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Archive for May, 2011

yahoo.com – next financial crisis “even scarier”


In “Reckless Endangerment,” co-authors Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner examine the origins of the crisis, starting in the early 1990s. The co-authors pull no punches and aren’t shy about placing blame. (See: Reckless Endangerment: Morgenson, Rosner Name Names — Point Finger at Fannie Mae. )

Having taken a long, hard look back, I asked Morgenson and Rosner about what worries them today and looking forward.

Too Big to Fail: Now, Even Bigger!

“We have even more ‘too big to fail’ institutions; more politically interconnected, very deep and wide institutions that could create another systemic event,” says Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at The New York Times. “It’s almost as if the situation that brought us to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having to be bailed out has now been squared or quadrupled. It’s worse, not better.”

Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher, wholeheartedly agrees.

“The risks are enormous” because there’s even more concentration of assets among the biggest banks, which are “too big to analyze and manage,” he says.

If the financial system was a “house of cards” before the crisis, the situation is worse today because back then investors had “some sense the numbers being given in annual reports and quarterly filings were accurate,” Rosner says. “Now we know the government seems to be [complicit] in allowing them to fudge those numbers.”

Toil & Trouble

Another issue which keeps Rosner up at night is the Fed’s uber-easy monetary policy.

“The Fed is still under the assumption all they have to do to revive an economy is blow a new bubble,” he says, suggesting commodities and emerging market bubbles have replaced housing, which in turn filled in after the Internet bubble collapsed.

At the same time, the Fed is creating “a lot of interest rate risk” by keeping rates at zero for so long. “As interest rates rise we’ll see which banks are in trouble,” he warns.

Speaking of trouble, Morgenson takes some solace that government regulators are (finally) starting to investigate alleged Wall Street crimes. “It’s hard to imagine a crisis this large, which created trillions of losses, was nobody’s fault,” she says.

Amen.

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/risks-enormous-why-morgenson-rosner-worried-152700730.html

Categories: Global news

The Stage Is Set For a Nuclear False Flag


The Intel Hub
By Alex Thomas
May 29th, 2011

The stage has been set for a nuclear false flag in America.

Many in the alternative media have wondered if a false flag nuke attack within America is a real possibility. Would they do it? Who would it be? What cities would be targeted?

Recently, The New York Times reported that the United States is running out of a rare gas that is used to detect smuggled nuclear materials.

The reason given is that one arm of the Energy Department is selling the gas much quicker than the other is able to accumulate it.

While this could possibly be a legitimate reason, it seems highly suspicious that a government that is installing a police state nationwide to supposedly save us from terrorists would be unable to obtain the gas needed to detect smuggled nuclear weapons.

Wouldn’t a nuclear attack on America be the MOST important threat to combat?

Unfortunately there is a long history of suspicious nuclear activity in the United States, with cover story after cover story being spread throughout the corporate controlled media.

At this junction in history it seems prudent to lay out some of the more ludicrous stories that have been planted into the minds of the American people.

http://theintelhub.com/2011/05/29/the-stage-is-set-for-a-nuclear-false-flag/

Categories: World War III

Taliban Threaten To Take Over Pakistan & Nukes


 

The Taliban has said they have no plans to attack Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal as it is the only Muslim state to possess such weapons, amid global concerns over the possibility of atomic weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. Taliban has stepped-up a violent campaign in Pakistan to avenge Osama bin Laden’s killing and has renewed fears that the country’s warheads could be vulnerable.

