MPs’ expenses: shoot them or jail them – public is after revenge

From The Guardian UK: It was fortunate that Andrew MacKay did not encounter one of his elderly constituents when the Conservative MP defied growing public fury to show his face in Bracknell town centre yesterday.

“I can see ordinary people going round with shotguns and shooting them all,” said a pensioner in this industrious Berkshire town. She was so enraged by MPs’ expenses, she said, that she was tempted to shoot the Speaker herself.

The days when Dick Turpin reputedly rested up in a pub where this new town now sprawls have long gone. But voters outside Westminster are increasingly convinced that their representatives have got away with daylight robbery. See full story HERE

Woman cuffed for not holding escalator handrail

From The Globe and Mail: Anyone who has ridden an escalator and bothered to pay attention has seen – and likely ignored – little signs suggesting riders hold the grimy handrail.

In Montreal’s subway system, the friendly advice seems to have taken on the force of law, backed by a $100 fine.

Bela Kosoian, a 38-year-old mother of two, says when she didn’t hold the handrail Wednesday she was cuffed, dragged into a small holding cell and fined.

“It was horrible, disgusting behaviour [by police],” said Ms. Kosoian, a 38-year-old student of international law. “I did nothing wrong. They should go find the guys who stole my tires off the balcony.” See story HERE

US backing for world currency stuns markets

From The Telegraph UK: The dollar plunged instantly against the euro, yen, and sterling as the comments flashed across trading screens. David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the apparent policy shift amounts to an earthquake in geo-finance.

“The mere fact that the US Treasury Secretary is even entertaining thoughts that the dollar may cease being the anchor of the global monetary system has caused consternation,” he said. See story HERE

High Taxes Make People Happy!

It seems that countries that pay the most in taxes are also the most happy: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says people in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are the most content with their lives. The three ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the OECD’s rankings of “life satisfaction,” or happiness.

There are myriad reasons, of course, for happiness: health, welfare, prosperity, leisure time, strong family, social connections and so on. But there is another common denominator among this group of happy people: taxes.

Northern Europeans pay some of the highest taxes in the world. Danes pay about two-thirds of their income in taxes. Why be so happy about that? It all comes down to what you get in return. The Encyclopedia of the Nations notes that Denmark was one of the first countries in the world to establish efficient social services with the introduction of relief for the sick, unemployed and aged. … Simply, you pay for what you get.

Taxes in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return for paying them, other than the world’s biggest military. Healthcare and other such social services aren’t built into our system. That means we have to worry more about paying for things ourselves. Worrying doesn’t equate to happiness.

The U.S. ranked 11th on the OECD list. In addition to the top three, we were beat out by Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Norway. See full story HERE from TaxProf Blog.

Another CEO bites the dust

Hundreds of people across the country stand to lose millions of dollars in what investigators describe as a Ponzi scheme based out of a Fresno equipment-leasing company.

And the man FBI agents believe masterminded it all — John W. Otto, a pioneer in the equipment-leasing industry — committed suicide this week in Palm Desert.

His death complicates what investigators say will be an enormous task: tracking down where all the money went, and whether others in Otto’s firm — HL Leasing — were involved.

FBI agents began looking into Otto and HL Leasing after investors complained that they had not received April interest payments on their investments with the firm. As many as 1,200 victims nationwide could lose the money they entrusted to Otto, investigators say.

“At this point, it does appear to be a Ponzi scheme,” said Steve Dupre, an FBI spokesman in Sacramento. “Right now, from our preliminary review, it appears that $138 million is the potential loss in this case.” See full story HERE

Saudi ‘Killer Chip’ Implant Would Track, Eliminate Undesirables

It could be the ultimate in political control — but it won’t be patented in Germany. German media outlets reported last week that a Saudi inventor’s application to patent a “killer chip,” as the Swiss tabloids put it, had been denied.

The basic model would consist of a tiny GPS transceiver placed in a capsule and inserted under a person’s skin, so that authorities could track him easily.

