Thursday, May 31, 2012
Ireland Is Holding A Huge National Referendum Today That Could Ultimately Determine Its Fate In The Euro
It hasn't gotten that much attention, but Ireland is holding a national referendum today on whether it will join the Fiscal Compact, the agreement made last year whereby every Eurozone country basically agrees to strict deficit controls and oversight. Basically it's the beginning to giving up budget sovereignty, a necessary long-term move if the Eurozone is ever going to have any kind of permanent transfers from rich to poor countries.
Ireland is the only country that's having a national referendum on the question.
And it's expected to pass, but not overwhelmingly so. Polls show a consistent lead, but also a consistent bloc of undecided voters which could throw a wrench into things. Ireland's pro-Fiscal Compact contingent seems to be, shall we say, 'cautiously optimistic.'
Polling ends tonight at 10 PM Ireland time, and counting begins tomorrow.
For a really great read on the issue, see economist Megan Greene's take, wherein she argues that the Fiscal Compact is not going to solve anything, but that Ireland needs to vote yes. Why? Because Ireland will likely need another bailout, she says, and rejecting the Fiscal Compact will make getting one basically impossible.
ACTA rejected by EU Parliament committees in crucial vote
The European Parliament has opposed the controversial ACTA treaty, after three of its influential committees said the trade agreement should be rejected.
The Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), the Committee for Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) all voted against implementing the agreement, which caused mass protests in several European countries this year.
In ITRE, the votes were split 31 members for and 12 votes against a draft opinion which called on the Parliament to reject ACTA. One member abstained.
In JURI, 10 votes were cast for a pro-ACTA draft opinion and 12 against, while two committee members abstained. The small-margin victory still went to opponents of the treaty.
LIBE also sided with critics of the treaty, with 36 members voting for a negative report on ACTA, 1 against and 21 abstaining from the vote.
The cold shower news for the trade agreement does not seal its fate. The next vote on it by Committee on International Trade (INTA) of the European Parliament will take place on June 21. It will be the fourth and final opinion the committees are to submit before ACTA is taken to a plenary session in early July.
Earlier on Tuesday Dutch legislators voted to ax ACTA, saying the government of the Netherlands will never sign it. They said they would oppose it even if the European Parliament approves the treaty.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is aimed at protecting copyright in many industries, from software engineering to agriculture. Critics say the national governments would have to make a draconian attack on online privacy to implement provisions of the treaty on their soil.
The European Union suspended efforts to ratify the treaty in February amid a storm of protest from human rights activists. Thousands demonstrated across the EU against ACTA and the amount of power it would give to big corporations.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Former Spanish PM: 'WE'RE IN A SITUATION OF TOTAL EMERGENCY'
It really is all about Spain.
“We’re in a situation of total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through” said ex-premier Felipe Gonzalez, the country’s elder statesman.
The warning came as the yields on Spanish 10-year bonds spiked to 6.7pc, pushing the “risk premium” over German Bunds to a post-euro high of 540 basis points. The IBEX index of stocks in Madrid fell 2.6pc, the lowest since the dotcom bust in 2003.
The buzz is that Greece is an afterthought and that the Euro either lives or dies based on the immediate response to Spain.
Matthew Lynne at MarketWatch argues that Spain will leave the Euro before Greece, a comment that sounds preposterous, but which is interesting as an emblem of the way people are talking about Spain.
Matthew Yglesias at Slate has the same take, although a bit more sober. "Greece is a distraction," he says.
The point anyway isn't so much that Spain is in a state of crisis, but that it's in a state of crisis that will demand some kind of rapid response.
Let's see if Europe is up for it.
Moody’s Downgrades Danske Bank, Eight Other Danish Lenders
Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the ratings of nine Danish financial institutions, including the country’s biggest bank, Danske Bank A/S, saying loan books have deteriorated and debt refinancing has become harder.
Danish banks suffer from “a weak operating environment, pressurized asset quality and poor profitability,” the rating company said late yesterday in a statement published out of London.
Danske Bank’s deposit rating was cut two steps to Baa1 from A2, after Standard & Poor’s earlier yesterday cut the Copenhagen-based bank’s long-term rating to A- from A. The bank said in a separate statement that it “does not understand Moody’s very negative view” of the Danish banking industry. It had also questioned the reasoning for S&P’s downgrade.
“We have had a close dialog with Moody’s in recent months,” Henrik Ramlau-Hansen, Danske’s chief financial officer, said. “We are certain that Moody’s has heard our arguments, but we do not think they are reflected in the rating the bank has received.”
Denmark’s bank industry is still struggling to emerge from the fallout of its 2010 bail-in package, Europe’s only resolution framework that requires senior creditors to share losses. A burst real estate bubble helped put the economy into a recession last year and sent loan losses surging among many of its regional lenders as agricultural loans soured.
Other Danish banks cut by Moody’s yesterday by two steps included Jyske Bank A/S and Sydbank A/S (SYDB) while Spar Nord Bank A/S (SPNO) and Ringkjoebing Landbobank A/S (RILBA) were cut by one level.
Moody’s also lowered the rating of mortgage lender Nykredit Realkredit A/S and its Nykredit Bank A/S unit, both by three notches.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
New Big Brother Cyber Weapon Can Turn on Your Computer’s Microphone, Take Screen Shots, Copy Data, Record Communications
To the disbelief of many of our readers, in a 2011 report titled Everything You Do Is Monitored, we noted that microphones and cameras on cell phones and computers allow interested parties (translated to mean your respective government) to hear and see everything going on in the direct vicinity of the device without the knowledge of its owner.
That these monitoring features are available on cell phones was a known fact, as FBI surveillance networks already have the ability to turn on any cell phone microphone or camera remotely without tipping off the user. It’s believed that this surveillance technique can work even when the cell phone user has shut down their phone, with the only surefire way to prevent such surveillance being removal of the unit’s battery.
Computers, however, were believed to be secure from these kinds of backdoors, and the majority of computer users believe their PC’s are protected from such intrusive technologies once they install virus and malware protection software.
However, a new virus identified by leading digital security firm Kaspersky Lab, is reportedly capable of not only embedding itself onto computer systems without being identified by traditional anti-virus applications, but able to execute total surveillance and monitoring that includes turning on your camera and microphone, copying your data, and recording emails and chat conversations.
Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.
Kaspersky researchers said they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.
Cyber security experts said the discovery publicly demonstrates what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.
…
Symantec Security Response manager Vikram Thakur said that his company’s experts believed there was a “high” probability that Flame was among the most complex pieces of malicious software ever discovered.
…
Kaspersky’s research shows the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, then Sudan and Syria.
The virus contains about 20 times as much code as Stuxnet, which caused centrifuges to fail at the Iranian enrichment facility it attacked. It has about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information, said Kaspersky Lab senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg.
Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.
Kaspersky Lab said Flame and Stuxnet appear to infect machines by exploiting the same flaw in the Windows operating system and that both viruses employ a similar way of spreading.
…
“The scary thing for me is: if this is what they were capable of five years ago, I can only think what they are developing now,” Mohan Koo, managing director of British-based Dtex Systems cyber security company.
Source: Reuters
With a new National Security Agency data center coming online and capable of capturing, aggregating and analyzing every digital communication in the United States, cellphones and computers having in excess of 99% penetration across the country, and some 30,000 drones being prepared for domestic operations, we can safely say that a total police state surveillance infrastructure is now in place and fully capable of monitoring everything - and we mean EVERYTHING – that you do.
The Matrix has you…
Security backdoor found in China-made US military chip
A microchip used by the US military and manufactured in China contains a secret "backdoor" that means it can be shut off or reprogrammed without the user knowing, according to researchers at Cambridge University's Computing Laboratory.
UPDATE: However, one security consultancy has said that the implication that the backdoor might have been secretly inserted by the Chinese manufacturer is "bogus", and that malicious intent is unlikely.
In a draft paper, Cambridge University researcher Sergei Skorobogatov wrote that the chip in question is widely used in military and industrial applications. The "backdoor" means it is "wide open to intellectual property theft, fraud and reverse engineering of the design to allow the introduction of a backdoor or Trojan", they said.
The discovery was made during testing of a new technique to extract the encryption key from chips, developed by Cambridge spin-off Quo Vadis Labs. The "bug" is in the actual chip itself, Skorobogatov wrote, rather than the firmware installed on the devices that use it, meaning there is no way to fix it than to replace the chip altogether.
"The discovery of a backdoor in a military grade chip raises some serious questions about hardware assurance in the semiconductor industry," wrote Skorobogatov. Interesting Links
Anonymous forces plant research website offline
However, Robert Graham, of US security consultancy Errata Security, wrote yesterday that the backdoor is unlikely to have been added maliciously. He claims that the entry route discovered by Skorobogotov is likely to be a debugging tool deliberately installed by the manufacturer.
