What Adam Curry is reading

Bitcoin Hysteria | SurlyTrader
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  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:09
  I am not going to lie, I am enjoying the entertainment. I guess I would be enjoying it more if I earned a 1,000% return in a bit over a quarter's time, but I am still having a good time. As President Obama would say, ''let me be clear'...'' this is not an indication that fiat currencies are going away. It was only in mid-march that the Bitcoin started to trade consistently above $1 million on a daily basis. $1 Million is a piece of dust on a miniature fly, living in a world that is entirely on a single hair on the back of a dog'...in today's flooded fiat markets. The highest daily volume was $19.5M so far, which is what Ben Bernanke lights on fire in the 1/100th of a second when his morning alarm goes off.
  The only way to describe the current trajectory is exponential:
  The most amusing thought is that the very central banks that true Bitcoin devotees hate are buying Bitcoins in order to blow it up and destroy the potential alternative market. Hardly out of the realm of possibility given the dollars/yen/euros/pounds at their disposal.
  Related posts:
  Bitcoin Mania!Noteworthy News '' December 6, 2010Why Gold Is Shining Bright & What the Fed is DoingNoteworthy News '' March 25, 2013Noteworthy News
VIDEO-Video Center - WBOC-TV 16, Delmarvas News Leader, FOX 21 -
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  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:21
  Video Center - WBOC-TV 16, Delmarvas News Leader, FOX 21 - Video Gallery - Video Landing Page - CanvasVideo Gallery - Video Landing Page - WBOC Featured VideoVideo Gallery - Video Landing Page - Info PaneVideo Gallery - Video Landing Page - WeatherVideo Gallery - Video Landind Page - Sports VideoVideo Gallery - Video Landing Page - AP Video
Defense.gov News Release: Department of Defense Announces Missile Defense Deployment
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  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:24
  IMMEDIATE RELEASENo. 208-13April 03, 2013Department of Defense Announces Missile Defense Deployment
  The Department of Defense will deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Guam in the coming weeks as a precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat.
  The THAAD system is a land-based missile defense system that includes a truck-mounted launcher, a complement of interceptor missiles, an AN/TPY-2 tracking radar, and an integrated fire control system. This deployment will strengthen defense capabilities for American citizens in the U.S. Territory of Guam and U.S. forces stationed there.
  The United States continues to urge the North Korean leadership to cease provocative threats and choose the path of peace by complying with its international obligations. The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and stands ready to defend U.S. territory, our allies, and our national interests.
1200 Canadian Cancer Patients Were Accidentally Given Diluted Form of Chemotherapy Drugs : Drugs/Therapy : Counsel & Heal
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  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:07
  Update Date: Apr 03, 2013 12:19 PM EDT
  (Photo : Flickr/ srqpix)
  For patients battling cancer, the last thing they want to be worrying about is whether they have a proper dosage of chemotherapy.
  But, for patients in Canada, a recent mix-up has led to that exact set of concerns.
  According to CTV News, nearly 1,200 patients were administered a diluted dose of two chemotherapy drugs. The patients at five hospitals, London Health Sciences Centre, Windsor Regional Hospital, Peterborough Regional Health Centre, Lakeridge Health and Saint John Regional Hospital, were administered chemotherapy drugs that had been diluted by between three and 20 percent by saline.
  The error was realized last week by a pharmacy technician in Ontario. After administering the drugs to patients, the technician noticed that there was more liquid left in the bags than should have typically been the case. After calling attention to the situation, the dilution came to light.
  The drugs involved are cyclophosphamide and gemcitabine. All of the hospitals purchased the drugs from the same source, Marchese Health Care, which combines and labels bags of drugs.
  Investigators are attempting to determine the source of the problem. In the meantime, patients are receiving proper dosages since the problem was discovered. Marchese Healthcare has defended itself in a statement, saying, "Our preliminary investigation of this issue leads us to be confident that we have met the quality specifications of the contract we are [honored] to have been awarded."
  According to the Windsor Star, medical errors are serious. However, the two drugs in question - cyclophosphamide and gemcitabine, which are used to treat cancers like breast cancer, lymphoma and lung cancer - are typically used in conjunction with other treatments. They are not considered to be the most important part of the treatments. In addition, the dosage problems were quite small, when the drugs are used in combination with other treatments.
  The concern is that lower dosages of cancer treatments may lead to worse outcomes for patients. However, one expert said to CTV News that the research on these matters has been inconclusive.
  Recent reports state that 17 patients given the diluted drugs have since died. However, investigators may never know whether their deaths were linked with the chemotherapy mix-up.
  TagsChemotherapy, Canada, cancer, lymphoma, Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, pharmacy, mix-up, saline, hospital, cyclophosphamide, gemcitabine
  (C) 2013 Counsel&Heal All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NBA Is Rigged? Fan Shows Some Suspect Proof The NBA Needs Lakers In The Playoffs
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  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:49
Worse than the Great Depression: Mass Unemployment, 100 Million Americans Live in Poverty
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  Source: Global Research
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:45
  Workers in the United States are in a very difficult situation'--one made significantly worse by the Great Recession and the very slow ''recovery.'' The latest data as we write this (available for January 2013) indicates that although the unemployment rate has declined from its peak and is now at 7.9 percent, when those working part time but wanting full-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work are added in, 14.4 percent of the labor force currently needs full-time employment.1
  To give some idea of the meaning of such a large percentage needing full-time jobs, this represents 22 million people, compared to total nonfarm private-sector employment of about 113 million. Given the large portion of workers in part-time positions, there are currently less than 100 million full-time-equivalent jobs left in the private sector.2 With the public sector hiring few if any workers for the foreseeable future, and no New Deal-type works program in the cards, the private sector will be the source of whatever job increases occur.
  As if the current employment situation is not bad enough, there has also been a long-term decline in the relative power of the working class, with capital increasingly gaining the upper hand. One crucial indication of this is the stagnation or decline over decades of real wages (corrected for inflation). For a while workers' lost ground with respect to wages was compensated for by more women entering the labor force so that households increasingly had two earners, helping to maintain household income. However, over the last decade there has even been a downward trend in median family income'--decreasing from $54,841 in 2000 to $50,054 in 2011 (both in 2011 dollars).3 The financial impact of the Great Recession has had a devastating effect on many people'--with millions declaring bankruptcy, losing homes to foreclosure, or being forced ''underwater'' (owing more than the worth) on their homes.
