Gary Saunders, a company director, was using a hands-free phone when he burst out laughing at a joke told by his brother-in-law, who he was talking to.
A few moments later he noticed a traffic officer flashing his lights at him and gesticulating at him to stop his Renault.
When Mr Saunders got out of his car, the policeman told him: "Laughing while driving a car can be an offence."
Scammers are capitalizing on that.
Some are hard at work trying to trick individuals into paying for access for government grants, and the Federal Trade Commission is urging consumers to be careful.
WASHINGTON — Dismal. Quite depressed. Very weak. Steep declines. Pronounced declines overall. The government’s latest report on the front lines of the economy is laced with the language of recession.
Almost every region of the country in the Federal Reserve survey released Wednesday reported the economic climate was not just bad but getting worse. Businesses said they expected no recovery until late this year at the earliest.
Let's corporatize and brand EVERYTHING, shall we? - Ed.
WASHINGTON — The $787 billion stimulus has begun flowing into the economy, but President Obama isn't done selling its merits to Americans. To counter ever-sliding stock prices and consumer angst, he's ramping up a marketing campaign.MOSCOW, March 3 (RIA Novosti) - A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.
According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said it was time for Nato to make a "fresh start" with Russia, in her first meeting with the military alliance's foreign ministers.
"It's time to explore a fresh start. We can and must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest, including helping the people of Afghanistan," she said at the meeting in Brussels, the Belgian capital.
WASHINGTON -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a joint session of Congress on Wednesday that the world must have a unified response to the international economic crisis to survive an ``economic hurricane.''
Read more @ Miami Herald
by Grace Halsell
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel—and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.
The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere—among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel—and Zionism—often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor draw down window-type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad “unChosen” enemies.
–Pope St. Pius X, Discourse of Dec.13, 1908 at the beautification of Joan of Arc.
Yesterday I went to Mass and got the press release of the Superior General of the SSPX. I prayed before the Blessed Sacrament during Benediction after listening to the sermon which left me in a quandary. I am not here to pass judgment on anyone-only to express my feelings in regards to a situation and a man, a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church that I hold in high regard. I asked the Lord to speak to my heart, soon after he did. I know that could put me in a weird spot. I don’t claim to be a Joan of Arc. I didn’t hear any audible voices or anything; however I do believe the Lord will speak to anyone who has a desire to listen.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A court-appointed trustee in the case against Bernard Madoff has asked a judge if he may take over ownership of the accused swindler's firm, an associated trading firm, property, artwork and corporate entertainment tickets.
Court documents seen on Tuesday said the trustee, New York lawyer Irving Picard, had made the request with the consent of other civil and criminal investigators as part of efforts to recover assets for Madoff's customers.
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record ," March 3, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: And finally, an arrest in the Chandra Levy murder case. United States attorney Jeffrey Taylor spoke earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAYLOR: Earlier today, a judge of the superior court of the District of Columbia signed an arrest warrant charging 17-year-old Ingmar Guandique for first-degree murder in the death of Chandra Levy.
As stated in the affidavit submitted in support of that warrant, we allege that Guandique murdered Ms. Levy on or about May 1, 2001, in Rock Creek Park in northwest Washington, D.C.
We believe that Ms. Levy was a random victim of Guandique, who allegedly attacked and killed her as she walked her dog through Rock Creek Park on May 1, 2001.
Read more @ Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,504404,00.html
At first sight, the budget proposal has all the appearances of an expansionary program, a demand oriented "Second New Deal" geared towards creating employment, rebuilding shattered social programs and reviving the real economy.
Obama's promise is based on a mammoth austerity program. The entire fiscal structure is shattered, turned upside down.
If you missed our latest video, “The 11 Laws of Bear Market Success,” or you want to watch it again, click here now for the recording.