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30 May 2011
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Webster Tarpley – Pakistan Is The Road To World War 3 – China Gives USA Ultimatum – 21/5/2011
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Gunmen Storm Pakistan Navy Air Base – 22/5/2011 – CIA?
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Pakistan Says China to Operate Key Port
MAY 22, 2011, 1:18 P.M. ET
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US, Pakistan Near Open War; Chinese Ultimatum Warns Washington Against Attack
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http://tarpley.net/2011/05/21/us-pak…gainst-attack/

China & Pakistan Military Powers Unite With Unbreakable bond
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Attack on Pak will be attack on China: report
Posted: Thu May 19 2011, 12:56 hrs
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NATO Helicopters Strike Inside NorthWest Pakistan May 17th 2011
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US Lawmaker – “Pakistan Was lying To Us” – “A New Relationship With India” “Its A Game Changer”
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India confirms Chinese military in PoK
Josy Joseph, TNN | May 12, 2011, 04.50am IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i…ow/8259346.cms

NASA Banned From Working With China
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The Closest Enemy – All US Paths Lead To War With China.
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Pakistan seeks solace in the Kremlin
South Asia May 7, 2011
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME07Df03.html

Pakistan Warns US & India Against Covert Operations – ‘Could Result In A Catastrophe’
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China To USA: ‘If You Mess With Pakistan You Will Be Messing With China’ – Webster Tarpley
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China calls on international community to support Pakistan
BEIJING, May 5, 2011
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CIA Announces that Next False Flag Terror Op will be Blamed on Pakistan’s
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Pakistan drops US, embraces China as new arms partner: Report
IANS, Mar 28, 2011, 09.05pm IST
http://articles.timesofindia.indiati…f-17s-pakistan

China Terms US Blockade Against Cuba a ‘Genocide’
By Redaction AHORA / redaccion@ahora.cu / Monday, 11 April 2011 11:52
http://www.ahora.cu/english/sections…-genocide.html

China Calls for Libya Ceasefire After Gadhafi’s Son Dies
VOA News May 02, 2011
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/…121087209.html

Aussies fear threat of war with China
Matt Johnston From: Herald Sun April 25, 2011 12:00AM
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Gilani urges Karzai to dump US, team up with Pakistan, China: Report
Washington, April 27(ANI):
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/436775.php

China’s 1st aircraft carrier to be launched by year’s end: spy head
2011/04/25 23:21:54
http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNe…D=201104250039

China,Russia Block Action on Syria,Israel Fears Islamic Uprising

US risks war with China and Russia – World War III – Pt 1/2 – 04-25-2011.

Libya Proxy Cold War between China & West – Build Up To Major War

Categories: World War III

Fears over fluoride plans


Fear: health risks of added fluoride are not clear

Ministers have triggered a major health row by unveiling plans to allow fluoride to be added to all drinking water in England and Wales.

Water companies will be forced to add fluoride if local health authorities order it, despite controversy over the long-term effects on health, the Government confirmed.

The authorities will have to demonstrate that the local population broadly supports such a move, which is designed to reduce dental decay.

But campaigners said they feared fluoridation would be given the green light in many parts of the country after minimal public consultation.

The policy will infuriate environmentalists and consumer groups.

Some believe fluoridation has links to cancer, Down’s syndrome, infant mortality and bone damage.

Up to half of those drinking fluoridated water also suffer ‘dental fluorosis’ – a mottling of the teeth thought to be caused by its effects.

However, studies have shown conclusively that fluoride – similar to an ingredient in many toothpastes – cuts the amount of tooth decay in children by strengthening the enamel in growing teeth.

About one in ten people in Britain drink fluoridated water, with some water companies adding it and others refusing to.

Amendments to the Water Bill will shift responsibility for deciding to treat water away from the companies to regional strategic health authorities.

Campaigners said they would be much more likely to agree to add fluoride.

Public health minister Melanie Johnson told MPs that schemes would go ahead only after wide-ranging consultations ‘and the majority of the population have indicated that they are in favour’.

She said large chunks of the country – ‘roughly from Hartlepool down to Essex’ – had naturally-occurring fluoride in the water.

Another five million people in areas such as Birmingham had fluoridated supplies.

The NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination found no evidence of a negative effect on health with fluoridation.

