(on the scam of money as debt) - AUDIT the European Central Bank

I think petitions are a joke, but this is about serious stuff:


AUDIT the European Central Bank

While the euro monetary rent - hundreds of billion euros each year - is being masked in the ECB balance sheet (in the liabilities side instead of the assets side), we ask for a long due independent AUDIT of the European Central Bank.

Please, do sign the petition here:http://www.petitiononline.com/auditecb/petition.html

A better way to account for fiat money at the Central Bank
Thomas (Cool) Colignatus, December 31 2005http://leconomistamascherato.blogspot.com/2009/11/better-way-to-account-for-fiat-money-at.html

The EU seigniorage ticking time BOMB:
OLAF POLICE CAN'T INVESTIGATE THE ECB EURO-SEIGNIORAGE SCANDAL http://riflessioni-backbone.blogspot.com/2009/11/eu-seigniorage-ticking-time-bomb-eu-la.html

The case for auditing the ECB: seigniorage fraud on banknoteshttp://leconomistamascherato.blogspot.com/2010/03/case-for-auditing-ecb-seigniorage-fraud.html


THE 'FAKE LIABILITIES' SCANDAL

"The solvency constraint of the Central Bank only requires that the present discounted value of its net non-monetary liabilities be non-positive in the long run. Its monetary liabilities are liabilities only in name, as they are irredeemable: the holder of base money cannot insist at any time on the redemption of a given amount of base money into anything else other than the same amount of itself (base money)."
From Willem H. Buiter (London School of Economics) at page 20:
"Seigniorage", economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 2007-10http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/journalarticles/2007-10


AUDIT THE ECB ON FACEBOOK:http://www.causes.com/causes/366875?recruiter_id=88643505

The U.S. Wins the Right to Abduct Innocent People with Impunity

June 15th, 2010 - Salon:

The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning to Canada in 2002, held incommunicado for two weeks, and then rendered to Syria, where he spent the next 10 months being tortured, even though — as everyone acknowledges — he was guilty of absolutely nothing. 

Arar sued the U.S. Government for what was done to him, and last November, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of his lawsuit on the ground that courts have no right to interfere in these decisions of the Executive Branch. That was the decision which the U.S. Supreme Court let stand today, ending Arar’s attempt to be compensated for what was done to him.

King David and His Howling Commandos

About the imperial adventures backstage, from Pen and Sword by Jeff Huber: 

As Renaissance political scientist Niccolo Machiavelli noted, the fall of Rome came about when its military elite, known as the Praetorian Guard, gained control over the emperor and the Senate. Had irony survived the Bush Jr. administration, it would relish that America’s empire is crumbling under the undue influence of its military elite, the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

A May 24 New York Times story by Mark Mazzetti informed us that last September “King David” Petraeus empowered himself, through a secret directive, to expand “clandestine military activity” throughout his Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility without seeking permission of Congress or the commander in chief. “Clandestine military activity” involves SOCOM assets.

The Mazzetti story, sourced to unnamed “defense officials,” was the first volley in the next round of the information warfare being conducted among elements of the national security structure to avoid taking the fall for the miserable failures of our Iraq and Bananastan* misadventures while managing to keep the Long War going for an indeterminate length of time.

The rest of the media gave little bandwidth to Mazzetti’s story until unnamed “senior military and administration officials” leaked in anger to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post. A June 4 article titled “U.S. ‘Secret War’ Expands Globally as Special Operations Forces Take Larger Role” announced that the “Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups.”

DeYoung and Jaffe hint that the White House is driving the escalation of special force activity against the Evil Caliphate (the neocons’ post-Cold War successor to the Evil Empire), or is at least a willing victim. Special-ops types have “become a far more regular presence” at the executive mansion, even more so than they were during the Bush administration. “We have a lot more access,” one military official told DeYoung and Jaffe. From the way this military official talked, the White House is doing everything shy of handing out sexual favors to attract SOCOM’s help and loyalty. He says OBAMACOM is “asking for ideas and plans … calling us in and saying, ‘Tell me what you can do. Tell me how you do these things.’”

“These things” boil down to those things that Stanley McChrystal and his band of merry assassins did when he commanded the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC): zorch around the western half of Asia like Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos blowing away “suspected” terrorists and civilians galore on the basis of intelligence gathered from human sewers – like Afghan drug lord Wali Karzai – who love nothing better than having the U.S. military pay them handsomely for the privilege of rubbing out their enemies.

