9 Dec 2012

RIP Patrick Moore

Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore, (4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012) was an English amateur astronomer who attained prominent status in that field as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter.
Moore was a former president of the British Astronomical Association, co-founder and former president of the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA), author of over 70 books on astronomy, and presenter of the world's longest-running television series with the same original presenter, The Sky at Night on the BBC. As an amateur astronomer, he became known as a specialist on observing the Moon and creating the Caldwell catalogue; he was involved in the lunar mapping used by the Apollo program. Idiosyncrasies such as his rapid diction and monocle made him a popular and instantly recognisable figure on British television.
He holds the Guinness world record for the longest continuous tenure as presenter of a single television programme, having presented The Sky At Night from 24 April 1957 until his death, over 55 years.
Moore was also a self-taught xylophone and piano player, as well as an accomplished composer and a former amateur cricketer, golfer and chess player. In addition to his many popular science books, he wrote numerous works of fiction. Moore was an opponent of fox hunting, an outspoken critic of the European Union and served as chairman of the short-lived anti-immigration United Country Party. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II; his fiancée was killed by a bomb during the war and he never married or had children. Source/Wikipedia

The Icelandic Success Story - azizonomics

Iceland
Aziz: Emotionally, I love Iceland’s financial policies since the crash of 2008:
Iceland went after the people who caused the crisis — the bankers who created and sold the junk products — and tried to shield the general population.
But what Iceland did is not just emotionally satisfying. Iceland is recovering, while the rest of the Western world — which bailed out the bankers and left the general population to pay for the bankers’ excess — is not.
Bloomberg reports:
Few countries blew up more spectacularly than Iceland in the 2008 financial crisis. The local stock market plunged 90 percent; unemployment rose ninefold; inflation shot to more than 18 percent; the country’s biggest banks all failed.
This was no post-Lehman Brothers recession: It was a depression.
Since then, Iceland has turned in a pretty impressive performance. It has repaid International Monetary Fund rescue loans ahead of schedule. Growth this year will be about 2.5 percent, better than most developed economies. Unemployment has fallen by half. In February, Fitch Ratings restored the country’s investment-grade status, approvingly citing its “unorthodox crisis policy response.”
So what exactly did Iceland do?

8 Dec 2012

73% of New US Jobs Created in Last 5 Months Are in Government

Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments.
By November, according to data BLS released today, the total number of people employed had climbed to 143,262,000, an overall increase of 847,000 in the six months since June.
In the same five-month period since June, the number of people employed by government increased by 621,000 to 20,559,000. These 621,000 new government jobs created in the last five months equal 73.3 percent of the 847,000 new jobs created overall. Source

Digital Rights Groups Shut Out of Secret TPP Negotiations - Public interest groups fly to Auckland, NZ to meet with TPP negotiators, are only allowed in the building to give a 15-minute joint presentation

: Having been promised a chance to meet with the delegates at the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership treaty meeting in New Zealand, a representatives from nonprofit public interest groups around the world flew to Auckland. Once they arrived, the TPP announced that they would be granted 15 minutes, total, for all of the groups to make a statement.
TPP is a sweeping copyright treaty, a kind of ACTA on steroids, being conducted without any public scrutiny or input -- only governments and giant corporations are welcome in the negotiating room. It has profound implications for the future of medicine, Internet regulation, and privacy and surveillance.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the groups that sent a representative to Auckland. They've published an open letter signed by the public interest coalition protesting their shabby treatment at the hands of TPP's administrators.
Academics, experts, consumer groups, Internet freedom organizations, libraries, educational institutions, patients and access to medicines groups have flown a long way from around the world to Auckland, New Zealand, to engage with delegates in the 15th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.
For the first time, however, we have been locked out of the entire venue, except for a single day out of the 10 days of negotiations.

