Harvard derivatives whiz fired for emailing Summers about 'frightening' trades

A former quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Company, the university's once-vaunted endowment manager, tells the Harvard Crimson she was fired for voicing concern to then-university president Larry Summers' chief of staff about the money manager's risky use of derivatives the traders didn't understand.

Read more @ TPM Muckracker

Why is Judaism counted among the world's great religions?

Have any of you ever wondered why Judaism is counted among the worlds great religions? Christianity has over 2 billion subscribers, Islam about 1.5 and we secular non religious types number over a billion. Even the Sikhs, Juche and Spiritist's out number the subscribers to Judaism estimated at only 14 million. So how can Judaism even be mentioned among great religions? And what is a Jew anyway? Someone who subscribes to Judaism or is it an ethnic identity? Before 9/11 my short answer to these questions of course would have been...who gives a shit? These folks whoever or whatever they are represent zero percent of the worlds population(rounded). Why are we wasting our time talking about this? But then of course 9/11 happened and my view of Israel and many of it's Jewish citizens would change radically as many of you may have noticed.

Read more @ Liberal White Boy

ADL slams archbishop who said more Catholics than Jews died in Holocaust

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has
condemned the words of a Brazilian Catholic Archbishop who suggested in a magazine interview that "more Catholics than Jews have died in the Holocaust, but this is usually not told because Jews own the world's propaganda."

Read more @ Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238562878994&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Israel's new foreign minister dismisses Annapolis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel's new foreign minister angered Palestinians and raised the prospect of tension with Washington by saying on Wednesday Israel was not bound by a deal to start negotiations on establishing a Palestinian state.

Read more @ Yahoo News

Finally, talking the lobby's role in America

Most Americans would prefer to keep their lights on than to personally finance Israel’s existence

It finally seems acceptable, even within polite circles, to discuss the role of the Israeli Lobby on US foreign policy. AIPAC’s recent success in deposing the almost National Security Chief Chas Freeman stimulated much free thought worldwide.

Freeman made it clear that he blamed certain “unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country whose aim is to prevent any other view other than its own from being aired.”

Read more @ Khaleej Times

Taleban will launch attack on America that will amaze world

uh huh. - ed.

Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taleban, threatened yesterday to launch an attack on Washington that would “amaze everyone in the world” as he claimed responsibility for the raid on a police academy in Lahore and boasted of a new regional militant alliance.

Mr Mehsud, for whom the United States offered a $5 million reward last week, said that Monday's raid, which killed seven police officers, was retaliation for US drone attacks on Pakistan's northern tribal areas, now the main hub of Taleban and al-Qaeda activity.

Read more @ Times Online

Interim IG report on surveillance program released

When Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last year, it enacted a requirement that the Inspectors General of agencies that participated in the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance program must prepare a comprehensive review of that program, which was conducted from 2001 to 2007 outside of the FISA legal framework that normally regulates intelligence surveillance.

Read more @ Secrecy News

You want to see a crazy psychopath? Read this.

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Read more @ The Atlantic

Trends and Cycles of History

by Charles Hugh Smith

We cannot hope to understand the forces which will shape the Great Transformation unless we examine what might be called "ontological forces": structures of Nature which work not just in organisms but in human societies and history, and ontological states which can be characterized as "the politics of experience." By ontological I mean these are forces that are not limited to certain eras or cultures; they act upon human societies in all era and locales.

Read more @ of two minds

Biting Criticism of the Corruption goes 'Mainstream'

• 'MAINSTREAM' REALISES IT IS BEING LIED TO AND MANIPULATED

• PRE-G-20 MEETING VIBES CONTINUE TO 'GO PEARSHAPED'

Read report @ Global Analysis

Financial Crisis for Beginners

We believe that everyone should be able to understand how the financial crisis came about, what it means for all of us, and what our options are for getting out of it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of all writing about the crisis - including this blog - assumes some familiarity with the world of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and so on. You’ve probably heard dozens of journalists use these terms without explaining what they mean. If you’re confused, this page is for you. Over time, we will be adding more explanations and more links to external sources, so check back for updates. (Some of the explanations on this page are simplified and not 100% accurate; their goal is to explain the key concepts to a general audience.)

Read more @ The Baseline Scenario
h/t Sis

Gordon Brown channels GW Bush

Gordon Brown has made an overtly religious call for a new world order based on the 'deep moral sense' shared by all faiths.