"It's remotely possible that the Chinese manufacturer added the functionality, but highly improbable. It's prohibitively difficult to change a chip design to add functionality of this complexity."
He also questioned the description of the chip as "military grade". "The military uses a lot of commercial, off-the-shelf products. That doesn't mean there is anything special about it."
Graham writes that the backdoor could pose a security threat, however. "It not only allows the original manufacturer to steal intellectual-property, but any other secrets you tried to protect with the original [encryption] key."
Monday, May 28, 2012
New computer virus hits Iran, West Bank in unprecedented cyberattack
Internet security firm Kaspersky calls 'Flame' bug the 'most sophisticated cyber-weapon yet unleashed,' hints it may have been created by makers of Stuxnet worm.
Internet security company Kaspersky Lab announced on Monday that it had uncovered a 'cyber-espionage worm' designed to collect and delete sensitive information, primarily in Middle Eastern countries.
Kaspersky called the malware, named "Flame," the "most sophisticated cyber-weapon yet unleashed." It said the bug had infected computers in Iran, the West Bank, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The company also said that Flame contained a specific element that was used in the Stuxnet worm and which had not been seen in any other malware since.
On its blog, Kaspersky called Flame a "sophisticated attack toolkit," adding that it was much more complex than Duqu, the vehicle used to deliver Stuxnet.
The Stuxnet bug, discovered in June 2010, targeted primarily Iranian computers. Iran admitted that the worm damaged centrifuges operating at an uranium enrichment facility at Nantaz.
Kaspersky's chief malware expert Vitaly Kamluk told the BBC that more than 600 specific targets had been hit by Flame, including computers owned by individuals, businesses, academic institutions and government systems.
Kamluk said he believed the malware had been operating at least since August 2010, and probably earlier, adding that there was "no doubt" that it was developed by a state actor.
Symantec, another Internet security firm, said on its blog that the bug's code was on par with that of Stuxnet and Duqu, which it described as "arguably the two most complex pieces of malware we have analyzed to date."
It also said that certain file names in Flame were identical to those described in a hacking incident in April involving the Iranian oil ministry.
According to the firm, the worm had been operating discreetly for at least two years and was likely written by "an organized, well-funded group of people working to a clear set of directives."
Symantec said the virus had also been found in computers in Hungary, Austria, Russia, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
Venus 'Transit of Sun' is next amazing sky sight
The "ring of fire" solar eclipse may be history, but skywatchers have another stunning event to look forward to — June's historic Venus transit of the sun.
On Sunday, May 20, the moon covered most of the sun's disk but left a ring of light blazing around its circumference. The resulting annular solar eclipse wowed skywatchers in parts of Asia, the Pacific region and western North America.
As impressive as that sight was, it may just be a warm-up for the Venus transit of June 5 (June 6 in much of the Eastern Hemisphere). Venus will cross the sun's face from Earth's perspective, appearing in silhouette as a tiny, slow-moving black dot.
The dramatic celestial event will be visible from all seven continents, and it's a must-see for skywatchers; Venus won't trek across the solar disk again for 105 years.
"I think this is the last one I'll see," Dean Pesnell, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com. Pesnell is project scientist for NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft, which will have an unparalleled view of the transit.
A historic event
Venus transits occur in pairs that are eight years apart, but these dual events take place less than once per century. The last transit occurred in 2004, but the next won't come until 2117.
In addition to being rare and spectacular skywatching events, transits of Venus have played a large role in astronomical history. For example, scientists and explorers mounted huge expeditions to view the 18th century's two transits, which occurred in 1761 and 1769.
The goal was to answer one of astronomy's most important questions — the distance from Earth to the sun. By precisely timing the transit's length from many different points around the globe, the reasoning went, scientists could calculate the Earth-sun distance using the principles of parallax. With this information in hand, the scale of the entire solar system would follow.
Famed British explorer Captain James Cook took part in the 1769 expedition, sailing to Tahiti and watching the transit from a place now known as Point Venus.
The 18th-century efforts came up short, but astronomers eventually got the data they needed from photographs taken during the next pair of Venus transits, which occurred in 1874 and 1882.
Watching the transit
While most of the globe will able to watch at least part of the Venus transit on June 5-6, you may have to travel if you want to see Venus both enter and exit the solar disk.
Weather permitting, the entire seven-hour transit will be widely visible from eastern Asia, eastern Australia, New Zealand and the western Pacific, as well as Alaska, northern Canada and almost all of Greenland.
Not content to live vicariously through their spacecraft, Pesnell and some other SDO scientists will watch the transit from Fairbanks, Alaska. They're going to bring 10 to 20 educational displays with them, using the event to teach the public about the sun and SDO, Pesnell said.
If you plan to watch the transit, be safe. WARNING: Never look at the sun directly with your naked eye or through cameras, binoculars or small telescopes without proper filters. Doing so can result in serious and permanent eye damage, including blindness.
To safely observe the Venus transit, you can buy special solar filters to fit over your equipment, or No. 14 welder's glass to wear over your eyes.
The safest and simplest technique, however, is to observe the transit indirectly using the solar projection method. Use your telescope or one side of your binoculars to project a magnified image of the sun’s disk onto a shaded white piece of cardboard.
The projected image on the cardboard will be safe to look at and photograph. But be sure to cover the telescope’s finder scope or the unused half of the binoculars, and don’t let anyone look through them.
Google Privacy Inquiries Get Little Cooperation
Secrets spilled across the computer screen.
Reinhold Harwart, deputy mayor of Molfsee, Germany, organized a town protest against Google’s Street View methods.
After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of his fellow citizens. Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, postings on Web sites and social networks — all sorts of private Internet communications — were casually scooped up as the specially equipped cars photographed the world’s streets.
“It was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen,” Mr. Caspar recently recalled about that long-sought viewing in late 2010. “We were very angry.”
Google might be one of the coolest and smartest companies of this or any era, but it also upsets a lot of people — competitors who argue it wields its tremendous weight unfairly, officials like Mr. Caspar who says it ignores local laws, privacy advocates who think it takes too much from its users. Just this week, European antitrust regulators gave the company an ultimatum to change its search business or face legal consequences. American regulators may not be far behind.
The high-stakes antitrust assault, which will play out this summer behind closed doors in Brussels, might be the beginning of a tough time for Google. A similar United States case in the 1990s heralded the comeuppance of Microsoft, the most fearsome tech company of its day.
But never count Google out. It is superb at getting out of trouble. Just ask Mr. Caspar or any of his counterparts around the world who tried to hold Google accountable for what one of them, the Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy, called “probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy.” The secret Street View data collection led to inquiries in at least a dozen countries, including four in the United States alone. But Google has yet to give a complete explanation of why the data was collected and who at the company knew about it. No regulator in the United States has ever seen the information that Google’s cars gathered from American citizens.
The tale of how Google escaped a full accounting for Street View illustrates not only how technology companies have outstripped the regulators, but also their complicated relationship with their adoring customers.
Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple supply new ways of communication, learning and entertainment, high-tech wizardry for the masses. They have custody of the raw material of hundreds of millions of lives — the intimate e-mails, the revealing photographs, searches for help or love or escape.
People willingly, at times eagerly, surrender this information. But there is a price: the loss of control, or even knowledge, of where that personal information is going and how it is being reshaped into an online identity that may resemble the real you or may not. Privacy laws and wiretapping statutes are of little guidance, because they have not kept pace with the lightning speed of technological progress.
Michael Copps, who last year ended a 10-year term as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, said regulators were overwhelmed. “The industry has gotten more powerful, the technology has gotten more pervasive and it’s getting to the point where we can’t do too much about it,” he said.
Although Google thrives on information, it is closemouthed about itself, as the Street View episode shows. When German regulators forced the company to admit that the cars were sweeping up unencrypted Internet data from wireless networks, the company blamed a programming mistake where an engineer’s experimental software was accidentally included in Street View. It stressed that the data was never intended for any Google products.
The F.C.C. did not see it Google’s way, saying last month the engineer “intended to collect, store and review” the data “for possible use in other Google products.” It also said the engineer shared his software code and a “design document” with other members of the Street View team. The data collection may have been misguided, the agency said, but was not accidental.
Although the agency said it could find no violation of American law, it also said the inquiry was inconclusive, because the engineer cited his Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. It tagged Google with a $25,000 fine for obstructing the investigation.
Google, which has repeatedly said it wants to put the episode behind it, declined to answer questions for this article.
“We don’t have much choice but to trust Google,” said Christian Sandvig, a researcher in communications technology and public policy at the University of Illinois. “We rely on them for everything.”