(Here’s something else irony would have liked: Adm. Gary Roughead, the sycophant who became chief of Naval Operations after Adm. Mike Mullen got promoted to Joint Chiefs chairman for changing his vote to “aye, aye, sir” on the Iraq surge, said for the record in 2009 that “The biggest breakthrough in the current fight in [Iraq and Afghanistan] is the successful integration of intelligence with operations.” Judas hanging from a redbud tree, how do cement-heads like Roughead wind up in positions of such enormous power?)

What’s more, Gen. Stan and his Hooligan Clan pulled their deadly shenanigans under direct orders of Dick Cheney, who as vice president didn’t have a pig’s wings’ worth of constitutional or legal standing in the military chain of command. Special operators were shaking in their jump boots at the prospect that all their beautiful wickedness might melt away if a Democrat became their commander in chief, but lo! Obama turned out to be their newest, biggest, bestest buddy since Sgt. Hulka from Stripes.

Candidate Obama got his tongue stuck in a wringer when he begged for the war mongrel vote by promising to “get the job done” in Afghanistan. When it came time to decide whether to keep executing all those drone raids that were killing so many innocent Bananastani bystanders, Commander in Chief Obama said, sure, heck, what else we got going for us? YES YOU CAN execute more special force assassinations. This COIN (counterinsurgency) bull plop we’ve been feeding the public isn’t going to work. We have to do something, even if it’s something stupid like blindly striking at suspected evildoers and killing lots of civilians in the process. Sure, that just adds more recruits to the ranks of the evildoers than we had before, but it’s better than doing nothing, right?

So you’d think the SOCOM commandos have all the autonomy to spread mayhem globally that they could possibly want, but no, they’re howling for more. They don’t want to work for anyone who isn’t a special operator and doesn’t understand their special needs. They “bridle” at the authority of wimp ambassadors who “control who comes in and out of their country.” They “chafe” at needing permission from the president and secretary of defense to use lethal force outside of war zones. They want to wreak whatever havoc they feel like wreaking whenever and wherever the feel like wreaking it, and they don’t want to hear any guff about it.

Will no one protect the world from these psychopaths? This invertebrate president and Congress certainly won’t. The Constitution won’t save us. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin would have anybody who challenged SOCOM in court bludgeoned to death with tea bags for failure to support the troops.

Be on the alert for Joe Lieberman or some other congressional concubine of the warmongery to introduce legislation that cancels the parts of Title 10 of U.S. Code that require SOCOM forces to conduct missions under the “command of the commander of the unified combatant command in whose geographic area the activity or mission is to be conducted” unless “otherwise directed by the president or the secretary of defense.”

Yeah, the snake eaters and frogmen have a good thing going now, what with their buddy Petraeus in charge of CENTCOM, and a pushover president, and bureaucratic twit Bob Gates for a SECDEF. But they’d like to get their civilian chain of command neutered in writing in case somebody with a pair of baby-makers ever gets elected president (you never know, it might happen).

And look for the recent discovery of “vast riches” of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan to be the excuse Obama needs to cave in to the military’s demands to flush his withdrawal timeline all the way to the chow hall. The decades it will take for Afghanistan to exploit its riches plays into SOCOM’s “Era of Persistent Conflict” [.pdf] like an egret plays into an oil spill.

*The Bananastans are Afghanistan and Pakistan, our Central Asian banana republics where U.S. and NATO troops are under the command of “Bananas” Stan McChrystal.

Originally posted @ Antiwar.com. 
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Related: US “Surge” in Afghanistan in Disarray

Food prices to rise by up to 40% over next decade, UN report warns

Growing demand from emerging markets and for biofuel production will send prices soaring, according to the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation
Katie Allenguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 June 2010 13.02 BST

Food prices are set to rise as much as 40% over the coming decade amid growing demand from emerging markets and for biofuel production, according to a United Nations report today which warns of rising hunger and food insecurity.

Farm commodity prices have fallen from their record peaks of two years ago but are set to pick up again and are unlikely to drop back to their average levels of the past decade, according to the annual joint report from Paris-based thinktank the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The forecasts are for wheat and coarse grain prices over the next 10 years to be between 15% and 40% higher in real terms, once adjusted for inflation, than their average levels during the 1997-2006 period, the decade before the price spike of 2007-08. Real prices for vegetable oils are expected to be more than 40% higher and dairy prices are projected to be between 16-45% higher. But rises in livestock prices are expected to be less marked, although world demand for meat is climbing faster than for other farm commodities on the back of rising wealth for some sections of the population in emerging economies.

