The Voice of the White House

Washington , D.C. , April 24, 2008 : “I had a very interesting conversation on Sunday with a friend of my wife’s. It was concerned with the huge and growing number of Americans who are falling deeper and deeper into debt and struggling to pay such vital bills as food and rent.

Today ( April 24, 2008 ed.) the New York Times ran a front page article on the outsourcing of telephone debt collections to India . Much of what my wife’s friend was borne out by this article but because the subject is of great, and growing, interest, I am putting all of this together for the interest of the public.

With millions of Americans falling behind on debt payments, the larger debt-collecting companies are outsourcing their collection methods to India . There, the trained operators call the American debtor on the phone. They remind them that they will probably be getting tax rebates and that perhaps they could pay “just a little” on their back bill. Even a few dollars would show their really good intentions.

Do not trust this approach because it is a snare and a delusion. In most cases, the debts involved have passed the statute of limitations and not only is it impossible to sue for the unpaid balances but the debt itself has vanished from the credit report system. By sending in even a dollar on the back balance, the debt is automatically renewed again and further harassments, phone calls, registered letters and debt-collection suits can, and will, follow.

The best advice here is not to send in a penny.

Here are some other valuable suggestions to save your capital and avoid harassment.

As almost all bill collecting now is done either by phone call or by mail, why not change your phone number? First, call your carrier and stop service, being very sure to pay the back bill, Then, after suffering a short period when you have no phone, start up again with a new carrier but under a different name. Why? Because the phone companies will supply to bill collectors, lists of their customers for a fee. So if you shut down the Bill Jones number and just start up under the same name but with a different carrier, be certain the bill collectors will very soon have the new number.

And when you get the new account (if they want other numbers you have recently used, tell the person at the new service that you have been out of the country, serving with the Armed Forces) To be even safer, you might want to have an unpublished number. If you have a new number under a new name and an unlisted service, you might also wish to add a caller ID to your service.

That, in and of itself, will shut off bothersome calls but if you really want to clean up your act, find a local mailbox service and rent a box. Give them an old address. That way, all your current bills, letters and magazines will go to that address and be reported to various agencies of interest. Then, with the new address, send in to the USPS a form indicating a change of address. Do not give them the drop address but another, more creative, one. One good new address is: 350 5^th Ave. , New York , NY   10018 . This is the huge Empire State Building in New York with thousands of people working there.

The post office does not know which office number or which floor is involved so eventually the mail is returned. Or you could give the address of a local hotel or a huge office complex. In any case, you are giving a legitimate address and it will take weeks for the letter or bill to be returned to the sender as undeliverable.

Speaking of returned mail, go to a local firm that makes up rubber stamps and have one done that says  ‘DECEASED’ on it. Then, if and when a new bill comes in to the drop address, you can stamp this in red ink on the surface and take it to any USPS station and drop it into a mail slot.

As almost all bill collecting is done by phone these days, these simple steps should materially ensure your continued privacy. This is a subject of increasing interest and we will have further informative and helpful suggestions at a later date.”

Mother Israel: God’s Gift to Rodents

Pro-Israel Group Clandestinely Targets Wikipedia

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/the-camera-eyes-in-on-israel-and-lies/

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America ), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia.

A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a “Senior Research Analyst” at CAMERA, calls for “volunteers who can work as ‘editors’ to ensure” that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are “free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context.” However, subsequent communications indicate that the group not only wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they intended to introduce included discredited claims that could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel’s true history.

With over two million articles in English on every topic imaginable, Wikipedia has become a primary reference source for Internet users around the world and a model for collaboratively produced projects. Openness and good faith are among Wikipedia’s core principles. Any person in the world can write or edit articles, but Wikipedia has strict guidelines and procedures for accountability intended to ensure quality control and prevent vandalism, plagiarism or distortion. It is because of these safeguards that articles on key elements of the Palestine-Israel conflict have generally remained well-referenced, useful and objective. The CAMERA plan detailed in the e-mails obtained by EI appears intended to circumvent these controls.

In the past, CAMERA has gained notoriety for its tactic of accusing virtually anyone who does not toe a right-wing pro-Israel line of bias. The group has even accused editors and reporters of the Israeli daily Haaretz of being “extreme” and participating in “radical anti-Israel activity.” Jeffrey Dvorkin, the former ombudsman of National Public Radio (NPR), frequently criticized by CAMERA for an alleged pro-Palestinian bias, wrote on the web publication Salon in February 2008 that “as a consequence of its campaign against NPR, CAMERA acted as the enabler for some seriously disturbed people,” citing persistent telephone threats he received in the wake of CAMERA campaigns.