  Although there were numerous other factors at work, President Reagan's 1981 firing of striking air traffic controllers, replacing them with nonunionized workers, was a turning point in the class war, leading to the decline of workers' power. This action set a tone for private business that made it ''acceptable'' to break strikes by bringing in scab labor. Labor legislation protecting workers' right to organize was weakened. The various unanswered attacks on both private- and public-sector labor that took place helped reverse the generally favorable view of unions on the part of the public. Consequently, the number of unionized workers has decreased dramatically, with public-sector workers providing now most of the total union membership, and attacks on unions increasingly focused on the public-sector. Total union membership dropped by 2.8 percent in 2012 to 11.3 percent of the workforce, the lowest in the entire post-Second World War period, with more than half the union-membership loss occurring in government jobs. Both the number of strikes and the workdays lost due to strikes have plummeted over the last four decades.4
  Among the arsenal of tools at capital's disposal that added to the decline of working-class power, perhaps the most important was the ability of bosses to outsource a portion of the work or actually move entire factories'--first to low-wage parts of the United States and, more recently, offshoring jobs to Asia and elsewhere to take advantage of low wages and lax environmental laws. Even the mere threat to move factories and jobs to lower-wage areas has frequently been enough to subdue labor'--and understandably so. With employment growth anemic at best, workers have been concerned that if they lost their jobs they might not be able to find new ones'--or ones as good. In the words of a recent New York Timesheadline, the ''Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages.''5
  Another long-term trend that has weakened labor has been the increasing use of part-time employees'--anyone working from 1 to 34 hours per week is officially considered part time. Since the 1970s there has been a general increase in the use of part-time labor, which now makes up approximately 20 percent of all employed workers. During the Great Recession when more than 11 million full-time jobs were lost, there was actually a gain in part timers'--so that the reported net loss of jobs, 8.7 million, did not give a full picture of what was happening.6 Many part-time workers are in especially difficult work environments, with new computerized scheduling programs able to tell bosses the number of workers needed during different days of the week'--and even at different times during the day. As a result, many part-timers, especially in retail sales, do not have fixed schedules that they can count on. This makes it more difficult to work at a second part-time job. An additional problem for labor in the current environment is that, of the workers hired during the ''recovery'' from the Great Recession, over 750,000 of these jobs were supplied by temporary help services, leaving these employees with a precarious hold on their jobs.7
  Labor's Share
  James K. Galbraith examined the ''squeeze on wages from the 1950s''1990s,'' discovering that the wage and salary share of personal income declined every decade on average throughout this period.8 Recently, a number of studies by quite ''reputable'' sources have appeared'--especially one by staff at the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and one by the Congressional Budget Office'--showing the decline in the share of the economy going to labor seen in the last half of the twentieth century has continued into the present century.9 Using different assumptions and approaches they developed three different calculations, all of which indicated that labor's share has been declining for some time.
  Determining labor's share of the pie obviously raises a number of methodological questions, as there are various ways to calculate this. Labor's share of income can be estimated on the basis of either (a) wages and salaries received by workers or (b) total compensation. The latter includes, in addition to wages and salaries, benefits provided by employers'--both legally required insurance entitling the employee to benefits in the event of ill-health, unemployment, disability, and old-age retirement, and also voluntary benefits such as paid leave and life insurance. These benefits differ considerably. Some, such as Social Security and Medicare, are genuine social insurance programs. Others, such as the Health Management Organizations (HMOs) in which workers are enrolled by their employers, are private insurance programs, where workers are required to pay a large and increasing portion of the cost, generating high profits to insurance companies and offering diminishing use-value per benefit dollar to employees.10
  It is important to recognize that benefits received by employees'--distinguishing total compensation from mere wages and salaries'--are very unevenly divided in the U.S. economy. They vary by (a) whether the worker is full time or part time'--benefits represent 31 percent of total compensation for private sector full-time workers but only 21 percent for part-time employees; (b) union or nonunion'--benefits are approximately 41 percent of all compensation for unionized goods-producing employees versus 31 percent for nonunion employees doing similar jobs; and (c) job type'--for example, benefits represent 34 percent of total compensation for full-time ''information'' employees versus 29 percent for full-time service employees.11
  Depending on the nature of the question, then, one may wish to emphasize either total compensation or wages and salaries in analyzing labor's share, comparing them alternately to GDP (or some other national-income indicator) or to private-sector output. In all cases, however, the general trends are very similar. Movements of total compensation and wages and salaries generally rise and fall together. This means, according to The State of Working America for 2012, ''that analyses'...that focus on wage trends'' alone as opposed to total compensation ''are using an appropriate proxy for compensation, at least on average.''12
  Here, we shall look separately at the shares of GDP represented by total compensation and wages and salaries. The upper line in Chart 1 shows the total compensation of all employees receiving wages and salaries'--workers and managers in the government and private sectors'--as a percent of GDP, while the lower line is restricted to total compensation of private-sector employees as a percent of GDP. Comparing the two lines, we can see that after a brief rise in the late 1960s a plateau emerges in the labor share of GDP for all employees (upper line), persisting through much of the 1970s, followed by a downward trend to the present. In contrast, the labor share of GDP for private sector employees alone (lower line) exhibits no increase in the 1960s, and a decline from the 1980s to the present. The slight rise in the labor share for all employees in the late 1960s along with the plateau for much of the '70s can therefore be attributed almost entirely to the increase in government employment in these years. This corresponded to the Vietnam War, the Great Society, and the Nixon Family Assistance Program, and to state and local government hiring to staff new schools and expand police and fire departments in the burgeoning suburbs. In the second half of 1966, during the big buildup of the Vietnam War, military expenditures accounted for half of the total increase in GDP.13 Overall, there was a huge increase in civilian government employees'--federal, state, and local'--in this period with civilian government employment as a percentage of all nonfarm employment rising from 15.6 percent in 1960 to its post-Second World War peak of 19.2 percent in 1975.14
  Chart 1. Total Labor Compensation as a Percent of GDP
  Sources: ''All employees'' is government plus private sector employee. Compensation for government employees from Table 1.13, ''National Income by Sector, Legal Form of Organization, and Type of Income,'' National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); Compensation for private sector employees, is from unpublished Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data; ''Gross Domestic Product'' (GDP), St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED Database), http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2. BLS data for private sector compensation provided by personal communication from the Supervisory Economist, Office of Productivity and Technology Division of Major Sector Productivity.
