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Russian Economy hit by Eurozone contraction

March 6, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics, World News

(AFP Photo / Philippe Huguen)

rt.com

The Eurozone economy is edging towards recession as business activity slows. The February shadow came from Italy and Spain. The Russian economy performed better last month, but is expected to be pressed by the Eurozone doom and gloom in the future.

February PMI data – an indicator of business activity – pointed to a drop in the Eurozone economies, causing fears of a continued recession. “A drop in services activity offset a marginal rise in manufacturing production,” the Eurozone PMI report explained.

The PMI Composite output Index for the Eurozone entered negative territory crossing the dividing line between growth and decline. It stood at 49.3 in February, which is a fall from 50.4 in January.

“At this stage, our best estimate is that the region’s GDP will have contracted by 0.1% in the first three months of the year,” commented Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit.

The Eurozone Composite output Index compiled by Markit tracks manufacturing and services at 4,500 companies in the area to provide for a general understanding of the economic environment.

A PMI reading above 50 points to growth, with below 50 pointing to economic contraction. Read the rest of this entry →

Anonymous – Fed Reserve Caught Red Handed

March 4, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Video Perspective

Uploaded by on Feb 25, 2012

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Taking Down the Tents – Occupy

March 4, 2012 in Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

By Phil Edwards

All sides seem to agree that the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters are leaving undefeated. The cathedral authorities stress that although ‘tents and camping equipment’ have been removed from the vicinity of St Paul’s, ‘ideas and protests’ are still welcome. One protester described the eviction as ‘an opportunity for us to move sideways and be innovative and creative’.

But in London, as elsewhere, as the campers have had to move sideways, Occupy will have to find another way forward. It isn’t the kind of protest in which an achievable goal is linked to a symbolic nuisance, so that when the authorities see reason everyone can go home. Its demands have been much bigger, and they’ve been backed by the continuing physical presence of people obstinately taking up space. In this respect it’s much more like the Greenham Common peace camps, or Brian Haw’s one-man encampment in Parliament Square, than a traditional demonstration or sit-in. Their current position recalls the experiences of the Situationist International, a group the Occupy movement has often been compared to, not least by Adbusters, which issued the original call to occupy Wall Street last July. Read the rest of this entry →

A World Bank for a new world

March 4, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

Jeffrey Sachs writes: The world is at a crossroads. Either the global community will join together to fight poverty, resource depletion and climate change, or it will face a generation of resource wars, political instability and environmental ruin.

The World Bank, if properly led, can play a key role in averting these threats and the risks that they imply. The global stakes are thus very high this spring as the Bank’s 187 member countries choose a new president to succeed Robert Zoellick, whose term ends in July.

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The Arrival of the Warrior Corporation – Drones

March 4, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Headline, Politics, World News

ElDave (CC-BY)

By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch

This piece originally appeared at TomDispatch.

In the American mind, if Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press here.  They have generally been greeted as if they were the sleekest of iPhones armed with missiles.

When the first American drone assassins burst onto the global stage early in the last decade, they caught most of us by surprise, especially because they seemed to come out of nowhere or from some wild sci-fi novel.  Ever since, they’ve been touted in the media as the shiniest presents under the American Christmas tree of war, the perfect weapons to solve our problems when it comes to evildoers lurking in the global badlands. Read the rest of this entry →

13 Million Unemployed : Why Aren’t They a Political Force to be Reckoned With?

March 2, 2012 in Headline, Occupy, Politics

By Jenny Brown  -  alternet.org

Unions are still grappling with how to organize the unemployed, including their own ex-members, into a political force.

Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Wrenching testimonies from laid-off workers are overflowing the internet, crying out from the pages of policy reports, and popping up in commercial media. But unions are still grappling with how to organize the unemployed, including their own ex-members, into a political force.

Department of Labor figures for December showed 13.1 million unemployed and actively looking for work, almost half of them for more than six months. Another 8.1 million were working part-time involuntarily, and 2.5 million were too discouraged to look for work.

Unfortunately, unions don’t do a good job of organizing this vast pool, said Tom Lewandowski, who spent nine years on layoff from GE starting in 1975.

