Wall Street Bank Run

David Ignatius
Washington Post
Saturday, February 23, 2008

It doesn't look like an old-fashioned bank run because it involves the biggest financial institutions trading paper assets so complicated that even top executives don't fully understand the transactions. But that's what it is -- a spreading fear among financial institutions that their brethren can't be trusted to honor their obligations.

Frightened financiers are pulling back from credit markets -- going on strike, if you will -- to escape the unraveling daisy chain of securitized assets and promissory notes that binds the global financial system. As each financier tries to protect against the next one's mistakes, the whole system begins to sag. That's what we're seeing now, as credit market troubles spread from bundles of subprime residential mortgages to bundles of other kinds of debt -- from student loans to retailers' receivables to municipal bonds.

Investors are nervous because they aren't sure how to value these bundles of securitized assets. So buyers stay away, prices fall further, and the damage spreads.

The public, fortunately, doesn't understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands. And there would be more pressure for bad policies -- ones that try to freeze the damage, rather than letting prices fall to levels where buyers will return and the markets will clear. Hillary Clinton's proposed moratorium on home foreclosures, in that respect, is one of the truly bad ideas of our time. It would make the situation worse by increasing even more the illiquidity and inflexibility of the housing market.

The answer to Wall Street's bank run may be a version of what saved Main Street banks during the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933 to reassure the public that there was an insurer of last resort for the banks -- and that people's money was safe even if they couldn't see it or touch it or put it under a mattress. Rep. Barney Frank and other congressional experts are weighing different approaches to this problem of how to backstop the markets without Clinton's misguided moratorium.

These markets are now so complicated that most of us can't begin to understand the details. So I asked the chief financial officer of a leading concern to walk me through what has been happening. The problem, he said, is that financial institutions are required to "mark to market" their tradable assets (which is a fancy term for setting a value) even when there isn't a functioning market. In many cases dealers can do little more than guess at the value -- and other investors down the line know it.

Full article here.

Diana inquest probes murky world of espionage

Paul Majendie
Reuters
Sunday, February 24, 2008

British intelligence officers are facing unprecedented public scrutiny as they take the stand at the inquest into Princess Diana's death to deny claims that the security services killed her on the royal family's orders.

Their former boss has already given a fascinating glimpse into the murky world of espionage -- but this is not all about glamorous 007 figures. Theirs is a more mundane world of bureaucratic checks and balances.

With his deadly array of guns and gadgets, James Bond has a Licence to Kill in his constant battle to thwart villains plotting world domination.

In reality, the world's most famous spy would need a Class Seven authorization agreed by his line managers and personally signed by the Foreign Secretary.

Britain's former spy chief Richard Dearlove gingerly lifted the lid on this secret world when giving evidence to the inquest into the 1997 deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a Paris car crash.

"His testimony made the security services sound more like a firm of accountants than a bunch of 007s," The Daily Telegraph concluded.

Now it is the turn of 10 serving and former intelligence officers to appear in court -- but their identities will be protected and they will be just referred to as numbers or letters.

The court will be cleared of the media and public on Tuesday when they start to give evidence, which will be piped by audio link to an annex.

Full article here.

Depression drugs don’t work, finds data review

Times Online

Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence.

The new generation of antidepressant drugs work no better than a placebo for the majority of patients with mild or even severe depression, comprehensive research of clinical trials has found.

The researchers said that the drug was more effective than a placebo in severely depressed patients but that this was because of a decreased placebo effect.

The study, described as “fantastically important” by British experts, comes as the Government publishes plans to help people to manage depression without popping pills.

More than £291 million was spent on antidepressants in 2006, including nearly £120 million on SSRIs. As many as one in five people suffers depression at some point. With that in mind, ministers will today publish plans to train 3,600 therapists to treat depression. Spending on counselling and other psychological therapies will rise to at least £30 million a year.

The study, by Irving Kirsch, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull, is the first to examine both published and unpublished evidence of the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which account for 16 million NHS prescriptions a year. It suggests that the effectiveness of the drugs may have been exaggerated in the past by drugs companies cherry-picking the best results for publication.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which is due to review its guidance on treating depression, said that it would consider the study.

Mental health charities say that most GPs admit that they are still overprescribing SSRIs, which are considered as effective as older drugs but with fewer side-effects. SSRIs account for more than half of all antidrepressant prescriptions, despite guidelines from NICE in 2004 that they should not be used as a first-stop remedy.