  Not surprisingly, this period was one of relative prosperity for workers. The average rate of real growth of the U.S. economy was higher in the 1950s and '60s than in the '70s. But even in the 1970s the economic growth rate exceeded that of the three decades that were to follow.15
  Chart 1 shows that total compensation of both all employees and private sector employees as a percent of GDP continued a downward slide for most of the 1980s, '90s, and the first decade of this century. However, a brief bump up was experienced in the second half of the 1990s. The temporary rise in the compensation share at that time was mainly a product of the dot-com financial boom, which turned into a bust in 2000. The bursting of the dot-com bubble led to a sudden drop in the compensation share, which was given an added downward push by the Great Recession less than a decade later.
  Wages and salaries, as distinct from total compensation, are especially important for workers at the lower-income levels, since this is the basis of their everyday consumption, constituting their means of subsistence. As with total compensation'--only more so'--wages and salaries exhibited a strong downward trend as a percentage of national output of goods and services (Chart 2). Similar to what we observed in the case of the total-compensation share, a brief, cyclical increase in the wage share is evident for all employees in the late 1960s and early '70s (upper line). But just as we saw with respect to total compensation, this short-term increase in the wage share disappears once we look at the wages and salaries of private-sector employees as a percent of GDP (lower line). Hence, the rising wage share for all employees in these years is once again explained primarily by the expansion of government employment, and subsequently eroded along with the decline of government consumption and investment as a percent of GDP beginning in the 1970s.16 It was not until the late 1990s dot-com bubble that one again sees significant employment gains, as well as modest increases in wages and salaries, resulting in a very brief increase in the share of wages and salaries in GDP'--though never approaching its previous peaks, and plummeting thereafter.
  Chart 2. Wages and Salaries as a Percent of GDP
  Sources: Salary and wages for all employees and private sector employees from Table 1.12, NIPA, BEA; GDP, FRED Database.
  Overall the decline in real wages (corrected for inflation) since the 1970s has been sharp. As David Gordon observed in 1996 in Fat and Mean, by the early 1990s the real hourly spendable earnings of private nonproduction/nonsupervisory employees in the United States had fallen ''below the level they had last reached in 1967'.... Referring to these trends since the early 1970s as 'the wage squeeze' is polite understatement. Calling it the 'wage collapse' might be more apt.''17 While the real hourly wage for all nonfarm private workers has declined, weekly (or annual) wages and salaries have fallen even faster. In the early 1970s the average earnings of nonfarm private workers was over $340 per week (in 1982''1984 dollars). Earnings of these workers declined rapidly to less than $270 per week in the early 1990s, rebounding to $294 per week by 2011'--still close to 15 percent less than in 1973.18 The decline in real income per week was the product of two trends: (1) stagnating and declining real hourly wages and (2) the decline of hours worked per week. As more people worked part time, the average hours worked in private sector nonfarm jobs declined from 38.6 hours in 1965 to 33.6 hours in 2011.19 It was this combination of declining real wages and fewer hours worked that left workers poorer and in more precarious positions.
  A Look at Class Divisions and Wages
  The labor share of income as depicted above in terms of both total employee compensation and wages and salaries as shares of GDP is of course a very crude indicator of what is happening to the working-class income, downplaying the actual fall in working-class wages and salaries as a share of GDP. This is because the aggregate data also includes the compensation going to CEOs and other upper-level management, which ought to be counted as income to capital rather than labor. The wages and salaries (and benefits) of higher management positions have been rising in leaps and bounds in recent decades while workers' wages at the bottom have lost ground. Consequently, the actual decline in wages as a share of GDP is much sharper where the working class itself is concerned. An examination of real hourly wages 1979''2011 by income decile (up to the 95th percentile) shows that the real hourly wage of the bottom decile shrank in absolute terms over the period, while that of the top decile increased by more than 35 percent.20 Thus, although the wage share of income has sharply dropped in the U.S. economy, this decline has not been shared equally, and applies mainly to what is properly called the working class, i.e., the bottom 80 percent or so of wage and salary workers.
  We should add, parenthetically, that the term ''working class'' is hardly used in the dominant discourse in the United States today. Many workers conceive of themselves as part of the ''middle class'' because they have come to think of their income as providing them with a ''middle-class lifestyle'''--and because they consider themselves above ''the poor,'' who have been converted in the ruling ideology into the entire lower class (or underclass), leaving out the working class altogether. Nevertheless, from a perspective that focuses on class as a power relation the working class rightly includes all those who work for wages or salaries and are not in a management or predominantly supervisory position'--and who are also not high-level professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Some members of the working class might be paid very well, but they still have the same basic relationship of worker to capital or ''the boss.''21
  There is no routine collection of statistics on the entire working class. The closest that the official statistics come to in this respect is in the standard private-sector reporting category called ''production and nonsupervisory'' workers, which includes ''production workers in the goods-producing industries and nonsupervisory workers in the service-providing industries.'' Although comprising some 90 million employees (about 80 percent of private-sector workers), it is a very rough approximation of the U.S. working class, leaving out many who should be counted.22 The residual group of private-sector employees not considered in this category, which we refer to in this article as ''management, supervisory, and other nonproduction employees,'' undoubtedly includes many employees who might well be considered part of the working class. Moreover, the production and nonsupervisory workers category applies only to the private sector and thus leaves out all government workers, many of whom, such as those who work in the post office, public schools, and local police, should be included within the total working class. So while the data tells us a lot, we must recognize its inadequacies. Still, it is the best statistical basis available for looking at the working class as a whole, as inadequate as it may be.
  Chart 3 provides data related to production and nonsupervisory employees. While the share of the GDP going to the wages and salaries of all private employees has, as we have seen, decreased dramatically (lower line in chart 2), the drop in the wage income of production and nonsupervisory workers as depicted here has been even more startling. Chart 3 shows that private-sector production and nonsupervisory workers have remained a fairly constant percentage of all private employment from the mid''1960s to the present. (See the top line in the chart, indicating that these workers represented around 83 percent of all private sector workers in both 1965 and 2011.) Nevertheless, the share of production and nonsupervisory workers in the total private sector payroll dropped from over 75 percent in 1965 to less than 55 percent during the Great Recession, and has only risen slightly since.
