NY Fed Documents: Geithner Knew Banks Were Manipulating LIBOR. The Shame of Nations. By LAWRENCE S. WITTNER On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money — and the tax money of other nations — went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war. World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion. Some news reports have emphasized that, from the standpoint of reducing reliance on armed might, this actually represents progress. After all, the increase in “real” global military spending — that is, expenditures after corrections for inflation and exchange rates — was only 0.3 percent.
In short, huge military establishments can be quite counterproductive. Lawrence S. U.N. Acquires Nuclear Weapon. NEW YORK—The United Nations, a highly organized governing body bent on world peace, has obtained a nuclear warhead and intends to use the dangerous device to pursue its radical human rights agenda, sources reported Monday. News of the nuclear weapon first surfaced late last week when the United Nation's own watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, released startling new satellite photos of the uranium-based device. Shortly thereafter, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a short and brazen list of demands, calling on all nations to "bow down at once to social progress. " "Tremble before the awesome might of this cooperative assembly of appointed representatives," said Ban, boldly holding a stack of diplomatic resolutions in his hand. "At last, when the United Nations calls for the development of more sustainable agricultural practices, the world at large will listen.
" Added Ban, "We will no longer be ignored. " "They're bluffing," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said. We Are the Good Guys (Video) Five Challengers of the Neoliberal Jackboot. The governments of the five large countries of the Global South, the BRICS states, met in New Delhi this week for their fourth summit. These five countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are home to forty per cent of the world’s peoples, and their share of the world’s Gross Domestic Product is now just over twenty-five per cent. Most of what was said at the summit, and in its Delhi Declaration, was hot air, as one has come to expect of such meetings.
However there are at least two significant developments that set this summit apart. First, the BRICS states not only repeated their critique of the world economic order and North Atlantic financial hegemony, but they offered new policy guidelines and institutions as a counterpoint. Second, the BRICS states have taken some more steps toward the rejection of the North Atlantic’s political leadership over the planet. Little of this summit came into the papers of the North Atlantic. Where you have to look is in the margins. Study: 'Arctic Cold War' Heats Up.
A new report reports that the Arctic shelf, with its disputed territory and vast energy resources, is becoming increasingly militarized. The study, released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, claims that Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are all developing their military interests there and numerous other nations are seeking better access to the region. © RIA Novosti.
Vladimir Baranov Russia, the report finds, will create its own special armed forces by the year 2015 for the Arctic, aimed at protecting the country’s geopolitical interests in the region. "Climate change is making the Arctic region—and its expected natural resources—more accessible. Overlapping claims by the five Arctic littoral states—Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States—have led to fears of future conflict in the region," the report concludes.
"In recent years all five countries have included increased protection of Arctic territories and claims in their defence policies. New Report Shows Extent of Global Arms Complex. There are few things as infuriating as the annual report by one of my favorite research organizations. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released on March 19 its yearly global arms report, with data showing that arms transfers for the past four years have increased by a quarter over the 2002-2006 period.
Asia is leading the world in the wrong direction. “Asia and Oceania accounted for 44 per cent of global arms imports, followed by Europe (19 percent), the Middle East (17 percent), the Americas (11 percent) and Africa (9 percent),” the report says, adding that “India was the world’s largest recipient of arms, accounting for 10 per cent of global arms imports.” A staff member of the group explained India’s motivation to CNN.
"India procures arms in relation to its tense relationship with Pakistan and increasingly sees China as a potential threat," said Siemon Wezeman, a senior analyst with SIPRI. U.S. “Sales by the forty-four U.S. © 2012 The Progressive. This is video activism. Synarchy: The Hidden Hand Behind the European Union. By LYNN PICKNETT & CLIVE PRINCE— While questions remain about the existence of a single global elite with an agenda that goes beyond simply keeping itself very, very rich, there are certainly groups that want to run the world for quite other reasons. And with the increasing globalisation of political and economic institutions, it has become easier for a relatively small group to inveigle itself into quite staggeringly influential positions.