American and British experts led by Professor Kirsch examined the clinical trials submitted to gain licences for four commonly used SSRIs, including fluoxetine (better known as Prozac), venlafaxine (Efexor) and paroxetine (Seroxat).

The study is published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine. Analysing both the unpublished and published data from the trials, the team found little evidence that the drugs were much better than a placebo.

“Given these results there seems little reason to prescribe antide-pressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed,” Professor Kirsch said. “The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking antidepressants is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.” He added that the study “raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported”.

The data for all 47 clinical trials for the drugs were released by the US Food and Drug Administration under freedom of information rules. They included unpublished trials that were not made available to NICE when it recommended the drugs for use on the NHS. “Had NICE seen all the relevant unpublished studies, it might have come to a different conclusion,” Professor Kirsch said.

Tim Kendall, a deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit, who helped to formulate the NICE guidance, said that the findings were “fantastically important” and that it was “dangerous” for drug companies not to have to publish their full data. He added: “Three of these drugs are some of the most commonly used antidepressants in this country. It’s not mandatory for drug companies to publish all this research. I think it should be.”

SSRIs are not prescribed to patients under 18 because of the risk of suicide.Drugs watchdogs in Europe are considering tighter controls on the development of new medicines, The Times reported this month, and may soon require regulators to monitor psychiatric effects and the risk of suicide more closely during clinical trials.

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said: “The authors have failed to acknowledge the very positive benefits these treatments have provided to patients and their families dealing with depression and their conclusions are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice. This one study should not be used to cause unnecessary alarm and concern for patients.”

A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said: “Extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated that fluoxetine is an effective antidepressant.”

IMF slashes Canada's growth outlook on US slowdown

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The International Monetary Fund on Monday slashed a half point from its 2008 Canadian economic growth forecast, to 1.8 percent, mainly due to a weakening US economy.

Despite a sharp slowdown in the final quarter of 2007, the Canadian economy expanded by around 2.5 percent for the full year, buoyed by nearly four percent growth in domestic demand, particularly private consumption and residential investment, the IMF said in a report on Canada.

In its prior forecast in October, the IMF had seen Canada's economy slowing slightly to a 2.3 percent pace in 2008.

However, rapidly deteriorating conditions in its neighbor to the south, where a severe housing slump and a related credit squeeze have nearly stalled the US economy, have affected Canada, the IMF said.

"Growth slowed toward the end of the (2007) year, and is expected to decelerate further to 1.8 percent in 2008 reflecting a sharp downturn in the United States, past currency appreciation, and a tightening of financial market conditions," the IMF said in a report on Canada.

Nevertheless, "domestic demand would likely remain solid," it said, noting "Canada's impressive macroeconomic track record since the mid-1990s, which has been underpinned by sound monetary and fiscal policies and favorable external conditions."

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in a statement: "The IMF report shows Canada is an economic leader, and our government is taking steps to ensure continued growth in the face of uncertainty."

The report, he said, "highlights the flexibility of the Canadian economy in adjusting to adverse shocks and notes that our strong fiscal situation puts Canada in an enviable position to take on the economic challenges ahead."

In October, Ottawa announced it would cut the federal debt by 10 billion dollars (Canadian, US) in fiscal 2007-2008, ending March 31 of this year, and by at least three billion dollars each year subsequently.

On March 31, 2007, Canada's national debt dropped to 467 billion dollars, or 32.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 68.4 percent a decade ago.

Ottawa has pledged to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to less than 25 percent by 2011-2012.

The IMF also welcomed Canada's "recent measured easing" of monetary policy -- two quarter-point interest rate cuts, in December 2007 and January 2008 -- saying the country's "strong monetary framework, as well as exemplary budgetary performance, have provided room for supportive policy actions."

The downward growth revision was expected because the Washington-based IMF had announced in December it would lower its October forecasts, issued in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook report, because of the US housing and credit crisis.

In recent days, the IMF has cut a half point off its 2008 growth estimates for Germany and France, to 1.5 percent. In January it trimmed 0.4 percentage points from its forecast for the US, the world's largest economy, to 1.5 percent.

Canada's financial conditions have been "modestly affected" by the spillovers from the global credit crunch, "but uncertainties remain with respect to the impact of further deterioration in US financial market conditions."

