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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

9 November - Blogs I'm Following

Map of Israel, the Palestinian territories (We...Image via Wikipedia
peter smollett: war resisters deserve remembrance
posted by L-girl at we move to canada - 8 minutes ago
Peter Smollett, writing in the *Toronto Star*: The last veterans of World War I have left us and their place in the ranks has been taken by survivors of more recent wars. As the last notes of The Last Pos...
Detailed map of Israeli settlements on the Wes...Image via Wikipedia

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Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in West Bank settlement risks US anger

from Current news updates, World current news by Megaan
http://www.news-updations.blogspot.com/
Israeli SettlementsImage by The World Wants a Real Deal via FlickrIsrael today periled infuriating fresh US anger when a plan to build 800 homes in the West Bank resolution of Ariel was disclosed hours after the Obama management expressed "deep disappointment" at endorsement for more than 1,300 Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.
The plan for the homes, in an area of Ariel close to the Palestinian town of Salfit, was reported to be at an advanced stage, needing only the endorsement of the local planning and building committee.
The exposé drew a furious reaction from the Palestinians, who said it was time for the worldwide population to at once recognise a Palestinian state on the pre-occupation 1967 borders.
Nearly the same place at the time of Herod I. ...Image via WikipediaFull story

Gates: US open to request from Iraq to stay

from Current news updates, World current news by Megaan
http://www.news-updations.blogspot.com/
The United States is release to the idea of keeping troops in Iraq history a deadline to depart next year if Iraq asks for it, U.S. Defense Escritoire Robert Gates said Tuesday.
"We'll place by," Gates said. "We're ready to have that conversation if and when they want to hoist it with us."
Gates urge Iraq's internal strife political groups to reconcile subsequent to eight months of deadlock. Any apply for to extend the U.S. military presence in Iraq would have to come from an implementation Iraqi government. It would amend the current conformity under which U.S. troops must leave by the end of 2011.
"That plan obviously needs to come from the Iraqis; we are open to discuss it," Gates said.
Full story

Sen. Kerry: Israel, Turkey must overcome tensions

from Current news updates, World current news by Megaan
http://www.news-updations.blogspot.com/
A higher-ranking U.S. senator called on Turkey and Israel to conquer recent tensions and renovate close ties to help with calm efforts in the Middle East. John Kerry, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tell a group of press Tuesday that doing so could help Israel's relations with Syria and Lebanon.
"It is significant that Turkey and Israel renovate relations and go back to the method they were," Kerry said.
Israel and Turkey built burly military and economic tie over the past 15 years, and Turkey became Israel's contiguous ally in the Muslim world.
Kindred between the two soured, though, with Turkey's Islamic-oriented government's increasingly vociferous criticism of Israel's action of Palestinians. They hit an all-time low in May, when Israeli marine commandos killed nine activists from Turkey on board a Gaza-bound ship that try to breach Israel's naval barrier.

Full story

Obama voices concerns about Mideast peace talks

from Current news updates, World current news by Megaan
http://www.news-updations.blogspot.com/
President Barack Obama, visit the world's most crowded Muslim nation, spoken deep concern Tuesday that Israelis and Palestinians aren't making the "extra effort" to secure a get through for achieving Middle East stillness.
Obama said he hasn't seen the kind of development in negotiations that "could finally create a frame for a secure Israel living side by side in peace with a sovereign Palestine." Asked at a news discussion with Indonesia's President Suslilo Bambang Yudhoyono about Israeli conclusion construction in East Jerusalem, Obama said, "Each of these incremental steps can end up breaking that trust amid these parties."
Obama raised his Mideast concern while appearing with Yudhoyono throughout his first visit to Indonesia as president to the country where he lived for four years as a child. He marveled over "sights plus sounds" that evoked memories of the past and said that Indonesia's scenery of today barely resemble the land where he went to live at age 6 in 1967.
Full story

Earliest Burrow of Four-Legged Animal Found

from Discovery News by Larry O'Hanlon
This groundhog hole-like quarters has been traced to an amphibian that lived 350 million years ago.

Light Pollution Blankets Even the Darkest Skies

from Discovery News
Guest contributor Matthew Hibbard investigates why the stars over Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park are dimming.