Model B would have an extra function — a dose of cyanide to remotely kill the wearer without muss or fuss if authorities deemed he’d become a public threat.
The inventor said the chip could be used to track terrorists, criminals, fugitives, illegal immigrants, political dissidents, domestic servants and foreigners overstaying their visas. See full story HERE

Trouble in Spain

Spain is forecast to be the hardest hit by the “crisis”. The economy has suffered its largest contraction in 50 years SEE HERE and the Spanish have been taking to the streets on a regular bases regarding protection of the jobless SEE HERE . And to top it all off they have found Cocaine in the air SEE HERE . Go figure,

Will designer brains divide humanity?

From The New Scientist: WE ARE on the brink of technological breakthroughs that could augment our mental powers beyond recognition. It will soon be possible to boost human brainpower with electronic “plug-ins” or even by genetic enhancement. What will this mean for the future of humanity?

This was the theme of a recent Neuroscience in Context meeting in Berlin, Germany, where anthropologists, technologists, neurologists, archaeologists and philosophers met to consider the implications of this next stage of human brain development. Would it widen the gulf between the world’s haves and have-nots – and perhaps even lead to a distinct and dominant species with unmatchable powers of intellect? See story HERE

Steel workers storm ArcelorMittal meeting

From The Guardian UK: Angry steel workers attacked the Luxembourg headquarters of ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker, during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday, setting off smoke bombs and breaking through the front door in protest at temporary layoffs. See fulls story HERE

Equality chief warns of race ‘cold war’

From The TimesOnline: THE head of Britain’s race relations watchdog says lack of control over immigration has led to a racial “cold war” among rival ethnic communities.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), believes that the failed policy risks inflaming racism among millions of young mothers and working professionals.

In an address to mark the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech in which Powell warned of apocalyptic social consequences if the rising tide of immigration were not halted, Phillips will say that the predictions have not come true. But he will warn that mass immigration has caused a different form of “war” that is just as worrying.

“Powell predicted ‘hot’ conflict and violence. However, we have seen the emergence of a kind of cold war in some parts of the country, where very separate communities exist side by side . . . with poor communication across racial or religious lines,” Phillips will say. See full story HERE

USA using Patriot Act against its own citizens

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Report: Exploited workers lose $20B a year

From CNN.COM: Some employers treat their help as “not a person but a machine (that) starts in the morning: Put on a switch (and) work consistently right through the day. Take care of the children, washing, cleaning, cooking, right down to cleaning (the) car.”

The exploitation of workers is a huge business worldwide.
Don’t Miss

* ILO: ‘The cost of coercion’

People forced to work without pay collectively lose more than $20 billion a year in earnings, according to a report from the United Nations International Labour Organization released Tuesday.

Global profits from human trafficking and forced labor have reached $36 billion, according to the United Nations, and that sum is climbing.

“Forced labor is the antithesis of decent work,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in a statement as the report became public. “It causes untold human suffering and steals from its victims.”

“It is the vulnerable who suffer the most” in times of economic crisis like the present, the report says.

It took years for governments to acknowledge the problem. Now the biggest challenges, officials say, are the implementation and enforcement of laws.

“Eighty percent of forced labor is in the private economy, but this is very, very rarely been prosecuted, if at all in most countries,” said Roger Plant, one of the authors of the ILO report. See full story HERE

Is Islamic finance the answer?

From The BBC: Experts in Islamic finance believe their way of doing business has shielded them from the global credit crisis.

But how does it differ from conventional Western finance?

A former executive director of the International Monetary Fund, Dr Abbas Mirakhor, says wider Islamic economics relies on God’s guidance, handed down almost 1,400 years ago.

There is a “consciousness of a supreme creator and a system that he has provided”, he says.

What we know as the conventional Western way does not have that, which is “really the major difference between the two”, he adds.

In practical terms, the most significant difference is that charging interest is not allowed in Islamic finance.