That reliance has built an impressive company — and a self-assurance that can be indistinguishable from arrogance. “Google doesn’t seem to think it ever will be held accountable,” Mr. Sandvig said. “And to date it hasn’t been.”
When Street View was introduced in 2007, it elicited immediate objections in Europe, where privacy laws are tough. The Nazis used government data to systematically pursue Jews and other unwanted groups. The East German secret police, the Stasi, similarly controlled data to monitor perceived enemies.
Commander X Claims Anonymous Infiltrated by the FBI
RT’s Abby Martin interviews X, an Anonymous hacktivist vigilante about FBI infiltration within Anonymous and the possibility of the U.S. government staging cyber-terrorism in the future:
Busted: Microsoft Harbors BitTorrent Pirates
n recent weeks the anti-piracy antics of Microsoft have made the news on a few occasions. From censoring The Pirate Bay to funding BitTorrent poisoning startups, the software giant is determined to attack piracy head-on. But perhaps the company should make a start by educating its own employees first. In Microsoft’s offices around the world many company employees are using BitTorrent to download and share pirated movies.
YouHaveDownloaded is a treasure trove of incriminating data on alleged BitTorrent pirates all across the world.
The site, launched late last year, exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded using BitTorrent. This data was gathered from public BitTorrent trackers, and the founders released it to show how much information can be found on BitTorrent users who don’t hide their IP-address.
The site’s founders inform TorrentFreak that since this mission has now been accomplished, they have stopped adding new info to the site. However, existing data is still online and that allows us to “out” a group of corporate BitTorrent pirates once more.
In recent weeks Microsoft has taken a strong position against copyright infringers. They censored Pirate Bay links in Windows Live Messenger, funded a startup that aims to kill BitTorrent traffic, and a few days ago it was revealed that they are the most active sender of DMCA takedown notices to Google.
Clearly, Microsoft is anti piracy. But would they also prevent their employees from using Microsoft office connections to download pirated films through BitTorrent? Let’s find out.
The methodology is easy. Look up a range of IP-addresses assigned to Microsoft and enter those into the search form on YouHaveDownloaded one by one. While we expected that it might take a while to find one, we already had a handful of offenders after two dozen tries.
Below are a few of our findings, all downloads that are linked to Microsoft’s office in Sammamish, Washington (or Seattle). Interestingly, most of the hits we ran into are movies such as “The Debt”, “Bordertown” and lesser known “Blind”.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Cannabis smokers show greater lung capacity and lower cancer levels than non-smokers
For many years, the demonizing claims being made against cannabis have been crumbling as research slowly dispels them. Fifty years ago people earnestly believed that the consumption of cannabis was directly linked to the development of an array of mental illnesses, and violent and hypersexual behavior.
Medical opinion must be guided by research But these prejudices are still hanging on. Today, an individual who responsibly informs their doctor of their marijuana use, because, as with any medicine, chemical interactions may change the resulting chemical behavior, are most frequently urged to cut back. Various reasons are given for a physicians concern. Some, who appear to have fallen behind on the research, still express concern about "brain cell damage" a remnant from the Reagan era's Just Say No campaign.
The main objection, that even the most well-informed physicians feel justified in making, is that even if cannabis itself is not particularly harmful, its most common method of ingestion, smoking, is bad for the lung tissue, regardless of the harmlessness of the substance being smoked. The belief piggybacked its way in on the back of growing opposition to tobacco, and the understanding that tobacco obstructs pulmonary flow and shortens breath.
When a chemical defined by its action doesn't act Because some of the same chemicals, which have identifiable carcinogenic impact in cigarettes, are also found in cannabis smoke, many believe that the cancer-causing potential of cannabis is proportionate to the amount of these chemicals. The fact that cannabis contains four times more tar (or oil) than cigarettes sparked the 1990s claim that smoking a joint was as bad for the lungs as smoking four cigarettes. This extrapolation makes perfect sense at face value, but doesn't hold up when compared to actual cancer rates.
Rewriting the medical records The results of a new government-run research program are now forcing medical authorities to overturn these beliefs. The study has been ongoing for the past twenty years, following the smoking habits of over 5000 people. Researchers found that, contrary to popular belief, smoking cannabis, does not interfere with lung function or capacity. This holds true for ongoing regular -even including daily- and long term consumption. Curiously, as a general rule, cannabis smokers had better lung function than nonsmokers, which researchers attribute to the smoking action itself, rather than the cannabis. Pot smokers inhale deeply and hold those breaths to make the most of their supply, expanding the lung's capacity.
Dr. Tashkin found that, in almost all instances, cannabis consumers had rates of cancer that were no different from those who didn't smoke cannabis. The one exception to this rule was between cannabis smokers and individuals who didn't smoke anything (including tobacco), in which marijuana smokers actually had lower levels of lung cancer.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Google Trends: Fear Of Bank Runs Hits All Time High For Americans
The Alex Jones Channel Alex Jones Show podcast Prison Planet TV Infowars.com Twitter Alex Jones' Facebook Infowars store
Concern over economic crisis outstrips Lehman Brothers aftermath
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Friday, May 25, 2012
According to the latest figures out of Google Trends, Americans have been searching for the term “bank run” in record numbers in recent days, outstripping the level of concern displayed following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
The search volume index on Google for “bank run” in the United States region peaked at an all time record level on May 13 and has hovered around this high ever since.
Google Releases New Copyright Transparency Report
Today, Google expanded its transparency reports program today by releasing a detailed report of content removal requests from copyright holders. The new copyright report joins its semi-annual government takedown transparency report, and covers more than 95% of the copyright takedown requests it has received for Search results since July 2011.1 Though Google has posted the content of takedown requests to Chilling Effects where possible before, this report presents the data collectively (and graphically) for the first time.
Striking is the sheer volume of takedown notices Google receives: in just the last month, it processed over 1.2 million requests for Search alone, from 1,296 copyright owners and 1,087 reporting organizations. That scale allows it to present trends in the data that might not otherwise be apparent. For example, even in the case of notorious "pirate" sites like The Pirate Bay, Google has received takedown notices for less than 5% of their indexable pages.
On the other hand, this report also provides a clearer look into the abuse of copyright tools. Google explains that it's complied with 97% of takedown requests received between July and December of 2011, but also provides examples of obviously invalid copyright requests it's received. Those examples range from cases of negligent over-application, such as movie studios who have attempted to remove IMDB entries or links to legitimate trailers for their movies, to clear attempts at censorship, such as businesses who have issued takedown requests for employee accounts of unfair treatment. Of course, there are even more ridiculous examples: the report describes a reporting company sending a takedown notice for links to earlier takedown notices that obviously did not infringe.
This transparency report gives Google a chance to highlight some of its good citizenship as an online service provider. Although the burden of liability is supposed to be on the organization that sends the takedown notice — it is required to claim under penalty of perjury to have a good-faith belief of copyright infringement — in practice many groups are willing to skirt those rules, sending takedown notices to silence unfavorable speech or even without human review. The 3% of takedown notices that Google chooses not to comply with is a large absolute number, and each of those are instances of legitimate speech that would have otherwise been shut down. Google deserves to be commended for that behavior.
Given its importance as a starting point for many users, removal from Google's index can have devastating consequences on speech. Google has done the right thing by pushing back on bogus takedown notices, both by reviewing and rejecting those requests the first time, and by publishing real data about the behavior of copyright holders and reporting organizations. As with the government transparency reports, reporting on copyright notices can expose bad practices and allow people to assign blame where it belongs: with the people abusing the system. We hope this is just the beginning: Google should extend the program out to their other properties like YouTube and Blogger, and other online service providers should follow suit.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
99% of Breast Cancer Tissue Contained This Everyday Chemical (NOT Aluminum)
New research examining parabens found in cancerous human breast tissue points the finger at antiperspirants and other cosmetics for increasing your risk of breast canceri.
The research, which is also reviewed in an editorial published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology, looked at where breast tumors were appearing, and determined that higher concentrations of parabens were found in the upper quadrants of the breast and axillary area, where antiperspirants are usually appliedii.
Parabens are chemicals that serve as preservatives in antiperspirants and many cosmetics, as well as sun lotions. Previous studies have shown that all parabens have estrogenic activity in human breast cancer cells.
Another component of antiperspirants, aluminum chloride, has been found to act similarly to the way oncogenes work to provide molecular transformations in cancer cells. According to the authors of the editorial review, the research shows "signals of concern that such compounds are not as safe as previously generally considered, and further research is warranted." Furthermore:
"The data from this latest study, the most extensive examination of parabens in human breast so far published, confirms previous work and raises a number of questions on the entire parabens, personal care product and human health debate, particularly relating to the source and toxicological significance of the paraben esters."
