PFGBestWatch

Age of Pericles: An Obama Allegory

2009-03-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

George Galloway banned from Canada

2009-03-20T11:51:00.001-07:00

The British M.P. who kissed the ground in Gaza, and who gave money, property, and diplomatic cover to the terrorist regime of Hamas, has been denied entry into Canada because he is deemed to be a security risk.

From the Daily Mail:

'Infandous*' George Galloway banned from Canada on grounds of national security (*look it up)

Outspoken anti-war MP George Galloway has vowed to fight an 'outrageous decision' to ban him from Canada on the grounds of national security.

Mr Galloway said the ban was 'not something I'm prepared to accept' and pledged to use all means at his disposal to challenge the ruling.

But a spokesman for Canada's immigration minister Jason Kenney insisted the decision, taken by border security officials, would not be overturned for a 'infandous* street-corner Cromwell' (*'infandous: too odious to be expressed or mentioned).

This Hamas photo shows the head of the Hamas government Ismail Haniyeh, right, embracing George Galloway during their meeting in Gaza City on March 10 this year

Mr Galloway was due to give a speech in Toronto on March 30 but has been deemed 'inadmissible' to Canada under section 34(1) of the country's immigration act.

Mr Kenney's spokesman Alykhan Velshi said the act was designed to protect Canadians from people who fund, support or engage in terrorism.

The minister has the right to issue special exemption permits but will not do so in Mr Galloway's case.

The man who banned him: Canada's immigration minister Jason Kenney

Mr Velshi said: 'We're going to uphold the law, not give special treatment to this infandous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving 'financial support' to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada.

'I'm sure Galloway has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him. Canada, however, won't be one of them.'

Mr Galloway, 54, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, is consulting organisers of his north American speaking tour and exploring whether legal action can be taken to overturn the ban.

Mr Galloway, an opponent of the war in Afghanistan where Canadian troops are deployed as part of international forces, lamented the 'idiotic' ruling as 'irrational, inexplicable and an affront to Canada's good name'.

And the Scot also said being refused entry to Canada was like being told to stay away from the family home.

Mr Galloway said: 'This is a very sad day for the Canada we have known and loved - a bastion of the freedoms that supporters of the occupation of Afghanistan claim to be defending.

'This has further vindicated the anti-war movement's contention that unjust wars abroad will end up consuming the very liberties that make us who we are.

'This may be a rather desperate election ploy by a conservative government reaching the end of the line, or by a minister who has not cottoned on to the fact that the George Bush era is over.

'All right-thinking Canadians, whether they agree with me over the wisdom of sending troops to Afghanistan or not, will oppose this outrageous decision.

'On a personal note - for a Scotsman to be barred from Canada is like being told to stay away from the family home.

'This is not something I'm prepared to accept.'

Mr Galloway was due to speak at a public forum entitled Resisting war from Gaza to Kandahar, hosted by Toronto Coalition to Stop the War later this month.

The Respect party MP was also set to address a second public forum in Mississauga, just south of Toronto, on March 31.

His proposed visit prompted the Jewish Defence League of Canada to write an open letter to the country's government urging it to do 'everything possible to keep this hater away'.

In 2006, Mr Galloway was refused entry to Egypt on the grounds of national security after he travelled to the country to give evidence at a 'mock trial' of former prime minister Tony Blair and ex-US president George W Bush.

He was held overnight in a police cell before the authorities changed their minds and allowed him in, and he later received a personal apology from the country's president.

A spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada confirmed that Mr Galloway had been deemed inadmissible on national security grounds and would not be allowed into the country.

He said the decision had been taken by border security officials 'based on a number of factors' in accordance with section 34(1) of the country's immigration act.

The act states: 'A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on security grounds for:

'(a) engaging in an act of espionage or an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada;

'(b) engaging in or instigating the subversion by force of any government;

'(c) engaging in terrorism;

'(d) being a danger to the security of Canada;

'(e) engaging in acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada; or

'(f) being a member of an organisation that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages, has engaged or will engage in acts referred to in paragraph (a), (b) or (c).'

Immigration minister Jason Kenney has the right to exempt people from the act if it is felt that their presence would not be 'detrimental to the national interest'.

But the spokesman said Mr Kenney would 'decline to exercise that discretion' in Mr Galloway's case.

NowPublic

Muslims stallking Jewish shops and saying "I'm going to kill you"

2009-01-23T08:47:00.001-08:00

Threats to Jews in New York, threats to Jews in London, threats to Jews all over. And yet the UN is focused on "Islamophobia," and Islamic advocacy groups in the U.S. have to manufacture hate crimes to shore up their victim status. When will this madness end? Is the West even still able to produce a political leader who will stand up to this? The free world needs to take a stand and make it clear to Muslims in the West that this is not tolerable. But I am not holding my breath.

"London - More Anti-Semitic Attacks in Golders Green," from Vos Iz Neias?, January 22.

London - The Jewish community in Golders Green has been the target of further anti-Semitic attacks, in the form of more offensive graffiti.
Graffiti reading "Kill the filthy Jews" was daubed on walls and pavements near Golders Green tube station and vandals wrote "Jihad 4 Israel" on top of Holocaust Memorial Day adverts.

Golders Green residents have unanimously condemned the ongoing hate crimes, which have risen up in the wake of the Gaza conflict....

I'm glad they have, but what about the local Muslims?

Joseph Haziza, 27, manager of Menachem Kosher butchers which is next to Sinclair Grove on Golders Green road, said: "In this area of Golders Green the graffiti hasn't been as bad. Further up the Golders Green Road they have been affected, with Muslims coming into Jewish shops and saying: 'I'm going to kill you'.
"I don't wear my cuple [skull cap] when I'm out and about. I don't want to be started on."...

At least one Jewish resident of the area has been brutally beaten: "Bloody Beating In Golders Green," by Justin Cohen for Totally Jewish.com, January 22:

An Orthodox man from Golders Green yesterday spoke of his determination to continue living an openly Jewish life after he was viciously beaten and left with blood pouring from his face, in one of the most serious incidents of an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism afflicting Britain.
Wearing a kippah and his long Shabbat coat, Michael Bookarz was walking home from La Fiesta restaurant on Golders Green Road on Saturday night when he was set upon by two hooded attackers. "I was walking towards the A406 at about 10.20pm when I noticed a guy was walking towards me," the 31-year-old told TJ.

"He suddenly started running and punched me in the face. When I was on the ground, another person ran over and they both started kicking me and stamping on my body and head.

"One of them said this is because of what's happened to the Palestinians in Gaza. Someone must have looked out the window because they suddenly just ran off leaving me on the floor.

"I was scared but the main thought running through my head as it was happening was self-preservation and defending myself. The second the attack finished my next thought was to get help. I took my phone out to dial 999 and I could see blood covering the screen of the phone - there was blood pouring down from my nose."...

NowPublic

Does PFGBest have ties to Illinois Gov's Corruption Scandal?

2008-12-09T13:52:00.001-08:00

Now that Wall Street and the United States financial system has imploded, and the ties between corrupt financiers, politicians, and the shenanigans of these crooks are well known to all of us, we're left with many unanswered questions.

Public Corruption in Illinois:

Should Mr. Blagojevich end up in prison, he will join predecessors including the following:

Republican George Ryan, who is currently serving a 6 1/2-year stretch in federal prison for racketeering and fraud. Blagojevich, along with Sen. Richard Durbin, has publicly supported an appeal to the White House for the commutation of Mr. Ryan's sentence.

Otto Kerner, a Democrat who was convicted in 1973 on 17 counts of bribery, conspiracy, perjury and other charges before being sentenced to three years in the pen. The federal prosecutor in that case, James Thompson, later ascended to the governor's chair and wound up getting his law firm to defend Ryan for free.

Dan Walker was convicted in 1987 -- years after leaving office -- of bank fraud. Serving from 1973 to 1977, with a reputation as a reformer, he was the last Democratic governor of the state before Mr. Blagojevich took office in 2003.

Lennington Small, a Republican, served from 1921 to 1929. He was indicted while in office for embezzlement related to actions taken when he was state treasurer. He was later acquitted; several of the jurors in the case ended up with state jobs.

Also, in one infamous case further down the chain, a former speaker of the state's House of Representatives and secretary of state, Paul Powell, was found after his death in 1970 to have had several million dollars in embezzled cash stashed in shoe boxes.

Mr. Powell, according to a Time magazine article at the time, had his own definition of success, believing that "there's only one thing worse than a defeated politician, and that's a broke one."

Now that trillions of dollars are wiped from people's 401K's, pensions, and investments, the question as to who was watching the hen house is garnering more and more attention.

We have the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies that were supposed to be watching us, but who were they watching out for?

Firms like http:///www.http://www.pfgbest.com/ CEO, Russell Wassendorf, Sr.?

His campaign contributions into the Chicago Political machine where many of our major financial firms are located makes one wonder--is the stack of cards located against the investors?

On the other hand the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wants the public to be more informed of fraud and fraudulent claims by unscrupulous foreign exchange and other Commodity Firms:

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Forex Fraud

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has witnessed increasing numbers, and a growing complexity, of financial investment opportunities in recent years, including a sharp rise in foreign currency (forex) trading scams. A federal law enacted in December 2000, called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA), makes clear that the Commission has the jurisdiction and authority to investigate and take legal action to close down a wide assortment of unregulated firms offering or selling foreign currency futures and options contracts to the general public. In addition, the CFTC has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute foreign currency fraud occurring in its registered firms and their affiliates.

How about Peregrine Financial Group’s acquisition of American National Trading aka the “ANTC” Group?

A cursory review of American National would reveal that their main principals and firm was alleged to be in violation by the National Futures Association of:

C.R.2-2(a) - CHEAT,FRAUD DECEIVE CUSTOMERS C.R.2-9(a) - SUPERVISION OF EMPLOYEESC.R.2-29(a)(1) - FRAUDULENT COMM. TO PUBLIC PROHIB

Gee, how inspiring.

But, nonetheless, Peregrine Financial Group, announced that: "PFG and ANTC are joining forces to better serve ANTC’s customers," said PFG Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Russell R. Wasendorf, Sr. "There are so many synergies, and we believe there will be significant benefits to ANTC customers.

Synergies? Benefits? So Many?

Really.

From a very cursory public regulatory records search—which doesn’t include any civil or criminal complaints—there appears to be over 40 customer complaints with either the National Futures Association and/or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission against Peregrine Financial Group alone.

Not very inspiring of “trust” is it?

The future of our ability to invest with confidence and trust, and to believe what our capital market Financial Firms do, is how they perform, or what they don’t perform.

Based on the recent meltdown in the large New York and Chicago Securities and Financial Firms, that appears to have been replaced with a culture not only of greed, but of our collective ennui.

As to Mr. Wasenforf, Peregrine Financial, and other of his companies, how many times have they not had enough capital to legally operate one must wonder why they're still in business?

Quite a few actually. Are they using our trust monies to gamble with?

Are there any connections between Wasendorf, Tony Rezko, or the indicted Illinois Governor?

Time will tell.

But for a firm that was allegedly started in a "basement" the fact that Wasendorf's firm, Peregrine, sues all of his clients that his company loses money on behalf, is surely a clue to be aware of that these guys are no different than many of the others that have lost the public trust.

Which other companies, people, and politicians are next in line to be found liable in this unbelievable Chicago corruption?

NowPublic

Now Public named as a Top 40 Social News Website

2008-01-10T12:14:00.001-08:00

I think that this list from dosh-dosh, doesn't full compare and contrast Now Public with the rest of its choices, but kudos to everybody here:

"I spent some time going through hundreds of social news sites and came up with a list of sites which I think are worth exploring. Each site on this list is evaluated according to various criteria, including the no. of votes for each story and the frequency/date of submissions, all of which are indicators of user/viewer activity.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive. It doesn’t include every social news website out there but only the ones which I think has potential for providing you with relevant/fresh news while giving exposure to your ideas, brand or website.

Some of the sites on this list have a broad topical focus while others are created to cater to a specific niche. I’ve divided the list into two portions: General Social News or websites which cover a wide variety of news and Niche Social News which refers to specialized sites that only focus on a limited range of niche topics.

This list purely consists of English social news sites. There are no social bookmarking or social network sites included. I’ve not included video sharing sites because I’ll be writing more on them and video marketing in a future article.

Here’s a brief definition of social news sites, in case you’re unfamiliar with them:

Social News websites are communities which allow its users to submit news stories, articles and media (videos/pictures) and share them with other users or the general public. Some of these articles will be given more visibility, depending on various factors such as the number of user votes for each item.

Apart from counting registered user votes, some social news websites employ human editors to determine the visibility of each news item. Certain stories will be removed from the website while others may be given a ‘featured‘ position if the story is highly relevant and news worthy.

And down the list, on Number 18 is:

18. Nowpublic: A participatory news network which focuses on citizen journalism. Each user has their own individual profile blog/page and can upload videos, images and news stories."

Well, not much of a detailed description, but we get to write the final verse, line, and chapter.

NowPublic

Just Breaking: Car bomb kills 4, injures 68 in Turkey

2008-01-03T09:17:00.001-08:00

Looks like a War within a War in Iraq between the Kurds and Turkey. From Yahoo news:

ANKARA, Turkey - A car bomb apparently targeting military personnel killed four people and wounded 68 others Thursday in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern city of Diyarbakir, officials said.

A bus transporting military personnel was passing by a five-star hotel when the bomb exploded, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. Four people were killed and 68 wounded, according to the governor's office in Diyarbakir.

Two of the dead were soldiers, the private Dogan news agency said.

Several people could be seen lying unconscious amid burning cars, and a bus was engulfed in flames, reports said. Some students also were injured by flying glass, CNN-Turk television said.

Authorities blamed the blast on Kurdish rebels. Police captured two suspects who reportedly were escaping the scene, CNN-Turk television said, citing police sources.

The attack — which shattered the windows of surrounding buildings and could be heard some 3 kilometers (2 miles) away — appeared to be a retaliation to three airstrikes by Turkish warplanes against Kurdish rebel shelters in northern Iraq last month.

There have been two explosions in Turkey's commercial center, Istanbul, over the past two weeks, killing one and injuring nine. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler blamed Kurdish rebels.

Rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, have battled for autonomy in southeastern Turkey for more than two decades — a campaign that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. The group uses strongholds in northern Iraq for cross-border strikes.

In October, Parliament authorized Turkey's military to strike back at rebels across the border.

Turkish warplanes took off from an air base in Diyarbakir just minutes after Thursday's attack, pro-Kurdish Firat news agency reported on its Web site. It was not clear if the jets were on a bombing mission.

Turkish military claimed it has killed up to 175 rebels in the first air assault alone on Dec. 16, a figure denied by the PKK.

Firat reported that PKK leaders in Iraq earlier declared big cities in Turkey targets for rebels living in the country.

NowPublic

International Waters are Not Free

2008-01-01T17:32:00.001-08:00

From U.N., Wikipedia and World Net Daily sources:

The U.N. has now taken upon itself to regulate
International Waters--setting in motion, what had been
previously very dangerous precedents, into fact.

From the U.N.

A Constitution of the Oceans, ratified and implemented
back in 1982.

Background via Wikipedia:

Historical background

The LOS replaces the older -- and weaker -- 'freedom
of the seas' concept, dating from the 17th century:
national rights were limited to a specified belt of
water extending from a nation's coastlines, usually
three nautical miles, according to the 'cannon shot'
rule developed by the Dutch jurist Cornelius
Bynkershoek. All waters beyond national boundaries
were considered international waters - free to all
nations, but belonging to none of them (the mare
liberum principle promulgated by Grotius).

In the early 20th century some nations expressed their
desire to extend national claims: to include mineral
resources, to protect fish stocks, and to provide the
means to enforce pollution controls. (The League of
Nations called a 1930 conference at The Hague, but no
agreements resulted.) Using the customary
international law principle of a nation's right to
protect its natural resources, President Truman in
1945 extended United States control to all the natural
resources of its continental shelf. Other nations were
quick to follow suit. Between 1946 and 1950,
Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador extended their
rights to a distance of 200 nautical miles to cover
their Humboldt Current fishing grounds. Other nations
extended their territorial seas to 12 nautical miles.

By 1967, only 25 nations still used the old 3-mile
limit, while 66 nations had set a 12-mile territorial
limit and eight had set a 200-mile limit. For the
latest table of maritime claims, as compiled by the
United Nations, see [3]. According to that table, as
of July 24, 2007, only a handful of countries still
use the 3-mile limit: Jordan, Palau, and Singapore.
That limit is also used in certain Australian islands,
an area of Belize, some Japanese straits, certain
areas of Papua New Guinea, and a few UK dependencies,
such as Anguilla.

In 1956, the United Nations held its first Conference
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I) at Geneva,
Switzerland. UNCLOS I resulted in four treaties
concluded in 1958:

Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone,
entry into force: 10 September 1964
Convention on the Continental Shelf, entry into force:
10 June 1964
Convention on the High Seas, entry into force: 30
September 1962
Convention on Fishing and Conservation of Living
Resources of the High Seas, entry into force: 20 March
1966

Although UNCLOS I was considered a success, it left
open the important issue of breadth of territorial
waters.

In 1960, the United Nations held the second Conference
on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS II”); however, the
six-week Geneva conference did not result in any new
agreements. Generally speaking, developing nations and
third world countries participated only as clients,
allies, or dependents of United States or the Soviet
Union, with no significant voice of their own.

The issue of varying claims of territorial waters was
raised in the UN in 1967 by Arvid Pardo, of Malta, and
in 1973 the Third United Nations Conference on the Law
of the Sea was convened in New York. In an attempt to
reduce the possibility of groups of nation-states
dominating the negotiations, the conference used a
consensus process rather than majority vote. With more
than 160 nations participating, the conference lasted
until 1982. The resulting convention came into force
on November 16, 1994, one year after the sixtieth
state, Guyana, signed the treaty.

The convention introduced a number of provisions. The
most significant issues covered were setting limits,
navigation, archipelagic status and transit regimes,
exclusive economic zones (EEZs), continental shelf
jurisdiction, deep seabed mining, the exploitation
regime, protection of the marine environment,
scientific research, and settlement of disputes.

The convention set the limit of various areas,
measured from a carefully defined baseline. (Normally,
a sea baseline follows the low-water line, but when
the coastline is deeply indented, has fringing islands
or is highly unstable, straight baselines may be
used). The areas are as follows:

Internal waters

Covers all water and waterways on the landward side of
the baseline. The coastal state is free to set laws,
regulate use, and use any resource. Foreign vessels
have no right of passage within internal waters.

Territorial waters

Out to 12 nautical miles from the baseline, the
coastal state is free to set laws, regulate use, and
use any resource. Vessels were given the right of
"innocent passage" through any territorial waters,
with strategic straits allowing the passage of
military craft as "transit passage", in that naval
vessels are allowed to maintain postures that would be
illegal in territorial waters. "Innocent Passage" is
defined by the convention as passing through waters in
an expeditious and continuous manner, which is not
“prejudicial to the peace, good order or the security”
of the coastal state. Fishing, polluting, weapons
practice, and spying are not “innocent". Nations can
also temporarily suspend innocent passage in specific
areas of their territorial seas, if doing so is
essential for the protection of its security.

Archipelagic waters

The convention set the definition of Archipelagic
States in Part IV, which also defines how the state
can draw its territorial borders. A baseline is drawn
between the outermost points of the outermost islands,
subject to these points being sufficiently close to
one another. All waters inside this baseline will be
Archipelagic Waters and included as part of the
state's territorial waters.

Contiguous zone

Beyond the 12 nautical mile limit there was a further
12 nautical miles or 24 nautical miles from the
territorial sea baselines limit, the contiguous zone,
in which a state could continue to enforce laws
regarding activities such as smuggling or illegal
immigration.

Exclusive economic zones (EEZs)

Extend 200 nautical miles from the baseline. Within
this area, the coastal nation has sole exploitation
rights over all natural resources. The EEZs were
introduced to halt the increasingly heated clashes
over fishing rights, although oil was also becoming
important. The success of an offshore oil platform in
the Gulf of Mexico in 1947 was soon repeated elsewhere
in the world, and by 1970 it was technically feasible
to operate in waters 4000 metres deep. Foreign nations
have the freedom of navigation and overflight, subject
to the regulation of the coastal states. Foreign
states may also lay submarine pipes and cables.

Continental Shelf

Continental shelf is defined as natural prolongation
of the land territory to the continental margin’s
outer edge, or 200 nautical miles from the coastal
state’s baseline, whichever is greater. State’s
continental shelf may exceed 200 nautical miles until
the natural prolongation ends, but it may never exceed
350 nautical miles, or 100 nautical miles beyond 2,500
meter isobath, which is a line connecting the depth of
2,500 meters. States have the right to harvest mineral
and non-living material in the subsoil of its
continental shelf, to the exclusion of others.
Aside from its provisions defining ocean boundaries,
the convention establishes general obligations for
safeguarding the marine environment and protecting
freedom of scientific research on the high seas, and
also creates an innovative legal regime for
controlling mineral resource exploitation in deep
seabed areas beyond national jurisdiction, through an
International Seabed Authority.

Landlocked states are given a right of access to and
from the sea, without taxation of traffic through
transit states.

Part XI of the Convention provides for a regime
relating to minerals on the seabed outside any state's
territorial waters or EEZ. It establishes an
International Seabed Authority (ISA) to authorize
seabed exploration and mining and collect and
distribute the seabed mining royalty.

Opened for signature - December 10, 1982.
Entered into force - November 16, 1994.

Countries that have signed, but not yet ratified -
(24) Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burundi, Cambodia, Central
African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Republic of the
Congo, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia,
Iran, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Liberia,
Libya, Liechtenstein, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda,
Swaziland, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab
Emirates, United States.

Countries that have not signed - (17) Andorra,
Azerbaijan, Ecuador, Eritrea, Israel, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Peru, San Marino, Syria, Tadjikistan,
Timor-Leste, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vatican
City, Venezuela.

The United States strongly objected to the provisions
of Part XI of the Convention on several grounds,
saying that the treaty is unfavorable to America's
economy and security. The US felt that the provisions
of the treaty were not free-market friendly and were
designed to favor the economic systems of the
Communist states. The US also felt that the provisions
might result in the ISA becoming a bloated and
expensive bureaucracy due to a combination of large
revenues and insufficient control over what the
revenues could be used for.