FEATURES OF ISLAMIC ECONOMY
Dealing in interest, liquor, pork, gambling or pornography are prohibited under Sharia law
Islam forbids all forms of economic activity which it deems morally or socially harmful
Individuals must spend their wealth judiciously and not hoard it, keep it idle or squander it
Muslims have a duty to contribute a percentage of their wealth to deprived and poor sections of Muslim society

Neither are most forms of speculative investment permitted, such as hedging or derivatives trading. See full story HERE

Money launderers wash billions through international trade

Imported plain cotton pillow cases from France that cost more than $900 apiece and new bulldozers exported to Venezuela that cost $387 each. Such prices seem highly suspect — and could be examples of someone using international trade to launder money.

Despite strict enforcement of federal anti-money-laundering laws, criminals are constantly finding ways to transform dirty money — the proceeds of illegal activities — into clean cash, and one of their most important routes is laundering money via international trade.

Money launderers are moving enormous sums through ports in Florida and other parts of the country by overvaluing or undervaluing exports and imports, said John Zdanowicz, a professor of finance at Florida International University.

Using a statistical program he developed to track money laundering, Zdanowicz analyzes U.S. government trade figures, calculates average prices for commodities and merchandise and searches the data for abnormally priced products.

The pillow cases and bulldozers are among the products he has turned up that seem to indicate trade may have been used to disguise the movement of money. But since the names of importers and exporters don’t appear with government trade figures, Zdanowicz doesn’t know who is moving the merchandise — or the money.

”The front door of money laundering is the banking system,” Zdanowicz said. “The government has done a pretty good job of closing the front door, but the back door — international trade — is wide open.” See full story from The Miami Herald HERE

The end of the age of free

For a decade now, consumers have become accustomed to free access to music, films and information, via the internet. But with many of the media’s big players – including Rupert Murdoch – thinking of charging for content, is the tide about to turn? See story from The Guardian HERE

Spanish discontent as soup kitchens spring up

Faced with losing his home if he cannot find €6,000 (£5,350) by the end of this week, Javier Martínez has resorted to desperate measures: the unemployed father-of-four is selling his own flat and throwing in another, free.

The three-bedroom apartment in Tarazona, near Zaragoza in eastern Spain, is on the market for only €57,000. The former construction project manager is including a one-bedroom flat that he had been letting in an attempt to entice a buyer.

“I need to find the cash by May 15 or I may be declared bankrupt. I must provide for my children,” Mr Martínez said. He is one of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards facing ruin as Spain’s economy heads for meltdown.

The number of Spaniards unable to pay their debts has risen by 26 per cent to 2.7million in 2009, compared with the first four months of last year. During the same period 232,000 companies joined the list of bad debtors, a 67 per cent rise, according to AsNef-Equifax, a Spanish credit agency. See the rest of the story from The Times OnLine HERE

Man Who Robbed SF Bank Angry Over Bailouts

San Francisco police Tuesday asked for the public’s help in finding a bank robbery suspect who reportedly told a bank manager he was angry about corporate bailouts.

The robbery took place at about 12:50 p.m. on April 15, at a Bank of America branch at 50 California St., according to police.

Police said the man initially asked to speak with a manager because he wanted to make “a large withdrawal.”

When he met with the manager, the suspect, who was carrying a black laptop case, explained he worked for an organization concerned about government bailouts of corporations, according to police.

The man then allegedly threatened to detonate a bomb he was carrying with him if the manager didn’t hand over cash.

The suspect smiled throughout the encounter, and told the manager the money “would go to people who deserve it,” police said. See full story HERE

Controlling Our Food

The World according to Monsanto is a much watch documentary aired on French television and that Americans will never see…

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Max Keiser: There could be a Revolution in America

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Jobless Spaniards sell kidneys to transplant tourists

A MACABRE traffic associated with poor countries in Asia and Latin America has sprung up for the first time in western Europe as the credit crunch reduces Spaniards to selling organs to “transplant tourists”.

