Guardian UK – Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal. The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances. The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future. Read Article
Times Online – The Italian Parliament has approved a law that will shield Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, from criminal trials for the next year and a half. The decision led to vociferous protests from magistrates, judges and the centre-Left opposition. The law, passed last night, in effect undermines two trials in which Mr Berlusconi, 73, is accused of corruption. In one he is charged with giving David Mills, his former British tax lawyer and estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, a bribe to lie for him in court in corruption cases in the 1990s. In the second his television company Mediaset is accused of tax fraud over the purchase of Hollywood film rights. Read article
Daily Mail – Princess Diana died after attempts to frighten her into dumping Dodi al Fayed and ending her anti-establishment activities went horribly wrong, a leading lawyer has claimed. Michael Mansfield claimed he was sure Diana’s ‘killers’ had no intention of ending her life in a Paris tunnel in August 1997 and simply wanted to scare her. But he claimed the operation to torpedo her relationship with Dodi, and silence her planned criticism of the British government over foreign arms sales, backfired spectacularly. Read article
Telegraph – The US and Britain are acting in the expectation that any measures agreed by the UN Security Council will be heavily diluted by Russia or China. The supplementary action is being drawn up in consultation with Middle Eastern and Asian countries that have financial or trade ties with the Islamic regime, and a common interest in preventing it developing nuclear weapons. The measures would focus on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the secretive militia force that is suspected of running and financing the country’s covert nuclear programme. Read Article
Telegraph – Prince Bernhard, the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party, a new book has claimed, contracting the German-born Dutch war hero’s life-long denials. “Bernhard, a secret history” has revealed that the prince was a member of the German Nazi party until 1934, three years before he married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands. Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, has found membership documents in Berlin’s Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung. Read article
New York Times – In an effort to secure Republican support for an overhaul of financial regulations, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Monday proposed giving the Federal Reserve responsibility for protecting consumers from abusive and deceptive financial products. The new plan, described by an official briefed on the negotiations, was the latest iteration of an idea that has divided members of the committee, largely along party lines, and has been the major barrier in the path toward the most significant overhaul of banking rules since the Depression, a priority of the Obama administration. Read Article
Ed – Not only therefore would the wolves have the keys to the chicken coop, but they would also be appointed gamekeeper too.
Bloomberg — George Soros is helping drive up gold prices by doubling his bet in a market even he considers a “bubble” as Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Barclays Capital and HSBC Holdings Plc predict more gains before it bursts. Soros Fund Management LLC, which manages about $25 billion, increased its investment in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest exchange-traded fund for the metal, by 152 percent in the fourth quarter, a Feb. 16 Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows. While prices have fallen 9.2 percent since reaching a record on Dec. 3, 15 of 22 analysts in a Bloomberg survey say gold will reach a new high, with the median forecast predicting a 17 percent advance to as much as $1,300 an ounce this year. Read Article
Ed – With the coming inflationary crisis in the USA & UK (due to significant ‘quantitative easing’ over the last 2 years – in other words printing lots of extra money) the smart money will go to the safest bet there has always been in such times, gold.
