nuclear deal before Baghdad talks May 20, 2012The UN nuclear supervisor flies to Tehran looking for a deal to inspect suspected weapons sites - a potential breakthrough that Iran may hope could persuade the West to start lifting sanctions and deflect threats of war.
- Cobos says Mariotto 'is putting limits on Scioli' May 20, 2012Former Vice-President Julio Cobos said he believes Buenos Aires governor Daniel Scioli “is the most presidential candidate in the Justicialist Party,” therefore his deputy governor “tries to put bumps in the road.”
- European shares bounce back from five-month lows May 21, 2012
- Venezuelanalysis.com
- Venezuelan Authorities Regain Control of La Planta Prison after Violence May 19, 2012 tamara
- Venezuelan Economy Growing Ahead of 2012 Expectations May 18, 2012Venezuela's economy grew 5.6% in the first quarter of 2012 confirmed planning and finance minister Jorge Giordani and Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) president Nelson Merentes on Thursday. read moreewan
- Germany Asks European Union to Step Up Support for Venezuela’s Opposition May 18, 2012A German news website has revealed that the German government has been pushing for Eurozone countries to adopt a more active role in backing the current Venezuelan opposition coalition, the Roundtable of Democratic Unity (MUD), in the run up to this year’s presidential elections. read moreewan
- Tourism to Venezuela Increases by 49.5% in 2012 May 18, 2012A total of 312,725 international tourists have visited Venezuela between January and April 2012, a figure which represents almost a 50% increase compared with the same period last year. read moreewan
- Millions of Venezuelan Workers Now Eligible for Social Security May 17, 2012The government has revealed that there are about 3.7 million independent workers in Venezuela who could potentially benefit from the reforms to the Law on Social Security in Venezuela, enacted on April 21 by President Hugo Chávez. read moreRachael
- Venezuelan Opposition Candidate’s Campaign “Stagnating”, Journalists Attacked May 16, 2012Government representatives and private media have said opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles’ campaign is “stagnating” as he fails to gain support, while journalists also marched yesterday protesting violent attacks committed against them by Capriles’ supporters. read moregreg
- Chávez Returns to Venezuela after “Successful” Treatment, Riding High in Polls May 15, 2012Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez returned to Venezuela on Friday night, announcing a successful conclusion to his radiotherapy treatment in Cuba and his intention to return to the frontline of Venezuelan politics. Meanwhile, polls show him extending his advantage over rival Henrique Capriles Radonski. read more […]greg
- Alternative Venezuelan News Website Aporrea.org at 10 Years May 15, 2012Venezuelan alternative news website Aporrea.org reached its tenth anniversary today, marking a milestone in Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. read moregreg
- Unasur Nations Reveal Military Spending, Deepen Cooperation May 11, 2012 tamara
- Venezuelan Government and Communities See Urban Agriculture Increasing May 9, 2012 ewan
- Freegaza movement news (Palestine)
- Gaza's Ark: Building Hope May 17, 2012The Canadian Boat to Gaza, in cooperation, with international initiatives in the US, Australia and other countries, is launching a new initiative to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza, the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping. This new initiative: Gaza’s Ark, will build a boat in Gaza, using existing resources. A crew of intern […]Greta Berlin
- Outing Omer: The Fake Gay “Flotilla Activist” May 4, 2012FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (London, May 4, 2012) Last summer, “Omer” posted a video saying he had been turned down as a passenger on board one of Free Gaza’s boats because he is gay. Within a few days, he was discovered to be a fake, apparently recording his statement coordinated with the Israeli government press office. Yesterday, Jon Ronson from the Guardian, f […]Free Gaza Team
- Gaza “More Dire Than Ever” April 13, 2012April 11, 2012 During the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009, Dr. Gilbert was one of only two outside doctors in Gaza. Last week the International Criminal Court, to the protests of Amnesty International and other groups, stated it would not issue prosecutions for the Israeli Operation. Recently Gilbert, co-author of “Eyes in Gaza,” retur […]Free Gaza Team
- I have returned from Beit Hanoun. A terrible day. March 31, 2012I spent the early afternoon at a demonstration attended by several thousand people. The Hamas authorities refused to allow the people to march to the border, and clashes broke out with the police. .When we finally found a way to get around the Hamas cordon, we found shabob (Kids from roughly the age of 12 to 25) at Erez Crossing. They were throwing stones a […]Free Gaza Movement
- They Will Never Beg March 18, 2012We don't usualy post blogs, but this one from Audacity of Hope passenger, Johnny Barber, is eloquent and timely. He is currently in Gaza as a photojournalist and puts a face and a family to the murdered men, women and children from last week. http://onebrightpearl-jb.blogspot.fr/2012/03/hey-will-never-beg.htmlFree Gaza Team
- Gaza's Ark: Building Hope May 17, 2012
- Mondoweiss (US) Israel-Palestine matters
- South African artists, intellectuals and gov’t ministers take steps to isolate Israel May 20, 2012How long before South Africans are accused of being anti-Semites? South Africa to ban labeling West Bank settlement products as 'made in Israel', Amira Hass Minister of Trade and Industry says South Africa recognizes the State of Israel only within … Continue reading →Today in Palestine
- Aharon Appelfeld’s rage at the German language (and Arendt’s need for it) May 20, 2012It wasn't the German language that went crazy, Hannah Arendt explained. Israeli prize winner calls German a language of murderersEleanor Kilroy
- Feeling the hate in Long Island May 20, 2012Obama's Jewish support has gone from 78% to 62% and rightwing rabbi stirs the pot with video of old Jews hinting Obama is a secret MuslimPhilip Weiss
- The awakening: Missouri paper runs a Jew’s call for equal rights for all May 20, 2012Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune runs article exposing the 'Zionist mythology' that covers up the NakbaPhilip Weiss
- Monumental Dutch exhibit: Zionism built ‘a house, a cage, a UN shelter… a zoo’ May 20, 2012Inspired by the donkeys of the Gaza zoo, Israeli architect Malkit Shoshan exposes the inhumanities of Zionism in a Dutch exhibit that has stirred critics across EuropeAnnie Robbins
