Economists support occupy movement

Occupy Economics from Softbox on Vimeo.

They done me wrong song

Wow! We were meant to fly!

Banksters have moved in

According to the Economic Policy Journal, here’s what you need to know about the current crisis in the Eurozone. The big time banksters are getting direct hands-on control:

Mario Draghi (photo) has become president of the European Central Bank as of November 1. He was vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and a member of the firm-wide management committee. He was the Italian Executive Director at the World Bank. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Lucas Papademos has taken over as Prime Minister of Greece. He was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He was a visiting professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. And, he was previously a vice president of the European Central Bank. He has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998.

Mario Monti has succeeded Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister of Italy. Monti completed graduate studies at Yale University, where he studied under James Tobin (see the Tobin Tax). He is a member of the European Commission. He is European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission and and member of the Bilderberg Group.

If you get the sense that the elitist banksters are going to take this financial crisis and push it in whatever direction they want, you are probably correct.

European debt crisis explained

Men were not meant to fly - or were they?

Big bankers' paradise

Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over

By Paul Craig Roberts


On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks. Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB's charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation.

Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. As I wrote at the time, there is no reason for Germany, with its relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the troubled countries, not to be able to sell its bonds. If Germany's creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany's failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy's successful bond auction two days later.
Full article posted here

The pattern continues

On November 9th TransAlta Corp. admitted it manipulated electricity prices in Alberta forcing consumers to pay an extra $5.5 million for electricity. TransAlta negotiated its own penalty [settlement] for its transgressions and paid a fine of $370,000. Additionally, TransAlta gets to keep the details of its illegal actions confidential and out of the public eye.

On November 12th TransAlta’s CEO, Steve Snyder, wrote in the Calgary Herald, “We did not intentionally breach any rules or regulations. We misinterpreted rules around the competitive business of electricity trading”.

How does a company commit a $5.5 million dollar offense against the rate paying public and then negotiate a $370,000 penalty? What’s to prevent TransAlta from committing the same offense again and again if the penalty amounts to no more than a 7% fee, otherwise known as a cost of doing business?

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) and the Market Surveillance Administrator (MSA) are the two government created corporations responsible for overseeing Alberta’s electricity market. Both claim to be independent, and yet both have consistently sided with industry to the detriment of the rate paying public. The AESO is currently seeking a court judgment to limit the public’s right to attend rate increase hearings. AESO and the MSA are the very same organizations that couldn’t find any wrong doing when electricity prices spiked from $14.50 to $223.80 per megawatt in 2000. The comedic investigation was made all the more ridiculous after irrefutable evidence surfaced in 2005 [tape-recorded conversations] between TransAlta and Enron Employees. The tape recordings recorded employees engaged in the manipulation of market prices.

TransAlta’s market manipulation behavior has not been limited to Alberta. On June 25, 2003 the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a "Show Cause" order to TransAlta alleging that TransAlta manipulated electricity prices, along with Enron, leading to wide spread power outages in California. In a subsequent lawsuit, California’s Attorney General claimed that TransAlta charged rates in the California electricity markets that were unjust, unreasonable, and therefore illegal, and did so on thousands of occasions.

The FERC chose not to prosecute TransAlta because TransAlta claimed it profited less than $10,000. What has never been reconciled or explained to the public is how TransAlta, a multi-billion dollar company, was able to report nefarious profits of 89% in one quarter and 133% in one six-month time frame while it was manipulating market prices, and yet only make less than $10,000 in illegal profits.

Can Albertans trust what TransAlta or AESO executives tell us? These are the very same people that still claim the Bill-50 transmission lines are not being built to subsidize export. They tell Albertans this even after TransAlta received approval, on July 12, 2010, to export on average 48,000 megawatt hours each day ~ for the next ten years. [Alberta’s daily demand averages between 6,000 to 8000 megawatts hours.]

Alberta’s deregulated electricity system has been a disaster from the beginning. From one scandal to another including offenses of spying on citizens and market price manipulation, the system has fallen into disrepute. The organizations responsible for overseeing the system are ineffective and at times incompetent.

Albertans need an independent public inquiry into the abuses that plague Alberta’s electricity system. The public should be refunded for what they have been overcharged!

Joe Anglin
Rimbey, AB
(403) 963-0521

Message from one cop to his colleagues

Why you should become a politician

Kosovo - a Serbian perspective

NATO's intervention in the ethnic conflict in Kosovo fits a well established pattern. Article published here

Fictitious Economy with Vandana Shiva

9/11 - Phantom plane hits the Pentagon

"Obama, you are the nightmare of Dr. Martin Luther King"

Comet Storm in a Nearby Star System

An artist's concept of a comet storm around Eta Corvi. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Oct. 19, 2011: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years ago during a period known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment," which may have brought water and other life-forming ingredients to Earth.