Ninety-nine Percent of Breast Cancer Tissue Samples Contain Parabens
The featured study by Barr et.al. discovered one or more paraben esters in 99 percent of the 160 tissue samples collected from 40 mastectomiesiii. In 60 percent of the samples, all five paraben esters were present. There were no correlations between paraben concentrations and age, length of breast feeding, tumor location, or tumor estrogen receptor content. The median values in nanograms per tissue for the five chemicals were:
n-propylparaben 16.8
methylparaben 16.6
n-butylparaben 5.8
ethylparaben 3.4
isobutylparaben 2.1
While antiperspirants are a common source of parabens, the authors note that the source of the parabens cannot be established, and that 7 of the 40 patients reportedly never used deodorants or antiperspirants in their lifetime. What this tells us is that parabens, regardless of the source, can bioaccumulate in breast tissue.
And the sources are many. Parabens can be found in a wide variety of personal care products, cosmetics, as well as drugs. That said, it appears the dermal route is the most significant form of exposure. In the featured editorial, Philip Harvey and David Everett explain why:
"... [T]he dermal route of exposure is considered more plausible when intact esters are detected, and other authors reporting human exposures and body fluid concentrations of paraben esters consider cosmetics of some form or another as the likely sources... This is because the metabolic esterase activity of the gut and liver (relevant to oral exposure) is considered to greatly exceed that of the skin, and oral exposures would result in rapid liver metabolism of the esters to produce the common metabolite p-hydroxybenzoic acid... Paraben esters typically used in cosmetics pass through human skin in vitro/ex vivo, and Ishiwatrai et.al. (2007) has shown persistence of unmetabolized methylparaben in the skin"
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Victoria Grant Speech
12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt. April 27, 2012 at the Public Banking in America Conference, Philadelphia, PA.
Seven foods that will naturally cleanse your liver
The primary way in which your body expels toxins is via the liver, which detoxifies and cleanses your body by continuously filtering the blood of poisons that enter it through the digestive tract, the skin, and the respiratory system. But when your liver becomes overworked as a result of stress or excessive exposure to toxins, your entire system can be thrown off balance, and your health severely compromised.
Since the liver is also responsible for producing bile, another form of detoxification that is metabolically necessary for the breakdown and assimilation of fats and proteins from your food, it is exceedingly important that your liver be properly maintained. Without a well-functioning liver, your body will be unable to cleanse itself and absorb nutrients, which is a recipe for a health disaster.
"The thousands of enzyme systems that are responsible for virtually every body activity are constructed in the liver," writes Dr. Karl Maret, M.D., about the importance of vibrant liver function. "The proper functioning of the eyes, the heart, the brain, the gonads, the joints, and the kidneys, are all dependent on good liver activity."
"If the liver is impaired from constructing even one of the thousands of enzyme systems the body requires, there is an impairment in overall body function and a resultant greater metabolic stress on the individual."
So here are seven important foods you may want to begin incorporating into your diet in order to maintain a healthy liver.
Garlic, grapefruit, green tea, and green vegetables Garlic contains numerous sulfur-containing compounds that activate the liver enzymes responsible for flushing out toxins from the body. This bulbous relative of the onion also contains allicin and selenium, two powerful nutrients proven to help protect the liver from toxic damage, and aid it in the detoxification process.
Grapefruit is rich in natural vitamin C and antioxidants, two powerful liver cleansers. Like garlic, grapefruit contains compounds that boost the production of liver detoxification enzymes. It also contains a flavonoid compound known as naringenin that causes the liver to burn fat rather than store it (http://www.dailymail.co.uk).
Green tea is loaded with catechins, a type of plant antioxidant that has been shown in studies to eliminate liver fat accumulation and promote proper liver function (http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v26/n11/abs/0802141a.html). This powerful herbal beverage also protects the liver against toxins that would otherwise accumulate and cause serious damage.
Leafy green vegetables such as bitter gourd, arugula, dandelion greens, spinach, mustard greens, and chicory also contain numerous cleansing compounds that neutralize heavy metals, which can bear heavily on the liver. Leafy greens also eliminate pesticides and herbicides from the body, and spur the creation and flow of cleansing bile.
Avocados, walnuts, and turmeric Rich in glutathione-producing compounds, avocados actively promote liver health by protecting it against toxic overload, and boosting its cleansing power (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001219074822.htm). Some research has shown that eating one or two avocados a week for as little as 30 days can repair a damaged liver.
Walnuts, which contain high levels of l-arginine, an amino acid, glutathione, and omega-3 fatty acids, also help detoxify the liver of disease-causing ammonia. Walnuts also help oxygenate the blood, and extracts from their hulls are often used in liver-cleansing formulas.
Turmeric, one of the most powerful foods for maintaining a healthy liver, has been shown to actively protect the liver against toxic damage, and even regenerate damaged liver cells. Turmeric also boosts the natural production of bile, shrinks engorged hepatic ducts, and improves overall function of the gallbladder, another body-purifying organ.
The top five superfoods to always keep stocked in your pantry
What is a superfood? While there is no specific definition for the term, a superfood is generally recognized by a few characteristics: high nutritional density and low calories, high fiber, high in omega-3 fatty acids, lots of antioxidant activity, and rich with phytochemicals that have the potential to prevent or even reverse disease.
You could say that the hallmark of a superfood would be getting more nutrition without synthetic supplements while eating less. Eating less is healthy for most of us because there's less of a digestive/elimination burden on our bodies from eating more than we need.
Adding nutrients the body needs but that diminish as we grow older is an immune system bonus. Be aware that it takes some time, weeks or more, for you to realize results from daily consumption of the following superfoods.
Choose one or more of these five superfoods daily Chorella: This single celled, water-grown, chlorophyll-loaded algae is highly regarded by many. It boosts the immune system and helps detoxify. Taking chlorella and cilantro combined offers one of the best heavy metal chelating foods ever, especially useful for eliminating mercury.
It's most economical as a powder, but that form is not so tasty. You'll have to add to lemon/lime water and gulp or mix with juices and smoothies. But it's also available as tablets. Chlorella has strong cancer resisting capabilities also. Find out more here (http://www.naturalnews.com/026147_chlorella_cancer_body.html).
Spirulina: This powder tastes worse than chlorella. It's difficult for many to consume even with tasty liquids, but it's available in tablets too. Some prefer the spirulina flakes that are easy to add onto foods, if you don't mind the taste.
Like chlorella, it is simple microscope algae from ancient times loaded with phytonutrients. In addition to being an immune booster, it can assist with curbing an overactive immune system, which is often responsible for autoimmune diseases. Here are more details (http://www.naturalnews.com/025703_spirulina_diet_studies.html).
You'll be able to order either of these through the Natural News store (http://store.naturalnews.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=100151).
Aloe vera: The juice of this plant is commercially prepared for you to drink in small quantities as a health tonic. Avoid flavored or sweetened juices. Organic and not adulterated through processing is vital for optimum results.
It can be taken straight or with a fresh juice or water. Many AIDS and cancer patients cured themselves with higher than normal daily dosing of Aloe Vera. Read more about Aloe Vera's curative capabilities here (http://www.naturalnews.com/034738_aloe_vera_cancer_AIDS.html).
Barley grass: Barley grass is sold as a powder or liquid. Dr. Lorraine Day used it as part of her regimen for healing her cancer, and she promotes it constantly. Here's more (http://www.naturalnews.com/025185.html).
Pure powdered whey: This type of whey should be from grass fed cows that haven't been injected with antibiotics or hormones, and processed into powder with pharmaceutical grade purity. Don't bother with the often-flavored stuff sold as a protein for building muscle mass.
Pure powdered whey added to smoothies or mixed into soft foods will help your body create abundant glutathione, the master anti-oxidant that creates and regenerates antioxidants.
The digestive tract will not allow straight glutathione to come through. So a precursor or precursors are needed to allow you liver to generate them. Pure unadulterated powdered whey is the top glutathione precursor. Glutathione heals and detoxes the liver while building overall massive immunity (http://www.naturalnews.com/027114_glutathione_antioxidant_GSH.html).
Monday, May 21, 2012
Beware the new computer virus spreading via chat messaging window on Facebook
- Fake link directs users to download infected software
- Overrides protective software
- Deletes anti-virus software instantly
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: The pop-up window, used for person-to-person chat, pops up with a message from a 'friend' which links to an innnocent looking website
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: The pop-up window, used for person-to-person chat, pops up with a message from a 'friend' which links to an innnocent looking website
A new computer virus is spreading via the chat window on Facebook.
The pop-up window, used for person-to-person chat, pops up with a message from a 'friend' which links to an innnocent looking website.