- ‘King Bibi’ is ready for his close up, and ‘Time’ is willing to oblige May 20, 2012Time magazine crowns Benjamin Netanyahu in its latest cover article, although he comes across as the leader of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown.Craig Higgins
- A tale of two festivals May 20, 2012Eleanor Kilroy compares Palfest and the Jerusalem International Writers Festival.Eleanor Kilroy
- Kristol: ‘I don’t see it as a huge problem’ May 19, 2012Jeremy Ben-Ami and Bill Kristol debate at a synagogue in ManhattanAnnie Robbins
- New US demographics make Israel’s demographic fears seem all the more prehistoric May 19, 2012How long will Obama be able to honor Israel's demographic concerns without sounding like a total racist?Philip Weiss
- What forestry teaches us about ethnic cleansing May 19, 2012Our ancestors got away with destroying old growth forests. South Americans today are held to a higher standardPhilip Weiss
- South African artists, intellectuals and gov’t ministers take steps to isolate Israel May 20, 2012
- ynet.co.il (Israel)
- TA police chief: Migrants committing 'survival crimes' May 21, 2012During Knesset session on wave of violence, Commander Aharon Aksol says employing foreign migrants would curb phenomenon. MK Danon: Solution is simple – deportation
- Chinese execs to study at Tel Aviv University May 21, 2012Executives to take business course as part of cooperation agreement with Nanjing
- Ministers approve ban on biking with headphones May 21, 2012Bill also calls for additional bike lanes, requires cyclists to wear reflective clothing
- Mother recalls West Bank kidnapping attempt May 21, 2012Palestinian cell indicted in attempted kidnapping of Yael Shahak and 8-year-old daughter, now she recalls incident: 'Look in his eyes changed and he became crazed'
- Russian refusenik remembers Jerusalem May 21, 2012Minister Edelstein says Six Day War 'changed the standing of Israel in the eyes of Jews across the world'
- Katsav leaves prison to attend son's wedding May 20, 2012Former president leaves Maasiyahu Prison for first time in five and a half months to attend son Noam's wedding; will return to prison Sunday night
- Video: Settlers fire rubber bullets at Palestinians while soldiers stand by May 20, 2012B'Tselem video shows Yitzhar settlers firing rubber bullets at Palestinian who hurled stones at them. Victim in stable condition. Footage shows IDF soldiers failed to intervene
- TA police chief: Migrants committing 'survival crimes' May 21, 2012
- The Nation (US,New York) subscribers only )
- Can Occupy Fight Back Against the War on Women? May 18, 2012 Sarah Seltzer
- Can Occupy Fight Back Against the War on Women? May 18, 2012 Sarah Seltzer
- Comments of the Week: Standardized Testing, Poverty and Attachment Parenting May 18, 2012Sarah ArnoldSmart comments from our live chat on education reform and testing, along with comments on poverty and attachment parenting.Sarah Arnold
- With Hollande in Power, Can Germany's Social Democrats Force Merkel to Discard Austerity? May 17, 2012Norman BirnbaumThe fate of the EU hangs in the balance.Norman Birnbaum
- Preying on the Poor May 17, 2012Barbara EhrenreichHow government and corporations use the poor as piggy banks.Barbara Ehrenreich
- Obama Can't Knock the Hustle May 17, 2012Robert ScheerEven after it was known that Jamie Dimon’s bank blew more than $2 billion, Barack Obama still had praise for the intellect of his political backer.Robert Scheer
- Obama and the Arc of the Rainbow May 16, 2012The EditorsThe president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage is a testament to the generations of activists who waged a brave and often lonely battle for gay rights.The Editors
- Wisconsin's Recall May 16, 2012John NicholsIn the June 5 recall election to unseat Gov. Scott Walker and his cronies, grassroots activists are fighting millions in corporate cash.John Nichols
- Noted May 16, 2012Ari Berman on Mitt Romney’s bogus job numbers.
- Reality Bites Republicans May 16, 2012Chris MooneyPolitical watchdogs like PolitiFact and the Washington Post's "Fact-Checker" are accused of favoring Democrats—but it is the facts themselves that have a liberal bias.Chris Mooney
- freeviewdocumentaries.com (US)
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- EU Observer.com
- [Ticker] Nato launches European missile shield May 21, 2012Nato has told AFP that a US warship in the Mediterranean armed with interceptor missiles and a radar system in Turkey have come under Nato command out of a base in Rammstein, Germany. The move is phase one of a Europe-based missile shield system to be fully operational by 2018.
- [Opinion] Nato: Do what you do best May 21, 2012Nato should consider opening up its Partnership for Peace scheme to post-Arab-Spring democracies, writes Jos Boonstra.Related StoriesEU takes aim at Israeli settler productsObama presses EU leaders on growth
- [Ticker] Le Pen's parliamentary seat under threat May 21, 2012French far-right leader Marine Le Pen may lose her parliamentary seat to far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon in next month's parliamentary elections. An Ifop-Fiducial poll showed Le Pen would win 34% of first round votes to 29% for Melenchon but would be beaten 55-45% in the 17 June second round.
- Serb nationalist wins elections, pledges EU allegiance May 21, 2012Serb nationalist Tomislav Nikolic has backed Serbia's EU bid after his surpise victory in presidential elections.
- [Ticker] Denmark to label products made in Israeli settlements May 21, 2012Denmark is planning to label products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, foreign minister Villy Søvndal told Politiken Friday. In a similar move, South Africa's trade ministry Saturday said Israeli products made on Palestinian land must be marked "Made in Occupied Palestinian Territories." Israel described the move as "racist. […]
- [Ticker] Iranian filmmaker awarded EU prize in Cannes May 21, 2012Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi was awarded the European Union's Media Prize at this year’s film festival in Cannes. The 60,000 euro prize is meant to help fund his next film.
- [Ticker] Frankfurt sees thousands protest against austerity May 21, 2012More than 20,000 people demonstrated in Frankfurt on Sunday against austerity measures in Europe and the power of banks. Activists from the ”Occupy Frankfurt” set up tents outside the European Central Bank’s headquarter after police cleared out an earlier encampment at the same place last week.
