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