azeri air force chief shot dead

Azerbaijan air force head killed

The commander of Azerbaijan's air force has been shot dead outside his house in the capital, Baku, officials have said.

Lt-Gen Rail Rzayev, 64, was shot in the head by an unknown gunman while getting into his car at around 0800 (0400 GMT), the private Turan news agency reported.

Defence ministry officials said the general was taken to a military hospital, but died shortly afterwards.

The authorities say they have launched an investigation into the murder, but they do not know what the motive was.

The BBC's Martin Vennard, who recently returned from Baku, says Gen Rzayev was made commander of the air force and air defence forces shortly after Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

At the time, Azerbaijan was in conflict with neighbouring Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan, which lies on the Caspian Sea, has major oil and gas resources, while the opposition says corruption is widespread.

President Ilham Aliyez won re-election in October in a vote which international observers said fell short of fully democratic standards.

In October 2008, the International Crisis Group described Azerbaijan's armed forces as "fragmented, divided, accountable-to-no-one-but-the-president, un-transparent, corrupt and internally feuding".

"There have been several instances of officers arrested on corruption and embezzlement charges, but these tend to be brought selectively against those who have been critical of the regime," it said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7882911.stm

Published: 2009/02/11 10:07:15 GMT

© BBC MMIX

uk: legalizing drugs will stop violence

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-obama-and-the-lethal-war-on-drugs-1606268.html

Johann Hari: Obama and the lethal war on drugs

The death toll in Tijuana, Mexico, is now higher than in Baghdad

Wednesday, 11 February 2009

With the global economy collapsing all around us, the last issue President Barack Obama wants to talk about is the ongoing War on Drugs. But if he doesn't – and fast – he may well have two collapsed and haemorrhaging countries on his hands. The first lies in the distant mountains of Afghanistan. The second is right next door, on the other side of the Rio Grande.

Here's a starter for 10 about where this war has led us. Where in the world are you most likely to be beheaded? Where are the severed craniums of police officers being found week after week in the streets, pinned to bloody notes that tell their colleagues, "this is so that you learn respect"? Where are hand grenades being tossed into crowds to intimidate the public into shutting up? Which country was just named by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as the most likely after Pakistan to suffer a "rapid and sudden collapse"?

Most of us would guess Iraq. The answer is Mexico. The death toll in Tijuana today is higher than in Baghdad. The story of how this came to happen is the story of this war – and why it will have to end, soon.

When you criminalise a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn't disappear. The trade is simply transferred from chemists and doctors to gangs. In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up – and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of London or Los Angeles, where teen gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3,000 per cent profit margins on offer. Now imagine this process on a countrywide scale, and you have Mexico and Afghanistan today.

Drugs syndicates control 8 per cent of global GDP – which means they have greater resources than many national armies. They own helicopters and submarines and they can afford to spread the woodworm of corruption through poor countries right to the top.

Why Mexico? Why now? In the past decade, the US has spent a fortune spraying carcinogenic chemicals over Colombia's coca-growing areas, so the drug trade has simply shifted to Mexico. It's known as the "balloon effect": press down in one place, and the air rushes to another.

When I was last there in 2006, I saw the drug violence taking off and warned that the murder rate was going to rocket – but I didn't imagine it would reach this scale. In 2007, more than 2,000 people were killed. In 2008, it was more than 5,400 people. The victims range from a pregnant woman washing her car, to a four-year-old child, to a family in the "wrong" house watching television. Today, 70 per cent of Mexicans say they are frightened to go out because of the cartels.

The cartels offer Mexican police and politicians a choice: plato o plomo. Silver or lead. Take a bribe, or take a bullet. Juan Camilo Mourino, the Interior Secretary, admits the cartels have so corrupted the police they can't guarantee the safety of the public any more. So the US is trying to militarise the attack on the cartels in Mexico, offering tanks, helicopters and hard cash.

The same process has happened in Afghanistan. After the toppling of the Taliban, the country's bitterly poor farmers turned to the only cash crop that earns them enough to keep their kids alive: opium. It now makes up 50 per cent of the country's GDP. The drug cartels have a bigger budget than the elected government, so they have left the young parliament, police force and army riddled with corruption and virtually useless. The US reacted by declaring "war on opium".

The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the NATO commander has ordered his troops to "kill all opium dealers". Seeing their main crop destroyed and their families killed, many have turned back to the Taliban in rage.

What is the alternative? Terry Nelson was one of America's leading federal agents tackling drug cartels for over 30 years. He discovered the hard way that the current tactics are useless. "Busting top traffickers doesn't work, since others just do battle to replace them," he explains. But there is another way: "Legalising and regulating drugs will stop drug market violence by putting major cartels out of business. It's the one sure-fire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?"

Of course, the day after legalisation, a majority of gangsters will not suddenly join the Hare Krishnas and open organic food shops. But their profit margins will collapse as their customers go to off-licences and chemists, so the incentives for staying in crime will largely end. We don't have to speculate about this. When alcohol was legalised, the murder-rate fell off a cliff – and continued to drop for the next 10 years. (Rates of alcoholism, revealingly, remained the same.) No, Obama doesn't want to spend his political capital on this. He is the third consecutive US President to have used drugs in his youth, but he knows this is a difficult issue, where he could be tarred by his opponents as "soft on crime".

Yet remember: opinions are febrile in a depression. At the birth of the last great downturn, support for alcohol prohibition was high; within five years, it was gone. The Harvard economist Professor Jeffrey Miron has calculated that drug prohibition costs the US government $44.1bn per year – and legalisation would raise another $32.7bn on top of that in taxes if drugs were taxed like alcohol. (All this money would, in a sane world, be shifted to drug treatment.)

Can the US afford to force this failing policy on the world – especially when it guarantees the collapse both of the country they are occupying and their own neighbour?

Drug addiction is always a tragedy for the addict – but drug prohibition spreads the tragedy across the globe. We still have a chance to take drugs back into the legal regulated economy, before it's too late for Mexico and Afghanistan and graveyards-full of more stabbed kids on the streets of Britain. Obama – and the rest of us – have to choose: controlled regulation or violent prohibition? Healthcare or warfare?

To join the fight to legalise drugs, good organisations to join are Transform or Stop the Drug War.

j.hari@independent.co.uk
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-big-question-do-we-need-a-new-debate-about-relaxing-drugs-policy-in-britain-1606276.html

The Big Question: Do we need a new debate about relaxing drugs policy in Britain?

By Ed Howker

Wednesday, 11 February 2009


Why are we asking this now?

Today, the Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) publishes a report proposing the downgrading of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) or "Ecstasy" from a Class A to Class B substance with the same legal penalties for possession and dealing as crack-cocaine and heroin. Only last month, however, the Home Office reiterated its intention to maintain the drug's status as Class A – on 4 January – so the report is likely to have very little effect on government policy. It comes hot on the heels of the ACMD's recommendation that cannabis should remain a Class C drug, even though the Government reclassified it as a Class B substance last month. Both drug debates expose the growing chasm between the Government and their scientific advisers, a point underscored by the recent furore concerning the head of the Advisory Council Professor David Nutt and the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – who herself used cannabis in her youth.

What did Professor Nutt do wrong?

In an article for the latest edition of the Journal of Psychopharmacology Professor Nutt stated: "There is not much difference between horse riding and Ecstasy," explaining that horse riding accounts for more than 100 deaths a year while Ecstasy use is linked to some 30 deaths a year – up from 10 a year in the early 1990s. The point he was exploring was why certain practices are considered acceptable by society and others are not. "This attitude," he wrote, "raises the critical question of why society tolerates – indeed encourages – certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others such as drug use".

These seemingly innocuous questions were greeted by outrage. The Home Secretary called on him to apologise to families who have lost loved ones to Ecstacy – though not those who have lost loved ones to horse riding – and the ACMD moved to distance itself from the comments. On Monday he issued a statement saying: "I am sorry to those who may have been offended by my article. I would like to apologise to those who have lost friends and family due to Ecstasy use."

Was the Home Secretary's response reasonable?

Plenty of people think not. Danny Kushlick, head of policy at Transform, the drug think tank, argues that Jacqui Smith is helping to close down public debate on drugs: "The first casualty of any war is truth and the war on drugs is no exception. The Church of Prohibition is based on faith and a perverse idea of creating security, especially for young people. It is so overwhelmingly counterproductive that only propaganda can sustain support for it. Consequently, anyone who throws honesty, truth, reality or evidence into the debating ring must be vilified as being a traitorous heretic."

Have these kind of attacks happened before?

