Mar 8, 2012

The Eurocracy: "Let Them Eat GMOs"

By Rady Ananda

Food Freedom March 8th, 2012

In February, the European Commission (EC) approved four transgenic soybeans intended for food and feed, import and processing, reports Inf’OGM. This follows four approvals in December, on top of three last summer.
Three of the recently-approved GM soy varieties are tolerant to herbicides: DuPont-Pioneer’s 356043, Monsanto’s Glyphosate-tolerant soy GTS40-3-2, and Bayer’s A5547127. The fourth, Mon87701, produces an insecticide.
The US approved GTS40-3-2 in 1994, quickly followed by Canada, Japan, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. [1] In 2000, Monsanto discovered two extra bacterial DNA sequences, requiring global notifications to be sent. [2] Food safety authorities found no problem with the extra genetic material. [3]
France abstained from voting on approval of GTS40-3-2, as well as Mon87701 and DuPont-Pioneer’s 356043. However, the French Agency for Food Safety refused to approve Bayer’s A5547127 on the grounds that the safety studies failed to consider sub-chronic toxicity in rats.
Under the EU’s comitology procedure, the European Commission wholly decides GM approvals, a controversial committee-procedure that excludes member-state input.
Pesticide-resistant genetically modified crops have been linked to a host of problems including superweeds [4], superbugs, and bee colony collapse disorder.
Senior Scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman at the Union of Concerned Scientists sees potential benefits in genetic engineering, but notes after reviewing the current literature that, “current data suggests that the new, ubiquitous seed treatments that have accompanied Bt corn are just as harmful as the insecticides they are replacing.” [5]
Roundup® in particular has been linked to human birth defects [6], spontaneous abortions in animals and the discovery of a new soil pathogen previously unknown to science.

For the fully-referenced article, please join Food Freedom. If you're already a donor, contact me for the link to the full article with footnotes.
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Related:
Big $$ Beef Industry Job For Official Who Approved Ammonia Treated “Pink Slime”

The Truth about the Greek Bond Swap in One Chart

From Shenandoah March 8, 2012

by John Galt

The myth that the great shell game known as the Greek bond swap where worthless paper is exchanged for lower quality even more worthless paper so Greece can default on those bonds at a later date has been exposed in one chart showing the market’s faith in the viability of the Greek nation:

(chart from Bloomberg.com)

The yield on the one year Greek Government bond has topped 1,135%. This means that no matter what commitments are made by the Greek government, the markets believe that the nation is insolvent and the great swap does nothing to address the long term issues. The danger of this program being initiated to allow the ECB to print money to give to the Greeks so they can repay the ECB is that by destroying the credibility of the CDS markets with the cooperation of the ISDA, sovereign bonds will lose a lot of non-financial institution investors.

The game of extend and pretend has an end and unfortunately for the world, throughout history the light at the end of the tunnel is usually a war. Sadly for the people of Greece leadership of that nation seems hell bent on sacrificing its sovereignty, its independence, and its citizens to pacify a group of dirty old banksters located in Brussels and Berlin. Ireland, Portugal, and Spain will be joining this party soon enough unless they revolt against their masters hiding behind the walls of the world’s central banks.
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Related:

Ex-ECB’s Juergen Stark Says ECB’s Balance Sheet “Gigantic”, Collateral Quality “Shocking”

Yet Another Reason The Euro Project Does Not Work

[Assassination Nation] Experts Destroy Rationale for Obama’s Assassination Policy … And Slam Democrats for Supporting It

From Global Research, March 8, 2012
By Washington's Blog

Obama Expanding Program Started by Cheney

Attorney General Eric Holder announced at Northwestern University law school that the U.S. can assassinate U.S. citizens without any without disclosure of why they are even alleged to be baddies and without any review of any nature whatsoever by any judge, Congress or the American people.
Northwestern University’s law school professor Joseph Margulies said:

I defy anyone to read [Holder's] speech and show any differences between Obama and Bush on these issues, They both say we are in a war not confined to particular battlefield. … Both say we can target citizens without judicial oversight and that can happen anywhere in the world.

Columbia law school professor Scott Horton notes that this assassination strategy was created by Dick Cheney, and is being carried out by the Obama administration:

A lot of this seems to have been put in place under the tutelage of Dick Cheney. So here we see one of Dick Cheney’s ideas being ratified by Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder.