Clicking the link instantly infects your PC with the virus, labelled Steckt.Evl by discoverers Trend Micro.
The virus instantly disables and removes anti-virus software, then spreads itself by opening chat windows on the Facebook friends of the user.
'The worm propagates via instant messaging applications and social networking sites,' says security experts Trend Micro which uncovered the new threat.
'The instant message it sends is a link that downloads a copy of itself.'
Like many other new internet threats, the first thing the worm does is disable programs that might detect and destroy it.
It then actually deletes them, before going on to download further software which compromises the infected machine further.
'It terminates processes or services that are mostly related to anti-malware programs,' says Trend Micro.
'It also deletes the files that are related to the processes or services it terminates. It does the said routine to keep itself running on the affected system.'
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Google's New Search Tool to Use CIA and World Bank as Sources for 'Facts'
Google is making a big change to how it displays results in its dominant search engine. It is rolling out a new feature called the Knowledge Graph which breaks from the traditional practice of matching keywords with webpages.
According to an article on Blog Tips about Google's Knowledge Graph, immediate answers or "facts" from pre-selected sources like the CIA Factbook, Wikipedia, and the World Bank will be provided in search results along side the organic results:
Instead of using the typical search strength of a particular answer, this new feature will draw 'facts' from places like Wikipedia for historical information, CIA World Factbook for geopolitical answers, the World Bank for economic facts, Freebase for information about people and other predetermined sources.
This move by Google seems eerily similar to Orwell's Ministry of Truth in that search results, or "answers and facts", will no longer be gathered based on the algorithmic popularity of content, but rather selected by Google.
Sure, most would argue that Wikipedia does a pretty good job through its open-source format to nail down basic facts. However, the CIA and the World Bank are organizations with agendas sometimes counter to the truth, and making them the authority on facts gives them tremendous power to shape public knowledge.
Google also explains how it will collect data on you using the Knowledge Graph:
Google-owned Freebase will also be used in the Google Knowledge Graph. Freebase is a massive database, which according to Singularity Hub already "has data on over 24 million people, places, and things."
Google then combines its Freebase with Metaweb algorithms to connect everything and everyone. For the purposes of improving searches, this may be wonderful, but it's the exact type of software that can easily build and organize a profile on all Internet users.
Watch how they're already connecting your data points below:
So besides relying on the CIA and the World Bank to force feed Internet users "facts", they will also construct and display how each person appears in these new searches.
HFT Manipulation? EURO Soars As Bank Run Spreads From Spain To The UK
As the run on the banks spread in Europe, with 30% of customers pulling cash out of UK branches of Spain’s Santander bank, the Euro spikes on absolutely no news.
While we saw Wall Street banks admitting they jumped in to prop up Facebook’s opening day IPO crash today, there is no such admission or explanation when it comes to the Euro’s massive spike.
That spike of course which defies not only technical and fundamental data but conventional wisdom as well as Greece continues down the path of exiting the Euro while the mass withdrawal of consumer deposits has spread from Greece, into Spain and today into the UK.
This of course raises the specter that some high frequency trading algorithm was unleashed to manipulate the price.
With 18,250 cases of HFT market manipulation documented over the last 5 years, including the now infamous silver manipulation scandal and the 54 second grand rehearsal for a market crash the possibility of such manipulation is not far-fetched.
In any case there is explanation for the move in Euro as of right now so we will just have to see how this plays out.
Zero Hedge reports:
Nothing could be more appropriate than topping a week of surreal newsflow than what just happened with the EURUSD, which soared by 80 pips on absolutely non news, in what can be attributed to either some algo going apeshit and lifting every offer, a fat finger, or just the tried and true Bank of International Settlement stop hunt seeking to send correlated risk assets higher courtesy of a spark in upward momentum. Sadly today not even this glaring attempt to jump broad risk into the stratosphere is working. And ahead of a weekend where it is rumored Europe may reopen on Monday, we can’t wait for the inevitable snapback.
What we do know for certain is that what is not driving the EUR higher, is news of another semi-bank run in post bank-downgrade Spain, only this time not at nationalized Bankia, but at Banco Santander. From the WSJ:
Banco Santander SA’s SAN.MC +2.97% U.K. unit lost about £200 million of deposits on Friday as jittery customers worried about the lender’s financial health, according to a senior executive.
The deposit outflows on Friday, amounting to about $316 million, represented roughly 0.2% of Santander UK PLC’s total customer deposits, said Steve Pateman, Santander’s head of U.K. banking. Those deposits stood at £120.1 billion at the end of last year.
“We had a modestly negative day,” Mr. Pateman said.
Santander UK has spent the day scrambling to soothe anxious depositors. Customers apparently are nervous about the British bank’s vulnerability to Spain and its fragile banking system, and were further rattled by news coverage of a downgrade of the bank’s credit rating late Thursday by Moody’s Investors Service.
Customers have been visiting Santander branches and calling customer-service agents to discuss the bank’s financial situation, Mr. Pateman said. Branch managers are explaining to them that Santander UK is fully independent of its Spanish parent and that the U.K. bank benefits from strong supervision by the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, he said.
Mr. Pateman said about 70% of customers who visited Santander UK branches on Friday to discuss their concerns left without withdrawing their funds. The other 30% couldn’t be convinced, he said.
“They say, ‘I got caught by Northern Rock and I don’t want to get caught again’,” Mr. Pateman said. Northern Rock is a British bank that collapsed in 2007.
Source:Zero Hedge
Artificial Sweeteners Linked with Preterm Delivery
Sugar sweetened beverages such as sodas have received a wide-scale bad reputation for their negative impact on health. All the while, diet sodas are falsely promoted as a healthier alternative. But artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, used in diet soda, have also been tied to numerous health complications, with one study linking artificial sweeteners to premature delivery.
Although some attest to the safety of artificial sweeteners like aspartame, these sweeteners have actually been shown to cause considerable harm.
The study looking at the relationship between soft drink consumption and pregnancy outcome found that preterm delivery risk rises 38 percent for pregnant women having 1 or more servings of artificially sweetened drinks per day. What’s more, consuming 4 or more servings daily was associated with an increased risk of 78 percent.
“There was an association between intake of artificially sweetened carbonated and noncarbonated soft drinks and an increased risk of preterm delivery…A stronger increase in risk was observed for early preterm and moderately preterm delivery than with late-preterm delivery. No association was observed for sugar-sweetened carbonated soft drinks (P for trend: 0.29) or for sugar-sweetened noncarbonated soft drinks (P for trend: 0.93),” the study states.
While the study pinpoints artificially sweetened beverages for increasing preterm delivery risk, there is other research that suggests sugar-sweetened drinks also play a role. Other studies have found that both drink types increase risk for hypertension – a known risk factor for preterm delivery. In addition, there is evidence suggesting that both drink types could affect the length of gestation since high blood glucose concentrations and low-dose methanol exposure both cause shorter gestation duration.
The leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality, preterm delivery is actually among the major pregnancy complications which could occur. It was also found that preterm infants suffer from impairment in the long-term, and experience inequality in adult life. These reasons alone make it extremely important for mothers to avoid substances that may trigger premature delivery.
More research was also conducted with a focus on methanol, the primary alcoholic component used in the production of aspartame, to examine potential negative health effects. A retired food scientist and Professor Emeritus of Food Science and Nutrition at the Arizona State University Dr. Woodrow Monte describes how the toxic chemical methanol and its use in the production of aspartame and other chemicals could be a main factor in causing spina bifida, preterm delivery, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and more recently, autism in young children. It is also the primary factor in other developing chronic diseases and health conditions.
Needless to say, artificial sweeteners have been shown to be far from safe, and should be avoided if you’re aiming for optimal health.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
International House of Pander-cakes - Greece & France Vote
This is hilarious and holds a lot of truth.
Monday, May 14, 2012
‘Indignants’ hold fresh rally in Spanish capital
Spaniards have once again staged a rally at the capital’s Puerta del Sol square to protest against the government’s harsh austerity measures.
The so-called Spanish "Indignados (Indignants)" held the demonstration in Madrid on Sunday after 18 people were arrested in the same area earlier in the morning.
The protesters, chanting, "We're not all here," are planning to stay at the square until May 15.
The development came a few hours after tens of thousands of protesters marked the first anniversary of the anti-austerity “Indignados” movement with mass protests throughout the country.
Spain has entered a deep recession for the second time since the global economic downturn in 2008, with unemployment now standing at almost 25 percent, which is the highest in the eurozone.
The Spanish government has planned to reduce its public deficit to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2012 from 8.5 percent in 2011.
Madrid is adopting a fresh round of austerity measures, while experts fear that the country may soon require a Greece-style bailout.