  Chart 3. Number and Payroll of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees as a Percent of Total Private Sector
  Sources: Number of private sector production and nonsupervisory employees from BLS Series CES0500000006; Total private sector employees from ''All Employees: Total Private Industries'' (USPRIV), FRED database; Annual payroll of production and nonsupervisory is calculated from weekly aggregate payroll, BLS Series CES0500000082; Aggregate payroll of all private employees from Table 1.12, NIPA, BEA.
  The implication of this, of course, is that the management, supervisory and other nonproduction employees at the top, representing around 17 percent of private employees, receive more than 40 percent of private sector wage and salary income'--and this share is rising.
  We see the contrasts even more clearly when we look in Chart 4 at the shares of GDP going to the two separate groups that make up private employees'--production and nonsupervisory employees versus what we have labeled as management, supervisory, and other nonproduction employees. Wages and salaries received by the upper levels of private employees actually increased from 1965 to the present as a share of GDP. At the same time, those of the over 80 percent of private-sector workers in the production and nonsupervisory worker category saw their wages and salaries decline dramatically, from over 30 percent of the GDP to about 20 percent in 2011. Hence, the rapidly declining wage share in the monopoly-finance-capital period since the mid''1970s stagflation crisis fell entirely on the backs of working-class employees.
  Chart 4. Wages and Salaries of Private Sector Employees as a Percent of GDP
  Sources: Same as Chart 3, with share of GDP to ''Management, supervisory and other nonproductive employees'' calculated by subtraction of wages and salaries of ''production and nonsupervisory employees'' from wages and salaries of all private sector employees.
  Given this background of high unemployment, lower-wage jobs, and smaller portions of the pie going to workers, it should come as no surprise that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty (with income in 2011 below $23,021 for a family of four) while another 50 million live between the poverty level and twice the poverty level'--one paycheck away from economic disaster.23 Thus, the poor (those in poverty or near poverty), most of whom belong to the working poor, account for approximately 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population.
  Writing more than a decade ago, Bill Moyers commented on the plight of labor as follows: ''Our business and political class owes us better than this. After all, it was they who declared class war 20 years ago, and it was they who won. They're on top.''24 However, the way the system works, the ruling class does not owe workers anything aside from wages and salary earned and legally required benefits. And the attack on labor'--its unions, wages, working conditions, social programs, and even legally required benefits'--continues to this day.
  Wage repression and high unemployment are the dominant realities of our time. A vast redistribution of income'--Robin Hood in reverse'--is occurring that is boosting the share of income to capital, even in a stagnating economy. Is it any wonder, then, that for years on end polls have shown a majority of the population agreeing with the statement that the United States is on the wrong track and not headed in the right direction?25
  Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont.
  John Bellamy Foster is editor ofMonthly Review and professor of sociology at University of Oregon. They are the coauthors of The Great Financial Crisis(2009) and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (2011)'--both published by Monthly Review Press.
  Notes
  '†(C) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic News Release, Alternative Measures of Labor Utilization, Table A-15,http://bls.gov.'†(C) Ninety-six million full time equivalent private sector workers calculated assuming a forty hour work week and using actual hours worked per week from Average Weekly Hours Of All Employees: Total Private (AWHAETP) and number of private employees from All Employees: Total Private Industries (USPRIV), from St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED database, http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/, December 30, 2012.'†(C) U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: Households, Table H-6. Regions'--All Races by Median and Mean, http://census.gov.'†(C) Melanie Trottman and Kris Maher, ''Organized Labor Loses Members,'' Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2013,http://online.wsj.com.'†(C) Catherine Rampell, ''Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds,'' New York Times, August 30, 2012,http://nytimes.com.'†(C) St. Louis Federal Reserve, FRED database, Employed, Usually Work Part Time (LNS12600000), January 4, 2013, http://research.stlouisfed.org.'†(C) Bureau of Labor Statistics database, Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National), Employees Temporary Help Services (series ID CES6056132001), http://data.bls.gov.'†(C) James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 82''83.'†(C) Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino, ''Behind the Decline in Labor's Share of Income,'' Cleveland Federal Reserve, 2012, http://clevelandfed.org; Congressional Budget Office, What Accounts for the Slow Growth of the Economy After the Recession? (see Figure 7, p. 14), 2012, http://cbo.gov. Galbraith's data here shows that direct income to capital in the form of interest, dividends, and rent increased from 10 percent of personal income in the 1940s to 17 percent in the 1990s.'†(C) Data on total compensation also includes ''other compensation'' such as bonuses and stock options mainly applying to upper-level management. It does not, however, include capital gains which are the main source of the increasing wealth of the capitalist class.'†(C) Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, ''Employer Costs for Employee Compensation'' database,http://bls.gov.'†(C)Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th edition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 182.'†(C) MichaÅ‚ Kalecki, The Last Phase of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 110.'†(C) Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey, http://bls.gov.'†(C) John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, Great Financial Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012), 129.'†(C) On government spending (government consumption and investment) as a percent of GDP over the post-Second World War period, see John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, ''A New New Deal Under Obama?,''Monthly Review 60, no. 9 (February 2009): 4''5.'†(C) David M. Gordon, Fat and Mean (New York; Free Press, 1996), 19''20.'†(C) Calculated from Table B-47 of the 2012 Economic Report of the President, http://gpo.gov.'†(C) Table B-47, Hours and earnings in private nonagricultural industries, 1965''2011, 2012 Economic Report of the President, http://gpo.gov.'†(C) Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th edition, 186. The data goes up to the ninety-fifth percentile and does not include the income of the top 5 percent of the population.'†(C) See Michael Zweig, ''Six Points on Class,'' in Michael Yates, ed., More Unequal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 173''82. In a larger sense the working class also can be seen as including many of those on public assistance and who have retired as well, along with dependents. But we are dealing here only with the working class as a component of the officially designated labor force.'†(C) From St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED database, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees: Total Private (CES0500000006), updated January 1, 2013, http://research.stlouisfed.org.'†(C) Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica C. Smith, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011, United States Census Bureau, 2012, http://census.gov.'†(C) Bill Moyers, ''Which America Will We Be Now?,'' The Nation 271, no. 16 (November 19, 2001): 11''14.'†(C) ''Right Direction or Wrong Track: 35% Say U.S. Heading in the Right Direction,'' Rasmussen Reports, January 23, 2013, http://rasmussenreports.com.
