Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Criticizing GM Crops May Land You In Jail In India.

Criticising Genetically Modified (GM) products could land you in jail — if the draconian draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill (BRAB) of 2009, which will be tabled in the parliament by the UPA government, is passed.

In an unprecedented muzzle on the right to freedom of speech of the citizen, Chapter 13 section 63 of the draft bill says, “Whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about the safety of the organisms and products…shall be punished with imprisonment for a term that shall not be less than six months but which may extend to one year and with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees or with both.” The BRAI Bill drafted by the department of bio-technology under the Ministry of Science and Technology comes on the heels of a moratorium on Bt Brinjal announced by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

“What they are doing is much worse than what Hitler or Mussolini did. Through this bill, they want to take absolute authority. They are behaving like a vendor instead of a regulator,” Pushpa M Bhargava, a member of the Supreme Court appointed Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) said.

There are also other provisions in this bill which are disconcerting.

Article 27 (1) of the bill seeks to keep the information related to the research, approval and science of the GM Products out of the purview of the Right to Information ( RTI) Act.

In other words, farmers, NGO’s and Environmental groups that have been on the forefront of the campaign against BT Brinjal and other genetically modified crops, can longer obtain information about it.

Not only that, the three member experts of the Department of Biotechnology will override any existing legislation about GM technology in the states.

The draft bill also states that the BRAI will set up its own appellate tribunal which will have the jurisdiction to hear arguments on the issues concerning biotechnology. In case of any disputes, petitioners can only approach the Supreme Court of India.

“The BRAI bill is more draconian than what the nation faced during the Emergency ‘’ says Devinder Sharma, writer and Food Policy Analyst. “If the Bill was already in force, I would have been in jail.

Jairam Ramesh too would have been in jail for challenging the health and environmental claims of the company developing Bt Brinjal,” he said. The bill demonstrates the extraordinary hold the multinational companies have over the UPA government, he added. Kavitha Kurugunti of Kheti Virasat Mission said that this bill is just a way to silence the voices who are opposed to GM technology.

Prehistoric UFO & ET Images Found In Remote Caves In India.

Prehistoric UFO and ET images found in remote cave in India

A group of anthropologists working with hill tribes in a remote area of India have made a startling discovery: Intricate prehistoric cave paintings depicting aliens and UFO type craft.

the images were found in the Hoshangabad district of the state of Madhya Pradesh only 70km from the local administrative centre of Raisen. The caves are hidden deep within dense jungles.

A clear image of what might be an alien or ET in a space suit can be seen in one cave painting along with a classical flying saucer shaped UFO that appears to be either beaming something down, in what might be an ancient UFO abduction scenario. A forcefield or trail of some sort is seen at the rear of the UFO.

Also visible is another object that might depict a wormhole, explaining how aliens were able to reach earth. This image may lead UFO enthusiasts to conclude that the images might have been drawn with the involvement of aliens themselves.

Local archeologist, Mr. Wassim Khan, has personally seen the images. He claims that the objects and creatures seen in them are totally anomalous and out of character when compared to other, already discovered, examples of prehistoric cave art depicting ancient life in the area. As such he believes that they might suggest beings from other planets have been interacting with humans since prehistoric times. Adding weight to the 'ancient astronaut theory' which postulates that human civilization was established with the assistance of benevolent space faring aliens.

Friday, April 23, 2010


First, they teleported photons, then atoms and ions. Now one physicist has worked out how to do it with energy, a technique that has profound implications for the future of physics.

In 1993, Charlie Bennett at IBM's Watson Research Center in New York State and a few pals showed how to transmit quantum information from one point in space to another without traversing the intervening space.

The technique relies on the strange quantum phenomenon called entanglement, in which two particles share the same existence. This deep connection means that a measurement on one particle immediately influences the other, even though they are light-years apart. Bennett and company worked out how to exploit this to send information. (The influence between the particles may be immediate, but the process does not violate relativity because some informatiom has to be sent classically at the speed of light.) They called the technique teleportation.