Making the first speech by a serving Prime Minister at St Paul's Cathedral in London, he quoted scripture as he urged people to unite to forge a new 'global society'.

The Prime Minister argued that through all faiths, traditions and heritages runs a 'single powerful modern sense demanding responsibility from all and fairness to all'.

He quoted the Christian doctrine of 'do to others what you would have them do unto you' and highlighted similar principles in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism.

'They each and all reflect a sense that we share the pain of others, and a sense that we believe in something bigger than

ourselves - that we cannot be truly content while others face despair, cannot be completely at ease while others live in fear, cannot be satisfied while others are in sorrow,' he said.

Read more @ Pimpin Turtle

Israeli Fascist Govt Sworn In

At 5.00 pm Israeli time today Israel’s extreme right-wing government headed up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be sworn in.

Netanyahu’s government will likely be the most overtly right-wing government the nation of Israel has ever had. It is outwardly racist, insisting that the state of Israel is exclusively a Jewish state, and has no intention whatsoever of ever allowing the Palestinian people to have a state of their own preferring instead to eventually be able to incorporate the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in to what they hope will become Greater Israel as the openly expansionist Zionists move into the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Read more @ Telling the history of the 21st century as it really is

Les Vis: Blood and Excrement...The Movie. Coming Soon.

April is almost here. The day after tomorrow is April Fools Day. I hope we don’t get fooled again… as the song goes, more or less. There are great stinking piles of excrement all over the place. The world has become a marsh of hog lagoons and you’ve got to watch your step. The problem is, when people are watching their step they tend to notice shit; pun intended. That’s not good for the people who put it there and nothing will take the mind off of the smell quite as well as the smell of blood.

Read more @ Smoking Mirrors

American Goy parses the news

News: Aren't you happy that the United States, in its moment of a greatest financial crisis since the 1930's Great Depression, has its fiscal priorities in order?

Read more @ American Goy

Did Dick Have These People Killed?

On 10 March 2009, Seymour Hersh revealed that, during the Bush years, the US military ran an "executive assassination ring" which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Raw Story Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them..."

Dick Cheney was Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009.

One hopes he had nothing to do with the deaths of the following:

Read more @ aangirfan

Strange Maps: Palestine's Island Paradise

hanks to Miguel for forwarding this incredible map. (Strange Maps) The Bible contains at least two stories equating the aquatic with the amoral. As Red Sea pedestrians, Moses and the Israelites didn’t even get their sandals moist, while the Lord did some expert smiting on the pursuing Egyptians, by way of the gurgling waters closing in on them. And a few thousand years earlier, Noah kept his binary boatload afloat while all the rest of humanity (and the now extinct species of the animal kingdom) met their watery grave.

Read more @ Palestine Think Tank

'Ontario residents only' at Tent City

You can't even be homeless anywhere you want! - Ed.

Dozens of Ontario police and code enforcement officers descended upon the homeless encampment known as Tent City early Monday, separating those who could stay from those to be evicted.

Large, often confused, crowds formed ragged lines behind police barricades where officers handed out color-coded wristbands. Blue meant they were from Ontario and could remain. Orange indicated they had to provide more proof to avoid ejection, and white meant they had a week to leave.

Read more @ LATimes

Dynasty of Death: Historical Perspective on the Bush [Crime] Family

There is no historic parallel that can be drawn, nothing compares with the accomplishments of the Bush family. No dictator or tyrant can equal the suffering and destruction they have wrought on humanity, as they are not mere tyrants themselves, but the makers and breakers of tyrants, the organizers and profiteers of war and death. They are not alone and solely responsible for creating the present day military industrial complex, however since 1915 the Bush family has been directly involved in World War One and Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, numerous CIA secret wars, the Gulf War, and now a “Never Ending War”. The past four generations of this one family have had a hand in promoting and profiting from most of major wars that America has waged since the beginning of the industrialized age.

Read more @ Global Research
h/t Greg Bacon

The 7 Words You Can't Say in Advertising

The machine gets a lube job. - Ed.

by Steve Simpson

Braced from your latest e-mail communication from Obama/Axelrod/Plouffe and still tingling from the latest toke from your fave bookmark, recovery.gov, you're driving your underpowered hybrid automobile with frugal pressure on the pedal and one eye on the goal of energy independence from sneering foreign despots, the other on beating your personal mpg record.

Read more @ Adweek