Although the report sees production increasing to meet demand, it warns that recent price spikes and the economic crisis have contributed to a rise in hunger and food insecurity. About 1 billion people are now estimated to be undernourished, it said.

Fairtrade campaigners said the predictions of sharply rising prices provided a "stark warning" to international policymakers.

"Investment to encourage the 1 billion people whose livelihoods rely on smallholder agriculture is vital. Not only will this increase yields but will go a long way to increase prosperity in poverty stricken regions," said Barbara Crowther, director of communications at the Fairtrade Foundation.

"At the same time, the promise of increased agriculture commodity prices could spark a new surge in land grabbing by sovereign wealth funds and other powerful investors which risks marginalising further rural communities who must be included in solutions to secure and maintain food supplies."

The report says that agricultural production and productivity must be stepped up and it argues for a well-functioning trading system to ensure fair competition and that surplus food is getting to where it is needed.

It also painted a growing role for developing countries in both boosting demand and production. Brazil is by far the fastest growing agricultural producer, with output expected to rise by more than 40% in the next decade and production growth is also expected to be well above 20% in China, India, Russia and Ukraine.

"The role of developing countries in international markets is growing quickly, and as their impact grows, their policies also have an increasing bearing on conditions in global markets," said FAO director-general Jacques Diouf.

"This makes their role and contribution to global policy issues critical. Policy discussions must be global in scope and we need to improve the framework for such exchange of views."

Another factor driving up food prices is the controversial biofuelsindustry. The report predicts that continued expansion of biofuel output – often to meet government targets – will create additional demand for wheat, coarse grains, vegetable oils and sugar.

SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options

On September 19, 2001, CBS reported:
Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.

An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.

The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise. ...More


Related:  Did 9/11 provide cover for massive securities fraud by the Fed?

Nicolas Sarkozy 'Bans Tall Workers From Factory Walkabout'

from Connecting the Dots in the New World Order :

The 5ft 5ins tall leader is alleged to have sent aides to the plant ahead of an official visit, to stop anyone over 5ft 6 ins from appearing alongside him.

The claims come just a week after Mr Sarkozy was reported to have banned tall bodyguards from his presidential protection team.'
Read more...

16 Burning Questions About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill

Just published on The economic collapse blog:


The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a national nightmare that seems to have no ending.  Every day new details come out that are even more shocking than what we learned the day before.  The truth is that life will never be the same in the Gulf of Mexico or for those who live along the Gulf coast.  

Now Barack Obama has made a big Oval Office speech and has tried to convince all of us that he is in charge of the crisis.  Well, perhaps if he had tried to take decisive action a month ago the American people may have rallied around him.  But right now the BP/government response to this disaster remains completely and totally chaotic.  Nobody seems to be able to stop the leak, and BP has made the environmental nightmare far worse by dumping over a million gallons of highly toxic dispersants into the Gulf.  U.S. government officials are running around holding press conferences and waiting for BP to do something.  Meanwhile oil is pouring ashore and toxic gases are being detected at very alarming levels.  The biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history is also quickly becoming one of the biggest economic disasters and potentially one of the biggest public health disasters.   


The truth is that the American people deserve some answers about what in the world is going on down there in the Gulf.  BP does not own the Gulf of Mexico and they have no right to keep the American people from seeing what is happening.  There are some very serious health and environmental questions that have been raised in the media recently, but both BP and the U.S. government are not giving us any answers. 
But we need some answers.  People are getting sick.  Crops are dying.  Wildlife is being devastated.  Birds are flocking north by the thousands.
But BP and the U.S. government continue to treat us as though we are on a "need to know" basis and that what we "need to know" is not much.
Actually, much of what they have decided to tell us throughout this crisis has turned out to be lies anyway.
The truth is that it is about darn time that someone started telling it to us straight.  


The following are 16 questions about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that we really need some answers to....
#1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used "as needed" by state governors.  So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly?  Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public?
#2) Barack Obama has also announced the creation of a "Gulf recovery czar" who will be in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico region following the oil spill.  So is appointing a "czar" Obama's idea of taking charge of a situation?