(Obama is also implementing Cheney and the boys’ plans for war in the Middle East and North Africa.)
Top constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley slams the Democratic Party for its complicity:

The choice of a law school was a curious place for discussion of authoritarian powers. Obama has replaced the constitutional protections afforded to citizens with a “trust me” pledge that Holder repeated.
***
Senior administration officials have asserted that the president may kill an American anywhere and anytime, including in the United States. Holder’s speech does not materially limit that claimed authority. He merely assures citizens that Obama will only kill those of us he finds abroad and a significant threat. Notably, Holder added, “Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan.”
The Obama administration continues to stonewall efforts to get it to acknowledge the existence of a memo authorizing the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. Democrats previously demanded the “torture memos” of the Bush administration that revealed both poor legal analysis by Judge Jay Bybee and Professor John Yoo to justify torture. Now, however, Democrats are largely silent in the face of a president claiming the right to unilaterally kill citizens.
Holder became particularly cryptic in his assurance of caution in the use of this power, insisting that they will kill citizens only with “the consent of the nation involved or after a determination that the nation is unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a threat to the United States.” What on earth does that mean?

Former constitutional trial lawyer and progressive writer Glenn Greenwald agrees:

The willingness of Democrats to embrace and defend this power is especially reprehensible because of how completely, glaringly and obviously at odds it is with everything they loudly claimed to believe during the Bush years. Recall two of the most significant “scandals” of the Bush War on Terror: his asserted power merely to eavesdrop on and detain accused Terrorists without judicial review of any kind. Remember all that? Progressives endlessly accused Bush of Assaulting Our Values and “shredding the Constitution” simply because Bush officials wanted to listen in on and detain suspected Terrorists — not kill them, just eavesdrop on and detain them — without first going to a court and proving they did anything wrong. Yet here is a Democratic administration asserting not merely the right to surveil or detain citizens without charges or judicial review, but to kill them without any of that: a far more extreme, permanent and irreversible act. Yet,with some righteous exceptions, the silence is deafening, or worse.
How can anyone who vocally decried Bush’s mere eavesdropping and detention powers without judicial review possibly justify Obama’sexecutions without judicial review? How can the former (far more mild powers) have been such an assault on Everything We Stand For while the latter is a tolerable and acceptable assertion of war powers? If Barack Obama has the right to order accused Terrorists executed by the CIA because We’re At War, then surely George Bush had the right to order accused Terrorists eavesdropped on and detained on the same ground.
That the same Party and political faction that endlessly shrieked about Bush’s eavesdropping and detention programs now tolerate Obama’s execution program is one of the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.
***
To recap Barack Obama’s view: it is a form of “terror” for someone to be detained “without even getting one chance to prove their innocence,” but it is good and noble for them to be executed under the same circumstances. To recap Eric Holder’s view: we must not accept when the Bush administration says “just trust us” when it comes to spying on the communications of accused Terrorists, but we must accept when the Obama administration says “just trust us” when it comes to targeting our fellow citizens for execution.
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What’s so striking is how identical Obama officials and their defenders sound when compared to the right-wing legal theorists who justified Bush’s most controversial programs. Even the core justifying slogans are the same: we are at War; the Battlefield is everywhere; Presidents have the right to spy on, detain and kill combatants without court permission; the Executive Branch is the sole organ for war and no courts can interfere in the President’s decisions, etc. I spent years writing about and refuting those legal theories and they are identical to what we hear now. Just consider how similar the two factions sound to one another. When it came to their War on Terror controversies, Bush officials constantly said back then exactly what Obama officials and defenders say now: we’re only using these powers against Terrorists — The Bad People — not against regular, normal, Good Americans; so if you’re not a Terrorist, you have nothing to worry about.
***
This is nothing more than an exercise of supremely circular reasoning and question-begging: whether someone is actually a Terrorist can be determined only when the evidence of their guilt is presented and they have an opportunity to respond, just as Holder and Obama said during the Bush years. Government assurances that they’re only targeting Terrorists — whether those assurances issue from Bush or Obama — should reassure nobody: this is always what those who abuse power claim, and it’s precisely why we don’t trust government officials to punish people based on unproven accusations. [Indeed, we’ve gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making laws in secret.]
***
We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!
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That this policy is being implemented and defended by the very same political party that spent the last decade so vocally and opportunistically objecting to far less extreme powers makes it all the more repellent. That fact also makes it all the more dangerous, because — as one can see — the fact that it is a Democratic President doing it, and Democratic Party officials justifying it, means that it’s much easier to normalize: very few of the Party’s followers, especially in an election year, are willing to make much of a fuss about it at all.
And thus will presidential assassination powers be entrenched as bipartisan consensus for at least a generation. That will undoubtedly be one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy. Let no Democrat who is now supportive or even silent be heard to object when the next Republican President exercises this power in ways that they dislike.