The timing couldn’t be better. Indeed …
Just as the Obama Administration launches a triple tirade of new initiatives — a record stimulus package, a bigger round of rescues, and the largest deficit financing of all time …
Just as the Treasury Department doubles down on its bailouts for sinking giants — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, and Citigroup …
And precisely when the government has raised hopes for a recovery in 2010 …
The panic phase of this collapse is about to begin.
The panic phase is an acceleration in the economic decline … a chain reaction of debt explosions … a free-fall in the financial markets … and a series of rude awakenings that will accelerate the decline even further:
March 3 (Bloomberg) -- Ruth Madoff said she owns a Manhattan apartment, $45 million in bonds and $17 million in cash that are “unrelated” to an alleged Ponzi scheme by her husband, Bernard Madoff.
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton, who is presiding over a lawsuit against Madoff by the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed an order yesterday modifying terms of an asset freeze on Bernard Madoff’s property. As part of his order, he cited a claim by Ruth Madoff that some of her assets are separate from his.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran is not close to having a nuclear weapon, which gives the United States and others time to try to persuade Tehran to abandon its suspected atomic arms program, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday.
"They're not close to a stockpile, they're not close to a weapon at this point, and so there is some time," Gates said on NBC television's "Meet The Press."
MI5 Alert on Bank Riots
TOP secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a “summer of discontent” in Britain.
By Mark Heinrich and Sylvia Westall
VIENNA (Reuters) - A new U.S. readiness to engage Iran could help resolve suspicions about its nuclear work but Tehran must do more to "unblock this stalemated situation," the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said on Monday. Mohamed ElBaradei made the remarks in an address kicking off a week-long meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors in Vienna, the first since U.S. President Barack Obama took office on January 20.
GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas said Monday the West's boycott of the Islamist group would undercut international reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip, a cautionary message coinciding with an international donors' conference in Egypt.
Western powers say they will not deal with Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, unless the group renounced violence and recognized Israel.
AIG's shares were recently up 7.6% at
Chief Executive
The question of what makes a journalist is due for yet another round of debate, now that Congress is weighing two competing versions of a federal shield law for reporters.
Last Friday, the Senate introduced its own version of the Free Flow of Information Act, a follow-up to the House’s action two days before. Both versions would provide new — if limited — protection against subpoenas for journalists, and both version contain a range of exceptions. Both bills were introduced in 2007 as well, with the House version passing overwhelmingly despite a veto threat. The Senate bill was passed easily out of committee only to die without a vote of the full chamber as the session ran out of time. (For details on the previous bills, see previous CMLP posts here, here, here, and here.)
The oil industry created the practice of countries (SHIPS?) flying "flags of convenience" as a means of avoiding income taxes nearly a century ago. Since the 1960s the U.S. Government itself has encouraged American banks to set up branches in Caribbean hot-money centers and more distant islands as a means of attracting foreign money into the dollar. The initial aim was to help finance the Vietnam War by turning America into a new Switzerland for the world's hot money.
This policy succeeded in turning the United States into a flight-capital center for third-world dictators, Mexican presidents and Russian oligarchs. The former Soviet Union now finances a substantial portion of the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit with the flight capital that neoliberal "reformers" facilitated by backing the kleptocrats. The result has grown into a full-blown system enabling multinational corporations to evade taxes everywhere, including the United States itself. It enables domestic investors to globalize their operations by setting up offshore affiliates Enron-style in the Cayman Islands, Dutch West Indies or some small and newly notorious Pacific Island of their choice.
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Friday Tehran's atomic plans were not of military nature, urging Russia to complete Iran's long-delayed nuclear power plant.
"In the Friday prayer sermon, we don't make false promises. Therefore I declare that Iran's nuclear plan is not to build weapons ... and we are ready to prove it in negotiations," he said in a sermon carried live on state radio.
Israel's prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu says talks to include the centrist Kadima party in a coalition have ended without agreement.
The Likud leader said he had faced "categorical rejection" in 90-minute talks with Kadima leader Tzipi Livni.
