Russia won't back 'crippling sanctions'

Herb Keinon – Jerusalem Post February 25, 2010


Israel and the US will hold a one-day, high-level strategic dialogue on Thursday expected to focus on sanctions against Iran, a day after Russia announced it opposes “paralyzing” sanctions aimed at the Islamic Republic’s energy sector.

A week after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu returned from Moscow, where he publicly called for “crippling sanctions” and “sanctions with teeth” against Iranian energy exports and imports, Oleg Rozhkov, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security and disarmament department, said that Moscow would not back “crippling or paralyzing” sanctions that could lead to the “political or economic or financial isolation” of Iran.

According to Reuters, Rozhkov – when asked by a reporter what sanctions Russia might support – replied, “Those that are directed at resolving nonproliferation questions linked to Iran’s nuclear program.

“What relation to nonproliferation is there in forbidding banking activities with Iran?” he asked. “This is a financial blockade. And oil and gas. These sanctions are aimed only at paralyzing the country and paralyzing the regime.”

Despite these comments, the Israeli and US teams on Thursday are expected to concentrate on the issue of sanctions to halt Iran’s nuclear program. A possible military strike is not expected to be discussed, since Washington has made clear that while it might need to be discussed in the future, the military option is not now on the agenda.

There is currently no known discussion between Israel and the US, at any level, about military action, even though over the years both countries have said that it should not be taken off the table.

In Washington, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran’s continuing refusal to provide more information on its nuclear program had left the international community “little choice” but to impose new, tough sanctions on Teheran.

In congressional testimony on Wednesday, Clinton said Iran’s failure to accept the Obama administration’s offers of engagement and prove its nuclear intentions were peaceful had given the US and its partners new resolve in pressuring Teheran to comply with international demands through fresh penalties.

“We have pursued a dual-track approach to Iran that has exposed its refusal to live up to its responsibilities and helped us achieve a new unity with our international partners,” she told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“Iran has left the international community little choice but to impose greater costs and pressure in the face of its provocative steps. We are now working actively with our partners to prepare and implement new measures to pressure Iran to change its course,” Clinton said, in comments that seemed at odds with Rozhkov’s statement in Moscow.

Netanyahu’s office had no comment on Rozhkov’s remarks, while one government official said Israel would likely seek clarification from the Kremlin.

The position articulated by Rozhkov runs contrary to the impression Netanyahu gave reporters last week in Moscow when, after meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, he said the feeling toward sanctions in Moscow today was dramatically different than it was 10 months ago.

Clinton addressed the possibility that Congress might impose its own sanctions on Iran, besides those the US was seeking through the UN Security Council. Congressional sanctions might be tougher than any for which the United States could win international approval at the UN, but the US wants international backing for its tough stance against Iran and sees the UN penalties as a powerful symbol of world resolve against an Iranian bomb.

The comments from Moscow came as a bit of a surprise, as top officials both in Washington and Jerusalem have expressed optimism in recent weeks that significant nonmilitary action, such as “crippling” sanctions, could have a real impact on Teheran.

The Israeli delegation to Thursday’s strategic dialogue in Jerusalem will be led by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, while the US team will be headed by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg. This is the first meeting of the strategic dialogue framework, which was set up in 1999, since Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama came into office.

The meeting comes as both Jerusalem and Washington believe that Iran is making its international position more difficult by continuing to talk about enriching uranium to higher levels. While it is unclear exactly which way China – which holds a veto on the UN Security Council – will vote on sanctions, there is a growing sense that it would be unlikely to buck the will of most of the rest of the world – and the other permanent members of the Security Council – and scuttle sanctions. This assessment is largely based on previous Chinese behavior and Beijing’s general reticence to defy international consensus.

A high-level Israeli delegation, led by Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, left for Beijing on Wednesday to lobby on behalf of sanctions.

In the run-up to the Security Council sanctions vote, expected sometime in March, the US is doing its utmost to distance itself from any hint that sanctions were intended for regime change in Teheran, and not only to stop the nuclear program. The fear is that this could chase both Russia and China away from supporting a fourth round of sanctions.

For instance, Rozhkov told reporters on Wednesday that “Russia isn’t working or participating in actions which should lead to overthrowing the existing regime. We are working with the US and others... only to solve those concerns we have regarding Iranian nuclear efforts.”

Also on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that a delay in delivering air-defense missiles to Iran was connected with concerns about regional tensions.

Russia signed a contract in 2007 to sell S-300 missiles to Iran, a move that would substantially boost the country’s defense capacities and make an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities more difficult.

Lavrov, when asked about the delivery, said Russia never takes “any actions leading to the destabilization of this or that region. All deliveries of Russian weapons abroad follow from the need to strictly respect this principle.”

It marks the first time Russia has publicly called into question the wisdom of honoring its contractual obligations to Iran. Various Russian defense officials had suggested in recent weeks, including the day before Netanyahu went to Moscow last week, that the commitment to supply the missiles would be fulfilled.

When pressed on the specific reason for the missile holdup, Lavrov broadened the question by referring to arms sales by any country to South America, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

“There are certain principles we need to be guided by when selling arms,” he said. “We cannot sell weapons if it will destabilize any of these regions.”

Netanyahu, asked after his meeting last week with President Dmitry Medvedev whether he had received assurances that Moscow would not supply the weapons systems, said, “I trust what I heard from the president of Russia. I trust him because I know that in this issue, Russia is guided by concerns about regional stability.” 

'Buy farmland and gold,' advises Dr Doom

The world’s most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a “dirty war” by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash.

The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers.

Dr Faber, who advised his audience to pull out of American stocks one week before the 1987 crash and was among a handful who predicted the more recent financial crisis, vies with the Nouriel Roubini, the economist, as a rival claimant for the nickname Dr Doom.

Speaking today, Dr Faber said that investors, who control billions of dollars of assets, should start considering the effects of more disruptive events than mere market volatility.

“The next war will be a dirty war,” he told fund managers: "What are you going to do when your mobile phone gets shut down or the internet stops working or the city water supplies get poisoned?”

His investment advice, which was the first keynote speech of CLSA’s annual investment forum in Tokyo, included a suggestion that fund managers buy houses in the countryside because it was more likely that violence, biological attack and other acts of a “dirty war” would happen in cities.

He also said that they should consider holding part of their wealth in the form of precious metals “because they can be carried”.

One London-based hedge fund manager described Mr Faber’s address as “excellent, chilling stuff: good at putting you off lunch, but not something I can tell clients asking me about quarterly returns at the end of March”.

Dr Faber did offer a few more traditional investment tips, although their theme fitted his general mode of pessimism.

In Asia, particularly, he said, stock pickers should play on future food and water shortages by buying into companies with exposure to agriculture and water treatment technologies.

One of Dr Faber’s darker scenarios involves growing military tension between China and the United States over access to limited oil resources.

Today the US has a considerable advantage over China because it has free access to oceans on both coasts, and has potential energy suppliers to the north and south in Canada and Mexico.

It also commands an 11-strong fleet of aircraft carriers that could, if necessary, secure supply routes in a conflict situation.

China and emerging Asia, meanwhile, face the uncertainty of supplies that must travel from the Middle East through winding sea lanes and the Malacca bottleneck.
American military presence in Central Asia, Dr Faber said, may add to the level of concern in Beijing.

“When I tell people to prepare themselves for a dirty war, they ask me: “America against whom?” I tell them that for sure they will find someone.”

At the heart of Dr Faber’s argument is a fundamentally gloomy view on the US economy and its capacity to service a growing mountain of debt.

His belief, fund managers were told, is that the US is going to go bankrupt.

Under President Obama, he said, the country’s annual fiscal deficit will not drop below $1 trillion and could rise beyond that figure.

Arch bears have predicted that US debt repayments could hit 35 per cent of tax revenues within ten years. 

Hurdles Hinder Counterterrorism Center

By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — The nation’s main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress.

The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department. The findings come just weeks after the National Counterterrorism Center was criticized for missing clear warning signs that a 23-year-old Nigerian man was said to be plotting to blow up a Detroit-bound commercial airliner on Dec. 25.

The counterterrorism center’s mission is to gather information from across the government, pull it all together and assess terrorist threats facing the United States, then develop a plan for the government to combat them. But the new report found that the center’s planning arm did not have enough authority to do its main job of coordinating the White House’s counterterrorism priorities.

The center’s planning operation is supposed to be staffed by representatives of various agencies, but not all of them send their best and brightest, the report said. It also cited examples in which the C.I.A. and the State Department did not even participate in some plans developed by the center that were later criticized for lacking important insights those agencies could offer.

As a result, the center’s planning arm “has been forced to develop national plans without the expertise of some of the most important players,” the report determined.