Yes. Three years ago the Chief Constable of North Wales Police, Richard Brunstrom, stated that Ecstacy was "no more dangerous than aspirin" and that he would "campaign hard" for heroin to be legalised. He also stated that drugs laws were out of date and that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 should be replaced by a new "Substance Misuse Act". There were immediate and repeated calls for his resignation. Other police chiefs have argued that too much time is spent dealing with cannabis use. Last year, Simon Byrne, Merseyside's assistant chief constable and ACPO spokesman on policing cannabis, said forces had agreed with the Government's original decision to downgrade the drug because of the "disproportionate time spent by frontline officers in dealing with offenders in possession of small amounts of cannabis".

So is prohibition working?

Probably not. The UK has one of the most punitive sentencing structures for drugs in Europe. The possession of an illegal drug is punishable by a prison sentence of between two and seven years. It is very difficult to establish how effective this policy is. Since 1971, when the Misuse of Drugs Act was enacted, there has never been any rigorous official assessment of its efficacy. What we do know is that 30 years ago there were around 1,000 "hard" drug addicts. Today there are around 270,000.

Where do the political parties stand?

The Government, though previously committed to the downgrading of cannabis, has now uprated it. The thrust of Home Office drugs policy, however, is the identification of users and pushers through neighbourhood policing, and improving prison treatment programmes. It also seeks to extend international agreements to intercept drugs and help addicts to complete treatment.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats seek to re-classify cannabis as a Class C drug, and Ecstasy as a Class B drug. They also want to end imprisonment as a punishment for possession for own use of any Class B or C drug.

The current aim of Conservative drugs policy is to pursue an effective abstinence-based approach, weaning hard-drug addicts off methadone through residential rehabilitation. However, the Tory leader David Cameron once had a more flexible approach. In 2002, while a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, he co-authored a review of UK drug policy which recommended: "that the Government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways – including the possibility of legalisation and regulation – to tackle the global drugs dilemma." Mr Cameron is now not persuaded by legalisation.

Do we need a new public debate on drugs?

Almost certainly. Danny Kushlick, at Transform, says, "Most drug 'debates' are mismatched discussions between those who are opposed to fundamental reform and those in favour of sensible evidence-based policy making – leading to much heat and little light. One way out of the impasse would be for the Government to commission an independent impact analysis of legal regulation and prohibition, in order to provide more grist for the debating mill."

Haven't we heard these kind of calls before?

All too frequently. To give one example, ahead of the 1998 UN session on drugs, an open letter was sent to the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan calling for an honest debate: "Too often those who call for open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies, and serious consideration of alternatives are accused of 'surrendering'. But the true surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress critical analysis, and dismiss all alternatives to current policies. Mr secretary- general, we appeal to you to initiate a truly open and honest dialogue regarding the future of global drug control policies."

It was signed by more than 100 political and community leaders from around the world including the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Labour MP Austin Mitchell. Asked if he believed that there had been any improvement, Mr Mitchell said yesterday: "Things have gone from bad to worse, there is no possibility of an honest discussion now. Anyone who sticks their head above the parapet and calls for a rational consideration of the drug laws gets it shot off and kicked around by a horde of lunatics."

Should we finally end the war on drugs?

Yes...

* Strict drugs policies needlessly turn law-abiding citizens into criminals

* The drugs war means that illegal psychotropic substances become more valuable than gold. And it becomes impossible to stop supply

* The war on drugs drives use and production underground, making it impossible for government to regulate

No...

* Recent polling indicates that the number of British young people taking recreational drugs is falling – the war is working

* We cannot legally condone the use of substances that have such detrimental effects on society

* If the Government weakens its stance then it is admitting defeat

us bonds: asian tigers dump 10bn$ a week

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4560901/

Bond-market-calls-Feds-bluff-as-world-falls-apart.html

Global bond markets are calling the bluff of the US Federal Reserve.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Last Updated: 7:22PM GMT 08 Feb 2009

The yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds – the world's benchmark cost of capital – has jumped from 2pc to 3pc since Christmas despite efforts to talk the rate down.

This level will asphyxiate the US economy if allowed to persist, as Fed chair Ben Bernanke must know. The US is already in deflation. Core prices – stripping out energy – fell at an annual rate of 2pc in the fourth quarter. Wages are following. IBM, Chrysler, General Motors, and YRC, have all begun to cut pay.

The "real" cost of capital is rising as the slump deepens. This is textbook debt deflation. It was not supposed to happen. The Bernanke doctrine assumes that the Fed can bring down the whole structure of interest costs, first by slashing the Fed Funds rate to zero, and then by making a "credible threat" to buy Treasuries outright with printed money.

Mr Bernanke has been repeating this threat since early December. But talk is cheap. As the Fed hesitates, real yields climb ever higher. Plainly, the markets do not regard Fed rhetoric as "credible" at all.

Who can blame bond vigilantes for going on strike? Nobody wants to be left holding the bag if and when the global monetary blitz succeeds in stoking inflation. Governments are borrowing frantically to fund their bail-outs and cover a collapse in tax revenue. The US Treasury alone needs to raise $2 trillion in 2009.

Where is the money to come from? China, the Pacific tigers and the commodity powers are no longer amassing foreign reserves ($7.6 trillion). Their exports have collapsed. Instead of buying a trillion dollars of extra bonds each year, they have become net sellers. In aggregate, they dumped $190bn over the last fifteen weeks.

The Fed has stepped into the breach, up to a point. It has bought $350bn of commercial paper, and begun to buy $600bn of mortgage bonds. That helps. But still it recoils from buying Treasuries, perhaps fearing that any move to "monetise" Washington's deficit starts a slippery slope towards an Argentine fate. Or perhaps Bernanke doesn't believe his own assurances that the Fed can extract itself easily from emergency policies when the cycle turns.

As they dither, the world is falling apart. Events in Japan have turned deeply alarming. Exports fell 35pc in December. Industrial output fell 9.6pc. The economy is contracting at an annual rate of 12pc. "Falling exports are triggering a downward spiral of production, incomes and spending. It is important to prepare for swift policy steps, including those usually regarded as unusual," said the Bank of Japan's Atsushi Mizuno.

The bank is already targeting equities on the Tokyo bourse. That is not enough for restive politicians. One bloc led by Senator Koutaro Tamura wants to create $330bn in scrip currency for an industrial blitz. "We are facing hyper-deflation, so we need a policy to create hyper-inflation," he said.

This has echoes of 1932, when the US Congress took charge of monetary policy. We are moving to a stage of this crisis where democracies start to speak – especially in Europe.

The European Central Bank's refusal to follow the lead of the US, Japan, Britain, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden in slashing rates shows how destructive Europe's monetary union has become. German orders fells 25pc year-on-year in December. French house prices collapsed 9.9pc in the fourth quarter, the steepest since data began in 1936. "We're dealing with truly appalling data, the likes of which have never been seen before in post-War Europe," said Julian Callow, Europe economist at Barclays Capital.

Spain's unemployment has jumped to 3.3m – or 14.4pc – and will hit 19pc next year, on Brussels data. The labour minister said yesterday that Spain's economy could not "tolerate" immigrants any longer after suffering "hurricane devastation". You can see where this is going.

Ireland lost 36,500 jobs in January – equal to a monthly loss of 2.3m in the US. As the budget deficit surges to 12pc of GDP, Dublin is cutting wages, disguised as a pension levy. It has announced "Rooseveltian measures" to rescue the foundering companies.

The ECB's obduracy has nothing to do with economics. It fears zero rates as a vampire fears daylight, because that brings the purchase of eurozone bonds ever closer into play. Any such action would usher in an EMU "debt union" by the back door, leaving Germany's taxpayers on the hook for Club Med liabilties. This is Europe's taboo.

Meanwhile, Eastern Europe is imploding. Industrial output fell 27pc in Ukraine and 10pc in Russia in December. Latvia's GDP contracted at a 29pc annual rate in the fourth quarter. Polish homeowners have had the shock from Hell. Some 60pc of mortgages are in Swiss francs. The zloty has halved against the franc since July.

Readers have berated me for a piece last week – "Glimmers of Hope" – that hinted at recovery. Let me stress, I was wearing my reporter's hat, not expressing an opinion. My own view, sadly, is that there is no hope at all of stabilizing the world economy on current policies.

whig's spokesman: the guillotine for bankers

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1138673/Vince-Cable-Bring-guillotine--bankers.html

Vince Cable: 'Bring back the guillotine...for bankers'

By Vince Cable

10:27 PM on 08th February 2009

CABLE: 'The unfettered greed and rewards for stupidity and failure which have been exposed in the City leave a very bad taste in everyone's mouth'
The crass behaviour of Britain’s financial aristocracy rivals the last of the Bourbons. Marie Antoinette famously patronised the Parisian mob with her ‘let them eat cake’, while dining in luxury in the Tuileries.
The City bankers who ruined their banks but have been kept in employment by the taxpayer now demand we pay them their bonuses to maintain the aristocratic lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They know no shame and take no blame. They are lucky the British have no guillotines in stock.