Spanish “kidney for sale” advertisements have proliferated recently on the internet as people struggle to make ends meet in a country whose 17% unemployment rate is the highest in Europe.

Sergio, a 42-year-old welder and father of four, said he had received an offer of £20,000 from a German couple who needed his kidney for their five-year-old son. If tests showed them to be compatible, an operation would be performed in a “third country” since such transactions are illegal in Europe.

“Apparently, there’s a waiting list of at least five years for a kidney in Germany,” he told a television programme, “but in five years the kid will be dead.” Read full story from The Times Online HERE

For the Love of Money

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G20 police ‘used undercover men to incite crowds

Its one of the oldest tricks in the book, yet its incredible that most people don’t know it happens, and often. From The Guardian:

An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament’s joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.

“When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, ‘There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,’” Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. “He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable,” Amos said. “Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He ­legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked.”

Amos added: “He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up.” See full story HERE

Police provocateurs at Montebello Summit

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Global Crisis ‘Vastly Worse’ Than 1930s

The current global crisis is “vastly worse” than the 1930s because financial systems and economies worldwide have become more interdependent, “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb said.

“This is the most difficult period of humanity that we’re going through today because governments have no control,” Taleb, 49, told a conference in Singapore today. “Navigating the world is much harder than in the 1930s.”

The International Monetary Fund last month slashed its world economic growth forecasts and said the global recession will be deeper than previously predicted as financial markets take longer to stabilize. Nouriel Roubini, 51, the New York University professor who predicted the crisis, told Bloomberg News yesterday that analysts expecting the U.S. economy to rebound in the third and fourth quarter were “too optimistic.” See full story from Bloomberg HERE

Brussels doubles EU recession forecasts for 2009

The European Commission has revised economic forecasts sharply downwards and pushed recovery predictions out to the second half of 2010 in the face of the “deepest and most widespread recession in the post-war era”.

Brussels is now expecting Europe’s GDP to contract by 4 per cent this year, twice the 1.8 per cent predicted just three months ago. The slump will also last longer, with a further decline of 0.1 per cent in 2010, compared with earlier forecasts of 0.5 per cent growth.

Of the major EU countries, Germany will fare the worst, with a 5.5 per cent decline in 2009. But the Commission’s assessment will also make grim reading for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The UK economy is expected to lose between 4 and 4.5 per cent in 2009, a far bleaker prediction than the 3.5 per cent forecast in Mr Darling’s Budget. Italy is also expected to contract by up to 4.5 per cent, France and Spain by 3 per cent. See more of the story from The Independent HERE

How do you know you are living in a Police State 1

A 16 year old boy is locked up under The Patriot Act:

“Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby’s bedroom in his mother’s Granville County home is nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags are everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, on the wall.

But according to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15. The family was at a church function that night, his mother, Annette Lundeby, said.

“Undoubtedly, they were given false information, or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats,” Lundeby said.

Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.

“I was terrified,” Lundeby’s mother said. “There were guns, and I don’t allow guns around my children. I don’t believe in guns.”

Lundeby told the officers that someone had hacked into her son’s IP address and was using it to make crank calls connected through the Internet, making it look like the calls had originated from her home when they did not. See full story HERE

How you know are living in a Police State 2

17 year old California girl denied help for her seemingly dead father, and later arrested. You must watch this video.

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Chinese ordered to smoke more to boost economy

No this story is not from The Onion but is from The Telegraph:Local government officials in China have been ordered to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of cigarettes in a move to boost the local economy during the global financial crisis. See full article HERE

Survival classes thriving despite hard times

An addition to both gun and ammunition sales on the increase in the USA, classes teaching you “survival skills” are also doing good business:

“In today’s tough economic times, when people are contemplating living with less, survival classes are attracting plenty of students who believe the primitive world offers an embarrassment of natural riches that not only can make the difference between life and death but also can expand personal growth.