Due to Part XI, the US refused to ratify the UNCLOS,
although it expressed agreement with the remaining
provisions of the Convention. Even though the United
States is not a party to the treaty, it considers many
of the remaining provisions as binding as customary
international law.

Revision of the LOS Convention

From 1983 to 1990, the United States accepted all but
Part XI as customary international law, while
attempting to establish an alternative regime for
exploitation of the minerals of the deep seabed. An
agreement was made with other seabed mining nations
and licenses were granted to four international
consortia. Concurrently, the Preparatory Commission
was established to prepare for the eventual coming
into force of the Convention-recognized claims by
applicants, sponsored by signatories of the
Convention. Overlaps between the two groups were
resolved, but a decline in the demand for minerals
from the seabed made the seabed regime significantly
less relevant. In addition, the decline of Socialism
and the fall of Communism in the late 1980s had
removed much of the support for some of the more
contentious Part XI provisions.

In 1990, consultations were begun between signatories
and non-signatories (including the United States) over
the possibility of modifying the Convention to allow
the industrialized countries to join the Convention.
The resulting 1994 Agreement on Implementation was
adopted as a binding international Convention. It
mandated that key articles, including those on
limitation of seabed production and mandatory
technology transfer, would not be applied, that the
United States, if it became a member, would be
guaranteed a seat on the Council of the International
Seabed Authority, and finally, that voting would be
done in groups, with each group able to block
decisions on substantive matters. The 1994 Agreement
also established a Finance Committee that would
originate the financial decisions of the Authority, to
which the largest donors would automatically be
members and in which decisions would be made by
consensus.

In the United States there is vigorous debate over the
ratification of the treaty, with criticism coming
mainly from political conservatives who consider
involvement in some international organizations and
treaties as detrimental to US national interests. A
group of Republican senators, led by Jim Inhofe of
Oklahoma, has blocked American ratification of the
Convention, claiming that it would impinge on US
sovereignty. The Bush administration, a majority of
the United States Senate, and the Pentagon favor
ratification, as do representatives of scientific and
international legal scholars, and mining and
environmentalist groups.

Pro-Ratification Arguments

The Environment:

Oceans cover over 70 percent of the
Earth. In the US, there are laws to keep marine
resources available for future generations. UNCLOS
sets a global standard so that all countries are
legally bound to protect the marine environment,
protect fish stocks, and prevent pollution.
National Security: The US military, which relies
heavily on its ability to freely navigate on and fly
over the sea, has been a strong advocate of UNCLOS. In
the absence of treaty law, the US relies on customary
law that can change as states' practices change. Also,
under this customary law, the Pentagon claims that
countries often make unreasonable and irresponsible
claims on marine territory that frustrates US military
action. The US has tried to work around these claims,
but without a legal framework to support them, the
Pentagon believes it risks compromising its
intelligence and military operations at sea.
International diplomacy and peaceful dispute
resolution: The Convention offers a peaceful way to
resolve territorial and natural resource disputes
through the ISA or the Law of the Sea Tribunal, based
on agreements which signatory parties have already
committed to. In contrast, without ratification, the
US has no peaceful recourse if another non-signatory
party decides to close its straits to navigation.
It helps American businesses: Each country has
exclusive rights to manage the resources in areas near
its coast. Under the terms of UNCLOS, which maps out
the boundaries of these areas, the American zone is
larger than that of any other country in the world.
The size of this zone is 3.36 million square miles -
bigger than the lower 48 states combined. In addition,
under UNCLOS, coastal states can exercise sovereign
rights over natural resources within the extended
continental shelf area beyond this territory. It would
also give US companies an opportunity to apply for
licenses with the ISA, which manages claims to
resources in the deep seabed, an area over which no
country has sovereign rights.
Anti-Ratification Arguments

National sovereignty:

The treaty creates the
International Seabed Authority (ISA) with its own
dispute resolution tribunal. However, should the US
stop its current compliance with the US-negotiated
laws of the Convention, the U.S. could not be taken to
the Law of the Sea Tribunal since the U.S. has
indicated that it would choose binding arbitration
rather than availing itself of the International
Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.

The Environment:

Some of the Convention's conservation
provisions would provide new avenues for non-US
environmental organizations to affect domestic US
environmental policies by pursuing legal action in
both US and international courts. In addition,
requirements that nations either harvest their entire
allowable catch in certain areas or give the surplus
to other nations could result in mandated overfishing.
Taxation: The license fees and taxes levied on
economic activities in the deep seabed Area by the ISA
would be, in effect, a form of 'taxation without
representation'. Citizens would be indirectly taxed
through business and governmental activities in the
area.

Economics:

Businesses can already exploit resources
from the international area; ratifying the treaty
would force them to buy licenses for that right and
pay taxes on the proceeds.

Navigation rights not threatened: One of the treaty's
main selling points, legally recognized navigation
rights on, over, and under straits, is unnecessary
because these rights are not currently threatened by
law or by any military capable of opposing the US.
Harm to de-militarizing operations: The treaty would
require all unmanned ocean vessels, including
submarines used for mine detection to protect ships
exercising the right of innocent passage, to navigate
on the surface in territorial waters to be entitled to
the right of innocent passage. The operative language
is identical to that contained in the 1958 Convention
on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone to which
the U.S. is already a party.

No control over funding:

The treaty gives a blank
check to the UN, funded by the US. The US would have
no control over how the money is used.
Eminent domain:

The treaty applies eminent domain to
intellectual intellectual property giving the UN the
power to seize technology and share it with
potentially enemy states.

Lack of need:

The U.S. already honors almost all the
provisions of the treaty. For practical purposes,
there is no pressing need to ratify it that outweighs
the negatives of the remaining provisions. Any
perceived benefit of an improved U.S. image world-wide
is likely to be illusory.

On May 15, 2007, President Bush announced that he had
urged the Senate to approve the UNCLOS. On October
31st, 2007, the Senate Foreign Relations Committe
nvoted 17-4 to send the treaty to the full U.S. Senate
for a vote.

With this vote--the United States virtually guarantees
that the United Nations has, de facto, become the
trustee of the Internatinal Seas--setting the stage
for confrontation.

LOST has long had the support of environmental groups
such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.

It would establish rules governing the uses of the of
the world's oceans – treating waters more than 200
nautical miles off coasts as the purview of a new
international U.N. bureaucracy, the International
Seabed Authority

The ISA would have the authority to set production
controls for ocean mining, drilling and fishing,
regulate ocean exploration, issue permits and settle
disputes in its own new "court."

Companies seeking to mine or fish would be required to
apply for a permit, paying a royalty fee

Critics also point out the new U.N. agency would have
the right to compete directly with private companies
in those profit-making activities.

The U.S. would have only one vote of 140 – and no veto
power as it has on the U.N. Security Council.

The Bush administration claims the initiative for
reintroduction of the treaty comes from the military,
which likes the 12-mile territorial limits it places
on national claims to waters. Yet, critics point out
international law already protects non-aggressive
passage, including non-wartime activities of military
ships.

One of the main authors of LOST not only admired Karl
Marx but was an ardent advocate of the
Marxist-oriented New International Economic Order.
Elisabeth Mann Borgese, a socialist who ran the World
Federalists of Canada, played a critical role in
crafting and promoting LOST.

Borgese was hailed by her U.N. supporters as the
"Mother of the Oceans" or "First Lady"of the Oceans."
She died in 2002.

The youngest daughter of the German novelist Thomas
Mann, Borgese openly favored world government , wrote for the left-wing The Nation magazine and was
a member of a "Committee to Frame a World
Constitution." She served as director of the
International Center for Ocean Development and
chairman of the International Oceans Institute at
Dalhousie University in Canada.

The U.N. Environment Program, UNEP, has said that
Borgese recognized the oceans as "a possible test-bed
for ideas she had developed concerning a common global
constitution."

Borgese received UNEP's "Environment Prize" in 1987
and was credited with organizing the conferences that
"served to lay the foundation" for the United Nations
Convention of the Law of the Sea, according to
Dalhousie University, which houses her archives.

In a 1995 speech, pro-U.N. Democratic Sen. Claiborne
Pell said Borgese's ideas were "embodied in the
negotiated texts of the Law of the Sea Convention."

Her ideas included recognizing the oceans as the
"common heritage of mankind" and creating an
International Seabed Authority to charge U.S. and
foreign companies for the right to mine the ocean
floor.

In a January 1999 speech, Borgese declared, "The world
ocean has been, and is, so to speak, our great
laboratory for the making of a new world order."

In an article titled, "The New International Economic
Order and the Law of the Sea," she argued that the
pact could "reinforce" the goals of the NIEO by giving
Third World countries a role in managing access to the
oceans.

In a 1997 interview, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
broadcaster Philip Coulter asked Borgese about the
collapse of Soviet-style communism and the triumph of
the "elites."

Borgese replied "there is a strong counter-trend. It's
not called socialism, but it's called sustainable
development, which calls ... for the eradication of
poverty. There is that trend and that is the trend
that I am working on."

The concept of "sustainable development," considered a
euphemism for socialism or communism, has been
embraced in various pronouncements by the U.N. and
even the U.S. government.

In her book, "The Oceanic Circle: Governing the Seas
as a Global Resource," she approvingly cites Karl
Marx, the father of communism, as someone with
"amazing foresight" about the problems faced by urban
and rural societies. The book is available from the
liberal Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

In an article co-authored with an international
lawyer, Borgese noted how LOST stipulates that the
oceans "shall be reserved for peaceful purposes" and
that "any threat or use of force, inconsistent with
the United Nations Charter, is prohibited."

She argued LOST prohibits the ability of nuclear
submarines from the U.S. and other nations to rove
freely through the world's oceans.

NowPublic

The International Waters are not Free

2007-12-26T11:30:00.001-08:00

NowPublic

Uh-Oh, Mel Gibson Redux? "Will Smith -- Hitler, Schmitler; He Wasn't That Bad"

2007-12-24T15:45:00.001-08:00

Where are all of the Al Sharpton's, Jesse Jackson's, and talking heads when you need them?

Will Smith -- Hitler, Schmitler; He Wasn't That Bad

On the day before Christmas, a leading Jewish group is kvetching loudly about Will Smith's recent suggestion that Adolf Hitler wasn't all bad, calling it "ignorant, detestable, and offensive." Oy.

And it doesn't end there ...

The Jewish Defense League is calling on Barack Obama to repudiate Smith's comments, and wants theaters to pull Smith's new flick "I Am Legend" from their screens. Smith told a Scottish paper that Hitler "didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' ... I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'" What kind of meshuggeneh talk is that?!

Smith's words, say the JDL, "spit on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis. His disgusting words stick a knife in the backs of every veteran who fought (and sometimes died) to save the world from the intentions of Adolf Hitler." Smith's rep could not be reached for comment.

[Ed.note] I have read that Mr. Smith has recently joined the Church of Scientology. Perhaps he needs to join another.

NowPublic

US Readiness for Flu Outbreak "Spotty"- RapidRecon

2007-12-23T10:12:00.001-08:00

Putting aside for a moment whether an outbreak of Pandemic avian flu (H5N1) is on the horizon or not, the recent outbreaks in China (where no concrete connections have yet been proven) and in Pakistan (where a small chain of human to human transmission has occurred according to the World Health Organization) raise the concern level.

Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the WHO’s global influenza program, told Reuters this week that the Pakistan cases probably represent a mix of poultry-to-human infections and human-to-human transmission resulting from close contact when people cared for infected relatives. “We don’t have any indication of a broader health threat, other than poultry outbreaks” in the area, WHO spokesman John Rainford told CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy - University of Minnesota) news today. “Our risk assessment suggests no evidence of sustained transmission. All the close contacts and involved healthcare workers remain asymptomatic and have been released from close medical observation.”

At the same time, CIDRAP is also reporting that the origins of the more recent outbreak in Indonesia in which five members of one family have been infected are unknown (see also from CIDRAP: CIDRAP News story “Possible H5N1 family cluster probed in Pakistan” and CIDRAP News story “Reports suggest common source in family H5N1 cases”

Therefore, despite explanations, there is a possibility that in both Pakistan and China (and maybe Indonesia), we are seeing both human-to-human and bird-to-human transmission. The question of human-to-human transmission, and whether that jump can or will turn into a pandemic has to be considered. In fact, the World Health Organization, in its latest reports said that there is a possibility that the reported Bird Flu in Pakistan might be spreading both from person to person and from poultry to humans. Additionally, the U.S. State Department this week began a series of articles on the bird flu preparations in Vietnam

Vietnam’s Vaccination Effort Helps in Fight Against Avian Flu Vaccinating its highest-risk populations of chickens and ducks has been an expensive and logistically complex effort for Vietnam’s central government, but animal health officials say it has slowed deadly outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza among birds in the Southeast Asian nation and, critically, among people. Also see: The State Department’s Bird Flu website is found here, Bird Flu (Avian Influenza) and National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza

Why make this point (over and over again)? It’s all about preparedness. Based on a report from Trust for America’s Health (tagged as a “watchdog” group by some local media), “Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Disease, Disasters, and Bioterrorism,” we remain unprepared. The report indicates that a “number of critical areas of the nation’s emergency health preparedness effort still require attention.” More on point:

Thirteen states don’t have adequate plans to distribute vaccines and antidotes in the event of a flu pandemic or a bioterrorism attack. Among the findings outlined in the report:

● Flu vaccination rates decreased among the elderly in 11 states during the past year.
● Six states cut their public health budgets between fiscal 2005 and fiscal 2006.
● Thirteen states do not have adequate plans to distribute emergency vaccines, antidotes, and medical supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile
● Twenty-one states do not have statutes that allow for adequate liability protection for healthcare volunteers during emergencies
● Twelve states do not have a disease surveillance system compatible with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Electronic Disease Surveillance System
● Seven states have not purchased any portion of their federally-subsidized or unsubsidized antivirals to use during a pandemic flu
● Seven states and D.C. lack sufficient capabilities to test for biological threats
“There is little doubt that emergency health preparedness is on the national radar,” Levi added. “But until all states are equally well prepared, our country is not as safe as it can and should be.”

All fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) were graded based on publicly available data. The results? Thirty-five states and D.C. scored eight or higher on the scale of ten indicators. Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia scored the highest with 10 out of 10. Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Wyoming scored the lowest with six out of 10.

We are dealing with the potential onset of a naturally borne medical disaster. I believe that it is important to recognize that the question of the “jump” to human-to-human transmission is one that could be “only one mutation” (of the virus) away. This was discussed back in October in The “Next” Step in Bird Flu Mutations. While “some” people may argue that “human-to-human” transmission is not occuring (or at least not yet on a large scale), or even that if an outbreak of H5N1 occurs in the United States, it might not become a pandemic, I blieve that the saying that “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” holds true here.

[Ed.note] With all the signs of war, pandemics of disease, destabilization, wealth transfer, poverty, inflation, eco-disaster, and a myriad of other problems that we face, it is all too easy to sit-back and watch it all unfold.

Take an activist stand--report it, analyze it, comment on it--here at Now Public. At least for starters; Act Locally, Think Globally.

NowPublic

DailyBriefings--Center for Threat Awareness

2007-12-22T18:29:00.001-08:00

December 21, 2007

1. China’s intelligence service gained access to a secret NSA listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service.

2. Suicide bomber again targets Pakistani Interior Ministry, kills 50 at Eid prayers in mosque.

3. Belgium arrests 14 in plot to break al-Qaeda 9/11 plotter from prison, security stepped up.

4. Israeli officials say ‘Russia does not want a nuclear Iran,’ yet Russian-supplied nuclear fuel frees Iran to stockpile its own enriched uranium production.

BELGIUM
Fourteen arrested in Belgian terror plot to break AQ 9/11 plotter from prison - Telegraph
Belgium tightens security against possible attack: ministry - AFP

CHINA
China taps into U.S. spy operations - Washington Times
December 1: MI5 alert on China’s cyberspace spy threat - Times Online
US hits at Chinese oil deal with Iran - MSNBC
First Joint China-India Exercises Begin - Defense News

IRAN
Israeli officials: ‘Russia doesn’t want nuclear Iran’ - Jerusalem Post
Russia Delivers Fuel for Iranian Reactor - Moscow News
Iran: Russian fuel won’t stop Iran enrichment process - M&C
US: Iran could revive atom bomb bid due to IAEA inspection curbs - Reuters
Powers fail to reach deal on Iran sanctions - AFP

PAKISTAN
Suicide Bombing at Mosque again targets Interior Ministry, Kills Dozens - VOA
50 die in Pakistan suicide blast near home of former Interior Minister - Los Angeles Times
Backgrounder: Distinguishing Interior Ministry Forces from Pakistani Army - ThreatsWatch
Chronology: Attacks in Pakistan since July 2007 - Reuters

NowPublic

Torture chamber found in Iraq

2007-12-21T17:56:00.001-08:00

I fail to see how the United States is responsible for this gruesome atrocity. From Yahoo, via AP News:

BAGHDAD - Blood-splotches on walls, chains hanging from a ceiling and swords on the killing floor — the artifacts left a disturbing tale of brutalities inside a suspected al-Qaida in Iraq torture chamber. But there was yet another chilling fact outside the dirt-floor dungeon. Villagers say they knew about the torment but were too intimidated by extremists to tell authorities until now.

Stories such as these — claims of insurgent abuses and the silence of frightened Iraqis — have emerged with increasing frequency and clarity recently as U.S.-led forces push deeper into former extremist fiefdoms and forge alliances with tribes seeking to reclaim their regions.

The reports and tips now pouring in build a harrowing portrait of rule under al-Qaida and its backers: mass graves, ruthless punishments, self-styled Islamic courts ordering summary executions.

Such a lead brought soldiers earlier this month to the hidden room in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Thursday. Graffiti on the building proclaimed "Long Live the Islamic State" — a reference to the Islamic governance, or caliphate, sought in Iraq by Sunni extremist groups that include al-Qaida.

Scrawled in white paint above a bed in the torture area was a Quranic phrase in Arabic normally used to welcome a guest. But the context suggested only sadistic mockery: "Come in, you are safe."

The floor was littered with food wrappers, plastic soda bottles and electric cables that snaked to a metal bed frame, presumably where detainees were shocked, according to the U.S. account of the discovery during a Dec. 8-11 mission.

The rooms "had chains, a bed — an iron bed that was still connected to a battery — knives and swords that were still covered in blood," said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq.

Nearby were nine mass graves containing the remains of 26 people, he said.

Villagers knew about the torture site, but did not tell authorities as they were afraid of reprisals from the militants, a local policeman told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was still afraid of being targeted by extremists.

He said he thought the chamber had been used for a year.

It was not the first such torture chamber discovered in Iraq. But it serves as a reminder of the extremist grip in parts of Iraq despite growing optimism as violence continues to fall.

And Diyala province — where the grisly discovery was made — remains one of the most volatile regions as U.S. and Iraqi forces struggle to match the clear advances against extremists made in Baghdad and the western desert of Anbar.

The province is mixed between Sunnis and Shiites — often called a "little Iraq" and a remnant of Iraq before sectarian bloodletting partitioned many parts of the country along religious lines. Diyala's capital, Baqouba, also is the self-proclaimed seat of the insurgents' caliphate.

"I think that is why al-Qaida wants that province so very much, because it is 'a little Iraq,'" Hertling said. "It gives them access to Baghdad and it also ... is considered their caliphate capital."

American commanders say they are a long way from declaring victory in Diyala.

The weapons caches found during the Muqdadiyah raids included a surface-to-air missile launcher, sniper rifles, and 130 pounds of homemade explosives, Hertling said.

"You know, there's going to be continued spectacular attacks," he said. "Are we confident we can protect it? As soon as I say, 'Yeah, we're confident,' it's going to blow tomorrow."

It was not the first apparent torture site found after U.S. forces moved into former extremist strongholds.

In March, U.S. troops discovered a similar site in the village of Karmah just west of Baghdad that was used by Sunni insurgents for torture and summary executions. They rescued two Iraqi captives, who apparently had been spared immediate execution because the militants' video camera broke and they wanted to film the killing.

The captives told U.S. soldiers they had been sentenced to death by an insurgent court and had the choice of either beheading or a fatal gunshot.

Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia death squads regularly torture their captives before killing them — sometimes with power drills. Most of the hundreds of bodies that have turned up in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq show signs of torture.

NowPublic

Support the Iraq Surge? Or Collapse our Position?

2007-12-20T12:11:00.001-08:00

An opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal:

I recently spent a week touring Iraq, meeting with American servicemen and women and interacting with Iraqis. What I saw convinced me that the war has changed in both tone and substance since the president surged 30,000 troops into the country earlier this year.

A year ago, sectarian brutality and violence were out of control. Every month approximately 1,000 American servicemen and women were either killed or wounded as they fought to staunch a bloody civil war that to date has killed 60,000 Iraqi civilians.

But now the facts on the ground are entirely different. Sectarian killings, suicide truck bombings, and attacks on U.S. forces and the Iraqi Army and police are down by an order of magnitude. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been tactically defeated in the streets of Baghdad and in the Sunni stronghold of Anbar Province. Roadside-bomb and rocket attacks (which can be deadly to our troops even when they are riding in armored vehicles) from Shiite militias are down markedly. Border crossings by suicide jihadists from Syria have plummeted. The intelligence picture has shifted from night to day as Iraqis by the thousands come forward to identify AQI and criminal Shiite extremists in their communities.

However, we must decide if this inflection point is real. Is it sustainable as we begin our inexorable drawdown and disengagement from the theater?

There are several profound changes taking place in Iraq. The Sunnis who dominated the country in the Baathist era have come to realize that al Qaeda was terrorizing their own community with a malignant and extremist form of Islam. The Sunnis also woke up to the fact that the Americans would eventually leave -- and they would be soon out in the cold with little participation in an Iraqi Army or police dominated by Shiites and Kurds.

The "tribal awakening" began a separate kind of surge , this one to put Sunnis into the police and the Army. In addition, the Coalition Forces created armed "concerned local citizen" groups that number some 60,000 to guard neighborhoods. These groups feed enormous amounts of real-time intelligence into the counterterrorism forces and provide security.

The Shiite militia forces of Moqtada al-Sadr have also been maneuvered into a ceasefire that is making peace possible in the major cities. This is a fate Mr. Sadr and his gunmen brought on themselves after carrying out attacks in the Holy City of Najaf, which was widely reported on TV throughout the Arab world. In addition, Coalition special forces are effectively targeting both Shiite terrorists and al Qaeda leaders with intelligence-driven raids.