Is the public outrage simply the politics of envy? I think not. Most of us have no problem with successful entrepreneurs earning lots of money. They rightly command respect, as the backbone of a healthy, private enterprise system.
The bonus-hunting bankers, by contrast, stand charged with destroying wealth on an epic scale. Foolish, greedy, irresponsible behaviour and excessive risk-taking led to massive losses and the crisis in the banking system which is now costing millions their jobs and many their homes. Why should such failure be rewarded?
The banks were deemed ‘too big to fail’. Otherwise, the bankers would be on the dole. The Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest has a balance sheet – assets and liabilities – much bigger than the British economy. It is one of the biggest banks in the world.
Had it been allowed to go bankrupt, it would have caused massive destruction: the financial equivalent of detonating an H-bomb.

So the Government had to step in, using taxpayers’ money to buy shares.

The chief culprit, the bank’s former chief executive Sir Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, has disappeared with his millions. But most senior executives and the whizzkids in the investment banking arm whose trading activities with billions of pounds of ‘toxic’ paper lie at the heart of the present crisis, have remained.

Managers now seek their ‘bonuses’, arguing that their unique skills are needed to dig the bank out of the hole they created. This is a little like the managers of a hospital with a terrible record of poor hygiene and premature deaths surviving the sack, then demanding more money as an incentive to improve.
Other banks, less in the spotlight, incubate the same culture of excessive pay. It was revealed last week that Barclays pays a man £40million to legally avoid British taxes – the ultimate insult to taxpayers who have to underwrite the bank.

When I debated these issues with a leading hedge fund manager on Newsnight, he argued that there is a ‘market’ rate and we have to pay it to attract the best people to clean up the mess. I understand the pragmatic approach, but it is wrong.

There are more bankers than banking jobs. Large numbers are being laid off. Those who remain are lucky to be in work. Nor are there easy pickings overseas. The Obama Administration is cracking down on bonuses in the US. Even the banker-friendly Swiss government has now slashed bonuses in the banks it had to rescue.

Sir Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin, the former head of Royal Bank Of Scotland, presided over the company as it plunged to losses of £28bn
In this new world, those running the Government-subsidised or guaranteed banks are public servants, in the same position as the top managers of the NHS or the immigration service or the prison service.

The head of the NHS, the fourth-biggest employer in the world, is paid £220,000 a year, an extremely good salary but way below what the City bankers have come to expect.

The Government will have to be firm and stop dithering on the sidelines appealing plaintively to them to behave, like a weak teacher struggling to control an unruly class.
First, the pay and benefits of all employees in publicly supported institutions should be fully declared. Anyone paid over, say, £100,000, should have their remuneration made public. Just as MPs are being called to account on careless policing of expenses and generous pension arrangements, so should others who benefit from the taxpayers’ support.
Now is also the time to set the rules for bonuses in future contracts. Many good companies have incentive schemes which motivate their employees. The banks, by contrast, have incentivised their employees, particularly in investment banks, to take extreme risks with depositors’ money, then walk away from their deals with fat commission payments.

In future, any bonuses must be in company shares, properly priced, which can only be cashed in after five years or more. In other words, cash bonuses should be banned.
The future of High Street banking will also be very different. The old-fashioned clearing banks should be stripped of their high-risk, gambling operations and be required to operate as the safe, reliable, stable institutions they once were.
Britain will continue to need bright, enterprising people and to reward success. But the unfettered greed, and rewards for stupidity and failure which have been exposed in the City, leave a very bad taste in everyone’s mouth. The financial aristocracy has to learn to respect the public who pay their wages. Otherwise we shall soon be importing French guillotines.

Vince Cable is the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman

uk recession, revolution asking the right questions

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Recession: the road to revolution

Political elites have more to fear than protectionism – the economic crisis threatens to bring regime change in its wake

Richard Gott guardian.co.uk

Wednesday 4 February 2009 19.00 GMT

A spectre haunts the gatherings of the political elites of much of the world as they contemplate the imminent collapse of the economic and political model they have fondly supported for the last 30 years. Politicians and economists wedded to the current neo-liberal model of capitalism rail against one possible outcome of the current crisis that they regard as totally beyond the pale, something that is absolutely unthinkable and undiscussable and only mentioned to conjure up an alarming image that will frighten the children.

Yet the spectre is in fact a perfectly respectable economic philosophy invoked from time to time and in different places over several centuries. It has a name – protectionism – often associated with the writings of Friedrich List, a 19th-century professor of political economy who opposed free trade, supported government intervention in the economy and advocated the erection of protectionist tariff barriers to protect a country's industry and agriculture. His book, The National System of Political Economy, published in 1841, was highly influential both in the United States and in Bismarck's Germany. List was an early opponent of globalisation. He accused Adam Smith of "cosmopolitanism", of constructing the notion of a beneficent global community that clearly flew in the face of the facts.

For most people know otherwise. They know, with List, that the global community is an invented phantom. Nearer home, they have no reason to expect that the EU will protect their interests. Indeed, they vote against its proposed constitution whenever they get the opportunity. Europe is moribund, and the only community they know and recognise is the nation state to which they belong, and whose elected government they require and expect to defend their work, their culture and their way of life. Yet governments in the neo-liberal era have other concerns and have manifestly not been doing anything of the kind. As a consequence, as the banks go bust and the economic situation deteriorates, British workers have appeared on unofficial picket lines to defend their jobs, just as the citizens of Bolivia were led to demonstrate spontaneously a few years ago against the privatisation of their water supply. People learn quickly. As Lenin recognised: they can learn in
20 days what they forgot in 20 years.

Such a huge chasm between the faulty ideology of the governing elite and the growing political understanding of the great mass of the people leads eventually to regime change, as has happened in country after country in Latin America during the last decade. This is the spectre, even more dramatic than protectionism, that now looms over Britain and the continental partners with whom it has joined forces in the neo-liberal madness of recent decades. Suddenly, the probability emerges that few of today's governments will be here in a couple of years time; they will be replaced, and replaced again if they fail to come up with credible solutions. And the solutions will be national rather than global, supportive of the local society envisaged by List rather than the failed cosmopolitan vision of the neo-liberals.

Today's crisis is far more wide-ranging than most politicians and commentators are prepared to admit. It will last for at least 10 or 20 years, not just for one. It will go on and on, producing utopian programmes, reverses and changes along the way. This is not 1929, nor yet 1917. It is more comparable to the preliminary rumbles of 1789, to the collapse of the ancien regime and the start of a long revolutionary period of huge untried experiments and uncertainty.

There is an apparent flaw in this argument, of course, for today there is no left or right, and there appears to be no group of impatient intellectuals waiting for their ideas to be seized and picked up by the next group of leaders. The upheavals of 1789 were preceded by decades of Enlightenment debate, with political ideas that could be expanded and promoted by successive generations of revolutionaries. Today, so complete is the grip of neo-liberal ideology on the political and media structures of the west that no alternative ever gets an adequate airing. There seems to be an ideological vacuum.

Yet this is not really so. There are plenty of ideas about and many of them are being tested in Latin America by a new generation of political leaders put in power by rebellions from below. They just remain below the radar of the media and the political class, who pay no attention. Protectionism (in different forms and guises) is one new/old idea; the recovery of history is another. So too is the revival of the economic activity of the state, a state characterised by justice and efficiency, and as different from the Soviet Union as from the delirious construction of the ideologues of neo-liberalism.

In this unfolding scenario, forgotten questions will be asked again: why do we allow the media to be dominated by foreign owners and foreign programmes? Why is our economic activity in the hands of foreign corporations? Why are we forced by advertising to purchase products that we have no desire or need to consume, simply in order to sustain the country's economy? Why do we leave thousands of acres in the hands of private landowners? Why does our country make no effort to be self-sufficient in food? Why do we still pretend that Britain is an imperial country, 50 years after the end of empire? Why do we remain allied to the most dangerous and reactionary country in the world?