One cabal in particular reveals – alarmingly – what a small group, driven by a fanatical belief system, can achieve from the shadows. And writing as we are in the United Kingdom, this group is on our doorstep, and has been for over a century. And although perhaps small in number, its reach is big. This shadowy politico-occult movement is synarchy, which was developed by the Frenchman Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves, the Marquis d’Alveydre, in opposition to the rise of anarchy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Towards Europe’s ‘United States’
The Death of Investigative Journalism. Fifteen years ago, in 1997, my Haitian friends helped to arrange my visit to Cite Soleil, then the largest and the most brutal slum (or ‘commune’) in the Western hemisphere, at the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The arrangement was simple: my F-4 camera and I were to be loaded on the back of the van. The driver and two guards promised to take me there for a two-hour photo shoot. The condition was simple: I was supposed to stick to the back platform of the pickup truck. Once we arrived, I broke the agreement: I simply couldn’t resist the temptation. The guards refused to follow me and when I came back to the intersection, the van was gone. Abandoned, young and moderately insane, I continued working for more than two hours. At some point I noticed two Humvees and the US military men and women with the machine guns facing a desperate crowd. Nobody bothered to screen me – I just walked in with no interference. “What the hell are they doing?”
“They are removing her tumor”, he said. “What now?” The Declining Influence of the US Constitution. Among Americans there remains strong pride about the US Constitution, even though there is widespread support for creating reform amendments to it. Globally, however, what should surprise Americans is a significant loss of respect for it.
Other nations, especially those creating new democracies, see better constitutions elsewhere. This is not opinion. It is fact. And it is important to understand this historic shift. A new university study sends a disturbing message to all Americans that want to hang on to the fiction that the US constitution is not only the world’s best one, but does not need to be improved. What exists today is far different than what was proudly proclaimed in 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, by Time magazine which calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”
A Supreme Court Justice has also weighed in. Before becoming a writer and consultant, Joel S. Designing the news - Imprint. This article originally appeared on Imprint. Ever wonder what a graphic designer does to wile away the idle hours. Johnny Selman spends every morning ritually checking headlines on the BBC. But that’s not all. In 2010, “I decided to create a poster a day for 20 days in reaction to a headline for each day,” he recently told me.
“The purpose of this project is to promote the awareness of global current events with the American public,” Selman wrote in the introduction to his website. The changing pool of content kept the project exciting, he says. Slow news days were inevitable, but he tried to instill a sense of urgency and importance to every story he represented in the hopes that someone would be inspired by even the more bland news days. Rigor is imperative when creating a daily poster. The task he set for himself was exhausting. But the project became “the constant in my life.” The posters vary in conceptual acuity, but on the whole Selman’s visual shorthand is up to the task. The Month’s BBC News Remixed. NYT Public Editor on Anonymity and Drone Story. Media's Weird Ethics: Pretending to Be Someone Else Is Worse Than Facilitating Global Catastrophe. There's a popular verb in headlines about climate researcher Peter Gleick's admission that he used trickery to get damning documents out of the climate change-denialist group the Heartland Institute: "Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers" (New York Times, 2/21/12); "Scientist Peter Gleick Admits He Lied to Get Climate Documents" (L.A.
Times, 2/21/12); "Climate Researcher Says He Lied to Obtain Heartland Documents" (WashingtonPost.com, 2/21/12). What you wouldn't gather from all these pants-on-fire condemnations is that there is a long and honorable tradition, from Nellie Bly feigning madness to expose mistreatment of the mentally ill to the Chicago Sun-Times' Mirage Tavern corruption lab, of investigative journalists using false identities to gather information–when the public interest is clear, and there's no other way to get the story.
However, as Aaron Swartz pointed out in Extra! Edit: Placed Eric Berger at the right paper. The Smoking Gun: Public Documents, Mug Shots. Www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi. Welcome to Liberty Post, the premier news discussion forum providing speed, efficiency, simplicity and ease of use for a variety of news topics. Liberty Post is offered for use as the modern day electronic "town crier" or "broadside. " As such, all political news and discussion, as well as current events, news of the day, scientific, medical and technical advances are welcome for discussion. We do not limit discussion to any specific political point of view, since truth can only exist where there is freedom to discuss those issues.
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