Finally, the Iraqi Army is now coming online with disciplined and courageous units. They are successfully confronting the thugs and extremists who dominate the streets of Iraq. The police, previously a disaster, have been forcibly retrained, better equipped, and most of their senior leaders replaced. Although corruption, incompetence and inadequate equipment are prevalent, in many neighborhoods Iraqi Security Forces now control the streets.

Brilliant leadership by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker , and a new counterinsurgency strategy combined with the uncommon valor and creativity of U.S. combat forces, have turned the situation around for now. In the coming months we will withdraw all five "surge brigades" and learn if the Iraqis can hold it together. The jury is out because of a weak and sectarian central government run by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a clumsy Iraqi constitution, and continuing centrifugal forces from a bitterly divided and fearful nation.

We need to press our advantage while it exists. The key to winning the war is to massively build Iraqi Security Forces with the equipment, training and leadership needed to maintain internal order and security as we withdraw. Without security for the population there will never be reconciliation in Iraq. In addition, we must recognize that economic recovery is a prerequisite to success. Congress must support programs to rebuild the electrical, oil, transportation and agricultural systems. Our new diplomatic outreach to Syria, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia must continue unabated.

We are running out of time. The American people have lost faith in this war. Some 34,000 of our sons and daughters have been killed or wounded as we've poured $400 billion into the mess. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has begun to heal fissures in the national security process. He is creating transparency with the media, offering respect to Congress, giving initiative to his field combat forces, and leveling with the international community and the American people.

It will probably be two years before we know whether this will work. But there is now a sense of momentum and advantage among our soldiers and our Iraqi allies on the streets of Iraq. And that counts for a lot.

Looks like a pivotal moment in history. We'll see what happens.

NowPublic

US Military Not Told of Turkey Bomb Plan

2007-12-18T20:28:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure what to make of this. From Drudge, via MyWay:

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military commanders in Iraq didn't know Turkey was sending warplanes to bomb in northern Iraq until the planes had already crossed the border, said defense and diplomatic officials, who were angered about being left in the dark.

Americans have been providing Turkey with intelligence to go after Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. And a "coordination center" has been set up in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information, two officials said Tuesday.

But defense and diplomatic officials in Washington and Baghdad told The Associated Press that U.S. commanders in Iraq knew nothing about Sunday's attack until it was already under way.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Their comments follow complaints by Iraqi leaders Monday that Turkey hadn't coordinated with Baghdad before sending bombers to strike targets of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

It was left to the Americans to inform Iraqi government officials of Sunday's incursion, one U.S. official said.

No problem occurred with a conflict in the air space, but might have as both military and commercial flights go through northern Iraq, the officials said.

U.S. diplomatic officials also expressed irritation that the Turks had not provided them or the Iraqis with advance notice of the operation and said they had made their displeasure clear.

One senior State Department official said the Turks informed the United States of the airstrikes through military channels in Ankara but not until after the first wave of planes was already in the air.

When questioned about the late notification, the Turks replied they were chasing PKK rebels and there had not been time, according to the official.

"They said it was hot pursuit," the official told the AP. "But our message to them was that they need to make sure we're aware of what they're doing and that we find out about it before the guns start firing."

"There are supposed to be coordinating mechanisms for this kind of thing with us and the Iraqis, and whatever happens in the heat of the moment, they have to tell us in a reasonable and timely manner," the official added. "We have told them it would be extremely helpful if they were more forthcoming on the notification."

Dozens of planes reportedly were involved in the incursion, which would be the largest aerial attack in years against the outlawed rebel separatist group. Other reports put the number of planes at a much smaller number.

It was unclear whether any U.S. radar or surveillance systems became aware of the first wave of planes before official notification reached Baghdad."

NowPublic

Trouble in Hillaryland

2007-12-15T09:12:00.001-08:00

What seemed like a sure bet, doesn't appear so anymore. This is no longer speculation, that Senator Clinton's presidential campaign is in trouble--it is fact. From Newsweek of all places:

A senior Democratic senator fretted in a holiday receiving line that "this celebrity thing" could run away with the presidency. It's dawning on the Washington Establishment that their candidate could lose, swept away by a charismatic upstart and a talk show host. Word is even leaking out from Chappaqua and Harlem that the big gun is confiding to who knows whom that not all is not well in Hillaryland.

And whose fault is that? Hillary was doing pretty well on her own until Bill started whining about the boys ganging up on her and the media mistreating her. But that was nothing compared to his declaration that he was against the Iraq war from the beginning. That little bit of revisionist history landed like a live grenade in the middle of Hillary's campaign, exploding a year's worth of positioning to put the Iraq war vote behind her.

The key point the former president seems not to have fully absorbed is that the race is not about him, it's about her. Reporters have taken to counting the number of times he says "I" in his speeches, compared to his mentions of Hillary. He can't help himself. He's focused on his own legacy and standing, and it's hard for him to be in somebody else's shadow. "It makes you wonder what her presidency would be like. If he's second-guessing and undermining her campaign, what would he do to an administration?" says a veteran Democratic strategist who is in Hillary's camp.

Bill's grousing feeds the notion that Hillary, a candidate running on competence and experience, is not really up to the job—and that she'd need to bring him in to save the day. Democrats love Bill Clinton, but too much of him brings back memories, not all of them fond, during a campaign in which change has emerged as the dominant theme. Bill reportedly thinks the campaign needs to be more aggressive, that his wife's advisers were inclined to sit on their early lead—resulting in its vanishing, at least in New Hampshire. But they've also been clumsy in taking on Barak Obama, in my view—making another blunder this week that resulted in the resignation of Hillary's New Hampshire campaign chairman, Bill Shaheen, for dredging up Obama's admitted past drug use. In what looked like one of the oldest campaign tricks in the book, Hillary pollster Mark Penn managed to repeat the charge even as he disavowed its place in the campaign. "It's dangerous for her," says the Democratic strategist. "She has high negatives. She cuts someone else up; she cuts herself down."

There isn't any argument over Hillary's Achilles' heel: the perception that she lacks likability and warmth. The campaign put up two new ads in Iowa this week: a testimonial from Hillary's mother, 87-year-old Dorothy Rodham, who talks into the camera about how she'd want Hillary elected even if the candidate weren't her daughter, and an appearance by Chelsea Clinton in a campaign ad as a backdrop to her mother talking about values. Most voters have never even heard Chelsea speak, she's been so sheltered throughout the Clintons' time on the national stage. But in Iowa the former and possibly future First Daughter will soon be a familiar figure.

With three weeks to go before the Iowa caucus, John Edwards is the one who's smiling. After a stint as the angry man in the race, he's back to his sunny self, and with Hillary sniping at Obama and Obama jabbing back, the gates to victory could open for Edwards in Iowa. Short of winning herself, that's the next-best outcome for Hillary—or so the experts agreed at an election panel assembled Thursday morning by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Analyst Michael Barone assumes Edwards could be stopped in New Hampshire, where he is polling a distant third (and finished fourth in 2004), or in South Carolina, where he is receiving very little evident support from African-Americans, who make up half the Democratic primary electorate. Hillary could survive losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, said resident scholar Norm Ornstein, adding it would be "a triumph of hope over experience," a play on the campaign themes.

It will be very interesting to witness history in the making over the next few months--everything is at stake for our country, world peace and/or war.

NowPublic

Lovers turn to text message to say it's over

2007-12-14T08:02:00.001-08:00

I don't think I am that old, to think that this is not the right way to end a relationship. From Reuters, via Yahoo News:

LONDON (Reuters) - U R dumped -- one in seven say they have suffered the same fate as Britney Spears' ex-husband and been told it's all over via text message or email, a survey said on Friday.

While hiding behind technology might appear a cowardly way of splitting up, it contrasts with the four percent who simply drop all communication with their lovers without notice.

"Most of us send emails and texts everyday, so it comes as no surprise they are now being used to ditch someone -- however distasteful this is," said Rob Barnes from moneysupermarket.com, which carried out the survey.

"The results show one per cent of the population would use a social networking site to dump a partner. It would be interesting to see how this changes as sites such as Facebook and MySpace become more apparent in our everyday lives."

One of the most high-profile victims of dumping by text was Kevin Federline, who reportedly received news that pop singer Spears was filing for divorce while being filmed for a television show.

The survey said 15 percent of the 2,194 people questioned had been dumped by text or email, although a quarter of those in the most tech-savvy 18 to 24-year-old age group would choose the traditional method -- a letter.

[Ed.Note]What a way to go!

NowPublic

Tags: Culture | dumped | Text Messages

Teen caller tricks White House

2007-12-12T21:32:00.001-08:00

You gotta laugh at this one. From Reuters:

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - A teen-ager says he convinced the White House he was Iceland's president and managed to schedule a call with George W. Bush but was found out before he got to talk to the U.S. president.

"My call was transferred around a few times until I got hold of Bush's secretary and managed to book a call meeting with Bush the following Monday evening," Vifill Atlason, 16, told Reuters.

The teen-ager posed as Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson when he made the call on Dec 1.

Icelandic police turned up at his door two days later -- the day of the planned call -- and took him in for questioning.

"They told me the CIA had called the National Commissioner of the Icelandic police and asked if the police could try and find out where I received that phone number from," said Atlason.

The teen-ager said he was unable to recall where he discovered the telephone number for the White House.

"I know I've had it on my phone card for at least 4 years now and that an Icelandic friend gave it to me, but I don't remember who," he said.

At a White House news conference Monday, Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said her understanding was that Atlason had called a public line "that anybody can call," according to a transcript.

Local police confirmed the National Security Unit at the national police headquarters had asked them to bring Atlason in.

NowPublic

Sudan, Arab Militias, and China "Strangle" the U.N. Peacekeeping Mandate

2007-12-11T06:43:00.001-08:00

by Mia Farrow:

United Nations Resolution 1769 entered the world with promise. The infant resolution was destined to accomplish great things: It authorized the deployment of 26,000 peacekeepers to protect millions of imperiled people in the anguished Darfur region of Sudan.

It was ushered through with no shortage of midwives. Even China, Sudan's closest business partner and ally on the Security Council, signed onto the resolution under intense international pressure. Thus, when it was adopted on July 31, 2007, there was new hope for Darfur's desperate people, and the aid workers struggling to sustain them.

But despite those hopes, violence continues to escalate in Darfur.

The United Nations documents that hundreds of people have been killed in about 20 land and air attacks carried out by the government of Sudan and its affiliated militia in the past six months. Humanitarian workers have also been victimized.

This week, Oxfam's director in Sudan, Alun MacDonald said, "Our staff are being targeted on a daily basis. They are being shot, robbed, beaten and abducted." The security situation, he insisted, "is the worse since the entire conflict began." Seven aid workers were killed in October, according to Mr. Macdonald. "These aren't conditions we can keep working in."

Where has Resolution 1769 been amid all this? Slowly suffocating at the hands of a regime that will stop at nothing to ensure its demise.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has blocked the peacekeepers with every conceivable obstacle. Last week, he rejected the offers of Nepal, Norway, Sweden, India and Thailand to contribute troops. "Even if there is a shortage of troops from the African continent," he said, "we are not going to accept those people."

Resolution 1769 says the force "should have a predominantly African character and the troops should, as far as possible, be sourced from African countries." But predominantly African in character is not the same as exclusively African.

Deadlines for assembling the force have come and gone, thwarted by Mr. Bashir's regime. Khartoum has not given the U.N. mission the land or water access to base and sustain its troops. It places restraints on U.N. helicopter flights. It denies landing rights to transport aircraft. It refuses to allow night flights essential for civilian protection and medical evacuations. It refuses to allow off-loading of equipment in Port Sudan. And it demands advance notice of U.N. troop movements, as well as the right to shut down all communications.

This week, U.N. Director of Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno informed the Security Council that Khartoum's demands "would make it impossible for the mission to operate." Mr. Guéhenno raises the grim question, "Do we move ahead with the deployment of a force that will not make a difference, that will not have the capability to defend itself, and that carries the risk of humiliation of the Security Council and the United Nations, and tragic failure for the people of Darfur?"

As Resolution 1769 lies dying, the world seems content to look on in silence. The diplomatic pressure needed to end Mr. Bashir's pattern of obstruction is nowhere to be found.

China alone holds diplomatic and economic leverage over Khartoum. It is support from China's leaders that allows Sudan's president to smugly thumb his nose at the world. And yet there has been no outpouring of diplomatic pressure on China to use its influence to end Khartoum's obduracy.

Similarly, the basic logistical support needed to move the force forward is lacking. The commander of the proposed mission, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, is pleading for a mere 24 helicopters "essential" for security and protection operations, but no nation has offered a single chopper. Zero.

This week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to Security Council members and all countries for help. "While helicopters alone cannot ensure the success of the mission," he said, "their absence may well doom it to failure." Mr. Ban has personally contacted every country with the potential to contribute a helicopter, to no avail.

"We are at the critical moment for Darfur," Mr. Ban said. "Member states have spoken clearly about what must be done. It is time for them to walk their talk."

And so a promising young resolution continues its death throes. World powers are standing by mutely watching Mr. Bashir strangle the infant U.N. resolution, with China at his side.

Ms. Farrow, an actor, has visited the Darfur region seven times.

NowPublic

Questions of intelligence

2007-12-10T23:32:00.001-08:00

Via the Boston Globe:

FOR 15 YEARS in my various government and parliament duties for the State of Israel, I have been closely tracking Iran's nuclear program. I do so because I consider it a threat to the international community and an existential threat to my country.

Frankly, the headlines about the recent National Intelligence estimate on Iran - "Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003" - stunned me. After a thorough reading of the published parts of the NIE, I pose three questions to its authors, whom I don't know but I do respect.

You wrote, "Iran resumed its declared centrifuge enrichment activities in January 2006, despite the continued halt in the nuclear weapon program. Iran made a significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges in Natanz. . ." And, "Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing a nuclear weapon, if a decision is made to do so."

If uranium enrichment and development of those technologies continues, what exactly was halted in the fall of 2003?

Two ingredients are mainly required for a nuclear bomb: fissile material and a special explosion device.

The production of the fissile material requires large, easily detectable industrial facilities like the one in Natanz. To develop and produce the weapon device, however, only a small plant is enough, a plant whose size and contours are similar to any innocent laboratory. That is what is called "the weapon group." Only the absolute dismantling of the "weapon group" can be considered as "halting nuclear weapons program." Can you say with confidence that such a laboratory does not exist anywhere in Iran? Is your coverage of Iran so total and intrusive as to justify such a conclusion?

The report said, "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so." But, you also write that ". . .We don't know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." And, "We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Teheran is willing to maintain the halt."

If you don't have enough knowledge about the regime's intention, and that is understandable, how do you know, or will you know, that such a decision has not been taken or implemented?

You wrote, "A growing amount of intelligence indicates Iran was engaged in covert uranium enrichment activity, but we judge that the efforts probably were halted in response to the fall 2003 halt, and that these efforts probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007."

You say "probably." But your judgment that Teheran had not "restarted its nuclear weapon program as of mid-2007" can be based only on the assumption that nowhere in Iran is there an active covert nuclear program. Are you sure?

According to the NIE, "sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame" Iran would have enough enriched uranium for a weapon. The ballistic missiles that can deliver such a weapon to Israel, as well as Gulf and European countries, are already operational.

We can't wait for answers to my questions. This National Intelligence Estimate, about which there are legitimate questions, may well reduce the likelihood that additional and tougher international sanctions will be imposed on Iran. We would then have to rely on ourselves.

Well, since Iran has proven to be such a "trustworthy" ally of our soldiers in Iraq, we should just believe whatever the Persians tell us, huh?

From CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military Sunday presented evidence it says shows an elite Iranian force under the command of Iran's supreme leader is behind bombings that have killed at least 170 U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. officials have made general statements in the past year about Iranian involvement in Iraq, but haven't provided many details.

The charges came at a Baghdad briefing by a senior defense official, a senior defense analyst and an explosives expert, all of whom asked to remain unnamed.

The officials focused on EFPs, or explosively formed penetrators, as evidence that Iran is involved in arming Iraqi insurgents. EFPs can punch through heavily armored vehicles.(Watch U.S. officials outline their case against Iran

The U.S. military officials said EFPs are manufactured in such a specific way that they can be traced to Iran.

Also, the U.S. military says 81 mm mortar shells used in deadly attacks in Iraq can also be directly traced to Iran.

The U.S. military said the munitions are being provided to Shiite groups in Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds force, which answers directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The military officials said a senior operations officer for the Quds force was among several Iranian officers arrested in Irbil, Iraq, in the past few weeks.

NowPublic

Illegal migrants drown off Turkey

2007-12-10T20:31:00.001-08:00

People are desperate, around the world, for a better life. And frequently in that pursuit, they lose their lives. From AP via the San Jose Mercury News:

ANKARA, Turkey—A boat carrying illegal migrants sank off Turkey's Aegean coast and at least 43 died, an official said Monday.

The 50-foot boat sank in rough weather late Saturday off the coast of Seferihisar, a town south of the city of Izmir, said Gov. Orhan Sefik Guldibi. Six migrants were rescued and hospitalized, mostly for shock.

Citing survivors, the Coast Guard said a total of 85 people were on board.

Dogan news agency said earlier that 51 people had died, but a local official disputed that report. Ercan Dogu, an official from the Izmir governor's office, said a miscommunication between police and paramilitary police had resulted in conflicting fatality reports.

Dogu said a final count late Monday afternoon showed 43 dead, including two women.

"We are trying to keep our hopes alive but the possibility of more survivors is diminishing," Guldibi said.

"Boats and helicopters are searching for more migrants in the sea," Guldibi said. "Because of the strong wind, we think the bodies should be closer to the coast than where this boat sank. But they are searching far off the coast as well."

The survivors, who stayed afloat by wearing inflated inner tubes around their waists, swam to shore late Sunday and shouted for help, according to Guldibi. Residents heard their shouts and called the police.

The migrants were mostly Palestinians, Somalis and Iraqis, Guldibi said.

The passengers met up in Izmir Saturday

evening and were taken to the coast from where they boarded the boat in the dark. The vessel capsized around two hours after setting sail, Guldibi said.

Strong winds and rough seas hampered rescue work, private NTV television reported. Rescuers were also searching areas close to the Greek island of Chios for bodies, the report said.

Thousands of immigrants from Asia and Africa enter Turkey illegally on their way to European Union countries in search of jobs and a better life. Smugglers often take the migrants from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands on fragile and overcrowded boats, and accidents are common.

The EU, which Turkey wants to join, wants the country to crack down on illegal immigration.

EU-member Greece, which has an 8,000-mile coastline dotted with thousands of islands, has accused Turkish authorities of not doing enough to halt the flow of illegal migrants.

Turkey has increased patrols along its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, but boats still get through.

NowPublic

Healthy Ways to Use the TV and Computer

2007-12-10T20:14:00.001-08:00

As a former competitive swimmer and surfer, I learn tremendous health information from the amazing professionals at Iowa Avenue:

In general, we have become a group of people who watch too much television, “Surf the Internet,” play videogames or, just “chill” with our friends.

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; but if it becomes too much, your personal physical fitness suffers, and that’s not a good thing.

On average, Americans watch between 3-5 hours of TV per day. The video and gaming industries are reaching untold masses of youth and other people—distracting them from other activities—especially physical fitness.

That perpetuates a sedentary lifestyle. Being sedentary tends to perpetuate. You go to work, or school, you want to check your email, watch the latest “hot show” or play that newest video game. But, guess what:

Inactivity breeds more inactivity.

I enjoy watching TV, but I don’t watch it too often. I love Project Runway and Top Chef; I watch some news, and once in a while, a movie. I reserve time in my schedule for my favorite programs, so it’s a time for me to relax.

Do you use TV viewing as a time to relax? Or do you use it as a time to eat? Have you substituted more sustained or regular physical, interpersonal, or productive activity in lieu of the time spent on all of these wonderful new fun gadgets?

Let’s face it—they are addictive and necessary in today’s faced paced environment. It’s probably not realistic to not check your email or use your TV or Computer on a daily basis. And if you did, how long might that last?

Food for thought.

On that point, if you are watching too much TV, or spending an inordinate amount of time on the PC or Internet, chances are, you are not getting enough exercise, or keeping other lifestyle options open for yourself.

Let’s tackle these one at a time.

Many people like to eat or “munch” while sitting at the PC or watching television. This is definitely a huge problem for people trying to lose weight, because most of the time that type of eating is based on “boredom” rather than hunger need.

Usually, the typical TV/Internet/Video Game diet consists of junk food-- potato chips, corn chips, high fat popcorn, cookies, or candy. Perhaps even Pizza and beer!

Might I suggest a few other alternatives?

1. Try low fat popcorn. It’s just as good as the high fat ones, but obviously much less fat and calories.

2. If you want eat during these activities, try a healthy snack. How about some baby carrots or some fruit? How about nothing until you sit down for a meal?

I know the idea of eating a healthy snack has been incessantly drummed into our collective ears, over and over and over, but we still fail to heed the advice and certainly don’t act upon it……………….:(

3. While watching TV, try to start a hobby, like knitting, crocheting, etc. You’d be surprised how much “work” you can get done on a project while watching TV. Before I started Iowa Avenue, I completed entire sweaters while watching TV.

4. Why not write a blog post for Iowa Avenue? It’s not too hard to watch TV and write, although, sometimes you might lose your concentration on one or the other, usually the TV. Hey, it’s just a suggestion………………..:)

5. Do some stretches. Small movements, while sitting in your chair, or stretching out on the floor can have long term effects. This community wiki site says it better than I could, so just substitute TV for “Computer”:

How to Exercise While Watching TV

For more suggestions, try this link:

How to Exercise While Sitting at Your Computer

6. Of course there is one more suggestion, don't eat anything at all.

Now, you have a few tools in your arsenal for better TV, computer use, and potentially “video gaming” viewing.

What are you “weighting” for?

After all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle

Who knew? You can write a story for Now Public, and keep active at the same time.

NowPublic

Vigilante Justice - Megan's Law listing may have led to Slaying

2007-12-10T10:49:00.001-08:00

Interesting story about the Internet, Megan's Law, privacy, and Vigilante justice. Does the story from the LA Times, raise more questions than it answers?

Lake County prosecutors have investigated the possibility that information in the Internet database might have been the motive for the killing of a convicted sex offender.

LAKEPORT, CALIF. -- Convicted rapist Michael A. Dodele had been free just 35 days when sheriff's deputies found him dead last month in his aging, tan mobile home, his chest and left side punctured with stab wounds.