Need for stealth and secrecy

Throughout the documents EI obtained, CAMERA operatives stress the need for stealth and secrecy. In his initial action alert, Ini requests that recipients “not forward it to members of the news media.” In a 17 March follow-up email sent to volunteers, Ini explains that he wants to make the orchestrated effort appear to be the work of unaffiliated individuals. Thus he advises that “There is no need to advertise the fact that we have these group discussions.”

Anticipating possible objections to CAMERA’s scheme, Ini conjectures that “Anti-Israel editors will seize on anything to try to discredit people who attempt to challenge their problematic assertions, and will be all too happy to pretend, and announce, that a ‘Zionist’ cabal (the same one that controls the banks and Hollywood?) is trying to hijack Wikipedia.”

But stealth and misrepresentation are presented as the keys to success. Ini suggests that after volunteers sign up as editors for Wikipedia they should “avoid editing Israel-related articles for a short period of time.” This strategy is intended to “avoid the appearance of being one-topic editors,” thus attracting unwanted attention.

Ini counsels that volunteers “might also want to avoid, for obvious reasons, picking a user name that marks you as pro-Israel, or that lets people know your real name.” To further conceal the identity of CAMERA-organized editors, Ini warns, “don’t forget to always log in before making [edits]. If you make changes while not logged in, Wikipedia will record your computer’s IP address” — a number that allows identification of the location of a computer connected to the Internet.

A veteran Wikipedia editor, known as “Zeq,” who according to the emails is colluding with CAMERA, also provided advice to CAMERA volunteers on how they could disguise their agenda. In a 20 March email often in misspelled English, Zeq writes, “You don’t want to be precived [sic] as a ‘CAMERA’ defender’ on wikipedia [sic] that is for sure.” One strategy to avoid that is to “edit articles at random, make friends not enemies — we will need them later on. This is a marathon not a sprint.”

Zeq also identifies, in a 25 March email, another Wikipedia editor, “Jayjg,” whom he views as an effective and independent pro-Israel advocate. Zeq instructs CAMERA operatives to work with and learn from Jayjg, but not to reveal the existence of their group even to him fearing “it would place him in a bind” since “[h]e is very loyal to the wikipedia [sic] system” and might object to CAMERA’s underhanded tactics.

“Uninvolved administrators”

The emphasis on secrecy is apparently not only to aid the undetected editing of articles, but also to facilitate CAMERA’s takeover of key administrator positions in Wikipedia.

For Zeq a key goal is to have CAMERA operatives elected as administrators — senior editors who can override the decisions of others when controversies arise. When disputes arise about hotly contested topics, such as Israel and Palestine , often only an “uninvolved administrator” — one who is considered neutral because he or she has not edited or written articles on the topic — can arbitrate.

Hence, Zeq advises in a 21 March email that “One or more of you who want to take this route should stay away from any Israel realted [sic] articles for one month until they [sic] interact in a positive way with 100 wikipedia [sic] editors who would be used later to vote you as an administrator.”

Once these CAMERA operatives have successfully infiltrated as “neutral” editors, they could then exercise their privileges to assert their own political agenda.

In addition, Zeq suggests making deliberately provocative edits to Palestine-related articles. He hopes that editors he assumes are Palestinian will delete these changes, and then CAMERA operatives could report them to administrators so they could be sanctioned and have their editing privileges suspended.

Passing propaganda as fact

Gilead Ini’s 17 March email provides specific advice on how to pass off pro-Israel propaganda or opinion as fact meeting Wikipedia’s strict guidelines:

“So, for example, imagine that you get rid of or modify a problematic sentence in an article alleging that ‘Palestinian [sic] become suicide bombers to respond to Israel ’s oppressive policies.’ You should, in parallel leave a comment on that article’s discussion page (either after or before making the change). Avoid defending the edit by arguing that ‘ Israel ’s policies aren’t ‘oppression,’ they are defensive. And anyway Palestinians obviously become suicide bombers for other reasons for example hate education!’ Instead, describe how this sentence violates Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines. One of the core principles is that assertions should adhere to a Neutral Point of View, usually abbreviated NPOV. (The opposite of NPOV is POV, or Point of View, which is basically another way of saying subjective statement, or opinion.) So it would be best to note on the discussion page that ‘This sentence violates Wikipedia’s NPOV policy, since the description of Israel ’s policies as ‘oppressive’ is an opinion. In addition, it is often noted by Middle East experts that one of the reasons Palestinians decide to become suicide bombers is hate education and glorification of martyrdom in Palestinian society …’”

In fact, there have been numerous studies debunking claims about Palestinian “hate education,” or “glorification of martyrdom” causing suicide bombings (such as Dying to Win by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape) though this claim remains a favorite canard of pro-Israel activists seeking to distract attention from the effects of Israel’s occupation and other well-documented and systematic human rights abuses in fueling violence.