"We believe we have direct evidence for an ongoing Late Heavy Bombardment in the nearby star system Eta Corvi, occurring about the same time as in our solar system," said Carey Lisse, senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and lead author of a paper detailing the findings to appear in the Astrophysical Journal.
Interesting article posted here

Testimony by Lizzy Phelan: "The war on Libya is a war on Africa"

Back in the UK, after several months spent in Libya covering NATO war crimes and uncovering mainstream media lies, freelance journalist Lizzie Phelan continues to fight for truth and justice on behalf of the Libyan people. Her testimony below is a gripping example of her commitment.

Lizzie Phelan spent her last days in Libya - where she was reporting for PressTV - trapped in the Rixos Hotel, together with Thierry Meyssan, Mahdi Nazemroaya and two other members of the Voltaire Network team.

She said a Western-backed genocide is taking place in Libya and there are no independent journalists left on the ground to cover the story.
Watch video testimony here

New York State flood relief needed

While protesters fill the streets of New York City,
the rural part of the New York State, which was
devastated by floods, faces Third World shortages
of food, warm clothing, shelter, tools and building
materials.

Winter's coming soon...and, true to form, the
corporate news media can't be bothered to
tell the story.

The Governor of the State, best buddy of the
Wall Street scam machine (he played his role
as head of HUD), did a few helicopter fly bys
and has been missing in action ever since.

How bad is it? Pretty bad.

The Christians of the Orient stand up against the new Western colonialism

Invited at the Elysee the 5th of September 2011, S.B. Bechara Boutros Rai, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and the entire Middle-East (the head of the most important Church in the Middle-East that is attached to Rome) heard that France and its allies will soon intervene militarily in Syria to establish the Muslim Brothers as the leaders of the country. The Christians of the Orient, who would lose their place in society, would then have to prepare themselves for the exodus and could find refuge in Europe.
© Présidence de la République - P. Segrette




by Thierry Meyssan

The war against Syria, planned by the United States, France and the United Kingdom for mid-November 2011, has been blocked in extremis by the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the Security Council. According to Nicolas Sarkozy, who informed the Maronite Patriarch of the matter during a stormy meeting at the Elysée Palace on 5 September 2011, the plan contemplates the expulsion of Middle East Christians by the Western powers. In this context a press campaign is underway in Europe to accuse the Christians of the Orient of collusion with the dictatorships. Mother Agnès-Mariam of the Cross, mother superior of the monastery of James the Mutilated in Qara (Syria) responds to this war propaganda.

Insightful article posted here

2,000 OWS protesters nabbed in US

Demonstrators affiliated with the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement protest in Times Square in New York City on October 15, 2011.


The US police have arrested nearly two thousand Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters since the outbreak of the anti-corporatism and -corruption movement in New York in mid-September, Press TV reports.



Fresh arrests come as the movement is spreading across the globe.

The police have come up with various charges against the demonstrators in order to clear the streets filled with protest tents.

Chicago police say they have made 175 arrests on Saturday after protesters refused to obey orders to leave public areas and as more than 2,000 people marched from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago to Grant Park.

Also on Saturday, nearly 90 demonstrators were detained in New York, while police forces apprehended over 70 people in Phoenix and Colorado.

Protesters have, however, pledged to remain on the streets, despite the heavy-handed clampdown.

The OWS movement was initiated on September 17, when a group of people began rallying in New York's financial district to protest 'corporate greed' and top-level among other instances of social inequality in the United States.

The campaign has now spread to tens of major cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Boston, as well as hundreds of communities across the nation.

More and more Americans are, meanwhile, joining the demonstrations each day.

According to a Press TV survey published on Saturday, many believe that the American Awakening -- represented by the OWS movement -- stems from misguided financial policies of the US establishment, thought to be behind the country's current economic crisis.

Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal were also some of the countries that saw huge OWS-inspired protest rallies on Saturday.
Article source here

Publicly-owned Banks as an Instrument of Economic Development: The German Model

by Ellen Brown


Publicly-owned banks were instrumental in funding Germany’s “economic miracle” after the devastation of World War II. Although the German public banks have been targeted in the last decade for takedown by their private competitors, the model remains a viable alternative to the private profiteering being protested on Wall Street today.



One of the demands voiced by protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement is for a “public option” in banking. What that means was explained by Dr. Michael Hudson, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in an interview by Paul Jay of the Real News Network on October 6:

[T]he demand isn’t simply to make a public bank but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility. . . . Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking. There should be a government bank that offers credit card rates without punitive 30% interest rates, without penalties, without raising the rate if you don’t pay your electric bill. This is how America got strong in the 19th and early 20th century, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you’d have roads and bridges. . . . The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business.