Big Pharma wants you hooked on these six pharmaceuticals for life
It is a known fact that the drug industry makes a whole lot more money on pharmaceuticals that patients must take perpetually for chronic conditions, rather than on those they take occasionally for isolated illnesses. This is why Big Pharma has worked hard over the years to get as many people as possible hooked on drugs that must essentially be taken for life, including six classes of drugs in particular that you or someone you know is probably already taking.
Ever since direct-to-consumer drug advertising became commonplace on television, in magazines and even on billboards starting in the 1990s, more Americans than ever become convinced that they have some novel new disease that requires ongoing treatment with medication. And these conditions include things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, asthma, gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) and many others.
But many of these conditions have essentially been made up, or at least grossly overblown, for the purpose of selling new drugs. Individuals are made to feel as though they must take a drug for the rest of their lives in order to mitigate the symptoms of these new and novel conditions. And the consequence of this has been a massive upswing in the number of pharmaceutical drug addicts in America today, conveniently making Big Pharma very rich in the process.
The big three - behavioral drugs, statins, and antidepressants
Writing for AlterNet.org, Martha Rosenberg recently outlined six types of drugs that drug companies hope you and your family will get suckered into taking for the rest of your lives. And rounding out the top three, though not in this particular order in Rosenberg's piece, are behavioral drugs, statin drugs and antidepressants.
Every year, the age at which children are "pre-diagnosed" for conditions like ADHD, bipolar disorder and other so-called "behavioral" problems gets younger and younger. More than 20 million American children, in fact, have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, even though the vast majority of them are simply immature children that have yet to develop into adults (http://www.naturalnews.com/033131_psychiatric_disease_labeling.html).
This is precisely how Big Pharma has been able to rope more parents into drugging up their children, by convincing them that their children have inherent behavioral problems that must continually be addressed by drugs that calm or "normalize" them. And the same is often true for children and adults that are diagnosed with depression and told they must take antidepressants for an indefinite period of time (http://www.naturalnews.com/031267_antidepressants_medical_fraud.html).
Then there are statin drugs, which purportedly normalize cholesterol levels and prevent cardiovascular problems, but that must be taken throughout a person's life. Even though statins cause many other health problems, even raising the risk of cardiovascular events, many patients fear that if they stop taking them, their arteries will become clogged and they will be worse off in the long run.
Hormone replacement therapy, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) for "heartburn," and asthma-control medicines are three other major drug categories that require constant use as well, even though they only address symptoms while doing little or nothing to address the underlying health problems involved. Incidentally, each of these classifications is also linked to very serious side effects.
"[Pharma executives] have shown less interest in medicines like antibiotics that actually cure disease than in those that only treat symptoms," wrote Melody Petersen of Our Daily Meds about the issue. "Most blockbusters are pills for conditions such as anxiety, high cholesterol or constipation that must be taken daily, often for months or years. They are designed for rich Americans who can afford to buy them."
Talking About Greece Leaving The Eurozone Is No Longer Taboo
This started last week, but it's now becoming a hot trend: It's no longer taboo to talk about Greece leaving the Eurozone.
The FT is running a story about how central bankers are now, increasingly discussing it openly.
Bloomberg is also quoting various finance officials around Europe saying the same thing, that a Greece exist is not desirable but possible.
Ekathimerini The recent cover from Der Spiegel, titled Akropolis Adieu, also shows how the idea of Greece leaving the Euro has permeated mainstream thinking.
Bottom line: Between Greece bickering internally, and serious people in Europe talking about how the Eurozone could handle a Grexit, the country's position is looking more and more tenuous.
The two main things keeping it in: Eurozone membership is extremely popular in Greece. AND people think that an actual departure would be horrible for Greece and the rest of Europe, possibly leading to the collapse of the Eurozone altogether.
The fact that its departure would be such a nightmare seems to be why people still don't think it will happen.
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JPMorgan Estimates Immediate Losses From Greek Exit Could Reach 400 Billion
While our earlier discussion of the implications of Greece's exit from the Euro are critical reading to comprehend the real-time game of chicken occurring in front of our eyes, JPMorgan's somewhat more quantifiable estimates of the costs and contagion, given the results of the Greek election have raised market expectations of an exit of Greece from the Euro, also provide key indicators and flows that should be monitored. Identifying what has gone wrong with Greece's co-called 'adjustment' program, they go on to identify key transmission mechanisms to Spain and Italy, how it could potentially improve (Marshall-Plan-esque) and most critically, given the exponentially growing TARGET2 balances, if and when Germany throws in the towel.
JPMorgan: Greek Contagion
The results of the Greek election have raised market expectations of an exit of Greece from EMU. How exactly could this exit happen and what flows should we monitor?
Market forces could induce a Greek exit. A potential deadlock between the Greek government and the Troika which terminates funding from the EU/IMF, has the potential to create fear and panic and accelerate the capital and deposit flight out of Greece. Once this capital flight accelerates Greece would likely have to ultimately introduce capital controls. With EU funding being cut and the economic situation deteriorating, Greece will likely to start paying at least part of salaries and pensions in promissory notes or Greek bonds.
Greek banks have run out of ECB eligible collateral already and can only access Bank of Greece’s ELA, but even with ELA, the collateral, typically loans, is not unlimited. They have already borrowed €60bn via ELA which, assuming 50% haircut corresponds to around €120bn of loan collateral. Outstanding loans are €250bn, so Greek banks have a maximum of €130bn of remaining loan collateral which allows for a maximum of €65bn of additional borrowing from Bank of Greece’s ELA.
This corresponds to around 40% of Greek bank deposits which stood at €170bn as of the end of March. The true maximum amount that Greek banks can borrow via ELA is likely though to be significantly smaller because not all loans are accepted as collateral via ELA. The alternative is for Greek banks to be allowed to issue more government guaranteed paper but the ECB can, with a 2/3rd majority, block a steep and unsustainable increase in Bank of Greece’s ELA. This would effectively cut Bank of Greece off from TARGET2 and force it to eventually issue its own money.
Unfortunately, we need to wait until the end of June for the ECB’s monthly MFI balance sheet data to get an accurate picture of the impact of Greek elections on deposits. Anecdotal evidence from the Greek press and elsewhere suggests that deposit outflows re-accelerated post elections.
It is often stated that Greece’s low primary deficit (projected at 1% or €2bn in 2012) increases the incentive for Greece to walk away from the bailout agreement. This is not true, in our view, given that Greece is still on the hook for the €6.3bn that is needed to clear general government arrears and the extra €23bn that is needed to complete the bank recapitalization plan. And as described above, a deadlock with Troika raises the risk of an accident that leads to Greece’s departure via market forces even if this was not the original intention of the Greek government.
The consequences for Greece would be clearly negative, if not catastrophic following an exit: high inflation, fuel shortages, big reduction in living standards, increase in social tensions or even unrest, political isolation internationally. This is why the chances of a Greek exit should be logically significantly below 50%.
What would the consequences for the rest likely to be?
The main direct losses correspond to the €240bn of Greek debt in official hands (EU/IMF), to €130bn of Eurosystem’s exposure to Greece via TARGET2 and a potential loss of around €25bn for European banks. This is the cross-border claims (i.e. not matched by local liabilities) that European banks (mostly French) have on Greece’s public and non-bank private sector. These immediate losses add up to €400bn. This is a big amount but let's assume that, as several people suggested this week, these immediate/direct losses are manageable. What are the indirect consequences of a Greek exit for the rest?
The wildcard is obviously contagion to Spain or Italy? Could a Greek exit create a capital and deposit flight from Spain and Italy which becomes difficult to contain? It is admittedly true that European policymakers have tried over the past year to convince markets that Greece is a special case and its problems are rather unique. We see little evidence that their efforts have paid off.
The steady selling of Spanish and Italian government bonds by non-domestic investors over the past nine months (€200bn for Italy and €80bn for Spain) suggests that markets see Greece more as a precedent for other peripherals rather than a special case. And it is not only the €800bn of Italian and Spanish government bonds still held by non-domestic investors that are likely at risk. It is also the €500bn of Italian and Spanish bank and corporate bonds and the €300bn of quoted Italian and Spanish shares held by nonresidents. And the numbers balloon if one starts looking beyond portfolio/quoted assets. Of course, the €1.4tr of Italian and €1.6tr of Spanish bank domestic deposits is the elephant in the room which a Greek exit and the introduction of capital controls by Greece has the potential to destabilize. In this respect, it is important to keep a close eye on Chart 1.
What has gone wrong with the Greek adjustment program?