Telegraph – Open warfare has broken out at the top of the European Union with governments accusing the new president, Herman Van Rompuy, of making a power grab. National leaders are concerned Mr Van Rompuy, who had been expected to take a back seat role, is attempting to expand his position. Germany and France backed his candidature on the understanding he would act as an EU “chairman” rather than a high-profile leader. But the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty has triggered bitter in-fighting between Mr Van Rompuy, Baroness Ashton, the foreign minister, and the Commission over who is in charge of representing Europe on the global stage. Read article
The Independent – It could spell the end of the kiss and tell: public figures might, within 18 months, have the power to stifle bad news stories before they are published, a senior lawyer has warned. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is currently fast-tracking a landmark case, brought by Max Mosley, to tighten UK privacy laws. Mark Stephens, a lawyer acting for a group of media and free speech organisations opposing Mr Mosley in court, believes that the extraordinary pace with which it is proceeding suggests that the judges are about to rule in the former Formula One boss’s favour. That would mean a change in the law that would force the press to contact anyone that they are intending to run a story about to warn them if it could potentially breach their privacy, giving public figures a chance to gag newspapers before publication. Read Article
Ed – By a dark irony Mr Mosley’s father was Sir Oswald Mosley the British wannabe Hitler and leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930’s
Financial Times – Otmar Issing, one of the fathers of the euro, correctly states the principle on which the single currency was founded. As he wrote in the FT last week, the euro was meant to be a monetary union but not a political one. Participating states established a common central bank but refused to surrender the right to tax their citizens to a common authority. This principle was enshrined in the Maastricht treaty and has since been rigorously interpreted by the German constitutional court. The euro was a unique and unusual construction whose viability is now being tested. The construction is patently flawed. A fully fledged currency requires both a central bank and a Treasury. Read Article
Ed – Do not forget who is writing this article in the world’s most uinfluential financial paper. George Soros made his multi-billion dollar fortune from talking down currency values, and then buying them on the cheap. It should also be noted that the undercurrent of the story is that the Greek episode shows that the Euro can only work with central fiscal control & the associated loss of democractic accountability and soverign power – all straight from the New World Order handbook.
New Scientist – One day in, and already one of the five reviews into “climategate” has been hit by its own controversy. Former civil servant Muir Russell will head an independent inquiry into the professional behaviour of climate scientists at University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, UK, relating to the emails which were leaked into the public domain last November. Russell, whose career was devoted to the government of Scotland, announced his panel of six independent experts yesterday. Hours later, one of them – Philip Campbell, editor of Nature – was forced to step down over claims that he is not impartial: last year, Campbell told a Chinese radio station that there was nothing to suggest that the UEA scientists had misbehaved. Read Article
Ed – As we have previously pointed out, this supposedly independent inquiry is chaired by Muir Russell who is a Fellow of the Royal Society Of Scotland, a body that has given out millions in grants to research…… Anthropogenic global warming
Associated Press – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is going to play a bigger role in efforts to get Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks by intensifying his partnership with special U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell. Read article
Daily Telegraph - The Business Secretary spoke of the “remarkable success” of the beleaguered euro despite the problems which have beset the single currency in recent weeks. The peer was speaking just as a group of key eurozone countries lined up to pledge “determined and co-ordinated action” over Greece. In an interview, Lord Mandelson, a former European Union trade commissioner, spoke in praise of the currency, describing it as a “remarkable success” He said: “It is strong and that is why it is going to remain intact. I think in the longer term it would be in Britain’s interests to be part of the eurozone.” Read Article
Ed – Mandelson is the power behind the throne of both Blair and now Brown. He also holidays with the opposition Conservatives 2IC, George Osborne. He is Britain’s Henry Kissinger and he knows the agenda very well indeed. As we have warned time and again, it will not be Labour but the supposedly Euro-sceptic Conservatives who will hand away the last vestiges of Britain’s sovereignty by joining the Euro, after presenting it to the people as the only way out of the massive financial hole that the country is currently in.
Only a few short years ago, maybe even less than two, the New World Order was a phrase usually reserved for discussions on Usenet groups, amongst right-wing radicals, and by high profile individuals with a penchant for speaking circuits and radio shows. Whichever the medium, the audience was generally, and unapologetically, considered by the mainstream public as conspiracy crackpots on the fringe of society … Read full editorial
Herald Sun – THE world’s top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets. Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports. Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Tony Blair is lobbying world leaders on the environment on behalf of an organisation funded by the Russian oligarch with close links to Lord Mandelson. The former Prime Minister has given speeches and presented reports on climate change, including at the Copenhagen summit, which focus on the need for governments to fund new technology while allowing industries to keep polluting. His initiative, called Breaking The Climate Deadlock, is partly paid for by Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire tycoon who entertained both Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, on his yacht. Read Article
Ed – Another example of the pyramid of control exercised by the global elite and how they are able to influence the agenda – usually not for enlightened reasons. For those not familiar with the UK political elite, Lord Mandelson is the UK’s answer to Henry Kissinger, and the real power behind the throne of Blair and more recently Brown. Osborne is the opposition finance spokesman and will probably will be Chancellor of The Exchequer (Finance Minister) after the election in May. The fact alone that he holiday’s with Mandelson should have raised far more concern in a supposedly healthy democracy than it has done.