Officers quickly arrested Dodele's neighbor, 29-year-old construction worker Ivan Garcia Oliver, who made "incriminating comments, essentially admitting to his attacking Dodele," the Lake County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

Prosecutors said they have investigated the possibility that the slaying of Dodele, 67, stemmed from his having been listed on the state's Megan's Law database of sex offenders. If so, his death may be the first in the state to result from such a listing, experts said.

Oliver pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, burglary and elder abuse when he was arraigned Nov. 30.

In a jailhouse interview Wednesday night, Oliver said he has a son who was molested in the past, and he took action to protect the child.

"Society may see the action I took as unacceptable in the eyes of 'normal' people," Oliver said. "I felt that by not taking evasive action as a father in the right direction, I might as well have taken my child to some swamp filled with alligators and had them tear him to pieces. It's no different."

Although Oliver did not say he killed Dodele, he said that "any father in my position, with moral, home, family values, wouldn't have done any different. At the end of the day, what are we as parents? Protectors, caregivers, nurturers."

In fact, Dodele was not a child molester. But a listing on the Megan's Law website could have left Oliver with the impression that he had abused children because of the way it was written.

Although Dodele's listing has been taken down since his death, a spokesman for the state attorney general said the site described the man's offenses as "rape by force" and "oral copulation with a person under 14 or by force."

"He was convicted of other bad things, but nothing involving a minor," said Richard F. Hinchcliff, chief deputy district attorney for Lake County. But "it would be easy to understand why someone might think so looking at the website."

Dodele's crimes involved sexual assaults on adult women, records show.

A neighbor at the Western Hills Resort & Trailer Park, a tattered collection of mobile homes and bungalows, said that two days before the killing, Oliver "told every house" in the park that he'd found Dodele listed on the website of convicted sexual offenders and was uncomfortable living near him.

[Ed.note] The Deputy District Attorney's comments are interesting. If something is perceived by law enforcement as not truthful, then it it the government's responsibility to reverse that reality. Even if the people affected are admitted sex offenders. Two wrongs never make a right.

NowPublic

Breaking News: UK PRIME MINISTER TELLS TROOPS: WAR IS OVER

2007-12-09T22:09:00.001-08:00

From the Sun UK via the Drudge Report:

Gordon Brown yesterday delivered a stirring festive message to Our Boys in Iraq: “Happy Christmas – war is over.”

The PM was cheered as he praised UK troops and revealed combat operations in Basra will end “within two weeks”.

Iraqi forces will take over as the 4,500-strong British force switches from front-line duties to a training role.

By early next year, our contingent in Southern Iraq will be cut to 2,500 – and may be withdrawn completely in March.

The PM broke the good news in a flying visit to Iraq.

He landed at the Army’ s base at Basra airport in darkness in an RAF Hercules transporter plane.

Minutes later he spoke to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki.

He then gave a rousing speech to 300 squaddies after shaking hands with them all.

To warm applause, he told them the region – the last under British control in Iraq – would be handed back to the Iraqis in a fortnight.

He said: “The Prime Minister of Iraq has asked me to pass on his thanks to you for helping to rebuild the democracy of Iraq.

“This is because of the operations over the last month that you have been involved in.

“The security situation has not only improved, but he is able to tell me he will now be recommending a move to a provisional Iraqi control within two weeks.

“Iraqis can take far more control of their country.”

Mr Brown quoted Sir Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Montgomery as he thanked Our Boys for their “courage and bravery”.

He said: “The British people are so grateful for all you do . . . we are incredibly proud of what you have done. The whole British people are proud of everything you achieved here “Thank you very much and Happy Christmas to you all.”

Since Our Boys withdrew from Basra’s city centre and palace to the airport a few miles away back in September attacks on them have fallen by 90 per cent.

They have been helping to train 30,000 police and armed forces during rebuilding operations.

It is thought they will only be recalled to the front if there is a major post-handover incident coupled with a direct plea from Iraqi generals.

Several hundred may be stationed in neighbouring Kuwait early next year.

Before flying out, Mr Brown insisted five Brits kidnapped in Iraq’s capital Baghdad in May must be freed immediately.

The kidnappers warned last week the men will be killed unless troops are withdrawn, but Mr Brown said he would not be forced into changing his policies in the country.

He added: “The taking of hostages is completely unacceptable. We are demanding the immediate release.”

NowPublic

Breaking News: Huckabee Wanted to Isolate AIDS Patients

2007-12-08T08:57:00.001-08:00

This is an important and timely political news story. It is not presented to advocate for or against Presidential Candidate, Mike Huckabee.

From the Guardian, via AP:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could ``pose a dangerous public health risk.''

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

``If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,'' Huckabee wrote.

``It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.''

The AP submitted the questionnaire to both candidates; only Huckabee responded. Incumbent Sen. Dale Bumpers won his four term; Huckabee was elected lieutenant governor the next year and became governor in 1996.

When asked about AIDS research in 1992, Huckabee complained that AIDS research received an unfair share of federal dollars when compared to cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

``In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified,'' Huckabee wrote. ``An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor (,) Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research.''

Huckabee did not return messages left with his campaign.

When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In late 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 195,718 AIDS patients in the country and that 126,159 people had died from the syndrome.

The nation had an increased awareness of AIDS at the time because pro basketball star Magic Johnson had recently disclosed he carried the virus responsible for it. Johnson retired but returned to the NBA briefly during the 1994-95 season.

Since becoming a presidential candidate this year, Huckabee has supported increased federal funding for AIDS research through the National Institutes of Health.

``My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals,'' Huckabee said in a statement posted on his campaign Web site last month.

Also in the wide-ranging AP questionnaire in 1992, Huckabee said, ``I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.''

A Southern Baptist preacher, Huckabee has been a favorite among social conservatives for his vocal opposition to gay marriage. In 2003, Huckabee said that the U.S. Supreme Court was probably right to strike down anti-sodomy laws, but that states still should be able to restrict things such as gay marriage or domestic partner benefits.

``What people do in the privacy of their own lives as adults is their business,'' Huckabee said. ``If they bring it into the public square and ask me as a taxpayer to support it or to endorse it, then it becomes a matter of public discussion and discourse.''

[Ed.note] People do make mistakes, and the fact that Huckabee, if elected as President of the United States, announced that he would make finding an AIDS vaccine a priority, should be duly noted.

NowPublic

Uganda: Nation On Ebola Alert

2007-12-07T21:26:00.001-08:00

[Ed.note] This is extremely serious and dangerous. Breaking news from allAfrica:

THE government yesterday announced that suspected cases of the lethal Ebola hemorrhagic fever have been reported in seven more districts.

State Minister for Primary Healthcare, Dr Emmanuel Otaala said eight sporadic alert cases have been registered in the districts of Adjumani in West Nile, Mbale in the east, Masaka and Mubende in Buganda region and Kasese, Fort Portal (Kabarole) and Kanungu in western Uganda; implying the whole country is now under Ebola siege.

The case in Adjumani involves a UPDF soldier who couldn't easily be identified. But Dr Otaala said :"Alert cases do not necessarily mean they are (confirmed) cases of Ebola but they ring a bell in our minds that there is something to investigate," the minister said.

Dr Otaala said reported Ebola infections countrywide since August had surged to 101 while deaths from the virulent disease stagnated at 22.

The Cabinet in an emergency sitting chaired by Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi yesterday approved Shs6 billion to handle the spate of Ebola, plague, meningococcal meningitis, suspected cholera and yellow fever/Hepatitis A epidemics currently ravaging different parts of the country.

But as Ebola threatens to engulf the whole country, acting government spokesman Dr. James Nsaba Buturo said cabinet threw out pleas by lawmakers on Thursday that a state of emergency be urgently declared to draw international attention to the exploding incurable hemorrhagic fever.

"The work (declaration of) state of emergency is not in our vocabulary because we (government) are on top of things (containing the epidemic)," Dr Buturo said.

But it emerged yesterday that Mr Moses Natukunda, a guard with Delta Security suspected to be ill with Ebola was on Thursday night admitted to Mulago Isolation Ward; the same unit where Kikyo Health centre IV Medical Superintendent Dr. Jonah Kule died of the viral hemorrhagic fever three days ago.

"He (Natukunda) was brought in by his employers, Delta Security, after vomiting and passing out blood," Dr Ayati Omoruto, a community health officer at Mulago Hospital said.

A group of Kyambogo University students who had moved to attend a funeral of a relative in the Ebola hit western Uganda have caused a scare at the campus, forcing Ministry of Health officials to put them under medical observation.

The Director General of Health services, Sam Zaramba said an elaborate surveillance network had been established to trace prior contacts of all victims and now a total of 338 persons are being monitored to establish if they are in gestation period of the contagion.

President Yoweri Museveni, while speaking at the on-going Kampala City of God Crusade at Kololo Airstrip on Thursday warned Ugandans to wave but not shake hands while greeting.

[Ed.note] The rise of these super-virus killers like AIDS, SARS, Ebola, are literally killing millions of people. Is this because of overpopulation?

NowPublic

The Destroyed Tapes: A Boon for Conspiracy Theorists

2007-12-07T16:47:00.001-08:00

[Ed.note] Hey wait a minute--does that mean that the latest NIE aka National Intelligence Estimate that Iran is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, a vast LEFT WING CONSPIRACY?

From Time:

The CIA has proved, once again, that the cover up is worse than the crime. Or at least let's hope that's the case.

CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden has admitted that in 2005 the CIA destroyed two videotapes of interrogations of al-Qaeda prisoners, including a central figure in 9/11, Abu Zubaydah. Hayden said the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the CIA interrogators from members of al-Qaeda and other terrorists who might try to retaliate. He also claims that the tapes were made to safeguard against unlawful treatment of detainees, and that they were only destroyed after it was confirmed that suspects were not being tortured.

At a time when Congressional Democrats are trying once again to pass a torture ban, it's a given that the revelation is going to further inflame the torture debate — since the tapes apparently showed harsh interrogation techniques. The assumption will be that the CIA did not want the tapes seen in public because they are too graphic and could lead to indictments.

But more to the point, the revelation will raise another question: What other evidence has the CIA destroyed? And can the CIA be trusted to tell us? The CIA had told the 9/11 Commission, when it formally requested such materials, that there was no taping of interrogations. CIA lawyers also told federal prosecutors trying the Zacarias Moussaoui terror case that the agency did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge and Moussaoui's defense lawyers. The CIA insists that the tapes destroyed were not the ones in question.

I would find it very difficult to believe the CIA would deliberately destroy evidence material to the 9/11 investigation, evidence that would cover up a core truth, such as who really was behind 9/11. On the other hand I have to wonder what space-time continuum the CIA exists in, if they weren't able to grasp what a field day the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are going to have with this — especially at a time when trust for the government is plumbing new depths.

I myself have felt the pull of the conspiracy theorists — who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, somehow pulled off by the U.S. government. For the record, I don't believe that the World Trade Center was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the Pentagon. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn't all that good at it, and certainly couldn't carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with.

Still, the people who think 9/11 was an inside job might easily be able to believe that Abu Zubaydah named his American accomplices in the tape that has now been destroyed by the CIA.

It isn't going to help that the Abu Zubaydah investigation has a lot of problems even without destroyed evidence. When Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, two ATM cards were found on him. One was issued by a bank in Saudi Arabia (a bank close to the Saudi royal family) and the other to a bank in Kuwait. As I understand it, neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia has been able to tell us who fed the accounts. Also, apparently, when Abu Zubaydah was captured, telephone records, including calls to the United States, were found in the house he was living in. The calls stopped on September 10, and resumed on September 16. There's nothing in the 9/11 Commission report about any of this, and I have no idea whether the leads were run down, the evidence lost or destroyed.

If this sounds like paranoia, it is. But the CIA certainly is not helping by destroying evidence. And they should know better than to destroy evidence in the biggest criminal case in American history. More than anything what we need right now is complete and total transparency on 9/11.

[Ed.note] "Biggest Criminal Case in American History?" CNN, reporters of whatever, but hyperbole at its finest!

NowPublic

Breaking News: Major Oil Spill off the coast of South Korea

2007-12-07T11:56:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times:

A Hong Kong-registered oil tanker leaked 10,810 tons, or 66,000 barrels, of crude oil off South Korea’s stormy west coast today, officials said, in what was estimated to be the nation’s largest maritime oil spill.

A band of oil about three miles long was snaking slowly toward the coast, which is dotted with scenic beaches, wildlife habitats and oyster and other fishing beds.

“So far, we have no reports of damage,” said Kim Jong-seok, an official at the Maritime and Fisheries Ministry. “Much will depend on how the sea currents move in coming hours. We have 40 vessels out there fighting the oil spill.”

The spill occurred when a vessel carrying a crane crashed into the 147,000-ton tanker Hebei Spirit this morning about five nautical miles off the coast near Taean, 90 miles southwest of Seoul.

[Ed.note] Just one more example of why we need to "kick" the "oil" addiction.

NowPublic

Report: Donald Trump Leaves $10,000 Tip on $82 Bill

2007-12-06T19:20:00.001-08:00

A very heart-warming story for the Holidays. From Fox News:

Donald Trump isn't a cheapskate when it comes to good service.

The real-estate mogul left a $10,000 tip on an $82.27 bill Monday at a restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif., Derober.com reports.

Click here to see the receipt at Derober.com.

Billy D., a waiter at the Buffalo Club, got the gargantuan tip after the Donald complimented him on his dinner service, Derober.com reported. Trump and a colleague had dined on pasta and soup with cappuccinos for dessert.

Click here to see video of the waiter.

“What’s the biggest tip you ever got?” Trump reportedly asked Billy.

“Jerry Bruckheimer comes in a lot," Billy responded. "He tipped me $500 on a $1,000 check once.”

You’re very good at your job," Trump then told the waiter.

/**/

When the down-on-his-luck waiter saw the tip Trump left, he couldn't believe it, the site reported.

"I actually tried calling his office to say thanks, which is impossible," he told Derober.com. "So if you’re reading this, Mr. Trump, thank you!”

Let's all try to give all year, every year, to all of those that may need help, that could use it. Not just during this Holiday time. Everybody occasionally falls on "hard-times."

That's what makes the United States the greatest nation in the world. We are the largest philanthropists in the world.

Let's stop to remember that, during all of this rancor, bitter political divide, and terrible global instability, that we are all in this ship together. United we stand, divided we fall.

NowPublic

The Power of the Internet and Weight Loss

2007-12-06T09:27:00.001-08:00

The video below features Nancy. It’s a truly inspirational story about a woman who lost 500lbs without surgery. Nancy discovered the support of friends she found online, for motivation and encouragement, to lose a half a ton. She went from having no life to being all about life. Congratulations, Nancy!!

Nancy is a great example of the power that friends and family, who are far away, can be. Having friends in an on-line weight loss social community can be equal to, if not, more powerful than somebody in your own physical surroundings.

She credits her Internet friends with saving her life. Listen to her story.

Internet Weight Loss: A woman lost more than 500lbs without surgery or dieting

This was why Iowa Avenue was created. It is community based, people powered dynamic community connecting people in a meaningful way for a meaningful purpose.

What could be more important?

After all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle!

Sourced and attribution from © Iowa Avenue

NowPublic

Map: How Iran Feeds Iraq Iinsurgency

2007-12-05T10:03:00.001-08:00

Iran is actively killing our soldiers world-wide, is developing ballistic technology, enriching uranium, and threatening to "Wipe Israel off the Map."

Why study History? We are doomed to repeat the horrors of it. WWIII redux. From the Long War Journal:

Iran's Ramazan Corps and the ratlines into Iraq--an interactive Map.

The issue of Iranian complicity in the Iraqi insurgency has been contentious since US and Iraqi forces began heavily targeting the Iranian networks in late 2006. While news reports have touted Iran's role in reducing the violence, US military officers believe Iran still serves as a source of weapons and fighters in Iraq.

The Long War Journal has spoken to several mid-level and senior US military and intelligence officers, all of whom have declined to go on the record due to the sensitive nature of the Iranian issue. Based on these conversations as well as other information, The Long War Journal has learned the nature of the Qods Force operations in Iraq and how they move resources into the country.

Qods Force and the Iraqi insurgency

Iran began to extend its influence in Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003. Through the Qods Force, Iran's external wing of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran immediately moved money, weapons, and operatives inside Iraq to influence the various fractured Shia political parties and militias.

Iran worked through various militias such as the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps, the Qazali Network, the Shebaini Network, and a host of other surrogates to attack Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces, and rival political leaders. When groups like the Badr Corps and its political backer the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq broke from the Iranian sphere of influence and integrated with the government, the Iranian-backed militias, which have since been designated the Special Groups, began attacking them as well.

To streamline operations in Iraq, the Qods Force established a unified command, called the Ramazan Corps, and split Iraq into three roughly geographical regions.

Meanwhile, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considers the latest IAE "intelligence" as a "Great Victory" for Iran, while President Bush is warning them to "Explain Past Actions on Arms" about their nuclear program.

On the surface, the statements above, via the New York Times, are totally irreconcilable.

Our intelligence and spy agencies were created with the sole goal of protecting our nation and our people--either way, their credibility is now forever tarnished, because of this latest "two-step" around the Executive Branch, and from the previous mishaps regarding the intelligence information before the Iraq war.

Most Americans sense something has gone terribly wrong with our security apparatus. That much, is obvious to all.

NowPublic

The Grinch who stole Baby Jesus?

2007-12-04T19:47:00.001-08:00

I'm not joking, this is a true story, from Florida.

Baby Jesus Stolen From Nativity Scene

Thieves Steal Holiday Decorations From Neighborhood

ARREDONDO FARMS, Fla. -- A Grinch may be lurking among a Central Florida neighborhood, stealing holiday decorations, reindeer and a baby Jesus.

Police said three homes in a neighborhood near Gainesville have been targeted.

A resident said her entire nativity scene, including baby Jesus, was stolen.

Other residents said they worry their decorations will be stolen, too.

Deputies are recommending residents to display their lawn ornaments close to the house where they can be seen from the inside.

Like the Grinch, deputies said it's not likely the thieves will return the stolen decorations.

NowPublic

Tags: Culture | decorations | The Grinch who stole Baby Jesus | thieves | Unbelievable

Setting Realistic Weight Loss Goals

2007-12-04T13:40:00.001-08:00

Courtesy and with permission from the great people at © Iowa Avenue

When trying to lose weight, many people make the crucial mistake of creating unrealistic goals about how much weight they want to lose and how quickly they want to lose it.

The first thing to consider is determining how much you “should” or “want” to weigh. How do you come to this decision?

And please don’t tell yourself, or your best friend, you watch TV programs or look at magazines, and think you should look like a “model.”

Models weigh what is right for them, because that is what they do for a living—and sometimes they are too thin. And you are probably not going to weigh what a model weighs because that is not always realistic. Plus, the idea of what a model weighs is slowly changing from being “stick-thin” to a “healthy-thin,” although you’ll notice the word “thin” is still present.

To find out what healthy weight is right for you, check out your body mass index aka as BMI. The link also provides excellent information about BMI.

Use the calculator on the link, and try different weights, for your height. You’ll soon discover that there’s a range of healthy weights for different heights. So, don’t believe that there is some “magic” or “perfect” number that your scale should read.

In addition, keep in mind, your BMI is only a guideline.

Take a realistic look at the weight range on the Body Mass Index chart, and set a weight-loss objective for yourself. Two things to remember when you’re setting your weight-loss goals are:

Health benefits of losing weight can be achieved with as little as a 10% weight loss. So, for example, if you're overweight and weigh 200lbs, you can lose 20lbs and you will dramatically lower your risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
If your goal is more than 10% of your current weight, try setting incremental weight loss goals. As an example, if after achieving your first goal of losing 20lbs, congratulate yourself for meeting your goal.

After that, set another goal, and with each goal, you get a little closer to your final objective.

Now you have the information and tools to get started toward setting your own weight-loss goal.

The next steps are yours…………:)

What are you Weighting for?

After all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle.

NowPublic

Bush: No change in Iran policy

2007-12-04T12:58:00.001-08:00

From the Guardian:

George Bush today ruled out a change in Washington's Iran policy following the declassification yesterday of a US intelligence report that concluded Tehran had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

The US president denied the national intelligence estimate (NIE) - which said Tehran's determination to develop nuclear weapons "is less ... than we have been judging" - had undercut his administration's repeated assertions that Iran was building nuclear weapons.

"Iran was dangerous. Iran is dangerous. And Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush told his first White House press conference in nearly seven weeks.

From the Weekly Standard:

Five Questions Concerning the Latest NIE:

First, what intelligence is this assessment based upon?

Second, what has changed since 2005?

Third, how did the IC draw its line between a "civilian" nuclear program and a military one?

Fourth, how does the IC know that Iran has stopped its clandestine activities with respect to developing nuclear weapons?

Fifth, how does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior?

And, using the Socratic method of reasoning, exactly how many times does one have to be wrong, to not ever be correct? And, of course, the reverse.

NowPublic

CNBC Reporter Apologizes For Calling Bush A 'Monkey'

2007-12-02T17:11:00.001-08:00

To what level has our media stooped to, for this to occur? This is beyond the level of "reasonable" and "tolerable" and is quickly taking us as a nation into the abyss.

And it is totally pathetic, and dangerous, especially during a time of war and unprecedented global instability and terrorism.

CNBC Reporter Apologizes For Calling Bush A 'Monkey'

NowPublic

Fighting the “Diabesity” Pandemic

2007-12-02T13:21:00.001-08:00

From and with permission of © Iowa Avenue

With global rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes now rising at such breakneck pace, that understanding has become ever more crucial. “I think it's become much worse than I ever thought it would”, Zimmet says. “It's like a rolling stone.”

Paul Zimmet is Foundation Director of the International Diabetes Institute, and Professor of Diabetes at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia, and at the Graduate School of Public Health of the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is also co-Chair of the IDF Task Force on Epidemiology.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 billion adults are overweight with 300 million of them are obese.

People have been getting fatter and fatter every year for the past 25 years. And this increase is not limited to adults. The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Among children and teens aged 6-19 years, 16 percent (over 9 million young people) are considered overweight.

He reiterates that, lifestyle, proper nutrition, exercise, and the "mechansim" of our daily routines, has dire consequences for long term diseases--especially diabetes.