After all, Greece has managed to reduce its primary deficit by 8 percentage points in two years, something that no other country has achieved. And according to Bank of Greece, given announced cuts, unit labour costs are likely to be down by 13% this year vs. the end of 2009, an adjustment that is only comparable to Ireland’s “success” story. From a technocrat’s point of view, this must be impressive performance.
Perhaps the best way to understand what went wrong with the Greek adjustment program is to compare it with Iceland’s program. On Nov 3rd 2011, the IMF issued the verdict on its 3-year adjustment program for Iceland. The IMF’s verdict was that its “program for Iceland was a success” due to 4 factors:
the decision not to make taxpayers liable for bank losses. the decision not to tighten fiscal policy during the first year of the IMF program. preservation and even strengthening of Iceland’s welfare state during the crisis. prudent use of capital controls. The IMF said: “capital controls were necessary and are now seen as useful addition to policy toolkit”.
Although permissible under EU treaties, factor 4 is admittedly not consistent with a monetary union. But none of the remaining 3 factors were present in the Greek program. No debt relief was given to Greece early, the fiscal adjustment was front-loaded rather than back-loaded (a massive 5% deficit reduction was required in the first year only), and not much attention was paid to protecting those at the low end of the income distribution.
How could the situation improve?
The Marshall plan for Greece is probably the best hope. Much has been said about Greece’s Marshall plan over the past months but little has been done. Estimates are close to €20bn or 10% of Greek GDP. Assuming Greece is changing its bureaucrat and deficient administrative/tax/legal structures quickly enough to allow for fast absorption of these funds, a Marshall plan has the potential to at least stop and perhaps reverse the economic decline.
Clearly such a Marshall plan represents a transfer from the core to periphery. These transfers are necessary in a monetary union where the core diverges from the periphery or, more correctly, Germany diverges from all the rest. Charts 2 and 3 show that both TARGET2 imbalances and real GDP levels continue to show a widening gap between Germany and the rest.
Without these transfers the likelihood of repeated crisis in the euro area will remain very high especially if tight financial conditions, uncertainty and lack of private sector investment condemns the periphery to a path of rising unemployment and never ending economic decline. And unfortunately Greece is not alone in facing these persistent headwinds. As we highlighted in F&L April 27th, the drag from tight financial conditions on periphery remains heavily negative.
It is possible that necessary fiscal transfers are not politically feasible or that Germany is eventually far too different from the rest to coexist in a monetary union. In this case the horrific scenario of a break up becomes more likely. We would like to make two observations: 1) it is less painful and makes more economic sense for Germany rather than periphery to leave. See above discussion on consequences of a Greek exit for Greece, 2) the cost of a breakup is rising exponentially over time. Bundesbank TARGET2 balance reached a new high of €644bn in April.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Cannabis oil is a highly efficient natural cancer cure
Ever since the mid 70s, medical scientists have been well aware of the beneficial effects of cannabinoid compounds over cancerous cells. Thanks to modern science, over a dozen studies conducted during recent years have been able to partially reveal just how it works. Yet cannabis is still not endorsed by pharmaceutical companies as a cancer cure, and since it is not promoted through mainstream channels, very few people are aware of its benefits. Consequently, it is not sought after as an alternative to disfiguring chemotherapy and other harmful drugs.
Laboratory tests conducted in 2008 by a team of scientists formed as a joint research effort between Spain, France and Italy, and published in The Journal Of Clinical Investigation, showed that the active ingredient in marijuana, known as tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, can function as a cure for brain cancer by inducing human glioma cell death through stimulation of autophagy.
The study concluded that via the same biochemical process THC could terminate multiple types of cancers, affecting various cells in the body. Other studies have shown that cannabinoids may work by various mechanisms, including inhibiting cell growth, inducing cell death, and inhibiting tumor metastasis.
What is amazing is that while cannabinoids effectively target and kill cancerous cells, they do not affect healthy, normal cells and may actually protect them against cellular death. Moreover, cannabinoids are also researched for their pain-modulation and anti-inflammatory abilities as they bind to special receptors in the brain, much like opioid derivatives that are commonly prescribed today.
Further evidence to support the effects of cannabis extract on malignant cells comes from the real life experience of individuals who have successfully overcome cancer by using cannabis oil. Examples include a patient, who managed to completely cure his skin cancer by simply applying cannabis oil onto the affected areas of the skin, as well as another, who recovered from a severe head injury with the aid of hemp oil.
One of the cannabinoids that has displayed amazing medical properties is cannabidiol, or CBD - a non-psychoactive compound that is regarded by some as the medical discovery of the 21st century, and with good reason. Research indicates that CBD can relieve convulsions, reduce inflammation, lower anxiety and suppress nausea, while also inhibiting cancer development. In addition, CBD has exhibited neuroprotective properties, relieving symptoms of dystonia and proving just as effective as regular antipsychotics in the treatment of schizophrenia.
What stands out is that from the vast amount of research and data available, as well as the personal experiences of cancer survivors, is that no chemotherapy currently being used medically can match the non-toxic anti-carcinogenic and anti-tumorigenic effects of these natural plant compounds.
Plume-gate: Secret documents prove global cover-up of continued Fukushima radiation pollution
A Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) request filed by Friends of the Earth (FoE), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and the Nuclear Information and Resource Center (NIRS) has unearthed a shocking series of new evidence proving a deliberate, global cover-up of the true severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. And the unfortunate reality is that the mainstream media continues to blatantly ignore this colossal scandal.
Private emails, meeting transcripts and other key documents reveal that both the Obama White House and the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) were well aware of just how bad things really were with Fukushima from the early days of the disaster, but did nothing to warn the public about it. In fact, NRC and the White House purposely did not warn Americans about a massive radiation plume that struck the West Coast just days after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's eastern coast.
According to information gathered from hundreds of pages worth of private NRC emails, conference calls and secret meetings, key players in the Fukushima whitewashing campaign, including the NRC's David McIntyre and Elliot Brenner, were hard at work in the days following the disaster distracting public attention away from it. By pretending that a radioactive plume did not exist while simultaneously sending out misinformation to the media, these two, in conjunction with White House officials, actively participated in a criminal cover-up of the truth.
You can read key portions of these criminal dealings at the following link: http://theintelhub.com
Plume-gate, the world's biggest nuclear cover-up to date
A situation that is now being dubbed "Plume-gate," this massive cover-up of critical information about Fukushima could have saved thousands of lives, including the more than 14,000 individuals, many of whom were babies, that died in the weeks following the disaster (http://www.naturalnews.com/034586_Fukushima_USA_fatalities.html). And yet to this very day, the federal government's cozy relationship with the nuclear industry has allowed the injustice to continue, as no proper investigation into this dastardly crime has yet taken place."The executive branch and multiple federal agencies, agencies tasked with keeping the American public safe, did their best to hide and to cover-up information about a deadly radioactive plume and ensuing fallout that was headed for the West Coast of the United States from Japan," writes Tony Muga from The Intel Hub about the situation.
Not only did these government agencies hide the truth and deliberately deceive the public, they also used other events, including the infamous Qur'an burning in Afghanistan, as a distraction to divert public attention away from Fukushima, and away from the 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. that are of a similar age and vulnerability as Fukushima.
So why is the federal government getting away with all this? It is for the same reason that it gets away with most of its other crimes against humanity: corporate fascism. And sadly, corporate fascism is a bipartisan problem, as both Republicans and Democrats today are slaves to it, representing opposite but identical sides of the same coin.
"It seems that the fundamental problem with what Americans are experiencing is not just radioactive fallout but Fascism, the merging of the corporate and the state," adds Muga. "In a fascist state, there is little or no responsible action from the corporations for there is little or no promotion of accountability from the state. The corporations, for all intents and purposes, control the state."
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Colombia passes 1st draft of drug crop legalization bill
The Colombian House of Representatives Wednesday passed the first draft of a bill that seeks to legalize illicit crops.
The initiative calls for the decriminalization of growing plants such as coca, marijuana and opium poppies in the country.
Representative Hugo Velasquez Jaramillo, who proposed the bill, explained that although the cultivation of plants would be legal under the new legislation, the processing and trafficking of drugs would remain subject to criminal sentencing.
According to Velazquez, congress cannot move forward with the “failed drug policy pursued by the governments of Colombia and the United States.”
“The important thing is that we have the opportunity to listen to congressmen from [drug] producing regions and hear from different government officials, not just those in opposition [of the bill] with Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Esguerra,” he said.
Velazquez also reminded the government that drug crop legalization is an agricultural issue as well as a legal matter.
Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Esguerra reiterated that the government is staunchly opposed to the proposed legislation, saying this is a “turning point in the fight against drugs” and it is not yet time to make a policy change.
“It’s not the time to anticipate a set of rules on this issue (…) this cannot work like the Lone Ranger,” he added.