Now, as president of the Northeast Indiana Central Labor Council in Fort Wayne, he’s leading an effort to survey unemployed workers, watchdog the county’s economic development, and demand accountability from the unemployment office for laid-off workers struggling to navigate the system. Read the rest of this entry →

Honduras – Resistance Front Forms Political Party

March 1, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

Honduras’s National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP) gathered in Tegucigalpa February 11-12 to launch a political party. The name, “Liberation and Re-foundation Party (Libre),” is timely: Honduras is mired in catastrophe.

Its murder rate is the world’s highest. Political violence, crime, militarization, poverty, malnutrition, drug trafficking, and police corruption are overflowing. Landowner thugs kill family farmers; the two-year toll of murdered journalists is 13. The economy shrunk 2.1% in 2009. On February 14 a prison fire killed 350 mostly uncharged and untried inmates. Most died behind doors the police didn’t unlock. Read the rest of this entry →

Britain leads dash to explore for oil in war-torn Somalia

March 1, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

and Tariq Abdinasir –  guardian.co.uk

Engineers and visitors tour an exploratory well in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region. Photograph: Reuters

Government offers humanitarian aid and security assistance in the hope of a stake in country’s future energy industry

Britain is involved in a secret high-stakes dash for oil in Somalia, with the government offering humanitarian aid and security assistance in the hope of a stake in the beleaguered country’s future energy industry.

Riven by two decades of conflict that have seen the emergence of a dangerous Islamic insurgency, Somalia is routinely described as the world’s most comprehensively “failed” state, as well as one of its poorest. Its coastline has become a haven for pirates preying on international shipping in the Indian Ocean. Read the rest of this entry →

A small but important SF Rally: Why Greece matters to the Occupy movement.

February 27, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

Are the people of Greece being set up “economic hitman” style and could the US be one of the next victims?  About seventy-five of us gathered Friday February 17 at 101 Market Street in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, our home-base.  Green signs dotted the sidewalk with messages such as “IMF out of Greece” and “The people of Greece are sovereign.”  Cars, buses and trolleys passed by, some honking in support.  But today was different than a typical Friday evening at OccupySF, because a speaker from Greece, Maria, stood with a megaphone describing the economic tragedy that Is unfolding for the Greek people, “Children are fainting in schools due to lack of food…this austerity package sets up the country for privatization where the people will have to sell off their water, their sewage, their telecommunications and their natural resources which includes coal and oil.  It will lead to the country’s resources being pillaged.”

As we munched on delicious Greek dolmas donated by a local Café, an Occupy speak-out began on the plight of Greece, and some of our homeless occupiers exhibited knowledge of economics far surpassing the average US citizen.   Mike spoke about the involvement of Goldman Sachs in the derivative swaps that set the country up for failure, and how the signing terms of the austerity measures “literally sell off Greek democracy to private banks and corporations.”  Rob spoke about the parallels with Iceland, a great example of what should happen, and how Wiki-leaks releases showed the corruption and fraud of the bankers, prompting the Icelandic people to denounce the debt.  “We need to prosecute these bankers and get our sovereignty back,” he said.  Derek spoke about how we need alternative structures such as a time-bank/skill-share system to challenge the currency-based system so people can take direct responsibility for what their actions produce, and Nick, a Veteran for peace compared the oppression of the Occupy movement which led to the breaking of his ear-drum by police, to the oppression of the people in Greece. Read the rest of this entry →

March and Rally! Funeral for the Gulf of Mexico! Demands of Government and BP

February 27, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Editorial, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Update, World News

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Mikal NOLA

 

http://www.facebook.com/events/271951906207368/

List of Demands of the Government and BP as a result of the BP oil Disaster:

