"Le Parti des pirates sera représenté au Parlement européen" LEMONDE.FR 17.04.09 | 20h33  n an de prison ferme. C'est la condamnation qu'a prononcée le tribunal de Stockholm à l'encontre des quatre responsables de The Pirate Bay, un des principaux sites de téléchargement au monde, pour complicité de violation de droits d'auteur. Une lourde peine qui pourrait profiter au Piratpartiet ("Parti des pirates"), parti politique suédois indépendant créé en 2006 dans la mouvance du site de téléchargement. Christian Engström, 49 ans, est la tête de liste du parti pour les élections européennes de juin prochain. Il enjoint les jeunes à voter pour le Parti des pirates afin de manifester leur mécontentement. D'après un sondage publié en décembre dernier, 21 % des Suédois pourraient donner leur vote à ce parti. J'ai véritablement été choqué. Un an de prison et 3 millions d'euros de dommages et intérêts pour avoir permis l'échange de fichiers, c'est complètement scandaleux. Les Suédois, en particulier les jeunes, ont maintenant une bonne raison de voter aux élections européennes, pour montrer aux hommes politiques ce qu'ils pensent de ce verdict. Estimez-vous que ce verdict va favoriser votre campagne ? Oui, je pense que de nombreux jeunes, d'habitude peu intéressés par les élections européennes, vont aller voter juste pour montrer à quel point cette condamnation de The Pirate Bay les a mis en colère. De ce point de vue, le verdict du tribunal tombe au bon moment. Dans les cinq heures qui ont suivi la condamnation, notre parti a enregistré dix-huit cents nouveaux membres. Nous comptabilisons maintenant seize mille cinq cents membres, soit plus que les Verts (MP) et le parti de gauche (VP). Je suis convaincu que nous allons provoquer un tournant aux élections européennes de cette année. Nous serons representés au Parlement européen. En quoi consiste votre programme pour les élections ? Le Parti des pirates se bat pour un Internet libre, sans aucune licence, dans une société ouverte. La liberté de communication est l'une des bases des droits de l'homme et fait partie de la Convention européenne des droits de l'homme. Les nouvelles technologies sont quelque chose de fantastique que nous devons encourager, et non entraver en mettant en prison les gens qui fournissent des infrastructures. Les politiciens ne pourront jamais mettre un terme à l'échange de fichiers mais ils peuvent causer des dommages à l'Internet et aux gens qui œuvrent pour le développer. Propos recueillis par Audrey Garric |
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
drakkar pirate en route vers bruxelles
Saturday, 18 April 2009
bolivia: ammazzati 3 mercenari europei, dovevano uccidere morales
http://www.altrenotizie.org/alt/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=101306&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
BOLIVIA: SVENTATO UN ATTENTATO A EVO MORALES
Venerdì, 17 Aprile 2009 - 13:32 -
di Fabrizio Casari
Il luogo è Santa Cruz, capoluogo dell’omonima regione, la più ricca del paese e, non a caso, la capofila dell’opposizione di destra al governo. La polizia boliviana, dopo una sparatoria durata mezz’ora in un hotel della città, elimina una cellula terrorista composta da mercenari europei. Le vittime sono tre, un ungherese, un croato (sembra) ed un irlandese. Da diverso tempo seguivano i movimenti del Presidente Evo Morales ed il funzionamento della struttura adibita alla sua sicurezza ma, da altrettanto tempo, erano a loro volta seguiti dalle forze di sicurezza boliviane. Il Vice ministro dell’Interno, Rùben Gamarra, in un incontro con la stampa nazionale ed estera, ha affermato che i tre uccisi erano “mercenari stranieri membri di una cellula terroristica che aveva come obiettivo l’assassinio del Presidente Evo Morales e del Vicepresidente Alvaro Garcia Linera”.
Gamarra ha spiegato che lo scontro è durato mezz’ora, che oltre ai tre uccisi ci sono due arrestati e che nelle perquisizioni successive “sono stati rinvenuti esplosivo ed armi di grosso calibro, situati in un deposito della Cooperativa dei telefoni di Santa Cruz", allocato all’interno di una fiera imprenditoriale gestita da gruppi dell’opposizione di destra. A rendere il quadro ancora più inquietante, ci sono le dichiarazioni del Capo della polizia boliviana, il Generale Victor Hugo Escobar, che ha annunciato la presenza di numerosi indizi che indicherebbero come lo stesso gruppo terrorista sarebbe responsabile dell’attentato dinamitardo - per fortuna senza vittime - che alcuni giorni prima aveva colpito la casa del Cardinale Julio Terrazas, massimo gerarca cattolico del Paese.
Il Capo della polizia ha quindi dichiarato che “il Governo dispone di tutti i mezzi necessari per scoprire tutte le ramificazioni del complotto, ma è chiaro che non ci troviamo di fronte ad una cellula unica; supponiamo la presenza di altre cellule operative, vista la quantità di armi ed esplosivi rinvenuta”. Il Presidente Morales, che si trovava in Venezuela per la riunione dell’ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana delle Americhe, formata da Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras e con Ecuador e Repubblica Dominicana in veste d’invitati) ha autorizzato l’azione delle forze di sicurezza boliviane ed ha denunciato il complotto terroristico ai suoi danni.
E’ evidente che l’organizzazione di un complotto per uccidere il Presidente ed il suo vice, con notevoli quantità e qualità di mezzi a disposizione e l’utilizzo di mercenari provenienti dall’Europa è un’operazione estremamente costosa, oltre che criminale. Non sono certo moltissimi i boliviani in grado di montare un’operazione del genere e il fatto che il retroterra logistico sia stata la città ribelle al governo, guidata dal capo dell’opposizione, il prefetto Ruben Costas (che in diverse occasioni ha invocato l’uso delle armi contro il governo di Morales), sembrerebbero indicare con sufficiente chiarezza l’indirizzo dei possibili mandanti. Si deve peraltro ricordare che la città di Santa Cruz è stata teatro di altri attentati dinamitardi contro le residenze dei rappresentanti del governo, che hanno fatto salire al livello di guardia la tensione politica.
L’opposizione – un mix tra imprenditori, proprietari terrieri e fedeli ai passati governi – ha dovuto incassare diverse sconfitte dall’ascesa al potere di Evo Morales. La più dura, quella rappresentata dalla nuova Carta Costituzionale che, per la prima volta, sovverte l’ordine di grandezza nei diritti e doveri, assegnando alle risorse della terra, alle diverse comunità etniche, ai diritti sociali e civili, un ruolo ben più preponderante di quanto non lo abbiano il denaro e l’impresa privata. L’opposizione denuncia una Costituzione che aumenta l’ingerenza dello Stato nell’educazione, nell’economia, nella cultura e nella famiglia, con ciò ribadendo come la nuova Bolivia sia incompatibile con i vecchi padroni della stessa.