That's not really an overstatement of its potential. Since quantum particles are indistinguishable but for the information they carry, there is no need to transmit them themselves. A much simpler idea is to send the information they contain instead and ensure that there is a ready supply of particles at the other end to take on their identity. Since then, physicists have used these ideas to actually teleport photons, atoms, and ions. And it's not too hard to imagine that molecules and perhaps even viruses could be teleported in the not-too-distant future.






Citi Plans Crisis Derivatives.

bankrupt

Credit specialists at Citi are considering launching the first derivatives intended to pay out in the event of a financial crisis. The firm has drawn up plans for a tradable liquidity index, known as the CLX, on which products could be structured that allow buyers to hedge a spike in funding costs.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows: David Reilly

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aaIuE.W8RAuU

Haiti Earthquake: Orphans For Sale For $50

Haitian orphans at the UN compound in Port-au-Prince.

Orphans in Haiti are being offered for sale to foreigners for as little as £30 amid warnings that up to one million children in the country have been left vulnerable to abuse and trafficking in the wake of the earthquake.

Mystery As Century-Old Swiss Watch Discovered In Ancient Tomb Sealed For 400 Years.

Watch ring

Archaeologists are stumped after finding a 100-year-old Swiss watch in an ancient tomb that was sealed more than 400 years ago.

They believed they were the first to visit the Ming dynasty grave in Shangsi, southern China, since its occupant's funeral.

But inside they uncovered a miniature watch in the shape of a ring marked 'Swiss' that is thought to be just a century old.

The mysterious timepiece was encrusted in mud and rock and had stopped at 10:06 am.

Watches were not around at the time of the Ming Dynasty and Switzerland did not even exist as a country, an expert pointed out.

The archaeologists were filming a documentary with two journalists when they made the puzzling discovery.

'When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, suddenly a piece of rock dropped off and hit the ground with metallic sound,' said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Museum.

'We picked up the object, and found it was a ring.

'After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch,' he added.

The Ming Dynasty - or the Empire of the Great Ming - was the was ruling dynasty in China from 1368 to 1644.

Anti-Piracy Agency's Logo Broke Copyright.

Hadopi logo : Anti-piracy agency's logo broke copyright

France's new internet agency set up to protect the rights of artists is facing legal action for using a copyrighted design for its logo.


The French government's web police force – called Hadopi – was set up to stop piracy and clamp down on illegal downloaders.

The agency's logo was unveiled this by French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand, who said that Hadopi "finally had a face".

But within hours of its launch, it was forced to apologise for using a typeface without permission that belonged to France Telecom.

The blunder was spotted by graphic designer Jean-Francois Porchez, who created the distinctive "Bonjour" font and sold it exclusively to France Telecom.

The design agency Plan Creatif that created the Hadopi logo has now admitted it used the typeface by mistake and the design had now been "tweaked".

But Mr Porchez said he was still considering legal action against the government for illegal use of his design.

He said: "My lawyer will contact the culture ministry and France Telecom in the hope of finding a solution."


SEC Order Helps Maintain AIG Bailout Mystery

SEC agreed with AIG to keep some bailout terms sealed.
Secrecy order stays in place until November 2018

It could take until November 2018 to get the full story behind the U.S. bailout of insurance giant American International Group because of an action taken last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most controversial aspect of the AIG bailout: the funneling of tens of billions of dollars to big banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance, in granting AIG's request for confidential treatment, said the "excluded information" will not be made public until Nov. 25, 2018, according to a copy of the agency's May 22 order.

The SEC said the insurer had demonstrated the information in the exhibit, called Schedule A, "qualifies as confidential commercial or financial information."

Willem Buiter: Massive Dollar Collapse.

MPC founder member Willem Buiter.

Willem Hendrik Buiter
Chief Economist Citigroup
Chair London School of Economics.
Founding member of Monetary Policy Committee.
Former Bank of England Policymaker.


According to Mr. Buiter

1. The long held assumption that US government bonds are a safe haven will soon be overturned.

2. Exodus of foreign cash from US Securities.

3. Reigniting fear of currency prospect.

4. Question marks over Obama's mooted plans for a Keynesian style increase in public spending to pull US out of economic trouble.


Writing on his blog, Prof Buiter said: "There will, before long (my best guess is between two and five years from now) be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. Old habits die hard. The US dollar and US Treasury bills and bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many. But learning takes place."