The Future of Surveillance Will Turn Society into a Massive Online Game
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  Source: StratRisks
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:22
  Source: SciAm
  No matter what the future may contain, one thing is certain: just about everything in it, including us, will increasingly be under surveillance. Our habits, patterns, health, and preferences will be translated into data.
  Who will benefit from this valuable information, and how can we start developing the mindset to deal with this reality now? To get started, let's filter a few core concepts and tough questions through our imaginations.
  Privacy The concept of privacy is relative, and it may be a luxury, but it's good when people are able to relax, think, live and create without fearing that curiosity and exploration will come back to haunt them.
  Surveillance limits our freedom, but it could also allow us to save lives. For example, if there are detectable patterns that lead to genocide (and experts say there are), could public surveillance in Myanmar lead to the prevention of what some fear is rapidly becoming a mass scale humanitarian crisis for the country's Muslims?
  If we could see events before they escalate, what would we do about it? If we could see such events before they escalate, what would we do about it? Is the possibility of detecting and preventing calamities, which we've never been able to do before, worth the loss of privacy in public places?
  Behavior Maybe real life in a surveillance environment will resemble a massively multiplayer game, and maybe it will retain some of the individual character of life as we now perceive it, but my guess is that some blend of the two will occur. Game designer Richard Garriott de Cayeux(AKA Lord British) is working on a new project, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, which gives us a glimpse of the possible future of ethics in a surveillance state that invisibly watches and judges.
  The story line in many games is that you are the hero and you fight your way up to the final battle against some evil character. Often, the player who is supposed to be the hero does all kinds of evil things on his way to gaining power on the path of least resistance, while the bad guy often has done nothing but wait for the supposed hero to arrive for deadly combat. In response to this paradigm, Garriott created a system for Ultima IV made up of eight virtues: honesty, love, valor, justice, self-sacrifice, honor, spirituality and humility. As the hero progresses through the game, he still has all the usual opportunities to lie, cheat and steal. Later, however, the hero's delusion of supremacy is shattered when his tally of misdeeds is revealed, requiring an ethical do-over in order to win.
  Who will be the arbiter of motivation? ''We held up a mirror to exactly what you did do,'' Garriott says. ''Are you a hero?''
  Are we ready to face the consequences of our misdeeds the same way we already face the possibility of getting a ticket in the mail when an invisible speed trap clocks us going over the limit? And who will be the arbiter of motivation? Will surveillance help us think about our preconceived notions of good and evil at another level, so we can assess our weaknesses and improve our character, or will it be a tool to help us reinforce our misperceptions and act on them at an irrevocable scale?
  Counterculture Right now, privacy is violated by cameras, code, scanners, and drones. In the future our bodies will contain chips, implants and nanobots. Garriott says he realizes it may be a futile gesture, but he opts out of scanners at the airport because he wants to stay in touch with the right to exercise some degree of privacy while he can. Security expert Bruce Schneier made some changes to his blog this week to enable people to share while protecting privacy. ''Fighting against the massive amount of surveillance data collected about us as we surf theInternet is hard, and possibly even fruitless,'' Schneier wrote. ''But I think it's important to try.''
  Here's a possible timeline for the future of surveillance:
  In the near future, an increasingly milquetoast society will live in fear that experimentation might be misconstrued and punished without motivation and context being thoughtfully considered.
  Meanwhile, genuine maniacs will find a way to behave violently when they are able to escape detection.
  In the longer term, the intelligent underground counterculture will struggle to stay a step ahead of slow-moving bureaucracies.
  After the full penetration of surveillance reaches its apex, some catalyzing event will result in widespread nostalgia (to whatever degree our cyborg lives and circumstances permit at that point) for some semblance of privacy.
  The counterculture will start to go mainstream as meaningful analysis of data gains greater depth.
  The distant future will belong to storytellers who can make sense of the data and help us understand what it means to be human in an increasingly technological environment.
  Tags: Behavior Maybe, Bruce Schneier, Counterculture Right, Myanmar, power, Richard Garriott, us
Did Bloomberg TV just accuse Michael Dell and Icahn of acting like Mobsters, looting the company?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: What Mel Cooley is saying.
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:29
IMF sets terms of Cyprus bailout
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: The Guardian World News
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:28
  Cyprus' new finance minister Haris Georgiades, second from left, in a meeting ahead of the country's bailout. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP
  The International Monetary Fund has demanded that Cyprus cut state pension costs and reform its welfare system as the price of a '‚¬1bn (£854m) loan to help bail out the stricken island.
  The IMF's managing director, Christine Lagarde, said the poorest Cypriots would be protected from the worst of the cuts, but Cyprus must press ahead with measures to bring its annual state budget into surplus by 2018.
  The deal, agreed in principle by the Cypriot government, provoked an immediate reaction from trade unions, which called on bank workers to strike over potential pension cuts. Officials from the Cyprus Union of Bank Employees called on bank staff in Nicosia to walk off their jobs at lunchtime on Thursday, and gather in a protest march towards the parliament.
  Underlining the sense of panic, the Cypriot central bank was reportedly preparing to extend capital controls to prevent a run on the banks despite previously lifting some more draconian elements earlier in the week.
  The statement by Lagarde followed confirmation that the IMF will provide one-tenth of a '‚¬10bn bailout loan, leaving the European Union and the European Central Bank to pick up the remaining '‚¬9bn tab.
  Cyprus needs the money to refinance its stricken banking sector and reduce government debts that were on course to reach 180% of GDP. The crisis brought Cyprus to the brink of collapse after it was in effect locked out of private markets and forced to seek funds from the EU and IMF. The Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, has struggled to bring the situation under control after a series of mishaps that included imposing a tax on bank deposits of less than '‚¬100,000 '' protected under EU guarantees '' which was later reversed.
  The three-year IMF loan was secured against a series of reforms agreed by the government two weeks ago that involved shutting the island's second largest bank, Laiki, and restructuring the biggest lender, Bank of Cyprus. A tax on bank deposits of more than '‚¬100,000 was also put in place to raise '‚¬5.8bn from domestic funds, amid reports that the haircut could be between 40% and 80% of deposits.