To wit:

"Given the current scale of diabetes and obesity worldwide, that attitude could have worrying ramifications. Zimmet has become a public advocate for fundamental changes to how our lives are organised. “These problems are all a consequence of changes that are happening in the world—mechanisation, exercise being engineered out of our lives. We need to re-think totally the way we live. It is a difficult thing to do, but until we do, the problem of diabetes is going to get worse.” Individual responsibility for sensible eating and regular exercise is important, but governments also need to act, he says. He believes that such things as proper urban planning and responsible advertising of foods are important weapons in the fight against diabetes and obesity."

Paul Zimmet: Fighting the “Diabesity” Pandemic

If you read his comments carefully, they are devastatingly real, and really devastating.

As one of the world renowned experts in long term disease, obesity, and diabetes, he is making the case for why Iowa Avenue, Weight1Minute™, are so important, timely, and useful.

We are in the midst of a global obesity pandemic, and it is "preventable"

pre·vent·a·ble, pre·vent·i·ble, adjective

pre·vent·a·bil·ty, noun

pre·vent·ing·ly, adverb

—Synonyms 1. obstruct, forestall, preclude, obviate, thwart. Prevent, hamper, hinder, impede refer to different degrees ofstoppageof action or progress. To prevent is to stop something effectually by forestalling action and rendering it impossible: to prevent the sending of a message. To hamper is to clog or entangle or put an embarrassing restraint upon: to hamper preparations for a trip. To hinder is to keep back by delaying or stopping progress or action: to hinder the progress of an expedition. To impede is to make difficult the movement or progress of anything by interfering with its proper functioning: to impede a discussion by demanding repeated explanations.

—Antonyms 1. help, assist.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

That's what I'm talking about--to impede is to make difficult the movement or progress of anything by interference.

In our cases--we can all avoid or manage our weight, and lead healthy lifestyles, by stopping those things that lead to negative consequences.

It's about a healthy lifestyle!

NowPublic

"Shock Jock" Dan Imus, Back on Air Tomorrow

2007-12-02T11:35:00.001-08:00

The irony either wants to make you laugh or cry--on various film, t.v., radio, video, Internet, and other media outlets, the words like "bitch" and "ho," have been considered "business-as-usual" for a long, long, time. I don't approve of racism, but comics, the media, the music industry, the big corporations, the film industry, the advertising industry, and rappers have all been pushing the envelope for a long time. Imus was just a scapegoat, for the growing trend of the use of this kind of language.

From the New York Daily News:

In four decades on radio's high wire, Don Imus may never have faced a trickier challenge than he does tomorrow when he steps to the microphone at 6a.m. to launch his new morning show on WABC-AM (770 AM).

Without losing his edge, without becoming less blunt, less cranky, less entertaining or less funny, he's got to make clear he knows what was so unacceptable about cracking offhandedly in April that the Rutgers women's basketball team looked like "nappy-headed ho's."

It will require nimble verbal footwork, and it won't happen in one show, any more than he will complete all his thank-yous and trashings in one morning.

But tomorrow is when he has the brightest spotlight, which would be more daunting if he hadn't already come back to life more times than the masked maniac in a cheap horror film.

"He'll be fine," says Michael Harrison, editor of the trade magazine Talkers. "He got more attention now than he's had in years. He's bigger than ever."

He's also never taken the easy road.

The first time he made it big in New York, in the mid-'70s, he drank and snorted himself right out of town. He climbed back. When his radio act got tired, he developed a new one that gave him a unique and lucrative niche in high political, corporate and media worlds.

Ten years ago, when he insulted the President in front of some of the most powerful people in those worlds, he shrugged, said "Get over it," and stayed the course.

But none of those challenges was the same as the avalanche of fallout from "The Incident."

Offensive remarks were not unique on Imus' show, though he has noted many of them, including the infamous reference to CBS newswoman Gwen Ifill as a "cleaning lady," came from the mouths of satiric characters the show was ridiculing.

The Rutgers remark just hit a perfect storm on a slow news week. Critics dismissed his apology ("I'm a good person who did a bad thing."), advertisers bailed out, MSNBC dropped his TV simulcast and his flagship radio home WFAN finally followed suit.

Since then, he's gotten a reported $20 million settlement from CBS and kept his mouth shut, though a few details of the reborn show have surfaced.

Imus will have at least one and perhaps two regular or semi-regular black cast members. The show will be simulcast, 6-9 a.m., on RFD-TV. Sidekick Charles McCord, engineer Lou Ruffino and producer Bernard McGuirk will return.

Returning guests start tomorrow with James Carville. His advertisers, a big part of the reason WABC-AM hired him, have had a mixed response. General Motors says it will wait and see. Hackensack Medical Center is back. Verizon is gone, for now.

Tomorrow's show, a $100-a-ticket benefit at Town Hall for his Imus Ranch, is sponsored by Hanley Center, the West Palm Beach, Fla. rehab center that cleaned him up in the '70s.

Many critics, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, say they're waiting and seeing. So, perhaps, are radio affiliates, though he's back in his strongholds of Boston and Providence.

His goal, presumably, is getting back to normal - to the point where he's only confronting the same questions as everyone else in radio: Does he have advertisers and does he have listeners, and how many?

At age 67, those should be questions enough.

NowPublic

CNN: Corrupt News Network

2007-12-01T09:55:00.001-08:00

A self-serving agenda was set for the Republican presidential debates.

The United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Corruption is a strong word. But consider these facts: The gimmick behind Wednesday's debate was that the questions would be selected from those that ordinary Americans submitted to the video sharing Internet website YouTube, which is owned by Google. According to CNN, its staff culled through 5,000 submissions to select the handful that were put to the candidates. That process essentially puts the lie to the vox populi aura the association with YouTube was meant to create. When producers exercise that level of selectivity, the questions -- whoever initially formulated and recorded them -- actually are theirs.

That's where things begin to get troubling, because CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue -- immigration. Now, if that leaves you scratching your head, it's probably because you're included in the 96% of Americans who do not think immigration is the most important issue confronting this country. We've got a pretty good fix concerning what's on the American mind right now, because the nonpartisan and highly reliable Pew Center has been regularly polling people since January on the issues that matter most to them. In fact, the center's most recent survey was conducted in the days leading up to Wednesday's debate.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten1dec01,0,906290.column?coll=la-tot-entertainment&track=ntothtml

Words can't seemingly do justice to the perfidy of these actions by C.N.N. In case anybody has been remiss is not paying attention to this news station, it is apparent that they have been getting their "facts" wrong for a long, long, time.

They have been driving an agenda so warped, and so biased, that it simply boggles the mind.

Recently, Christine Amapour, produced and particpated in a C.N.N. special: "God's Holy Warrior's."

The problem was her premise and hypothesis is flawed. She attempts to lay down the foundation of her comparisons--that Islamic suicide bombers can be equated to Israel's self-defense, or Christians from around the world.

Sounds distorted? You're damn right.

It would not be out of line to express concern that Christiane Amanpour’s purpose in making her CNN special, “God’s Holy Warriors,” was to float a theory about a Jewish conspiracy in the U.S. and to float innuendoes with anti-Semitic undertones.

Critics have already highlighted the program’s multiple distortions, questionable “experts” and troubling bias. But these critiques do not get to the darker message lurking beneath it. Amanpour’s documentary intended to teach people (1) that Israel and the “illegal” Israeli settlements are the root of Middle Eastern turmoil and increasing extremism; (2) that the world’s only superpower, the US, supports Israel and turns a blind eye to the settlements only because of the power of the Jewish lobby, and (3) that the newly developing pro-Israel Christian and Jewish partnership poses a fundamentalist threat to American values.

All these charges carry undercurrents of classic anti- Semitism that need to be exposed and challenged.

The very fact that Amanpour introduced the program with Jews and Israeli settlements implied that they are a primary problem. She said as much, claiming that the battle over Jerusalem is the heart of the conflict in the Middle East, and that the Jewish presence there and in the West Bank “inflames the Muslim world.” This is a standard anti-Semitic trope. If only the Jews weren’t there or were under control-be it in 12th century England, 15th century Spain, 20th century Germany, the 21st century West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem-the world would be a better place, and conflict would subside. The Jews’ presence, and the fact that they dare to assert rights, is inherently sinister.

Amanpour reinforced this message by focusing on the few, isolated examples of Jewish terrorism in order to equate it with Islamic terrorism. In effect, this equivalence becomes another anti-Semitic trope for the implication is that Jewish terrorism is more widespread than most viewers would have thought, that Israeli Jews are as much perpetrators as victims of terrorism and of the conflict itself.

We don't see any Christians rampaging through streets, calling for "Fatwah's." and suicide bombing civillians. We certainly don't see them ramming Jets into high buildings filled with thousands of innocents, do we?

What should be the consequences of C.N.N.'s shoddy and disreputable behavior?

I'll leave that to the experts. Be that as it may, I am sure that I speak for millions of Americans, and others, who abhor this kind of "reporting" and abuse of the News.

Perhaps, everybody can now grasp the importance of Now Public and how reporting should be done: without bias, with reliable sources, nor paid for by others, or even worse--that you want to effect a rigged election in the United States of America.

Shame on CNN: Corrupt News Network

NowPublic

Kalpoe Brothers to Be Released in Aruba - Now Van der Sloot released also

2007-11-30T13:46:00.001-08:00

And none of them, according to their defense attorney's can ever be re-arrested ever again. Case is closed:

(CNN) -- An Aruban judge Friday ordered the release of Joran van der Sloot, a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

Prosecutors said they will not appeal the decision.

Two other suspects, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, were released last week.

A statement from the public prosecutor's office said the judge, in his decision, found that the authorities' "recent investigation has not resulted in more direct evidence than before that Natalee Holloway has died as a result of a violent crime against her or that the suspect has been involved in such a crime."

Authorities arrested all three young men last month, citing new and incriminating evidence but not offering specifics. All three -- who were arrested and released during the investigation in 2005 -- were charged last month with involvement in the "voluntary manslaughter" of Holloway, as well as assault and battery leading to her death.

As I suspected from the very beginning, as this latest story broke. From Fox News:

Two suspects rearrested in the Aruba disappearance of Natalee Holloway will be released. [Ed.note] Again, and again, and again, and again.............................

Court officials said the detention of two brothers held since last Wednesday would not be extended.

A judge last Friday had ordered an extended detention of Surinamese brothers Satish and Deepak Kalpoe in the disappearance of Holloway after reviewing new evidence in the case of the missing teenager.

Investigators were focusing in part on cell phone calls and text messages between the suspects, prosecutor Dop Kruimel told The Associated Press.

"It's part of the investigation," she said, declining to give further details. "We do everything we can to see what happened."

Holloway, of Mountain Brook, Ala., was last seen leaving a bar with the Kalpoes and Joran van der Sloot the three on May 30, 2005, hours before she was scheduled to board a plane home with high school classmates celebrating their graduation on the Dutch Caribbean island. She was 18 at the time.

A search by hundreds of volunteers, soldiers, police and FBI agents, even Dutch air force planes, turned up no trace of her. Her father, Dave Holloway, told The Associated Press he plans to launch a new effort to find her remains off the island's coast, using private boats.

/**/

Prosecutors said they had ordered the three men re-arrested and disclosed that they had new evidence, although officials declined to provide any details.

The Kalpoe brothers and the van der Sloot individual, were the last three people on this planet to have been seen, and have acknowledged to have been with her, before she vanished from the planet--this must be gut wrenching for the family of Natalee.

As the old saw goes, law in this lifetime, justice in the next.

NowPublic

At age 61, doctor joins the Navy

2007-11-30T11:09:00.001-08:00

An amazing, heartwarming, and gut-wrenching story this morning, from the Los Angeles Times:

When one of his sons, a Marine, was killed in Iraq, Dr. Bill Krissoff decided to enlist. With help from the White House, he's in uniform and will be stationed near his other son, who's at Camp Pendleton.

SAN DIEGO -- In the months after his oldest son was killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff decided to honor his son -- and help other Marines -- by enlisting in the military as a doctor.

His medical credentials are impeccable and he's in good physical shape, but at 61, he was pushing the age limit. The paperwork bogged down.

Then in late August, Krissoff and his wife, Christine, were among several relatives of service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan invited to meet with President Bush after his speech to the American Legion convention in Reno.

At the end of the hourlong meeting, Bush asked each family if there was anything he could do for them. Dr. Krissoff mentioned his desire to enlist.

Karl Rove, then the president's top political advisor, took down the key information. Once back at the White House, he turned the matter over to Marine Gen. Peter Pace, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A few days later, Krissoff was called by a medical recruiter from the Navy, which provides the medical personnel for Marine Corps. With a push from the top, Krissoff's enlistment application began to speed through the process of interviews and background checks.

"Suddenly I got all the support I needed from the bureaucracy to get this done," said Lt. Cmdr. Ken Hopkins, a Navy nurse now on medical recruiting duty.

On Nov. 17, Krissoff was commissioned a lieutenant commander in the Navy reserves, assigned to the medical corps. Rove sent flowers and a note of congratulations.

Several weeks of training in military-style medicine lie ahead, but Krissoff believes he is on his way to honoring his late son, 1st Lt. Nathan Krissoff, by deploying to a field hospital in Iraq.

He's closing up his orthopedic medicine practice in Truckee, Calif., and he and his wife are moving to San Diego to be close to the Marine Corps 4th Medical Battalion. They'll also be near their other son, Austin, 24, a Marine officer at Camp Pendleton.

"I'm just a doctor who wants to help Marines -- I'm not trying to change the world," Krissoff said in a telephone interview. "I'm inspired by both my sons' dedication to service."

Nathan Krissoff, 25, an intelligence officer with the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, was killed last Dec. 9 by a roadside bomb while riding in a Humvee outside Fallouja. Hundreds of Marines, soldiers and sailors attended a memorial service in the auditorium at Camp Fallouja.

Even by the mournful standards of such events, the memorial was emotional. Marines hugged one another, and many had tears in their eyes. Officers and enlisted eulogized Krissoff as a natural leader, charismatic but humble.

Lt. Col. William Seely, the battalion commander, called the young officer a "modern-day knight" who felt a moral need to rid Iraq of "oppression, tyranny and extremism."

Months later, Seely traveled the U.S. to visit the families of Marines in his battalion who had died in Iraq. Seely encouraged Krissoff in his enlistment idea and advised him on navigating the process.

With a medical degree from the University of Colorado and advanced training at San Francisco General Hospital and the University of California, Davis, Krissoff has a flourishing practice specializing in "fracture work," mainly knee and shoulder problems. For the Navy, he hopes to be assigned to trauma medicine, which will require some refresher training.

"Operating in a well-lighted surgical theater with air-conditioning is different than operating in a tent in a field,:" said Hopkins, who served in Iraq during the assault on Baghdad in 2003. Hopkins said Krissoff will be able to serve both as a doctor and, because of his decades of experience, as a mentor to younger doctors.

"He had exactly the skill set we look for," he said.

Krissoff concedes a kind of turnabout is at play. "Usually it's the father who tries to lead the sons by example," he said. "In this case, my sons led me."

And what would his son Nathan think of his desire to enlist and deploy to a war zone?

"He'd just say, 'Way to go, Pops,'" said Krissoff, his voice seeming to tremble slightly.

NowPublic

‘Snooty’ bankers blamed for crisis

2007-11-29T18:48:00.001-08:00

From the Financial Times:

The “snooty” attitude of bankers and financiers who thought they were cleverer than everyone else is largely to blame for the global credit squeeze “disaster”, Germany’s finance minister has said.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Peer Steinbrück played down the impact on Europe’s largest economy of the turmoil but said steps had to be taken to raise risk awareness.

German proposals before the squeeze for increasing transparency had been “mocked” and sometimes deliberately misunderstood as an attempt to impose regulation rather than voluntary codes, Mr Steinbrück said, but were now winning support.

In a swipe at finance industry leaders, he said the “quality of managers” had proved a weakness. “The snooty attitude that we have sometimes seen – under the motto of ‘we are cleverer than the others’ – ended in disaster,” he said.

Mr Steinbrück’s comments came as IKB and WestLB, the German banks hit hard by the turmoil, pledged more capital to cover potential losses, and Rolf Gerlach, the chairman of WestLB, resigned unexpectedly.

After talks with the Bundesbank and the financial regulator, the banks that rescued IKB said they would cover a further $520m of possible losses in addition to their €3.5bn ($5.1bn) rescue.

Mr Steinbrück was critical of the management of Sachsen LB and IKB. “It is clear that the management . . . didn’t have the right management expertise.” They had been unable to cope with the complexity of the products in which they were investing, he said. Crisis talks on IKB’s future took place on Thursday but Mr Steinbrück said taxpayers would not foot a rescue bill.

The Bundesbank warned that financial market turmoil had “noticeably” increased macro-economic risks to the German financial system but the economy remained in good shape.

Would you buy a used car from your Investment Banker? Actually, in all honesty, you might just get something useful instead.

NowPublic

Our Financial Institutions may Implode

2007-11-28T17:23:00.001-08:00

And according to the Wall Street Journal, the "Rich" well they just "Don't Trust Their Advisers."

The wealthy should be relying more than ever on their financial advisers.

Investing, especially for the rich, has become ever more complicated. The well-heeled used to be able to make due with a basic portfolio of blue-chips, munis and a couple of homes. Now, experts recommend more than a dozen asset classes, from hedge funds and private equity to commodities and currencies. And today’s market swings show that the financial landscape is more precarious than ever.

So it’s surprising that recent surveys show that the rich are opting to make some of their most important investing decisions themselves, snubbing their brokers, financial planners or private bankers. According to a survey released this morning by Spectrem Group, which polled investors worth $25 million or more, close to half of all respondents believe they could do a better job of financial planning than their advisers. And only about half were satisfied with the “knowledge and expertise” of their adviser and his or her ability to “deal with complex financial issues and problems.”

What’s even more interesting is that today’s rich don’t use advisers for some of their most complex investing. More than half invest in venture capital and private equity without any adviser, and more than two-thirds invest in futures, commodities and options without an adviser.

Why the loner mentality? Today’s rich are self-made — the survey points out that most of the $25 million plus group are business owners or corporate execs who didn’t inherit their fortunes. They’re used to building and managing their wealth themselves. And people who succeed in one area of business (say owning a trucking firm) often believe they’re instant experts in other areas (say, convertible bonds).

Second, the rich are leery of adviser agendas and expertise. They believe (fairly or not) that private banks and Wall Street firms today are more interested in products than providing custom financial advice. Other clients feel their advisers don’t really understand what they’re selling or why, since the talent pool in wealth management has yet to catch up with market complexities.

There is no “right” or “wrong” answer to whether the rich should be using their financial advisers more. Too many of the wealthy ran their investments themselves during the dot-com boom and lost millions. At the same time, they’re right to distrust some of their wealth advisers, since many care more about short-term profits than long-term advice.

So if the wealthy lose their shirt in the current market turmoil, they may have no one to blame but themselves.

I guess, I won't be calling my Merrill Lynch or Peregrine Financial "anytime" soon. After all, when they sell me something I take all of the risk, and they take all of the profits--er, that was, until now everything that these New York and Chicago firms do is quite specious and suspect as to it being nothing short of defalcation.

Deadbeat Commercial developers Signaled by Property Derivatives.

"Commercial real estate is a full-blown bubble that feels very much at a bursting point," said Christian Stracke, an analyst in London at CreditSights Inc., a fixed-income research firm. "There's a fairly toxic mix of factors at work."

The seven-year rally in offices and retail properties ended in September when prices fell an average of 1.2 percent, according to Moody's Investors Service. Banks worldwide are holding $54 billion of unsold commercial mortgages, according to data compiled by New York-based Citigroup Inc. that includes fixed and floating-rate debt.

Lenders are struggling to sell loans to investors after losses on debt backed by subprime mortgages to people with poor credit caused financial markets to seize up in July and August. Bonds with AAA ratings secured by properties ranging from the Sears Tower in Chicago to trailer parks in Delaware yield about 203 basis points more than similar maturity Treasuries, up from 92 basis points on Oct. 12, according to Morgan Stanley indexes.

The benchmark CMBX-NA-AAA index of derivatives tied to the safest commercial mortgage securities rose to 102 basis points from 44 a month ago. It costs $102,000 a year to protect $10 million of bonds backed by property loans against default, up from $44,000 a month ago.

Sales of debt secured by commercial mortgages tumbled 80 percent to $3.9 billion in October from a year earlier, data compiled by Bloomberg show. New securities backed by loans on buildings will fall 50 percent in 2008 from $220 billion this year, Moody's said Nov. 2.

My Comment: This is a full blown commercial real estate credit crunch. What else would one call an 80% decline? Furthermore, a 50% projected drop for all of next year is quite a contraction.

Real estate deals are coming apart at the fastest pace since September 2001, when the U.S. economy was shrinking, because banks are tightening standards for loans, said Robert White, president of Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based research firm.

About $15 billion of commercial property transactions of $10 million or more are under contract in the U.S., compared with about $70 billion at mid-year, White said. That's unusual because the number usually rises at year-end, he said.

Market is Imploding

More than 75 [deals] have been withdrawn because banks aren't lending, and that estimate is "probably conservative, because not all deals that blew up were well-publicized," White said.

"The commercial real estate market is imploding," said James Ortega, who manages $150 million at Saenz Hofmann Fund Advisory in Sao Paulo. Ortega has set trades to profit from a decline in property companies' shares. "We're about to experience a very significant correction."

My Comment: "Banks Aren't Lending" Fancy that. Large banks like Citigroup (C) are capital impaired. Citigroup could not do major commercial real estate deals now even if it wanted to. For more on this idea as well as the desperation at Citigroup please see Abu Dhabi Deal Raises Questions About Citigroup's Health and Petrodollars Return Home.

In Manhattan, the world's largest office market, the vacancy rate rose to 7.6 percent in October, the highest in a year, property brokerage Colliers ABR said. Rents increased 1.4 percent on average to $64.08 a square foot from September, the second-smallest month-to-month increase since June 2006.

My Comment: Blackstone (BX) has already admitted it may have "net losses for a number of years". Declining rents and rising vacancies are not going to help matters. See Commercial Real Estate Black Hole for more on Blackstone.

Subprime Similarities

Record-low interest rates in the past five years encouraged banks to loosen underwriting standards and caused prices to rise as much as 35 percent a year.

My Comment: This was obvious to the whole world and should have been obvious to Moody's, Fitch, and the S&P. Amazingly enough it either wasn't or they simply looked the other way. See Fitch Discloses Its Fatally Flawed Rating Model for more on fatally flawed models.