  1. Revoke the arbitrary cut off dates to file claims: No limit on the filing of claims.
  2. Free public health clinics should be set up in every community impacted by the disaster to facilitate the treatment of those impacted by the chemical poisoning.
  3. The people demand a full and public trial of BP. No settlement! All evidence associated with this trial, documents, tests of marine and human life, and reports should be accessible to the public. We demand full transparency of the government and BP.
  4. The people demand a fair and just outcome of the BP trial, nothing less than 100% compensation for human and marine losses suffered as a result of BP and the government’s criminal negligence and full and ongoing rehab of gulf waters and wetlands.
  5. Ban the use of dispersants, including Corexit. Facilitate the use of green technology to rehab the gulf and wetlands. Facilitate the use of green technology to rehab the gulf and wetlands.
  6. Full disclosure by the U.S. government, BP and NALCO, the company that manufactures Corexit, as to how much Corexit has actually been in the Gulf of Mexico.
  7. NALCO should be held accountable for damages to marine and human life for the use of Corexit.
  8. Seize assets of BP and put them under public control. Those assets will be used toward compensation, health care for all poisoned by the chemicals, green rehabilitation of the Gulf waters and beaches, retraining of oil field workers offer green jobs and fair and just compensation for loss of jobs, and development and production of green energy and technology.
  9. Manage and regulate the oil industry under a democratically elected council of workers, community members and environmental planners.
  10. Massive investment into a public works program to develop and move toward clean, renewable energy and public transpiration to create millions of union jobs and move towards green energy, and end our dependence on fossil fuels.

Occupy 2.0: the convergence of streets and networks

February 23, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

Giorgio Griziotti, Dario Lovaglio, and Tiziana Terranova

To the extent to which we are not witnessing a clash between two capitalisms but a process of reconfiguration realized through the hegemony of finance, information and circulation, the only way to change the current situation is through the autonomous organization of the multitude’s living labour in the streets and on the net.

About one year ago, the world attention turned to the nascent powers of expression and action of networked multitudes first in the Wikileaks battle and, subsequently, in the Arab revolutions and the social movements 15M and Occupy. After this revelatory year, dense with threats and promises from a completely new global movement, global governance – painfully aware of the great threat that such autonomous horizontal communication poses to its control – is vigorously attacking digital freedoms.

It is in this context that the (possibly already foiled) attempts to pass the Stop Piracy Online Act (SOPA), the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the effective shutdown of Megaupload are taking place. Read the rest of this entry →

Honduras: Our Continuing Catastrophe

February 22, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

by: Mark Engler

(Photo: davidNallah / Flickr)

Honduras has become a human rights disaster. The country now has the world’s highest murder rate. And impunity for political violence is the norm.

For all this, the United States deserves a good deal of the blame.

I was pleased to see the New York Times recently publish a hard-hitting op-ed by Dana Frank that makes this case. Lest anyone in this country think that things in Honduras have settled into a peaceable, post-coup normality, Frank describes the post-June 2009 chain of events—a coup that the United States didn’t stop, a fraudulent election that it accepted—[that] has now allowed corruption to mushroom.

The judicial system hardly functions. Impunity reigns.

At least 34 members of the opposition have disappeared or been killed, and more than 300 people have been killed by state security forces since the coup, according to the leading human rights organization Cofadeh. At least 13 journalists have been killed since [President Porfirio] Lobo took office, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Read the rest of this entry →

Made in Jordan: Thousands of gunmen preparing to enter Syria?

February 22, 2012 in Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

Soldiers of the Free Syrian Army (AFP Photo / Ricardo Garcia Vilanova)

Over 10,000 Libyans are reportedly being trained in a closed-off zone in Jordan, before being snuck into Syria to fight for the opposition. These men are allegedly paid around US$1,000 a month, funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

­Jordan-based AlBawaba news website says most of the gunmen who are being trained are actually part of the Libyan armed opposition, who have not had the chance to lay down arms following the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The allegations of funding from Riyadh and Doha were not attributed to anyone, but AlBawaba did draw attention to the fact that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar actively support the Syrian opposition.

At the same time, several Iranian news sources report that some 50 Turkish officers arrested in Syria last week have confirmed that they were trained by the Israeli Special Forces to carry out insurgent acts against the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad.

The arrested officers also, according to Iran’s Fars news agency, admitted to initiating contact with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, inadvertently lending support to the countries’ involvement in the ongoing conflict in Syria. Read the rest of this entry →

Noam Chomsky: The Imperial Way

February 16, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics, World News

by: Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch

In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere.  In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery.  They have also rid themselves of all U.S. military bases and of IMF controls.