Minutes earlier, Mrs Livni said the meeting "concluded without agreement on key issues".
Mr Netanyahu has been tasked with forming a government in the wake of elections earlier this month.
In other regional developments, Israel's military attacked alleged smuggling tunnels in Gaza on Thursday, in what it said was retaliation for earlier rocket launches.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Treasury Department announced on Friday that it will convert a significant share of the preferred stock it holds in struggling bank Citigroup Inc to common stock as long as others also do so.
In an early-morning announcement, Treasury said it would convert dollar-for-dollar its preferred shares to match conversions by private preferred holders in a bid to strengthen Citigroup's capital base.
(originally posted in Feb. 2006)
In 2004, a woman revealed details of Hugh Hefner's sex life.
If the Playboy founder is any indication, a life dedicated to porn and promiscuity leads to homosexuality and impotence. The 60's icon of suave masculinity is, in old age, a grotesque self-parody.
Hefner, 82, pays a bevy of whores $2000 a week to be his girlfriends and have sex with him every Wednesday and Friday. He uses Viagra and watches male gay porn to stay erect while as many as ten concubines mount him in succession. The other girls simulate lesbian sex to arouse him.
"He doesn't really do anything," says Jill Anne Spaulding, author of the book "Upstairs." He just lies there with his Viagra erection. It's just a fake erection, and each girl gets on top of him for two minutes while the girls in the background try to keep him excited. They'll yell things like, "F-k her daddy, f-k her daddy!" There's a lot of cheerleader going on!"
No one becomes a playmate without having intercourse with Hefner. The "girl next door" is now a whore; and Hefner's maudlin example of arrested development is a fitting epitaph for his Playboy Philosophy.
Playboy was not a spontaneous phenomenon. It was social engineering designed to foster homosexuality and family breakdown. See my "Playboy and the (Homo) Sexual Revolution." This is why Spaulding's revelations got so little publicity.
"In my opinion this possibility exists," said the Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI, referring to life on other planets.
Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support.
While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.
As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:
What happened to the ferrets that received Baxter’s H5N1 virus material?
The animals died “promptly” according to the story below.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: Did any ferrets in neighboring cages—that didn’t receive the Baxter H5N1 virus—also get sick and die? The answer to that question is conveniently missing from every story that I have found about this incident.
If the answer is ‘yes’ it means that Baxter didn’t supply standard H5N1 virus, but rather a weaponized/pandemic version that is the same as or similar to the one that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was developing.
WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency's new director outlined spy policies Wednesday, including an aggressive campaign in Pakistan, that underscored considerable continuity with the Bush administration.
CIA Director Leon Panetta, in his first meeting with reporters, said the agency will continue to carry out drone attacks on militants in Pakistan. He also said that while CIA interrogations will have new limits, President Barack Obama can still use his wartime powers to authorize harsher techniques if necessary.
Pay attention...this is the NWO plan unfolding before our eyes. - Ed.
The daily White House intelligence report that catalogs the top security threats to the nation has a grim new addition, reflecting the realities of the age: a daily update on the global financial crisis and its cascading effects on the stability of countries through the world.
The first Economic Intelligence Briefing report was presented to the White House yesterday by the CIA, the agency's new director, Leon Panetta, revealed at a news conference. The addition of economic news to the daily roundup of terrorist attacks and surveillance reports appears to reflect a growing belief among intelligence officials that the economic meltdown is now preeminent among security threats facing the United States.
"They did mention Commerce," Obama's new CIA director told reporters Wednesday. Noting Obama's troubles in filling that job, he added, "I guess I made a good decision."
The 70-year-old former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, who just a month ago was running his Panetta Institute at Cal State Monterey Bay, now is knee-deep in some of Washington's thorniest debates: Where will detainees go when Guantanamo Bay is closed? How aggressively should terrorist suspects be interrogated? Is Iran close to having a nuclear weapon?