Banks provided loans that allowed borrowers to pay only interest, not principal, and lenders offered financing that exceeded property values, according to Moody's. The average loan-to-value ratio reached a record high of 117.5 in the third quarter for mortgages that were turned into bonds, from 90 in 2003, said Moody's, which bases its calculations on its own estimates of rental value.

Those are some of the same practices hurting the $10.7 trillion residential mortgage market, according to an annual survey in October by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute in Washington.

My Comment: It was only a matter of time before this started to hit commercial real estate. And the key point here is that it is just starting. In baseball terms this is the top half of the first inning.

Bondholders helped feed demand for loans by purchasing a record $273 billion of securities backed by commercial mortgages this year, up from $95 billion in 2004, based on data compiled by Trepp LLC, a New York-based research firm.

Demand has dried up since July, when securities linked to subprime home mortgages contaminated credit markets and caused financial institutions to report losses or writedowns of more than $66 billion.

My Comment: Willingness to borrow and willingness to lend are both impacted. There is much pain to come. The declines in residential started out slow as well. Anyone remember the mantra "It's only subprime that affected?" The new mantra is "It's all subprime".

Banks also have about $283 billion of debt they provided to help finance leveraged buyouts in the U.S. and Europe that hasn't been sold, according to research by Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp.

My Comment: This is crucial. Banks will be lending impaired as long as they sit on this debt. If they dump it to get rid of it, they will take huge losses. If they sit on it, they will bleed capital and/or be lending impaired. Yes this is yet another Zugzwang for banks not strong enough to pull such "assets" on to the balance sheet.

The next time you get a call from a investment broker, banker, or firm, offering you an investment,, just remember this--they know just about nothing. Nothing at all.

Exactly why should we trust Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Peregrine Financial Group, or their rating, and regulatory agencies?

Le Caveat Emptor.

NowPublic

It's about a Healthy Lifestyle

2007-11-28T16:07:00.001-08:00

More good health advice from the people at Iowa Avenue:

According to recent study, eating plans rich in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables may help your heart.

Whole Grains Do a Heart Good

In the study that took place in Sweden, 24,000 postmenopausal women supplied information on how often they ate 96 common foods. The food was then grouped into four major dietary patterns: healthy (vegetables, fruits and legumes); Western/Swedish (red meat, processed meat, poultry, rice, pasta, eggs, fried potatoes, fish; alcohol (wine, liquor, beer and some snacks); and sweets (sweet baked goods, candy, chocolate, jam and ice cream).

In a 6 year follow-up period, 308 of the women had heart attacks. However, two dietary patterns, healthy and alcohol, were associated with lower risk of heart attack.

Researchers concluded a low-risk eating plan consisted of high intake of whole grains, fish, vegetables, fruit, and legumes, moderate alcohol consumption, along with not smoking and being physically active and relatively thin. “This combination of healthy behaviors – present in 5% [of those studied] – may prevent 77% of heart attacks in the study population,” the study team wrote.

“This study clearly demonstrates that it is within an individual’s control to change destiny and the ability to control his of her health,” said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “It demonstrated that people have control over their health and can take control, eat properly and exercise and prevent onset of disease.”

The issue is confusing with the myriad of books urging different diets, she acknowledged. But the real road to long-term health “is not so much going on a diet as adopting a healthy lifestyle,” Steinbaum said.

It is amazing that a reduction of 77% of heart attacks is in the total control of each individual. Each of us can take active steps to improve our own lifestyles.

It should be encouraging for our community to know and to understand that eating right is beneficial in a myriad of ways. These are not clichés but real life.

Are you ready to “Get Real?”

After all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle!!

NowPublic

New Buchanan Book Declares 'End Of America'

2007-11-26T07:01:00.001-08:00

From the Drudge Report:

"America is coming apart, decomposing, and...the likelihood of her survival as one nation...is improbable -- and impossible if America continues on her current course," declares Pat Buchanan. "For we are on a path to national suicide."

The best-selling author and former presidential candidate is on the eve of launching his new epic book: DAY OF RECKONING: HOW HUBRIS, IDEOLOGY AND GREED ARE TEARING AMERICA APART.

[The book's release date has been moved up to this week. It ranked #237 on AMAZON's hitparade Monday morning.]

This time, Buchanan goes all the way:

"America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive."

The U.S. Army is breaking and is too small to meet America’s global commitments.

The dollar has sunk to historic lows and is being abandoned by foreign governments.

U.S. manufacturing is being hollowed out.

The greatest invasion in history, from the Third World, is swamping the ethno-cultural core of the country, leading to Balkanization and the loss of the Southwest to Mexico.

The culture is collapsing and the nation is being deconstructed along the lines of race and class.

A fiscal crisis looms as the unfunded mandates of Social Security and Medicare remain unaddressed.

All these crises are hitting America at once -- a perfect storm of crises.

Specifically, Buchanan contends:

• Pax Americana, the era of U.S. global dominance, is over. A struggle for global hegemony has begun among the United States, China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam

• Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a product of hubris and of ideology, a secular religion of “democratism,” to which Bush was converted in the days following 9/11

• Torn asunder by a culture war, America has now begun to break down along class, ethnic and racial lines.

• The greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty and independence is the scheme of a global elite to erase America’s borders and merge the USA, Mexico and Canada into a North American Union.

• Free trade is shipping jobs, factories and technology to China and plunging America into permanent dependency and unpayable debt. One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush

• “Sovereign Wealth Funds,” controlled by foreign regimes and stuffed with trillions of dollars from U.S. trade deficits, are buying up strategic corporate assets vital to America’s security

• As U.S. wages are stagnant, corporate CEOs are raking in rising pay and benefits 400 to 500 times that of their workers

• The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to our survival as one nation than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq

* European-Americans, 89% of the nation when JFK took the oath, are now 66% and sinking. Before 2050, America is a Third World nation

• By 2060, America will add 167 million people and 105 million immigrants will be here, triple the 37 million today.

• Hispanics will be over 100 million in 2050 and concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans believe belongs to them

Buchanan’s Recommendations:

• A new foreign-defense policy that closes most of the 1000 bases overseas, reviews all alliances, and brings home U.S. troops

• A purge of neoconservative ideology and the “Cakewalk” crowd” from national power.

• To avert a second Cold War, the United States should “get out of Russia’s space and get out of Russia’s face,” and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union

• To reach a cold peace in the culture war, Buchanan urges a return to federalism and the overthrow of our judicial dictatorship by Congressionally mandated restrictions on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

• To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, Buchanan urges a Hamiltonian solution: a 20% Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers

• To prevent America becoming “a tangle of squabbling nationalities” Buchanan urges: No amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal aliens; a border fence from San Diego to Brownsville; Congressional declarations that children born to illegal aliens are not citizens and English is the language of the United States; and a “timeout” on all immigration.

NowPublic

Chavez to freeze relations with Colombia

2007-11-25T17:34:00.001-08:00

I don't think that I like this guy. An AP Newswire story, from Yahoo News:

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he is putting relations with Colombia "in the freezer" after its president ended the Venezuelan leader's role mediating with leftist rebels in the neighboring country.

Chavez said economic relations will be hurt, blaming actions by Colombia's U.S.-allied President Alvaro Uribe that he said were "a spit in the face."

"I declare before the world that I'm putting relations with Colombia in the freezer because I've completely lost confidence with everyone in the Colombian government," Chavez said during a televised speech.

Addressing Cabinet ministers and military officials, Chavez said: "Everyone should be alert in relation to Colombia — economic relations — the businesses Colombians have here and the businesses we have there. Commercial relations, all of that is going to be harmed. It's lamentable."

Chavez was responding to Uribe's decision to cancel his mediation with Colombian rebels, preliminary talks aimed at a prisoner swap that would free rebel-held hostages, including three Americans. Uribe's spokesman said Chavez had defied the Colombian president by directly contacting his army chief to discuss the issue.

The Venezuelan leader said a statement issued by Uribe's government giving its reasons for ending his mediation was "filled with lies."

"I really, truly believe that the Colombian government doesn't want peace," Chavez said.

Chavez said he was particularly irked that Uribe had his officials issue statements instead of contacting the Venezuelan leader directly.

"Why don't do you show your face?" Chavez said. "President Uribe is lying ... in a shameless, horrible, ugly way. I think Colombia deserves another president, it deserves a better president."

Chavez in August joined Colombian lawmakers in a new push to free hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC. Prisoners include three U.S. military contractors and Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian seized in 2002 while campaigning for Colombia's presidency.

The two South American countries are major trading partners, and the spat with Colombia comes amid another dispute with Spain that could affect Spanish businesses with major investments in Venezuela. Chavez has demanded Spanish King Juan Carlos apologize for telling him to shut up publicly during a recent summit in Chile.

Chavez said the situation with Colombia is similar.

"It's like the case of Spain: Until the king of Spain apologizes, I'm freezing relations with Spain," he said.

Chavez and Uribe are polar opposites politically.

Since taking office in 2002, the conservative Uribe has fought to crush Colombia's peasant-based rebel army with $4 billion in U.S. military aid.

The socialist Chavez has meanwhile railed against U.S. involvement in the region and called for Uribe to negotiate peace with Colombian guerrillas.

NowPublic

The Importance of Staying Active

2007-11-25T08:09:00.001-08:00

An important topic from the people at Iowa Avenue:

There are so many beneficial reasons to staying active, which are important to your health, welfare, and well-being. Even if you consider yourself a healthy person, there are unhealthy aspects to not staying active. An active lifestyle can help everybody. You don't have to be as fit as a professional athlete to benefit from physical activity. If you think you're too busy with work, family, and all the other demands in your life, it is important to be aware of that if you don’t spend time staying active, you won’t reap the many benefits of staying active. In fact, 30 minutes of moderate physical activity (activity that increases your heart rate) is all you need to:

Lower your risk of getting heart disease, stroke, colon cancer, and type 2 diabetes
Lower or prevent high blood pressure
Possibly help protect against breast cancer
Help control joint swelling and pain from arthritis
Reduce mild to moderate anxiety and depression
Promote psychological well-being
Help you handle stress
Help control your weight
Make you feel more energetic
Help you sleep better

As automobiles, automation, computers, television, and other influences play greater roles in peoples lives around the world, people tend to become more sedentary.

Being sedentary is essentially--not being active. It affects, or can affect all ages, sexes, and plays a major role in how people function in all aspects of their lives, lifestyles, and their ability to function, prevent disease, and lead healthy lifestyles.

It eventually causes sickness, disease, and leads to increases in drug, alcohol, and tobacco usage. As it also manifests itself--in medical and other problems--it causes significant monetary costs to society

Some examples from scientific and educational studies, confirm this:

The External Costs of a Sedentary Life-style.

The data supporting the effects of being sedentary and the benefits from staying active are enormous.

Therefore, Iowa Avenue—a Weight Management Community-- recommends the following to get you “moving,” as a preventative measure/s that will mitigate your chances of becoming sick, disabled, or worse:

Choose an activity that's fun.
Vary your activities, so you don't get bored.
Use different jogging, walking, or biking paths to vary your routine.
If you can't set aside one block of time, do short activities throughout the day, such as three 10-minute walks.
Create opportunities for activity, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Don't let cold weather keep you on the couch! You can find activities to do in the winter, such as exercising to a workout video which are available free of charge at most public libraries.
Exercise with a friend or family member.
Turn activities into social occasions—for example, go to a movie after you and a friend work out.
Share you successes with a friend.
Build a community group to go on hikes, build walking trails, start exercise classes, and organize special events to promote physical activity.
Set specific, short-term goals, and reward yourself (with something other than food!) when you achieve them.
Don't expect to notice body changes right away.
Make your activity a regular part of your day, so it becomes a habit.

Remember that feeling good on the inside and outside are just not about being thin, killing yourself exercising, or for that matter, not enjoying food or starving yourself.

Remember, it’s about a Healthy Lifestyle.

NowPublic

Now is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the already enormously wealthy in History

2007-11-23T08:14:00.001-08:00

Goldman says the Cost Of The Crunch Is $2 Trillion.

The firm's economic team put a $2 trillion price tag on the ultimate economic cost of the credit crunch, including $400 billion in losses directly tied to mortgages--well north of recent estimates by economists, including those at the Federal Reserve.

In July, for example, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke put subprime-related losses at $50 billion to $100 billion. "Even at the time, these numbers seemed quite optimistic," wrote Goldman (GS) economist Jan Hatzius, in a note Friday. "Now it is clear to most observers that they are far too low."

Some have called on the Fed to do more to ease the credit crunch and restore the fixed-income markets to normal. But in a speech in New York on Friday, Fed Gov. Randall Kroszner said the central bank probably won't need to reduce interest rates further to help the economy.

The first problem here is blaming the credit crunch for losses. That is a very poor way of looking at things. If $2 trillion is the answer, then what is the question?

The real question is: "How much damage did the Fed and central bankers worldwide do by spawning off the biggest credit boom in history?"

Now that we have the proper question we can see that calling on the Fed to do more to ease the credit crunch cannot be the solution. The Fed caused the credit crunch by slashing interest rates to 1% to bail out its banking buddies in the wake of a dotcom bubble collapse. All the Fed did was create a bigger bubble.

This bubble is so big in fact that it cannot even be bailed out. It's the end of the line for a serially bubble blowing Fed.

Are we done with question and answer? No, not quite even though we now have the right question and possibly the right answer. The next logical question is "Who is paying the price?"

The answer is the poor to middle class. Wall Street made out like bandits and the of executives of Citigroup (C), Merrill Lynch(MER), Bear Stearns(BSC), Countrywide (CFC) made countless $billions.

So not only was this the biggest credit bubble in history, this was also the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the already enormously wealthy. That is the real travesty of justice regardless of whether or not the price tag is $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or $10 trillion.

And if you factor in rising property taxes, insurance, gasoline prices, etc, while real wages were sinking, even $10 trillion could be conservative by the time all is said and done. Whatever the figure is, Fed and Congress will be hellbent on reckless solutions that will do nothing but make matters worse.

NowPublic

Welcome to America, Home of “The Speculation Economy”

2007-11-20T17:08:00.001-08:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

With the financial world still in relative chaos, it’s time to take stock of some basic questions. Here are a couple: Is Wall Street doing more harm than good right now? How did it get to be such an integral part of the economy in the first place?

To answer that, we spent some time with Lawrence E. Mitchell, a George Washington University law professor who authored a new book called “The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed Over Industry” (Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.)

Deal Journal: It’s so easy not to even ask how things got to be a certain way. You tracked the roots of the modern corporation. What did you find?

Lawrence Mitchell: Before 1889, for the most part, a company couldn’t buy stock in another company. In 1893, New Jersey came up with a law that allowed companies to buy stock in other companies. The most important part is that New Jersey said boards of directors had the final say on the value of the property. Now they had a way to combine and take over a corporation by printing stock. You could print as much stock as you needed to buy these companies.

In 1896, we came out of a huge depression. There was all this surplus capital around. Financiers and promoters, and later J.P. Morgan, said ‘wow, look at this. We can buy these companies for little or no cash. We can make bundles of money.’ For example, when Morgan put together U.S. Steel in 1901, it was capitalized at $1.4 billion, and Morgan took $62.5 million in stock. In 2007 dollars, that was a $1.4 billion fee, which was then dumped on the market. They were printing huge amounts of stock, compensating sellers with it, and all the stock got dumped on the market.

DJ: Then came the huge explosion in the stock market.

LM: Trading volume in 1897 was 77 million shares on the NYSE, almost all railroads. By 1901, that was 265 million shares. During this time, and depending whose numbers you use, anywhere from $8 billion to $20 billion of capitalization got shoved into the U.S. economy, almost all of it stock.

DJ: So what’s the matter with that? This capital was helping build new businesses and the economy at large.

LM: In most of these offerings they raised some working capital. But most of it was secondary sales. Industrial jobs grew no faster than they did previously. It was speculative.

DJ: And that’s the legacy you describe in your book.

LM: It transformed the entire financing of American business. Prior to this time, businesses were financed with retained earnings, founder savings, maybe some local debt and equity kicked in by friends. Common stock has an unlimited upside. And so the market began to demand that corporations focus not so much on the steady production of goods and services, but on shoving dividends out the door.

Today, 20% of GDP comes from manufacturing and 32% comes from finance. It kind of makes you wonder what finance was financing.

DJ: But part of the success of America has been its ability to innovate with finance.

LM: A tiny, tiny fraction, less than 3%, is for new offerings. The rest is secondary trading. If we’re not financing productivity, what are we financing? You start to see this sort of second-order level of remove from production and industry, of finance taking on its own independent logic, where money is moving from one pocket to another but not landing any place where it’s making any difference.

DJ: So we’re in danger of falling down the rabbit hole of finance?

LM: I’m deeply worried that unless we pay attention to restoring a basic balance to our economy, and redirecting finance to its original goal – which was to finance productivity – then we’re going to find ourselves in the long term in very bad shape.

DJ: How can we fix the problem as you see it?

LM: My favorite is that we revisit long-term capital gains taxation. You could take it industry by industry, one year versus 10 years, creating a sliding scale capital gains tax. For day traders, if they trade within a month, tax 90% of the gains, and over 10 years, extend tax forgiveness.

DJ: Seems like a pretty tough mission to get it changed.

LM: Thorsten Veblen said in 1903 that ‘industry and finance are two different things. The well being of the nation depends on it.’

Industry and Finance are indeed, two very different things, but our esteemed Congress doesn't get it:

Fannie & Freddie Clobbered Over Need to Raise Capital

The proposal by Bernanke and Congress to up the lending limit on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not solve a thing if both are capital impaired and cannot make new loans. That seems to be the situation as Freddie Mac Loses $2 Billion and Seeks New Capital.

Freddie Mac, the nation's No. 2 buyer and guarantor of home loans, lost $2 billion in the third quarter and said Tuesday it must raise fresh capital to meet regulatory requirements. Its shares fell more than 26 percent.

The mortgage financier said it is "seriously considering" cutting in half its dividend in the fourth quarter and has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. as financial advisers to help it examine possible new ways of raising capital in the near future.

My Comment: After listening to its latest conference call I questioned Fannie Mae's cure rates and capitalization in Fannie Mae's Credit Loss: What's The Real Story?

In the call Fannie repeatedly dodged questions over capital concerns. In response, I wrote "Fannie Mae is way undercapitalized and a systemic threat. Oddly enough this was the opinion of the Fed before they abruptly changed their minds in reaction to the credit crunch."

It did not take long to prove that assertion, and so much for the alleged transparency from this Fed.

Expect a disaster in Fannie Mae's next quarterly statement as well.

Freddie Mac said it set aside $1.2 billion in the turbulent July-September period to account for bad home loans, reflecting "the significant deterioration of mortgage credit."

My Comment: It is now clear that Fannie Mae is way too optimistic about what cure rates will be. This will restrict the ability of both Fannie and Freddie to take back more loans as well as issue new loans.

The $2 billion third-quarter loss for McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac worked out to $3.29 a share, compared with $1.17 a share in the third quarter of 2006.

Freddie Mac's regulatory core capital was estimated to be just $600 million in excess of the 30 percent mandatory target capital surplus directed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

My Comment: In the next bubble blowing gimmick, expect the amount of regulatory capital required to be lowered. The Fed , Congress, and oversight committees will do damn near anything to keep the bubble alive. However, nothing will work. The system is broke. It's time for a new one.

"We have begun raising prices, tightened our credit standards and enhanced our risk management practices," Piszel said. "We also continue to improve our internal controls."

My Comment: Raising prices huh? We finally have explicit confirmation of what I have been saying for a long time: Mortgage rates are going to disconnect from 10-year treasuries over default concerns. We can now add capital impairment as a reason for further disconnect.

"We were getting thin" in terms of excess capital, and Freddie Mac decided it needed to bolster its capital "to manage through this credit cycle," Piszel said in a telephone interview. That cycle isn't expected to improve until 2009, he said, with home prices projected to register a 5 percent to 6 percent decline nationwide.

My Comment: Notice how 2007 became 2008 became 2009. I expect it will be more like 2012 at the earliest. My reasons were outlined in When Will Housing Bottom? Now we have more reasons to add to the list.

And, Peregrine Financial Group, the serial undercapitalized Investment "Experts", provides more reasons, to realize that finance and industry are not our greatest export, either:

Notice to public: Settlement hearing in the matter of Peregrine Financial Group (Canada) Inc. TORONTO, Nov. 16 /CNW/ - The Investment Dealers Association of Canada

(IDA) announced today that a hearing will be held before a Hearing Panel

appointed pursuant to By-law 20 for the presentation, review and consideration

of a Settlement Agreement.

The Settlement Agreement is between IDA staff and Peregrine Financial

Group (Canada) Inc., which was at all material times a Member of the IDA, and

relates to matters for which it may be disciplined. The conduct which is the

subject of the hearing occurred during the time period from December 2005 to

March 2006. The charges against Peregrine Financial Group (Canada) Inc.

include that it failed to maintain a risk adjusted capital at a level greater

than zero calculated in accordance with Form 1, contrary to By-law 17.1.

The hearing is scheduled to commence at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November

28, 2007, at Legal Transcript Services, 111 Richmond Street West, Suite 1500,

Toronto, Ontario. The hearing is not open to the public unless and until the

Settlement Agreement has been accepted by the Hearing Panel. Copies of the

decision of the Hearing Panel and the Settlement Agreement will be made

available if and when the Settlement Agreement is accepted by the Hearing

Panel.Oh yeah, they seem to have "been there done that" in Canada previously.Welcome to America, Home of “The Speculation Economy”

NowPublic

Saudi FM Saud al-Faisal warns US dollar could collapse if OPEC considers Alternative Currency

2007-11-17T08:40:00.001-08:00

The warning was overheard at an oil producing countries’ session Riyadh over an open microphone in a private meeting in reply to a proposal from Venezuela and Iran to discuss a currency basket for pricing crude. Prince Saud said: “My feeling is that the mere mention that the OPEC countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries.” The microphone was then cut off.

Don't you all love people who don't care about us, give us "warnings?"

Or, since almost 50 million United States citizens have no health insurance, that has become a major issue in this upcoming Presidential election.

Oh, did you hear the one about Russell R. Wasendorf, Sr., CEO and Chairman, of Peregrine Financial Group, telling us that the merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, won't "substantially" lessen competition between U.S. exchanges?

Gee, in business school, the concept of few companies in an industry are either a monopoly or an oligopoly.

Meaning one player, or just a few, gets to price gouge us, and have a lock on the market.

