Links June 12 09
- Baptize (video) - ArthimotH - The real threat: Deadly Iranian Metal
- Obama envoy raises possibility of U.S. strike on Iran - Haaretz - Dennis Ross is evil.
- Pakistani general's home attacked - AP/WaPo
- Gaza by the numbers - Mondoweiss
- Gaza: No right to life (video) - Guardian
- The Big Hate - Krugman/NYT - The danger from the right
- The fiscal black hole in the US - Mavercon/FT
- We're Screwed ... - Alternet - On (not) outlawing usury
- World Bank Sees Economy Shrinking 3 Percent This Year - NYT
- Oil surges on raised forecast of demand (alt link) - FT - $73+/bl - Speculation, not real demand. See you again at $150/bl.
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Posted by b on June 12, 2009 at 6:50 UTC | Permalink
A review of "Wired for war", about the likely future of robotic war.
U.S. War Privatization Results in Billions Lost in Fraud, Waste and Abuse--Report.
Posted by: andrew | Jun 12 2009 10:22 utc | 2
We're Screwed: The Big Five (Britain, Russia, France, US and China) created the UN Security Council in 1945 to perpetually oppress the world, but that's nothing to the Multinational Corps, their banks and their sycophant media trolls grip on our lives:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/21345045/site/14081545
Shares in Gilead and Roach were falling (2007) as old Tamiflu stocks reach pull-date, ergo, time for Rumsfeld's "Dirty Boys" to bio-engineer a Tamiflu Profit Revolution:
http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUST236041
Stage 6. Mandatory inoculations. 100,000's adverse reactions, even deaths, for Baby Bejeebus. Godfather Mammon is laughing from his Underworld lair:
Posted by: Stalag Luft 7 | Jun 12 2009 12:23 utc | 4
Gets more interesting yet. They sure look like bearer bonds, necessarily old but with all the coupons. Now Japanese officialdom comes out and swears fealty to the dollar. Their motive is said to be protecting trade, but you wonder if they got caught sneaking to the exit before somebody yells fire.
Posted by: ...---... | Jun 12 2009 12:25 utc | 5
The International Energy Agency’s abrupt change, saying that the oil market was witnessing the “long-awaited emergence of improving fundamentals”, suggests that economic "green shoots" are starting to boost energy consumption.
There's that G-d damn "green shoots" meme Bernanke broadcast on 60 Minutes last
Sunday, a further proof the WehrMacht Werewolves use code signals to the market.
"The IEA forecast global oil consumption would be 120,000 barrels a day higher than it had previously estimated – although it would still drop this year by 2.5m b/d. Global demand is put at 83.3m b/d this year, ***down 2.9 per cent from 2008***."
Doesn't matter, the fix is in!
G-d damn Warren Buffett and all those non-delivery non-producer non-consumer fucks.
Fuck a "global flu pandemic", millions of people will starve to death, once again.
!!!DRIVE 55, KEEP ONE MORE CARBON REFUGEE ALIVE!!!!
Posted by: Paris Troika | Jun 12 2009 12:50 utc | 6
Soros restates the obvious: http://www.cnbc.com/id/31300899
Posted by: Nancy Drew | Jun 12 2009 13:14 utc | 7
DOD 2008 $481B GWOT1 $142B
DOD 2009 $541B GWOT1+2 $170B (est)
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/us_vs_world.gif
Recession is Most Definitely Over™ !!
On to Tehran!! SecState Clinton Says Attack on Israel Not an Attack on USA
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2665
Posted by: Likud Nick | Jun 12 2009 14:03 utc | 8
@...---..., comment 5
Yosano is talking the dollar up, nothing else. Toyota especially needs a little help to make its exports to the US cheaper. But is also I suspect it wants to buy into some assets from GM.
Posted by: Philippe | Jun 12 2009 15:11 utc | 9
The interesting aspect of this is staunch public support for the strong dollar coinciding with hints of covert diversification. If the dollar falls, FDI's their antidote for trade - Japan's real problem is their stock of dollar reserves, and all this skullduggery suggests that they've got that covered too. Europe's monetary authorities should be taking little pleasure jaunts to Liechtenstein themselves, if they know what's good for them.