He said that the dollar had been kept elevated in recent years by what some called "dark matter" or "American alpha" - an assumption that the US could earn more on its overseas investments than foreign investors could make on their American assets. However, this notion had been gradually dismantled in recent years, before being dealt a fatal blow by the current financial crisis, he said.

"The past eight years of imperial overstretch, hubris and domestic and international abuse of power on the part of the Bush administration has left the US materially weakened financially, economically, politically and morally," he said. "Even the most hard-nosed, Guantanamo Bay-indifferent potential foreign investor in the US must recognise that its financial system has collapsed."

He said investors would, rightly, suspect that the US would have to generate major inflation to whittle away its debt and this dollar collapse means that the US has less leeway for major spending plans than politicians realise.



Banks 'Making A Killing' On Government Toxic Asset Program

Banks Ppip


Remember the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP)? The Treasury Department unveiled the program in March 2009 and intended it as a way to help banks unload hard-to-sell (toxic) mortgage securities. In short, private investors partnered with the government to get bad loans off the banks' books -- and everyone, including taxpayers, was supposed to come out ahead on the proceeds of the asset sales.

But some of the nation's largest banks have actually bought more risky home loans instead of getting them off their balance sheets.

In other words, the program that was supposed to help banks dispose of these toxic assets instead made those assets so marketable that banks bought more -- which has pushed Wall Street's titans to even greater exposure to the stalled housing market. The banks apparently decided that the government's entry into the mortgage security market was simply a guaranteed money-making opportunity

Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs added $2.75 billion of this kind of mortgage debt from March 2009 up till December 2009.

The Public-Private Investment Program was introduced in March by Geithner as a means of helping struggling banks by reviving the market for unpackaged loans and mortgage securities that aren't backed by government-supported institutions, such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Under the program, asset managers were supposed to raise money from investors and, with additional capital and loans from taxpayers, buy as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets from U.S. banks, freeing up money for lending.

It's "absolutely ridiculous" that banks, which were expected to reduce their holding of such volatile mortgage securities, bought them before the government program was running and may now profit, said Michael Schlachter, managing director of Wilshire Associates, the Santa Monica, California- based investment-consulting firm. "Some of them created this mess, and they are making a killing undoing it."

Eric Petroff, director of research at Wurts & Associates, a Seattle-based investment advisory firm, told Bloomberg: "Any time the government says, 'We're going to buy something in the securities market,' they're putting out a sign that says, 'Free money, come and get it'."

Israel Distributing Gas Masks To Its Citizens.

Israel is distributing its entire population with gas masks, though no reason has officially been given by the Israeli government.

No indication or threat has been made against Israel from any country that an attack is planned. No country in the Middle East is believed to be likely to engage in chemical or biological warfare with Israel, either.

The gas mask distribution has, however, raised questions as to Israel's potential plans to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack could cause an unconventional response from Iran. Iran's chemical and biological weapons capabilities are currently not known.

Rumors in the Middle East abound that Israel is preparing to rein in Hezbollah through another war on Lebanon. Hezbollah, however, is also not believed to hold any chemical or biological weapons.

The only country in Israel's region currently believed to have access to a major chemical or biological weapons program is Israel itself, though the country unlikely to utilize them in an attack.

Despite the lack of a viable threat, Israel has begun issuing the gas masks to each of its residents. The Israel Defense Forces are managing the distribution. The IDF has engaged the Israel Postal Company to aid in the distribution, a departure from the use of Home Front Command for previous distributions.


Monday, April 19, 2010

Secret US Memo Urges War On Iran.

A secret memo by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates urges Washington to consider the use of military force against Iran if diplomacy fails to scrap the country's nuclear program.

In what seems to be a new twist in US efforts to tackle Iran's enrichment activities, The New York Times reveals that a three-page memorandum, which has been circulating in Washington since January, has advocated military action against Tehran.

The classified memorandum, according to unnamed government officials quoted by the Times, warns that Washington lacks an effective policy in dealing with Iran's nuclear program and should therefore come up with new options.

One senior official has said that the memo accuses Iran of weapons development and lays out a set of military alternatives to counter Iran's progress in nuclear science and technology.