Obama agency rules Pepsi's use of aborted fetal cells in soft drinks constitutes 'ordinary business operations'
The Obama Administration has given its blessing to PepsiCo to continue utilizing the services of a company that produces flavor chemicals for the beverage giant using aborted human fetal tissue. LifeSiteNews.com reports that the Obama Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided that PepsiCo's arrangement with San Diego, Cal.-based Senomyx, which produces flavor enhancing chemicals for Pepsi using human embryonic kidney tissue, simply constitutes "ordinary business operations."
The issue began in 2011 when the non-profit group Children of God for Life (CGL) first broke the news about Pepsi's alliance with Senomyx, which led to massive outcry and a worldwide boycott of Pepsi products. At that time, it was revealed that Pepsi had many other options at its disposal to produce flavor chemicals, which is what its competitors do, but had instead chosen to continue using aborted fetal cells -- or as Senomyx deceptively puts it, "isolated human taste receptors" (http://www.naturalnews.com).
A few months later, Pepsi' shareholders filed a resolution petitioning the company to "adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements." But the Obama Administration shut down this 36-page proposal, deciding instead that Pepsi's used of aborted babies to flavor its beverage products is just business as usual, and not a significant concern.
"We're not talking about what kind of pencils PepsiCo wants to use -- we are talking about exploiting the remains of an aborted child for profit," said Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director of CGL, concerning the SEC decision. "Using human embryonic kidney (HEK-293) to produce flavor enhancers for their beverages is a far cry from routine operations!"
To be clear, the aborted fetal tissue used to make Pepsi's flavor chemicals does not end up in the final product sold to customers, according to reports -- it is used, instead, to evaluate how actual human taste receptors respond to these chemical flavorings. But the fact that Pepsi uses them at all when viable, non-human alternatives are available illustrates the company's blatant disregard for ethical and moral concerns in the matter.
Back in January, Oklahoma Senator Ralph Shortey proposed legislation to ban the production of aborted fetal cell-derived flavor chemicals in his home state. If passed, S.B. 1418 would also reportedly ban the sale of any products that contain flavor chemicals derived from human fetal tissue, which includes Pepsi products as well as products produced by Kraft and Nestle (http://www.naturalnews.com).
Friday, May 11, 2012
US spy agency can keep mum on Google ties: court
The top-secret US National Security Agency is not required to reveal any deal it may have with Google to help protect against cyber attacks, an appeals court ruled Friday.
The US Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower court decision that said the NSA need not confirm or deny any relationship with Google, because its governing statutes allow it keep such information secret.
The ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public interest group, which said the public has a right to know about any spying on citizens.
The appeals court agreed that the NSA can reject the request, and does not even have to confirm whether it has any arrangement with the Internet giant.
"Any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA's implementation of its information assurance mission," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in the appeals opinion.
The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a formal request to make public documents related to the dealings, and said much of the information had already been in news media.
The request stemmed from a January 2010 cyber attack on Google that primarily targeted the Gmail email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
According to the Google blog, the Internet group's chief legal officer David Drummond stated that the firm was notifying other companies that may have been targeted and was also working with the relevant US authorities.
The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported that Google had contacted the NSA immediately following the attack.
According to news reports, the NSA agreed to help Google analyze the attacks in a bid to better protect the California-based search company and its users from future intrusions.
The reported alliance would seek to allow the spy agency to evaluate Google's hardware and software vulnerabilities, as well as estimate the sophistication of its adversary in order to help the firm understand whether it has the right defenses in place.
Privacy advocates already critical of Google policies regarding saving user data and targeting ads to match online behavior patterns fear that an alliance with the spy network could put private information at risk.
Mayan prophecy: The world won’t end, as a newfound calendar goes on and on and on
The ancient Mayans were masters of time, keepers of good calendars.
And now we have one of their timekeepers’ workrooms to prove it.
In a striking find, archaeologists in Guatemala report the discovery of a small building whose walls display not only a stunningly preserved mural of a brightly adorned Mayan king, but also calendars that destroy any notion that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012.
These deep-time calendars can be used to count thousands of years into the past and future, countering pop-culture and New Age ideas that Mayan calendars ended on Dec. 21, 2012, (or Dec. 23, depending on who’s counting), thereby predicting the end of the world.
The newly found calendars, which track the motion of the moon, Venus and Mars, provide an unprecedented glimpse into how these storied sky-gazers — who dominated Central America for nearly 1,000 years — kept such accurate track of months, seasons and years.
“What they’re trying to do is understand the large cycles of cosmic time,” said William Saturno, the Boston University archaeologist who led the expedition. “This is the space they’re doing it in. It’s like looking into da Vinci’s workshop.”
Before the new find, the best-preserved Mayan calendars were inscribed in bark-paged books called codices, the most famous being the Dresden Codex. But those pages hail from several hundred years later than the newly found calendars.
Saturno said researchers have long assumed that the Mayans had worked out the cycles of the moons and planets much earlier, but no evidence of such work had ever been found.
But in 2010, an undergraduate student working with Saturno, Max Chamberlain, stumbled onto the house as the team began to excavate at a Mayan city, Xultun, which, despite being known since 1915, had never been professionally excavated. Over the decades, looters had dug deep trenches to access buildings. One day at lunch, Chamberlain announced his intention to find paintings by crawling through the trenches.
Saturno scoffed. The buildings were too shallow — any paint on their walls would surely be long gone, erased by water, dirt, insects and encroaching tree roots.
But sure enough, Chamberlain stumbled onto a wall, open to a trench, showing two red lines.
A quick excavation revealed the back wall of the building — replete with a mural of a resplendent Mayan king, in bright blue, adorned with feathers and jewelry.
Saturno’s team brushed off the wall and “ta-da!” he said. “A Technicolor, fantastically preserved mural. I don’t know how it survived.” Saturno immediately e-mailed contacts at the National Geographic Society, which agreed to fund a full excavation of the building.
The mural is the first Mayan painting found in a small building instead of a large public space. And it’s also the oldest known preserved Mayan painting.
Next to the king, a scribe holds a writing instrument. Three mysterious figures wearing black also march across the wall. One of them is named “older brother obsidian.” Mayan experts have no idea whom these mysterious figures might represent.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Cesium in Fukushima Prefecture 122 Times Higher than in Belarus Evacuation Zone
The Fukushima Diary reports today that Koichi Oyama, a member of the city council of Minamisoma in the prefecture of Fukushima, has measured unusually high levels of cesium 134 and 137 in the soil of his city.
Soil samples were analyzed by the Minamisoma government and found to be 122 times more contaminated than the mandatory evacuation zone in Belarus north of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Cesium causes cancer of the liver, kidneys, pancreas and other organs. It is particularly dangerous when it is in the soil and ends up in food.
In March, it was reported that cesium was detected in plankton 600 kilometers east of the Fukushima facility, according to a Japan-U.S. joint research team.
The following charts on the results of the soil were posted by the Fukushima Diary:
On May 4, a panel discussion on Fukushima radiological health concerns sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Human Rights Now, and Voices for Lively Spring was held in New York.
The participants emphasized “that the issues of radiation and contamination are rarely publicized in Japan and worldwide. Underreported health consequences of radiation, lax standards in food safety, and fear of the worldwide spread of radiation were the main topics of discussion. According to the press conference’s sponsors and the members of the panel, the power plant is still releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere and the ocean, exposing residents throughout Japan to unsafe levels of radiation, yet the Japanese government is doing little to inform its citizens of the dangers,” reports Japan Culture NYC.
“This is something which humanity as a whole has literally never experienced. So we are going to be fighting this radiation for on an order of tens, maybe hundreds of years,” explained Hiroaki Koide, the Assistant Professor of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute.
Meanwhile, governments around the world continue to ignore the extremely perilous situation in Japan.
“Virtually nothing is happening. All the governments involved (Japan and USA, primarily) are playing a ridiculously stupid game of pretending there is no problem. The Japanese government, for its part, has decided that instead of admitted to a radiation problem, it’s easier to just tell Japanese citizens they have a mental disorder if they’re concerned about radiation,” writes Mike Adams for Natural News.
“The U.S. government plays a similar mind game, raising the allowable levels of radiation exposure by thousands of times and then declaring Fukushima fallout to be suddenly safe,” Adams continues. “Governments, in other words, are in denial mode even while Fukushima smolders and hurls us all toward irreversible global disaster.”
The soil examples taken from Minamisoma are yet another indication that Fukushima is by far the worst nuclear accident in human history with far reaching if not cataclysmic potential.
And yet it remains at best a back page story for the establishment media which is more interested in celebrating Obama’s comments about so-called gay marriage than reporting about an event that may wipe out not only humanity but all life on planet Earth.
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