The counterterrorism center was part of the overhaul of the government after Sept. 11, including the creation of the director of national intelligence. Now, years after the attacks, the entire reorganization is coming under scrutiny, raising fundamental questions about who is in charge of the nation’s counterterrorism policy and its execution.

“The fluid nature of modern terrorism necessitates an agile and integrated response,” the report concluded. “Yet our national security system is organized along functional lines (diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement, etc.) with weak and cumbersome integrating mechanisms across these functions.”

The 196-page report is the result of an eight-month study by the Project on National Security Reform, a nonpartisan research and policy organization in Washington. It was financed by Congress and draws on more than 60 interviews with current and former government and Congressional officials, including nearly a dozen officials at the counterterrorism center. The study is scheduled to be made public this week. The authors provided a copy to The New York Times.

The center noted in a statement on Monday that the study found the center had “made progress” in linking national policy with operations, adding that the report’s recommendations “provide an extremely thoughtful and useful critique of how counterterrorism actions are or are not fully synchronized across the U.S. government.”

The report found that the center’s planning arm struggled with “systemic impediments” like overlapping statutes, culture clashes with different agencies and tensions with two formidable players: the State Department’s counterterrorism office and the C.I.A.

Under President Obama, the report determined, counterterrorism issues have become more decentralized within the National Security Council’s different directorates, leaving the counterterrorism center’s planning arm to collect and catalog policies and operations going on at the C.I.A., the Pentagon and the Departments of State and Homeland Security, rather than help shape overall government strategy.

The planning arm has not yet figured out good ways to measure the effectiveness of the steps the government is taking against extremists. “The basic but fundamental question remains unanswered: How is the United States doing in its attempt to counter terrorism?” the report concluded. And the study is critical of Congress for failing to create committees that cut across national security issues. The planning arm “lacks a champion in either chamber of Congress,” the report found.

Since the counterterrorism center was created in 2004, its planning arm has been largely focused on a comprehensive review to assign counterterrorism roles and responsibilities to each federal agency, producing then revising a document called the National Implementation Plan. But pointedly, the counterterrorism center does not direct any specific operations.

Since the completion of that longer-term project, the study’s authors found that the center’s 100-person planning arm had become more involved in immediate counterterrorism issues: working on various classified projects involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and threats to the United States at home.

The study called on Mr. Obama to issue an executive order to define the nation’s counterterrorism architecture in order to address some of the problems and improve coordination. It also recommended giving the center’s director, currently Michael E. Leiter, a say in the choice of counterterrorism officials at other federal agencies, a step the 9/11 Commission had recommended but was not adopted.

The report was directed by Robert S. Kravinsky, a Pentagon planner on assignment to the group, and James R. Locher III, a former Pentagon official and senior Congressional aide who is the group’s president.

Until they joined the administration, Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, were members of the group’s board of advisers, which now includes Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush.

Morgan Stanley Strategist: Head for the Hills!

Bloomberg reported earlier this week that the former chief global stategist for Morgan Stanley is telling people to prepare for the worst. One more time folks, this is no conspiracy theorist. Barton Biggs, MORGAN STANLEY'S FORMER CHIEF GLOBAL STRATEGIST is telling you there is going to be an economic collapse.

Read the article below.

Barton Biggs has some offbeat advice for the rich: Insure yourself against war and disaster by buying a remote farm or ranch and stocking it with ``seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.''

The ``etc.'' must mean guns.

``A few rounds over the approaching brigands' heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage,'' he writes in his new book, ``Wealth, War and Wisdom.''

Biggs is no paranoid survivalist. He was chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley before leaving in 2003 to form hedge fund Traxis Partners. He doesn't lock and load until the last page of this smart look at how World War II warped share prices, gutted wealth and remains a warning to investors. His message: Listen to markets, learn from history and prepare for the worst.

``Wealth, War and Wisdom'' fills a void. Library shelves are packed with volumes on World War II. The history of stock markets also has been ably recorded, notably in Robert Sobel's ``The Big Board.'' Yet how many books track the intersection of the two?

The ``wisdom'' in the alliterative title refers to the spooky way markets can foreshadow the future. Biggs became fascinated with this phenomenon after discovering by chance that equity markets sensed major turning points in the war.

The British stock market bottomed out in late June 1940 and started rising again before the truly grim days of the Battle of Britain in July to October, when the Germans were splintering London with bombs and preparing to invade the U.K.

`Epic Bottom'

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plumbed ``an epic bottom'' in late April and early May of 1942, then began climbing well before the U.S. victory in the Battle of Midway in June turned the tide against the Japanese.

Berlin shares ``peaked at the high-water mark of the German attack on Russia just before the advance German patrols actually saw the spires of Moscow in early December of 1941.''

``Those were the three great momentum changes of World War II – although at the time, no one except the stock markets recognized them as such.''

Biggs isn't suggesting that Mr. Market is infallible: He can get ``panicky and crazy in the heat of the moment,'' he says. Over the long haul, though, markets display what James Surowiecki calls ``the wisdom of crowds.''

Like giant voting machines, they aggregate the judgments of individuals acting independently into a collective assessment. Biggs stress-tests this theory against events that shook nations from the Depression through the Korean War, which he calls ``the last battle of World War II.''

Refresher Course

Biggs has read widely and thought deeply. He has a pleasing conversational style, an eye for memorable anecdotes and a weakness for Winston Churchill's quips. His book works as a brisk refresher course.

What really packs a wallop, though, is his combination of military history, market action, maps and charts. It's one thing to say that the London market scraped bottom before the Battle of Britain. It's another to show it.

In May and June 1940, some 338,000 British and French troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk by a flotilla of fishing boats, tugs, barges, yachts and river steamers. The French and Belgian armies had collapsed; the Dutch had surrendered. Britain stood alone, as bombs shattered London and the Nazis prepared to invade. Yet stocks rallied.

Mankind endures ``an episode of great wealth destruction'' at least once every century, Biggs reminds us. So the wealthy should prepare to ride out a disaster, be it a tsunami, a market meltdown or Islamic terrorists with a dirty bomb.

The rich get complacent, assuming they will have time ``to extricate themselves and their wealth'' when trouble comes, Biggs says. The rich are mistaken, as the Holocaust proves.

``Events move much faster than anyone expects,'' he says, ``and the barbarians are on top of you before you can escape.''


James Pressley – National Expositor February 16

BBC NEWS REPORTING

The BBC six o'clock news has a standard format which goes something like this.

1. Report on human rights abuses from some far flung war torn nation, usually wars started by the alliance and bullying of the UK and USA's empire building, while NEVER mentioning the appalling human rights abuses going on in Britain's EVIL courts just around the corner from the BBC headquarters at Bush house.

2. Like Jeremy Kyle the BBC take the dregs of the earth from some deprived council scheme and hung , draw and quarter them for entertainment and report some APPALLING crime they have committed with inane comments from some crown lackey judge condemning their vile acts while ignoring the very same judges OWN vile decisions in British courts that go on every day. Also they don't mention that the cops had been called to the ned 1000 times prior to the crime and who repeatedly said to complainants there was NOTHING they could do. Also no mention that on the squalid housing schemes across the UK, and there are literally thousands, you will seldom if EVER see a masonic cop and only when the crime becomes horrific they act and that gives the corrupt legal system an opportunity to justify the thousands of lawyers, judges, cops, social workers, legal aid staff with the lawyers money train and prison warders and their employment status who rely heavily on crime ridden inner cities and the unpoliced neds they create to fund their privileged lifestyles and million pound + salaries.

3. Feature never ending shots of the British Royals doing utterly mundane stuff like dancing with silly hats on some tropical island (usually in the winter) or them presenting tacky worthless bits of metal to young soldiers who have had their lives destroyed fighting for the Queen and to a far lesser extent the country. Or showing up for half an hour at some charity ball who then use the money collected to pay for the party and the chief executives salary.Or finding some cause ,any cause , that they show up at to suggest they are compassionate and interested in the plight of the needy and poor, then they pop off to their mansions in their limousines with police escorts who's overtime bill alone could pay for beds for every homeless person in the UK.

4. The BBC are utterly obsessed with war if they are not reporting about it they are remembering some war or another with regular 1 year , 5 year and 10 year remembrances of wars from eons ago that they continue to regurgitate to remind us how lucky we are to live under the present royal tyrannical regime that survived any war that might have changed Britain for the worst or at least from the perspective of the BBC's rose tinted and masonic tinted glasses.

5. The BBC are also obsessed with reporting on the Freedom of Information Act that is despite the fact that the BBC themselves regularly fail to adhere to that act and continually refuse to disclose information that would expose the BBC as the complete hypocrites that they are.

6. Another favourite they report on regularly is drug addiction and the effect this has on society, never mentioning the fact that the BBC has recently been exposed as encouraging their own staff to do drugs on a grand scale to enhance their artistic abilities.