Zeq specifically names articles targeted for this kind of treatment including those on the 1948 Palestinian Exodus, Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, Hamas, Hizballah, Arab citizens of Israel, anti-Zionism, al-Nakba, the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian right of return.

Interestingly the CAMERA editors also target the article on the early Islamic period concept of Dhimmi, a protected status for non-Muslims which historically allowed Jews to thrive in Muslim-ruled lands while other Jews were being persecuted in Christian Europe. Pro-Israel activists have often tried to portray the concept of Dhimmi as akin to the Nuremberg laws in order to denigrate Muslim culture and justify ahistorical Zionist claims that Jews could never live safely in majority Muslim countries.

Also among the emails is a discussion about how to alter the article on the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the village of Deir Yassin by Zionist militiamen on 9 April 1948 . Unable to debunk the facts of the massacre outright, the CAMERA activists hunt for quotes from “reputable historians” who can cast doubt on it. Their strategy is not dissimilar from those who attempt to present evolution, or global climate change as “controversial” regardless of the weight of the scientific evidence, simply because the facts do not accord with their belief system.

Zeq has already made extensive edits to the Wikipedia article on Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist murdered by an Israeli soldier in the occupied Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003 . As a result of these and other edits Zeq has himself been a controversial figure among Wikipedia editors, suggesting his own stealth tactics may not be working.

“We will go to war”

Zeq, however, counsels CAMERA operatives to be patient and lie low until they build up their strength. “We will go to war after we have build our army, equiped it trained [sic],” he wrote on 9 April. “So please if you want to win this war help us build ou[r] army. let’s not just rush in and achieve nothing, or abit more than nothing [sic].”

Jimmy Carter: Emissary of Evil

April 16, 2008

by Ben Shapiro

Townhall.com

Jimmy Carter is an evil man. It is painful to label a past president of the United States as a force for darkness. But it is dangerous to let a man like Jimmy Carter stalk around the globe cloaked in the garb of American royalty, planting the seeds of Western civilization's destruction.

On Tuesday, former President Carter met with leaders of the terrorist group Hamas. He embraced Nasser al-Shaer, the man who has run the Palestinian education system, brainwashing children into believing Jews are the descendants of pigs and dogs. He laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, the most notorious terrorist thug of the 20th century. Then, he had the audacity to offer to act as a conduit between the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli and U.S. governments. This is somewhat like Lord Haw-Haw offering to broker peace between the German and British governments during World War II.

Carter is a notorious anti-Semite and an even more notorious terrorism- enabler. In particular, he is a huge supporter of Palestinian violence. He considered himself a friend to Arafat, as Jay Nordlinger of National Review wrote in his masterful 2002 piece, "Carterpalooza!": After the Gulf War, when Saudi Arabia was perturbed by Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein, Carter flew to the country at Arafat's behest to soothe the Saudis. In 1990, Carter told Arafat, "You should not be concerned that I am biased. I am much more harsh with the Israelis." He then proceeded to agree with Arafat that "the Reagan administration was not renowned as promise keepers," according to Douglas Brinkley.

Carter subsequently wrote one of Arafat's speeches, penning these vomit-inducing lines: "A good opening would be to outline the key points of the Save the Children report Then ask: 'What would you do, if these were your children and grandchildren? As the Palestinian leader, I share the responsibility for them. Our response has been to urge peace talks, but the Israeli leaders have refused, and our children continue to suffer. Our people, who face Israeli bullets, have no weapons: only a few stones remaining when our homes are destroyed by the Israeli bulldozers.' Then repeat: 'What would you do, if these were your children and grandchildren?' This exact litany should be repeated with a few other personal examples."

Not surprisingly, Carter's ardent hatred for Israel translates into a Jeremiah Wright-esque hatred for the United States -- the country he has never forgiven for throwing him out on his ear in 1980 in favor of Ronald Reagan.

Here's Carter on America 's refusal to fund Hamas: "Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life."

Jimmy Carter is all about Jimmy Carter. During his presidency, he gave up the Panama Canal and allowed the Ayatollahs to take power in Iran -- all for the praise of the international community. In 1980, he asked the Soviet Union to release Jewish emigrants, hoping that such action would soften American feeling against the USSR and thereby swing the presidential election to him. In 1984, he told the Russians that if Reagan were re-elected, there would not "be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power." In 2002, Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, despite a clear indication by Nobel Committee members that the prize was meant as a rebuke to President Bush.

Does all this make Carter evil, or just a useful idiot? By all accounts, Carter is highly intelligent -- perhaps the most intelligent president of the last 50 years. It would be foolish to write him off as simply naive. He is quite willing to be used by dictators from Venezuela to Cuba to North Korea , so long as helping them polishes his legacy. For almost three decades, Carter has pandered to enemies of Western civilization, shielding his treasonous behavior with the title of "ex-president." His Hamas-hugging is just the latest entry in a political diary that would make Osama Bin Laden proud.

Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House

Comment: This is an excellent example of a  classic assault on an y American  public figure that dares to express any opinion that runs contrary to the wishes of Israel . Jimmy Carter is not evil but Mr. Shapiro is nothing more than a loud shill for Israel and her legions of supporters in the United States and, most especially, in the American media. This is called “dual loyalty” and people should remember that nearly all of the American-based Soviet spies were Jewish. Then, their real loyalty was to Communism whose ranks were filled with their co-religionists and now their real loyalty is to the state of Israel . BH

SECRECY NEWS

from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2008, Issue No. 40

April 22, 2008

NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION

"The 2008-2009 election marks the first presidential transition in the post-9/11 era, and is of concern to many national security observers," a new report from the Congressional Research Service says.

"While changes in administration during U.S. involvement in national security related activities are not unique to the 2008-2009 election, many observers suggest that the current security climate and recent acts of terrorism by individuals wishing to influence national elections and change foreign policies portend a time of increased risk to the current presidential transition period."

"This report discusses historical national-security related presidential transition activities, provides a representative sampling of national security issues the next administration may encounter, and offers considerations and options relevant to each of the five phases of the presidential transition period."

See "2008-2009 Presidential Transition: National Security Considerations and Options," April 21, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34456.pdf

Meanwhile, "A growing community of interest, including Members of Congress, senior officials in the executive branch, and think-tank analysts, is calling for a reexamination of how well the U.S. government, including both the executive branch and Congress, is organized to apply all instruments of national power to national security activities," according to another new CRS report.

"The organizations and procedures used today to formulate strategy, support presidential decision-making, plan and execute missions, and budget for those activities are based on a framework established just after World War II."

"The 'outdated bureaucratic superstructure' of the 20th century is an inadequate basis for protecting the nation from 21st century security challenges, critics contend, and the system itself, or alternatively, some of its key components, requires revision."

The new CRS report is intended "to help frame the emerging debates by taking note of the leading advocates for change, highlighting identified shortcomings in key elements of the current system, and describing categories of emerging proposals for change."

See "Organizing the U.S. Government for National Security: Overview of the Interagency Reform Debates," April 18, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34455.pdf

The Congressional Research Service, acting at the direction of Congress, does not make its publications directly available to the public.

A PRIMER ON SCIENCE POLICY, AND MORE FROM CRS

The basic structures and procedures of science and technology policymaking are presented in detail in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. See "Science and Technology Policymaking: A Primer," April 18, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34454.pdf

Other noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available online include the following.

"Information Security and Data Breach Notification Safeguards," updated April 3, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL34120.pdf

"Congressional Oversight of Intelligence: Current Structure and Alternatives," updated April 1, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL32525.pdf

"Data Mining and Homeland Security: An Overview," updated April 3, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL31798.pdf

"Security Implications of Taiwan 's Presidential Election of March 2008," April 4, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34441.pdf

NATIONAL SECURITY LETTERS AND SECRET LAW

The implications of the expanded use of "national security letters" by the FBI and other agencies to compel disclosure of business record information will be explored in a hearing tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=3255

For an introduction to the subject see "National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: Legal Background and Recent Amendments," Congressional Research Service, updated March 28, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL33320.pdf

Next week on April 30, Sen. Russ Feingold will chair a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government":

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=3305

Commercial Banks Heading for Huge Derivatives Losses- Credit Crisis Turning into Credit Armageddon

April 21, 2008 -

by  Money_and_Markets

While most investors are focused on the latest stock market rally, hidden from view is a monumental change that few recognize and fewer understand: Unprecedented amounts of old debts are coming due in America , and many are not getting refinanced.

Even worse, borrowers are going into default, lenders are taking huge losses, and outstanding loans are turning to dust.

The numbers are large; the government's response is equally massive. So before you look at one more stock quote or any other news item, I think it behooves you to understand what this means and what to do about it ...

New Evidence of A Credit Crack-Up

Until recently, economists have had only anecdotal evidence of credit troubles.

They knew that individual banks were taking losses. They knew that many banks were tightening their lending standards. And they realized that there were hiccups in the credit markets.

So they called it the “credit crunch” — essentially a slowdown in the pace of new credit growth.

But we didn't buy that. Earlier this year, we warned that America 's credit woes involved much more than just a slowdown. We wrote that it was actually a credit crack-up — an outright contraction of credit the likes of which had never been witnessed in our lifetime.

Wall Street scoffed. No one had seen anything like this happen before, and almost everyone assumed that it would not happen now.

They were wrong.

Indeed, three new official reports are now telling us, point blank, that the credit crack-up is already beginning!