We don’t hear much about a public banking option in the United States, but a number of countries already have a resilient public banking sector. A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly-owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the world in the last few years.

In the U.S., North Dakota is the only state to own its own bank. It is also the only state that has sported a budget surplus every year since the 2008 credit crisis. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and the lowest default rate on loans. It also has oil, but so do other states that are not doing so well. Still, the media tend to attribute North Dakota’s success to its oil fields.

However, there are other Western public banking models that are successful without oil booms. Europe has a strong public banking sector; and leading it is Germany, with eleven regional public banks and thousands of municipally-owned savings banks. Germany emerged from World War II with a collapsed economy that had degenerated into barter. Today it is the largest and most robust economy in the Eurozone. Manufacturing in Germany contributes 25% of GDP, more than twice that in the UK. Despite the recession, Germany’s unemployment rate, at 6.8%, is the lowest in 20 years. Underlying the economy’s strength is its Mittelstand—small to medium sized enterprises—supported by a strong regional banking system that is willing to lend to fund research and development.
Continue reading article here

Hypocracy definition: What Democracy turns into when all of the politicians in your country are liars.

Things are heating up in New York

More photos and story here

Black Libyans make their stand in Sirte and Bani Wali

The Black defenders of Sirte and Bani Walid fight like lions because they have no choice.

By Glen Ford

← Stop NATO: Day 209 of War Against Libya, Crown of Africa
Black Libyans make their stand in Sirte and Bani Walid
Posted on 2011/10/13 by Quoriana

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/black-libyans-make-their-stand-sirte-and-bani-walid


The Black defenders of Sirte and Bani Walid fight like lions because they have no choice.

By Glen Ford

Both NATO and their Libyan rebel surrogates express wonder at the fact that loyalist forces continue to fight so fiercely in the contested cities of Sirte and Bani Walid, despite being vastly outnumbered on the ground and unceasingly pummeled from above by the world’s largest air armada. But one look at a picture of Gaddafi loyalist prisoners, captured at a hospital in Sirte, tells the story: they are all Black. The assault on Libya has largely devolved into a race war, and the Black soldiers are fighting for survival against the world’s biggest lynch mob, armed to the teeth by the United States and Europe.
Article continues here

Black American perspective on events in Libya

'US claim insults global intelligence'

Iran's Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Khazaei

Iran's envoy to the UN says US allegations about Tehran's involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington are an “insult to the intelligence” of the people of the world.


“We are used to the baseless allegations made by some US officials over the past three decades, but the big lie they have told today is so unfounded that it sounds like the work of Hollywood's scenario writers,” Mohammad Khazaei said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.

“It is a major insult to the intelligence of ordinary people in the US and the world,” he added.

He said the accusation that Iran attempted to assassinate the envoy of a neighboring Muslim country in Washington is a fabrication created by “warmongers” who seek to poison the atmosphere and create fear in the people's minds.

They fabricate false security threats to advance their political objectives, Khazaei said, adding that the move was a testimony to the West's unquenchable thirst to create imaginary enemies.

Khazaei said Iran categorically rejects the allegations and cautions the Americans not to fall for such malicious propaganda campaigns aimed at mounting political pressure on Iran.

Khazaei's remarks came in response to the recent claims made by the US Justice Department that Iran was involved in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Washington Adel Al-Jubeir with help from a suspected member of a Mexican drug cartel.

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast rejected the accusation, saying such 'ludicrous' claims hinged on the hostile joint stances adopted by the US and Israel against the country.

"These threadbare attitudes, which are based on the age-old and hostile American-Zionist policies, are a ridiculous show in line with certain [instances of] scenario fabrication of divisive ends on the part of the enemies of Islam and the region," he said.

Iran has also sent a letter of complaint to the UN over Washington's allegations.

Article source here

Chalk it up to experience

NATO Secretary General attends Special Forces exercise in Denmark

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is attending joint Special Forces exercise, NIGHT HAWK, in Denmark on 12-14 October 2011.

The exercise brings together representatives of Special Forces from 8 NATO Allies and Partner nations in a scenario involving simultaneous hostage rescues in multiple locations. It is hosted and organised by Denmark.

The Secretary General is accompanying a Special Forces group from the Netherlands on the initial stages of the mission, and observing the final stage of the operation from close to the site.

Land and air units from NATO Allies Denmark, Germany, Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and partners Finland and Sweden, are also taking part in the exercise.

There are no media opportunities.

Editor: Hostage rescues or planned assassinations?

Old divisions surface in Egypt

Cairo remains tense after clashes left at least 24 people dead and over 270 injured in the worst violence in the Egyptian capital since the country’s revolution in February.
Article posted here