7. Another favourite is knife and gun crime ensuring that the long suffering British public , unlike America , have been stripped of any means to protect themselves from a tyrannical government that by the day is reducing our rights and freedoms while those with the wealth and power in the UK from the royals down have access to vast arsenals of weapons with the Queen and Prime minister both having heavily armed cops with machine guns guarding their front doors. If they want rid of guns from our streets they should start with these two's vast arsenals.

8. Domestic violence is one of the most extreme BBC radical feminist rants ensuring that men are continuously demeaned and women always portrayed as the victims and that ensures the UK's corrupt crown, judiciary and lawyers have a continual excuse to relieve men of all their assets, homes and children . Maybe one of the most malicious of all the BBC reports, sometimes this happens even in a week when 5 or more children have been murdered by their mothers. They NEVER have any man's group on arguing about the biased BBC reports only extreme radical feminist women who ignore the many crimes and murders committed by women as if it is some sort of fantasy. Also the very people reporting these abuses are themselves bullies and abusers as we have had many reports of the bullying management at the BBC in some extreme cases managers have bitten the arms of employees during pitch battles in the offices of their newsrooms. No wonder they need drugs every day to survive the tyranny going on at the BBC.

9. The BBC have a self righteous stance on reporting on child abusers when they themselves have been harbouring staff charged for that abuse and the BBC fail to recognise the extreme abuse British courts and its judiciary impact on children's lives by separating children from their parents and extended families in draconian civil courts , closed to the public , and allows ruthless and devious crown judges to destroy the lives of families not part or connected to the masonic tyranny going on within these courts and were the crown is propping up the masonic coffers using mason judges while fleecing the millions of families caught up in that tyranny.

10. Finally the BBC while reporting crimes and thugs use the excuse of licence collection to bully, abuse and threaten poor and vulnerable people into paying a licence for creating their establishment propaganda. The BBC state time and again they require to collect a licence fee as they DO NOT have any adverts on their tv stations. This maybe the biggest lie the BBC have been caught out in as if anyone has seen the BBC world service which can be found in almost every country across the globe adverts feature regularly as do the many many stations across the globe that have BBC produced programs that have adverts and proves conclusively that the BBC is self financing and does not require to fleece the long suffering public for money they use to line the pockets of the BBC public school executives and their inflated salaries.

The Global Warming Tax Scam Kicks In

The British government is raising almost double the revenue in so called "green taxes" that it needs to offset the social cost of CO2 emissions according to a new report. An accompanying opinion poll also reveals that nearly two-thirds of people think politicians are using the green issue as an excuse to tax more.

The conclusion of a report by theTaxPayer's Alliance watchdog, states that "In many cases, individual green taxes and charges are failing to meet their objectives, are set at a level in excess of that needed to meet the social cost of CO2 emissions, and are causing serious harm to areas of the country and industries least able to cope."
The study found that the social cost of Britain’s entire output of CO2 was £11.7 billion in 2005 but in the same year, the total net burden of green taxes and charges was £21.9 billion. Meaning that even two years ago taxes were £10.2 billion in excess of the level agreed to meet the Britain’s CO2 emissions. The Alliance calculates this excess is equivalent to over £400 for each household in Britain.
"We need more honesty about the costs of extra green taxes when British taxpayers already pay some of the highest pollution charges in the world," said Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance.

(Article continues below)

The report also reveals that the main “pollution taxes” of fuel duty; vehicle excise duty (road tax); the Climate Change Levy; Air Passenger Duty; the Landfill Tax and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, each have serious flaws which indicate that the government is less concerned about the environment and more concerned with raking in excessive revenues.

In addition a second study by accountants UHY Hacker Young backs up this claim by revealing that the Government gives back in tax breaks just two per cent of the money it collects through environmental taxes.

UHY Hacker Young tax partner Roy Maugham said: "It's surprising just how lopsided the Government's approach to green taxes has been over the last ten years.
"At the moment it's all stick and very little carrot."

If the government were really concerned about climate change then they would be offering incentives not punishments for reducing CO2 emissions in the form of tax breaks. But tax breaks aren't a giant cash bonanza for our exalted guardians of Mother Earth, the loving government, who are going to tax the living hell out of us for our own good and for the very survival of mankind, while lining their own pockets.

The Treasury has said the claims in the studies are "ridiculous" and has dropped the green bomb on the TaxPayers Alliance, reminding it that climate change is a justification to do anything.
A spokesman said: "In arguing against these taxes, the Taxpayers' Alliance are being doubly dangerous - it would mean cuts to public services, schools and hospitals, as well as higher carbon emissions leading to accelerated climate change."
Meanwhile Corin Taylor, research director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, has reminded the government that over vamped green charges, far from being a solution, are a primary cause of cuts in public services. "Green taxes and charges impose substantial costs on, amongst others, the National Health Service." Taylor commented.
Released alongside the TaxPayers' Alliance study, a new YouGov poll of more than 2,000 adults (double the usual sample) was commissioned into public attitudes towards green taxes.
When asked what they thought the primary motivation was for new green taxes, 63 per cent agreed with the statement: “Politicians are not serious about the environment and are using the issue as an excuse to raise more revenue from green taxes.” Only 20 per cent thought that “Politicians are serious about the environment and are bringing in new green taxes to change people’s behaviour to help reduce carbon emissions.”

Remember that these studies encompass two year old figures and naturally do not even take into account newly proposed "carbon taxes" which would see a sky rocketing in costs sought by the Treasury.

In recent months we have seen proposals in the UK and the US to impose steep new taxes that would raise the cost of burning oil, gas and coal even at a time when the cost of energy is already through the roof.

Such calls for a carbon tax on energy have been echoed by globalist groups such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group whose members are coincidentally made up of many big energy company heads and CEOs who stand to gain from long term hikes in prices to offset an initial drop in demand that a new tax would bring.

We have previously pointed out that while many green activists aim their criticisms at the energy companies and big government, it is the elite structures within and surrounding those very areas that arepushing global warming fears, in addition to their tax proposals.

Global warming also acts as a convenient veil for the real environmental crimes that will continue on behalf of the mega corporations and scientific establishment that are in bed with the very government imposing draconian measures on us in the name of the environment. GM contamination, toxic waste dumping, bizarre cloning mad science, and the destruction of the rain forests will continue apace while we are still being lectured about light bulbs and beer bottles.

There is also actual discussion of imposing a carbon tax on humans for the air we breathe!

Meanwhile less than half of all published scientists endorse the theory that human activity constitutes a significant contribution to climate change, hardly a "consensus" as the UN appointed panel on climate change calls it.

The climate change momentum has shifted among prominent scientists who are now benefiting from a greater depth of research. A spate of new research papers has significantly chilled fears of man-made global warming.

If the cause is not even agreed upon how is it that the solution is?

Because governments throughout the world love convincing people that they are in danger and that they can only be saved by letting them take control. Globalists imagine and invent problems and then they offer us the solution, but the solution is always more government, more corporate monopoly, less sovereignty and less free market economy.
The global warming tax scam has kicked in. There's no time left for a debate they tell us - we don't want to hear about the medieval warm period, we don't want to hear about how temperatures dropped as carbon emissions increased for four decades from the 40's to the 80's, we don't want to hear about how the troposphere shows no build up of greenhouse gases, we don't want to hear about sun activity and its direct correlation with climate change, we don't want to hear about arctic ice samples showing how CO2 lags behind temperature increase. There's money to be made and there's peasants to flog.

Eco-fanatics and power-hungry elitists have taken total control of the global warming bandwagon. Before they choke the life out of modern industrialized civilization by eliminating the source of 80% of the planet's energy, and in the face of fierce silencing techniques, it is vital to further understand why scientific evidence is not on the side of the theory of human-caused warming.

Iran arrests seven ahead of revolution anniversary

Iran said on Sunday it has arrested seven people for allegedly planning to provoke riots on February 11, the day the nation marks the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution.

"Seven people tied with counter-revolutionary and Zionist satellite networks and the sedition have been arrested," the intelligence ministry said in a statement carried by local media.

It said the detainees were linked to Radio Farda – the US-funded, Prague-based Persian radio – and trained in Dubai and Istanbul, while "some of them were hired by the US spy service," which was not named.

The accused had a crucial role in gathering and sending news abroad and "provoking rioters, especially on Ashura," the ministry charged.

"They were due to do the same on February 11 and then leave the country to join the Americans."

The scene of tense protests since June's disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran saw the bloodiest unrest in recent months on December 27 when the nation was commemorating the solemn Shiite ceremony of Ashura.

Opposition supporters have staged anti-government protests to coincide with several regime-sponsored events, with expectations high of a repeat performance on February 11.

Ailing Banks Favor Salaries Over Shareholders

Finding the winners on Wall Street is usually as simple as looking at pay. Rarely are bankers who lose money paid as generously as those who make it.