LONDON (Reuters) - France, Germany and Britain are proposing a tough list of additional sanctions to be imposed against Iran over its disputed nuclear program, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
A confidential document seen by the FT and Italian newspaper Il Riformista lists 34 Iranian entities and 10 individuals believed to be linked to covert nuclear or biological weapons programs, the London-based daily said.
The FT quoted some European diplomats as saying the list was meant to provide U.S. President Barack Obama's administration with a "bigger stick" in a carrot-and-stick approach aimed at getting Iran to stop nuclear activity.
Typical of Freeman's viewpoints is a statement he made in a speech before the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2007, in which he more or less blames international terrorist acts on Israel:
"American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel’s American backers as against Israel itself. Under the circumstances, such retaliation – whatever form it takes – will have the support or at least the sympathy of most people in the region and many outside it. This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture."
Read more @ Israel National News
Stocks jump after Bernanke says recession may end
Obama's speech: positive reviews and some questions
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Financial Armageddon: Nowhere near a bottom....
People keep asking: Are we near the bottom in the stock market?
If history is any guide, the answer is no. That's because during similarly troubled times in the past, share prices did not hit their ultimate lows until traditional valuation measures such as P/E ratios and dividend yields reached oversold extremes.
David McGowan
August 2001
"Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose ... I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God's will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of flesh, between people ... paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, 'I believe this is in fact part of God's will.'"
Ralph Underwager, 'expert' witness for the defense in scores of child abuse cases and former vocal member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, in an interview in Paidika (a pro-pedophilia publication), conducted in June 1991
To the vast majority of Americans, the name Marc Dutroux doesn't mean much. Drop that name in Belgium though and you're likely to elicit some very visceral reactions. Dutroux - convicted along with his wife in 1989 for the rape and violent abuse of five young girls, the youngest of whom was just eleven - now stands accused of being a key player in an international child prostitution and pornography ring whose practices included kidnapping, rape, sadistic torture, and murder.
The current Presidential Seal has an eagle in it. The eagle replaced the Phoenix(the original national bird) in 1841 as the national bird. The Phoenix has been a Brotherhood symbol since ancient Egypt. The Phoenix was adopted by the Founding Fathers for use on the reverse of the first official seal of the United States after a design proposed by Charles Thompson, Secretary of the Continental Congress.
Read more @ Dissecting the New Age
Look at that “little boy lost” look.
Read more @ The Path Whisperer
Some people do yoga as a stress release. Others go for a long, reflective walk. Judith Cane plays the banjo.
As a financial adviser dealing with tumbling portfolios and panicky clients during the worst economic downturn in generations, she's been giving it a workout lately.
"I am playing my banjo really loudly and really hard," said Ms. Cane, president of Antara Financial Group in Ottawa. "It is really stressful."
Classic. - Ed.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III today warned that extremists "with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons" to sow terror, raising the specter that recent attacks in Mumbai that killed 170 people last year could embolden terrorists seeking to attack U.S. cities.
At a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mueller said that the bureau is expanding its focus beyond al-Qaeda and into splinter groups, radicals who try to enter the country through the visa waiver program and "home-grown terrorists."
The seven-year ordeal of a British resident who claims he was brutally tortured before being sent to Guantanamo Bay was brought to an end last night during an emotional reunion with his family.
Binyam Mohamed’s sister, Zuhra Mohamed, said she was “overcome with joy” as she watched her brother shuffle down the steps of the RAF transport plane which had carried him from the notorious US detention camp in Cuba to Northolt airfield, west London.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman acknowledged the five-month delay in paying the bonuses and said the Defense Department is working on a plan to start paying the almost 13,000 soldiers currently under the Army's stop-loss orders. Although Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to end the policy, the number of soldiers affected has risen since the middle of 2007.
Quaint. - Ed.
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama aims to dispel the cloud over U.S. banks that has driven their shares to a two- decade low by subjecting them to rigorous reviews and reviving the market for their toxic assets.