- Hollande to confront Merkel on eurobonds at EU summit May 21, 2012French leader Hollande has said he will call for joint eurozone debt at Wednesday's EU summit, despite German opposition.Related StoriesGreece struggling to manage asylum seekersEuropean Commission should be EU government, says GermanyObama presses EU leaders on growth
- Obama presses EU leaders on growth May 20, 2012A weekend summit of G8 leaders stressed the need for the eurozone to focus on keeping Greece inside the euro. But plans are reportedly being drafted to deal with its potential exit.Related StoriesEuropean Commission should be EU government, says GermanyHollande to confront Merkel on eurobonds at EU summit[Opinion] Nato: Do what you do best
- [Ticker] Turkey accuses Israel of violating northern Cyprus airspace May 18, 2012Turkey Thursday accused Israeli airplanes of violating the airspace of northern Cyprus - recognised only by Turkey. Ankara said the Israeli plan was driven off by Turkish fighter planes. The incident happened on Monday and comes as Turkey and Israel's relations have soured recently.
- [Ticker] Nato launches European missile shield May 21, 2012
- The European Union Times (UK)
- NASA plans to Land on Asteroid and stay for a Month May 18, 2012The space agency Nasa is training a team of astronauts to land on asteroids after a three million mile journey – dwarfing the mere 239,000 miles travelled to the moon. The mission, planned for the next decade, would land on an asteroid travelling at more than 50,000 miles an hour. The astronauts will drive vehicles [...]The European Union Times
- Moody’s cuts ratings of 16 Spanish banks May 18, 2012The European banking industry has suffered another crushing blow after Moody’s ratings agency downgraded the credit ratings of 16 Spanish banks, citing the weakened government’s ability to support some banks. The agency downgraded the long-term debt and deposit ratings by one to three notches for 16 Spanish banks and Santander UK PLC, a UK-domiciled subsidia […]The European Union Times
- Kepler space telescope records the number of superflares May 17, 2012NASA’s Kepler space telescope has recorded the number of superflares or enormous releases of magnetic energy that can damage a nearby orbiting planet. According to the report published in the journal Nature, superflares are much less frequent on slow-rotating stars like our Sun. The biggest recorded flare on the Sun happened on September 1, 1859 [...]The European Union Times
- Minority report: White births no longer majority in the US May 17, 2012For the first time in US history, racial and ethnic minorities outnumber its white majority – white births make up fewer than half the children born in the country, according to the US Census Bureau. The new 2011 census, which was made public on Thursday, reveals non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 per cent of all [...]The European Union Times
- Russia warns West against hasty wars and rising regional tension May 17, 2012Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned the West against launching ‘hasty wars’, which may increase regional tensions and even trigger a nuclear war. “Sometimes these [military] actions — which undermine state sovereignty — could result in a fully-fledged regional war, and even — although I do not want to scare anyone […]The European Union Times
- NASA plans to Land on Asteroid and stay for a Month May 18, 2012
- reddit.com
- A materials scientist at Michigan Technological University has discovered a chemical reaction that not only eats up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, it also creates something useful. And, by the way, it releases energy. May 21, 2012
- Holy shit! May 21, 2012
- High hopes for the future! May 21, 2012
- Perfect timing. May 21, 2012
- Good Guy Tyler Perry May 21, 2012
- Every rage comic on this subreddit from now until the end of time. May 21, 2012
- TIL that Whoopi Goldberg choose her stage name, not just as a reference to a Whoopee Cushion, but also because her mother thought "Goldberg" was Jewish-sounding enough to make it in Hollywood. May 21, 2012
- Recently discovered a secret about a house I've driven past on my way to work for 3 years. May 21, 2012
- Gordon Ramsay goes undercover, and takes a cooking class. May 21, 2012
- SKYFALL - First Official Teaser Trailer May 21, 2012
- Xinhuanet ( China )
- Poll suggests Gingrich benefits from Cain exit December 6, 2011New poll results released on Monday showed former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich on top of the GOP field and benefiting from the exit of Herman Cain from the presidential campaign.
- Egyptian new PM completes cabinet line-up December 6, 2011Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri has completed the line-up of the new cabinet, state TV reported Monday. Ganzouri led the Egyptian gov't under the Mubarak regime from Jan. 1996 to Oct. 1999.
- Senior British official rules out military intervention in Syria December 6, 2011The most senior security policy adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron told a committee of the Houses of Parliament on Monday that it was highly unlikely that there would be any British military intervention in Syria.
- Obama presses Congress to OK payroll tax cut extension December 6, 2011Obama Monday urged Republican lawmakers in Congress to join Democrats and approve the extension of payroll tax cuts next year to revive the U.S. economy.
- Abbas says ready to present Palestinian visions on status issues December 6, 2011Abbas announced Monday that the Palestinians are ready to present their visions concerning all the permanent status issues to end the conflict with Israel.
- Sarkozy, Merkel agree on new EU treaty to stem debt crisis December 6, 2011Europe's powerhouses France and Germany agreed Monday on a series of reforms aimed at changing the European Union (EU) treaty to impose tough control of eurozone budgets.
- Russia's ruling party to win Duma majority: CEC December 5, 2011Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) announced Monday that the ruling United Russia party won 49.54 percent of the votes after 95.71 percent of the ballots were counted.
- Syria responds "positively" to AL protocol, proposes minor amendments December 5, 2011Syria has responded positively to the Arab League (AL) protocol on an observer mission, but proposed "minor amendments" to the plan, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.
- Pakistan wants solid outcome of Bonn Conference: FM spokesman December 5, 2011Pakistan said on Monday that it wants solid outcome of Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan to promote peace and reconciliation in the war- shattered country.
- Irish PM gets tougher on budget December 5, 2011Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Sunday called for tougher measures for next year's budget, reminding the public that the country is running a deficit of 16 billion euros (21.46 billion U.S. dollars).