But this year is unusual, Eric Dash reports in The New York Times. A handful of big banks that are struggling in the postbailout world are, by some measures, the industry’s most magnanimous employers. Roughly 90 cents out of every dollar that these banks earned in 2009 — and sometimes more — is going toward employee salaries, bonuses and benefits, according to company filings.

Amid all the commotion over the large bonuses that many bankers are collecting, what stands out is not only how much the stars are making. It is also how much of the profits lesser lights are taking home.

To compete with well-heeled rivals, banks like Citigroup are giving their employees an unheard-of cut of the winnings. Citigroup paid its employees so much in 2009 — $24.9 billion — that the company more than wiped out every penny of profit. After paying its employees and returning billions of bailout dollars, Citigroup posted a $1.6 billion annual loss.

Granted, the bankers and traders who work for Wall Street’s biggest moneymakers are still collecting the richest rewards. But this bonus season, banking executives are rethinking how to divide the spoils.

Goldman Sachs, that highest of highfliers, is doing the unthinkable. It is giving its employees an unusually small cut of its profits — about 45 cents out of every dollar — even though its paydays will, in dollar terms, rank among the richest of all time.

That 45-cent figure, known as the payout ratio, represents the amount of compensation that Goldman is meting out relative to the pool of profits available for compensation. Until recently, the ratio for most Wall Street banks hovered around 60 cents of every dollar, in line with other labor- and talent-intensive industries like retailing and health care.

Most Americans would be thrilled to collect a Goldman-style paycheck. If compensation were spread evenly among the bank’s 36,200 employees, each would take home about $447,000.

But to keep up with the Goldmans, laggards like Citigroup are handing out fat slices of their profits, leaving little left over for their shareholders. Citigroup is, in effect, paying its employees $1.45 for every dollar the company took in last year. On average, its workers stand to earn $94,000 each.

Bank of America, meantime, is spending 88 cents of every dollar it made in 2009 to compensate its workers. At Morgan Stanley, that figure is 94 cents.

JPMorgan Chase, which has fared better than those three, paid out 63 cents of every dollar.

Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley — all of which have repaid their federal aid — defend their pay practices. Press officers for the banks say a number of factors, from one-time accounting charges to the constant need to lure and retain top producers, drove decisions about compensation.

But some analysts and investors say these and other banks are rewarding their employees at shareholders’ expense. The banking industry is quick to pay its workers when times are good but slow to penalize them when times are tough. Pay for performance? Not on Wall Street, the critics say.

“The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain,” said John C. Bogle, the founder and former chairman of the Vanguard Group, the mutual fund giant. “The financial industry gets paid before their clients, and we get paid whether times are good or bad.”

Institutional investors are alarmed by what they characterize as excessive rewards for bank employees. While banks are increasing salaries and bonuses for many employees, many have yet to restore dividends that were cut during the financial crisis.

“It’s not a fair shake,” said John A. Hill, chairman of the trustees at Putnam Funds, another big mutual fund company. “I think the shareholders who paid for building that franchise should be getting a bigger share of the franchise’s profits.”

Even now, after all those big bonus numbers, the pay-to-profit ratio for the financial industry might come as a surprise to many people. The five largest banks on Wall Street — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley — earned a combined $147.4 billion before paying compensation and taxes last year. They plowed back a combined $31.2 billion into their companies and returned a total of $2.1 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends. They paid $114.1 billion to their employees.

Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley traditionally set aside about half their revenue for compensation. Big diversified banks, like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, typically set aside about a third. Most banks have typically viewed compensation as the cost of bringing in new income, even though the main concern for most shareholders is profits.

At some banks, the relationship between pay and profit is a bit tenuous. In 2005, for instance, Morgan Stanley made a pretax profit of $7.4 billion. That year, compensation at the bank averaged $212,000 for each employee. Last year, Morgan Stanley made about $857 million before taxes. But compensation averaged $235,000 for each employee.

In other words, Morgan Stanley employees collected roughly 61 cents out of every dollar the bank made in 2005, and about 94 cents of every dollar last year.
Mark Lake, a Morgan Stanley spokesman, said that 2009 compensation per employee was the lowest in at least seven years if the business then looked as it did today, and that adding thousands of Smith Barney brokers and a large accounting charge led to a higher payout ratio.

Bank of America traditionally paid out a small sliver of its profits to workers and maintained a relatively high dividend. But the bank reversed course after its acquired Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial. Now Bank of America has more than doubled the share of earnings it sets aside for employees. It was forced to cut its quarterly dividend to a penny as a condition of its second government bailout and has yet to restore it.

Scott Silvestri, a Bank of America spokesman, attributed the higher compensation costs to a “change in the business mix” after the Merrill Lynch deal. “We must pay those, or we have no company,” Mr. Silvestri said.

Shareholder advocates maintain that Wall Street pay works in favor of management and employees rather than shareholders. The industry’s bonus culture is widely viewed as having helped foster the excessive risk-taking that led to the financial crisis.

In the three years before the crisis, the five Wall Street giants set aside a total of $295 billion in compensation. Had they not handed out bonuses or shifted more compensation into stock, pay experts estimate, those banks might have kept $118 billion of additional capital in the financial system. That is almost equal to the $135 billion of bailout funds that taxpayers poured into those five institutions.

“It’s heads I win, and tails they don’t lose too badly,” said Jesse M. Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-author of “Pay Without Performance.”

Some investors and Washington policy makers argue that shareholders should get a say on pay, even if their vote is nonbinding. Mr. Bogle, of Vanguard, says big investors need to be vigilant.

“If the shareholders would wake up, executive compensation would not be what it is,” he said

Record winter casualties for US-led occupying forces

Last month 44 US and coalition troops were killed in Afghanistan—the bloodiest month of fighting recorded in the country’s winter season since the 2001 invasion. In previous years, the freezing temperatures and snowy conditions have seen a lull in the conflict between the US and NATO led International Security Assistance Force and anti-occupation guerrillas.

In January 2009 there were 25 coalition troop deaths; in the same month in 2008 14 deaths were recorded; while in January 2007 just two soldiers died. Last month’s violence followed record annual fatalities in 2009 for the occupation forces—520, compared to 295 in 2008.




The upsurge reflects escalating opposition among ordinary Afghans toward the foreign occupation and the rule of Washington’s stooge, President Hamid Karzai. President Barack Obama’s unfolding troop “surge” has also led to more clashes. An additional 37,000 US and coalition soldiers are due to arrive in Afghanistan up to August 2010, bringing the total number to more than 150,000, not counting private contractors and mercenaries. Obama’s escalation of the war is aimed at suppressing all resistance within the Afghan population in order to shore up Washington’s control over the country and its geo-strategic interests in the oil- and gas-rich Central Asian region.

Of the 44 foreign forces killed last month, 29 were American. Others were from Britain (6), France (3), Canada, Norway, Denmark and Spain. The majority died in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, on the southwest border with Pakistan. According to statistics maintained by the web site icasualties.org, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) accounted for 70 percent of the deaths.

A briefing prepared last December by Major General Michael Flynn, the senior US intelligence official in Afghanistan, noted the growing importance of IEDs in the war. In an article published January 25, CNN reported: “The explosives do for the Taliban what surface-to-air missiles once did for the Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviets—somewhat equalise the fight against a superpower, Flynn says.”

The growing number of IED attacks will inevitably deepen the crisis of morale afflicting US and coalition forces. Frontal insurgent attacks are met with massive firepower, including helicopter, drone and fighter plane bombing raids that frequently destroy entire buildings and sections of towns and cities. Responding to IEDs is a different question. The US-led troops are engaged in an unending colonial-style war, confronting a largely unseen enemy that enjoys the support or acquiescence of the civilian population.

Flynn’s intelligence report noted the growing number and strength of IEDs. In May 2008 most bombs weighed less than 25 pounds (11 kilograms), whereas now more than three-quarters weigh more than 25 pounds. The nature of the IEDs has also changed. Previously they were mostly adapted military ordnance such as shells, but now an estimated 85 percent are made from ammonium nitrate, a common fertiliser. Flynn’s briefing stated that Pakistan is the primary source of the chemical, with China and Iran “also significant suppliers”.

According to CNN, President Karzai last month outlawed the “use, production, storage, or sale” of ammonium nitrate.

Flynn reported that “security incidents”—including IED attacks, ambushes, mortar fire and missile strikes—typically numbered 500 a week in the second half of 2009, compared to an average of less than 40 in 2004. Only a small fraction of the escalating attacks are ever reported in the US and western media. The intelligence official concluded his briefing by noting that the insurgency was “increasingly effective” and could “sustain itself indefinitely”. He reported that the Taliban now has “shadow governors” in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, up from just 11 in 2005.