As does Charles Pierce:

The criteria for when a president can unilaterally decide to kill somebody is completely full of holes, regardless of what the government’s pet lawyers say. And this…
“This is an indicator of our times,” Holder said, “not a departure from our laws and our values.”
…is a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo. This policy is a vast departure from our laws and an interplanetary probe away from our values. The president should not have this power because the Constitution, which was written by smarter people than, say, Benjamin Wittes, knew full and goddamn well why the president shouldn’t have this power. If you give the president the power to kill without due process, or without demonstrable probable cause, he inevitably will do so. And, as a lot of us asked during the Bush years, if you give this power to President George Bush, will you also give it to President Hillary Clinton and, if you give this power to President Barack Obama, will you also give it to President Rick Santorum?

Greenwald also points out that it is unclear whether the poster child for assassination of American citizens – Anwar Al Awlaki – was even a threat:

Applying traditional war doctrine to accused Terrorists (who are not found on a battlefield but in their cars, their homes, at work, etc.) is so inappropriate, and why judicial review is so urgent: because the risk of false accusations is so much higher than it is when capturing uniformed soldiers on an actual battlefield. Just recall how dubious so many government accusations of Terrorism turned out to be once federal courts began scrutinizing those accusations for evidentiary support. Indeed, Yemen experts such as Gregory Johnsen haverepeatedly pointed out in response to claims that Awlaki plotted Terrorist attacks: “we know very little, precious little when it comes to his operational role” and “we just don’t know this, we suspect it but don’t know it.” Given this shameful record in the War on Terror, what rational person would “trust” the Government to make determinations about who is and is not a Terrorist in the dark, with no limits or checks on what they can do?
***
Holder’s attempt to justify these assassinations on the ground that “capture is not feasible” achieves nothing. For one, the U.S. never even bothered to indict Awlaki so that he could voluntarily turn himself in or answer the charges (though at one point, long after they first ordered him killed, they “considered” indicting him); instead, they simply killed him without demonstrating there was any evidence to support these accusations. What justifies that? Additionally, the fact that the Government is unable to apprehend and try a criminal does not justify his murder; absent some violent resistance upon capture, the government is not free to simply go around murdering fugitives who have been convicted of nothing. Moreover, that Awlaki could not have been captured in a country where the government is little more than an American client is dubious at best …

(Interestingly, Lt.Col. Anthony Shaffer – who claims to have tracked several of the 9/11 hijackers prior to September 11th – alleges that al-Awlaki was a triple agent and an FBI asset before 9/11.)

Global Research Articles by Washington’s Blog

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US Attorney General Eric Holder confirms government has right to murder U.S. citizens anywhere, anytime, without legal review

Attorney General Holder degrades US to fascist ‘Assassination Nation;’ 99% response…?NO INDICTMENT, NO TRIAL, JUST DEATH – BY PRESIDENTIAL DECREE

FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil

Eric Holder Tortures the Constitution | Black Agenda Report

Obama Impersonator Steve Bridges Dead at 48

Obama Set To Sign "Trespassing Bill" Ending Freedom Of Speech In America

Video: Obama Admin Cites ‘Int’l Permission,’ Not Congress, As ‘Legal Basis’ For Action In Syria

Obama Put On Notice

Congress considers repeal of indefinite detention and torture

Coup D’état: Pentagon & Obama Declare Congress Ceremonial

Obama ‘asked for military options’ in Syria

Obama Uses Staged Cyber Attack To Sell Draconian Cybersecurity Bill

The Criminalization of Protest: Say Goodbye To Free Speech in America

New Chinese law allows police to make people “disappear ” in politically sensitive cases

Super Tuesday a "Super Letdown" as America realizes that her Presidential Candidates "Just Suck"

From CapitalAccount Mar 7, 2012 :
Welcome to Capital Account. Super Tuesday came and went, and if anything it seems more like a super letdown. As the economy dominates the agenda this election year, voters have failed to flock to the one candidate who actually has a long-term view and addresses concerns of sound money and monetary policy, and represents a shift from the status quo. Why? Are voters stupid? Does "the public suck" as George Carlin famously said? We find it hard to believe that Americans, after years of being fooled and lied to by politicians, dragged to war on false intelligence, forced to hand over their savings so bankers like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein could continue to make millions of dollars hand over fist are still willing to get up off their butts and go vote for another batch of politicians who plan on doing THE EXACT SAME THING. Insanity by definition...we ask our guest Dr. Paul Craig Roberts what he though about yesterday's "democratic" outcome and what he thinks this says not just about the candidates, but about the public.