Posted by: ...---... | Jun 12 2009 15:47 utc | 10
...article posted on Mondoweiss on Gaza:
The open air concentration camp description is getting old, but is apt and shows how much naming matters. France now has centres de rétention for illegal immigrants, they wanted to avoid the ‘imprisonment’ label. The Swiss are less hypocritical and call the same action imprisonment / incarceration, under the rubric, administrative violations. (Not too many criminals are found in prisons!) ‘Reservations’ for Indians come to mind as well. A longer list could be made.
What I wanted to point to is 1) how important it is for Israel for a putative Palestine to have an indeterminate status. In this way, they can treat Gaza as a ‘country’ - much in the way the Anglos then ‘west’ treated Iraq (sanctions, oil for food, invasion, etc.); as part of their territory (occupied) and finally also as individual ‘terrorist elements within’ who should not be allowed to vote or marry the pure, hold Gvmt. office, borrow money, have their own disgusting commemorations, etc.
2) The ‘west’ (be it the anglo coalition; plus Europe; the Security Council, whatever) tolerates all this, in flagrant violation of all its laws, principles, pronouncements, it’s ‘never again’ discourse, etc. Thereby it has lost legitimacy, shown itself to be morally void, and this is very dangerous for us all. Boycotts are great but implicitly negate whatever ‘the rule of law’ might be.
3) Israel will never accept any definite status for ‘Palestine’ as it would force the ‘west’ and particularly the US to become consistent and obey the rule of law, or possibly, make new ones. Obama knows this. The two-state solution is not viable, not because it is merely ‘making the best of a bad situation’ or because the injustice of Palestinians being locked up in Bantustans can never work, or because negotiations failed before, etc. but because it would oblige Israel to conform to some precise agreements / legal status, which it will never do unless *very* strongly coerced. And evidently, nobody is willing to move forward.
Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 12 2009 17:27 utc | 11
Obama's Afghan war, by Marc Herold (the cartoon in Spanish under the title says "occupation forces" and "silencer").
Colombia still undisputed leader in trade unionist murders.
Posted by: andrew | Jun 12 2009 18:56 utc | 12
Through the FRBNY Rothschild is in a privileged position to influence US monetary policy and shaping US monetary supply, crucially important since the US dollar remains the main reserve currency in the world....
The Rothschild family has have been closely associated with the Zionist Movement. The 1917 Balfour Declaration was in fact addressed to Lord Rothschild in which the British government committed itself to the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
...
But this year’s crisis could be worse than last year’s because of the multiple points of origin. In addition to the weak situation of the US Federal Reserve, whose financial commitments in support of the US banking system are equal to the total US GDP, European banks could go in tilt because of their exposure to emerging markets whilst those of Asia (especially Japan’s and China’s) could suffer because of Asian economies’ heavy reliance on now declining exports.
Signs of a new financial storm for September coming from Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jun 12 2009 19:30 utc | 13
About Ross' book cited in the Haaretz article in the first comment, an analysis about him and his method.
Posted by: andrew | Jun 12 2009 22:48 utc | 14
Dennis Ross
Thankyou, andrew, for that link.
The only possible reason for Ross' presence in his current job is that he has been put there deliberately, to f**k up any 'negotiations' or 'outreach' to Iran.
He has no apparent expertise on Iran, and has already expressed the idea that 'negotiations' will precede full-scale war (which nobody needs).
The very obvious path would be for the US to recognise its obligations under the NPT to assist nuclear-fuelling states.
A more intelligent operator than Ross would get US 'helpers' into Iran's nuclear centres to report 'transgressions' rather than relying on the IAEA, who have, so far, exonerated Iran's 'nuclear weapons' (as have 16 US intelligence agencies).
Ross f****d Israeli/Palestinian/US agreements, and shouldn't be in place to do it again with someone else.
Posted by: Richard | Jun 13 2009 1:54 utc | 15
The comments to this entry are closed.
Ha'aretz resumes a chapter of a book wrote by Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, who is described as "a former journalist who is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy". In that chapter Ross and Makovsky raise the spectre of a US strike against Iran. Read it in order to understand what passes in the mind of Hillary Clinton's special adviser on Persian Gulf.
Netanyahu turned Palestinian statehood into bargaining chip.
Posted by: andrew | Jun 12 2009 10:07 utc | 1