Jordan's King Warns Mideast War 'Imminent'.


Mahathir: US preparing for attack on Iran.








Health Insurance Companies Invest Billions In Fast Food Chains.


Did you ever wonder how health insurance companies drum up future business? It's easy: Just invest in companies whose products cause chronic degenerative disease, driving people towards more health care needs and therefore more health insurance.

And that's exactly what the health insurance industry is doing. A new article published in theAmerican Journal of Public Health reveals that U.S. and Canadian health insurance giants own nearly $2 billion worth of stock in fast food giants like McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell and others.

So profits made by health insurance companies are reinvested in industries that make people sick and diseased, bringing them back to buy more health insurance down the road. It's a pretty clever business model for an industry that seems focused on the almighty dollar and obviously has no concern whatsoever for the actual health status of its customers. If anything, these health insurance companies hope you get sicker!

Corporate conspiracy to keep you sick and diseased

These unholy alliances among corporate giants that conspire to keep you sick are more common than you think. In addition to health insurance companies owning billions of dollars worth of shares in fast food companies, pharmaceutical companies now own major shares of popular vitamin companies -- the ones that produce the cheap, useless chemical vitamin supplements sold at places like Wal-Mart and Walgreens.

Investors in the mainstream media are some of the same companies that own medical imaging equipment manufactures that produce mammography machines and CT scans, too. And did you know that the American Dental Association owns patents on materials used in mercury fillings, which is one of the reasons why the ADA continues to push for installing toxic mercury into the mouths of children? (http://pnwf.org/Dentistry_Mercury_C...)

This ownership of fast food companies by the health insurance corporate giants demonstrates a deeply disturbing fact about the entire sick-care industry: It really is about profits rather than health. If they can make an extra buck feeding you the very junk foods that are causing cancer, heart disease, diabetes and strokes, they will absolutely jump on that profit bandwagon no matter what the cost in human lives, pain and suffering.

The bigger picture: What are YOU invested in?

There's an even bigger story to all this, by the way. While it seems altogether contradictory that health insurance companies would invest in fast food chains, the disturbing truth is that many institutional investors hold billions of dollars worth of shares in pharmaceutical companies. Your very own mutual funds may hold large positions in Big Pharma. Even your employer may be investing your pension funds in vaccine-pushing corporations.

Right now might be a good time, in fact, to review whatever investments you might have and make sure you're not inadvertently investing in the types of corporations whose actions you oppose.

If you own mutual fund shares, you might be surprised to find out where your money is being invested. You actually have to research it a bit to find out where these mutual funds redirect your money. Most of them invest in Big Pharma in one way or another.

Remember that every dollar pumped into the pharmaceutical industry is another dollar that will be used to further expand the medical enslavement of the population through vaccines, medications, chemotherapy and other dangerous chemical treatments. The best way to protect the health of future generations is to starve Big Pharma of investment dollars and revenue by refusing to buy their products or stock shares.



Activists: Uzbekistan Orders Forced Sterilizations.



Human rights think tank alleged that Uzbek government has instructed health workers to surgically sterilize women as part of a campaign to reduce birth rate of the authoritarian ex-soviet nation.

Previous human rights, UN and US State Department reports also have alleged that women in the Central Asian country have been forced or duped into sterilization.

Uzbekistan's government retains strict Soviet-style control over health institutions in the predominantly Muslim nation of 27 million, whose population has been growing quickly.

Goldman Sachs Set To Pay £3.5 Billion In Bonuses.

world's biggest investment bank that is now assailed by accusations of fraud, is poised to reignite controversy over bankers' bonuses by paying its staff more than £3.5 billion for just 3 months' work.

This bumper payout will equate to about £110,000 a head for the firms 32,500 employees worldwide, with a handful of top traders expected to be in line for multi-million-pound bonuses.

Close to £600 million is expected to be paid to the group's 5,500 London based staff for the first 3 months of this year which is on a par with their remuneration in the last year of the boom (2007).

This revelation has come in-spite the fact that Goldman Sachs is preparing for a legal battle with the US government over claims it defrauded investors of $1 billion.

There is a likelihood that both the UK government and the government of Germany will file a charge sheet against them.