#3) Because it is so incredibly toxic, the UK's Marine Management Organization has completely banned Corexit 9500, so if there was a major oil spill in the UK's North Sea, BP would not be able to use it.  So why is BP being allowed to use Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico?
#4) It is being reported that 2.61 parts per million of Corexit 9500 (mixed with oil at a ratio of 1:1o) is lethal to 50% of fish exposed to it within 96 hours.  That means that 1 gallon of Corexit 9500/oil mixture is capable of rendering 383,141 gallons of water highly toxic to fish.  So why was BP allowed to dump 1,021,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 into the Gulf of Mexico, and why aren't they being stopped from dumping another 805,000 gallons of these dispersants that they have on order into the Gulf?

#5) If these dispersants are so incredibly toxic to fish, what are they going to do to crops?  What are they going to do to people?
#6) If the smell of the oil on some Gulf beaches is already so strong that it burns your nostrils, then what in the world is this oil doing to to wildlife that encounter it?
#7) Is it a bad sign that birds from the Gulf region are flocking north by the thousands?
#8) Why is BP being allowed to use private security contractors to keep the American people away from the oil cleanup sites?
#9) Why is BP openly attempting to manipulate the search results on sites like Google and Yahoo? 
#10) Why has the FAA shut down the airspace above the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?  What don't they want the American people to see?

#11) Senator Bill Nelson of Florida says that there are reports that there are additional ruptures in the sea floor from which oil is leaking.  If there are quite a few of these additional ruptures, then how in the world does BP expect to completely stop this oil leak?
#12) Why are scientists finding concentrations of methane at up to 10,000 times normal background levels in Gulf waters?
#13) At some testing stations in the Gulf of Mexico, levels of benzene have been detected at over 3000 parts per billion, and levels of hydrogen sulfide have been detected as high as 1192 parts per billion.  Considering that these levels would be highly toxic to humans, why hasn't the general public been warned?   
#14) Why are so many Gulf oil spill disaster workers showing up at local hospitals complaining of a "mysterious illness"?
#15) If "70% or 80%" of the protective booms are doing absolutely nothing at all to stop the oil, then what is going to stop the millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf from eventually reaching shore?
#16) It is being reported that the deepsea oil plumes are creating huge "dead zones" where all creatures are dying as they are deprived of oxygen.  If this oil spill continues to grow could the vast majority of the Gulf of Mexico become one gigantic "dead zone"?
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More: Controversial energy economist: BP disaster could last for "years and years"
Oil spill could reach Europe in "what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe in history." 


And more: 

Was Gulf Oil Spill an Inside Job?

Obama's Oval Office speech: A cowardly cover-up of BP's crimes

President Obama's Oval Office speech Tuesday night on the Gulf oil disaster was a cowardly exercise in evasion and cover-up that could have been written by the publicity department of BP.

Internal documents reveal criminal negligence: Obama administration's "escrow" account will shelter BP

Gulf Coast Disaster, Is it The Perfect Storm?

Scientists raise estimate of spill rate once again

Scientists now say oil spill is leaking between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day

Global Research: Gulf Oil Slick - Selected Articles

What US Scientists Are Forbidden To Tell The Public About The Gulf: Oil Volcano Pressure Too Strong For Containment

Quote: At some point the drilled hole in the earth will enlarge itself beneath the wellhead to weaken the area the wellhead rests upon. The intense pressure will then push the wellhead off the hole allowing a direct unrestricted flow of oil, etc.

The hole will continue to increase in size allowing more and more oil to rise into the Gulf. After several billion barrels of oil have been released, the pressure within the massive cavity five miles beneath the ocean floor will begin to normalize.

This will allow the water, under the intense pressure at 1 mile deep, to be forced into the hole and the cavity where the oil was. The temperature at that depth is near 400 degrees, possibly more.

The water will be vaporized and turned into steam, creating an enormous amount of force, lifting the Gulf floor. It is difficult to know how much water will go down to the core and therefore, its not possible to fully calculate the rise of the floor.

The tsunami wave this will create will be anywhere from 20 to 80 feet high, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole.

Depending on the height of the tsunami, the ocean debris, oil, and existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland, will leave the area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life. Even if the debris is cleaned up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit re-population of these areas for an unknown number of years.