First, the Federal Reserve is reporting a big contraction in short-term debts.

The specifics: Based on its Flow of Funds Report (pdf page 18), we can clearly see that ...

Just in the third quarter of last year, “open market paper” (mostly short-term commercial loans) was slashed at the annual rate of $682 billion ...

In the fourth quarter, it shrunk again — at the rate of $337 billion per year, and ...

This shrinkage doesn't even begin to reflect the impact of the Bear Stearns failure or the huge additional bank losses announced so far this year.

I repeat: This is not a mere “slowdown” in new lending, which would be relatively routine. This is an actual reduction in the short-term loans outstanding, which is anything but routine ... which implies a rupture in the nation's credit spigots ... and which could deliver a new shock to the U.S. economy.

If this represented a planned and voluntary effort by lenders to begin trimming America 's debt excesses, it might actually be a good thing.

But that's not the case here, not even close. Rather, this debt reduction is almost exclusively forced on lenders by the pressure of events — the plunging value of mortgages, the surging defaults by debtors, and the huge losses that have caught both banks and regulators off guard.

Second, the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is reporting havoc in the derivatives market.

Derivatives are bets and debts placed by banks and others.

In recent decades, derivatives have grown far beyond any semblance of reason. But in its latest report , the OCC reveals that in the fourth quarter of 2007 ...

For the first time in history, the notional value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks plunged dramatically — by $8 trillion ...

For the first time in history, U.S. banks suffered a massive overall loss on their derivatives — $9.97 billion, and, again ...

These numbers do not yet reflect this year's disasters at Bear Sterns and other institutions.

The OCC's chart below illustrates the magnitude and drama of the decline

The chart shows that, until the third quarter of last year, U.S. commercial banks had been making consistent profits from their derivatives quarter after quarter.

Their total revenue from these and related transactions (red line) never dipped into negative territory ... rarely suffered a significant decline ... and was even making brand new highs through the first half of 2007.

Then, suddenly, in the fourth quarter of last year, we witnessed a landmark game-changing event: For the first time ever, U.S. commercial banks lost big money in derivatives in the aggregate ( as you can plainly see by the sharp nosedive of the red line).

Again, if this were part of a planned retreat by the banks to more prudent trading approaches, it would be a positive. But it's anything but!

Indeed, the OCC specifically states in its report that the sudden and unusual reduction in derivatives was due entirely to the turmoil in the credit markets.

And ironically, nearly all of that turmoil was concentrated in “credit swaps” (blue line in the chart) — the one sector that was designed to protect investors from this precise situation.

These credit swaps were supposed to act as insurance policies that big banks and others bought to help cover their risk in the event of defaults and failures. But they're not working out as planned: Just in the fourth quarter, U.S. banks had a net loss (after all profitable trades) of $11.8 billion on credit swaps alone, according to the OCC.

Those losses helped wipe out all the profits they made in other derivatives, leaving a net overall loss of $9.97 billion.

Third, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that this crisis is barely ONE-THIRD over!

In its Global Financial Stability Report(see Executive Summary ), the IMF predicts that the total losses from the subprime and related credit crises could reach $945 billion, or more than triple the already-huge losses that have been announced so far.

The IMF further warns that ...

“There has been a collective failure to appreciate the extent of the leverage taken on by a wide range of institutions — including banks, monoline insurers, government-sponsored entities, and hedge funds — and the associated risks of a disorderly unwinding.” Now, both the OCC and the Fed reports confirm that this “disorderly unwinding” is already beginning.

“The transfer of risks off bank balance sheets was overestimated. As risks have materialized, this has placed enormous pressures back on the balance sheets of banks.” Now, the OCC report confirms that “the transfer of risk” (with credit swaps) has often failed.

“Notwithstanding unprecedented intervention by major central banks, financial markets remain under considerable strain, now compounded by a more worrisome macroeconomic environment, weakly capitalized institutions, and broad-based deleveraging.” This is precisely what we have been warning you about. Now, it's happening!

Looking ahead, the IMF also warns about...

“Deep-seated balance-sheet fragilities and weak capital bases, which mean the effects of the crisis are likely to be broader, deeper and more protracted.”

“A serious funding and confidence crisis that threatens to continue for a significant period.”

The U.S. Government's Response

You've seen what the Fed has already done — six rate cuts since August of last year ... unprecedented broker bailouts ... and massive new amounts of liquidity pumped into the banking system.

You've seen where a lot of that money has gone — into foreign currencies, gold and oil.

And you've seen the dramatic market surges which that money can generate. Case in point: The latest jump in crude oil to $117 per barrel.

Now, get ready for more of the same:

More rate cuts, with the next expected as soon as April 30 ...

More Fed bailouts ...

Even wilder money printing, and ...