E proprio nel giorno in cui il Congresso ha approvato la nuova legge elettorale che mette nella condizione di esprimere il proprio voto a tutte le comunità del Paese (con un nuovo registro elettorale aggiornato, che prevede il ricorso alle impronte digitali e che verrà utilizzato per la prima volta) viene scoperto e smantellato il complotto destinato ad uccidere il Presidente. Due segni significativi per la nuova Bolivia, il Paese dove, da quando Evo governa, gli ultimi sono diventati i primi.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two members of a mercenary gang said to have plotted to kill Bolivian President Evo Morales were veterans of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, reports say.
Three died and two were arrested in the eastern city of Santa Cruz after police fought a gunbattle with the group.
Bolivian police officials said two of the five fought for Croatian independence. The three others are said to be Irish, Romanian and Hungarian.
They were said to be planning attacks on government and opposition figures.
Chief among the suspected targets was Bolivian President Evo Morales, but Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera and Santa Cruz Governor Ruben Costas, a bitter opponent of Mr Morales, were also targeted, police said.
There has been no immediate explanation of why the alleged plotters would target government and opposition targets alike.
Mr Costas has questioned the government's information, accusing it of "mounting a show" aimed at discrediting the opposition.
'Paramilitary links'
Revealing details of the alleged mercenary gang, police chief Victor Hugo Escobar said prosecutors were now seeking "clear and concrete information".
The group, suspected by authorities of being behind a dynamite attack on the home of a Catholic cardinal earlier in the week, was tracked down on Thursday to a hotel in Santa Cruz, some 900km (620 miles) east of the capital, La Paz.
The resulting shootout killed Magyarosi Arpak, a Romanian, and Irishman Michael Martin Dwyer, officials say.
The police chief named Eduardo Rosa Flores, 49, a Bolivian-Hungarian man also killed in the gunbattle, as the ringleader of the group.
He fought in the war for Croatian independence in the 1990s where he commanded a paramilitary organisation, reports said.
The two men arrested were named as Mario Francisco Tasik Astorga, 58, another veteran of the Croatian war, and Elot Toazo, a Hungarian computer expert.
Multiple targets
Mr Morales revealed the existence of the alleged plot as he travelled to Venezuela and Trinidad for regional summits.
He said intelligence reports had warned of an assassination plot by a group comprising foreign attackers intending to "riddle us with bullets".
Early reports from Bolivia's leftist government suggested the plotters were linked in some way to opposition movements in the country's lowlands supported by Mr Costas.
But news that Mr Costas was himself thought to be a target brought a clarification from government officials.
"The terrorist group has a strategy... not only against the president or vice-president, but other authorities as well," Deputy Interior Minister Marcos Farfan told Bolivian radio.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/8005592.stm
Published: 2009/04/18 09:01:00 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Friday, 17 April 2009
no pic please, we're british
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos
Police delete London tourists' photos 'to prevent terrorism'
Austrian tourist who photographed bus and Tube stations says 'nasty incident' has put him off returning to London
Matthew Weaver and Vikram Dodd
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 April 2009 12.53 BST
Austrian tourist Klaus Matza and his son who were banned from taking pictures of buses in Walthamstow. Photograph: Klaus Matza
Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city's sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as "modern sculpture".
But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.
Matkza, a 69-year-old retired television cameraman with a taste for modern architecture, was told that photographing anything to do with transport was "strictly forbidden". The policemen also recorded the pair's details, including passport numbers and hotel addresses.
In a letter in today's Guardian, Matzka wrote: "I understand the need for some sensitivity in an era of terrorism, but isn't it naive to think terrorism can be prevented by terrorising tourists?"
The Metropolitan police said it was investigating the allegations.
In a telephone interview from his home in Vienna, Matka said: "I've never had these experiences anywhere, never in the world, not even in Communist countries."
He described his horror as he and his 15-year-old son were forced to delete all transport-related pictures on their cameras, including images of Vauxhall underground station.
"Google Street View is allowed to show any details of our cities on the world wide web," he said. "But a father and his son are not allowed to take pictures of famous London landmarks."
He said he would not return to London again after the incident, which took place last week in central Walthamstow, in north-east London. He said he and his son liked to travel to the unfashionable suburbs.
"We typically crisscross cities from the end of railway terminals, we like to go to places not visited by other tourists. You get to know a city by going to places like this, not central squares. Buckingham Palace is also necessary, but you need to go elsewhere to get to know the city," he said.
He said the "nasty incident" had "killed interest in any further trips to the city".
Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and a Green party member of the London assembly, said she would raise the incident with the Met chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, as part of discussions on the policing of the G20 protests.
"This is another example of the police completely overreaching the anti-terrorism powers," she said. "They are using it in a totally inappropriate way.
"I will be raising it with the commissioner. I have already written to him about the police taking away cameras and stopping people taking photographs and made the point that if it was not for people taking photos, we would not know about the death of Ian Tomlinson or the woman who was hit by a police officer."
A spokeswoman for Metropolitan police said: "It is not the police's intention to prevent tourists from taking photographs and we are looking to the allegations made." The force said it had no knowledge of any ban on photographing public transport in the capital.
sarko l'arrogant
| http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2009/04/17/sarkozy-l-arrogant-epingle-par-la-presse-internationale_1181842_823448.html LEMONDE.FR 17.04.09 | 09h17 •  arack Obama manque d'expérience, José Luis Zapatero "n'est peut-être pas très intelligent" et José Manuel Barroso brille surtout par son absence. Rapportées par Libération, les considérations assassines du président français, Nicolas Sarkozy, sur ses homologues, lors d'un déjeuner avec des parlementaires, ont déjà fait le tour de la presse internationale. L'Elysée a beau démentir, l'arrogance française a encore frappé. "Deux fois seulement" corrige le New York Times. Rappelant "le goût de l'action" du chef de l'Etat, le quotidien américain se borne à un exposé acerbe des prétentions françaises. "Dans le monde de Sarko, le président Obama est faible, inexpérimenté et mal informé sur le changement climatique". C'est "la fin de la courte lune de miel franco-américaine", ironise The Times. Côté espagnol, la polémique a rapidement pris de l'ampleur. A en croire El Pais, les démentis de l'Elysée n'ont pas convaicu. Beaucoup sont montés au créneau pour défendre le premier ministre socialiste. Même le vice-secrétaire de la communication du PP (Parti populaire, droite), Esteban González Pons, s'est dit gêné. "Je ne me réjouis pas de ces déclarations, même s'il a parfois raison. Zapatero est notre chef d'Etat, c'est comme ça, s'il est attaqué, nous devons le défendre."