Well, anti-trust and anti-competitive laws need to be strengthened not weakened. Or haven't the "poo poo" boys in Chicago been reading the latest financial news?

The price of oil is skyrocketing--more money for exchanges, speculators, future commission merchants, and OPEC, and less money for people who have to have to drive to work to survive.

And he bemoans the big bullies in New York:

To wit:

"Now, in its probe of the CME Group merger, Justice seems to be reacting to the FIA's lobbying, as the FIA decries that by concentrating significant power in Chicago the combination of the world's two largest and most successful futures exchanges might reduce competition or raise the barrier to entry for new competitors.

The FIA does not represent the best interests of the futures industry with this stand nor in general. The association purports to be an advocate for all futures firms, but its board is dominated by the big New York investment banks and the global wire houses. The organization had its roots in New York, where it was founded in 1955, and it has always given short shrift to Chicago, the home of the U.S. futures industry. It has been unwilling to include retail brokerage firms and CTAs in its strategic planning and in setting its agenda.

A powerful merged exchange in Chicago will be an enormous threat to the FIA's supremacy as a lobbying power in Washington and as a player in the industry. The New York investment banks have held sway over government for many years, and the Chicago exchanges have had to fight tooth and nail to keep these banks from stepping on their toes.

The CME-CBOT merger presents enormous benefits for futures customers and in turn the firms with whom they trade. Customers will have access to a wide range of products on one trading platform. This is increasingly necessary as more and more individual traders branch out in adding more products to their portfolios. Even FIA acknowledges the merger could bring cost savings and operational efficiencies to firms and their customers."

Well, most of us, by now. know that the words, "operational efficiencies," "global competition," and "best intestests" by those that are seeking something from us--MONEY--really don't have much of our compassion nor trust.

NowPublic

No More Surfer Jokes! A Laid-Back Surfer Dude May Be Next Einstein

2007-11-16T13:43:00.001-08:00

No more Spicoli "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" fur sure, archetypes about surfers:

From Fox News:

A surfer dude with no fixed address may be this century's Einstein.

A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist who divides his time between surfing in Maui and teaching snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, has come up with what may be the Grand Unified Theory.

That's the "holy grail" of physics that scientists have been searching for ever since Albert Einstein presented his General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago.

Even more remarkable is that Lisi, who has a Ph.D. but no permanent university affiliation, solves the problem without resorting to exotic dimensions, string theory or exceptionally complex mathematics.

A successful Grand Unified Theory would use a series of equations to show how the four fundamental forces of nature — gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces — relate to each other.

Electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force, which controls radioactivity, were linked more than 30 years ago, and some progress has been made with linking them to the strong nuclear force, which binds protons together in the atomic nucleus.

But gravity has always been an outlier. Not only have all attempts to link gravity to the other three forces failed, but physicists still can't agree on what gravity actually is or how it works.

Lisi solves this by using the E8 lattice, an eight-dimensional structure visualized earlier this year in a widely circulated paper.

• Click here to read more about the E8 lattice.

He noticed that several of the equations used to describe the lattice matched those he'd come up with trying to resolve the four fundamental forces.

"The moment this happened my brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," Lisi tells New Scientist magazine. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"

• Click here to read a formal presentation of the theory, if you dare.

By mapping known subatomic particles, plus 20 imaginary ones, onto the 248 points of the E8 lattice, and then rotating the lattice in a computer model, Lisi shows how the particles elegantly combine to form three of the four forces.

The imaginary ones combine to form gravity, for which subatomic particles have only been theorized.

• Click here to watch a video of the lattice being rotated.

"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," David Ritz Finkelstein of Georgia Tech tells New Scientist. "I think that this must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."

But Professor Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford tells Britain's Daily Telegraph that "there seem to be a lot of things still to fill in."

For his part, Lisi self-mockingly calls his finding "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," and downplays the suggestion that it may be the Grand Unified Theory.

"The theory is very young, and still in development," he tells the Daily Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelihood to this prediction."

He hopes the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, currently being built on the Swiss-French border will find some of his 20 imaginary gravity-related particles.

"This is an all-or-nothing kind of theory — it's either going to be exactly right, or spectacularly wrong," Lisi tells New Scientist. "I'm the first to admit this is a long shot. But it ain't over till the LHC sings."

• Click here for the New Scientist story, and here for the Daily Telegraph version.

NowPublic

Log On to ETrade. Sell ETrade.

2007-11-13T11:42:00.001-08:00

The Wall Street bloodbath gains more momentum; just when you thought it was "safe" to breathe--a metaphor, to be sure--no offense, Mr. Al Gore:

E*Trade Financial shares hit rock bottom at the open, and have since started digging. The stock, which opened down 36% on the Nasdaq Stock Market, is now down 49% and losses are accelerating in the wake of a report from Citigroup analyst Prashant Bhatia which suggested the company could be facing a “run on the bank” as investors, worried about the company’s financial condition, may pull their accounts en masse.

The idea of a free-for-all situation may seem far-fetched given the increased education investors have about investing, but Mr. Bhatia says “in our view, customers may withdraw assets first, and ask questions later.” No kidding — shares were already down 61% on the year coming into today, so this additional selloff doesn’t help the portfolio much.

They may do so just based on the tidbits contained in the company’s 10-Q report, which Mr. Bhatia (who was unavailable for an interview) quotes at great length. Basically, E*Trade, which has garnered a solid reputation as a discount brokerage, may have become the poster child for getting into a marginal business much later than it should have, and as a result it’s now embroiled in the subprime and collateralized debt mess in a big way.

In its 10-Q the firm notes that almost 90% of the home-equity loans it holds were purchased, rather than originated, and the declining value of those homes means “our ability to recover our investment by foreclosing on underlying properties has diminished.” The firm also said continued deterioration in loans underlying its asset-backed investments “could result in a significant deterioration” of those investments.

Citi estimates that trying to liquidate E*Trade’s “loan and ABS portfolio would result in over $5b of losses.” Several other analysts lowered estimates today, dropping fiscal 2007 earnings-per-share estimates to 72 cents from a consensus of 85 cents a month ago (Citi expects 31 cents in earnings). The stock is the most actively traded with more than 55 million shares changing hands in the first half-hour.

Of course, according to Russel Wasendorf, Sr., more money for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for additional regulation of our Derivatives markets is simply a bad idea. That is, of course, if the investing public has to "pay for it" leaving, of course, the participating firms, or the govenment left to pay for more resources--which, ironically, is why they had the hearing in the first place. The government and New York and Chicago Financial frims are NOT paying more money for more resources for the CFTC for more regulation of the Derivatives Markets.

Silly me! What was I thinking? As an honest investor why in the world would the Foxes contribute to somebody watching the proverbial Henhouse? DUH!

Not that, of course, that money has to come from somewhere.

One has to laugh at the irony:

From today's Wall Street Journal, more blowing of the "Trumpets of Doom:"

Who's Watching the Big Banks? - [Ed.Note] Gee, I thought that the government was! Wow, was I ever wrong.

An excerpt, read the whole thing:

On the global stage, major central banks in Europe have served up a huge new volume of reserves to mitigate stresses in their banking systems. Even the Bank of Japan, which had hinted it would raise money rates, seems to have pitched in by abstaining from rate hikes.

Yet in spite of these efforts on the part of monetary officials in the U.S. and world-wide, market confidence remains shaky. The volume of transactions in the subprime mortgage market is tepid at best. Stock prices of financial institutions have fallen sharply. In most markets, volatility is high. Key commodities prices have risen sharply. The U.S. dollar is under attack.

The problem is that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have failed to come forth with solutions that will limit future financial excesses. They've also failed to keep pace with a series of fundamental structural changes that have transformed markets in recent decades. As a result, in an age when "transparency" is the business watchword, financial markets have become increasingly opaque. This in turn has fostered doubts and fears about the underlying strength of markets and their institutions. Compared with a generation or even a decade ago, financial markets today are much more complex, an order of magnitude larger, and filigreed with new and often arcane credit instruments. Risk taking -- driven by the mystique of quantitative risk modeling -- has become more aggressive. And these structural changes, many of which were initiated in the U.S., are rapidly gaining acceptance in other major financial centers around the globe.

This new, highly securitized financial regime can work well only if securities are priced accurately. Stated differently, weaknesses and failures in securities pricing are wreaking havoc in financial markets. Traders and investors are learning the hard way that not all assets are the same when it comes to pricing. There is a sharp difference between marking-to-market U.S. government securities or large high-quality private-sector issues versus lower quality issues for which pricing is done off a model or matrix.

This brings to mind Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's response when I asked him at last month's Economic Club dinner in New York what information he would like that is not currently available to him. Pointing immediately to the problem of pricing subprime instruments, Mr. Bernanke said frankly, "I would like to know what those damn things are worth." Then added, "This episode has revealed a weakness in structured credit products."

Giant financial conglomerates contribute to the opaqueness in our financial markets. Their activities span across many sectors -- from consumers to business, from trading to investing, from securities underwriting to lending and proprietary trading, from insurance underwriting to real-estate brokerage, from managing billions of dollars of other people's money to consulting and advising. Their global presence has been growing briskly, with some now garnering more than half their profits from foreign operations. Their size, scope, and embeddedness in financial markets are impossible to decipher from their published balance sheets. Because their reach is so vast and deep, these financial behemoths are deemed too big to fail.

In the wake of these profound structural changes in our financial system, who or what can provide oversight and supervision? Today's regulatory system -- though system is too strong a word -- is largely a historical artifact left over from the era when financial markets and institutions were much more fragmented and insulated from one another. In the U.S., state and federal regulators of various kinds continue to oversee specific activities in the financial markets and institutions. But the destruction of financial silos that once separated brokerage, commercial banking, investment banking, insurance, mutual funds, and other financial businesses has made fragmented state and federal regulation obsolete.

The Federal Reserve System comes closest to performing the role of financial system guardian. Its central mission is to implement policy that will encourage sustained economic growth. But its monetary tactics are asymmetrical. Leading Fed officials periodically acknowledge that the central bank knows what to do when a financial bubble bursts (ease monetary policy), yet it lacks the analytical capacity to identify a credit bubble in the making. How, then, can the Federal Reserve hold inflation in check in order to encourage economic growth while at the same time restraining financial markets within prudent limits?

What is urgently needed is a new kind of institution that I will provisionally call the Federal Financial Oversight Authority. This regulatory body would oversee only the largest U.S.-based financial institutions -- the giant conglomerates engaged in a broad range of on- and off-balance-sheet activities that I noted above. The new authority would monitor and supervise these huge financial conglomerates -- assessing the adequacy of their capital, the soundness of their trading practices, their vulnerability to conflicts of interest, and other measures of their stability and competitiveness.

I am not proposing comprehensive supervision of most or all financial institutions. Oversight of the 10 to 20 largest financial conglomerates would fill the much-needed regulatory void, given the vast reach of those dominant players. The 15 largest institutions in the U.S., for example, have combined assets of $13 trillion. They dominate many key areas of trading, underwriting, and investment management. Many command an overwhelming position in derivatives and in many of the esoteric financial instruments that have grown so rapidly in the past decade."

Guess what, NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE ACTUALLY TAKING PLACE to fix any of these structural, accounting, legal, political, and other problems.

They are all, in the end, continuting more of the attempted "dumbing down" of all of us here in America.

What they are really saying, is "Be happy-Don't Worry" everything is going to be studied, groups will be formed to come up with potential solutions, and those potential solutions will, indeed, be implemented.

WRONG.

Don't feed us this b.s. anymore. We will go broke before we can see another "change," unless of course, that change is for the worse.

NowPublic

Subprime Losses May Reach $400 Billion, Analysts Say

2007-11-12T11:55:00.001-08:00

Subprime Losses May Reach $400 Billion, Analysts Say

Not very good "risk management."

The theory of risk management is essentially that the more risk that you encounter, the more money that you may make. In the alternative, investing in Triple AAA Corporate Insured Bonds, may pay a lower rate of interest, but they are less risky. Investing in U.S. Treasury's is considered even less riskier. And of course, sans a bank collapse, keeping your money there is even better--up to $100,000 is F.D.I.C. insured and guaranteed.

Making money on the way up out of taking out of our collective pockets, and then losing it is not "risk managemet."

These people won't tell you the truth.

Greed is not prudent "risk-management."

All of these big New York and Chicago Financial Firms knew what they were doing, they just wanted a "piece of the action." Well, looks like they got it.

They want to blame it on "Derivatives." Well, guess what, Derivatives, have a useful purpose as a hedge against commodity and security pricing, but used as an instrument, to leverage and make money, or to use as alleged "counter and contra party" risk, that is inherently risky.

Leveraging your company to the maximum to make maximum profit is not lack of "risk knowldege" it is stupidity.

There are no laws against stupidity.

There should be no laws against us, the public, bailing out your stupidity, either.

Losses from the falling value of subprime mortgage assets may reach $300 billion to $400 billion worldwide, Deutsche Bank AG analysts said.

Wall Street's largest banks and brokers will be forced to write down as much as $130 billion because of the slump in subprime-related debt, according to a report today by New York- based credit analyst Mike Mayo,. The rest of the losses will come from smaller banks and investors in mortgage-related securities.

Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley led more than $40 billion of writedowns as record U.S. foreclosures plundered asset prices. Estimates are rising with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last week predicting losses linked to U.S. mortgages may reach $250 billion over the next five years. Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group in July forecast $52 billion of costs related to mortgage-backed securities.

``We're not out of the woods yet,'' said Mondher Bettaieb- Loriot, who helps manage the equivalent of about $58 billion at Swisscanto Asset Management in Zurich. ``There are more losses to be taken and there's more negative news to come. At some point it will be a buying opportunity but we're not there yet.''

Morgan Stanley analyst Anil Agarwal in Hong Kong today cut his rating on the stock of HSBC Holdings Plc to ``equal-weight'' from ``overweight.'' The London-based lender's $2.1 billion of provisions against its $45 billion mortgage services business may be insufficient, he said.
Deutsche Bank's Mayo expects writedowns at HSBC, UBS AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Barclays Plc to be ``ballpark $5 billion or so'' each, he said.

Subprime Defaults

Subprime borrowers are likely to default on 30 percent to 40 percent of debt, Mayo wrote. Losses on loans to people with poor credit histories may be as much as half the sum lent, Mayo wrote. The forecasts on total writedowns are based on ``seat-of-the- pants'' estimates using losses announced by the biggest securities firms, he said.

Banks and brokers may have to write off $60 billion to $70 billion this year, Mayo wrote. The estimate is based on known charges of $43 billion and expected additional losses of $25 billion. The report didn't include writedowns at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, which were 2.16 billion euros ($3.15 billion) in the third quarter.

Bonds Plunge

Subprime-mortgage bonds have plunged this year. One ABX index linked to securities that initially carried the lowest investment-grade rating has fallen 39 percent in the past month, according to Markit Group Ltd., the London-based index administrator.

About $1.2 trillion of the $10 trillion of outstanding U.S. home loans are considered to be subprime, Mayo said in the note.

Loss rates on about $200 billion of securities based on derivatives linked to subprime debt will run to as high as 80 percent, Mayo wrote.

Commercial banks, government-chartered firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and mortgage and bond insurers will be affected the most by mortgage losses, which will be about $50 billion in 2008, Lehman Brothers analysts wrote on Nov. 5.

``While this is large relative to historical losses on mortgage portfolios, it is about half the size of losses on corporate portfolios during 2002,'' when long-distance telephone company Worldcom Inc. went bankrupt, Lehman analysts wrote.

Credit-default swaps on the iTraxx Financial Index of 25 European banks and insurance companies increased 3 basis points to 56 basis points. The benchmark reached a record 60 basis points on Aug. 16 when U.S. mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. drew on emergency funding to stay afloat.

The index, a benchmark for the cost of protecting bonds against default, rises when perceptions of credit quality worsen.

Deutsche Bank plans to hold a conference call on subprime debt on Nov. 15, according to the note.

Are we faced with Financial Armageddon?

"The Bloodbath in Credit and Financial Markets Will Continue and Sharply Worsen,"

It is now clear that the delusional hope that the severe credit and liquidity crunch that hit US and global financial markets would ease has been shattered by the events of the last few weeks. This credit crunch is getting much worse nd its financial and real fallout will be severe.

The amount of losses that financial institutions have already recognized - $20 billion – is just the very tip of the iceberg of much larger losses that will end up in the hundreds of billions of dollars. At stake – in subprime alone – is about a trillion of sub-prime related RMBS and hundreds of billions of mortgage related CDOs. But calling this crisis a sub-prime meltdown is ludicrous as by now the contagion has seriously spread to near prime and prime mortgages. And it is spreading to subprime and near prime credit cards and auto loans where deliquencies are rising and will sharply rise further in the year ahead. And it is spreading to every corner of the securitized financial system that is either frozen or on the way to freeze: CDOs issuance is near dead; the LBO market – and the related leveraged loans market – is piling deals that have been postponed, restructured or cancelled; the liquidity squeeze in the interbank market – especially at the one month to three months maturities - is continuing; the losses that banks and investment banks will experience in the next few quarters will erode their Tier 1 capital ratio; the ABCP and related SIV sectors are near dead and unraveling; and since the Super-conduit will flop the only options are those of bringing those SIV assets on balance sheet (with significant capital and liquidity effects) or sell them at a large loss; similar problems and crunches are emerging in the CLO, CMO and CMBS markets; junk bonds spreads are widening and corporate default rates will soon start to rise. Every corner of the securitization world is now under severe stress, including so called highly rated and “safe” (AAA and AA) securities.

The reality is that most financial institutions – banks, commercial banks, pension funds, hedge funds – have barely started to recognize the lower “fair value” of their impaired securities. Valuation of illiquid assets is a most complex issue; but starting with the November 15th adoption of FASB 157 the leeway that financial institutions have used so far for creative accounting will be much more limited. Valuation of illiquid assets is a most technical issue. But new regulations will limit the ability of financial institutions to put “illiquid” asset in “level 3” securities, i.e. securities where the lack of market prices allows them to use dubious “valuation models” and “unobservable inputs” to value such assets. As suggested by a commentator (Bernard) of my recent blog many Wall Street firms are still playing the game of putting too many assets in the “level 3” bucket of mark-to-model to models that don’t make much sense. As reported by the FT today research by the Bank of England shows that small minor changes of assumptions in these models can lead to changes in the value of “safe” asset of 35%. So even AAA or AA assets may be worth much less than par, as the ABX is telling us. But financial institutions are not using the prices derived from the ABX indices to value most of their sub-prime assets.

As put it by the FT:

“the banks have not yet made write-offs as large as the ABX might imply. Merrill Lynch analysts, for example, calculate that mid-quality ABX debt is on average now trading at 40 cents in the dollar. But these analysts say that Merrill Lynch itself has only written this type of debt down to 63 cents in the dollar – and UBS is still assuming this debt is worth 90 cents. “Simple math would imply that UBS needs an additional $8bn write-down [on its $15.4bn holdings] if the ABX pricing is correct,” Merrill says.”

This is indeed the message that comes from true market prices that are now indirectly available via the ABX indices. Those prices tell you not only that the mezzanine and equity tranches of subprime CDOs are now worth close to zero; they also tell you that prices for the AAA and AA tranches – that until recently were hovering near par of 100 – are now down to 79 and 50 respectively. Hundreds of billions of subprime RMBS and senior tranches of CDOs are still being evaluated as if they are worth 100 cents on the dollar. What the ABX is telling you is that they are worth much less; thus the losses from subprime alone are an order of magnitude larger than recognized by most firms. But most firms are not using such market prices – or their proxies – to value their illiquid assets.

Indeed, according to a MarketWatch article from September – based on Bernstein Research – many Wall Street firms put an excessive amount of securities in the level 3 bucket that uses unreliable models for valuation.

The share securities in the level 3 is:

15% for Goldman Sachs;
13% for Morgan Stanley;
8% for Lehman Brothers;
7% for Bear Stearns
and only 2% for Merrill Lynch.

No wonder that Merrill has been one of the few firms to report massive losses: it is at least one of the few firms that has come out clean on this valuation game and put only 2% of its assets in the voodoo valuation model bucket; compare that with the 15% put by Goldman or the 13% by Morgan Stanley.

But the forthcoming adoption of FASB 157 (unless current lobbying pressure by interest group forces the postponing of its November 15th adoption) will reduce the ability of financial firms to play such accounting games and tricks.

As explained in three recent white papers by the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) using the excuse of “illiquidity” to put assets in the model driven valuation bucket is highly inappropriate:

The white paper notes that it is important to distinguish between (1) an imbalance between supply and demand (e.g., fewer buyers than sellers, thereby forcing prices down) and (2) a “forced” or “distressed” transaction. Because persuasive evidence is required in establishing that an observable transaction is forced or distressed, it is not appropriate to assume that all transactions in a relatively illiquid market are forced or distressed.

The SEC, in a 2004 accounting and auditing enforcement release, determined that using a definition of fair value that assumed supply and demand were in reasonable balance was a violation of GAAP and that the registrant should have considered the current market environment, such as imbalances of supply and demand, in the determination of the then-current market value. Further, the SEC objected to the practice of taking a long-term view of the market while ignoring prices quoted by external sources.

Other key points from the draft white paper include the following:

A decline in a market’s transaction volume does not necessarily mean that the market is not active. A market is still considered active if transactions are occurring frequently enough on an ongoing basis to obtain reliable pricing information. When an active market exists, a quoted price provides the best evidence of fair value (Level 1 per Statement 157).
In the absence of an active market for the identical asset, entities often use valuation models. Entities may not ignore available market information or market participant assumptions that are reasonably available without undue cost and effort. Valuation models that use historical default data, or an entity’s own default assumptions, rather than assumptions that marketplace participants would use, are not appropriately using current market participants’ assumptions, even if the default assumptions are “stressed.”

Statement 157 contains disclosure requirements regarding fair value measurements that apply to entities that have adopted Statement 157. Entities that have not yet adopted Statement 157 should consider disclosures required by existing pronouncements (for example, AICPA Statement of Position No. 94-6, Disclosure of Certain Significant Risks and Uncertainties) in situations in which fair value measurements have a significant effect on the financial statements. When an entity that has not adopted Statement 157 measures fair value using significant unobservable inputs, the white paper suggests that the entity may wish to consider disclosures similar to those found in Statement 157.