Such liberating ideas can only come to the top of the agenda if the present political structure is demolished and swept away. Fortunately, the current systemic crisis is making this ever more probable. Our leaders, of course, ignore the likelihood of their imminent demise and scare us with innumerable arguments: protectionism is perceived at worst as an open door to fascism, at best as a forerunner of a yet more disastrous economic disaster. We should ignore the smoke screen of mystification that they try to erect and welcome the coming seismic upheaval. Then we will have to ride the political struggles of the consequent tsunami wave, and look forward with optimism to a more constructive and hopeful future.

kosovo: mensonges osce sur les massacres

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http://www.michelcollon.info/articles.php?dateaccess=2009-02-06%2013:26:23&log=attentionm

Le "massacre" serbe de Racak n'a jamais eu lieu

Le prétexte qui a justifié le bombardement de la Yougoslavie était un énorme mensonge

Louis Magnin

La Dr Helena Ranta, responsable de l'équipe d'enquêteurs sur le terrain, révèle comment elle a été obligée de confirmer la version officielle d'une sinistre mise en scène.

Helena Ranta, une spécialiste finlandaise de médecine légale de renommée mondiale, âgée de 62 ans, vient de publier sa biographie à Helsinki, écrite avec l’aide de Kaius Niemi, un des directeurs du journal Helsingin Sanomat. Elle était la responsable de l’équipe d’enquêteurs internationaux chargée sur place du rapport sur les événements qui s’étaient déroulés dans le village de Racak, au Kosovo, où 45 cadavres avaient été découverts en 1999. La sinistre trouvaille avait été immédiatement transformée par les médias occidentaux en un massacre de civils albanais attribué aux Serbes, suscitant l’indignation mondiale, et servant de prétexte justificatif du bombardement de la Yougoslavie. Dans son livre, Helena Ranta fait des révélations spectaculaires sur les pressions qu’elle a subies pour accréditer la fausse version de la culpabilité serbe, faisant ainsi voler en éclats un des plus grands mensonges de la guerre
dans les Balkans.
Elle y raconte que William Walker, le chef américain de la mission de l’OSCE au Kosovo pendant l’hiver 1998-1999, a brisé son cra-yon en bois et lancé les morceaux à sa figure, furieux des conclusions de son rapport, qui n’avaient pas utilisé “un langage suffisamment convaincant” à propos des atrocités serbes. Elle y décrit les pressions de trois fonctionnaires du ministère finlandais des Affaires étrangères qui exigeaient d’elle “des conclusions plus approfondies”. “J’ai conservé leurs e-mails” a-t-elle dit à son éditeur à Helsinki.

Une déclaration imposée

En 1999, elle avait été obligée de déclarer à la presse “oui, il s’agit d’un crime cotre l’humanité”. Mais le journaliste finlandais Ari Rusila, expert pour les Balkans, écrit dans un article sur le livre d’Helena Ranta que, pendant son enquête, elle avait voulu que ses résultats ne soient en faveur ni des uns ni des autres et avait essayé de se soustraire aux infleunces politiques, mais que, dès le début, elle travaillait sous une intense pression de sa hiérarchie et des médias. Les autorités voulaient qu’elle prouve que les coups de feu ayant tué les victimes étaient les coups de grâce d’une exécution. L’objectif de Walker était d’aider l’UCK et de mettre en scène un massacre attribué aux Serbes permettant l’intervention militaire des Occiden-taux, qui s’est produite au printemps 1999.
Ranta précise que le chef à l’époque de la section politique du ministère, Pertti Torstila, aujourd’hui secrétaire d’Etat, lui a demandé de retirer de son rapport un commentaire “modérément critique” de la politique du gouvernement. Torstila a démenti cette affirmation en se prétendant “stupéfait”.
L’intérêt de ces révélations est qu’elles confirment de façon définitive des doutes qui se manifestaient déjà à l’époque. Un article du 1er février 2001 de FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting – Equité et exactitude dans le reportage) fait état du black-out des médias à leur propos. Il revient sur le déroulement des faits.

Un “horrible massacre”

En janvier 1999, William Walker annonce que les soldats serbes ont massacré 45 Albanais du village de Racak. Il qualifie la tuerie d’“horrible massacre”, précisant que les victimes étaient toutes des civils, brutalement exécutés, certains d’entre eux même mutilés après leur mort.
Une fois l’histoire du massacre évoquée dans ses plus bouleversants détails par les grands médias du monde entier, la poussée vers la guerre s’est intensifiée et les alliés européens hésitants ont fait un pas décisif en ce qui concernait l’autorisation de frappes aériennes. Selon un article du Washington Post du 18 avril 1999, “Racak a transformé la politique balkanique de l’Occident comme peu d’événements isolés ont pu le faire.”

Des doutes font surface

Des questions troublantes ont pourtant vite vu le jour, mettant le massacre en doute et évoquant la possibilité que l’incident ait été manipulé pour pousser l’OTAN à la guerre, mais elles ont été complètement ignorées par les médias américains de l’époque.
Des articles importants de correspondants chevronnés en Yougoslavie s’interrogeant sur la version de William Walker ont pourtant été publiés par des journaux français comme Le Figaro (“Nuages noirs sur un massacre”, 20/1/99), et Le Monde (“Les morts de Racak ont-ils réellement été massacrés de sang-froid ?”, 21/1/99). Le quotidien allemand Berliner Zeitung a rapporté, le 13/3/99, que plusieurs gouvernements, dont l’Allemagne et l’Italie, demandaient à l’OSCE de renvoyer William Walker, à la lumière d’informations reçues de contrôleurs de l’OSCE au Kosovo selon lesquelles les corps de Racak “n’étaient pas – comme le prétend Walker – des victimes d’un massacre serbe de civils” mais ceux de combattants de l’UCK tués au combat.

Un rapport occulté pendant deux ans

Le Sunday Times de Londres (12/3/99) a écrit que l’équipe d’observateurs américains de Walker travaillait secrètement avec la CIA pour pousser l’OTAN à la guerre. Selon le journal, “Les diplomates européens collaborant à l’époque avec l’OSCE affirment avoir été trahis par une politique américaine rendant les frappes aériennes inévitables.”
Après le massacre, l’Union européenne a embauché l’équipe de scientifiques finlandais dirigée par Ranta pour enquêter sur les morts. Son rapport a été gardé secret pendant deux ans. Les médias US l’ont ignoré, malgré le fait que le rapport ait conclu qu’il y avait eu en effet des morts à Racak, mais qu’il n’y avait aucune preuve de massacre.
Selon le Berliner Zeitung du 16/1/01, les enquêteurs finlandais n’ont pas pu établir que les victimes étaient des civils, s’ils étaient de Racak, ni où ils avaient été tués. De plus, ils n’ont trouvé qu’un seul cadavre montrant des traces d’exécution, et aucune preuve que des corps aient été mutilés. Le journal précise que ces conclusions avaient été finalisées en juin 2000, mais qu’elles ont été occultées par l’ONU et l’UE. Aucun journal américain n’en a parlé.
Un second article de FAIR, daté du 18 juillet 2001, soulève à nouveau des questions.
De nouvelles informations sur l’incident de Racak ont vu le jour.

Des douilles introuvables

Selon le documentaire de la Canadian Broadcasting Company, “La route de Racak” (The World at Six, 29/5/2000), quand l’envoyé spécial du Figaro Renaud Girard est arrivé au village, il a été surpris de voir que William Walker n’avait pas isolé la scène du crime pour permettre l’enquête. Il s’est également étonné de ne trouver pratiquement aucune douille sur le sol. “C’était étrange, a-t-il dit à la CBC. Peut-être quelqu’un les avait ramassées.” De retour à Pristina le même jour, il a parlé à son confrère Christophe Cha-telot du Monde de l’apparente absence de douilles. Chatelot a demandé à l’un des observateurs de Walker, un capitaine de l’armée américaine, pourquoi on n’en avait pas trouvées. “C’est parce que je les ai prises, a répondu le capitaine, j’en fais collection.” Le capitaine “a déclaré à Chatelot qu’il avait ramassé toutes les douilles en arrivant sur la scène.”
Intrigué, Chatelot est retourné à Racak le lendemain. Quand il a essayé de trouver le capitaine américain, celui-ci était “tout à coup introuvable”. Chatelot affirme que la mission de l’OSCE lui a dit : “Nous ne le connaissons pas. Il n’a jamais été ici.” Quand il a demandé à parler aux quatre contrôleurs qui étaient présents à Racak et dans ses environs le jour de la tuerie, on lui a dit que leurs noms étaient subitement devenus un secret “classé confidentiel”. “C’est très curieux”, a-t-il dit à la CBC.