Elise Barthet |
pakistan's existence in doubt
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/66368.htmlU.S. experts: Pakistan on course to become Islamist stateJonathan S. LandayMcClatchy NewspapersApril 16, 2009 10:15:44 PMWASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing the a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan's terrorist haven did before 9/11. "It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution," said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies. "Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control," said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration. "Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century," agreed the U.S. intelligence official. "It's a developed state . . . (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had." "The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.," he added. "The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they'll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan, especially now that it's getting bigger." The experts McClatchy interviewed said their views aren't a worst case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants' gains and the failure of Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to respond. "The place is beyond redemption," said a Pentagon adviser who asked not to be further identified so he could speak freely. "I don't see any plausible scenario under which the present government or its most likely successor will mobilize the economic, political and security resources to push back this rising tide of violence. "I think Pakistan is moving toward a situation where the extremists control virtually all of the countryside and the government controls only the urban centers," he continued. "If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants." That pessimistic view of Pakistan's future has been bolstered by Islamabad's surrender this week for the first time of areas outside the frontier tribal region to Pakistan's Taliban movement and by a growing militant infiltration of Karachi, the nation's financial center, and the industrial and political heartland province of Punjab, in part to evade U.S. drone strikes in the tribal belt. Civilian deaths in the drone attacks, the eight-year-old U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and U.S. support for Pakistan's former military dictatorship also have sown widespread ambivalence about the threat the insurgency poses and revulsion at fighting fellow Muslims. "The government has to ratchet up the urgency and ratchet up the commitment of resources. This is a serious moment for Pakistan," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, on April 14 in Islamabad. "The federal government has got to . . . define this problem as Pakistan's." Many Pakistanis, however, dismiss such warnings as inflated. They think that the militants are open to dialogue and political accommodation to end the unrest, which many trace to the former military regime's cooperation with the U.S. after 9/11. Ahsan Iqbal, a top aide to opposition leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said the insurgency can be quelled if the government rebuilds the judicial system, improves law enforcement, compensates guerrillas driven to fight by relatives' deaths in security force operations and implements democratic reforms. "It will require time," Iqbal told McClatchy reporters and editors this week. "We need a very strong resolve and internal unity." Many U.S. officials, though, regard the civilian government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as unpopular, dysfunctional and mired in infighting. It's been unable to agree on an effective counterinsurgency strategy or to address the ills that are feeding the unrest. These include ethnic and sectarian hatreds, ineffective police, broken courts, widespread corruption, endemic poverty and a deepening financial crisis, they said. Pakistan's army, meanwhile, is hobbled by a lack of direction from the country's civilian leaders, disparaged for its repeated coups and shaken by repeated defeats by the militants. It remains fixated on India to ensure high budgets and cohesion among troops of divergent ethnic and sectarian allegiances, U.S. officials and experts said. Many officers and politicians also oppose fighting the Islamist groups that Pakistan nurtured to fight proxy wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and because they think the U.S. is secretly conspiring with India to destabilize their country. Alarm rose in Washington this week after the parliament and Zardari agreed to impose Islamic law in the Swat district, where extremists have repelled several army offensives; closed girls' schools; and beheaded, hanged and lashed opponents and alleged criminals. The government's capitulation handed the militants their first refuge outside the remote tribal area bordering Afghanistan, and less than 100 miles north of Islamabad. Taliban fighters also advanced virtually unopposed from Swat into the Buner district, 60 miles north of Islamabad. Buner is close to a key hydroelectric dam and to the highways that link Pakistan to China, and Islamabad to Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, much of which is already under Taliban sway. Many U.S. officials and other experts expect the militants to continue advancing. The Taliban "have now become a self-sustaining force," author Ahmed Rashid, an expert on the insurgency, told a conference in Washington on Wednesday. "They have an agenda for Pakistan, and that agenda is no less than to topple the government of Pakistan and 'Talibanizing' the entire country." Iqbal, the adviser to Sharif, disagreed. While militants will overrun small pockets, most Pakistanis embrace democracy and will resist living under the Taliban's harsh interpretation of Islam, he said. "The psychology, the temperament, the mood of the Pakistani nation does not subscribe to these extremist views," Iqbal said. The U.S. intelligence official, however, said that Pakistan's elite, dominated since the country's independence in 1947 by politicians, bureaucrats and military officers from Punjab, have failed to recognize the seriousness of the situation. "The Punjabi elite has already lost control of Pakistan, but neither they nor the Obama administration realize that," the official said. "Pakistan will be an Islamist state — or maybe a collection of four Islamic states, probably within a few years. There's no civilian leadership in Islamabad that can stop this, and so far, there hasn't been any that's been willing to try." Several U.S. officials said that the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy that President Barack Obama unveiled last month is being called into question by the accelerating rate at which the insurgency in Pakistan is expanding. The plan hinges on the Pakistani army's willingness to put aside its obsession with Hindu-dominated India and focus on fighting the Islamist insurgency. It also presupposes, despite doubts held by some U.S. officials, that sympathetic Pakistani military and intelligence officers will sever their links with militant groups. |
stiglitz: obama's plan destined to fail
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahnPchOxZMh8&refer=home# Stiglitz Says White House Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue By Michael McKee and Matthew Benjamin April 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration's plan to fix the U.S. banking system is destined to fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than create a viable financial system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said. "All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients," Stiglitz said in an interview. The people who designed the plans are "either in the pocket of the banks or they're incompetent." The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, isn't large enough to recapitalize the banking system, and the administration hasn't been direct in addressing that shortfall, he said. Stiglitz said there are conflicts of interest at the White House because some of Obama's advisers have close ties to Wall Street. "We don't have enough money, they don't want to go back to Congress, and they don't want to do it in an open way and they don't want to get control" of the banks, a set of constraints that will guarantee failure, Stiglitz said. The return to taxpayers from the TARP is as low as 25 cents on the dollar, he said. "The bank restructuring has been an absolute mess." Rather than continually buying small stakes in banks, weaker banks should be put through a receivership where the shareholders of the banks are wiped out and the bondholders become the shareholders, using taxpayer money to keep the institutions functioning, he said. Nobel Prize Stiglitz, 66, won the Nobel in 2001 for showing that markets are inefficient when all parties in a transaction don't have equal access to critical information, which is most of the time. His work is cited in more economic papers than that of any of his peers, according to a February ranking by Research Papers in Economics, an international database. The Public-Private Investment Program, PPIP, designed to buy bad assets from banks, "is a really bad program," Stiglitz said. It won't accomplish the administration's goal of establishing a price for illiquid assets clogging banks' balance sheets, and instead will enrich investors while sticking taxpayers with huge losses. "You're really bailing out the shareholders and the bondholders," he said. "Some of the people likely to be involved in this, like Pimco, are big bondholders," he said, referring to Pacific Investment Management Co., a bond investment firm in Newport Beach, California. Bigger Losses Stiglitz said taxpayer losses are likely to be much larger than bank profits from the PPIP program even though Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair has said the agency expects no losses. "The statement from Sheila Bair that there's no risk is absurd," he said, because losses from the PPIP will be borne by the FDIC, which is funded by member banks. "We're going to be asking all the banks, including presumably some healthy banks, to pay for the losses of the bad banks," Stiglitz said. "It's a real redistribution and a tax on all American savers." Stiglitz was also concerned about the links between White House advisers and Wall Street. Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. paid National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, a managing director of the firm, more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the 16 months before he joined the administration. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. 'Revolving Door' "America has had a revolving door. People go from Wall Street to Treasury and back to Wall Street," he said. "Even if there is no quid pro quo, that is not the issue. The issue is the mindset." Stiglitz was head of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton before serving from 1997 to 2000 as chief economist at the World Bank. He resigned from that post in 2000 after repeatedly clashing with the White House over economic policies it supported at the International Monetary Fund. He is now a professor at Columbia University. Stiglitz was also critical of Obama's other economic rescue programs. He called the $787 billion stimulus program necessary but "flawed" because too much spending comes after 2009, and because it devotes too much of the money to tax cuts "which aren't likely to work very effectively." "It's really a peculiar policy, I think," he said. Plan Deficient The $75 billion mortgage relief program, meanwhile, doesn't do enough to help Americans who can't afford to make their monthly payments, he said. It doesn't reduce principal, doesn't make changes in bankruptcy law that would help people work out debts, and doesn't change the incentive to simply stop making payments once a mortgage is greater than the value of a house. Stiglitz said the Fed, while it's done almost all it can to bring the country back from the worst recession since 1982, can't revive the economy on its own. Relying on low interest rates to help put a floor under housing prices is a variation on the policies that created the housing bubble in the first place, Stiglitz said. "This is a strategy trying to recreate that bubble," he said. "That's not likely to provide a long run solution. It's a solution that says let's kick the can down the road a little bit." While the strategy might put a floor under housing prices, it won't do anything to speed the recovery, he said. "It's a recipe for Japanese-style malaise." To contact the reporter on this story: Michael McKee in New York at mmckee@bloomberg.net; Matthew Benjamin in Washington at Mbenjamin2@bloomberg.net Last Updated: April 16, 2009 17:24 EDT |
texas governor mentions leaving the union
Dems: Perry should disavow secession talk
Thursday, April 16, 2009 | 6:47 PM
AP
AUSTIN, TX -- In a state that once was its own nation, a Republican governor who talked about secession without completely dismissing the idea has Democratic lawmakers in an uproar.
Gov. Rick Perry, in comments following an anti-tax "tea party" Wednesday, never did advocate Texas breaking away from the United States but suggested that Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to leave the union. That was enough to feed opinions for and against secession on Web sites, cable TV and talk radio across the nation.
At the Texas Capitol on Thursday, Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, joined by several fellow Texas House Democrats, said some people associate talk of secession with racial division and the Civil War and that Perry should disavow any notion of seceding.
"Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It can be nothing else. It is the ultimate anti-American statement," Dunnam said at a news conference.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, said that by not rejecting the possibility of secession out of hand, Perry "is taking a step down a very dangerous and divisive path encouraged by the fringe of Texas politics."
The Democrats are proposing a House resolution expressing "complete and total disagreement with any fringe element advocating the 'secession' of Texas or any other state from our one and indivisible Union."
Perry emphasized Thursday that he is not advocating secession but understands why Americans may have those feelings because of frustration with Washington, D.C. He said it's fine to express the thought. He offered no apology and did not back away from his earlier comments.
Perry's remarks Wednesday were in response to a question from The Associated Press as he walked away from the Austin rally, where some in the audience had shouted "Secede!" during his speech. The governor said he didn't think Texas should secede despite some chatter about it on the Internet and his name being associated with the idea.
"We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot," Perry said Wednesday.
A day later, Perry said he found the fascination with the remark interesting.
"I refer people back to my statement and I got a charge out of it," he said. "I was kind of thinking that maybe the same people that hadn't been reading the Constitution right were reading that article and they got the wrong impression about what I said. Clearly I stated that we have a great union. Texas is part of a great union. And I see no reason for that to change."
Texas was a republic from 1836, when it declared independence from Mexico, to 1845, when it became a U.S. state.
Perry has been speaking out against the federal government lately over federal economic stimulus spending. He's also in a tough race for re-election against a fellow Republican, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom he is trying to portray as a Washington insider.
Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle criticized Dunnam, saying he was "trying to distract from the fact that yesterday thousands of Texans, including many in his own district, expressed their extreme displeasure at Washington's rampant taxation, big spending and bloated government."
Dunnam suggested Perry is positioning himself for his political future.
"We all knew he wanted to be president. I just didn't know it was president of the Republic of Texas," he said to chuckles from onlookers.
Copyright ©2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
us: anti gov protests gain momentum
APRIL 15, 2009
Tax Day Becomes Protest Day
How the tea parties could change American politics.
By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies -- dubbed "tea parties" -- to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.
So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing "flash crowds" -- groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don't know each other.
In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves.
We saw a bit of this in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, with things like Howard Dean's use of Meetup, and Barack Obama's use of Facebook. But this was still social-networking in support of an existing organization or campaign. The tea-party protest movement is organizing itself, on its own behalf. Some existing organizations, like Newt Gingrich's American Solutions and FreedomWorks, have gotten involved. But they're involved as followers and facilitators, not leaders. The leaders are appearing on their own, and reaching out to others through blogs, Facebook, chat boards and alternative media.
The protests began with bloggers in Seattle, Wash., who organized a demonstration on Feb. 16. As word of this spread, rallies in Denver and Mesa, Ariz., were quickly organized for the next day. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli's Feb. 19 "rant heard round the world" in which he called for a "Chicago tea party" on July Fourth. The tea-party moniker stuck, but angry taxpayers weren't willing to wait until July. Soon, tea-party protests were appearing in one city after another, drawing at first hundreds, and then thousands, to marches in cities from Orlando to Kansas City to Cincinnati.
As word spread, people got interested in picking a common date for nationwide protests, and decided on today, Tax Day, as the date. As I write this, various Web sites tracking tea parties are predicting anywhere between 300 and 500 protests at cities around the world. A Google Map tracking planned events, maintained at the FreedomWorks.org Web site, shows the United States covered by red circles, with new events being added every day.
The movement grew so fast that some bloggers at the Playboy Web site -- apparently unaware that we've entered the 21st century -- suggested that some secret organization must be behind all of this. But, in fact, today's technology means you don't need an organization, secret or otherwise, to get organized. After considerable ridicule, the claim was withdrawn, but that hasn't stopped other media outlets from echoing it.