Officials will begin so-called stress tests of about 20 of the nation’s largest banks tomorrow with the aim of ensuring they have sufficient capital to withstand the toughest of economic times. Institutions that aren’t able to raise needed capital privately will get taxpayer money, regulators said yesterday.
The tenor of the gold market has changed. Gold has decoupled from the dollar and at the moment it is not driven by fear of inflation or hyperinflation, but by a flight to quality. What else can be expected when the media reports that governments are deliberately creating inflation to offset deflation? Jewelry demand that normally makes up 80% of gold demand has dropped and investment demand is what is now driving buying. SPDR Gold Trust, the ETF GLD, has added 200 tons of gold over the past six weeks and 62,000 ounces last week alone. We are very skeptical regarding GLD’s gold purchases due to a tight market and no reports of their purchases. They may be using derivatives illegally and if they are and the derivatives fail the owners of the fund will be left with little of their investment.
Read more @ The International Forecaster
An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in the United Nations Assembly and made the world community smile.
The Palestinian Representative's Speech at the UN
'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses. When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, 'What a good opportunity to have a bath!'
He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.
When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished.
An Israeli had stolen them.'
The Israeli representative jumped up furiously and shouted, 'What are you talking about? The Israelis weren't there then.'
The Palestinian representative smiled and said:
'And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.'
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says that Israel’s status as the Middle East’s only nuclear power and its only non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a major obstacle to efforts for global nuclear disarmament.
“What compounds the problem is that the nuclear non-proliferation regime has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of Arab public opinion because of the perceived double-standards concerning Israel, the only state in the region outside the NPT and known to possess nuclear weapons.” Though Israel has never formally admitted to its arsenal, it is widely accepted that it has a considerable number of nuclear weapons.
So it's against this backdrop of political and financial ineptitude, made worse by CONgress abdicating on war powers, Constitutionally mandate control of money creation, and a longer than we have time for laundry list of omissions, commissions, misfeasance's and lobby-nuzzling that we can all look forward to the "summer of hell" as people global do a massive "WTF?"
The only solace in all this is that it won't be America only. It'll be a global event. The UK's Guardian headlines it this way:
"Britain faces summer of rage - police.
Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets"
Well, gee, gosh, look surprised. I've been telling you this has been in the linguistics for Summer '09 for how long? Go look at this Google cache from my Wednesday August 20, 2008 report which not only clearly predicts the October '08 meltdown but this stuff still to come that British police are awakening to: "This run is focused on events as far out as July 2009, which for labeling purposes in modelspace is called the "Summer of Hell" for reasons that you'll be able to catch up with in Part Zero which is expected to be posted around September 5th..."
Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel's extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.
In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.
This is exactly what I've been talking about.
First, from Reuters this morning on European indices:
""We're near the cliff's edge, very close to capitulation, the mood is very gloomy," said Jean-Claude Petit, head of equities at Barclays Wealth Managers France.
"I not sure that governments and central banks are realising what's really going on," he said.
What's "really going on" is that our entire financial system has turned into a gigantic clown car. There hasn't been any recognition that the fundamental problem over the last two decades has been fraudulent lending - giving money to people on loan that the lender knows full well has no real chance of being able to pay it back.
by Alan Reynolds
When President Obama discusses his $275 billion mortgage bailout, he talks as if it was a national problem, caused by a national decline in home prices. "We must stem the spread of foreclosures and falling home values for all Americans," he says. But there is no national market for homes and no national price for homes. Instead, most of the United States will pay for the folly of few.
The beneficiaries of taxpayer charity will be highly concentrated in just five states - California, Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Michigan. That is not because the subsidized homeowners are poor (Californians with $700,000 mortgages are not poor), but because they took on too much debt, often by refinancing in risky ways to "cash out" thousands more than the original loan. Nearly all subprime loans were for refinancing, not buying a home.