Washington Post – Americans who hid money from the Internal Revenue Service in secret Swiss bank accounts may escape exposure, at least for now. An agreement between the U.S. and Swiss governments that was supposed to blow the cover on 4,450 accounts at Switzerland’s largest bank is in danger of collapse. Read Article
Daily Mail – Tony Blair is to give speeches to a secretive hedge fund that made millions betting on the collapse of UK banks. The former prime minister will be paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by Lansdowne Partners, one of London’s biggest, yet lowest-profile funds. The Mayfair-based company reputedly made £100million betting on the demise of Northern Rock and £12million in a matter of days exploiting a dramatic fall in Barclays shares. Read Article
Ed – It should be noted that the amounts at the disposal of these hedge funds (often hundred’s of billions of dollars) could, theoretically, enable them to manipulate an entire market to their advantage.
Newsweek – Two schools of thought have traditionally competed to determine how America should approach the world. Realists believe we should care most about what states do beyond their borders—that influencing their foreign policy ought to be Washington’s priority. Neoconservatives often contend the opposite: they argue that what matters most is the nature of other countries, what happens inside their borders. The neocons believe this both for moral reasons and because democracies (at least mature ones) treat their neighbors better than do authoritarian regimes. Read Article
ED – It should be noted that a number of Obama’s cabinet are members of the Council on Foreign Relations including Tim Geitner, Hillary Clinton & Larry Summers
Daily Telegraph – Before we get too worried about NASA’s latest stamping-its-little-feet claims that the world is getting hotter it is it is it IS, let us first remind ourselves why we should trust their temperature records slightly less far than we can spit. Then let’s have a closer look at the character and motives of the man in charge of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Dr James Hansen. Last year, he was described by his former course supervisor at NASA, Dr John Theon, as an “activist” and an embarrassment. Read Article
Ed – It should also be noted that he recently endorsed the book “Time’s Up!: An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis” by White House science czar John Holdren, which called for a “planetary regime” to carry out forced abortions and mandatory sterilization procedures, as well as drugging the water supply, in an effort to cull the human surplus. In his own words – “Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the ’system’ is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests – they will not look after our and the planet’s well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort.” – source Amazon.Com
Wall Street Journal – The Group of 20’s grand scheme of crafting a more balanced global economy is under way, with governments scheduled to submit their policy proposals and economic projections to the International Monetary Fund by the end of the month. The mutual assessment process, first agreed to by G-20 leaders in Pittsburgh in September, will be overseen by the IMF, which will highlight inconsistencies between policies and goals and make policy suggestions, according to documents released Friday by the fund. Read article
AFP – The governor of the Bank of England called Tuesday for a radical overhaul of the system of global financial governance in a bid to prevent a repeat of the firestorm that tore the world economy apart. Mervyn King proposed the Group of 20 industrialised nations should join forces with the International Monetary Fund to stop imbalances developing in the world economy. Read article
Yahoo – JPMorgan Chase kicked off bank earnings season Friday with a loud thud. Quarterly profit quadrupled to $3.3 billion but revenue was worse than expected thanks to rising consumer credit costs. “The devil was in the details,” says Wall Street Journal reporter Susanne Craig. “You’re still seeing this hangover from the credit crisis and they’re struggling with it.” Read article
Ed – $3.3b profit is a struggle on unexpectedly low revenues? Reality check, please!!
Yahoo – The Saudi billionaire whose investment firm is one of the biggest stakeholders in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. said he is looking to expand his alliances with the media giant, in the latest indication that his appetite for growth remains robust even as his company retrenches. Read article
The Raw Story – Banking giant JP Morgan Chase reported on Friday a big jump in net profit to 3.27 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2009, highlighting renewed health in the troubled sector. The New York-based financial giant doubled its profits for the full year to 11.7 billion dollars, and quadrupled the numbers put up in the fourth quarter of 2008. Read article