Insurgents are combining increasingly effective IED and other guerrilla attacks on foreign forces with high-profile assaults on Afghan government buildings. On January 18, Taliban suicide bombers and fighters armed with grenades and other weapons paralysed the capital, Kabul, for more than five hours before US military and Afghan security forces regained control.

Insurgents launched a similar operation on January 29 in Lashkar Gah, the regional capital of Helmand. Six militants armed with suicide vests and machine guns were reported killed after launching an assault from a hotel near an army barracks at 10 am. Fighting lasted more than seven hours, during which residents of the city were advised to stay at home, before government forces, British soldiers, and NATO helicopters were able to repulse the attack.

“I was in my shop when I heard the loud noises from the fighting,” Haji Mohammad Karim told Associated Press. “We all closed our stores and went home. The city was like a ghost town. The only people on the streets were security forces.”

Like the Kabul offensive, the Taliban’s operation in Lashkar Gah highlights the Karzai administration’s extremely tenuous control over the country. For the US and NATO forces, it again raises questions regarding insurgent infiltration of the pro-government security forces. President Obama and his international allies have made any drawdown of foreign troops conditional on the organisation and training of a local military and police proxy force. But the demoralised rag-tag forces so far assembled have proven highly vulnerable to penetration by militants.

US and coalition forces face growing danger from within the ranks of their Afghan colleagues. The killing of seven CIA operatives in a suicide attack late last year by a Jordanian posing as a US intelligence asset was the most prominent of a series of security incidents. On January 29, two US soldiers were shot dead by their Afghan interpreter at a military outpost in the eastern part of the country. The interpreter was then killed by other US troops. Military officials attempted to downplay the incident, telling the New York Times that the Afghan acted out of “personal motives” and was a “disgruntled employee”.

Ordinary Afghans continue to be killed in record numbers. Last year, at least 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed according to UN figures, which most likely significantly underestimate the real toll. On January 28, a US gunner shot dead an imam outside a mosque in Kabul. Witnesses said that 36-year-old Mohammed Yonus was driving his car with his seven-year-old son and other children when he stopped before an American convoy. Fourteen bullets were reportedly fired, with four hitting the cleric. The killing occurred near the site of a suicide attack on an American convoy that injured eight soldiers earlier in the week.

A brief protest of local people erupted before elders called it off, fearing a clash with government security forces. “A lot of innocent people have been killed by the Americans,” Shabaz Khan, a 20-year-old student told the Washington Post. 

In another incident on January 29, two civilians were killed and another badly injured when US troops fired into their car at a checkpoint in the southeastern Ghazni Province.

On January 30, four Afghan soldiers were killed by “friendly fire” after a joint US-Afghan special forces unit opened fire on an Afghan Army checkpoint in Shinz village, west of Kabul, and then called in helicopter gunship support.

Amid the deepening crisis confronting the occupying forces, there is no indication that the plan outlined at the January 28 International Conference on Afghanistan held in London—to buy off Taliban militants with cash drawn from a designated $650 million slush fund—is likely to work. In a statement released last Saturday, the Taliban leadership denied that its representatives had earlier met with UN envoy Kai Eide and said such reports were “mere futile and baseless rumours”.


Patrick O’Connor - Feb 01,2010

Historian Zinn Said ‘Largest Lie’ was U.S. ‘War on Terrorism’

The “largest lie,” wrote hisorian Howard Zinn who died yesterday at age 87, is that “everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a ‘war on terrorism.’”

“This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people’s homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security.”

In an article published previously in “The Long Term View” magazine of the Massachusetts School of Law,  Zinn said that in the Fallujah area of Iraq Knight Ridder reporters found there was no Ba’athist or Sunni conspiracy against the U.S., “only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops.”

Zinn, popularly known as the people’s historian, pointed out that the U.S. may have liberated Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein but afterwards it became Iraq’s occupier. He noted this is the same fate that befell Cuba after the U.S. liberated it from Spain in 1898.  In both nations, the U.S. established military bases and U.S. corporations moved in to profit from the upheaval.

 
Zinn recalled the words of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the NATO ministers in Brussels in June, 2002, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” of weapons of mass destruction. “That explains why this government, not knowing exactly where to find the criminals of September 11, will just go ahead and invade and bomb Afghanistan, killing thousands of people, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, and still not know where the criminals are,” Zinn wrote.

“This explains why the government, not really knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein is hiding, will invade and bomb Iraq, to the horror of most of the world, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorizing the population,” he continued.

The historian pointed out that even if the U.S. experienced few battle casualties in its invasion of Iraq, casualties would mount afterwards in the occupying army from sickness and trauma, which took a high toll both in Viet Nam and after the Gulf War. In the 10 years after the Gulf War, 8,000 veterans died and 200,000 veterans filed complaints about illnesses incurred “from the weapons our government used in the war.”
 
Zinn predicted accurately that once the American public realized President Bush had lied to them about Iraq they would turn against the government. “When it loses its legitimacy in the eyes of its people, its days are numbered,” he said of the Bush administration.

Writing of his personal feelings, Zinn said, “I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over… I wake up thinking this country is in the grip of a President (George W. Bush) who was not elected, who has surrounded himself with thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water, the air. And I wonder what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit.”
 

Zinn called on his readers “to engage in whatever nonviolent actions appeal to us. There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress. We find ourselves today at one of those critical points.”

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is a non-profit law school purposefully dedicated to the education of students from minority, immigrant, and low-income households who would otherwise not have the opportunity to obtain a legal education. Zinn’s article in The Long Term View first appeared in The Progressive magazine.

by Biznes team

TERRORISM & THE BUSINESS WORLD

 A talk delivered at a symposium organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology at Delhi on December 13,2008)

Terrorists target human beings—combatants and non-combatants (civilians)— as well as capabilities—economic and strategic.

2. Till the 1980s, they focused more on targeting human beings. Targeting of capabilities—-which may or may not cause human fatalities—- came into vogue in the 1980s, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out explosions in London’s financial district.

3. Targeting of capabilities does not create the same kind of public revulsion against the terrorists as the targeting of human beings does. Whereas the after-effects of the targeting of human beings remain localised in the area where they were targeted, the impact of the targeting of capabilities has a ripple effect far beyond the area where the act of terrorism was carried out.

4. The 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland had a ripple effect right across the world because of the increase in insurance premia for various business transactions and dislocation of international flights.The successful terrorist strikes in Bali had an impact on the tourist economy of not only Indonesia, but also of neighbouring countries. The effect of a successful terrorist strike on the oil installations of Saudi Arabia or on commercial shipping in the Malacca Strait would be felt right across the world with varying degrees of intensity. The impact of a successful terrorist strike on the information technology (IT) industries of Bangalore would be felt not only in Bangalore, but also in the stock markets of different cities, where the shares of the IT companies are traded. Because of networking, the repercussions of a successful terrorist operation against the critical information infrastructure in one city can spread the resulting damage right across the world.

5.Globalisation and decentralisation are the defining characteristics of the business world of today. Very often many of the core tasks of multinational companies are performed not by their headquarters in their country of origin, but by their field offices spread across the world. Western multinationals delegate many of their core tasks to their offices in India because of the availability in India of highly-qualified managerial experts, who are prepared to work for emoluments, which are high by Indian standards, but not so high by the standards of the country of origin of the multinational. If an act of terrorism disrupts the workling of their Indian offices it would affect not only their business operations in India, but also their operations right across the world.

6. Many studies of terrorist operations across the world since 9/11 have brought out how the international terrorist organisations of various hues have successfully adapted for their operations the same concepts and techniques of globalisation and decentralisation, which they have borrowed from the business world. They are globalised in their thinking and outlook and decentralised and autonomous in their operations In the field.

7.The terrorist strike in Mumbai from the night of November 26,2008 to the morning of November 29,2008, has sent a shiver right across the world not just because it was spectacular, but because there was a fearsome brain, which had conceptualised the entire operation, planned it to the minutest details and had it carried out through remote control from Pakistan with the help of not more than 10 terrorists. There might have been—-I apprehend there would have been— many, many more terrorists involved in various peripheral roles such as intelligence collection, reconnoitring, logistics etc, but the core group, which carried out the strike was not more than 10 in number, but it managed to have an important corner of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, under its control for more than 48 hours. A force of nearly 600 men of the Mumbai Police and the National Security Guards was required to eliminate this small group of 10. This was asymmetric urban warfare of a kind not seen in the world ever since terrorism assumed its major dimensions in the post-1967 world after the Arab-Israeli war of that year.