Hollywood Accounting, ZIRP - Max Keiser and Matt Taibbi

Max Keiser  and Stacy Herbert look at how Hollywood accounting has turned the global financial system into one in which money and wealth melt like so much congealed snow. And so from Pontiac, Michigan to the Australian outback, zero percent interest rates and jobs that never materialize are the new normal. In the second half, Max Keiser talks to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine about banksters who can't recall a single thing about their crimes, including everything from Libor rigging to defrauding monoline insurers. Source

David Icke - The Queen,The BBC & The Royal Child Catcher To The Establishment


Obama administration considering ways to overturn marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado

AFP Photo / Raul Arboleda
RT: New legislation in Washington state went into effect this week that legalizes for the first time in ages the possession of marijuana. Federal law still says otherwise, though, setting up the Justice Department to make some serious determinations.
Even as smoking up became protected by state law in Washington starting Thursday, coast-to-coast prohibition as provided by a long-standing federal ruling remains on the books. For marijuana advocates in the Pacific Northwest, the lifting of the ban is a pretty big victory. That doesn’t mean that the Justice Department has ruled out an intervention, though.
Since voters in Washington and Colorado opted on Election Day to legalize small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, the Department of Justice has been relatively quiet over how it will handle what is likely to become a heated debate regarding states’ rights. In an article published by The New York Times this week, reporter Charlie Savage says senior White House and Justice Department officials are already attempting to tackle how to handle the new marijuana laws, and are amid deliberations right now that will determine when, where and how national law enforcement can intervene.

manufacturing numbers - Greg Hunter

Max interviews Greg Hunter from usawatchdog.com. He talks about the post US election economic statistics including the latest jobs and manufacturing numbers. Greg is the producer and creator of Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com. The site's slogan is "analyzing the news to give you a clear picture of what's really going on." The site will keep an eye on the government, your financial interests and cut through the media spin. Source

US Student's parents file lawsuit after boy strip-searched in school

RT: Chicago Public Schools are facing a lawsuit after a 15-year-old boy said he was strip-searched at a high school while a security guard allegedly touched his genitals in search of drugs.
The boy came home crying, embarrassed and distraught that he was stripped naked in front of two security guards, a Chicago police officer and a female assistant principal.
The boy and his parents recalled the incident at Taft High School in an interview with CBS News. The student said that while the boy was serving his in-school suspension, the security guards, police officer and assistant principal took him out of the room and brought him to a bathroom. In response to an anonymous tip that the boy had drugs on him, the security guards searched the boy while he was held against the wall of a bathroom stall with his back to the guards.
“He searched me with my clothes on. Then he told me to remove my belt. As I undid my belt he pulled my pants and underwear down to my knees,” the boy told CBS.
He started grabbing and searching my privates,” the boy added.

UK Orthodox Jews protest Zionism

An outcry of British Jews against Israeli tyranny. That was the title of the protest held by dozens of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews outside the Israeli embassy in London. They got together in a unified stand to condemn the Zionist regime and its mistreatment of Judaism and religious Jews. Source

Austerity missiles launched from Dail Eireann. Who gains?

In war there are winners and losers and then there are the big time financial winners who gain by providing ‘solutions’ to the destruction and chaos that war imposes. The latest austerity missiles launched from Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament) on behalf of the banksters have landed directly on the lives of men, women, children, the elderly, disabled and the general coping classes. According to Stephen Donnelly Independent TD 3.5 Bn of austerity will transfer into the pockets of the banksters, particlularly the IRBC, (the company created to wind down the assets and liabilities of the former Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society). That’s a good chunk of the 5BN euros the government are planning to gift them this year on the promissory note.
Taxing maternity benefit and cutting children’s allowance hit women really hard and imposing a property tax on families already struggling in negative equity with unsustainable mortgages is a tipping point into chaotic personal default. The brazen imbalance where increases in social insurance tax  comes to exactly the same amount for a person earning 25, 000 euros as for a person earning 175,000 euros is jaw dropping in it’s arrogance towards ordinary folk.
To me the most puzzling of all are the cluster bombs of cuts to home help services, respite care ( which these days goes towards paying rising utility costs) and to housing modification grants given to home carers who care for disabled/elderly relatives in their own homes. In life’s impermanence anyone of us could get sick or have an accident that could leave us in need of full time care from a loved one. The basic allowance of 188 euro per week that home carers receive is well documented to save the state millions per annum, When you consider that it costs the state circa 50,000 PA to keep someone in a private care home.

One study shows that carers who work 24/7 for 365 days each year cost the state about 4cent per hour.

Gold/Dollar/Debt: The Next Four Years: Lindsey Williams

Pastor Lindsey Williams (states the obvious and claims he has inside information) unveils the truth behind the elite plan for humanity and this planet... THE NEXT 4 YEARS Source