The Canadian dollar has appreciated by 45 percent in real effective terms since 2002, the IMF said, noting that "domestic adjustment to the appreciation has been very smooth thanks to the flexible labor markets."

Tuesday, the Canadian government will present its 2008-2009 budget, but Flaherty has already downplayed expectations, saying: "This is a time of limited economic growth where you have to have a solid hand on the tiller."

U.S. existing home sales lowest in 9 years

Pacific Business News

Existing home sales plummeted to the lowest level in nine years nationwide, as the housing market battles a critical credit crunch and a flood of homes listed for sale, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

The seasonally adjusted annual rate dropped to 4.89 million homes last month, the lowest recorded since 1999, when the national association began tracking the activity.

And the median home price -- meaning half the homes sold for more, the other half for less -- declined for the fifth-consecutive month to $201,100, a 4.6 percent drop from $210,900 a year ago.

The elimination of subprime loans, considered the primary cause for the housing meltdown, has greatly slowed the market compared to previous years, industry leaders say.

"Subprime loans and other risky mortgage products have virtually disappeared from the marketplace, and over the past five months, this has been reflected in soft but fairly stable home sales," NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a news release.

NAR president Richard Gaylord of Long Beach, Calif., says some home buyers, especially those in higher-priced markets, are waiting for higher limits on conventional loans.

"Once buyers have greater access to higher loan limits, it will take a few months for increased shopping activity to translate into higher sales," he said in a news release. "We should see some movement of pent-up demand by this summer, but higher loan limits need to be implemented fully and promptly to have maximum benefit."

Existing home sales -- including condominiums and town homes -- dropped in all four regions of the nation, according to the 1.3 million-member association. In the West, existing home sales tumbled 28.5 percent from a year ago.

Some economists are less optimistic of a quick turnaround, citing a 10.3-month supply of homes on the market nationwide -- about double the inventory a few years ago, according to an Associated Press report.

New York Merchants Embrace Euro

Robin Shulman
Washington Post
Monday, February 25, 2008

NEW YORK -- "Euros Only" reads a handmade sign in Billy's Antiques & Props on East Houston Street in Manhattan. But that's really just an attention grabber. Actually, owner Billy Leroy explains, the store will accept Canadian dollars and British pounds, and U.S. dollars, too.

Leroy is one of a small but growing group of New York merchants in tourist-favored neighborhoods such as SoHo, the East Village and Times Square who have begun to accept the euro and other foreign currencies.

With the dollar near its lowest rate ever against the euro and the numbers of international tourists in New York at all-time highs, some store owners figure accepting the euro offers a convenience to customers and sometimes generates a stockpile of a strong currency for themselves.

Leroy began accepting euros after a buying trip to a Paris flea market in November, when the exchange rate meant he couldn't afford to purchase his usual volume of dressers, mirrors and wax figurines. This is his way to raise euros back home.

"European customers are here, buying apartments, and when they're buying apartments, they're here buying furniture for the apartments," said Leroy, in his shop, smoking a cigar. "This weekend, 50 percent of my customers were European."

The precipitous fall of the dollar -- currently one euro is worth nearly $1.50 -- has already changed the city.

Last year, the weak currency helped draw 8.5 million foreign visitors to New York, more than ever before, said George Fertitta, chief executive of NYC & Co., the city's tourism operation, and what they have been buying is as varied as lingerie and condominiums. Tourists generated $28 billion in spending last year and supported more than 350,000 jobs, and Europeans represent the largest group of foreign visitors, he said.

The plummeting dollar and rising euro have even entered popular culture. Rapper Jay-Z has a video in which he cruises New York streets flashing wads of euros.

"I need euros," said Garba Bar¿, a street vendor who sells cellphone covers and iPod cases from a table on Broadway in SoHo. He explained that he is from Niger, which he visits frequently and where the euro is commonly used.

Full article here.

Recovery may take longer than usual: Greenspan

Souhail Karam
Reuters
Monday, February 25, 2008

Economic growth has stalled and recovery may take longer than usual, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said on Monday.

"As of right now, U.S. economic growth is at zero," Greenspan said at an investment conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second-largest city. "We are at stall speed."

"Recovery might take longer to emerge than it usually does," he added.

The longer growth stays at zero, the more likely the world's largest economy would start to contract, he said, adding that globalization of trade could ease some shocks.

"Growing globalization of trade and the economy would facilitate the absorption of shocks in the U.S.," he said.

Full article here.