  In addition, public sector cuts and tax rises already under way are estimated to save around 5% of GDP. The IMF said further measures amounting to an additional 2% of GDP will be needed by raising the corporate income tax rate from 10% to 12.5% and the tax rate on interest income from 15% to 30%. Cuts in pensions and welfare benefits will bring savings worth another 4.5% of GDP in the medium term "to achieve a 4% of GDP primary surplus by 2018, which is required to put debt on a firmly downward path".
  It said the social welfare system will be reviewed to "streamline administration costs", minimise the overlap of existing programs, and improve their targeting to ensure that public resources "reach those in need".
  Lagarde said: "A combined financing package of '‚¬10bn is designed to help Cyprus cover its financing needs, including to service debt obligations, while it implements the policies needed to restore the health of the economy and regain access to capital market financing."
European Stocks Plunge, Catch Down To Credit
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Zero Hedge
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:57
  Yesterday it was all fixed, Cyprus was storm in a teacup, and as Barroso noted "the worst of the crisis over." It appears reality sunk in today as PMIs continue to disappoint and Europe's banking system implodes. Credit markets and financials have been flashing warning signals for a few weeks and once again European stocks (led by financials - mostly Italian - cough BMPS cough) were limit down and halted everywhere (with the broad EU bank index -3%). Italy's FTSEMIB is now -0.8% on the week (giving back all of yesterday's exuberance and some) and Spain is close behind. European sovereign bonds retraced their gains and ended slightly wider on the day. Swiss 2Y rates dropped (on safety bid) to -2bps (ahead of Bunds at 0%). EURUSD bucked the 'weak' trend and strengthened on the day back up to 1.2850 while Europe's VIX pushed back up to 21%.
  and the implicit bid in European sovereign bonds is evident when compared to stocks and the EUR... (perhaps the market is slowly realizing that OMT is 'conditional')... EURUSD (orange), Spain Stocks (green), Spain Sovereign bond spread (red)...
  and of course, EU Macro data continues to slump...
  Charts: Bloomberg
  Average:Your rating: NoneAverage: 4(1 vote)
This is What Societal Collapse Looks Like
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Zero Hedge
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:57
  Add the total and complete hypocrisy of France to the list of reasons to avoid putting a cent in the EU.
  We already know about Spain where Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was ''allegedly'' receiving bribes from property developers throughout the housing bubble'... while THREE different treasurers have been accused of everything from money laundering to fraud.
  Rajoy's defense to the allegations? ''I repeat what I said Saturday: everything that has been said about me and my colleagues in the party is untrue, except for some things that have been published by some media outlets.''
  Then there's Italy where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has a track record a mile long (including numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, tax evasion, and collusion with the mafia).
  Berlusconi's latest charge is for bribing an Italian senator to change political sides. His defense? Bribery is a ''necessary part of business.'' Mind you, this is the same man who once called tax evasion a God-given ''right.''
  Now there's France where we find out that the man in charge of catching those committing tax fraud was in fact engaged in massive tax fraud himself.
  The French government is in crisis after Fran§ois Hollande's former budget minister and tax tsar was charged with tax fraud following a shock confession that he had held a secret foreign bank account for 20 years and had repeatedly lied about it.
  J(C)r´me Cahuzac's sudden admission that he hid '‚¬600,000 (£510,000) offshore for more than two decades is the biggest scandal to hit Hollande's presidency.
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/02/jerome-cahuzac-france-offshore-account
  So'... in the last few months we've discovered'...
  EU political leaders were on the dole during the boom times often receiving bribes and then hiding the money via tax evasion schemes.EU political leaders feel it's acceptable to throw out issues like personal property rights and Democracy during the bust times.EU political leaders are so corrupt they don't even deny their crimes.When push comes to shove, EU leaders won't hesitate to STEAL citizens' money to bail out their banker friends.
  At this point, there is literally not one single reason to invest a cent in Europe. Banks are lying about their balance sheets. Politicians are lying about citizen's rights. The Central Bank is lying about everything'...
  By the way, Germany's minster of education recently quit when it was discovered that she plagiarized her PhD thesis.
  This is what systemic collapse looks like. This is what happens when society as a whole breaks down. It's now happening in Europe'... the single largest economy in the world. And eventually it will be making its way around the world as the overleveraged financial system breaks down.
  You DO NOT want to be on the bad end of this. What's coming will make what happened following Lehman's failure look like a joke.
  If you're an individual investor worried about what Europe's Crisis really means for your savings, we've published a FREE Special Report outlining exactly that. It's titled, What Europe Means For You and Your Savings.
  In this report, we outline the risks Europe's banking crisis holds not only for those in Europe, but for savers around the world. We also explain how this crisis will most likely unfold, including which areas are most at risk in the financial system. And we cap it off by listing multiple backdoor plays on Europe that investors can use to profit from Europe's Crisis.
  You can pick up a FREE copy here:
  http://gainspainscapital.com/what-europes-collapse-means-for-your-savings/
  Thank you for reading!
  Graham Summers
  Average:Your rating: None
Italy seizes record assets in Sicily
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  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:53
  3 April 2013Last updated at11:40 ETThe Italian authorities have seized assets worth 1.3bn euros ($1.7bn: £1.1bn) from a Sicilian businessman involved in renewable energy.
  Investigators allege that Vito Nicastri was a front man for the Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, investing illegal earnings in his business empire.
  The anti-mafia agency said in a statement it was the biggest ever seizure of mafia-linked assets.
  Mr Nicastri has been confined to his home town as investigations continue.
  The 57-year-old's assets include 43 wind and solar energy companies and 98 properties.
  So heavily was Mr Nicastri involved in renewable energy, Italian media dubbed him the "Lord of the Wind".
  Arturo de Felice, head of the anti-mafia agency, said: "This is a sector in which money can easily be laundered."
  Mafiosi constantly seek to penetrate areas of legitimate business activity, the BBC's Alan Johnston reports from Rome.
  Not only are they drawn by the profits that can be made in normal trading but they can also use their connections in these areas to launder money that they have made elsewhere in illegal activities such as extortion or drug-trafficking, he adds.
  SurveillanceInvestigators said the businessman from Alcamo, in western Sicily, had ''maintained constant relations with members of Cosa Nostra'' in Sicily, as well as having contacts with the 'Ndrangheta mafia in Calabria, on the Italian mainland.
  This relationship allegedly ''facilitated his transformation from an electrician into a businessman specialising in the production of electricity from renewable sources, giving him a prominent position in the south", Italy's Ansa news agency reports.