A newly formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada.  If it actually functions, that would be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as “the backyard.”

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries — Middle East/North Africa — which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” Control of MENA energy reserves would yield “substantial control of the world,” in the words of the influential Roosevelt advisor A.A. Berle.

To be sure, if the projections of a century of U.S. energy independence based on North American energy resources turn out to be realistic, the significance of controlling MENA would decline somewhat, though probably not by much: the main concern has always been control more than access.  However, the likely consequences to the planet’s equilibrium are so ominous that discussion may be largely an academic exercise.

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Iran Being Targeted For It’s Banks

February 13, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Politics, Update, World News

By Pete Papaherakles

The world's richest family runs the world's banks

Could gaining control of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran (CBI) be one of the main reasons that Iran is being targeted by Western and Israeli powers? As tensions are building up for an unthinkable war with Iran, it is worth exploring Iran’s banking system compared to its U.S., British and Israeli counterparts.

Some researchers are pointing out that Iran is one of only three countries left in the world whose central bank is not under Rothschild control. Before 9-11 there were reportedly seven: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Iran. By 2003, however, Afghanistan and Iraq were swallowed up by the Rothschild octopus, and by 2011 Sudan and Libya were also gone. In Libya, a Rothschild bank was established in Benghazi while the country was still at war.

Islam forbids the charging of usury, the practice of charging excessive, unreasonably high, and often illegal interestrates on loans,and that is a major problem for the Rothschild banking system. Until a few hundred years ago usury was also forbidden in the Christian world and was even punishable by death. It was considered exploitation and enslavement.

Since the Rothschilds took over the Bank of England around 1815, they have been expanding their banking control over all the countries of the world. Their method has been to get a country’s corrupt politicians to accept massive loans, which they can never repay, and thus go into debt to the Rothschild banking powers. If a leader refuses to accept the loan, he is oftentimes either ousted or assassinated. And if that fails, invasions can follow, and a Rothschild usury-based bank is established.

The Rothschilds exert powerful influence over the world’s major news agencies. By repetition, the masses are duped into believing horror stories about evil villains. The Rothschilds control the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the IMF, the World Bank and the Bank of International Settlements. Also they own most of the gold in the world as well as the London Gold Exchange, which sets the price of gold every day. It is said the family owns over half the wealth of the planet—estimated by Credit Suisse to be $231 trillion—and is controlled by Evelyn Rothschild, the current head of the family.

Objective researchers contend that Iran is not being demonized because they are a nuclear threat, just as the Taliban, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qadaffi were not a threat.

What then is the real reason? Is it the trillions to be made in oil profits, or the trillions in war profits? Is it to bankrupt the U.S. economy, or is it to start World War III? Is it to destroy Israel’s enemies, or to destroy the Iranian central bank so that no one is left to defy Rothschild’s money racket?

It might be any one of those reasons or, worse—it might be all of them.
——
Pete Papaherakles, a U.S. citizen since 1986, was born in Greece. He is AFP’s outreach director.

from  –  americanfreepress.net

Al-Qaeda joins ranks of revolt backers in Syria

February 12, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

The leader of Al-Qaeda has voiced his support for the Syrian uprising. He called on Muslims to join the opposition in Syria in their drive to oust President Bashar Assad.

­In an eight-minute video address posted on Sunday on a jihadist website, Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to aid the Syrian rebels.

“Continue your revolt and anger, don’t accept anything else apart from independent, respectful governments,” the successor of Osama Bin Laden urged the Syrians.

He also called on Syrians not to rely on Western or Arab governments, whom he said would impose a new regime subservient to the West.

The news comes as the Arab League is discussing in Cairo their next step in tackling the Syrian crisis. Earlier Russia and China blocked a draft resolution at the UN Security Council, which called for Assad to step down. Now a plan to send a joint UN-Arab League observer mission to Syria is on the table.