There's good news and bad news in this phenomenon for establishment politicians. The good news for Republicans is that, while the Republican Party flounders in its response to the Obama presidency and its programs, millions of Americans are getting organized on their own. The bad news is that those Americans, despite their opposition to President Obama's policies, aren't especially friendly to the GOP. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele asked to speak at the Chicago tea party, his request was politely refused by the organizers: "With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steele that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."
Likewise, I spoke to an organizer for the Knoxville tea party who said that no "professional politicians" were going to be allowed to speak, and he made a big point of saying that the protest wasn't an anti-Obama protest, it was an anti-establishment protest. I've heard similar things from tea-party organizers in other cities, too. Though critics will probably try to write the tea parties off as partisan publicity stunts, they're really a post-partisan expression of outrage.
Of course, it won't be the same everywhere. There are no national rules, and organizers of each protest are doing things the way they want. And that's the good news and the bad news for Democrats. It's not a big Republican effort. It's a big popular effort. But a mass movement of ordinary people who don't feel that their voices are being heard doesn't bode well for the party that positioned itself as the organ of hope and change.
Will these flash crowds be a flash in the pan? It's possible that people who demonstrate today will find that experience cathartic enough -- or exhausting enough -- that that will be it. But it's more likely that the tea-party movement will have an impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections, and perhaps beyond.
What's most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven't ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.
Cincinnati organizer Mike Wilson, a novice organizer who drew 5,000 people to a rally on March 15, is now planning to create a political action committee and a permanent political organization to press for lower taxes and reduced spending. Tucson tea party organizer Robert Mayer told me that his organization will focus on city council elections in the fall as its next priority. And there's lots of Internet chatter about ways of taking things further after today's protests.
This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.
Mr. Reynolds is the author of "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths" (Thomas Nelson, 2006). He will be covering the tea party protests today at PJTV.com.
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A15
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
banks losses may reach 4 trillion$
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/256364/according_to_press_reports_the_imf_may_allegedly_be_increasing_its_estimate_of_global_bank_losses_to_4_trillion_a_figure_consistent_with_estimates_by_a_variety_of_independent_bank_analysts
According to press reports the IMF may allegedly be increasing its estimate of global bank losses to $4 trillion, a figure consistent with estimates by a variety of independent bank analysts
Nouriel Roubini
|
Apr 10, 2009
But if you think that $2.2 trillion was already a huge figure, the
RGE Monitor new estimate in January 2009 of peak credit losses (available in a paper for our RGE clients) suggested that total losses on loans made by U.S. financial firms and the fall in the market value of the assets they are holding would be at their peak about $3.6 trillion ($1.6 trillion for loans and $2 trillion for securities). The U.S. banks and broker dealers are exposed to half of this figure, or $1.8 trillion; the rest is borne by other financial institutions in the US and abroad. The capital backing the banks’ assets was last fall only $1.4 trillion, leaving the U.S. banking system some $400 billion in the hole, or close to zero even after the government and private sector recapitalization of such banks and after banks’ provisioning for losses. Thus, another $1.4 trillion would be needed to bring back the capital of banks to the level they had before the crisis; and such massive additional recapitalization is needed to resolve the credit crunch and restore lending to the private sector. What are the implications of these figures? Let me explain.
These figures suggest that the US banking system is effectively near insolvent in the aggregate. Of course this does not mean that all or most institutions are insolvent but that many of them will be – at the peak – with a massive capital shortfall. Of course time can heal many wounds and with borrowing costs for banks cost to zero and net interest margin rising some banks may be able to rebuild capital over time in spite of severe losses from marking down the value of loans and securities. But some institutions are so severely damaged that even rising interest margins, forbearance and time will not be enough to let them recover their capital losses; i.e. some – even large –institutions may be insolvent under most likely states of the world. Note that the difference between the RGE estimate of $3.6 trillion of losses and the IMF estimate of $2.2 trillion – in spite of taking the same analytical approach – was that the IMF was looking at current charge-off/delinquency rates while RGE made estimate of peak losses based on a sensible scenario about the US economy (growth, home price declines, unemployment rate).
But it has now reported in the press that the IMF will soon publish new revised estimates of credit losses of $4 trillion;
of this estimate $3.1 trillion is losses on loans and assets originated
by US financial institutions while $0.9 trillion are losses by
European and Asian institutions. Since the RGE estimate is for loans
and securities originated by US institution the appropriate comparison
is between the $3.6 trillion estimate by RGE and the $3.1 trillion of
the IMF. So at this point the IMF estimates and those of RGE are
converging towards a very similar figure. RGE has not made yet an
estimate of losses on loans and securities issued by European and Asian
institutions but we estimated (based on Fed and IMF estimates) that
about 40 to 50% of the losses on securities are borne by non-US
investors. Thus, about $1 trillion of the US originated securities
losses are suffered by non-US institutions because of this
international credit risk transfer. If you then add this $1 trillion to
the IMF alleged estimate of $0.9 trillion losses on loans and
securities originated by Europe and Asia total losses for these
European and Asian institutions would be $1.9 trillion that is not very different from our estimate of $2.6 trillion of losses ($3.6 trillion minus $1 trillion) borne by US investors and financial institutions. One critique of the RGE and IMF estimates of credit losses is that the estimates of losses on securities are based on current mark to market values of such securities. If current prices are depressed because of a large illiquidity premium then long term losses will be smaller. While this argument is partially valid it does not significantly affect the overall estimate of losses. Suppose – to be very very generous to the « liquidity discount » critique – that such illiquidity premium is 30%. Then, our estimate of securities losses of $2 trillion needs to be revised downward to $1.4 trillion. Then, our estimate of total credit losses goes down from $3.6 trillion to $3.0 trillion, a figure very close to the most recent alleged IMF estimate.
It should also be noted that the RGE figure may be an underestimate
rather than an overestimate - of peak losses. Because of the lack of precise data we have not included losses on two important categories of assets, municipal bonds and sovereign bonds of emerging market economies. Given the likely sharp increase in default rates by state/local government (in 1991 at the time of the last real
estate-driven recession muni bonds were trading like junk bonds) and given that sovereign spread are now very high losses on these two categories of assets are likely to be very significant. Also, at the time of our January 2009 estimates we assumed that the US unemployment rate would peak in 2010 only to 10% (an estimate now shared by the OECD for the US and most advanced economies), But there are now signs that the unemployment rate will peak closer to 11% if not higher (and the current unemployment rate is already above 15% if you include partially-employed workers and discouraged workers who left the labor force).