But Jane Jones, campaign director of the National Pure Water Association, said: ‘ Fluoridation is indiscriminate mass medication.

‘ People have an absolute right to determine for themselves what they will and will not put into their bodies. This right is denied when medicine is added to the public drinking water supply.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-187013/Fears-fluoride-plans.html#ixzz1Nx8VOYHT

Categories: Health/Pharma

Israeli central bank chief to be next IMF head?


ERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s central bank chief, Stanley Fischer, is interested in the top job at the International Monetary Fund and has received a number of phone calls in recent days from around the world encouraging him to apply, a person familiar with the banker’s thinking told The Associated Press on Sunday.

The person said Fischer has not decided whether to pursue the job and has no desire to leave his current post, but would have a hard time saying no to the IMF. “If the opportunity comes along, he will take it,” said the person.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because Fischer is still weighing his options. He said he expects Fischer to make a decision within the next two weeks.

Fischer, an internationally respected economist, held the No. 2 position at the IMF during the 1990s and is well acquainted with the workings of the fund.

Born in Zambia and educated at the London School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he also has held top jobs at the World Bank and at Citigroup Corp.

Fischer came to Israel in 2005 to take the post of governor of the Bank of Israel. He has been widely credited with enabling the country to largely escape the global economic crisis. Unemployment in Israel is just over 6 percent, and the real estate sector is booming.

Last year, he was appointed to a second five-year term.

Fischer has received phone calls from top IMF officials and officials from major finance ministries around the world encouraging him to seek the post, the person said. He refused to identify the countries or officials.

The post has traditionally gone to a European, and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has emerged as the front-runner. Developing nations have argued that someone from another region should be considered.

The IMF’s last director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quit this month after he was accused of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid.

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Israels-Fischer-interested-in-apf-1672718171.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=

Categories: Global news

Yemeni forces attack protesters, kill 70


Mon, 30 May 2011 07:01:34 GMT

At least 70 individuals have been killed in southern Yemen as security forces clashed with protesters that were calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Protest organizers reported on Monday that Yemeni forces have killed at least 70 demonstrators in Taizz, according to wire and broadcast reports.

The reports also indicate that government forces set protest camps at Freedom Square on fire as well, injuring scores of protesters in the process.

Witnesses said Yemeni Republican Guard forces, backed by tanks, moved in during the early hours of Monday to disperse demonstrators at the square.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for near daily demonstrations in Yemen’s major cities since late January, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment as well as demanding the ouster of Saleh, who has been ruling the country since 1978.

Observers believe that Saleh is trying to spread fear that Yemen will plunge into chaos without him.

On May 23, clashes broke out between Yemeni security forces and members of the country’s powerful Hashid tribe in capital Sana’a.

Scores of tribesmen and regime forces have been killed in clashes that took place following Saleh’s refusal to sign a power transition deal brokered by the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council. Some reports have put casualty figures in recent clashes at well over a hundred.

 

http://edition.presstv.ir/TextOnly/detail.aspx?id=182372

Categories: World War III

Uk training Saudi’s to supress uprising in Bahrain


Britain is training Saudi Arabia‘s national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that the kingdom’s human rights record is “a major concern”.

In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in “weapons, fieldcraft and general militaryskills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training”. The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier.

The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for “all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport”.

Bahrain’s royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops.

“Britain’s important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain,” said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

Analysts believe the Saudi royal family is desperate to shore up its position in the region by preserving existing regimes in the Gulf that will help check the increasing power of Iran.

“Last year we raised concerns that the Saudis had been using UK-supplied and UK-maintained arms in secret attacks in Yemen that left scores of Yemeni civilians dead,” said Oliver Sprague, director of Amnesty International’s UK Arms Programme.

Defence minister Nick Harvey confirmed to parliament last week that the UK’s armed forces provided training to the Saudi national guard. “It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian national guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission,” he said.