Oil's Accomplices in Killing Gulf Coral

from Discovery News by Tim Wall
Deepwater coral in the Gulf of Mexico faces a deadly threat from a gang of potential killers.
  • The Anti-Semitic Plot thickens
    posted by Alison at Creekside - 1 hour ago
    Live-blogging from the Ottawa Conference on Combating Antisemitism today, the intrepid Kady does her level best to find out what The Plot - a secret exhibit from the US Anti-Defamation League that is off...
  • Thousands Of Americans Register for NVIC's New Advocacy Portal During Vaccine Awareness Week
    posted by Barbara Loe Fisher at Vaccine Awakening - 2 hours ago
    by Barbara Loe Fisher Thousands of Americans living in all 50 states took action and registered for the new NVIC Advocacy Portal at www.NVICadvocacy.org during Vaccine Awareness Week (Nov. 1-6, 2010) co-...
  • Human, Neanderthal Brains the Same Until Birth
    posted by null at Discovery News - Top Stories - 2 hours ago
    The first year of life sparked dramatic differences in development that may have given humans an edge.
  • Rohan's Story*
    posted by Iconic Imagery at Broken of Britain - 3 hours ago
    Never before have I been so aware of myself, my strengths, happiness and many faults, as I was this morning on Sunday 10 October, World Mental Health Day 2010.There are so many misconceptions and myths surro...
  • The US State Dept Dog and Pony Show
    posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at CENSORED NEWS - 3 hours ago
    By Brenda Norrell Censored News http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/ When the US State Dept. announced "Listening Conferences" for the first-ever UN Periodic Review on Human Rights, Russell Means called ...
  • Andrew Sheng - "it's a shell game in which somebody has taken away the shell."
    posted by Truth Excavator at The Excavator - 3 hours ago
    Andrew Sheng, the Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, and author of the book 'From Asian to Global Financial Crisis' boils down the global financial crisis that was created by Wall St...
  • Is Islamic Finance the new challenge to Wall Street?
    posted by Truth Excavator at The Excavator - 3 hours ago
    Is Islamic Finance the new challenge to Wall Street? By Andrew Sheng for The China Post An Excerpt: The distinctive elements of Islamic finance are its ethical element (the prohibition of usury and explo...
  • Perspectives of Native Struggles, Strengths and Survival
    posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at CENSORED NEWS - 4 hours ago
    *Perspectives of Native Struggles, Strengths and Survival* *Ofelia Rivas and Ward Churchill *Nov. 12, 2010, 7 pm GCC Campus, Corner of Olive and 59th Ave., Glendale, Arizona (Phoenix Valley) Sponsored by t...
  • Tarantulas Provoke Brain's Fear Circuits
    posted by Jessica Marshall at Discovery News - Top Stories - 4 hours ago
    Understanding which brain regions fail to function normally when confronted with fear could one day help treat people with phobias.
  • Twitter From America
    posted by DB at Biased BBC - 5 hours ago
    Hey look, there's a shout-out to the Biased BBC massive from BBC Washington correspondent Iain Mackenzie : Not so much "Reds", Iain, as partisan hacks. Remember Obama's inauguration? Or your views on S...
  • UNA: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Reclaiming of the Black Hills
    posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at CENSORED NEWS - 5 hours ago
    *United Native Americas* *Watch Parts II and III at Quanah Parker Brightman's Channel: *http://www.youtube.com/user/QuanahBrightman Censored news reporter Brenda Norrell http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
  • Karl Denninger - Bernanke Impeachment
    posted by Truth Excavator at The Excavator - 5 hours ago
    Bernie Madoff's future cellmate: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. This video is by Karl Denninger:
  • Navajo Hall of Shame: 51 Council Delegates' Water Rights Giveaway
    posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at CENSORED NEWS - 5 hours ago
    *Navajo Nation Council Special Session Regarding Legislation Number 0422-10 **“Approving the Proposed North Eastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlements* Censored News http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com...
  • Israeli Banks Profiteering from Occupation
    posted by Truth Excavator at The Excavator - 5 hours ago
    Israeli Banks Profiteering from Occupation By Stephen Lendman November 8, 2010 Wall Street does it. Other Western banks do it. They all exploit markets, often ripping off customers illegally. Why not Isra...
  • Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems
    posted by Truth Excavator at The Excavator - 6 hours ago
    Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems Washington's Blog November 6, 2010 Even Alan Greenspan is confirming what William Black, James Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, George Ak...
  • Ancient Monuments Prone to Collapse
    posted by Rossella Lorenzi at Discovery News - Top Stories - 6 hours ago
    Many Italian monuments could meet the fate of the 2,000-year-old House of Gladiators, which collapsed in Pompeii on Saturday.
  • NVIC & Mercola.com Launch NVIC Advocacy Portal During Vaccine Awareness Week
    posted by Barbara Loe Fisher at Vaccine Awakening - 6 hours ago
    * * *Washington, D.C*. – In a joint effort to raise public awareness about the importance of defending the legal right to voluntary, informed consent to vaccination, the *National Vaccine Information Cen...
  • Canadian Deaths in Afghanistan in 2010
    posted by Truth Excavator at The Excavator - 7 hours ago
    The following list of 14 Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan in 2010 (up to November 8, 2010) is taken from Wikipedia, including their age, hometown, date of death, and cause of death: Sgt. John Way...
  • Better Than Farmville: A Simulated Century of Farming
    posted by Tim Wall at Discovery News - Top Stories - 8 hours ago
    Farmers, conservationists and scientists want to know how soil changed under cultivation.