The Disaster Compounds As Obama Blows Smoke to Calm the Sheep

June 16, 2010 Shepard Ambellas and Alex Thomas 

On Tuesday evening, with the disaster now pushed into a continual downward spiral, the President addressed the nation. By pushing the cap and trade agenda he was attempting to blow smoke to his sheeple. Lots of interesting keywords and phrases were used in the speech...

Eurointelligence Daily Briefing - 16 June 2010: Axa’s head of global fixed income says eurozone is doomed

European Commission wants Spain to cut even more

• Spain must cut another €8bn on top of the €11bn austerity plan already announced;
• more wage cuts and tax increases beckon;
• Barroso tells MEPs that the Commission is the European economic government;
• EP has built cross-party coalition in opposition to European Council’s power grab;
• ECB imposes haircuts on Greek bonds, as Moody’s announces severe downgrades of Greek banks;
• European Parliament proposes severe caps on bonus payments;
• an opinion poll among Germany’s elite shows a 94% dissatisfaction rating with the Merkel government;
• Jean Quatremer reports of an unholy alliance between the regionalists and the ecologists in the European Parliament as Greens make overtures to de Waver;
• Axa’s head of global fixed income says eurozone is doomed; FT asks whether Commission suppressed information exonerating the role of CDS during the crisis; Wolfgang Munchau, meanwhile, argues that Germany’s short sale ban is financially illiterate

Eurointelligence Columns
The limits of the small-country mindset

By: Wolfgang Münchau

The European Union is a tyranny of small countries, and this has served it well. But the small-country syndrome is counterproductive when it comes to macroeconomics. I was struck last week by two remarks from Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. He defended the fast spreading austerity programmes on the grounds of the robust economic recovery. And on intra-eurozone imbalances, he said it was mostly a problem of countries with current account deficits.

_____________________________________________________________________
This is the Daily Briefing from www.eurointelligence.com.
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More: Nightmare vision for Europe as EU chief warns 'democracy could disappear' in Greece, Spain and Portugal --EU begin emergency billion-pound bailout of Spain --Countries in debt may fall to dictators, EC chief warns --'Apocalyptic' vision as some states run out of money 


15 Jun 2010 Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned. In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.
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Related: Eurozone Still Failing
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 – by Staff Report



AXA fears 'fatal flaw' will destroy eurozone ... Analysts at the French financial group AXA see a serious likelihood that the eurozone will break in half or disintegrate, dismissing Europe's €750bn (£623bn) rescue package for Club Med debtors as a stop-gap measure that misdiagnoses the problem. "The markets are very nervous because they can see that there is a fatal flaw in the system and no clear way out," said Theodora Zemek, head of global fixed income at AXA Investment Managers. "We are in a very major crisis that has even broader implications than the credit crisis two years ago. The politicians have not yet twigged to this." Ms Zemek said the rescue had bought a "maximum" of 18 months respite before deeper structural damage hits home, with a "probable" default by Greece setting off a chain reaction across Southern Europe. "It would be the end of the euro as we know it. The long-term implications are at best a split in the eurozone, at worst the destruction of the euro. It is not going to end happily however you slice it," she said. – UK Telegraph 


Dominant Social Theme: So many problems ... and yet we in the Eurozone must persevere. Courage!


Free-Market Analysis: The Daily Bell analyzes the dominant social themes of the power elite, and one of the most important fear-based promotions has been the inevitability of monetary union – expansive, global and ongoing. Thus, we have watched bemusedly as the EU brain-trust has staggered from crisis to crisis with its nose in the air and its many hands blurring from the desperate juggling it must do to keep the balls flying.
Read More ...
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More: European trade union head backs austerity measures

An interview with John Monks, the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), provides a revealing glimpse into the discussions taking place behind the scenes between leading figures in the European political establishment.
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And more: €uro: the worst case scenario

by Jean-Michel Vernochet*

The Greek budgetary crisis, which has become a crisis of the euro, is not the inevitable result of market self-regulation, but rather the consequence of a deliberate attack. According to Jean-Michel Vernochet, the crisis was provoked by an economic offensive directed from Washington and London that followed similar principles to those of contemporary military warfare, employing game theory and a strategy of ‘constructive chaos’. The ultimate aim is to oblige the Europeans to enter into an Atlantic bloc, i.e. an empire where Anglo-American budgetary deficits would be automatically financed through the expedient of a dollarised euro. The agreement concluded between the European Union and the IMF, giving the Fund partial oversight of Union economic policies, is a first step in this direction.