- Poll suggests Gingrich benefits from Cain exit December 6, 2011
- Wired Magazine
- Laser Levels and Motion Capture Show Everything You Know About Bike Fit Is Wrong May 21, 2012 Chuck Squatriglia
- 7 Social Networking Apps for When Facebook Jumps the Shark May 21, 2012 Christina Bonnington
- Nexus Smartphones: Who Wins, Who Loses if Google Launches Android 5.0 in Multiple Handsets? May 21, 2012 Nathan Olivarez-Giles
- Alt Text: 5 Horrifying Combo Monsters for Syfy Creature Features May 21, 2012 Lore Sj?berg
- May 21, 1927: Lucky Lindy Flies His Way Into the Celebrity Ranks May 21, 2012 Tony Long
- 5 Nuclear Sites That Could Launch War With Iran May 21, 2012 Spencer Ackerman
- How Apple and Microsoft Armed 4,000 Patent Warheads May 21, 2012 Robert McMillan
- Kevin Smith Riffs on Spoilers, His New Show for Movie Geeks May 21, 2012 Angela Watercutter
- A Google-a-Day Puzzle for May 21 May 21, 2012 Ken Denmead
- Watch Live: Annular Solar Eclipse Creates Ring of Fire May 20, 2012 Adam Mann
- cyveillanceblog.com (US)
- Protecting Corporate Assets with ShodanHQ – An Interview with the ShodanHQ Creator April 25, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- APWG’s CeCOS Conference in Prague: Face to Face Collaboration in the Fight Against eCrime April 18, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Forget Marriott Introducing Ads into Your Hotel Wifi – Whose Network Are Your Employees On Anyway? April 6, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Defensive Measures of Google+ for Businesses April 3, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Contacting the Owner of a Website Using WHOIS Information March 7, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Common Questions About the New gTLDs February 22, 2012 admin
- Monitoring DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions February 9, 2012 admin
- Securing the Internet with DNSSEC February 6, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Cyber Attacks Abound with the Proliferation of New Technology – No Time for Complacency December 16, 2011 admin
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) Explained November 14, 2011 admin
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
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- telesurtv.net (Venezuela)
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- La Jornada (Mexico)
- Reportan dos muertos en Beirut vinculados a situación en SiriaLos choques se produjeron en la noche luego de la muerte de un dignatario sunita a manos del ejército en el norte del Líbano.AFP
- Reportan dos muertos en Beirut vinculados a situación en Siria
- zonavirus.com (España)
- Variante de spyzbot - z May 22, 2012
- Nueva variante de reveton.a (virus de la policia) May 22, 2012
- Nuevas variantes de fakedoc que afectan a ficheros doc de unidades compartidas May 22, 2012
- Nueva variante de fake av security shield cazada por la heuristica del elistara May 22, 2012
- Los ciberdelitos supusieron 485 millones de dólares en pérdidas en 2011, solo en ee.uu May 21, 2012
- Vulnerabilidades en openoffice y libreoffice May 21, 2012
- Ahora el virus de "la policia" llega aparentando ser multa de la sgae por delitos contra la propiedad intelectual May 20, 2012
- Ficheros .doc convertidos en .scr, en servidores con comparticion de ficheros de dicho tipo (relacionado con fakedoc) May 19, 2012
- The pirate bay y wikileaks se recuperan de ataques de negación de servicio distribuidos... May 19, 2012
- Invitan a delinquir ofreciendo ganancias de 90.000 dólares mensuales... May 19, 2012
- Stampa Libera (Italia)
- Terremoto – Ministro Romani lo dica che è dovuto al Fracking delle trivelle texane autorizzato da Lei May 20, 2012 Lino Bottaro
- Ornella Vanoni – Una ragione di più May 20, 2012 Redazione
- Niente più risarcimenti per le calamità naturali, ci vorrà l’assicurazione May 20, 2012 Domenico Proietti
- Colonizzazione sottile May 20, 2012 Redazione
- L’Iran catturò dei terroristi protetti da Israele alla vigilia dell’incontro diplomatico P5 + 1 May 20, 2012 luca martinelli
- Perche’ la Russia teme un attacco atomico Usa? May 20, 2012 Redazione
- Stelle per uscire dallo stallo May 19, 2012 Roberto Duria
- NON TUTTO VA MALE! …ESEMPI DA SEGUIRE. May 19, 2012 Ascanio Montisci
- COMUNICATO di PAOLA MUSU, l’avvocato che ha denunciato Monti, Napolitano e deputati May 19, 2012 Domenico Proietti
- Schiavi May 18, 2012 Redazione
- theintelligence.de (Deutschland)
- Erste Ergebnisse zur Ägypten-Wahl! May 21, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Kim Kovalsky)
- Ende mit Schrecken: Drachme statt Euro! May 21, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Otmar Pregetter)
- Tagesschau geifert gegen Griechen „Gebaren als linksradikaler Erz-Flegel“ May 20, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Gerd R. Rueger)
- Ein kurzer Blick ins Reagenzglas May 20, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Kolumnistenschwein)
- Die Krise News (72) – Farbenspiele May 19, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (KriSe)
- Erlebnisse in China (2) May 19, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Theophil Sempes)
- Wem dient die EU? May 18, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Christian Brand)
- Die Sache mit der Grundordnung ... May 18, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Peter Reuter)
- Notaufnahme – Der kleine Roman (Teil 1 bis 4) May 17, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Oliver Wellmann)
- Erlebnisse in China (1) May 17, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Theophil Sempes)
- gesundheitlicheaufklaerung.de
- Der Theta-Zustand – Zugriff auf das Unterbewusstsein May 16, 2012 Sandra Weber
- Tote Rinder durch Gen-Mais – Bauer erstattet Strafanzeige gegen Syngenta May 9, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Gerhard Klügl, Aurachirurge: “Ich bin ein Weltenmensch” (Doku) May 3, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Die Weltbank und das positive HIV April 20, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- BAYER: 30 Jahre Kritische Aktionäre April 20, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Der Sonne ist unsere Zeit egal – Sagen Sie NEIN zur Zeitumstellung! April 13, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Kapitalismuskrankheit Burnout – Ausgebrannt: Wenn nichts mehr geht April 13, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Diskussion: Die große Verschwendung – Nahrungsmittel im Müll April 12, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Petition: Landwirtschaftliche Bodennutzung – Ersatz mineralischer Phosphordünger und Klärschlamm durch Humusdüngung April 11, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Buchtipp: Einfach Ballengang – natürliches Gehen April 10, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- info.kopp-verlag.de (Deutschland)
- +++ Verfassungsschutz: Rechnet mit Anschlägen islamistischer Einzeltäter +++ Nach Frankreich-Wahl: Moslemstimmen verändern die politische Landschaft Europas +++ Mordaufruf gegen pro-NRW: Generalbundesanwalt ermittelt gegen Islamisten +++ (Zeitgeschichte) May 21, 2012
- Abstimmung mit dem Möbelwagen: Ärzte kehren Deutschland den Rücken (Enthüllungen) May 21, 2012
- Fliegeneier statt Fischmehl (Enthüllungen) May 21, 2012
- Warten wir ab, für wen es am Ende wirklich bitter wird! (Wirtschaft & Finanzen) May 21, 2012
- Der Honigmann sagt ….