Meanwhile, Germany does seem to be taking a cue from one republican presidential hopeful -- Ron Paul -- who has long called for an audit of the US's gold reserves. The Bundesbank is reportedly reviewing its gold reserves. Are they taking stock in case of a eurozone collapse? Anyone who has read Jim Rickards' "Currency Wars," knows very well that if things escalate dramatically gold may be a country's only salvation from total currency collapse. The Germans may finally be catching on to this reality, and stocking up for that rainy day...

And, yesterday we told you about the computer jeopardy champion, Watson, going to work on Wall Street. Well, UBS head floor trader Art Cashin is talking about artificial intelligence (A.I.) saying machines may explain some unusual financial market behavior going on. We'll debate where this is headed. Demetri has some interesting theories about the potential for this to become another sky net judgment day, only this time instead of the machines taking over the military and destroying the world through nuclear war, they will destroy mankind through the financial markets.

Bernanke Broods Over New Ways To Print Money – Waiting For Gold To Explode

From Gold and silver blog, March 8, 2012:

Perhaps it was the realization that the U.S. Federal Reserve was losing to the ECB in the money printing race. Perhaps it was the realization that the only way to prevent a debt imperiled economy from imploding was by supplying new doses of the only remedy left in the Fed's medicine bag. In any event, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke made it clear today that his determination to continue quantitative easing has not diminished.

In an effort to silence critics who equate QE with currency debasement and inflation, the Chairman has come up with an improved version of QE that will boost the economy without creating inflation or boosting oil prices - in effect, the modern equivalent of turning lead into gold. The new and improved version of QE even comes with a new and impressive sounding moniker -"sterilized bond-buying".

The Wall Street Journal's explanation of how this new money creation engine of the Fed would actually work probably left many lesser mortals scratching their heads. See if you can follow how new money creation by the Fed creates wealth and prosperity, while maintaining a sound dollar and zero risk of inflation blow-back.

Third, in the new novel approach, the Fed could print money to buy long-term bonds, but restrict how investors and banks use that money by employing new market tools they have designed to better manage cash sloshing around in the financial system. This is known as "sterilized" QE.

The Fed's objective under any of these programs would be to reduce the holdings of long-term securities in the hands of investors and banks. The Fed believes that reducing the amount of long-term bonds in the hands of investors drives down long-term interest rates, encourages more risk-taking, and thus spurs spending and investment by households and businesses.

Under the third approach, the Fed would create new money as it buys long-term bonds. But then it would effectively lock up the money rather than letting it loose in the broader economy. The Fed would do this by borrowing the money back from investors for short periods—say, 28 days—in exchange for some low interest rate it would pay investors.

Will this new genius wealth creation mechanism of the Fed actually work or will it wind up driving gold into the stratosphere as the average American finally begins to realize that not only does the Emperor have no clothes, but that he is also delusional?

Here's the take on the new and improved QE (sorry, I meant to say "sterilized bond-buying") by astute observer Jim Sinclair, who is never at a loss to expound on the monetary mess we are in.

This would be a hat trick because it assumes the Fed would borrow back funds they have created by good ole debt monetization. It assumes there is no purpose to QE in the first place. It is monetary double talk beyond MOPE or maybe MOPE at a spiritual level. It is an attempt to intellectually cloud the process and to give plausible believability to PR lies.

This is a statement that says we will step on the gas and then equally apply the brakes which means you go absolutely nowhere. It is a statement that is total gobbledegook to deflect the fact that QE is going to infinity. It is a statement that only those who do not understand monetary science might give credibility to.

The claim that QE can be controlled by equal stimulation and draining adds up to nothing whatsoever. The idea that the Fed could so perfectly orchestrate pulling and pushing is denied by the fact of where we are right now.

Only gold can protect you from this sinking ship without hope of rescue as there is no captain at the helm.