Larger surges in foreign currencies and commodities, despite intermediate setbacks.

But also start preparing for the day when the credit crack-up temporarily overwhelms the Fed, driving the U.S. economy into a far deeper recession than most people expect.

The Bottom Line for You Right Now

The three official reports support several related conclusions:

First, whether the stock market goes up or down in the near term, this crisis is far from over — and it's likely to get a lot worse.

Bottom line: It's far too soon to waver from a path of safety.

Second, credit is already scarcer and is probably going to be even harder to get as this crisis progresses.

Bottom line: If you're looking forward to a future day when you can buy properties at bargain prices, don't count on doing so with a lot of borrowed money. Instead, be prepared to put up substantial amounts of cash.

Third, some banks won't survive this crisis.

Bottom line: Be sure to keep your bank accounts — including principal, accrued interest and checks outstanding — under the FDIC's $100,000 insurance limit. (Amounts that run above the limit could be at risk.) Plus, for maximum safety, use U.S. Treasury bills or money market funds invested exclusively in short-term Treasuries.

Fourth, for protection and profit from a falling dollar, invest in the strongest foreign currencies plus other assets that naturally rise with the falling dollar

A Climate Diasater Coming Soon?

Global Cooling or Global Warming - Which Is It and How Can We Know?

April 11, 2008

by Jo Hartley

NaturalNews

There is huge disagreement in the scientific community about global warming. Researchers on either side have no trouble finding data to support their chosen theory. Recent climatic events highlight the importance of not over interpreting short-term data - temperature fluctuations either up or down. The environmental alarmists who have been overstating connections between extreme weather conditions and a man-made warming trend are on the opposite side of other researchers who are sounding the warning bell about global cooling. Both sides of the issue must be careful to avoid distortion of facts to support beliefs.

The key to interpretation is long-term trends. To focus on a few years or months of climatic data and present any evidence of either cooling or warming as been called a waste of time and perhaps even a harmful distraction.

Over the past year, informal evidence has begun to stack up supporting a global cooling trend. For example, recently Baghdad saw its first snowfall ever, China has recorded its coldest winter in 100 years, and North America has more snow cover this year than it has had in the last 50 years. Additionally, record low temperatures have been recorded in Texas, Florida, Minnesota, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greenland, South Africa, Greece, Argentina, and Chile, to name a few.

Recently, supporters of a global cooling theory were boosted with the release of data from all four global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, GISS, UAH, and RSS). All agree that over the past year temperatures have dropped abruptly over the entire earth.

The entire cooling amount ranges from 0.65C to 0.75C . This amount is significant enough to eliminate almost all of the warming recorded over the last 100 years. Most significant is the fact that this cooling occurred over one year. All four tracking outlets confirmed that this is the fastest temperature shift ever recorded, either up or down.

It is important to note that this new data does not disprove the greenhouse emission theory; however, it does demonstrate that another more powerful driver may now be cooling the earth.

Some researchers are linking the cooling to a reduction of solar activity. Solar activity has a much more significant effect on temperatures than man-made greenhouse emissions. Research has shown that solar activity occurs in regular cycles. The one expected to begin at this time has not begun, however. Sunspots have disappeared and all activity seems to be alarmingly quiet. The last time circumstances were similar to this was right before the beginning of the "Little Ice Age." Some scientists now fear a similar sequence of events may be beginning.

The Little Ice Age occurred roughly 400 years ago. During this period, global temperatures dropped alarmingly. New York Harbor froze solid and glaciers in Norway increased by 100 meters a year.

Scientists on either side of the global cooling/warming debate have begun to agree on one thing. Long term data interpretation is the key to beginning to understand the climatic changes our earth may be experiencing.

Comment: Scientists indeed can agree on nothing. The current concerns over global climate change have produced endless theories, postulations and many, many reams of paper. It is not the intention to recapitulate these endless speculations here but some observations might serve to enhance the theory that instead of universal planetary warming, the actual trend is planetary cooling

Scientists announced in the July 21, 1999 , edition of the journal Nature findings that suggest that global warming can clearly lead to very cold Northern Hemisphere weather or even a worldwide freeze.

Scientists have long known that a severe cold spell occurred after the end of the Pleistocene glaciation, approximately 8,200 years ago. The cause, however, has been a mystery. The authors of the Nature article write that the centuries long cold spell might have been caused by meltwater from the disappearing glaciers, cooling the North Atlantic .

The Laurentide Ice Sheet covered parts of North America with ice up to two miles thick for more than a million years. When the Earth began to warm 10,000 years ago, it retreated back toward the poles. The ice sheet left in its wake at least two lakes containing more water than the Great Lakes combined.

When these drained, through the St. Lawrence River , trillions of gallons gushed into the north Atlantic , flowing out at 100 times the rate water leaves the Mississippi . This cold water then adversely impacted on the northern reaches of the Gulf Stream .