Kristol: ‘I Recommend The Politics Of Fear’

Think Progress
Monday, February 25, 2008

This morning on Fox News Sunday, New York Times columnist Bill Kristol recommended that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) employ the “politics of fear” to attack Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL):

KRISTOL: [Obama’s] riding a wave of euphoria. She [Clinton] needs to puncture it. The way you puncture euphoria is reality, or to be more blunt, fear. I recommend to Senator Clinton the politics of fear.

Kristol explained that his fear-mongering political strategy would focus on Iran. He recommended that Clinton say the following about Obama: “He wants to negotiate on January 21st with Ahmadinejad. Here’s what Ahmadinejad has said about blowing up Israel.” Watch it:

Kristol has invested heavily in a strategy of convincing policymakers to bomb Iran. Here’s some examples of what Kristol has advocated:

– “We could in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner than people expect.”

– The Iranian people would embrace “the right use of targeting military force.”

– President Bush “could easily build political support” for an attack on Iran “at the beginning of 2008.”

Because the concept of engaging Iran is a threat to Kristol’s agenda, he appears desperate to do all he can to delegitimize the idea of negotiation. As Kristol’s Fox News colleage Juan Williams has said, all Kristol wants is “war, war, war.”

Middle Class May Be Subject To Food Rations, Warns UN

Experts warn of food riots as foreign troops cleared to patrol American cities
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, February 25th, 2008

The UN is warning of a food shortage crisis and drawing up plans for food rations which will hit even middle-class suburban populations as inflation and economic uncertainty causes the prices of staple food commodities to skyrocket.

The United Nation's World Food Programme cautions today that if it doesn't receive more funding, it will have to halt food aid to developing countries like Mexico and China.

"The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a “new area of hunger” in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being “priced out of the food market” because of rising food prices," reports the Financial Times.

The warning coincides with a speech by William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, who cautioned that rising agricultural raw material prices would translate this year into sharply higher food inflation.

It also parallels a prediction by Don Coxe, a Chicago-based global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group who correctly forecast the fall of the dollar and the rise in price of gold and oil years in advance, who last week spoke of a "global food crisis" which will cause the world to enter into, "A period of food shortages and swiftly rising prices," leading to government embargoes.

With the U.S. on the verge of a recession and, as many analysts have warned, a potential second great depression, those long scoffed at for hoarding vast quantities of storable food may unfortunately be able to say "I told you so" if the dollar continues to deteriorate and people begin to be priced out of the food market.

Global food prices have skyrocketed by as much as 60 per cent in the past year, while UN officials warn of the likelihood of food riots.

"If prices continue to rise, I would not be surprised if we began to see food riots,” said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, last October.

Many see the food shortages, whether real or manufactured, as simply another pretext for the implementation of martial law and the introduction of foreign troops to patrol major U.S. cities.

A recent announcement by Northcom confirmed that U.S. and Canadian troops will be allowed to patrol each other's countries in the event of a national emergency.

"U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, and Canadian Air Force Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command, have signed a Civil Assistance Plan that allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency," reads a Northcom press release.

Turkey ignores Iraq pull-out plea

Al Jazeera

Heavy fighting between the Turkish military and PKK fighters in northern Iraq has continued despite pleas by the Iraqi government for Turkey to withdraw.

Turkish troops on Monday fired more than 40 salvos of artillery shells across the Iraqi border and witnesses said helicopters continued to target Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) bases in Iraq.

A day earlier, a Turkish helicopter crashed in Iraq and at least eight soldiers were killed during a ground operation against the banned Kurdish group.

Turkey's five-day incursion has focused on border towns and Al Jazeera has learned of troops and helicopters heading towards the town of Goli.

'Heavy fighting'

James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in northern Iraq, said: "[Goli] is a place that has been a PKK camp, its in a mountainous area, and we believe that attack is about to get under way or is already under way."

With Turkish and Iraq's regional Kurdish government denying journalists access to the clashes are taking place, it is difficult to independently confirm the fighting, he said.

"What is clear from both Turkish and PKK figures, although they're very different," Bays said, "is that there are still casualties on both sides and that heavy fighting is continuing."

The Turkish military says 15 soldiers have been killed since Thursday but PKK fighters say they have killed 47 troops so far.

Turkey also said it had killed 33 more PKK members, taking the Kurdish toll to 112 since the launch of the cross-border incursion on Thursday evening.