I am horrified by today’s total distortion of fact of how the monetary mechanism works by the Federal Reserve. We will win the war by jamming the accelerator to the floor and jumping on the brakes simultaneously, therefore stimulating the dead cat bouncing economies of the Western world to prosperity and avoid sovereign debt failure.

My god that is nonsense.

Meanwhile, for those keeping score, the European Central Bank has powered ahead of the Federal Reserve in the money printing race. The Fed's balance sheet has ballooned to triple its size from 2008 as the Fed printed $2 trillion in new dollars to purchase mortgage backed securities and treasury debt (effectively financing 40% of the U.S. Government's deficit). As of the end of February, the Fed's balance sheet stood at $2.94 trillion.

Faced with the total collapse of the banking system, wild money printing by the European Central Bank (ECB) makes the Fed look like an amateur. After dishing out $1.4 trillion to 800 problem banks since December, the ECB's balance sheet has exploded to $3.96 trillion.

Other central banks worldwide are following the desperate actions of the Fed and the ECB. The combined balance sheets of the ECB, Federal Reserve, England, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and China and Great Britain has expanded from $6 trillion in mid 2007 to over $15 trillion today.

Most of the central bank money has been used to liquify insolvent banks by purchasing bank assets of dubious value. A good portion of the funds received by banks has in turn wound up as idle excess reserves, as the banking industry refuses to expand lending to already over-leveraged or insolvent borrowers.

There will be one surefire way to determine when the money created by the central banks eventually works it way into the real economy - the price of gold will explode upward with a concurrent rise in inflation and wide spread debasement of virtually every world currency. In the meantime, as we watch the "QE to infinity" process unfold before our eyes, gold remains on the bargain table.
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Related:

Federal Reserve INSANITY: So much for "no QE3"

ZIRP -- A basic rule of economics is that once you change the price of something, you change behavior as well. With money now virtually free, two things are happening....

China moves one step closer to killing the U.S. dollar

Mike “Mish” Shedlock and Kerry Lutz – Financial Survival Network – 07.Mar.2012

from The Financial Survival Network:

Mish Shedlock and I had a big laugh at the Fed’s expense today. They announced they might buy bonds differently, printing up money out of thin air, and then sterilizing the proceeds of their bond purchases to prevent inflation from taking hold. However, this is pure folly. If their intention is to give business lending a jump-start, it will have the opposite effect because many businesses looking to borrow are not credit worthy. Those that are credit worthy aren’t interested in borrowing since they have no profitable avenues in which to invest it.
Like putting the toothpaste back in the tube, the thought that somehow the Fed can print money, use it to monetize debt, and then stop the recipients of the new money from spending it is somewhat absurd. This hasn’t worked before, and it won’t work now. So sit back, buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the flight into the tumultuous financial skies. It’s going to get quite turbulent, but having gold and silver might very well make the ride smoother.
Click Here to Listen to the Podcast

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Original audio source (MIshShedlock03-07-2012.mp3)

Is Germany About to Start a Run on Gold Held at the New York Fed?

From Economicpolicyjournal, MARCH 7, 2012

German lawmakers are to review Bundesbank controls of and management of Germany’s gold reserves. Parliament’s Budget Committee will assess how the central bank manages its inventory of Germany’s gold bullion bars that are believed to be stored not only in Frankfurt, but at locations outside Germany, according to German newspaper Bild.

What's most interesting about all this is that Germany may follow in Hugo Chavez’s footsteps and repatriate their gold to Germany so as to have direct possession of and ownership of their gold reserves. It's really the only way to protect a central bank's gold ownership, since by simply going in and asking the New York Fed to show Germany "their" gold, the Fed can walk them in and show them a pile of gold and tell them that it is theirs. The next day they can walk Chinese officials in and show the Chinese the exact same pile of gold and tell them that the gold is theirs.

Possession is the only sure protection.

Germany’s huge gold reserves – 3,396.3 tonnes of gold are some 73.7% of Germany’s national foreign exchange reserves, and are held not only in Germany but at the New York Fed, in London and in Paris. Dumb.

What kind of pressure will the U.S. put on Germany to prevent them from repatriating their gold? The banksters clearly have German Chancellor Merkel in their pocket, but this is unlikely to be influence that is deep into German political leaders. Thus, a run on gold, started by Germany, is not an impossibility.

In this scenario, the noise you would hear is the spike in gold as Bernanke prints more dollars for open market purchases of gold to fill demand for delivery by various central banks. Yikes.

(ViaJamesMiller)
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