- Russlands neue Regierung steht! May 21, 2012 honigmann
- Nikolai Levashov (Teil 1) – “die Ausbreitung der Emotionellen Pest” May 21, 2012Seit 2007 habe ich gezögert von folgendem zu berichten und meine damalige Einsicht immer wieder verdrängt. Aber irgendwann kommt alles Verdrängte an die Oberfläche. Zunächst einmal wird dem aufmerksamen Leser aufgefallen sein, daß ich in meiner Besprechung des skandalösen Begleitbandes zu OROP Wüste den zweiten Teil des Büchleins, der von Richard Blasband zu […]honigmann
- “Die gesamte abendländische Geschichte ist das Ergebnis eines einzigen Konfliktes: zwischen Juden und Germanen. Es ist ein Kampf ums Dasein” May 21, 2012Einer der brillantesten Wissenschaftler, Rassenkundler und Kenner der jüdischen Geschichte: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (* 9. September 1855 in Portsmouth, England; † 9. Januar 1927 in Bayreuth) war ein Schriftsteller, Verfasser zahlreicher populärwissenschaftlicher Werke, unter anderem zu Richard Wagner, Immanuel Kant und Johann […]honigmann
- Pfingstausflug 2012 für alle die nicht zu den Externsteinen kommen können… May 21, 2012Um den Tag der energetischen Wurzel des Neuanfanges mitgestalten zu können, gibt es viele Möglichkeiten… Die Intuition einer lieben Leserin brachte uns auf die Idee, Orte ausfindig zu machen, die Pfingstsonntag um 14:30 Uhr durchaus eine Reise wert sind! Für den Süden Deutschlands sind zwei Orte zu nennen, an denen wir Pfingstsonntag um 14:30 Uhr [...] […]honigmann
- Neun Leichen hingen an einer Brücke – 23 Tote in Mexiko May 20, 2012Grausamer Drogenkrieg in Mexiko: Im Norden des Landes wurden 23 Tote gefunden. Mehrere Leichen hingen von einer Autobahnbrücke, die Köpfe der anderen Opfer lagen vor einem Rathaus. Neue Gewaltexzesse im mexikanischen Drogenkrieg: 23 Tote sind in der Grenzstadt Nuevo Laredo in Nordmexiko entdeckt worden. Neun Menschen hingen am Freitag von einer Autobahnbrück […]honigmann
- Französische Regierung kürzt ihre Gehälter, die deutsche erhöht sie May 20, 2012Der Sozialist Hollande setzt mit der 30prozentigen Kürzung ebenso ein Zeichen wie die konservative Kanzlerin mit der 5,7prozentigen Erhöhung Es ist eine symbolische Geste, wenn der frisch gewählte französische Präsident Hollande sich und seinen Ministern zu Beginn schon einmal eine 30prozentige Gehaltskürzung verordnet. Gleichwohl setzt die neue Regierung da […]honigmann
- “Das war´n Schuß in´n Ofen…” – alles blieb ruhig May 20, 2012Blockupy – Erfolg oder Niederlage? Mehr als 25.000 Menschen sollen heute (gestern) in der Frankfurter Innenstadt nach Veranstalterangaben gegen die Politik der EU-Troika demonstriert haben Das Spektrum der Demonstranten reichte von Gewerkschaften, der Linkspartei, Attac bis den außerparlamentarischen Bündnissen Ums Ganze und der Interventionistischen L […]honigmann
- Röttgen wehrt sich gegen Merkels Demontage May 20, 2012Nach dem kühlen Rausschmiss von Norbert Röttgen durch Kanzlerin Angela Merkel, wehrt sich der Ex-Bundesumweltminister nun: Er möchte sein Amt als Merkels erster Stellvertreter behalten © DAPD Den Rausschmiss will Ex-Bundesumweltminister Röttgen so nicht auf sich sitzen lassen. Er möchte stellvertretender CDU-Vorsitzender bleiben Der am Mittwoch entlassene Bu […]honigmann
- Film am Sonntag – Cagliostro – Teil 1 – Audienz in Versailles May 20, 2012Der Dreiteiler basiert auf dem Roman “Joseph Balsamo” von Alexandre Dumas Abenteurer, Hochstapler, Magier, Goldmacher, Geisterbeschwörer – “Graf” Cagliostro suchte im 18. Jahrhundert fast alle Hauptstädte und Höfe Europas heim. Im Jahre 1791 wurde er von der Inquisition verurteilt und verschwand bis an sein Lebensende hinter Ker […]honigmann
- Sonntagsansichten – Die armen, armen Männer….. May 20, 2012Wir verlangen, dass wir genau wie die Frauen mit einem Tag geehrt werden, da wir ständig Opfer von Missbrauch, Demütigungen, verbalen, physischen und sexuellen Attacken sind. Außerdem muss folgendes beachtet werden: Wer ist der Einzige der sich traut, alles aufzuessen, was ihm vorgesetzt wird, ohne zu mucksen ? Der selbstlose Mann ! Wer hebt die [...]honigmann
- Polskaweb.eu (Poland /German version)
- Schwindler Zuckerberg und die Facebook- Aktie May 20, 2012
- Horror: Wiesenthals "Geist" in Auschwitz unterwegs May 18, 2012
- Volksbetrug: Wolfgang Thierse ist gar kein Ossi ! May 16, 2012
- Schock: Weiterer Bundespräsident als Betrüger entlarvt May 13, 2012
- Rentenreform: Beispiellose Ungerechtigkeit May 12, 2012
- Radio Utopie (D)
- Stromfresser Stuttgart 21 abschalten! May 21, 2012Dokumentation: Die Rede von Parkschützer Matthias von Herrmann auf der heutigen 124. Montagsdemonstration der Stuttgarter Bürgerbewegung für den Kopfbahnhof und gegen das verkehrsindustrielle Umbauprogramm "Stuttgart 21" (S21).Redaktion
- Der G-Null-Gipfel May 20, 2012Ein Resumee des Gipfels der G-8-Regierungen in Camp David. Und ein Ausblick über den Horizont.Daniel Neun
- “World Wide Rebel Song”: Rock statt Rocks in Chicago zum NATO-Gipfel May 20, 2012Rund 500 Demonstranten versammelten sich vor dem Haus des Bürgermeisters von Chicago Rahm Emanuel, um gegen die kürzliche Schliessung der psychiatrischen Kliniken als Teil einer Reihe von Kundgebungen und Märsche zeitgleich mit einem NATO-Gipfel zu protestieren. Die Menschen hatten Transparente mitgebracht mit den Slogans “food not bombs”, “seize the peace” […]petrapez