. The Atlantic Gulf Stream normally acts like a conveyor belt to deliver warm tropical water to temperate regions. By adding so much cold fresh water in such a short time, the flood shut down the Gulf Stream .

Temperatures in Greenland and Europe dropped by 6 to 15 degrees for at least 200 years, according to ice core data.

The authors’ conclusions demonstrate how global warming can, paradoxically, provoke a global freeze. If a modern glacier such as the immense Greenland Ice Sheet melts, as it very clearly has been and at an escalating rate, the  result of rising Arctic temperatures, it can easily trigger a similar flood and severe climate fluctuation.

The rapid infusion of immense quantities of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic and the subsequent dislocation of the Gulf Stream , came from what was known as Lake Agassiz .

Lake Agassiz, named after Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz, was a 700-mile long by 200-mile wide lake that once covered much of Manitoba as well as parts of Ontario , Saskatchewan , Minnesota , and North Dakota .  It was formed  about 12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch during last two phases of the Wisconsin Glacial Age as a result of the accumulation of glacial meltwater that was prevented from flowing northward by remnants of the Laurentide Ice Sheet

Approximately 7500 to 8000 years ago, as the climate warmed further, the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted sufficiently to allow the lake to drain through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean..

These events had significant impact on climate, sea level and possible early human civilizations in the Younger Dryas event. BH

Glacial lake transformed to titanic torrent

April 17, 2008

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - For an hour or so Greenland had its own mighty waterfall, flowing secretly at three times the volume of Niagara .

A meltwater lake on the surface of a glacier suddenly emptied in July 2006, sending millions of gallons (liters)of water through cracks in the ice sheet to the ground where it could affect the movement of the ice.

The lake covered 2.2 square miles near the western edge of the ice sheet and took about 24 hours to drain.

During the most rapid 90 minutes, water was flowing out of the lake at 2.3 million gallons (8.71 million liters) per second, according to researchers led by Sarah Das of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.

Under international convention, the minimum flow of Niagara Falls in summer is about 750,000 gallons per second.

The findings are reported in a pair of papers about the Greenland ice sheet appearing in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science. Das and Ian Joughin of the University of Washington in Seattle led the teams that produced both papers.

"We found clear evidence that supraglacial lakes - the pools of meltwater that form on the surface in summer - can actually drive a crack through the ice sheet," Das said in a statement.

The researchers concluded that while surface melt plays a significant role in overall ice sheet dynamics, it has less of an effect than had been expected on the fast-moving glaciers that discharge ice to the ocean.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, NASA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Clark Arctic Research Initiative and the Natural Environment Research Council of Britain.

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

April 23, 2008

by Phil Chapman

The Australian

The scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain , the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York , the Christy group at the University of Alabama , and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California ) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada . Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco . He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger

April 18, 2008

by Marc Lacey

New York Times

PORT-AU-PRINCE , Haiti — Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti ’s presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country’s prime minister packing

Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, “They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.”

That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.

In Cairo , the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa , food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia , the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

Indeed, as it roils developing nations, the spike in commodity prices — the biggest since the Nixon administration — has pitted the globe’s poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations’ farm and environmental policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis tied to so many factors, from strong demand for food from emerging economies like China’s to rising oil prices to the diversion of food resources to make biofuels.

There are no scripts on how to handle the crisis, either. In Asia , governments are putting in place measures to limit hoarding of rice after some shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they could.

Even in Thailand , which produces 10 million more tons of rice than it consumes and is the world’s largest rice exporter, supermarkets have placed signs limiting the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to purchase.

But there is also plenty of nervousness and confusion about how best to proceed and just how bad the impact may ultimately be, particularly as already strapped governments struggle to keep up their food subsidies.

‘Scandalous Storm’

“This is a perfect storm,” President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún , Mexico . “How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of our countries.”

In Asia , if Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia steps down, which is looking increasingly likely amid postelection turmoil within his party, he may be that region’s first high- profile political casualty of fuel and food price inflation.

In Indonesia , fearing protests, the government recently revised its 2008 budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280 million.

“The biggest concern is food riots,” said H.S. Dillon, a former adviser to Indonesia ’s Ministry of Agriculture. Referring to small but widespread protests touched off by a rise in soybean prices in January, he said, “It has happened in the past and can happen again.”

Last month in Senegal , one of Africa ’s oldest and most stable democracies, police in riot gear beat and used tear gas against people protesting high food prices and later raided a television station that broadcast images of the event. Many Senegalese have expressed anger at President Abdoulaye Wade for spending lavishly on roads and five-star hotels for an Islamic summit meeting last month while many people are unable to afford rice or fish.