8. We saw in Mumbai a mix of attacks on human beings and capabilities, a mix of attacks on Indians and foreigners and a mix of various strategies. A strategy to disrupt the peace process between India and Pakistan was mixed with a strategy for reprisal against the expanding strategic co-operation of India with Israel and the Western world. A strategy for discrediting India’s political leadership and professional national security managers in the eyes of the Indian public was combined with a strategy for discrediting them in the eyes of the international community and the international business world. These strategies focussed on a mix of targets—-the man in the street and the elite. The man in the street was attacked in places like a railway station, a hospital and other public places. The elite was attacked in the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Oberoi-Trident Hotels.

9. These hotels are not just the favourite spots of tourists who travel on shoe-string budgets. These are the favourite spots of the cream of the international business world, who come to Mumbai not for pleasure, but for their business. Imagine what impressions the business managers of the world, who escaped being killed by the terrorists, would have carried back to their corporate headquarters— about the security of life and property in India, about the efficiency of India’s national security managers, about the quality of our political and professional leadership.

10. In an article on the terrorist strike in Mumbai, the “Guardian” of the UK wrote: ” Analysts are worried that the constant reminder of the attacks will heighten investors’ concerns at a time when the Indian economy is slowing and foreign capital is being repatriated. ‘This is the last thing India needs,’ said businessman Sir Gulam Noon. The British-based multimillionaire, who made his fortune in ready meals, escaped unhurt from the Taj Mahal after spending a frightening night holed up in his suite on the third floor. ‘The attacks will temporarily have an impact. It’s clearly not good for the economy at a time when the world is in a financial crisis.’ That the Taj Mahal and Oberoi play host to the cream of the international business elite is clear given the high-profile executives caught up in the tragedy. Along with Noon, Unilever chief executive Patrick Cescau and his successor, Paul Polman, escaped the Taj Mahal. ‘The security landscape has changed overnight,’ said Jake Stratton of investment risk consultancy Control Risks. ‘This will have a serious effect on how foreign companies perceive India as a business destination.’

11. The success of the terrorists in Mumbai was due to various factors—- inaction or inadequate action on available intelligence about the plans of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) to target Mumbai with a sea-borne operation,the rusting of our rapid response capability, our failure to draw the rigt lessons about crisis management from the unsatisfactory manner in which the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in 1999 was handled,and the lack of a joint action capability in our counter-terrorism community consisting of the intelligence agencies, the police, the armed forces, the NSG, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and the Joint Intelligence Committee.

12. The intelligence about the plans for a sea-borne strike in Mumbai had reportedly started flowing in from September when the attention of our policy-makers and senior national security managers was turned towards Vienna where the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was meeting to consider the question of a waiver for India. In their preoccupation with the Vienna meeting of the NSG, the task of co-ordinating the follow-up action on the flow of intelligence appears to have been relegated to junior officials. whose decisions and directions did not have the same impact on the various dramatis personae involved in joint action. Moreover, during the months preceding the attack the Joint Intelligence Committee, whose task it would have been to analyse and assess the intelligence and decide on follow-up action, was without a head just as it was during the months when the Pakistan Army was getting ready to launch its intrusions into the Kargil area in 1998-99. One of the important lessons of the Kargil conflict was the danger of leaving important posts in our national security apparatus remain unfilled, but we seem to have repeated that mistake once again.

13. Terrorist attacks directed against economic and business targets have a tactical as well as a strategic impact, an economic as well as a psychological impact. The tactical impact is in respect of replaceable damages . The strategic impact has a long-term effect on the profitability of their business operations due to factors such as an increase in insurance premia for business transactions, an increase in their expenditure on physical security, and an increase in their tax liability due to a surge in Govt. spending on counter-terrorism for which the money has to come from the tax-payers. It has been estimated that the 9/11 terrorist strikes have resulted in a one-third increase in the expenditure on counter-terrorism in the US Defence Department alone. This does not include the expenditure of the Department of Homeland Security.The total US expenditure on counter-terrorism now amounts to US $ 500 billion per annum, which is 20 per cent of the total federal budget. This money has to come from the tax-payers.

14. The psychological impact arises from the nervousness of the business community. A businessman, who ventures abroad, looks for two things—-profitability and security of life and property. If we are not able to assure the security of life and property, no amount of profitability will induce him to take the risk of operating from India.

15. It is important to hold a thorough, time-bound enquiry into what went wrong in Mumbai and to share its findings with the Parliament and the public. The 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US led to an enquiry by a National Commission constituted jointly by the President and the two Houses of the Congress. Its report was released to the public and discussed in the Congress. A bipartisan resolution to implement its recommendations was passed in 2004. The London blasts of July 2005, were followed by a detailed enquiry by the joint Intelligence and Security Committee. Its report was discussed in the Parliament and its recommendations implemented. So too in Spain after the Madrid blasts of March,2004.In Singapore, there was a detailed enquiry into the escape from jail of a member of the pro-Al Qaeda Jemmah Islamiyah some months ago. Its report was placed before the Parliament and discussed. Since 9/11, there have been many acts of mass casualty terrorism in India—- seven since November,2007, alone. We have not had a thorough enquiry into any of them. How can we identify the weaknesses in our counter-terrorism machinery unless we enquire into the terrorist strikes?

16. The National Commission in the US, which went into the 9/11 terrorist strikes, pointed out that there was no culture of joint action in the US counter-terrorism community. We have no culture of joint action either. The basic principle underlying the concept of joint action is that every organisation in the counter-terrorism community is individually and jointly responsible for preventing an act of terrorism. Had we developed this culture of joint action, we would not be seeing the unedifying spectacle of the intelligence agencies, the Navy and the Mumbai Police blaming each other for not preventing the Mumbai strike.

17. Terrorists calculate that repeated and sustained successful terrorist strikes against capabilities would make the States more amenable to pressure and intimidation from them than successful terrorist strikes against human beings. Their calculations are not far wrong. In the case of terrorism against capabilities, even fears or rumours of a possible terrorist strike against them can have a negative effect on the economy.

18. Protection of capabilities against terrorist strikes has, therefore, become an important component of counter-terrorism. Protection of the capabilities of the State is the exclusive responsibility of the State for which it has a preventive intelligence capability and specially trained physical security agencies or forces.

19. Protection of the capabilities in the private sector is basically the responsibility of the physical security set-ups of the companies concerned, but the State too has an important responsibility for guiding them and helping them to improve their physical security set-ups through appropriate advice. There may be sensitive industries in the private sector, where the State’s role extends beyond guidance and advice to actually buttressing the physical security set-up of the company through its (the Government’s) own trained and armed personnel.

20. Effective physical security rests on a strong information base. The security set-ups of private companies and other establishments suffer from a major handicap in this regard. Their ability to collect intelligence is confined to the interior of the company or establishment. They will have no means of collecting intelligence about threats, which could arise from outside the company or establishment.

21. For this awareness of likely external threats they are dependent on the media, the police and the governmental intelligence agencies. The media reporting often tends to be sensational and over-dramatised. The reliability of their reports is often questionable. While open source information from the media is important for increasing awareness of likely threats, the ability to have it verified, analysed and assessed is equally important. Otherwise, physical security set-ups will be groping in the dark.

22. Such verification, analysis and assessment have to come from the Police and the intelligence agencies and the results of this process have to be shared promptly with the companies or establishments, which are likely to face a threat, with appropriate suggestions for follow-up action. It should not be left to the security set-ups of private companies to take the initiative to contact the police and other counter-terrorism agencies to find out if there are any external threats to them—particularly after reading media reports in this regard.

23. The police and other counter-terrorism agencies should play a proactive role in creating and strengthening credible information awareness among the heads of the security set-ups of vulnerable private companies and their CEOs. This has to be constantly achieved through periodic interactions organised by the police in the form of brain-storming sessions, round-table discussions etc. Such interactions at the initiative of the governmental agencies seem to be more sporadic than regular—-often triggered only by an actual crisis than by the anticipation of a possible crisis.

24. Heads of the security set-ups of private companies should have easy access, when warranted, to senior officers of the police and other counter-terrorism agencies. One gets an impression that such access is often restricted to officers at the middle or lower levels, who do not have the required degree of professionalism and self-confidence to be able to interact meaningfully and satisfactorily with senior officers of the private sector.

25. The effective physical security of any establishment—sensitive or non-sensitive, private or public— depends on effective access control. Access control is ensured through means such as renewable identity cards for the permanent members of the staff; temporary identity cards to outsiders coming on legitimate work; numbered invitation cards to those invited to conferences, meetings etc; restrictions on the entry of vehicles of outsiders into the campus; restricting the number of entry points and exits to the minimum unavoidable; identity checking at doors; checking for weapons and explosives through door-frame detectors; checking of vehicles for explosives; installation of closed circuit TV at the points of entry and exit and at sensitive points in the establishment; a central control room to monitor all happenings at the entry points and exits and inside the premises through the CCTV etc.Better access control by the security staff is facilitated through the advance sharing of information with them about the outsiders, who are expected to visit the premises for meetings, conferences, seminars etc.