The RGE and IMF estimates of very large credit losses are consistent
with the analysis of most independent analysts of the banking system,
respected and authoritative figures such as Meredith Whitney (recent victim of cheap and unwarranted shots against her by a WSJ commentator), Chris Whalen and Mike Mayo.
As recently reported by Bloomberg Mike Mayo predicts that US loan losses may exceed Great Depression levels:
CLSA analyst Mike Mayo assigned an « underweight » rating to U.S. banks, saying loan losses may exceed Great Depression levels and the government may be forced to take over large lenders.
Financial shares and major U.S. stock indexes dropped after Mayo advised clients to sell banks including Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T Corp.
and Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bancorp. Mayo said in a report today that
he assigned « underperform » ratings to Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the two biggest U.S. banks by assets.
« While certain mortgage problems are farther along, other areas
are likely to accelerate, reflecting a rolling recession by asset
class, » said Mayo, who joined CLSA from Deutsche Bank AG last month. « New government actions might not help as much as expected, especially given that loans have been marked down to only 98 cents on the dollar, on average. »
The 46-year-old Mayo gained recognition in 1999 at Credit Suisse AG for correctly taking a bearish stance on bank stocks when other analysts remained bullish. After being fired from Credit Suisse, he joined Prudential Equity Group in 2001, where he earned a reputation for criticizing investors and companies who tried to curb objective analysis. At Deutsche, Mayo had « sell » or « hold » ratings on all 18 companies he covered, according to data compiled by Bloomberg... Nationalization of banks remains a possibility because government policy remains unclear, Mayo said on a conference call after releasing his report.
Existing government efforts aimed at boosting bank capital don’t « preclude regulators from taking harsher action, » Mayo said. « I don’t want to be a partner with the government in investing in bank stocks. » Mayo said he expects loan losses to increase to 3.5 percent, and as high as 5.5 percent in a stress scenario, by the end of 2010. The highest level of loan losses in the Great Depression was 3.4 percent in 1934, according to the report. Mayo’s estimate matches the prediction he made on March 10 for Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank.
Mortgage Losses
Mortgage-related losses are about halfway to their peak, while
credit-card and consumer losses are only a third of the way to their expected highest levels, according to Mayo, who declined to comment beyond the report. CLSA is an affiliate of New York-based Calyon Securities.
The nation’s largest banks may be transitioning from a financial crisis marked by writedowns of capital to an economic crisis featuring large loan losses, Mayo wrote. The U.S. government cannot provide much relief because its actions will lead to either banks having to raise new capital or toxic assets remaining on banks’ balance sheets, Mayo wrote.
Mayo said solutions to the banking crisis will take time, as the increase in risk happened over a decade or more. CLSA’s underperform rating reflects the expectation that the stock will underperform the local market by 0 to 10 percent, while a sell rating expects it to fare worse by more than 10 percent, according to the report.
Seven Deadly Sins
Mayo said banks engaged in « seven deadly sins »: greedy loan
growth, gluttony of real estate, lust for high yields, sloth-like risk management, pride of low capital, envy of exotic fees, and anger of regulators. Mayo’s « underweight » rating applies to the entire sector.
Meredith Whitney also remains very bearish on US banks:
Meredith Whitney, who left Oppenheimer & Co. in February to found Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC, said in a Forbes interview that banks will continue to write down their mortgage assets as home prices decline further than lenders expected. Home prices are not done falling and will ultimately drop 50 percent from their peak, Whitney said today in a CNBC interview.
The unemployment rate also has exceeded banks’ projections and could lead to further loan losses, Whitney told Forbes. Banks « by and large » will show profits in the first quarter before provisions for loan losses, Whitney said on CNBC.
Also, as reported by Forbes:
In a report to clients of the Meredith Whitney Advisory Group,
the closely followed bank stock analyst reiterated her bearish position on the financial sector and the economy in general. Though some are forecasting a recovery in late 2009 or 2010, Whitney believes that banks have still not properly reserved against greater than expected losses in home prices. Her earnings forecasts for 2009 and 2010 are almost across the board lower than consensus.
In Whitney’s narrative financial firms will relive the worst struggles of 2008 because housing prices in the major markets will fall much further than expected. Bank of America, HSBC and even the resilient JP Morgan Chase will have to increase reserves as real estate losses mount unabated. Home price expectations for the banking industry play a critical role in their entire accrual accounting methodology. « When a bank carries both a loan and a loss reserve against such a loan on its balance sheet, where that bank expects home prices to bottom is a key assumption much like unemployment or interest rates, » Whitney warns.
Her report, titled, « The Agony of Incrementalism » forecasts home prices to fall by more than 66.0% of current bank assumptions in the 10-City Case-Shiller Index.
« Increased liquidity drove home prices higher, » Whitney explained, « and contracting liquidity will drive home prices lower. » She pointed out that 70.0% of homeowners need leverage to buy and stay in their homes, therefore an overall declining mortgage market will put pressure on prices.
As home prices fall and as unemployment rises, banks will have
to retain earnings to fund greater reserve funds as part of a cycle
that Whitney says has « no end in sight as both forecasts continue to rise quicker than expectations. » It’s a « never ending game of catch up, » she says because the banks have been underestimating losses ever since the credit crisis began a year and a half ago. The average bank thinks the total decline in housing prices was going to be 30% at the end of the first quarter. Now, says Whitney, they’re thinking more like 37% -- still behind reality.
Similarly, Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics has recently pointed out that economic losses for US banks could be as high as $4 trillion:
Remember that the maximum probably loss (« MPL ») shown in The IRA Bank Monitor for the top US banks with assets above $10 billion, also known as Economic Capital, is a cash number representing the amount of incremental capital the banks may require to absorb the losses from a 3-4 standard deviation economic slump, such as the one we have today. If you include the subsidy required for the GSEs and AIG, the US Treasury could face a collective funding requirement of $4 trillion through the cycle.
Do Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner really believe that they can sell such a program to the Congress? To put it in perspective, the $250 billion in the Obama Budget for additional TARP funds will not quite cover Citigroup (NYSE:C).
Finally, given these negative assessments of the prospects for US banks by independent analysts and given forecasts of credit losses by the IMF that are now allegedly close to the ones of RGE
what should we make of the recent sharp rally of banks and financial stocks; of the recent statements by banks such as Bank of America and Citi and other banks that they are making profits in Q1 (before provisioning); of the better than expected earnings results of Wells Fargo that led to another stock market rally on Thursday; and of the recent press reports suggesting that most if not all banks will pass the stress test?