The country has been in turmoil for almost a year now. The government says it fights off foreign-sponsored terrorist groups masquerading as public uprising. Critics of the regime call it a bloody crackdown on Syrian citizens.

­Dr. Hisham Jaber, from the Center for Middle East Studies, told RT that Washington and Al-Qaeda are fighting against a common enemy in Syria.

“It seems that Al-Qaeda and the Western bloc are working in the same way and they have the same target, which is to destroy the regime in Syria and to collapse it,” he said. “Al-Qaeda never denied its presence in Syria. Al-Qaeda never denied its support of insurgents in Syria.”

from  — rt.com

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called to account before parliament in Iran

February 8, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics, World News

by    –  from guardian.co.uk

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opens a medical production line, in front of a picture of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Photograph: Ay-Collection/Sipa/Rex Features

The Iranian parliament has summoned the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to answer a series of questions over the government’s handling of the economy and his personal judgments.

The move is unprecedented in the history of the Islamic republic.

After a year of internal debate and unsuccessful attempts to question or impeach the president, MPs secured enough signatures for an attempt to summon Ahmadinejad. They succeeded in persuading the parliament’s presiding board to read the motion during Tuesday’s open session.

The move comes at a time of discontent at home owing to western economic sanctions and growing international isolation over Iran‘s nuclear programme. In recent weeks, fears of a major confrontation between Iran and the west have grown.

Within a month of receiving the summons, Ahmadinejad is required by law to appear in the parliament. Otherwise, MPs may impeach him. However, such a decision does not follow automatically either from his failing to attend the session or from his failing to give answers that satisfy parliament.

Local news agencies quoted the deputy head of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, as saying: “Ahmadinejad will be immediately informed about the decision … He has to appear in parliament a month after being officially informed.” Earlier this month, representatives of Ahmadinejad had met with MPs in an attempt to address their concerns about the president. But Mostafa Reza Hosseini, a spokesman for the MPs, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that they “had not been convinced by the answers”, resulting in their summoning the president, in a motion signed by 79 of Iran’s 290 MPs.

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‘Israel a bully on the verge of global isolation’

February 8, 2012 in Editorial, Headline, Politics, Video Perspective, World News

from – rt.com

Israeli soldiers advance during a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kfar Kadum, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on January 6, 2012      (AFP Photo / Jaafar Ashtiyeh)

Israel should put an end to pointedly hawkish political discourse towards Iran because a preemptive assault might cost it a loss of global legitimacy, warns Elan Baruch, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa.

­For Baruch, who recently resigned from government on grounds of principle, it is obvious that Iran is pursuing a position of a regional power “to serve interests that go beyond the immediate borders of Iran”. Primarily, Iranian politics is defensive and oriented towards self-protection, but for the domestic political discourse of Israel that is far from obvious.

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Europe coughing up cash for US military gamble in Iran

February 5, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Politics, Video Perspective, World News

from  –  rt.com

Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) transiting the Arabian Sea. (AFP Photo / Handout / US NAVY / MCS3 Will Tyndall)

Europeans should question why they are being asked to pay for an American-Israeli adventure in Iran during a time of unprecedented austerity, political analyst Chris Bambery told RT.

Iran says it will definitely put a swift stop to oil exports to “certain” European countries. A possible cut in supplies to other EU states is still under discussion.

The move comes in response to an EU oil embargo scheduled to come into force on July 1.

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Petrodollar pumping US policy on Iran, backfire looms

February 2, 2012 in Editorial, Finance, Headline, Politics, World News

by Michael T. Winter  -  taken from rt.com

As tensions between the US and Iran heat up, author Michael T. Winter believes the main reason behind America’s harsh stance is Tehran’s move to seek an alternative to the dollar as an oil currency.

An oil field near Pol-e-Dokhtar, Iran

­Economic sanctions, spearheaded by the US and, less willingly, the EU could have a disastrous effect on both of their respective economies.  If Iran cannot sell their oil to Europe, there are plenty of customers waiting in the wings, and if they come bearing not petrodollars, but gold and sovereign currencies, then all the better for Iran.  These sanctions, if enforced, will in effect place a serious dent in the power of the petrodollar.

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