26. These are the minimum measures considered necessary for any company or establishment, which is considered vulnerable to terrorist strikes. It is important for the Police to prepare and revise periodically lists of vulnerable companies/establishments in their jurisdiction and share their conclusions with the security set-ups concerned.

27. Similarly, it is important for each vulnerable company or establishment to prepare and revise periodically a list of vulnerable points/occasions, which would need the special attention of the security staff and brief the security staff on the follow-up action to be taken. It would also be necessary to discuss this list with the Police and seek their advice on the adequacy of the security measures, which the security set-up of the company or establishment proposes to take. The Police should not consider such consultations as unnecessary intrusions on their time. They should welcome such consultations or interactions as a necessary component of their counter-terrorism strategy.

28. IT companies and other establishments in South India often face work interruptions due to hoax telephone calls and E-mail and Fax messages regarding possible terrorist strikes. A basic principle in physical security is, “treat every information, hoax call etc as possibly correct unless and until it is proved to be false and take the necessary follow-up action. Never start on the presumption that the information is probably false or the message a hoax. This would be extremely inadvisable and even dangerous.

29.Even the best of intelligence cannot prevent a terrorist strike, if the physical security set-up is weak or inefficient. A competent physical security set-up can prevent a terrorist strike even in the absence of preventive intelligence.

30. Sometimes, despite the best of physical security, terrorists might succeed in staging an incident. That is where the role of the crisis management drill comes in to limit the damage. A well-prepared and frequently rehearsed crisis management drill is a very important part of the counter-terrorism strategy in any establishment—private or public.

31. Effective physical security is the outcome of constant enhancements in the security personnel of professionalism, self-confidence, information awareness, threat and vulnerability perceptions and protective capability. Achieving these enhancements is primarily the responsibility of the security set-up of the establishment, but the Police has an important role in facilitating this. This is a responsibility, which they should not evade. Well-structured police—security set-up interactions to enhance security in the private sector is the need of the hour.

32. Business resilience and business continuity management in terrorism-affected situations are two concepts increasingly figuring in discourses in the Western countries. They have also formed the subject of many studies by the business community and the counter-terrorism community—-separately of each other as well as jointly. It is said that the best contribution that the business community can make to counter-terrorism is by staying in business despite terrorist strikes. They may not be able to do it alone. The Government has to help them by playing a proactive role.

33. New ideas and new institutions have come up in the West to promote partnership between the Government and the business community for ensuring their security and for keeping their resilence undamaged. One example is the Overseas Security Assistance Council established in 1985 by the U.S. State Department to facilitate the exchange of security related information between the U.S. Government and the American private sector operating abroad. Another example is the creation of posts of Counter-Terrorism Security Advisers in important police stations in the UK after the London blasts of July,2005. One of their tasks is to keep in touch with the business establishments in their jurisdiction and advise them on security-related matters. 243 posts of Counter-Terrorism Security Advisers have been created since July 2005 and it has been reported that each important Police Station in London has at least two advisers attached to it. The London Police have established a programme called “London First” in which the Police and the private sector co-operate closely to ensure better security in London. The principle underlying it is that it is the joint responsibility of everyone in London to ensure its security from terrorist attacks. Let us have our own Delhi First,Mumbai First, Chennai First, Kolkata First, Bangalore First and Hyderabad First partnerships to ensure that November 26 will not be repeated again. (12-12-08)

by B. Raman

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies)

The Origin of Modren Banking

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from banks, and restored to the people.” Thomas Jefferson

Money was originally invented as a convenient alternative to barter, an alternative without which a highly developed civilisation like ours could not exist.

Imagine trying to pay the taxi driver with a bag of coal or the grocery bill with a box of spanners and a set of golf clubs. Imagine trying to carry all that around with you when you go shopping. As societies grew more complex and social roles became more specialised, the idea of money was conceived as a better and more flexible way to exchange, and thereby distribute among men, goods and services.

Money is quite simply an idea agreed upon among people that some system of tokens or symbols: discs of metal (coins) paper with symbols on it (notes) and so on, will be used by them to represent or stand proxy for goods and services and that those tokens can be exchanged for goods and services. One can then exchange the tokens rather than bags of coal, boxes of spanners or what-have-you and the tokens are easy to carry around. Its workability depends upon the participants' confidence that those tokens are and will continue to be exchangeable for a certain amount of goods or services.

That's all money is. It is no more complicated than that, although men may try to make it seem complex and hard to understand. The truth however, as truths tend to be, is simple; it is alterations of the truth - lies -that are complicated.

Many societies have used gold and silver coins as their tokens, then later pieces of paper to represent gold and silver coins, and later cheques and ledger entries to represent notes and coins and in modern times electronic money, the shifting and balancing of numbers in computer memories, alongside or in place of coins, notes and cheques. Thus when we receive a computer print-out of our bank statement saying we have £500 in our current account we usually visualise a stack of £l0 notes sitting in a vault somewhere, or perhaps a bag of gold coins, although in reality there is no pile of notes or bag of coins, merely the ledger-entry in an electronic memory Saying we have £500. Should we then write a cheque in order to spend £50 of it, the numbers in our ledger change to £450 and the payee's account increases by £50, although no notes, gold or anything else move from one account to another.

Yet it works because we have confidence in it and trust it and we know we can change that £500 for real notes, real coins or real goods or services whenever we want to.

This evolution in the system of tokens we use to represent real goods and services comes about through a succession of bright ideas in the direction of making distribution and exchange more convenient, the movement of wealth between people smoother and faster. However, anything can be used for money, provided people agree to use it and have confidence in it. For instance dried yak dung was once used in Tibet, notched pieces of wood in Medieval England, leather discs in Medieval Europe and even cigarettes and tins of coffee in post-war Germany. The money in use in a country is called currency, from the word current, meaning prevalent, in circulation or in use.

Governments firm up that agreement and confidence by enshrining a particular system of tokens in law and demanding those tokens in payment of taxes. A particular system of creating, denominating, issuing and circulating money - currency - where backed by law and deemed by law the only recognised system, and which cannot be legally refused as payment of a debt, is called legal tender. Where barter is no longer practised, one has to possess those tokens in order to acquire goods and services from others. It is the medium of exchange. Tokens, be they yak dung, metal discs or numbers with the '£' symbol in front of them, are exchanged back and forth between people instead of goods and exchange does now usually occur without the use of tokens or the promise of tokens on the future.

The way one acquires tokens is by producing something and then selling it to someone who has expressed his want for it by offering us some of his tokens. We do the deal and receive the tokens he has offered. Now we can go and exchange those tokens for other products that we desire, which we do not produce ourselves. Thus money enables goods and services to be exchanged among people and distribution of those goods and services to occur naturally, and according to the needs and wants of the participants.

The more of those tokens one possesses or is able to acquire through one's production, the more one can if one wishes acquire goods and services from others. One can also store money in a safe or bank account without having to build a couple of warehouses in which to store container-loads of spare goods. Money therefore confers exchange power or spending power on he who possesses it in direct ratio to the amount of it he is able to offer up for exchange.

GOLDSMITHS

In the old days gold was minted into coins and those coins, along with silver coins, formed the nation's currency. Goldsmiths had strongboxes and vaults in which to securely store the precious metal with which they worked. It was natural enough then that other people took to asking the goldsmith to store their gold and gold coins in his vault and to pay the goldsmith for the service. A merchant (for example) would entrust to the goldsmith £20 worth of his own gold for safekeeping. When he handed over his gold, the goldsmith would provide him with a receipt or note promising to hand back the gold (pay the bearer on demand) whenever the depositor returned and presented the note. The receipt held by the depositor was in fact as good as gold because he could exchange it for his £20 worth of gold any time he chose. But the note was easier to carry around than heavy and bulky amounts of gold and easier to conceal, so the depositor was often content to leave his gold in the goldsmith's safekeeping for long periods. In fact when the time came to pay for some commodity with his £20 of gold, instead of returning to the goldsmith, exchanging the receipt for the gold and then using the gold to pay for his purchase, it was more convenient for him simply to hand over his receipt to the seller. The seller was happy to accept the receipt in lieu of actual gold because it was more convenient to carry around and he knew that should he present it to the goldsmith, £20 of gold would be handed over to him.

Thus those gold receipts began to circulate and became the first paper money. People were happy to exchange them back and forth rather than the cumbersome gold they represented. The receipts had value because people were confident that in the goldsmith's vault lay the gold, which they could redeem at any time.

Eventually the goldsmiths noticed that the gold left by depositors remained in their vaults for longer and longer periods. People turned up wishing to exchange their receipts for gold less and less often, and that the receipts they had issued to depositors circulated in its stead. It seemed a shame to have that gold just sitting there doing nothing. Why not lend some of it out for a while? If it just sat there for year after year the owner, the holder of the receipt, was not going to miss it if it were loaned to someone else for a period.