Withdrawal calls

The Iraqi government on Sunday called for Turkey to withdraw its troops from northern Iraq.

A statement by Nuri al-Maliki's government urged Turkey "to withdraw its forces from Iraqi soil as soon possible".

"The government of Iraq calls on Turkey to respect its sovereignty and unity and considers that the unilateral operation across the border is a threat to the region," the statement said.

It came after Turkey's military warned Iraqi Kurds not to shelter Kurdish fighters fleeing its offensive.

The PKK is fighting for autonomy in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey and have carried out attacks on Turkish targets from bases in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Started in 1984, the conflict has claimed as many as 40,000 lives.

Ohio on front line in U.S. housing meltdown

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - The U.S. housing meltdown has struck cities and neighborhoods throughout the country, but it has hit few places harder than Cleveland's Slavic Village.

On some streets in the neighborhood - named for the Polish and Czech immigrants who settled here - only one or two houses are occupied. The rest are boarded up and slowly rotting.

"This is what you get when lenders run rampant," said Mark Seifert, executive director of a local nonprofit, the East Side Organizing Project, referring to what critics call "predatory" lending practices prevalent during the U.S. property boom.

Walking the area recently, Seifert pointed out the street corner where on Sept 1, 2007, Asteve'e "Cookie" Thomas, 12, wandered into a gunfight between drug dealers who had occupied empty houses in area. She was on the way home after buying candy. She bled to death on a neighbor's porch.

Local officials said stricter state and federal regulation of mortgage lenders could have prevented mass foreclosures in Cleveland, in the state of Ohio and across the United States.

Cleveland's city council passed an anti-predatory lending ordinance in 2002. But it was preempted by a state law that blocked municipalities from enacting such legislation.

One result: Until January 2007, no qualifications were necessary to become a property appraiser in Cleveland, a factor local officials said helped lead to thousands of questionable mortgages. Thousand of loans were also offered to people who could not afford them, they said.

"What we needed here was meaningful regulation," said Jim Rokakis, county treasurer for Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland. "What we got was the Wild West of lending."

Cleveland and other U.S. cities are now blighted with thousands of abandoned homes, most stripped of anything of value. And the rot is spreading to wealthy suburbs.

"We're seeing an increasing number of wealthier people - attorneys, architects, doctors - from the suburbs seeking help," said ESOP's Seifert.

"Cleveland is a microcosm of what's happening across the country," said Cleveland city councilman Michael Polensek. "This is America, just on a much smaller scale. It's outrageous this could happen in America."

HEAVY TOLL

Ohio, a "Rust Belt" state with industries like autos and steel, lost 23 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007 -- 235,900 jobs. That put many mortgages under strain, but Ohio's overall problem loans are far larger.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's National Delinquency Survey in December said Ohio had the country's highest percentage of homes in the process of foreclosure at 3.7 percent.

The MBA said Ohio was ahead of the other 49 U.S. states in foreclosures for both prime loans - those for people with good credit - and subprime loans - those with poor credit.

"This crisis is detrimental to the economy of this state," said Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat elected in 2006.

In Cleveland, the housing crisis has left 10,000 homes abandoned, around 10 percent of the city's buildings. The ESOP's Seifert said that "could easily pass 15,000 this year."

The ripple effects are pronounced. Cleveland property tax collections fell in both 2006 and 2007, a first for the city.

The city estimates it will need $100 million to demolish its 10,000 abandoned buildings. The city's annual demolition budget in 2006 and 2007 was $6 million.

"Never in the history of this country have we witnessed such a massive attack on abandoned properties," Polensek said.

Thieves and scavengers steal metal pipes, copper wiring, aluminum sidings and anything else of value from empty homes, leaving empty shells in places like Slavic Village. Some boarded-up homes here have "No copper, only PVC" painted on the boards to ward of would-be looters.

Vacant buildings are also a magnet for crime.

Efforts are under way to help strained homeowners in Cleveland. Groups like ESOP try to broker deals between borrowers and lenders to arrange affordable, fixed-rate loans.

Local bank Third Federal Savings, a unit of TFS Financial Corp, never sold the interest-only or adjustable rate mortgages that have fueled and worsened the housing crisis. It now offers fixed-rate mortgages to struggling home owners.

"We were disgusted at the way homeowners were lied to and taken advantage of and decided we had to take action," said Marc Stefanski, chief executive of Third Federal.

