Posted by seumasach on February 25, 2009
“Confidentiality serves to promote thorough decision-making. Disclosure of the cabinet minutes in this case jeopardises that space for thought and debate at precisely the point where it has its greatest utility.”
Richard Norton-Taylor
Guardian
25th February, 2009
The government took the unprecedented decision yesterday to block the release of cabinet minutes about the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it would undermine democratic decision-making, the very argument used by freedom of information bodies which had ordered their disclosure.
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Posted by seumasach on February 25, 2009
PressTV
24th Feruary, 2009
See also:
Why I support Barak Obama by Dennis Ross
The White House names controversial Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross as its special foreign policy adviser for Persian Gulf affairs.
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Posted in Iran | Tagged: Dennis Ross, Iran, Obama agenda, Team Obama | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 24, 2009
Nigel Holmes and Megan McArdle
Atlantic.com
December, 2008
All financial innovation involves … the creation of debt secured in greater or lesser adequacy by real assets,” wrote the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in 1993. And “all crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.”
Iceland’s neophyte bankers no doubt wish they’d paid more attention to this warning. In the past two months, many countries have seen their banks brought low by excess leverage, but none has been punished so thoroughly as Iceland, where the currency and the government’s credit rating have joined the banking system on the ash heap of history. “Too big to fail” turned into “too big to save”—the banks’ holdings were so large relative to Iceland’s economy that the government had no credibility as a lender of last resort. The economy looks likely to shrink by 10 percent this year, and future growth may not be enough to cover the interest on the massive foreign loans that Iceland needs simply to keep functioning.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: financial collapse, financial fraud, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 24, 2009
The Euro is a crucial question for Iceland given the immense vulnerability of the their currency, the Krona. There is nothing “independent” about an Iceland at the mercy of the IMF and international speculators.
Iceland’s Left-Green Movement has taken a “clear and conclusive” stance against the country joining the European Union, and is using its position in the country’s interim coalition government to make sure it does not happen.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Iceland into Euro, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 24, 2009
John Helmer
AsiaTimes
24th February, 2009
See also:
Putin: post-US world blueprint
MOSCOW – Officials involved in the Russian oil industry, and the country’s state treasury, breathed a sigh of relief as the Chinese and Russian governments announced agreement on a revolutionary shift in future Russian crude oil flows.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: China, China Develoment Bank, Russia-China cooperation, Russian diplomacy, SCO | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on February 24, 2009
DUBLIN (
Reuters) – Anger is growing among Ireland’s population over financial crisis and deepening recession, ministers said on Monday, with one describing the country’s banking scandals as “economic treason.”
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Posted in Battle for Europe | Tagged: Ireland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 23, 2009
“The bottom line is that we cannot borrow our way out of debt. Only new money will stimulate a debt-ridden economy – money that is interest-free and does not have to be paid back.”
The Gordon Brown approach is to increase debt in order to revive the economy. Ellen Brown’s approach is to create new money as a stimulus to productive investment and basic consumption of necessities. This maybe something similar to
the Chinese approach. According to Ellen Brown the problem lies not with quantitative easing itself but the fact that the money is being channeled towards the financiers. However, it remains irreconcilable with the dollar’s role as a reserve currency.
Ellen Brown
21st February, 2009
“Diseases desperate grown are by desperate appliances relieved, or not at all.” – Shakespeare, “Hamlet”
Moody’s credit rating agency is warning that the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating is at risk, because it has taken on so much debt that there are few creditors left to underwrite it. Foreigners have bought as much as two-thirds of U.S. debt in recent years, but they could be doing much less purchasing of U.S. Treasury securities in the future, not so much out of a desire to chastise America as simply because they won’t have the funds to do it. Oil prices have fallen off a cliff and the U.S. purchase of foreign exports has dried up, slashing the surpluses that those countries previously recycled back into U.S. Treasuries. And domestic buyers of securities, to the extent that they can be found, will no doubt demand substantially higher returns than the rock-bottom interest rates at which Treasuries are available now.1
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: economic collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on February 23, 2009
Friday 20 February 2009
TUC
Commenting on the Prime Minister’s call for world leaders attending the G20 in April to agree ‘decisive action’ to tackle the global recession, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:
‘Adding to the pressure on the G20 governments will be the Put People First March for Jobs, Justice and Climate on the Saturday (28 March) before the summit. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis, Uncategorized | Tagged: UK protest | 4 Comments »
Posted by smeddum on February 23, 2009
The Lindsey Oil Refinery foreign labour row spread across the UK
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Monday, 23 February 2009
BBC
Police are preparing to face a “summer of rage” in the UK as people join protests over the economic downturn, says a senior Met Police officer.
“Known activists” were likely to foment unrest, with the recession creating more “footsoldiers” to join them, Supt David Hartshorn told the Guardian.
The G20 meeting in London in April is expected to be a focus of protests.
BBC home editor Mark Easton said signs of anger would “not necessarily translate into action on the streets”.
Supt Hartshorn is regularly briefed on potential civil unrest, as head of Scotland Yard’s public order branch. Read the rest of this entry » |
Posted in Battle for Europe | Tagged: UK protest | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 23, 2009
by Milt Bowling
Scribd.com
Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are the essence of life—enabling and activating our genes to make us different from other animals. We are, after all, almost identical to chimpanzees when it comes to 98.8 percent of our genes. The reason we are very different from chimpanzees is, in large part, because of the evolutionarily programmed influence of EMFs.
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Posted in Ecological and Public Health Crisis | Tagged: EM radiation health hazard, wi-fi health | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 23, 2009
About a thousand protesters have flocked to the streets of the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, to rally against the government’s handling of the economy.
They called for the government’s resignation and new and fair elections.
“President Yushchenko, the government of Tymoshenko and the parliamentary majority consisting of oligarchs and NATO henchmen, who have shown that they are unable to get the country out of the crisis,”read a resolution of the rally participants. “Ukraine needs a total change of power, otherwise it will face famine, ruin and death.”
Many protesters headed to the city from other towns in Crimea to rally against growing unemployment and spiralling living costs.
Posted in Battle for Europe | Tagged: anti-NATO protests ukraine, Battle for Europe | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 