“Five years ago, I founded Adventure Out. It was just me with a few friends helping to give surf lessons and survival workshops,” says Cliff Hodges of Santa Cruz. “The company grew to 20 employees, and now we run programs all over the state. Now every class fills up with a pretty long waiting list.”

Wilderness survival schools have been around since the 1960s, but interest began swelling during the Y2K scare. These days, people have access to plenty of survival material. They’re watching survival television shows. They’re reading survival books, such as “Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere – Alive” by Les Stroud, host of the Discovery Channel show “Survivorman.” They’re checking out survival schools online and through word of mouth.” See full story from SF GATE HERE

The Economics Of Piracy

From NPR: Piracy off the coast of Somalia has become an international problem — and an international business. Navy SEALS rescued an American merchant captain earlier this month after Somali pirates raided the Maersk Alabama as it was making its way around the Horn of Africa to deliver aid.

But the issues of criminality and the potential for violence aside, a closer look at the “business model” of piracy reveals that the plan makes economic sense.

A piracy operation begins, as with any other start-up business, with venture capital.

J. Peter Pham at James Madison University says piracy financiers are usually ethnic Somali businessmen who live outside the country and who typically call a relative in Somalia and suggest they launch a piracy business. The investor will offer $250,000 or more in seed money, while the relative goes shopping.

“You’ll need some speedboats; you’ll need some weapons; you also need some intelligence because you can’t troll the Indian Ocean, a million square miles, looking for merchant vessels,” says Pham, adding that the pirates also need food for the voyage — “a caterer.” See full story HERE

How are small and quirky biz dealing with the crisis?

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Howard Zinn and The Haymarket Affair

You like that 8 hour workday? Howard Zinn speaking about the Haymarket Affair…

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US Gun Owners stock up

From CNN: Gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.

“In the last two months it’s gotten very, very difficult to find ammunition,” says Richard Taylor, manager of The Firing Line, a gun shop and shooting range in the Denver, Colorado, suburbs.

“There are a lot of rumors floating around that the present government would like to increase taxes on ammunition. I think [there is] just a lot of panicked buying going on.” See full story HERE

Think you are being “Green”? Think again.

WHEN British consumers are compelled to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs from 2012, they will save up to 5m tons of carbon dioxide a year from being pumped into the atmosphere. In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China – which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs sold in Britain – are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends on highly toxic mercury.

Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light. See full story from The Mailonline HERE

Riots across Europe fuelled by economic crisis

Tension over the global economic slump have fuelled May Day protests and riots across Europe with trouble breaking out in Germany, Greece, Austria, Turkey and France. Police in Berlin arrested 57 people while around 50 officers were hurt as young demonstrators threw bottles and rocks and set fire to cars and rubbish bins. There were also clashes in Hamburg, where anti-capitalist protesters attacked a bank.

In Turkey, masked protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at police, smashing banks and supermarket windows in its biggest city, Istanbul. Security forces fired tear gas and water cannon at hundreds of rioters and more than a hundred were arrested with dozens more hurt. There were also scattered skirmishes with police in the capital, Ankara, where 150,000 people marched. See full story from TheTelegraph HERE

Blackout Europe

They want control of the internet. Will you let them have it?

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Max Keiser on the Chrysler Bankruptcy

American workers are doomed with no fight in them?

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Using Shock to Control Society

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Deadly attack due to the Economic “Crisis”?

More “Crisis” bloodshed? Reminds of the old song with the lyrics “don’t push me because I’m close the edge”….

“Five people were killed and several others hurt in the Netherlands after a car rammed into a crowd of spectators in what police are calling a premeditated attack on the royal family.”

“The motive for the attack was unclear. Dutch media, citing neighbors, said the assailant recently was fired from his job and was to be evicted from his home. Police identified him as a 38-year-old Dutch man with no history of mental illness or police record, but they would not release his name.” More of the story HERE