    Work Harder, ChiComm Slaves! - Says The Crown

    from Politically Confused by AdamS
    Make the toxic plastic stuff we love to feed to those disgusting Western peasants...

    The China powder keg: JOHN HUMPHRYS on a nation that's either on the edge of becoming THE superpower - or exploding into anarchy
    The chanting, when it ­began, sounded angry. I was in my hotel room in Beijing trying to put ­together a report on ­political repression for the Today programme and this ­sounded as if it might be just what I needed.

    I had been in China for more than a week. Everywhere I went people had been telling me that things had changed so much since I first started reporting from here more than 30 years ago that I would scarcely ­recognise the place.

    True, there are many protests, sometimes violent, but almost always out in the ­provinces and motivated by a single ­grievance.

    Yet here we were in the heart of the capital, a short stroll from Tiananmen Square, and something was going on. I grabbed my producer and, as the shouting grew louder, we ran outside — to be ­confronted by a tug-of-war.

    The kitchen staff had challenged the hotel management to a contest and there they were in the middle of the street, heaving away on a thick rope, the chefs’ hats falling into the gutter, the managers’ ties askew, all of them shouting fit to burst. The ­managers won.

    Not quite the scene I had imagined, but what’s interesting is that it is possible for a foreign journalist to wander the streets of this city, microphone at the ready, and nobody will take a blind bit of notice.

    When I first started reporting from here, that would have been unimaginable.

    We needed permits in triplicate to go anywhere and we were always accompanied by ­minders. Today it’s even possible — with a little effort — to talk to dissidents.

    So here’s the first contradiction of ­modern China.

    The Communist leadership of this country has an absolute monopoly on power, but foreign journalists have never been so free to ply their trade.

    What’s even more remarkable is that so many people in senior Communist Party positions are now happy to admit openly that it’s a mistake to prevent ­Chinese ­people speaking freely to each other.

    Not that they can say anything they choose.

    ...

    The dangers are obvious. The leadership is about to publish a new five-year plan which will promise to raise the wages of those who are paid pathetically little. Given the pressures they are under, they have no choice.

    But it is those low wages that keep the price of their goods low enough for the rich West buy in such huge quantities.

    If exports begin to dry up, the jobs may ­disappear and what happens to the migrant workers then? Social unrest is a real danger.

    And if wages rise and the effect is to create a much more educated, questioning population, there is another danger. The new middle class may well demand political reform that goes a long way beyond what the leadership is prepared to countenance.

    The Communist Party is ­gambling that it can restore and maintain China’s greatness without ripping the country apart again.

    There is no guarantee that it will succeed. In this new globalised, inter-dependent world what happens to the world’s biggest country ­matters to every single one of us.