The confirmation that this training is focused on maintaining public order in the kingdom is potentially embarrassing for the government. Coming at the end of a week in which the G8 summit in France approved funding for countries embracing democracy in the wake of the Arab spring, it has led to accusations that the government’s foreign policy is at conflict with itself.

Jonathan Edwards, a Plaid Cymru MP who has tabled parliamentary questions to the MoD about its links to Saudi Arabia, said he found it difficult to understand why Britain was training troops for “repressive undemocratic regimes”. “This is the shocking face of our democracy to many people in the world, as we prop up regimes of this sort,” Edwards said. “It is intensely hypocritical of our leadership in the UK – Labour or Conservative – to talk of supporting freedoms in the Middle East and elsewhere while at the same time training crack troops of dictatorships.”

The MoD’s response was made in 2006, but when questioned this week it confirmed Britain has been providing training for the Saudi national guard to improve their “internal security and counter-terrorism” capabilities since 1964 and continues to do so. Members of the guard, which was established by the kingdom’s royal family because it feared its regular army would not support it in the event of a popular uprising, are also provided places on flagship UK military courses at Sandhurst and Dartmouth. In Saudi Arabia, Britain continues to train the guard in “urban sharpshooter” programmes, the MoD confirmed.

Last year, Britain approved 163 export licences for military equipment to Saudi Arabia, worth £110m. Exports included armoured personnel carriers, sniper rifles, small arms ammunition and weapon sights. In 2009, the UK supplied Saudi Arabia with CS hand grenades, teargas and riot control agents.

Sprague said a shake-up of the system licensing the supply of military expertise and weapons to foreign governments was overdue. “We need a far more rigorous case-by-case examination of the human rights records of those who want to buy our equipment or receive training.”

An MoD spokesman described the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, as “key partners” in the fight against terrorism. “By providing training for countries to the same high standards used by UK armed forces we help to save lives and raise awareness of human rights,” said the spokesman.

Labour MP Mike Gapes, the former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said British military support for Saudi Arabia was about achieving a “difficult balance”.

“On the one hand Saudi Arabia faces the threat of al-Qaida but on the other its human rights record is dreadful. This is the constant dilemma you have when dealing with autocratic regimes: do you ignore them or try to improve them?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/28/uk-training-saudi-troops

Categories: World War III

Egyptian Saif al-Adel now acting leader of al Qaeda, ex-militant says


CNN) — An Egyptian who was once a Special Forces officer has been chosen “caretaker” leader of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the group’s inner workings.

Al Qaeda’s interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long played a prominent role in the group, according to Noman Benotman. Benotman has known the al Qaeda leadership for more than two decades. He was once a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant organization that used to be aligned with al Qaeda, but in recent years renounced al Qaeda’s ideology.

Benotman told CNN that based on his personal communications with militants and discussions on jihadist forums, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, had been chosen interim chief of al Qaeda because the global jihadist community had grown restive in recent days about the lack of a formal announcement of a successor to bin Laden.

U.S.: Bin Laden communicated with Yemen group

According to Benotman, this was not a decision of the formal shura council of al Qaeda, because it is currently impossible to gather them in one place, but was rather the decision of six to eight leaders of al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Al-Adel was already one of the top leaders of the group.

Bin Laden’s money trail

Stop the money, defeat al Qaeda

However, Benotman said, the choice of an Egyptian may not sit well with some Saudi and Yemeni members of al Qaeda, who believe bin Laden’s successor should come from the Arabian Peninsula, a region that is holy to all Muslims. Bin Laden was from a wealthy Saudi family.

The presumed successor to bin Laden is his long-time deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is also Egyptian. Benotman, who has long been a reliable source of information about al Qaeda, said the temporary appointment of al-Adel may be a way for the leadership to gauge reaction to the selection of someone from beyond the Arabian Peninsula as the group’s leader.