Local citizen groups like "Bring Back the 70's Street Club" - representing homeowners from East 70th to East 78th streets - want to reverse the tide and revitalize neighborhoods decimated by the housing meltdown. But they say there is much anger.

"Mortgage lenders devastated neighborhood after neighborhood here because they decided that the dollar on Wall Street was worth more than my dollar here on East 76th Street," said club president Barbara Anderson.

Anderson said she wants to hear specific solutions to the housing crisis from the candidates running in the state's March 4 presidential primary. "I want to know who's going to clean up this mess," she said.

Dr. Hans Koechler: 9/11 May Have Been an Inside Job

Syed Akbar Kamal
Scoop
February 21, 2008

In a significant observation many time UN contributor & international observer Professor Hans Koechler said “9/11 may have been an insider’s job” in response to a question from one of the delegates attending his lecture The ‘Global War on Terror - Contradictions of an Imperial Strategy’ last night at the Trades Hall in Auckland.

“I am not a boy-I am 59. There are many inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the official version of events. Those who could not handle a Cessna pulled off 9/11,” he said.

But he was quick to note that the official version has to be challenged. Quoting David Ray Griffin he said these events, in terms of destruction caused, these incidents cannot have been exclusively organized by a shadowy network of Mujahedeen from the remote places of the globe.

The causes officially given for the incidents are not a sufficient explanation for what actually happened on that day, especially as regards the logistics of this highly sophisticated operation and the very advanced infrastructure required for it.

He has published more than 300 books, reports and scholarly articles in several languages. In his book The Global War on Terror and the Metaphysical Enemy he writes the atrocities of September 11, 2001- Instead of dealing with the contradictions and inconsistencies in the official version of events and the numerous gaps in terms of the factual information, a “dogma of political correctness” has been promulgated according to which 19 Islamic-inspired Arab hijackers, directed by an elusive “Al-Qaeda” (“base”), succeeded in carrying out the atrocities all by themselves.

	During the course of his lecture he recalled the detailed and precise questions asked on 11 January 2008 by Yukihisa Fujita, member of Japan’s House of Councillors (Senate) and Director of the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, about the 9/11 attacks as the origin of the war on terror

During the course of his lecture he recalled the detailed and precise questions asked on 11 January 2008 by Yukihisa Fujita, member of Japan’s House of Councillors (Senate) and Director of the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, about the 9/11 attacks as the origin of the war on terror are a rare exception.

The total silence about Mr. Fujita’s intervention before the Committee, that was broadcast live on Japan’s public NHK television channel, in the Western corporate media is a telling example of the lack of courage in front a powerful political establishment. Thus, a rather docile and obviously opportunistic intellectual élite in the West, in tandem with client régimes in the Muslim world, has effectively silenced – or at least marginalized – critical opinion.

Against this bleak – geopolitical as well as civilizational – background we can basically identify two desiderata of international politics in the framework of the increasing alienation between Islam and the West, which accompanies the confrontation over the “global war on terror”:

The countries of the West, “assembled,” to varying degrees of intensity and loyalty, around the United States as the imperial hegemon, have to realize that they are about to embark upon an unwinnable test of wills: a conflict that cannot be ended in (conventional) military terms and that will, if not contained by means of multilateral diplomacy, completely absorb the “political energies” and exhaust, to a considerable extent, the resources even of advanced industrial societies.

At the same time, they have to correct and eventually reverse the process of “civilizational alienation” vis à- vis Islam for which they are responsible in important respects. There is a need, as then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has put it, “to unlearn the stereotypes that have become so entrenched in so many minds and so much of the media.”

Since 1972, UN Secretaries-General in their statements subsequently acknowledged Professor Köchler’s contributions to international peace. In April 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Professor Koechler as international observer at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands (Lockerbie Trial).

Koechler said “up to the present day, the government of the United Kingdom has rejected calls for a public inquiry into the circumstances of the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1989.”

He said “up to the present day, the government of the United Kingdom has rejected calls for a public inquiry into the circumstances of the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1989. As international observer, appointed by the United Nations, of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands I have outlined the flaws in the proceedings and called for a revision of the court’s verdict.”

Eventually, in June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, apparently sharing the author’s original concerns, referred the case back to the appeal court.