- SYRIZA-Vorsitzender Tsipras: “Es ist ein Krieg zwischen den Völkern und dem Kapitalismus” May 19, 2012Griechenland: Nachdem vorher der Botschafter der Berliner Republik in Athen, Wolfgang Dold, und der deutsche EU-Parlamentspräsident Martin Schulz (SPD/SPE) bei ihm rausgeschlichen kamen, hat der Vorsitzende der Koalition der Radikalen SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras, auch dem britischen "Guardian" eine Audienz gegeben. Auszüge des Interviews im Wortlaut: […]Daniel Neun
- Frau Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, streichen Sie bitte Paul Watson von Roter Liste … May 19, 2012Sea Shepherd Conservation Society warnte am 17.Mai davor, dass Paul Watson in Costa Rica nicht sicher ist und um sein Leben fürchten muss. Die taiwanesische Haifang-Mafia hat seit Jahren ein Kopfgeld in Höhe von 20.000 Dollar auf den Captain ausgesetzt. “Wir wissen, dass der Arm der taiwanesischen Fischerei-Mafia nicht nur bis zur illegalen Fischerei in Cost […]petrapez
- Der neue Protest May 18, 2012Sie hat nichts mit dem Ereignis zu tun, das ihm den Namen gab: Die riesige Rallye für Frieden , an deren Ende die Ermordung Yitzhak Rabins war. Diese Rallye war in jeder Hinsicht anders. Es war ein fröhliches Ereignis. Dutzende von NGOs, viele von ihnen klein, einige von ihnen etwas größer, jede mit einer anderen Agenda, kamen zusammen, um den sozialen Prote […]Uri Avnery
- Denn Mutti sagt immer die Wahrheit May 18, 2012Heute hat Angela Mutti Merkel versucht, ihrem griechischen Volk ein Referendum zu geben.. Leider gab es da ein kleines Mißverständnis. Dabei will sie nur ständig das Beste. Und zwar mit Zinsen. Heute hat also Mutti – wer würde ihr schon was antun? Einfach abwählen?! Niemals! Ihr Muttimörder! – dem griechischen Volk ein Referendum über blühende [. […]Daniel Neun
- Blockupy Frankfurt 18.5.2012 May 18, 2012Videos und updates In ganz Frankfurt und Randgebiete ist das Recht auf Bewegungsfreiheit, Meinungsäusserungen und Pressefreiheit ausser Kraft gesetzt, denn die Repressalien der Polizei erstrecken sich auf Kontrollen und Platzverweise für alle Besucher, einschliesslich Touristen und Einwohner. Auch am heutigen Freitag kamen tausende Menschen in die Innenstadt […]petrapez
- Frankfurter Paulskirche: 1000 Demonstranten halten Grundgesetz in die Höhe May 17, 2012Liedermacher Konstantin Wecker auf dem Paulsplatz zu den Blockupy-Protesten: Wecker: “Begräbnis demokratischer Rechte” Livestreams und updates von den “Bloccupy”-Protesten. Ohrfeige nach Karlsruhe aus der Main-Metropole: die Bürger verhalten sich wie Bürger, die zur Verteidigung der Verfassung sowie für das Gemeinwohl der Gesellschaft […]petrapez
- US-Gericht blockiert National Defense Authorization Act! May 17, 2012Mit diesem 565 Seiten umfassenden Gesetz wäre ein Freibrief durch einen kurzen Paragraf in Statut 1021 für das Militär in Kraft getreten, jeden Bürger auf unbestimmte Zeit ohne ein ordentliches Gerichtsverfahren zu inhaftieren, dem vorgeworfen wird, wissentlich oder unwissentlich Unterstützung des Terrorismus zu leisten.petrapez
- Stromfresser Stuttgart 21 abschalten! May 21, 2012
- heise.de (Deutschland)
- Facebook vor dem zweiten Handelstag: Angst vor dem Absturz
- GEMA legt im YouTube-Streit Berufung ein
- Perl 5.16.0: neues Release der Skriptsprache
- EU-Kommission verlangt von Google Zugeständnisse
- Hersteller: Tablets mit Windows 8 nicht konkurrenzfähig
- Bitkom: Rechenzentren wurden effizienter
- Webbrowser: Chrome rückt Internet Explorer auf die Pelle
- Kabel Deutschland übernimmt Tele Columbus
- Chefs von Apple und Samsung suchen Lösung in Patentstreit
- Winken und Schnipsen am PC
- wirtschaftsfacts.de
- Niederlande: Obacht, Steuerzahler – nationale Hypothekenmärkte wackeln May 21, 2012 REd
- Hollande pocht auf Eurobonds – und ist nicht allein… May 21, 2012 REd
- USA: Steuerverweigerer im Ausland – wir kriegen Euch alle… May 20, 2012 REd
- Krugman über Europas Apokalypse; wir sprechen über apokalyptischen Krugman May 20, 2012 REd
- Facebook: Bewertung mit 100-fachem des Gewinns – LoL! Sichere Short-Wette? May 19, 2012 REd
- Facebook: Der erste Handelstag … enttäuschend May 19, 2012 Robert Schroeder
- Riskante Staatsanleihemärkte: Japanischer Pensionsfonds setzt erstmals auf Gold May 18, 2012 REd
- Italien: Neue Industrieaufträge brechen im März regelrecht ein May 18, 2012 REd
- Katzenjammer im globalen Minensektor setzt sich fort May 18, 2012 REd
- Spaniens Polizeikräfte nicht zimperlich im Einsatz gegen Demonstranten May 17, 2012 REd
- NATO website
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- Reuters top news
- Lockerbie bomber Megrahi to be buried in Libya May 21, 2012
- Alibaba buys back 20 percent stake held by Yahoo for $7.1 billion May 21, 2012
- Russia says West still considering military action on Iran May 20, 2012
- Spain to slump further but will hit deficit goal May 21, 2012
- NATO to hand combat role to Afghans as it seeks way out of war May 21, 2012
- Strauss-Kahn investigators open group rape inquiry May 21, 2012
- Zuckerberg's post-IPO wedding is smart legal move May 21, 2012
- Barclays to sell $6.1 billion BlackRock stake May 21, 2012
- Insight: Greece party talks framed by unreality, punctuated by insults May 21, 2012