  Police and magistrates said Mr Nicastri was linked to alleged top Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who is a fugitive from the law.
  The businessman has been put under surveillance in Alcamo, where he must regularly sign in at police stations.
  The seizure "impacts in a significant way on the economic power of Matteo Messina Denaro, who is considered the lord of that land [Sicily]", the anti-mafia agency said.
  Ivan Lo Bello, vice-chairman of business lobby Confindustria, wrote on Twitter: "Matteo Messina Denaro is behind many businessmen considered above suspicion who manage and take care of the assets of the real boss of Cosa Nostra.
  "To defeat the Mafia, the fight against money-laundering is fundamental."
As US Packs Up, Return of Dreaded MREs
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:25
  KABUL -- U.S. troops across Afghanistan are preparing for a reunion with a long-lost frenemy.
  After years of base build-ups and access to massive dining halls with a substantial selection of ethnic food options and specialty nights, soon many servicemembers instead will be chowing down on a plateful of MRE, or Meals, Ready to Eat '-- also referred to by nicknames inspired by the packaged food's taste, or lack thereof.
  As U.S. troops strive to meet the Dec. 31, 2014, deadline for international combat troops to leave Afghanistan, the American military is mandating sweeping changes as support services also decline. Changes include consolidating housing and reduction of contract labor, as well as changes to the soldiers' daily diet. All dining halls will replace two of the current four hot meals per day with MREs or Unitized Group Rations (UGRs), which are similar to a giant MRE.
  The hot food reductions are part of a larger plan to return to so-called expeditionary standards, meaning a return to conditions more akin to those during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The deadline for all bases to conform to the new guidelines is Oct. 1, though the process has already begun, said Brig. Gen. Steven Shapiro, who is helping to implement the new rules.
  Shapiro echoed coalition commanders' assertions of success in Afghanistan, even amid continuing violence and a rash of coalition deaths at the hands of their Afghan counterparts.
  ''The fact that we're winning, it manifests itself in these expeditionary standards,'' Shapiro said.
  Deployed troops had mixed feelings about the impending changes.
  Sgt. Michael Day, a combat engineer at Kandahar Air Field, said he understands the need to scale back services, but that chow is the wrong thing to skimp on.
  ''It's great for, I guess, saving money and cutting back on contractors '... but there's a lot more things you can cut back,'' he said. ''It's not fair to the soldiers doing the daily grind.''
  Spc. Angel Gonzalez, with 1st Battalion, 41st Field Artillery Unit, said he understands the rationale for cutting back in order to leave the country, but he said there will be an inevitable effect on morale.
  ''It wouldn't be that bad since they're cutting soldiers back, but still, that chow is a morale booster really,'' he said. ''It's something you look forward to in your day. It gets you going through the day, that hot meal, and those fresh drinks.''
  Sgt. 1st Class Jamie Villarreal, also with 1st Battalion, 41st Field Artillery Unit, said the new meal regimen would be no different than the conditions troops faced at the beginning of the Iraq War and said the MRE offerings have improved.
  ''The quicker we get out of here, the better,'' he said. ''We go back home, be around family and friends, so there's nothing bad about this.''
  Amongh other changes Shapiro said troops will see are:
  ' Housing will be consolidated as the military closes buildings in advance of shutting down bases. This means many troops sleeping two to a room may have to double up, though they are unlikely to be moved into tents.
  ' Post exchange stores will reduce their selection, a process that has already begun.
  ' Vendors, including the restaurants along Kandahar Air Field's boardwalk, will start closing, so there will be fewer dining and shopping options at the larger bases.
  ' Although gyms will not be closed and MWRs will remain open, some of the specialty events troops at large bases have become accustomed to, such as salsa and bingo nights, may disappear.
  ' Soldiers are likely to take over many of the jobs contractors have been doing for years, such as food service, as the military starts sending contractors out of the country.
  The transition will be gradual and base commanders will have latitude to decide which meals to cut, though breakfast and the midnight meal, generally the least-attended offerings, are the most likely to go. Bases will go through their remaining stocks of food before reducing the number of hot meals offered, Shapiro said.
  ''You almost have to eat your way to this new standard,'' he said.
  One service that will not be affected is emergency medical care, Shapiro said. The military will still keep in place the so-called ''golden hour'' standard that seriously wounded troops can get to a trauma center within an hour of being injured on the battlefield. The only change in medical care may be that outpatient services are transferred to larger bases.
  ''We're not going to sacrifice health and safety,'' he said.
  Shapiro explained that troops will continue to have access to wireless Internet, which he said is key to morale.
  ''As long as I can Skype with my wife and my kids at the end of the day, I'm having a good day,'' he said.
  The military has rolled out an awareness campaign about the entire transition process, including American Forces Network ads with soldiers talking about how losing amenities means they are closer to going home. A series of posters, with the theme ''expeditionary in, expeditionary out,'' is more colorful, with one featuring a marine eating a scorpion as a humorous example of what ''expeditionary'' will not mean. Another poster will feature a display of the various MRE menus.
  Of course, this news is likely to bring snickers from troops based at remote combat outposts, many of which have never had any of the trappings of larger bases, such as Bagram Air Field, a logistical hub near Kabul with a Pizza Hut and Popeyes on Disney Drive.
  Shapiro said the changes are expected to result in a savings of 10 to 20 percent in contracting costs, as well as canceled construction contracts worth roughly $1 billion. But he stressed that the financial benefit is a bonus, rather than the reason for the changes.
  -- Stars and Stripes reporter Alex Pena contributed to this report.
  (C) Copyright 2013 Stars and Stripes. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
CIA BACKS TURKEY VERSUS GREEK CYPRUS
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: aangirfan
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:34
  The CIA loves Islamist Turkey and hates Christian Cyprus."Sibel Edmonds says there are two sides to Cyprus banks, a Greek side and Turkish side.
  "Russia and NATO are both using Cyprus, she believes Russia is probably using the Greek side as US/NATO is using the Turkish side."
  Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operat...
Federal Register | Requested Administrative Waiver of the Coastwise Trade Laws: Vessel GOING GALT; Invitation for Public Comments
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:31
  As authorized by 46 U.S.C. 12121, the Secretary of Transportation, as represented by the Maritime Administration (MARAD), is authorized to grant waivers of the U.S.-build requirement of the coastwise laws under certain circumstances. A request for such a waiver has been received by MARAD. The vessel, and a brief description of the proposed service, is listed below.