He pointed out the sentencing of a lone intelligence officer from Libya for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which has caused the death of 270 people. While this individual most likely is not guilty as charged, i.e. is not the one who inserted the bomb onto the plane via Malta and Frankfurt (according to the “Opinion of the Court”: The High Court of Justiciary at Camp Zeist, Case No: 1475/99, 31 January 2001), no efforts have been made to date to comprehensively investigate the midair explosion and prosecute the actual perpetrators. The U.K. and U.S. governments have both rejected a public inquiry into the circumstances of this incident, thus preventing efficient measures against possible acts of terrorism against civil aviation in the future.

Prof Koechler is the Founder and President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), an international non-governmental organization (NGO) in consultative status with the United Nations and with a membership in over 70 countries, representing all continents.

Through his research and international activities, Professor Koechler made major contributions to the debate on international democracy and United Nations reform, in particular reform of the Security Council. This was acknowledged by international figures such as the German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. In 1985, Professor Koechler organized the first major colloquium on “Democracy in International Relations” on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the United Nations in New York. With Irish Nobel Laureate Seán MacBride he initiated the Appeal by Lawyers against Nuclear War, which set in motion an international campaign that eventually led to a General Assembly resolution and the issuing of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice. As President of the I.P.O., he dealt with the humanitarian issues of the exchange of prisoners of war between Iran and Iraq and with the issue of Kuwaiti POWs and missing people in Iraq.

EU Pulls Out of Northern Kosovo Due to Serb Resistance

Sofia News Agency
February 24, 2008

The north of Kosovo is home to just under half of the region’s 120,000 minority Serbs. They have issued a warning to the EU mission of police and magistrates that they will be treated like an occupying force.

The European Union has withdrawn staff from the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica following violent protests by the Serb minority, an EU envoy announced.

“We have temporarily brought back our personnel, but we will maintain our office in the north,” EU envoy Peter Feith told reporters in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren.

The EU staff in Mitrovica have been preparing a 2,000 strong EU police-judicial mission in Kosovo after its declaration of independence, which has been rejected by the Serbian government and Kosovo Serbs.

Kosovo’s status as a country has been recognised by the United States and the major powers of the European Union.

The EULEX rule of law mission is taking over from the United Nations, who have run Kosovo since 1999.

The north of Kosovo is home to just under half of the region’s 120,000 minority Serbs. They have issued a warning to the EU mission of police and magistrates that they will be treated like an occupying force.

Pakistan Blocks YouTube

Associated Press
February 24, 2008

Pakistan’s government has banned access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube because of anti-Islamic movies that users have posted on the site, an official said Sunday.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told the country’s 70 Internet service providers Friday that the popular Web site would be blocked until further notice.

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a movie trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release an anti-Quran movie portraying the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

The PTA official, who asked not to be identified because he was not an official spokesman, said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority also blocks Web sites that show controversial drawings of the Prophet Muhammad. The drawings were originally printed in European newspapers in 2006 and were reprinted by some papers last week.

Read entire article

HPV Vaccine: It’s Not Just for Girls Anymore

Jan Hoffman
The New York Times
February 24, 2008

Now Merck wants your boys to take Gardasil, never mind they might fall over dead like girls who take the vaccine. Not a word about that in this New York Times propaganda piece, though.

How cool are those Gardasil Girls? Riding horses, flinging softballs, bashing away on drum sets: on the television commercials, they are pugnacious and utterly winning. They want to be “One Less,” they chant — one less victim of cervical cancer. Get vaccinated with Gardasil, they urge their sisters. Protect yourselves against the human papillomavirus, or H.P.V., which causes cervical cancer.

But someone’s missing from this grrlpower tableau.

Ah, that would be Gardasil Boy.

Gardasil Girl’s cancer-related virus? Sexually transmitted. She almost certainly got it from him.

So far, Gardasil is approved just for girls. They can be vaccinated when they are as young as 9, although it’s recommended for 11- and 12-year-olds, before they are sexually active.

As the commercials show, the pitch to Gardasil Girl’s parents doesn’t need to address sex: it’s about protecting their daughter from a cancer.

Read entire article

Virtuality and reality 'to merge'

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website, in San Francisco

Computers the size of blood cells will create fully immersive virtual realities by 2033, leading inventor Ray Kurzweil has predicted.

Exponential growth in processing power and the shrinking of technology would see the development of microscopic computers, he said.

"We will see a billion-fold increase in the price-performance of computers in the next 25 years," he said.

"Virtual will compete with reality," he told the Game Developers Conference.