Des agents de la CIA

Plus tard, il est apparu que l’équipe d’observateurs américains de Walker était en grande partie composée d’agents secrets appartenant à la CIA.
Dans son discours à la nation du 19 mars 1999, annonçant la décision de l’OTAN de lancer les frappes aériennes sur la Yougoslavie, le président Bill Clinton a dit : “Au moment où nous nous préparons à agir, nous devons nous rappeler des leçons apprises dans les Balkans. Nous devons nous souvenir de ce qui est arrivé dans le village de Racak en janvier – des hommes innocents, des femmes et des enfants ont été arrachés à leurs foyers, amenés dans un ravin, forcés à s’agenouiller dans la boue et mitraillés – pas pour quelque chose qu’ils auraient fait, mais simplement pour ce qu’ils étaient.”
Tout récemment, le Byzantine Blog a marqué le neuvième anniversaire de l’affaire de Racak en rappelant que le jour de Noël 1993, 49 civils serbes avaient été massacrés dans le village bosniaque de Kravice par des troupes musulmanes basées à Srebrenica, un épisode qui n’a entraîné qu’une prudente condamnation des responsables internationaux, bien loin de l’impitoyable bombardement de 78 jours qui a suivi la mort à Racak de 45 Albanais armés.
Le site en profite pour rappeler quelques détails supplémentaires que nos grands médias ont passé sous silence.

Une brigade sur place de l’UCK

Dès son arrivée sur place, Walker a accusé la police serbe du massacre, alors que c’était une police yougoslave multiethnique qui menait les actions antiterroristes au Kosovo. Ses opérations ont été suivies par les contrôleurs de l’OSCE, deux équipes de télévision étrangères et un grand nombre d’envoyés spéciaux de différents pays : aucun d’entre n’a assisté à un massacre avant que Walker n’en ait vu un. Au début de janvier 1999, le poste de commandement d’une brigade de l’UCK de 126 hommes avait été installé à Racak. Parmi eux se trouvait la famille Mujota, connue pour avoir assassiné six policiers serbes. Les villages environnants de Petrovo, Luzak et Rance étaient sous le contrôle de l’UCK.

Une opération contrôlée par l’OSCE

La police yougoslave a informé la mission de l’OSCE de son intention de lancer un raid anti-terroriste sur le village de Racak. L’action a débuté à 8 heures. Selon Renaud Girard, la police n’avait rien à cacher, puisqu’à 8 h 30 elle a invité une équipe de TV (deux reporters d’Associated Press) à filmer l’opération. Des membres de l’OSCE étaient présents et des contrôleurs ont observé le village pendant toute la journée à partir d’une vallée voisine.
A 15 h, un rapport de la police a été rendu public par le International Press Center de Pristina, qui précisait qu’au cours des combats à Racak, 15 terroristes de l’UCK avaient été tués, et qu’une quantité significative d’armes avait été confisquée. A 15 h 30, les forces de police, accompagnée par l’équipe de TV d’Associated Press, ont quitté le village, emportant une pièce lourde d’artillerie de calibre 12,7 mm, deux engins d’artillerie portables, deux fusils de snipers et 30 kalashnikovs fabriqués en Chine. A 16 h 30, un reporter français a traversé le village en voiture, et y a vu trois véhicules oranges de l’OSCE. Les contrôleurs internationaux parlaient tranquillement avec trois adultes albanais en civil. Ils cherchaient des civils éventuellement blessés. En retournant au village à 18 h, le reporter les a vus emmener deux femmes et deux vieillards légèrement atteints.

126 terroristes et 4 instructeurs

Au centre du village, dans une maison où avait été installée la base de l’UCK, la police a trouvé un ordinateur contenant des informations sur la brigade de l’UCK et la liste de ses 126 membres, dont faisaient partie quatre personnes avec des noms anglo-saxons, qui ont été considérées comme des instructeurs étrangers.
Quand les policiers yougoslaves ont investi le village, et commencé à sécuriser les routes et les tranchées, ils ont été attaqués par les Albanais à partir du Lake Mountain (Jezerska planina) et des villages avoisinants. Pris sous le feu d’une forte offensive et placés en contre-bas, ils ont du se replier. C’est alors qu’a eu lieu la grande mise en scène destinée à impressionner le monde entier.

Des cadavres déplacés et rhabillés

Les membres de l’UCK revenus dans Racak ont récupéré dans les ravins et vallons les corps des Albanais tués pendant le combat et les ont rassemblés dans un champ où auparavant il n’y en avait aucun. L’équipe de TV d’AP qui était entrée plus tôt dans le village avec la police a certifié que le champ où on avait empilé les cadavres des victimes soi-disant exécutées était à ce moment vide. Les Albanais ont rhabillé en civils une quarantaine de morts, et ont emmené les autres cadavres en uniforme à Budakovo, où ils les ont probablement enterrés.
Le lendemain matin tôt, Walker est arrivé au champ pour indiquer comment les corps devaient être disposés pour faire croire à un massacre. La mise en place achevée, il a fait venir les équipes de TV et les journalistes. La description détaillée de l’épisode figure dans le livre du reporter Milorad Drecun intitulé “La seconde bataille du Kosovo”, au chapitre “Le mensonge de Racak”.

Les frappes “humanitaires”

L’agence Tanjug rappelle, à l’occasion de cet anniversaire, que la secrétaire d’Etat US de l’époque, Madeleine Albright, avait dit à CBS que “des dizaines de personnes avaient été égorgées à Racak” et que la seule solution était “des frappes aériennes humanitaires sur la Yougoslavie”.

Dossier préparé par Louis MAGNIN.

B. I. n° 138, décembre 2008.

angry voters jam congress phone

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February 4, 2009

2309 GMT (0709 HKT)

Unhappy voters jam Capitol Hill phone lines

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The recent debate over the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus plan and revelations of tax problems by three Obama administration appointees have voters angrily jamming phone lines on Capitol Hill to air their frustrations to their elected representatives.

Their reactions are putting pressure on Congress and benefiting watchdog groups on both sides of the political aisle.

Capitol operators tell CNN Radio that phone lines have been jammed for the past two weeks, sometimes prompting busy signals.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, said calls on the sweeping stimulus plan jumped from eight during all of January to hundreds a day now.

In a sampling of 12 Senate offices, half had so many messages that their voicemail boxes were full.

It's because of people like Betty Davidson.

"I'm very upset!" exclaimed the 63-year-old from Laguna Hills, California.

She called her senators Tuesday, frustrated with the almost $900 billion-dollar economic recovery proposal. Watch more on the stimulus debate in the Senate »

"What a joke!" she said.

But she is particularly incensed by news that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former Obama appointees Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer didn't pay their taxes properly in the past. Watch more of Obama's plan for the economy »

"They can make the laws, but they don't have to abide by the laws," she complained. "It's only we taxpayers."

Those bitter words are like spring rain to nonprofit watchdog groups across the spectrum, who are seeing big boosts in interest.

"Just in the last week ... responses to our e-mails out to activists have jumped dramatically," said Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform. "We've had more calls into our offices, more e-mails."

That same spike has hit Citizens Against Government Waste, which is also seeing a surge in e-mails, calls and angry posts to its Web site.

"These people are almost feeling like suckers now for paying taxes, because no one else does," said the group's vice president, David Williams.

He sees the tax issues and stimulus bill as hair triggers after months of frustration over bailouts, Wall Street greed and whether the rich and powerful get special treatment.

"In the past week, we have gotten numerous e-mails from people talking about how the interest rates on their credit cards are going up even though these companies have received taxpayer bailouts," he said, "and they don't understand why they're not feeling any relief."

At the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Deputy Director Naomi Seligman said that whenever a well-known politician, such as Daschle or Geithner, is involved in an ethics question, it does raise some interest for them.

Seligman suggested that tax issues are raising the greatest ire.

"I think the average American is looking at their taxes during tax time and saying 'Wow, I pay my taxes. Why aren't these guys?' " she said.

That's certainly how Davidson feels. She's worried about shoveling debt onto her grandkids from the stimulus bill, and she is convinced Washington is corrupt.

"I'm just getting so sick and tired," she said.

ceo paycuts ain't retroactive

Goldman, JPMorgan Won’t Feel Effects of Executive-Salary Caps

By Matthew Benjamin and Christine Harper

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial institutions receiving federal aid aren’t likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced yesterday by President Barack Obama.

The rules, created in response to growing public anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to top executives at companies that need “exceptional” assistance in the future. The limits aren’t retroactive, meaning firms that have already taken government money won’t be subject to the restrictions unless they have to come back for more.

The new guidelines are the first salvo in a broader financial-rescue plan Obama plans to announce next week. The president and Congress have had to defend billions in aid to banks that continue to provide generous bonuses and luxury perks while posting record losses. Pay caps may provide the political cover the administration needs to deliver additional infusions of capital into the financial sector that may be necessary.

Some analysts said the new rules wouldn’t have much effect.