“Why are these riots happening?” asked Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program, which has issued urgent appeals for donations. “The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you’re hungry you get angry quicker.”

Leaders who ignore the rage do so at their own risk. President René Préval of Haiti appeared to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints about la vie chère — the expensive life — grew. He said if Haitians could afford cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families. “If there is a protest against the rising prices,” he said, “come get me at the palace and I will demonstrate with you.”

When they came, filled with rage and by the thousands, he huddled inside and his presidential guards, with United Nations peacekeeping troops, rebuffed them. Within days, opposition lawmakers had voted out Mr. Préval’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, forcing him to reconstitute his government. Fragile in even the best of times, Haiti ’s population and politics are now both simmering.

“Why were we surprised?” asked Patrick Élie, a Haitian political activist who followed the food riots in Africa earlier in the year and feared they might come to Haiti . “When something is coming your way all the way from Burkina Faso you should see it coming. What we had was like a can of gasoline that the government left for someone to light a match to it.”

Dwindling Menus

The rising prices are altering menus, and not for the better. In India , people are scrimping on milk for their children. Daily bowls of dal are getting thinner, as a bag of lentils is stretched across a few more meals.

Maninder Chand, an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi , said his family had given up eating meat altogether for the last several weeks.

Another rickshaw driver, Ravinder Kumar Gupta, said his wife had stopped seasoning their daily lentils, their chief source of protein, with the usual onion and spices because the price of cooking oil was now out of reach. These days, they eat bowls of watery, tasteless dal, seasoned only with salt.

Down Cairo ’s Hafziyah Street , peddlers selling food from behind wood carts bark out their prices. But few customers can afford their fish or chicken, which bake in the hot sun. Food prices have doubled in two months.

Ahmed Abul Gheit, 25, sat on a cheap, stained wooden chair by his own pile of rotting tomatoes. “We can’t even find food,” he said, looking over at his friend Sobhy Abdullah, 50. Then raising his hands toward the sky, as if in prayer, he said, “May God take the guy I have in mind.”

Mr. Abdullah nodded, knowing full well that the “guy” was President Hosni Mubarak.

The government’s ability to address the crisis is limited, however. It already spends more on subsidies, including gasoline and bread, than on education and health combined.

“If all the people rise, then the government will resolve this,” said Raisa Fikry, 50, whose husband receives a pension equal to about $83 a month, as she shopped for vegetables. “But everyone has to rise together. People get scared. But we will all have to rise together.”

It is the kind of talk that has prompted the government to treat its economic woes as a security threat, dispatching riot forces with a strict warning that anyone who takes to the streets will be dealt with harshly.

Niger does not need to be reminded that hungry citizens overthrow governments. The country’s first postcolonial president, Hamani Diori, was toppled amid allegations of rampant corruption in 1974 as millions starved during a drought.

More recently, in 2005, it was mass protests in Niamey , the Nigerien capital, that made the government sit up and take notice of that year’s food crisis, which was caused by a complex mix of poor rains, locust infestation and market manipulation by traders.

“As a result of that experience the government created a cabinet-level ministry to deal with the high cost of living,” said Moustapha Kadi, an activist who helped organize marches in 2005. “So when prices went up this year the government acted quickly to remove tariffs on rice, which everyone eats. That quick action has kept people from taking to the streets.”

The Poor Eat Mud

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.”

But the grumbling in Haiti these days is no longer confined to the stomach. It is now spray-painted on walls of the capital and shouted by demonstrators.

In recent days, Mr. Préval has patched together a response, using international aid money and price reductions by importers to cut the price of a sack of rice by about 15 percent. He has also trimmed the salaries of some top officials. But those are considered temporary measures.

Real solutions will take years. Haiti , its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself. Outside investment is the key, although that requires stability, not the sort of widespread looting and violence that the Haitian food riots have fostered.

Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling slum of Haiti ’s Cité Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. “Take one,” she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. “You pick. Just feed them.”

Double number of ex-cons join the US army

April 22 2008

by Elana Schor in Washington

The Guardian

The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the demands of the Iraq war, allowing sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats, and child abusers into the military, new records released yesterday showed.

The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.

The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-cannabis-related drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and nine sex offenders.

The new data were released by the oversight committee of the House of Representatives. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight panel, said that while "providing opportunities to individuals who have served their sentences and rehabilitated themselves" is important, the waivers are a sign that the US military is stretched too thin.

The number of moral waivers in the military, mostly for misdemeanours such as speeding fines, reached 34,476 in 2006, or nearly 20% of all enlisted soldiers, according to the Palm Centre at the University of California. Recruits with felony convictions are more likely than other soldiers to drop out or be released from the military.

More than one felony conviction disqualifies recruits from the army or marines, but the navy and air force can admit those with multiple offences.