The detailed answers to those questions will be provided in my next blog in the next few days. In brief: banks are benefitting from close to zero borrowing costs; they are benefitting from a massive transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers given a dozen different government bailout and subsidy programs for the financial system; they are not properly provisioning/reserving for massive future loan losses; they are not properly marking down current losses from loans in delinquency; they are using the recent changes by FASB to mark to market to inflate the value of many assets; they are using a number of accounting tricks to minimize reported losses and maximize reported earnings; the Treasury is using a stress scenario for the stress tests that is not a true stress scenario but rather a benchmark of what the economy is likely to look like in 2009 and 2010; a true stress scenario would have considered a much more serious economic downturn..
Thursday, 9 April 2009
antarctica: ice cold warming
Antarctic Sea Ice Up Over 43% Since 1980, Where Is The Media?
Posted by Admin
Monday 06 April 2009 - 06:14:35
Sea ice at Antarctica is up over 43% since 1980 and we hear nothing in the news, yet Arctic ice is down less than 7% and they're all over it! We've been waiting for the main stream media to pick up on the increase of Antarctic ice but so far they're been totally absent. Guess its doesn't fit the plan.
From the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado
Still no sign of the national media on the extraordinary growth of sea ice at the antarctic. They sure haven't missed a chance to point out the relatively small loss of ice at the arctic. Did did it ever occur to them that perhaps there is a natural process at work that has shifted ice growth from one pole to the other? Do they not want to admit that there are things man doesn't yet understand about how this planet works?
Remember that some of the "models" predicted increased antarctic ice, but they predicted increased "interior ice" due to increased snow fall. None of the models predicted increased sea ice around the antarctic. Yet that is what we have, and not just a little increase but a 43% increase since 1980!. This is highly significant yet hardly anyone in the main stream media (MSM) is talking about it.
Sea ice is much different than interior ice. Some of the models predicted increased ice over the interior of antarctic. If you've ever lived in the extreme cold temperature regions you already understand this. When it gets very cold the air become drier and it snows less, as the temperature warms towards freezing it actually snows more. Since the antarctic rarely even gets close to freezing its understandable that warming would cause more snow fall. Over time compacted snow would lead to more ice. But that is not what is happening here. We're seeing a dramatic increase in "sea ice", this ice is over the ocean. Sea ice is caused by colder temperatures, not by increased snow fall. An increase of 43% is highly significant, but we hear nothing from either the MSM or the scientific community. Especially compared to the out 6%-7% decrease at the arctic (this isn't year over year, this is a 6% decline since 1980!).
Antarctic Sea Ice for March
Extent Concentration
2009 5.0 million sq km 2.9 million sq km
1997 3.8 million sq km 2.2 million sq km
1980 3.5 million sq km 2.0 million sq km
This is an increase of 45% for ice concentration since 1980. This continues a long trend that has been noted here for several months..
Interior ice is also increasing but not due to warming as the models have predicted. According to NOAA GISS data winter temperatures in the antarctic have actually fallen by 1°F since 1957, with the coldest year being 2004. All the while global CO2 levels have gone up and the main stream media has been reporting near catastrophic warming conditions. They regularly show Antarctic sea ice shelves breaking apart, which is an entirely normal process (though they never tell you that part). The main stream media and certain segments of the scientific community truly must have no shame.
If you have doubts about the increase in ice you can run the numbers yourself at the National Snow and Ice Data Center's website (part of the University of Colorado and funded by the National Science Foundation).
And if you want to read something really amusing take a gander at Michael Asher Blog about climate modelers trying to explain antarctic warming.... agh .. cooling....agh... warming it's delightful.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
us gov considers climate engineering
Obama looks at climate engineering
Apr 8
11:55 AM US/Eastern
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."
Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.
Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."
At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.
Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.
The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."
Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.
But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air—making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested—could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.
Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.
Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide—the chief human-caused greenhouse gas—out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
genocide in the pipe in sri lanka
"War on Terror" ... yet again!
Arundhati Roy : "Colossal humanitarian tragedy"
by Arundhati Roy*
Pointing an accusing finger at the Indian Government for silence on the unfolding tragedy in Sri Lanka, Arundhati Roy, writer and activisit, in an article appearing in Times of India says, "while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country [India]. It's a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it's too late."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 April 2009
The silent horror of the war in Sri Lanka
The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.
From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the 'war on terror' as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.
Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ''welfare villages'' have been established to house displaced Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ''will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting''. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps ? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph : ''A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They're basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.''
Given its stated objective of ''wiping out'' the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ''terrorists'' does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture.
The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.
Why the silence ? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ''A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.''
Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and 'white van abductions', which have made society ''freeze with fear''. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.
There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries ? Pakistan ? China ? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation ?
In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.
It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here ? There are no 'white van abductions' — at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government's long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country. It's a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it's too late.
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer (in English) and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize
time: marijuana economic-stimulus package
Thursday, Apr. 02, 2009
Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense
By Joe Klein
For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver's licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We'll let you proceed with your lives — much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case — without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We'll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: "Tune in, turn on, drop dead."
A fantasy, I suppose. But, beneath the furious roil of the economic crisis, a national conversation has quietly begun about the irrationality of our drug laws. It is going on in state legislatures, like New York's, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted. And it has reached the floor of Congress, where Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have proposed a major prison-reform package, which would directly address drug-sentencing policy. (See pictures of stoner cinema.)
There are also more puckish signs of a zeitgeist shift. A few weeks ago, the White House decided to stage a forum in which the President would answer questions submitted by the public; 92,000 people responded — and most of them seemed obsessed with the legalization of marijuana. The two most popular questions about "green jobs and energy," for example, were about pot. The President dismissed the outpouring — appropriately, I guess — as online ballot-stuffing and dismissed the legalization question with a simple: "No." (Read "Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?")
This was a rare instance of Barack Obama reacting reflexively, without attempting to think creatively, about a serious policy question. He was, in fact, taking the traditional path of least resistance: an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts. In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. Such a person is assumed to be stoned all the time, unworthy of being taken seriously. Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk radio. The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering.
But there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public. (See the top 10 ballot measures.)
At the same time, there is an enormous potential windfall in the taxation of marijuana. It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone. And that's probably a fraction of the revenues that would be available — and of the economic impact, with thousands of new jobs in agriculture, packaging, marketing and advertising. A veritable marijuana economic-stimulus package! (Read "Is Pot Good For You?")
So why not do it? There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe — with some good reason — that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to "riverboats" and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald's has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although it's true that with legalization, those two might not be unrelated.) Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?
In any case, the drug-reform discussion comes just at the right moment. We boomers are getting older every day. You're not going to want us on the highways. Make us your best offer.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
yen will devalue
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5110578/Swiss-slide-into-deflation-signals-the-next-chapter-of-this-global-crisis.html
Swiss slide into deflation signals the next chapter of this global crisis
Watch Switzerland closely. It is tipping into deflation, the first Western country to succumb to Japan's disease.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
7:17PM BST 05 Apr 2009
Swiss consumer prices fell 0.4pc in March (year-on-year). Swiss CPI will be minus 1pc at least by July, nearing the level where spending psychology changes. By the time you have a self-feeding spiral, it is too late.