- Blind Chinese activist Chen rests in NYC May 21, 2012
- Times Magazine ( Top Stories)
- A Year of Recovery in Joplin, Mo.: Photos by Eric Thayer May 21, 2012
- Obama's Afghanistan Problem: Neither Karzai Nor the Taliban Like the 'Reconciliation' Script May 21, 2012
- The Passing of the Lockerbie Bomber: Have More Secrets Died in Libya? May 21, 2012
- Robin Gibb, Bee Gees Singer and Pop Pioneer, Dies at 62 May 21, 2012
- Has Obama 'Gotten It' in Time? May 21, 2012
- Why the Coalition Trying to Recall Scott Walker Is Splintering May 21, 2012
- From China's State Press, a Not-So-Fond Farewell to Activist Chen Guangcheng May 21, 2012
- What You Need to Know About the New Census Numbers on Hispanic Births May 21, 2012
- NATO in Chicago: Geopolitics Meets Reality of a U.S. City May 21, 2012
- A Monstrous Act in Brindisi: Why Was an Italian Girls School Bombed? May 21, 2012
- CNN ( Top Stories)
- Dominique Strauss-Kahn may face gang rape allegations May 21, 2012
- Gibb, 62, dies after cancer battle May 21, 2012
- Violent protests near NATO summit May 21, 2012
- Italy hit by back-to-back quakes May 21, 2012
- China human rights activist now in U.S. May 20, 2012
- Lockerbie bomber dies in Libya May 21, 2012
- Flesh-eating victim breathes on her own May 21, 2012
- Mom with rare bug has 7 surgeries May 21, 2012
- Riot halted at prison where guard died May 21, 2012
- Zuckerberg's latest move -- a wedding May 21, 2012
- CBC (Canada)
- Montreal tuition protesters defy law and clash with police May 21, 2012
- Prince Charles and Camilla arrive in Canada May 20, 2012
- Mount Everest descent claims Canadian woman, 2 others May 21, 2012
- Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb dies May 21, 2012
- 'Ring of fire' eclipse dazzles millions May 21, 2012
- Yemen suicide bombing kills 38 at army parade May 21, 2012
- Afghanistan mission won't be extended, MacKay says May 21, 2012
- Salad recall expanded after Listeria contamination May 21, 2012
- Quake-struck Italians fear return to homes May 21, 2012
- Leukemia fighter keen to meet royals May 20, 2012
- The Guardian – (UK) Global News
- Sana'a suicide bomb attack kills 63 May 21, 2012 Sam Jones, Tom Finn
- Nato summit: US-Pakistan rift widens May 21, 2012 Ewen MacAskill
- Settler filmed firing gun at Palestinians May 21, 2012 Harriet Sherwood
- Eurozone crisis live: EU heading for showdown over growth May 21, 2012 Graeme Wearden
- Afghanistan has poetry in its soul | Reza Mohammadi May 21, 2012 Reza Mohammadi
- Rural education offers Morocco's women promise of a quiet revolution | Santorri Chamley May 21, 2012 Santorri Chamley
- Syria crisis hits Beirut - live updates May 21, 2012 Matthew Weaver
- Bee Gees fans mourn Robin Gibb – video May 21, 2012
- Ryanair faces disruption over Stansted baggage handlers' strike May 21, 2012 Dan Milmo, Gwyn Topham
- The saola 'Asian unicorn' in pictures May 21, 2012
- The Washington Post ( Politics)
- White House visitor logs provide window into lobbying industry May 21, 2012 T.W. Farnam
- Featured Advertiser May 21, 2012
- Cory Booker commits the classic Washington gaffe May 21, 2012 Chris Cillizza, Aaron Blake
- Santorum, Gingrich campaigns owe millions May 21, 2012 T.W. Farnam
- As Obama opens NATO summit in Chicago, focus is on winding down Afghanistan war May 21, 2012 Karen DeYoung, Scott Wilson
- Romney could best Obama in fundraising May 20, 2012 Chris Cillizza
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorses Scott Walker May 20, 2012 Rachel Weiner
- Mitch McConnell, John Boehner double down on deficit concerns May 20, 2012 Ed O'Keefe
- Obama’s cash advantage grew in April May 20, 2012 Aaron Blake
- Hakeem Jeffries: Brooklyn’s Barack Obama? May 19, 2012 Rachel Weiner
- New York Times (Global)
- Supply Lines Cast Shadow at NATO Meeting on Afghan War May 21, 2012 By HELENE COOPER and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
- Bo Xilai’s Fall in China Put Allies in Peril May 21, 2012 By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
- Suicide Attack in Yemen May 21, 2012 By ALAN COWELL
- Megrahi’s Death Revives Debate Over Trial and Release May 21, 2012 By JOHN F. BURNS
- ‘Super PACs’ Changing How Political Operatives Operate May 21, 2012 By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
- Italy Quake Kills 5 and Causes Widespread Damage May 21, 2012 By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
- At the Ethiopian News Agency, Hope for Freer Journalism May 21, 2012 By BENNO MUCHLER
- The New American Job: Increasingly, Men Seek Success in Jobs Dominated by Women May 21, 2012 By SHAILA DEWAN and ROBERT GEBELOFF
- Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story May 21, 2012 By BARRY BEARAK
- Cairo Journal: In Streets and Online, Campaign Fever in Egypt May 21, 2012 By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MAYY EL SHEIK
- Huffingtonpost.com
- Stress Relief: 7 Calming Workouts That Aren't Meditation May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Sachigusa Yasuda's 'Aerial' Exhibition Mixes Meditation And Thrills (PHOTOS) May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Weight Loss Success: Jason Barsotti Wanted To Get Healthy For His Daughter And Lost 120 Pounds May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Too Good To Be True? A History Of Failed Fitness Gadgets May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Bailout Architects Overly Optimistic About The Program's Success May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Miley Cyrus Spits Off Hotel Balcony (PHOTO) May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Stacy Berman: Double-Dipping Workouts May 21, 2012 Stacy Berman