As long as there was enough gold in the vaults to satisfy anyone who did turn up with a receipt, then no-one would be any the wiser. So depositor Joe would leave £20 of gold with the goldsmith for safekeeping and depart with his receipt which he would then use as money in lieu of the gold and it would circulate. It might be years before anyone turned up with that £20 note asking for £20 of gold. Meanwhile Tom would turn up at the goldsmith's asking to borrow £20 of gold and the goldsmith would lend it to him, demanding that it be paid back after a certain period at a certain amount of interest. But instead of lending Tom actual gold, the goldsmith would draw up a £20 receipt, just like the one depositor Joe had been given. Tom was happy to take the receipt in lieu of the gold because it was more convenient to carry around and people were happy to accept such receipts in payment for things.

So Tom went off with his £20 note, content that through it he was now in temporary possession of £20 of gold. But unbeknownst to Tom, Joe also has a receipt representing that gold. In other words there are now two notes in circulation representing the same £20 of gold! Clearly the goldsmith's issuance of two receipts for the same amount of gold is fraudulent - particularly when Tom repays the gold he believes he has borrowed in real gold. As each receipt promises to hand over the same £20 of gold on demand, the goldsmith is making a promise he knows he cannot keep.

Several things are clear at the moment the second receipt was issued and entered circulation: new money has been created out of thin air; that new money has been loaned into existence; as the loan has interest charged upon it, then a debt has been created out of nothing that is greater than the amount of new money created.

And another thing: Tom will eventually return to the goldsmith and repay his £20 loan, say at 10% interest. He will therefore hand the goldsmith, £22 in real gold. In other words, the goldsmith, in creating that bogus receipt and lending it to Tom, is creating for himself, albeit after a delay, real debt-free gold worth more than the new money he loaned into existence! It gets worse.

After a while the goldsmith, seeing that his fraud is working pretty well, thinks that if he can issue two £20 receipts against the same £20 of gold, then why not two, three or even four?

So Joe deposits £20 of gold and the goldsmith gives him his receipt. In time four other people turn up at his shop wanting to borrow that £20 of gold. The goldsmith obligingly lends it to each of them at interest, giving each a receipt purporting to represent that £20 of gold. There are now five receipts in circulation representing the same deposit of gold, one for the original depositor and one for each of the four borrowers. For that deposit of £20, £80 (4x £20) of new money is created merely by writing on a fancy piece of paper.

If(say) £2 of interest (10%) is charged on each loan, at the same time that £80 of new money is created out of thin air, a debt of £88 is also created out of thin air.

Property is held as security against these loans so if the borrower fails to repay with real gold the fraudulent piece of paper he borrowed, the goldsmith takes his property.

Each time the goldsmith lends £20 of bogus gold he charges 10% interest on the loan. By lending out £20 four times over and charging £2 interest on each loan, the goldsmith makes a whopping 40% (four times £2) in interest on the £20 "reserves" that were not even his to begin with! The goldsmith cannot lose and soon begins to amass a fortune from his fraud. It is the greatest get-rich-quick scheme ever invented. And it is, in essence, the basis of the modern banking system.

The goldsmiths of yesteryear became the bankers of today and although paper money and latterly electronic money took over from gold, essentially the same fraud is being run.

BANKERS

The business of lending pieces of paper pretending to be gold made the goldsmiths very wealthy and very influential men. Their easy wealth enabled them to move to upmarket premises. They became pillars of the community and some even became international financiers, lending money to kings and governments.

In the seventeenth century conflict between the bankers of the day and the Stuarts led the bankers to act in concert with bankers in Europe. They joined forces with those in the Netherlands to finance the invasion of England by William of Orange. William overthrew the Stuart Kings in 1688 and became King William III.

By the end of the 1600s England was in financial ruin, gold and silver supplies were running low and a costly civil war followed by costly wars with France and Holland, all in a fifty year period, had left her heavily in debt.

Government officials met with the financiers to negotiate the loans they needed. King William was £20 million in debt and he could not pay his army. Apparently it did not occur to William or anyone that if William needed to pay his army or get the economy going, all he had to do was have the government print its own money and use that to pay the troops -something that Abraham Lincoln would do successfully during the American Civil war nearly two hundred years later!

King William's "friends", the bankers, were willing to loan him the money he needed but the price they wanted for their "help" was high. They wanted a government-sanctioned but privately owned central bank that could; through fractional reserve lending, create money out of nothing and loan it to the government.

They got their way. In 1694 the world's first privately owned central bank was created. It was to be called the Bank of England. The Bank's charter included the following immortal words: "The bank hath benefit on the interest on all monies which it creates out of nothing."

Instead of exercising its right to create money and spend it into the economy, the government had the bank create it, then lend it to the government so that the government could spend it into the economy, then pay the loans back later at interest. That completely unnecessary complication was to have devastating consequences for the futures of the English people.

As well as delivering extraordinary power over the nation into the hands of a privately owned business corporation, it began the National Debt, a debt that would go on increasing remorselessly over the ensuing years until it had reached around £380 billion in 1996, costs us around £30 billion a year in interest payments and is still climbing.

By the end of the 17th century, the goldsmiths' scam had become respectable banking. The role of the banks in issuing money through lending to individuals and businesses had already become widely accepted. Thus there came to be established two routes by which money was borrowed into the economy: private and commercial borrowing on the one hand and government borrowing on the other. That combined debt in the present day has now soared to well over one trillion pounds.

In 1704, just ten years after the creation of the Bank of England, the banks' promissory notes, on the recommendation of the bankers and financiers who advised the government, were declared legal tender.

Although the new central bank was an entirely privately owned corporation, the name chosen for it led generations of Englishmen to believe that it was part of their government, when it most certainly was not. Like any other privately owned corporation the new central bank sold shares to create its initial capital. Its investors - whose identities were never disclosed - were supposed to put up a total of £1 ¼ million in gold coin to purchase their shares. Only three quarters of a million was ever received.

Nevertheless, despite that minor technicality, the bank was chartered in 1694 and began the business of lending out several times the money it supposedly had in its reserves.

In exchange for this unique and immensely profitable privilege, the bank would very kindly lend the English, and later British, government as much money as it wanted, at interest, provided the debt was secured by direct taxation of the people.

THE MODERN INCARNATION OF FRAUD

What happens when you or I, or for that matter the government, borrow money from the bank? Prepare yourself for a surprise.

Let's say we want to borrow a £100,000 mortgage on a house. The bank or building society does what the goldsmith did and creates £100,000 out of thin air. Instead of handing us a paper certificate, it simply credits our bank account with the £100,000 and registers that £100,000 as a debt, with (say) a further £100,000 interest over 25 years. The money is simply penned into our account without any account anywhere being debited the loaned money. New money is therefore created. Alongside it a debt (in this case £100,000 plus the roughly £100,000 of interest) is created. When we repay the debt, the interest is accounted as income for the bank. The £100,000 we originally borrowed is withdrawn from circulation and is accounted as collateral for further lending, loaned back into circulation when someone else borrows.

Our house is held as security so if we fail to keep up our repayments, the creditor takes possession of it. The repayments themselves can vary through no fault of our own, according to interest rates set by the banking industry.

After 25 years of blood sweat and tears we finally pay back the last installment of the £200,000 capital-plus-interest we owed and the house in finally ours. It is not ours until that point.

The lender, who loaned us money which did not exist until the moment he created it out of nothing, winds up with £100,000 of interest on the loan: that is real, spendable income that comes courtesy of our real work and real wealth creation. The numbers have been simplified to highlight the nature of the fraud and in practise the process is hidden under a great deal of complexity but this in essence is the process of money creation.

Each time the banks create money they create a debt that is greater than the spending power they create. One can see too that each time they are creating a debt for the borrower, they are ultimately creating debt free money for themselves.

Before the goldsmiths' scam began, the money in circulation was hard currency - usually gold or silver minted into coins which then circulated as the tokens used to represent goods and services. That minting and circulation of coinage was usually administered by the government or king.

However as soon as the goldsmiths' certificates became used in lieu of gold, paper money had made an appearance. As soon as the goldsmiths began issuing paper notes for gold they did not actually have, the goldsmiths were themselves creating new money and lending it into circulation.

One can see that this establishes debt as the basis of our currency. Where once, long ago, the British pound represented something -so much gold or silver - it now represents so much debt, which is not only nothing it is less than nothing.

Extracted from: Your Business Under Siege…and the reasons why. Published by the BAMR, email: BAMR@bamr.fsnet.co.uk Tel: 01342410962 (UK)

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. And when we realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few very powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
U.S. President James Garfield. A few weeks after making this statement, he was assassinated on July 12, 1818.