Obama, 47, “is not proposing to go back and get that $18.4 billion in bonuses back,” Laura Thatcher, head of law firm Alston & Bird’s executive compensation practice in Atlanta, said of the cash bonuses New York banks paid last year, the sixth- biggest haul in history. “Right now, we have not clamped down” on pay at banks.

Huge Paydays

In addition, some executives may be compensated for the potential reduced salaries with restricted stock grants, which may result in huge paydays after the bank repays the government assistance with interest.

“They’re just allowing companies to defer compensation,” said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant and author of “The Crystal Report on Executive Compensation.”

The restrictions are “a joke,” he said, because “if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.”

According to the new guidelines, announced at the White House yesterday by Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, senior executives at banks that negotiate “exceptional assistance” deals with Treasury, such as the targeted relief provided to Citigroup Inc. last November or to Bank of America Corp. in January, would be limited to annual compensation -- salary plus bonus -- of $500,000.

Office Redecoration

Other perks that enraged Americans -- such as a $1.2 million office redecoration by the chief executive of Merrill Lynch & Co., which took $10 billion in government funds, or a four-day Las Vegas junket for executives at Wells Fargo & Co., which accepted $25 billion -- will be subject to new disclosure rules.

A White House official called it the name-and-shame provision, based on the idea that banks would limit such benefits if forced to disclose them.

“For top executives to award themselves these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of this economic crisis is not only in bad taste, it’s a bad strategy, and I will not tolerate it as president,” Obama said yesterday.

Yet none of the new rules will apply to any firm until it negotiates an extraordinary deal with the federal government to remain solvent.

‘Double Dippers’

“What I’m a little bit surprised by is that those pay restrictions don’t apply to what I would call the double dippers, which is basically Citigroup and Bank of America, which have come back for capital,” said Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC in New York. Both banks received money under the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, and required additional bailout funds and a government guarantee of their assets.

The Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington-based trade group representing banks, called the restrictions “a measured response” in a news release yesterday.

For some firms, the rules are insignificant. Morgan Stanley is among companies that don’t expect the restrictions to affect their business because they foresee no need for additional government help.

“We have one of the highest Tier 1 capital ratios among financial services firms, so we do not anticipate the need for additional government capital,” said Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in New York, when asked about the new restrictions.

Repaying TARP

Goldman Sachs said yesterday it wants to repay $10 billion it got from Treasury under the TARP to signal the firm is healthy and to escape limitations that came with that infusion of money. “Our financial condition is sound and, subject to approval from regulators, we hope to repay TARP money as soon as practicable,” said Lucas van Praag, a spokesman for New York- based Goldman Sachs.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Feb. 3 that the firm didn’t need capital and didn’t ask for TARP funding. The lender accepted the $25 billion it received from the first capital injection at the request of the government and to help stabilize the banking system, he said.

Other restrictions on banks that get major new bailout packages include a “say on pay” provision that would require new executive pay packages to be subjected to nonbinding shareholder resolutions. Companies also must have in place provisions to reclaim, or “claw back,” bonuses and incentives from the top 25 senior executives if they are found to engage in deceptive practices. Bans on so-called golden parachute severance payments will be extended to more executives.

Treasury Discretion

Jen Psaki, a White House spokeswoman, said Treasury “will have discretion to apply” the restrictions “to the top leadership of the firm, but the size of that group will vary depending on the structure and size of the institution.”

Some of the new rules, including disclosure of luxury perks and the ban on golden parachutes, will also apply to banks taking part in generally available government capital programs, similar to the TARP, which has provided capital to some 360 financial institutions so far. The rules do not apply retroactively to TARP participants, however.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the rules weren’t intended to be “overly punitive,” while a senior administration officials said their primary goal is to align the interests of top executives at bailed-out firms with those of shareholders, who now include U.S. taxpayers.

Right Direction

Nell Minow, founder and president of the Corporate Library, a corporate-governance research company in Portland, Maine, said the rules are in the right direction.

“Not allowing the restricted stock awards to vest until the government’s been paid back goes a step toward the goal,” she said.

Bill Black, a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said the entire Wall Street pay structure is dysfunctional and needs to be revamped.

“Compensation is the root that created the perverse incentives and led to the current financial crisis,” he said.

Yet the new guidelines won’t bring about that change, said Sharyn O’Halloran, a professor of political science at Columbia University in New York.

“The goal is for accountability and the argument is that if a large portion of executive pay is based on excessive risk- taking, then you would anticipate them taking excessive risk,” she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Benjamin in Washington at mbenjamin2@bloomberg.net To contact the reporter on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 5, 2009 00:01 EST

rfid very vulnerable

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http://www.itnews.com.au/News/95588%2Chackers-clone-passports-in-driveby-rfid-heist.aspx

Hackers clone passports in drive-by RFID heist

By Iain Thomson

4 February 2009 03:55PM


A British hacker has shown how easy it is to clone US passport cards that use RFID by conducting a drive-by test on the streets of San Francisco.

Chris Paget, director of research and development at Seattle-based IOActive, used a US$250 Motorola RFID reader and an antenna mounted in a car’s side window and drove for 20 minutes around San Francisco, with a colleague videoing the demonstration.

During the demonstration he picked up the details of two US passport cards, which are fitted with RFID chips and can be used instead of traditional passports for travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

“I personally believe that RFID is very unsuitable for tagging people,” he said.

“I don’t believe we should have any kind of identity document with RFID tags in them. My ultimate goal here would be, my dream for this research, would be to see the entire Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative be scrapped.”

Using the data gleaned it would be relatively simple to make cloned passport cards he said. Real passport cards also support a ‘kill code’ (which can wipe the card’s data) and a ‘lock code’ that prevents the tag’s data being changed.

However he believes these are not currently being used and even if they were the radio interrogation is done in plain text so is relatively easy for a hacker to collect and analyse.

The ease with which the passport cards were picked up is even more worrying considering that less than a million have been issued to date.

Paget is a renowned ‘white hat’ ethical hacker and has made the study of the security failings of RFID something of a speciality.

In 2007 he was due to present a paper on the security failings of RFID at the Black Hat security conference in Washington but was forced to abandon the plans after an RFID company threatened him with legal action.

He points out that RFID tags are increasingly being used in physical security systems such as building access cards and the technology needs significant security adding before it could be considered safe for commercial use.

Copyright © 2008 vnunet.com

"liberal" stiglitz: let banks die

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Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz

The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Davos

8:29AM GMT 02 Feb 2009

Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz
Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks.

"The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?" he said.

"There is an argument for letting the banks go bust. It may cause turmoil but it will be a cheaper way to deal with this in the end. The British Parliament never offered a blanket guarantee for all liabilities and derivative positions of these banks," he said.

Mr Stiglitz said the Government should underwrite all deposits to protect the UK's domestic credit system and safeguard money markets that lubricate lending. It should use the skeletons of the old banks to build a healthier structure.

"The new banks will be more credible once they no longer have these liabilities on their back."

Mr Stiglitz said the City of London would survive the shock of such a default because it would uphold the principle of free market responsibility. "Counter-parties entered into voluntary agreements with the banks and they must accept the consequences," he said.

Such a drastic course of action would be fraught with difficulties and risks, however. It would leave healthy banks in an untenable position since they would have to compete for funds in the markets with state-run entities.

Mr Stiglitz's radical proposal is a "Chapter 11" scheme for households to allow them to bring their debts under control without having to go into bankruptcy. "Families matter just as much as firms. The US government can borrow at 1pc so why can't it lend directly to poor people for mortgages at 4pc. ," he said.

otan/afghanistan:massacre pour la saint-valentin

4 février 2009

source: voltairenet.org/fr

Le Commandeur de l’OTAN ordonne de massacrer des milliers de civils afghans

Le général Bantz Craddock, Suprême commandeur de l’OTAN, a ordonné aux troupes alliées présentes en Afghanistan de tuer, dans les zones insurgées, toutes les personnes impliquées dans la culture et le commerce des drogues, sans attendre de savoir si elles sont ou non liées à l’insurrection.

Selon le site internet de Der Spiegel, qui a révélé les faits, l’ordre a été confirmé par écrit, le 5 janvier 2009, au général allemand Egon Ramms qui s’y opposait en qualifiant l’exécution de cette instruction de crime de guerre.

Ces révélations provoquent un vif émoi en Allemagne, mais pas dans les autres États impliqués militairement en Afghanistan.

Ces instructions s’appliquent à toute la zone insurgée, mais pas à la zone « pacifiée », c’est-à-dire placée sous l’autorité du président Karzaï, où son demi-frère exploite le pavot.

En clair, le général Bantz Craddock a ordonné de massacrer tous les paysans qui cultivent le pavot et tous les trafiquants dès lors qu’ils rivalisent avec le monopole de la famille Karzaï.