"This is something that we must prevent at all costs. The current situation is extraordinarily serious," said Philipp Hildebrand, a governor of the Swiss National Bank.
The SNB is not easily spooked. It is the world's benchmark bank, the keeper of the monetary flame. Yet even the SNB's hard men have thrown away the rule book, taking emergency action to force down the exchange rate of the Swiss franc.
Here lies the danger. If other countries try to export deflation by this means, we will face a second phase of the global crisis. Taiwan is already devaluing. Korea, Singapore, and Sweden all seem tempted to follow. Japan is chomping at the bit.
"We don't fully realise in the West what a catastrophic collapse Japan has suffered," says Albert Edwards, global strategist at Société Générale. "The West has dumped a large part of its economic downturn onto Japan by devaluing against the yen."
This is about to go into reverse as Tokyo hits the ping-pong ball back across the net. "As the unfolding collapse in the yen gathers pace, the West will see its green shoots incinerated to dust," he said.
Japan's industrial output fell 38pc in February (year-on-year), mostly concentrated into the last four months. No major economy imploded at this speed in the 1930s. The country has been hit by a double shock. As an export power it has taken the brunt of Anglo-Saxon belt-tightening: as the world's top creditor it is cursed by a "safe-haven" currency that soars in moments of danger – largely because the Japanese bring home their wealth till the storm passes. Normally, Japan can cope. This time, the yen's rise has pushed the economy over a cliff.
The yen must come back down to earth, and soon, or Japanese society will start to disintegrate. If necessary, the Bank of Japan will force it down by intervention, as occurred in 2003-2004.
Will China stand idly by as Japanese unleashes a shock to the global system through competitive devaluation? That depends whether you think China's spring recovery is the real thing, or an inventory build-up before the next downward slide. The Communist Party says 20m jobs have been lost since the bubble burst. This cannot be tolerated for long.
It is remarkable that China's fall into deflation has attracted so little notice. China's CPI was minus 1.6pc in February. The country has built too many factories producing goods that the world cannot absorb. The temptation is to shunt this excess capacity abroad. A faction of the politburo is already itching to devalue the yuan.
Of course, Britain has already played the currency card. That is different. The pound's fall, though welcome, is a side-effect of the Bank of England efforts to stem the credit crunch. There has been no currency intervention.
Crucially, Britain has a current account deficit. Many countries toying with devaluation are exporters with surpluses – 15.4pc of GDP for Singapore, 8.4pc for Switzerland, and 6.1pc for China. If these countries refuse to let their imbalances correct, world demand must implode.
Mr Hildebrand denies that the SNB is pursuing a "beggar-thy-neighbour' strategy. Like the yen, the franc suffers from the safe-haven curse: everybody buys it in a storm. This tightens monetary conditions. The SNB cannot easily offset this. It has already cut interest rates to near zero. There are not enough Swiss government bonds in the market to rely on the sort of "QE" asset purchases being carried out by the Bank.
Ultimately, I suspect this crisis may mark the moment when the Swiss franc loses its safe-haven role. Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on five-year government debt have reached 127 for Switzerland, higher than Britain at 118. Norway has the world's lowest CDS at 48, reflecting its status as a petro-democracy.
Switzerland's banks are over-leveraged. Loans to emerging markets equal 50pc of GDP (half to Eastern Europe). Banking secrecy is dying. Fortunately for the Swiss, they have built up $700bn in net foreign assets for a rainy day. Improvident Britons are less lucky. But that is another story. What we risk now is a game of deflation "pass-the-parcel" worldwide. The economic establishment was caught off guard from 2003 to 2007 because it overlooked the way that Asia's unbalanced relationship with the West was feeding a credit bubble.
It may be caught again as the same warped structure leads to a chain of (panicked) devaluations.
Enjoy the "bear-trap" rally on global bourses this spring. But remember, we have only just begun to see the mass lay-offs and hardship caused by this slump. The politicians will act to save their skins. Markets may not like the result.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
end the war on drugs
LewRockwell.com
End the War on Drugs
by Ron Paul
We have recently heard many shocking stories of brutal killings and ruthless violence related to drug cartels warring with Mexican and US officials. It is approaching the fever pitch of a full-blown crisis. Unfortunately, the administration is not likely to waste this opportunity to further expand government. Hopefully, we can take a deep breath and look at history for the optimal way to deal with this dangerous situation, which is not unprecedented.
Alcohol prohibition in the 1920's brought similar violence, gangs, lawlessness, corruption and brutality. The reason for the violence was not that making and selling alcohol was inherently dangerous. The violence came about because of the creation of a brutal black market which also drove profits through the roof. These profits enabled criminals like Al Capone to become incredibly wealthy, and militantly defensive of that wealth. Al Capone saw the repeal of Prohibition as a great threat, and indeed smuggling operations and gangland violence fell apart after repeal. Today, picking up a bottle of wine for dinner is a relatively benign transaction, and beer trucks travel openly and peacefully along their distribution routes.
Similarly today, the best way to fight violent drug cartels would be to pull the rug out from under their profits by bringing these transactions out into the sunlight. People who, unwisely, buy drugs would hardly opt for the back alley criminal dealer as a source, if a coffeehouse-style dispensary was an option. Moreover, a law-abiding dispensary is likely to check ID's and refuse sale to minors, as bars and ABC stores tend to do very diligently. Think of all the time and resources law enforcement could save if they could instead focus on violent crimes, instead of this impossible nanny-state mandate of saving people from themselves!
If these reasons don't convince the drug warriors, I would urge them to go back to the Constitution and consider where there is any authority to prohibit private personal choices like this. All of our freedoms – the freedom of religion and assembly, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right to be free from unnecessary government searches and seizures – stem from the precept that you own yourself and are responsible for your own choices. Prohibition laws negate self-ownership and are an absolute affront to the principles of freedom. I disagree vehemently with the recreational use of drugs, but at the same time, if people are only free to make good decisions, they are not truly free. In any case, states should decide for themselves how to handle these issues and the federal government should respect their choices.
My great concern is that instead of dealing deliberatively with the actual problems, Congress will be pressed again to act quickly without much thought or debate. I can't think of a single problem we haven't made worse that way. The panic generated by the looming crisis in Mexico should not be redirected into curtailing more rights, especially our second amendment rights, as seems to be in the works. Certainly, more gun laws in response to this violence will only serve to disarm lawful citizens. This is something to watch out for and stand up against. We have escalated the drug war enough to see it only escalates the violence and profits associated with drugs. It is time to try freedom instead.
See the Ron Paul File
March 31, 2009
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
Posts
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_eukg_2.gif)