Al-Adel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in the winter of 2001 he fled to Iran. According to senior Saudi counterterrorism officials, from there al-Adel authorized al Qaeda’s branch in Saudi Arabia to begin a campaign of terrorist attacks in the Saudi kingdom that began in Riyadh in May 2003, a campaign that killed scores.

Some reports in the past year have suggested that al-Adel had left Iran for Pakistan.

Pakistan announces key al Qaeda arrest

One of the key issues that al-Adel has to reckon with now is the fallout from the large quantities of sensitive information that was recovered by U.S. forces at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was shot on May 2. That information is likely to prove damaging to al Qaeda operations.

The selection of an interim leader allows al Qaeda to begin the process of collecting allegiance, or baya, from al-Qaeda affiliates such as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the North Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Baya was a religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden rather than to the organization itself, in the same way that Nazi Party members swore an oath of fealty to Hitler rather than to Nazism. That baya must now be transferred to whomever the new leader of al Qaeda is going to be, which is likely to be al-Zawahiri, given his long role as bin Laden’s deputy.

Opinion: Why bin Laden was radicalized

However, there is scant evidence that al-Zawahiri has the charisma of bin Laden, nor that he commands the respect bordering on love that was accorded to bin Laden by members of al Qaeda.

Now that bin Laden is dead there is a real opportunity for the Taliban to disassociate itself from al Qaeda, as it was bin Laden who, sometime before the 9/11 attacks, swore an oath of allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the Amir al-Muminin, “commander of the faithful,” a rarely invoked religious title that dates from around the time of the Prophet Mohammed.

Mullah Omar could now take the position that the new leader of al Qaeda does not need to swear an oath of allegiance to Omar as commander of the faithful.

Such a move would satisfy a key condition for peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments: that the Taliban reject al Qaeda, something that they have so far not done.

Al-Adel has been involved in militant activities since the late 1980s, according to an interview with him published in spring 2005 in the Arabic-language London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi.

In the article, written by Fuad Husayn, a Jordanian journalist and writer, al-Adel recalled that he was detained for militant activities in Egypt on May 6, 1987.

Al Qaeda’s most-wanted leaders

“The case pertained to the assassination attempt against ex-Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan Abu-Basha. … I was then a colonel in the Egyptian Special Forces,” he said.

Al-Adel also has been involved for years in anti-American activities, other sources indicate.

Mohamed Odeh, one of the bombers of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in August 1998, told FBI interrogators that in 1993 he was ordered by al-Adel to go to Somalia to link up with local tribes and train them to fight and attack U.S. forces who were then serving there in a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis.

And a British-Ugandan, Feroz Ali Abbasi, who had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, recalled in a memoir that Adel instructed him and other recruits to fight U.S. forces around Kabul or in the southern city of Kandahar during the American invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001

In the interview published in Al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Adel also explained al Qaeda’s motivations for the 9/11 attack: “Our main objective, therefore, was to deal a strike to the head of the snake at home to smash its arrogance.”

After the fall of the Taliban, Adel recalled that he and other members of al-Qaeda found refuge in Iran: “We began to converge on Iran one after the other,” he said. “…We began to rent apartments for the fraternal brothers and some of their families. The fraternal brothers of the group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar” — an Afghan militant then living in exile in Iran who is now a leader of the insurgency in Afghanistan — “offered us satisfactory help in this field. They provided us with apartments and some farms that they owned.”

But Al-Adel said that the Iranians subsequently arrested a large number of these “brothers.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/17/mideast.al.qaeda.appointee/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Categories: World War III

Footage captures ‘troops on the ground’ in Libya


Categories: World War III

Gen. Hamid Gul – US Will Start WW3 If War Expands To Pakistan.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2vZJ-VYpoA

 

Amid the fallout between Washington and Islamabad over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, RT spoke to Hamid Gul, former chief of Pakistan’s Intelligence Agency. He calls the US a haughty empire spoiled by a sense of authority.

Categories: World War III