Le général Bantz Craddock est l’ancien chef du cabinet militaire de Donald Rumsfeld. En qualité de commandant du South Command, il installa le centre de torture de Guantanamo. Il participa activement à la planification de la guerre israélienne de 2006 contre le Liban et fut nommé à cette époque à la tête de l’OTAN en vue d’une possible mission de l’Alliance atlantique aupays du Cèdre (projet qui fut contrecarré par Jacques Chirac lors de la Conférence de Rome).

Rappelons que la drogue produite par les Karzaï est principalement acheminée par les avions US à Camp Bondstell (Kosovo) où elle est prise en charge par le Premier ministre Haçim Thaçi. Elle est alors distribuée par la mafia kosovare principalement en Europe occidentale. Les bénéfices servent à financer les opérations spéciales de la CIA hors contrôle budgétaire du Congrès.

yeltsin was jelzman...

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http://globalfire.tv/nj/08en/politics/russia_has_awoken.htm

The New Russian Revolution Has Deposed The Jews

By Arthur Cristian

1-23-9

Shortly after Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia in 2000, the murdered family of Czar Nicholas was beatified. Until quite recently, the centers of Jewish power had hoped to preserve some idealized memories of the murderous Soviet system in the minds of the Russians, but it turned out to be a vain hope.

Because Bolshevism was formulated and executed by Jews, their power centers had retained fond hopes of being able some day to reconnect and reinstall some sort of Jewish lobby leverage in the Kremlin. These fond hopes were dashed by Vladimir Putin.

By the end of 2008, the Russians were expected to have decided on what archetype they preferred: Stalin's 'Patriotic War' or Czarism. Until quite recently, Stalin had remained slightly ahead of Czar Nicholas II . 'Then, however, the Czar mysteriously pulled ahead.' (Die Welt, 17 July 2008, page 1) After that, the choice no longer had to be made.

The Jewish Lobby was of course hoping that a Czarist cult would never rise again, since the Czar had been the great adversary of the Bolshevik Jews. Now however, the Russians again see in Czar Nicholas II a kind of savior who, like Jesus, had dared to oppose the Pharisees.

Following on the heels of the organized collapse of the Soviet Union, the global Jewish Lobby was able to install Boris Yeltsin (alias Jelzman) in the Kremlin. Once they had seized control of Russia's natural resources, they believed they could rule forever, or at least as long as they were operating under the protection of the US military forces. Not only did they control the military bloodhound USA, which they could let loose against any country that became troublesome; they also controlled Russia, whose energy wealth they could use to exploit and enslave the entire planet. Yeltsin-Jelzman allowed the Russian military forces to disintegrate rapidly.

In the early 1990s the Arab press investigated the Jelzman case and exposed Yeltsin as a puppet of the Lobby, providing additional background details. On 28 November 1992 the newspaper 'Al Arab', published in London, made the following announcement on the front page: 'The name change was decided upon at the 20th Party Congress ... Yeltsin is a Jew. Risselov, a member of the Volksunion, revealed that the family name of President Yeltsin was Jelzman, a German Jewish name. The 20th Party Congress then decided to change the family name of Boris Jelzman to Yeltsin ... The reason given for this change was that the Russian people would be afraid of the name Jelzman since his grandfather Jelzman had murdered thousands of Russians under Beria.'

Everything had seemed to be going well for the Lobby. Then, out of a clear blue sky, Putin's coup occurred.

He deposed the terrible Jelzman-Yeltsin. Today Yeltsin's Jewish background is openly discussed even in the Establishment press, where as he is described as having 'converted to Christianity'. For example, on page 1 of its issue of 17 July 2008, Die Welt refers to 'Boris Yeltsin, the Communist who later converted to Christianity.'

When they brutally murdered the Czar's family in Yekaterinburg on the night of 17 July 1918 in the house of the engineer Ipatjev, the Bolsheviks unwittingly established '...a cult that, 90 years later, is still as strong as ever.' (Die Welt, 17 July 2008, p. 1) This was true even though Jelzman did everything in his power to erase the memory of the Czar from Russian consciousness. 'Boris Yelzin even had the Ipatjev house demolished without being able to stop the growing fondness for the Czar in Russia.' (Die Welt, 17 July 2008, page 1).

However, the Russian schools now teach that it was Jews who murdered the Czar's family, which is probably the reason why even Wikipedia has begun reporting that the murderers were Jews, a fact that could not be mentioned in former times. 'On 4 July 1918, the Cheka took over guarding the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg. They were accompanied by Jakov Jurovski... Jurovski was a Jew.' (from Wikipedia). Two additional Jewish assassins who joined the Jurovski murderers were Alexander Belobarodov and Filip Goloschtschokin.

Today, the Russians weep when they think of the horrible crime. 'Only the Jews would have been capable of such a terrible bloody crime' stated a participant in the memorial mass in front of the Church of the Blood that was held in Yekaterinburg in 2008.

According to eyewitness reports of the massacre, "the Czarina complained to Commandant Jurovski about the empty room in which they were held and she requested two chairs. Jurovski then had two chairs brought in, on which the Czarina and her ill son Alexi sat down. Jurovski ordered the other family members to stand in two rows behind mother and son, then brought in the execution detail. Jurovski informed the Czar that the government had ordered their execution and therefore, he was now going to shoot them. The Czar said nothing except the words 'Forgive them Father, for they know what they do' as Jesus said on the Cross. Then Commandant Jurovski shot him. All the other soldiers also shot Nicholas as well, and he died immediately.


Then the firing squad began shooting wildly to kill all the other members of the family. When the shooting was over, Alex and three of his sisters were still alive and lying wounded on the floor. The bullets that were fired at the girls seemed to have been deflected. The soldiers then began bayoneting the victims. However, the bayonets became stuck in the girls' bodices. This was because, during internment in Alexander Palace, the children and Lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova had sewed a large number of the family jewels and diamonds into a pillow and the girls' bodices. On the evening they were murdered they were wearing these bodices, and in addition, Demidova attempted to deflect the bullets with the pillow. For this reason the execution lasted about 20 minutes until the last member of the family was dead. After the murders, Jurovski attempted to erase all traces of the crime.' (From Wikipedia).

According to a report released by Archbishop Wikenti on 17 July 2008, around 40,000 persons took part in a religious procession from Yekaterinburg to an abandoned mineshaft some 18 kilometers distant.

In conjunction with the memorial service for the Romanovs, copies of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' were offered for sale.
The bodies of Czar Nicholas, his German wife Alexandra and their five children had been carried to that place after they had been shot by their Jewish murderers in the night of 17 July 1918 in Yekaterinburg. In conjunction with the memorial service for the Romanovs, copies of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' were offered for sale. Large numbers of printed pamphlets were distributed along with the Protocols. The printed materials were entitled 'Why we hate the Jewish Mafia' and posed the question 'Is This Xenophobia or Self Defense?' The student Ivan Kolsev, 20, who had wrapped himself in a Czarist banner, expressed the opinion of many when he said 'Democracy has no future -- we are returning to Monarchy!' On the banner was written 'In honor of Russia: for Czar and Fatherland.' [Agence France-Presse (AFP), 28 July 2008.]

For the Russians, the Jews are guilty of having killed emissaries of God when they murdered the Romanov family, since the family has been beatified. '...Just as they once crucified Jesus' said a participant in the memorial services. 'Nicholas and Alexandra were our father and mother -- they were like Russia's parents' said another of the faithful. Another participant in the memorial mass expressed enthusiasm for the return of the Czarism: 'The Czar is God's chosen on Earth, we must have a Czar.' (AFP 17 July 2008.)

The new Czarist cult is more than a revolution, it is the rebirth of the Russian nation after all the suffering the Bolsheviks inflicted on it. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expressed this view during his visit to Moscow at the end of July 2008: 'Venezuela takes note of the rebirth of Russia with great and affectionate attention.' (Die Welt, 23 July 2008, p. 5)
President Medvedev then expressed sincere appreciation to President Chavez for his heartfelt interest. Since his first day as President of Russia, it has been Putin's principal goal to enable Russia's reawakening. He and his allies have always had a clear picture of the people who murdered the Romanovs along with 55 million other Russians.