Pea-sized computer

Mr Kurzweil said it was possible to accurately predict the growth and change in computing power by looking at how it had developed over the last 50 years.

"There will be a 100,000-fold shrinking of computer technology over the next 25 years," he said.

"Today you can put a pea-sized computer inside your brain, if you have Parkinson's disease and want to replace the biological neurons that were destroyed by the disease."

He said a billion-fold increase in computing performance and capability over the next 25 years coupled with the 100,000 fold shrinking, would lead to "blood cell-size devices... that can go inside our bodies and keep us healthy and inside our brain and expand our intelligence".

He said the blood cell computers would be able to "produce full immersion virtual reality from inside the nervous system".

He said the games industry had to be thinking about the future development of computing now.

"The games industry fits in well with the acceleration of progress; in no other industry do you feel that more than games."

Mr Kurzweil, who invented the flat bed scanner and text-to-speech synthesis, said the virtual world was a misnomer.

"In virtual worlds we do real romance, real learning, real business. Virtual reality is real reality."

He added: "Games are the cutting edge of what is happening - we are going to spend more of our time in virtual reality environments.

"Fully emergent games is really where we want to go. We will do most of our learning through these massively parallel interactions."

"Play is how we principally learn and principally create," he said.

News, features and footage from the GDC 2008 in San Francisco

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7258105.stm

Published: 2008/02/22 01:16:10 GMT

Russia 'causes concern' says poll

By Nick Childs
World affairs correspondent, BBC News
Most people in the G-7 leading industrialised countries have a negative view of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, a BBC poll suggests.

Of 16,000 people questioned, 56% said he had had a harmful impact on democracy and human rights in Russia and on peace and security in the world. But in the remainder of the 30 countries covered by the poll, opinions of Mr Putin were more favourable.

And in Russia itself, he was given overwhelmingly positive ratings.

The survey was carried out by polling organisations Globescan and The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

Legacy

There is little doubt that, in his eight years as Russian President, Vladimir Putin has had a considerable impact on the world stage, and inside Russia.

How positively or negatively his legacy is viewed, though, depends on where you are in the world, according to the BBC World Service poll.

PUTIN POLL DATA Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.

But a key imponderable in viewing these results is also the extent to which one is indeed talking about a "legacy".

Mr Putin is stepping down as president shortly. Just how much influence he will continue to wield, and in what precise capacity, remains a matter of great speculation.

Against the background of general unease among Western governments over the direction that Moscow has been taking recently under Mr Putin, the poll suggests that 56% of people in the world's seven leading industrialised countries think he has had a negative impact on democracy and human rights in Russia.

Nearly half - 47% - also think his impact on international peace and security has been negative.

Among the six western European countries polled, opinion was on the negative side generally. What is more, this poll did not include former Warsaw Pact countries in central and eastern Europe, where the attitudes of people towards Moscow are likely to be negative.

Yet, despite a recent series of major diplomatic rows between Moscow and London, 45% of Britons polled had a positive view of Russia's world role.

Counterweight?

In terms of the more broadly positive reactions overall among the 30 countries except Russia that were surveyed, this may be driven in part by a continuing view in many regions of the world that Russia represents a potential counterweight to the United States,

The US is still widely seen as the dominant superpower, but whose foreign policy under the Bush administration has been especially controversial.

So, beyond the major industrialised countries and the West, there may be less unease about - and perhaps even a welcoming of - a newly-assertive Russia.

The counterweight argument may be reflected in the very different results emerging in this survey from the Middle East - 78% of Egyptians view Russian influence as positive, only 29% of Israelis do.

Egypt, of course, has a long history of close ties to Russia, even though the current Egyptian government is close to Washington.

Strikingly, in terms of Russia's and Mr Putin's world roles, the Chinese are very positive. That may be because the Chinese feel a common bond with the Russians as part of a camp that seeks to check US influence, and reassert a multi-polar world.

Still, the scale of some of the results is surprising - 69% of the Chinese surveyed see Russia playing a positive international role.

Beijing has certainly developed a relationship with Moscow, but only up to a point, and the two are themselves still potential rivals.

Significantly, Russians in this survey give Mr Putin high approval ratings on all the issues raised - including democracy, human rights, and quality of life in the country, as well as on the international stage. And, for Mr Putin himself, these may be the most telling results.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7259320.stm

Published: 2008/02/25 00:22:38 GMT