The message from FASB 157 and the CAQ white papers is clear: using dubious models and accounting tricks to avoid using market prices or proxies for market prices to value illiquid asset is extremely inappropriate. And appropriate disclosure of the methods used to estimate the “fair value” of assets is now a requirement. Note that the proposed Super-conduit is another one of these scheme aimed at parking securities and avoiding having to recognize their true market value. So, the process of recognizing hundreds of billions of losses, not just in sub-prime related assets but across the board of trillions of dollars of securitized assets has barely begun. Thus, you can expect that the ongoing credit crunch will get much worse in the year ahead and its fallout spread from the US to Europe and throughout Asia and the globe. Trillions of dollars of securitized assets that were sliced and diced in the long food chain of securitization are now at some risk. The first crisis of financial globalization and securitization is thus only at its beginning stage.

Look at the info Citigroup just filed with the SEC today: they have $135 BILLION in LEVEL 3 ASSETS. I have a neat idea. Why don't we take every single major financial institution out there and then divide their total Level 3 assets by their equity capital base and make comparisons? This will give us a better idea as to which of them may really remain solvent at the end of the day. Shall we? Let's have a look at Citigroup. Their equity base is $128 billion. Therefore, their Level 3 assets to equity ratio: 105% How about Goldman Sachs? Level 3 assets are $72 billion, equity base is $39 billion. Their Level 3 assets to equity ratio is 185%. Morgan Stanley: $88 billion in Level 3, equity base is $35 billion. Ratio: 251% (WOW!)

Bear Stearns: $20 billion in Level 3, equity base is $13 billion. Ratio: 154% Lehman Brothers: $35 billion in Level 3, $22 billion in equity. Ratio: 159% Merrill Lynch: $16 billion in Level 3, $42 billion in equity. Ratio: 38%

Here is the Level 3 assets to equity ratio summary:

Citigroup 105%

Goldman Sachs 185%

Morgan Stanley 251%

Bear Stearns 154%

Lehman Brothers 159%

Merrill Lynch 38% This becomes very interesting now, doesn't it? Looks to me like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are by far in the WORST situation among the investment banks. And yet the media is focusing all of their attention on Merrill Lynch---which actually has by far THE LEAST EXPOSURE of all of them. What a joke. As I said before, the media should stop diverting attention and trying to make this into a "Merrill-specific" problem. All of the investment banks are in deep trouble. These numbers should make that extremely evident.

The deception must be exposed.

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Losses from the falling value of subprime mortgage assets may reach $300 billion to $400 billion worldwide, Deutsche Bank AG analysts said.

Wall Street's largest banks and brokers will be forced to write down as much as $130 billion because of the slump in subprime-related debt, according to a report today by New York- based credit analyst Mike Mayo,. The rest of the losses will come from smaller banks and investors in mortgage-related securities.

Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley led more than $40 billion of writedowns as record U.S. foreclosures plundered asset prices. Estimates are rising with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last week predicting losses linked to U.S. mortgages may reach $250 billion over the next five years. Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group in July forecast $52 billion of costs related to mortgage-backed securities.

``We're not out of the woods yet,'' said Mondher Bettaieb- Loriot, who helps manage the equivalent of about $58 billion at Swisscanto Asset Management in Zurich. ``There are more losses to be taken and there's more negative news to come. At some point it will be a buying opportunity but we're not there yet.''

Morgan Stanley analyst Anil Agarwal in Hong Kong today cut his rating on the stock of HSBC Holdings Plc to ``equal-weight'' from ``overweight.'' The London-based lender's $2.1 billion of provisions against its $45 billion mortgage services business may be insufficient, he said.
Deutsche Bank's Mayo expects writedowns at HSBC, UBS AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Barclays Plc to be ``ballpark $5 billion or so'' each, he said.

Subprime Defaults

Subprime borrowers are likely to default on 30 percent to 40 percent of debt, Mayo wrote. Losses on loans to people with poor credit histories may be as much as half the sum lent, Mayo wrote. The forecasts on total writedowns are based on ``seat-of-the- pants'' estimates using losses announced by the biggest securities firms, he said.

Banks and brokers may have to write off $60 billion to $70 billion this year, Mayo wrote. The estimate is based on known charges of $43 billion and expected additional losses of $25 billion. The report didn't include writedowns at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, which were 2.16 billion euros ($3.15 billion) in the third quarter.

Bonds Plunge

Subprime-mortgage bonds have plunged this year. One ABX index linked to securities that initially carried the lowest investment-grade rating has fallen 39 percent in the past month, according to Markit Group Ltd., the London-based index administrator.

About $1.2 trillion of the $10 trillion of outstanding U.S. home loans are considered to be subprime, Mayo said in the note.

Loss rates on about $200 billion of securities based on derivatives linked to subprime debt will run to as high as 80 percent, Mayo wrote.

Commercial banks, government-chartered firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and mortgage and bond insurers will be affected the most by mortgage losses, which will be about $50 billion in 2008, Lehman Brothers analysts wrote on Nov. 5.

``While this is large relative to historical losses on mortgage portfolios, it is about half the size of losses on corporate portfolios during 2002,'' when long-distance telephone company Worldcom Inc. went bankrupt, Lehman analysts wrote.

Credit-default swaps on the iTraxx Financial Index of 25 European banks and insurance companies increased 3 basis points to 56 basis points. The benchmark reached a record 60 basis points on Aug. 16 when U.S. mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. drew on emergency funding to stay afloat.

The index, a benchmark for the cost of protecting bonds against default, rises when perceptions of credit quality worsen.

Deutsche Bank plans to hold a conference call on subprime debt on Nov. 15, according to the note.

And, as to be expected, we should conduct "intermarket analysis" before "investing" into the Futures Markets, according to Peregrine Financial Group's editor of their SFO Magazine.

Isn't America great?

A firm that was operating as an alleged Futures Commission Merchant without sufficient financial capital and reserves, is advising us to be careful!

NowPublic

Subprime Losses May Reach $400 Billion, Analysts Say

2007-11-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

Subprime Losses May Reach $400 Billion, Analysts Say

Not very good "risk management."

The theory of risk management is essentially that the more risk that you encounter, the more money that you may make. In the alternative, investing in Triple AAA Corporate Insured Bonds, may pay a lower rate of interest, but they are less risky. Investing in U.S. Treasury's is considered even less riskier. And of course, sans a bank collapse, keeping your money there is even better--up to $100,000 is F.D.I.C. insured and guaranteed.

Making money on the way up out of taking out of our collective pockets, and then losing it is not "risk managemet."

These people won't tell you the truth.

Greed is not prudent "risk-management."

All of these big New York and Chicago Financial Firms knew what they were doing, they just wanted a "piece of the action." Well, looks like they got it.

They want to blame it on "Derivatives." Well, guess what, Derivatives, have a useful purpose as a hedge against commodity and security pricing, but used as an instrument, to leverage and make money, or to use as alleged "counter and contra party" risk, that is inherently risky.

Leveraging your company to the maximum to make maximum profit is not lack of "risk knowldege" it is stupidity.

There are no laws against stupidity.

There should be no laws against us, the public, bailing out your stupidity, either.

Losses from the falling value of subprime mortgage assets may reach $300 billion to $400 billion worldwide, Deutsche Bank AG analysts said.

Wall Street's largest banks and brokers will be forced to write down as much as $130 billion because of the slump in subprime-related debt, according to a report today by New York- based credit analyst Mike Mayo,. The rest of the losses will come from smaller banks and investors in mortgage-related securities.

Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley led more than $40 billion of writedowns as record U.S. foreclosures plundered asset prices. Estimates are rising with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last week predicting losses linked to U.S. mortgages may reach $250 billion over the next five years. Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group in July forecast $52 billion of costs related to mortgage-backed securities.

``We're not out of the woods yet,'' said Mondher Bettaieb- Loriot, who helps manage the equivalent of about $58 billion at Swisscanto Asset Management in Zurich. ``There are more losses to be taken and there's more negative news to come. At some point it will be a buying opportunity but we're not there yet.''

Morgan Stanley analyst Anil Agarwal in Hong Kong today cut his rating on the stock of HSBC Holdings Plc to ``equal-weight'' from ``overweight.'' The London-based lender's $2.1 billion of provisions against its $45 billion mortgage services business may be insufficient, he said.
Deutsche Bank's Mayo expects writedowns at HSBC, UBS AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Barclays Plc to be ``ballpark $5 billion or so'' each, he said.

Subprime Defaults

Subprime borrowers are likely to default on 30 percent to 40 percent of debt, Mayo wrote. Losses on loans to people with poor credit histories may be as much as half the sum lent, Mayo wrote. The forecasts on total writedowns are based on ``seat-of-the- pants'' estimates using losses announced by the biggest securities firms, he said.

Banks and brokers may have to write off $60 billion to $70 billion this year, Mayo wrote. The estimate is based on known charges of $43 billion and expected additional losses of $25 billion. The report didn't include writedowns at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, which were 2.16 billion euros ($3.15 billion) in the third quarter.

Bonds Plunge

Subprime-mortgage bonds have plunged this year. One ABX index linked to securities that initially carried the lowest investment-grade rating has fallen 39 percent in the past month, according to Markit Group Ltd., the London-based index administrator.

About $1.2 trillion of the $10 trillion of outstanding U.S. home loans are considered to be subprime, Mayo said in the note.

Loss rates on about $200 billion of securities based on derivatives linked to subprime debt will run to as high as 80 percent, Mayo wrote.

Commercial banks, government-chartered firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and mortgage and bond insurers will be affected the most by mortgage losses, which will be about $50 billion in 2008, Lehman Brothers analysts wrote on Nov. 5.

``While this is large relative to historical losses on mortgage portfolios, it is about half the size of losses on corporate portfolios during 2002,'' when long-distance telephone company Worldcom Inc. went bankrupt, Lehman analysts wrote.

Credit-default swaps on the iTraxx Financial Index of 25 European banks and insurance companies increased 3 basis points to 56 basis points. The benchmark reached a record 60 basis points on Aug. 16 when U.S. mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. drew on emergency funding to stay afloat.

The index, a benchmark for the cost of protecting bonds against default, rises when perceptions of credit quality worsen.

Deutsche Bank plans to hold a conference call on subprime debt on Nov. 15, according to the note.

Are we faced with Financial Armageddon?

"The Bloodbath in Credit and Financial Markets Will Continue and Sharply Worsen,"

It is now clear that the delusional hope that the severe credit and liquidity crunch that hit US and global financial markets would ease has been shattered by the events of the last few weeks. This credit crunch is getting much worse and its financial and real fallout will be severe.
The amount of losses that financial institutions have already recognized - $20 billion – is just the very tip of the iceberg of much larger losses that will end up in the hundreds of billions of dollars. At stake – in subprime alone – is about a trillion of sub-prime related RMBS and hundreds of billions of mortgage related CDOs. But calling this crisis a sub-prime meltdown is ludicrous as by now the contagion has seriously spread to near prime and prime mortgages. And it is spreading to subprime and near prime credit cards and auto loans where deliquencies are rising and will sharply rise further in the year ahead. And it is spreading to every corner of the securitized financial system that is either frozen or on the way to freeze: CDOs issuance is near dead; the LBO market – and the related leveraged loans market – is piling deals that have been postponed, restructured or cancelled; the liquidity squeeze in the interbank market – especially at the one month to three months maturities - is continuing; the losses that banks and investment banks will experience in the next few quarters will erode their Tier 1 capital ratio; the ABCP and related SIV sectors are near dead and unraveling; and since the Super-conduit will flop the only options are those of bringing those SIV assets on balance sheet (with significant capital and liquidity effects) or sell them at a large loss; similar problems and crunches are emerging in the CLO, CMO and CMBS markets; junk bonds spreads are widening and corporate default rates will soon start to rise. Every corner of the securitization world is now under severe stress, including so called highly rated and “safe” (AAA and AA) securities.

The reality is that most financial institutions – banks, commercial banks, pension funds, hedge funds – have barely started to recognize the lower “fair value” of their impaired securities. Valuation of illiquid assets is a most complex issue; but starting with the November 15th adoption of FASB 157 the leeway that financial institutions have used so far for creative accounting will be much more limited. Valuation of illiquid assets is a most technical issue. But new regulations will limit the ability of financial institutions to put “illiquid” asset in “level 3” securities, i.e. securities where the lack of market prices allows them to use dubious “valuation models” and “unobservable inputs” to value such assets. As suggested by a commentator (Bernard) of my recent blog many Wall Street firms are still playing the game of putting too many assets in the “level 3” bucket of mark-to-model to models that don’t make much sense. As reported by the FT today research by the Bank of England shows that small minor changes of assumptions in these models can lead to changes in the value of “safe” asset of 35%. So even AAA or AA assets may be worth much less than par, as the ABX is telling us. But financial institutions are not using the prices derived from the ABX indices to value most of their sub-prime assets.

As put it by the FT:

“the banks have not yet made write-offs as large as the ABX might imply. Merrill Lynch analysts, for example, calculate that mid-quality ABX debt is on average now trading at 40 cents in the dollar. But these analysts say that Merrill Lynch itself has only written this type of debt down to 63 cents in the dollar – and UBS is still assuming this debt is worth 90 cents. “Simple math would imply that UBS needs an additional $8bn write-down [on its $15.4bn holdings] if the ABX pricing is correct,” Merrill says.”

This is indeed the message that comes from true market prices that are now indirectly available via the ABX indices. Those prices tell you not only that the mezzanine and equity tranches of subprime CDOs are now worth close to zero; they also tell you that prices for the AAA and AA tranches – that until recently were hovering near par of 100 – are now down to 79 and 50 respectively. Hundreds of billions of subprime RMBS and senior tranches of CDOs are still being evaluated as if they are worth 100 cents on the dollar. What the ABX is telling you is that they are worth much less; thus the losses from subprime alone are an order of magnitude larger than recognized by most firms. But most firms are not using such market prices – or their proxies – to value their illiquid assets.

Indeed, according to a MarketWatch article from September – based on Bernstein Research – many Wall Street firms put an excessive amount of securities in the level 3 bucket that uses unreliable models for valuation.

The share securities in the level 3 is:

15% for Goldman Sachs;
13% for Morgan Stanley;
8% for Lehman Brothers;
7% for Bear Stearns
and only 2% for Merrill Lynch.

No wonder that Merrill has been one of the few firms to report massive losses: it is at least one of the few firms that has come out clean on this valuation game and put only 2% of its assets in the voodoo valuation model bucket; compare that with the 15% put by Goldman or the 13% by Morgan Stanley.

But the forthcoming adoption of FASB 157 (unless current lobbying pressure by interest group forces the postponing of its November 15th adoption) will reduce the ability of financial firms to play such accounting games and tricks.

As explained in three recent white papers by the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) using the excuse of “illiquidity” to put assets in the model driven valuation bucket is highly inappropriate:

The white paper notes that it is important to distinguish between (1) an imbalance between supply and demand (e.g., fewer buyers than sellers, thereby forcing prices down) and (2) a “forced” or “distressed” transaction. Because persuasive evidence is required in establishing that an observable transaction is forced or distressed, it is not appropriate to assume that all transactions in a relatively illiquid market are forced or distressed.

The SEC, in a 2004 accounting and auditing enforcement release, determined that using a definition of fair value that assumed supply and demand were in reasonable balance was a violation of GAAP and that the registrant should have considered the current market environment, such as imbalances of supply and demand, in the determination of the then-current market value. Further, the SEC objected to the practice of taking a long-term view of the market while ignoring prices quoted by external sources.

Other key points from the draft white paper include the following:

A decline in a market’s transaction volume does not necessarily mean that the market is not active. A market is still considered active if transactions are occurring frequently enough on an ongoing basis to obtain reliable pricing information. When an active market exists, a quoted price provides the best evidence of fair value (Level 1 per Statement 157).
In the absence of an active market for the identical asset, entities often use valuation models. Entities may not ignore available market information or market participant assumptions that are reasonably available without undue cost and effort. Valuation models that use historical default data, or an entity’s own default assumptions, rather than assumptions that marketplace participants would use, are not appropriately using current market participants’ assumptions, even if the default assumptions are “stressed.”

Statement 157 contains disclosure requirements regarding fair value measurements that apply to entities that have adopted Statement 157. Entities that have not yet adopted Statement 157 should consider disclosures required by existing pronouncements (for example, AICPA Statement of Position No. 94-6, Disclosure of Certain Significant Risks and Uncertainties) in situations in which fair value measurements have a significant effect on the financial statements. When an entity that has not adopted Statement 157 measures fair value using significant unobservable inputs, the white paper suggests that the entity may wish to consider disclosures similar to those found in Statement 157.

The message from FASB 157 and the CAQ white papers is clear: using dubious models and accounting tricks to avoid using market prices or proxies for market prices to value illiquid asset is extremely inappropriate. And appropriate disclosure of the methods used to estimate the “fair value” of assets is now a requirement. Note that the proposed Super-conduit is another one of these scheme aimed at parking securities and avoiding having to recognize their true market value. So, the process of recognizing hundreds of billions of losses, not just in sub-prime related assets but across the board of trillions of dollars of securitized assets has barely begun. Thus, you can expect that the ongoing credit crunch will get much worse in the year ahead and its fallout spread from the US to Europe and throughout Asia and the globe. Trillions of dollars of securitized assets that were sliced and diced in the long food chain of securitization are now at some risk. The first crisis of financial globalization and securitization is thus only at its beginning stage.

Look at the info Citigroup just filed with the SEC today: they have $135 BILLION in LEVEL 3 ASSETS. I have a neat idea. Why don't we take every single major financial institution out there and then divide their total Level 3 assets by their equity capital base and make comparisons? This will give us a better idea as to which of them may really remain solvent at the end of the day. Shall we? Let's have a look at Citigroup. Their equity base is $128 billion. Therefore, their Level 3 assets to equity ratio: 105% How about Goldman Sachs? Level 3 assets are $72 billion, equity base is $39 billion. Their Level 3 assets to equity ratio is 185%. Morgan Stanley: $88 billion in Level 3, equity base is $35 billion. Ratio: 251% (WOW!)
Bear Stearns: $20 billion in Level 3, equity base is $13 billion. Ratio: 154% Lehman Brothers: $35 billion in Level 3, $22 billion in equity. Ratio: 159% Merrill Lynch: $16 billion in Level 3, $42 billion in equity. Ratio: 38%

Here is the Level 3 assets to equity ratio summary:

Citigroup 105%

Goldman Sachs 185%

Morgan Stanley 251%

Bear Stearns 154%

Lehman Brothers 159%

Merrill Lynch 38% This becomes very interesting now, doesn't it? Looks to me like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are by far in the WORST situation among the investment banks. And yet the media is focusing all of their attention on Merrill Lynch---which actually has by far THE LEAST EXPOSURE of all of them. What a joke. As I said before, the media should stop diverting attention and trying to make this into a "Merrill-specific" problem. All of the investment banks are in deep trouble. These numbers should make that extremely evident.

The deception must be exposed.

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Losses from the falling value of subprime mortgage assets may reach $300 billion to $400 billion worldwide, Deutsche Bank AG analysts said.
Wall Street's largest banks and brokers will be forced to write down as much as $130 billion because of the slump in subprime-related debt, according to a report today by New York- based credit analyst Mike Mayo,. The rest of the losses will come from smaller banks and investors in mortgage-related securities.

Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley led more than $40 billion of writedowns as record U.S. foreclosures plundered asset prices. Estimates are rising with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last week predicting losses linked to U.S. mortgages may reach $250 billion over the next five years. Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group in July forecast $52 billion of costs related to mortgage-backed securities.

``We're not out of the woods yet,'' said Mondher Bettaieb- Loriot, who helps manage the equivalent of about $58 billion at Swisscanto Asset Management in Zurich. ``There are more losses to be taken and there's more negative news to come. At some point it will be a buying opportunity but we're not there yet.''

Morgan Stanley analyst Anil Agarwal in Hong Kong today cut his rating on the stock of HSBC Holdings Plc to ``equal-weight'' from ``overweight.'' The London-based lender's $2.1 billion of provisions against its $45 billion mortgage services business may be insufficient, he said.
Deutsche Bank's Mayo expects writedowns at HSBC, UBS AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Barclays Plc to be ``ballpark $5 billion or so'' each, he said.

Subprime Defaults

Subprime borrowers are likely to default on 30 percent to 40 percent of debt, Mayo wrote. Losses on loans to people with poor credit histories may be as much as half the sum lent, Mayo wrote. The forecasts on total writedowns are based on ``seat-of-the- pants'' estimates using losses announced by the biggest securities firms, he said.

Banks and brokers may have to write off $60 billion to $70 billion this year, Mayo wrote. The estimate is based on known charges of $43 billion and expected additional losses of $25 billion. The report didn't include writedowns at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, which were 2.16 billion euros ($3.15 billion) in the third quarter.

Bonds Plunge

Subprime-mortgage bonds have plunged this year. One ABX index linked to securities that initially carried the lowest investment-grade rating has fallen 39 percent in the past month, according to Markit Group Ltd., the London-based index administrator.

About $1.2 trillion of the $10 trillion of outstanding U.S. home loans are considered to be subprime, Mayo said in the note.

Loss rates on about $200 billion of securities based on derivatives linked to subprime debt will run to as high as 80 percent, Mayo wrote.

Commercial banks, government-chartered firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and mortgage and bond insurers will be affected the most by mortgage losses, which will be about $50 billion in 2008, Lehman Brothers analysts wrote on Nov. 5.

``While this is large relative to historical losses on mortgage portfolios, it is about half the size of losses on corporate portfolios during 2002,'' when long-distance telephone company Worldcom Inc. went bankrupt, Lehman analysts wrote.

Credit-default swaps on the iTraxx Financial Index of 25 European banks and insurance companies increased 3 basis points to 56 basis points. The benchmark reached a record 60 basis points on Aug. 16 when U.S. mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. drew on emergency funding to stay afloat.

The index, a benchmark for the cost of protecting bonds against default, rises when perceptions of credit quality worsen.

Deutsche Bank plans to hold a conference call on subprime debt on Nov. 15, according to the note.

And, as to be expected, we should conduct "intermarket analysis" before "investing" into the Futures Markets, according to Peregrine Financial Group's editor of their SFO Magazine.

Isn't America great?

A firm that was operating as an alleged Futures Commission Merchant without sufficient financial capital and reserves, is advising us to be careful!

Fun with math!

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Subprime Losses May Reach $400 Billion, Analysts Say

Subprime Losses May Reach $400 Billion, Analysts Say

Log On to ETrade. Sell ETrade.