    If they lose their gamble none of us will escape the consequences.
    Full Article
    How about that for a thinly veiled threat? Who runs the world? Is it the US or the Crown? Here is a clear answer. Slave drivers of the AAA still at it, just a little more subtly than before. What a heartless article, telling China how it should keep its Communist police state, to control the uppity Chinese slaves. I don't like anyone who thinks it is their business telling the world what to do, especially in such an underhanded way as this.
    Related - The High Street fashions made by 'slaves in British sweatshops'
    The truth about illegal immigration is, they don't really 'steal' jobs, rather illegal immigration allows big business to undermine the local labourers. I am a supporter of organised labour (except when it's government employees organising, which is a whole different thing). With constant illegal immigration, there can be no organised labour to counterbalance the power of the fat cats.

    Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems

    from The Excavator by Truth Excavator
    Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems
    Washington's Blog
    November 6, 2010
    Even Alan Greenspan is confirming what William Black, James Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof and many other economists and financial experts have been saying for a long time: the economy cannot recover if fraud is not prosecuted and if the big banks know that government will bail them out every time they get in trouble.
    Specifically, Greenspan said today in a panel discussion at a Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia (where the plans to form the Fed were originally hatched):
    Banks operated with less capital because of an assumption they would be rescued by the government, he said. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. wouldn’t have failed with adequate capital, he said. “Rampant fraud” was also an issue, he said.
    Lack of Trust
    “Fraud creates very considerable instability in competitive markets,” Greenspan said. “If you cannot trust your counterparties, it would not work.”
    Greenspan is right.
    As leading economist Anna Schwartz, co-author of the leading book on the Great Depression with Milton Friedman, told the Wall Street journal in 2008:
    "The Fed ... has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."
    So even though the Fed has flooded the credit markets with cash, spreads haven't budged because banks don't know who is still solvent and who is not. This uncertainty, says Ms. Schwartz, is "the basic problem in the credit market. Lending freezes up when lenders are uncertain that would-be borrowers have the resources to repay them. So to assume that the whole problem is inadequate liquidity bypasses the real issue."
    ***
    Today, the banks have a problem on the asset side of their ledgers -- "all these exotic securities that the market does not know how to value."
    "Why are they 'toxic'?" Ms. Schwartz asks. "They're toxic because you cannot sell them, you don't know what they're worth, your balance sheet is not credible and the whole market freezes up. We don't know whom to lend to because we don't know who is sound. So if you could get rid of them, that would be an improvement."
    Similarly, Robert Reich wrote in 2008:
    The underlying problem isn't a liquidity problem. As I've noted elsewhere, the problem is that lenders and investors don't trust they'll get their money back because no one trusts that the numbers that purport to value securities are anything but wishful thinking. The trouble, in a nutshell, is that the financial entrepreneurship of recent years -- the derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt instruments, and so on -- has undermined all notion of true value.
    Many of these fancy instruments became popular over recent years precisely because they circumvented financial regulations, especially rules on banks' capital adequacy. Big banks created all these off-balance-sheet vehicles because they allowed the big banks to carry less capital.
    Nothing has changed since 2008 ... the problem is still exactly the same.
    The fraud committed by the giant banks - including mortgage fraud, encouraging appraisal fraud, fraud in representing the soundness of mortgages packaged together into mortgage backed securities, the rating of financial instruments, the numerous types of accounting fraud (repo 105s being just one example) - have continued. No big fish have been prosecuted.
    No wonder no one trusts anyone else.
    Continued. . .


    The latest Blogs of Note

    November 8, 2010
    http://mouseshouses.blogspot.com/
    November 5, 2010
    http://llydecke.blogspot.com
    November 4, 2010
    http://parisvsnyc.blogspot.com/
    November 3, 2010
    http://kissssing.blogspot.com/
    November 2, 2010
    http://www.danoah.com/
    November 1, 2010
    http://thatgalkiki.blogspot.com/
    October 29, 2010
    http://drunkenseveredhead.blogspot.com/
    October 28, 2010
    http://www.donnaperuginichildrensauthor.com/
    October 27, 2010
    http://www.rabinphotography.com/
    October 26, 2010
    http://nikkinikkinikki72.blogspot.com/

     

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