- John Edwards Trial: Jury Resumes Deliberations On Former Presidential Candidate's Fate May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- James Sims: Fighting My Mother's Cancer With Text Messages May 21, 2012 James Sims
- Sarah Klein: Introducing The 30-Day Summer Shape Up Challenge: Sweat Into Summer May 21, 2012 Sarah Klein
- ilmessaggero.it (Italia)
- Terremoto, nuove scosse in Emilia nella notte. Salgono a 4mila gli sfollati, sette le vittime May 21, 2012
- Brindisi, ecco il video del presunto killer: così ha azionato la bomba May 21, 2012
- Melissa, oggi a Brindisi i funerali Riapre la scuola: studentesse in lacrime May 21, 2012
- Terrorismo, il ricordo di D'Antona Napolitano: rinsaldare coesione sociale May 21, 2012
- Ballottaggi, seggi aperti fino alle 15 Affluenza in picchiata May 21, 2012
- Terremoto, leghista su Fb: «Scusate il disagio, la Padania si sta staccando» May 20, 2012
- Crisi, Monti invita anche Rajoy al vertice con Merkel e Hollande May 21, 2012
- Chicago, in migliaia protestano al vertice Nato: almeno 45 arresti May 21, 2012
- Brescia, si getta con i figli dal balcone Tre morti, i bimbi avevano 1 e 4 anni May 21, 2012
- Coppia di Caserta sequestrata e uccisa in Venezuela: giallo a Maracaibo May 20, 2012
- Corriere della sera (Italia)
- Notte di paura, ancora scosse in Emilia Sette morti, 4.500 sfollati Video e foto May 21, 2012
- Terremoto in Emilia, la morte dei turnisti nei capannoni accartocciati May 21, 2012 Andrea Pasqualetto
- Che succede alla Pianura Padana? May 21, 2012 Giovanni Caprara
- Il ministro: «Non escludiamo niente» Ci sono due sospettati Foto May 21, 2012
- Riapre la scuola, studenti in lacrime May 21, 2012 Redazione Online
- Il falso attentatore che ha ingannato Facebook May 20, 2012 Matteo Cruccuilcruccu
- Coppa Italia, fischiato inno di Mameli May 21, 2012 Redazione online
- Uccide i suoi due figli lanciandoli dal sesto piano e poi si suicida May 21, 2012 Redazione Brescia Online
- Ballottaggi, riaperti i seggi fino alle 15 Domenica affluenza in forte calo May 21, 2012 Redazione Online
- Rapallo, bomba carta davanti a seggio May 21, 2012 Redazione Online
- El Pais ( Madrid )
- Roland Berger y Oliver Wyman auditarán a los bancos españoles May 21, 2012 El País
- Oliver Wyman encumbró a un banco irlandés antes de su colapso May 21, 2012 Cristina Galindo
- Guindos cifra en 7.500 millones el saneamiento pendiente de Bankia May 21, 2012 El País
- Rajoy: “Merkel apoya nuestra política” May 20, 2012 Antonio Caño
- Un ataque suicida mata a un centenar de militares en Yemen May 21, 2012 Agencias
- Bruselas exige cambios a Google en “semanas” para evitar la multa May 21, 2012 Claudi Pérez, Agencias
- Monti suma a Rajoy a la ‘cumbre del crecimiento’ con Merkel y Hollande May 21, 2012 El País
- Rubalcaba rechaza el rescate de la UE: “Podemos hacerlo solos” May 21, 2012 El País
- Miles de personas desplazadas por el terremoto en el norte de Italia May 21, 2012 Lucia Magi
- “No vuelvo a mi casa hasta que controlen esa grieta en la pared” May 21, 2012 Lucia Magi
- El Universal ( Mexico )
- Suman siete muertos por sismo en norte de Italia May 21, 2012 Notimex
- Sismo en Italia deja 6 muertos y graves daños a edificios May 21, 2012
- Atrapa narco en Centroamérica a jóvenes desempleados May 21, 2012 José Meléndez Corresponsal
- Atentado suicida deja decena de muertos en Yemen May 21, 2012 Notimex
- En esta crisis, a Europa le ha faltado rapidez May 21, 2012 Danilo Arbilla
- Welt online (D)
- Jemen: Selbstmordattentäter tötet fast 100 Menschen May 21, 2012
- Linksradikaler Grieche: Tsipras will mit Merkel über Sparkurs verhandeln May 21, 2012
- Sozialbetrug: Wie vermögende Türken den deutschen Staat ausnehmen May 21, 2012
- Konfliktforschung: Elf Kriege stehen der Menschheit noch bevor May 21, 2012
- "Hand nicht gesehen": Schweinsteiger entschuldigt sich bei Gauck May 21, 2012
- FC Bayern München: Uli Hoeneß zum vierten Mal Zweiter in dieser Saison May 21, 2012
- Geheime Verführer: In welche Psychofallen wir im Supermarkt tappen May 21, 2012
- Fahrrad-Verkehrsregeln: Handy verboten, Suff erst ab 1,6 Promille strafbar May 21, 2012
- Astronomie: Über Asien und Amerika leuchtet ein Feuerring May 21, 2012
- Bergsteiger-Unglück: Deutscher Arzt stirbt am Mount Everest May 21, 2012
- Der Spiegel (Germany)
- Bayern-Frust: Null Bock auf Niederlande
- Gipfel in Chicago: Nato zittert Afghanistan-Abzug entgegen
- Eurovision Song Contest: Zahlen, bitte!
- Debatte über Währungskrise: Sarrazin entlarvt die Euro-Lüge
- Bestseller-Autorin Patricia Schultz: Fünf Orte, die Sie sehen müssen, bevor Sie sterben
- Verdacht auf Börsenbetrug: Ramsch-Aktie stieg um 1000 Prozent
- Tourismusbranche: Griechenland-Buchungen brechen drastisch ein
- Jemen: Selbstmordattentäter reißt mehr als 60 Menschen in den Tod
- Google-Lunar-X-Prize: Stresstest für All-Amateure
- Zum Tode Robin Gibbs: Der Verkannte