It was always clear to Putin that these peoples' primary aim was to suck Russia dry and annihilate it for all time with their unparalleled parasitism.[the same pattern is most prevalent here in the U.S.] A Kremlin politician close to Putin was quoted as saying about the then most influential Jews: 'Boris Beresovski and Vladimir Gussinski are like bacteria that establish themselves in diseased bodies, but then die when the bodies grow healthy again.' [Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), 2 April 2002.] This statement reminds us of a passage from Mein Kampf: 'The Jew is and will remain the eternal parasite, a freeloader that, like a malignant bacterium, spreads rapidly whenever a growth medium is made available to it.' (Chapter 11)

Vladimir Gussinski was the head of the Jewish Central Committee in Russia as well as chairman of the Jewish World Congress. After fleeing Russia for refuge in Israel, he stated to the world press that in Russia, 'a new state ideology against the West is to be feared... It has many anti-Jewish characteristics.' He called the then Russian president, Vladimir Putin, an 'extreme anti Semite and secret admirer of Hitler.' (Spiegel, 25/2000, p. 180)[ as usual spreading lies about people..always stirring up trouble and blaming it on others]

In early July 2008 observers noted a new high point in Russia's struggle against the Lobby, when the new US ambassador was installed in Berlin. Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, an intimate friend of Putin, declined the invitation of the American ambassador, without explanation.

In the entire history of Post-War-Germany, or BRDDR, this had never before occurred. Such a snub could never have happened before, even in a dream. In addition to the fact that Schröder is not overly fond of the Lobby, he was certainly advised by his friend Putin to decline the invitation in order to demonstrate the new power relationship in Europe. 'When the new American embassy is opened in Berlin, Gerhard Schröder was absent. The ex-chancellor had been invited by the Americans, but he declined the invitation... The reasons for the former chancellor's failure to appear are not known.' Spiegel.de, 4 July 2008

zionist's "drang nach osten"

Israel hopes to colonize parts of Iraq as ‘Greater Israel’

By Wayne Madsen

Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jan 30, 2009, 00:20

(WMR) -- Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical “Greater Israel.”

Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.

Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslims, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the U.S. invasion in 2003, that is considered historical Jewish “property.”

The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish “properties” outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call “Judea and Samaria.”

Kurdish and Iraqi sources report that Israel’s Mossad is working hand-in-hand with Israeli companies and “tourists” to stake a claim to the Jewish “properties” of Israel in Iraq. The Mossad has already been heavily involved in training the Kurdish Pesha Merga military forces.

Reportedly assisting the Israelis are foreign mercenaries paid for by U.S. Christian evangelical circles that support the concept of “Christian Zionism.”

Iraqi nationalists charge that the Israeli expansion into Iraq is supported by both major Kurdish factions, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Iraq’s nominal President Jalal Talabani. Talabani’s son, Qubad Talabani, serves as the KRG’s representative in Washington, where he lives with his wife Sherri Kraham, who is Jewish.

Also supporting the Israeli land acquisition activities is the Kurdistan Democratic Party, headed by Massoud Barzani, the president of the KRG. One of Barzani’s five sons, Binjirfan Barzani, is reportedly heavily involved with the Israelis.

The Israelis and their Christian Zionist supporters enter Iraq not through Baghdad but through Turkey. In order to depopulate residents of lands the Israelis claim, Mossad operatives and Christian Zionist mercenaries are staging terrorist attacks against Chaldean Christians, particularly in Nineveh, Irbil, al-Hamdaniya, Bartalah, Talasqaf, Batnayah, Bashiqah, Elkosheven, Uqrah, and Mosul.

These attacks by the Israelis and their allies are usually reported as being the responsibility of “Al Qaeda” and other Islamic “jihadists.”

The ultimate aim of the Israelis is to depopulate the Christian population in and around Mosul and claim the land as biblical Jewish land that is part of “Greater Israel.” The Israeli/Christian Zionist operation is a replay of the depopulation of the Palestinians in the British mandate of Palestine after World War II.

In June 2003, a delegation of Israelis visited Mosul and said that it was Israel’s intentions, with the assistance of Barzani, to establish Israeli control of the shrine of Jonah in Mosul and the shrine of Nahum in the Mosul plains. The Israelis said Israeli and Iranian Jewish pilgrims would travel via Turkey to the area of Mosul and take over lands where Iraqi Christians lived.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

bartering exchange to open in moscow

The Moscow Times

» Issue 4072 »

VMillionaire's Crisis Plan: Return to Bartering

27 January 2009

By Nadia Popova / Staff Writer

To help pull the world out of economic crisis, German Sterligov, one of Russia's first multimillionaires, has swapped his valenki for polished office boots.

After spending four years in a wooden hut in a forest outside Moscow, Sterligov has leased out almost an entire floor atop a skyscraper in the Moskva-City business district to launch a global barter system.

Sterligov, who doesn't watch television and rarely uses the Internet because of his Orthodox religious principles, plans to start facilitating the barter of debt and goods with his company, the Anti-Crisis Settlement and Accounting Center, by early March.

While the global economic crisis didn't sweep into Russia until September, Sterligov said he sensed that trouble was looming in August and got to work.

"I decided that barter trade would be the right choice for the world in times of liquidity problems and payment delays," he said in a recent interview.

So from August to November, computer programmers hired by Sterligov created an interactive database allowing the barter of debt and goods worldwide.

Sterligov illustrated a possible barter deal with a real-life example: Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works' estimated debt of 1 billion rubles ($30.4 million) to Mechel for coal supplies.

"Mechel could put information about MMK's nonpayment in our system and then add which products it needs itself," Sterligov said.

MMK, in turn, would put 1 billion rubles of steel into the system, he said. At some point, a company would surface that wanted steel and had a product needed by Mechel, and the deal would be completed.

"For this to work, you have to have thousands of bids in the system," Sterligov said, adding that debt would probably become the most popular item for barter.

Mechel and MMK declined to comment about their possible participation in such a system.

Barter trade was widespread in Russia in the 1990s, when economic turmoil following the Soviet collapse prompted companies to pay employees and creditors with the products they produced — anything from bricks to vegetable oil.

Sterligov built his fortune through one of Russia's first mercantile exchanges, which he launched in 1990, and subsequently got involved in businesses, "ranging from fish processing to metals trade," he said.

Sterligov said he had invested "several million euros" into the Anti-Crisis Settlement and Accounting Center. "I have no business plan — it's my money — and I spend as much as I want and is reasonable," he said.

Sterligov said he has opened offices through joint ventures in New York, London, Brussels, Hong Kong, Paris and Sydney and plans to open three more soon — in Istanbul, Berlin and Milan. He said his company owns 51 percent in each joint venture.

He declined to disclose the firms' names before an official presentation of his company in late February.

The company currently has 13 regional offices across Russia and plans to boost the number to 1,000 — mostly small offices in towns and villages — by March, when the whole system is to be launched.

Sterligov plans to hire around 15,000 people in Russia, mainly workers who have been laid off in recent months as companies scaled back production and axed investment plans.

Sitting in his office on the 26th floor of the Moskva-City skyscraper, Sterligov said it takes him two hours to get to work from his hut in a forest of the Mozhaisky district of the Moscow region, 100 kilometers northwest of Moscow, where he lives with his wife and five children.

"I still have sheep, chickens, goats and cows, but now they are mainly my wife and children's responsibility," said Sterligov, 42.

He said he would return to the woods as soon as the world gets out of the economic crisis.

Sterligov moved to the forest in 2004 after selling all of his holdings, including "several luxurious houses" in the prestigious neighborhood along the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse and some property abroad. "I had to pay back huge debts from my election campaigns," Sterligov said.

Sterligov unsuccessfully ran for Krasnoyarsk governor and Moscow mayor before then-President Vladimir Putin ended popular elections for the positions. He also tried to run for president in 2004 but was denied registration because of his failure to get notary certification for the signatures of support that he had submitted. Sterligov says he followed all the proper legal procedures.

He refused to say how he had earned the money for the Anti-Crisis Settlement and Accounting Center.

Several companies contacted by The Moscow Times expressed an interest in using barter trade during the crisis. "We could use barter trade to pay our contractors with the square meters that we build," said Yevgeny Plaksenkov, chief executive of Miel, a leading real estate company. "We know how it all works through our experience in the 1990s."

The crisis of liquidity logically leads to barter trade, he said. "However, barter is like a drug for the economy," he said. "It may give a temporary effect, but if you continue playing with barter it throws the economy backward."

Sergei Ryabov, head of regional and strategy development at Titan-Agro, an agro-business holding, said Sterligov's plans had potential. "In times of crisis, all means are good," he said.

Economists and legal experts, however, were highly skeptical about Sterligov's initiative. "The price of money is not high enough yet to return to the underdeveloped economy of the 1990s," said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank. "The state was weak then, and taxes were barely paid. It is all different now."

Sergei Voitishkin, a corporate partner at Baker & McKenzie, said barter would not work because of hassles involving taxes and property rights. "The crisis is an opportunity to make economies more efficient, whereas barter schemes throw us back into the Dark Ages, which is definitely not what modern economy needs," he said.