  Submit comments on or before May 3, 2013.
  Comments should refer to docket number MARAD-2013-0038. Written comments may be submitted by hand or by mail to the Docket Clerk, U.S. Department of Transportation, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. You may also send comments electronically via the Internet at http://www.regulations.gov. All comments will become part of this docket and will be available for inspection and copying at the above address between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., E.T., Monday through Friday, except federal holidays. An electronic version of this document and all documents entered into this docket is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.regulations.gov.
  Linda Williams, U.S. Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE., Room W23-453, Washington, DC 20590. Telephone 202-366-0903, Email Linda.Williams@dot.gov.
  As described by the applicant the intended service of the vessel GOING GALT is:
  Intended Commercial Use of Vessel:''Excursions and daily or weekly charters''.
  Geographic Region:''Florida''.
  The complete application is given in DOT docket MARAD-2013-0038 at http://www.regulations.gov. Interested parties may comment on the effect this action may have on U.S. vessel builders or businesses in the U.S. that use U.S.-flag vessels. If MARAD determines, in accordance with 46 U.S.C. 12121 and MARAD's regulations at 46 CFR Part 388, that the issuance of the waiver will have an unduly adverse effect on a U.S.-vessel builder or a business that uses U.S.-flag vessels in that business, a waiver will not be granted. Comments should refer to the docket number of this notice and the vessel name in order for MARAD to properly consider the comments. Comments should also state the commenter's interest in the waiver application, and address the waiver criteria given in § 388.4 of MARAD's regulations at 46 CFR part 388.
  Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all comments received into any of our dockets by the name of the individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in the Federal Register published on April 11, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 70; Pages 19477-78).
  By Order of the Maritime Administrator.
  Dated: March 28, 2013.
  Julie P. Agarwal,
  Secretary, Maritime Administration.
  [FR Doc. 2013-07720 Filed 4-2-13; 8:45 am]
  BILLING CODE 4910-81-P
Federal Register | Establishment of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:36
  By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to promote the efficient administration of Federal elections and to improve the experience of all voters, it is hereby ordered as follows:
  Section 1. Establishment. There is established the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (Commission).
  Sec. 2. Membership. (a) The Commission shall be composed of not more than nine members appointed by the President. The members shall be drawn from among distinguished individuals with knowledge about or experience in the administration of State or local elections, as well as representatives of successful customer service-oriented businesses, and any other individuals with knowledge or experience determined by the President to be of value to the Commission.
  (b) The President shall designate two members of the Commission to serve as Co-Chairs.
  Sec. 3. Mission. (a) The Commission shall identify best practices and otherwise make recommendations to promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay, and to improve the experience of voters facing other obstacles in casting their ballots, such as members of the military, overseas voters, voters with disabilities, and voters with limited English proficiency.
  In doing so, the Commission shall consider as appropriate:
  (i) the number, location, management, operation, and design of polling places;
  (ii) the training, recruitment, and number of poll workers;
  (iii) voting accessibility for uniformed and overseas voters;
  (iv) the efficient management of voter rolls and poll books;
  (v) voting machine capacity and technology;
  (vi) ballot simplicity and voter education;
  (vii) voting accessibility for individuals with disabilities, limited English proficiency, and other special needs;
  (viii) management of issuing and processing provisional ballots in the polling place on Election Day;
  (ix) the issues presented by the administration of absentee ballot programs;
  (x) the adequacy of contingency plans for natural disasters and other emergencies that may disrupt elections; and
  (xi) other issues related to the efficient administration of elections that the Co-Chairs agree are necessary and appropriate to the Commission's work.
  (b) The Commission shall be advisory in nature and shall submit a final report to the President within 6 months of the date of the Commission's first public meeting.
  Sec. 4. Administration. (a) The Commission shall hold public meetings and engage with Federal, State, and local officials, technical advisors, and nongovernmental organizations, as necessary to carry out its mission.
  (b) In carrying out its mission, the Commission shall be informed by, and shall strive to avoid duplicating, the efforts of other governmental entities.
  (c) The Commission shall have a staff which shall provide support for the functions of the Commission.
  Sec. 5. Termination. The Commission shall terminate 30 days after it presents its final report to the President.
  Sec. 6. General Provisions. (a) To the extent permitted by law, and subject to the availability of appropriations, the General Services Administration shall provide the Commission with such administrative services, funds, facilities, staff, equipment, and other support services as may be necessary to carry out its mission on a reimbursable basis.
  (b) Insofar as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.) (the ''Act''), may apply to the Commission, any functions of the President under that Act, except for those in section 6 of the Act, shall be performed by the Administrator of General Services.
  (c) Members of the Commission shall serve without any additional compensation for their work on the Commission, but shall be allowed travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, to the extent permitted by law for persons serving intermittently in the Government service (5 U.S.C. 5701-5707).
  (d) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
  (i) the authority granted by law to a department, agency, or the head thereof; or
  (ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
  (e) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
  THE WHITE HOUSE,March 28, 2013.
  [FR Doc. 2013-07837Filed 4-2-13; 8:45 am]
  Billing code 3295-F3
Coinlab - 139.90000
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:35
  The Bitcoin network is the largest distributed computation cluster in the world. We help it's members provide their computation ability to the highest bidder.
  CoinLab's technology can access that computation for other tasks. We've been written up in The Irish Times, HPC Wire, and Forbes.com, (to name a few) highlighting our ability to access and leverage this emerging computation market.
  Do you have an HPC Problem that requires sustained petascale computation? Let us know so we can help.
The Associated Press Drops "Illegal Immigrant" From Standards Book - ABC News
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:37
  The Associated Press, the largest news-gathering outlet in the world, will no longer use the term "illegal immigrant."
  The news came in the form of a blog entry authored by Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll on Tuesday afternoon, explaining that the decision is part of the company's on-going attempt to rid their Stylebook of labels.
  See Also: The Times Is Behind the Times
  "The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term 'illegal immigrant' or the use of 'illegal' to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that 'illegal' should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally," Carroll wrote.
  The company's decision comes after years of controversy over the term. Fusion, the ABC-Univision joint venture, does not use "illegal immigrant" because we believe it dehumanizes those it describes and we find it to be linguistically inaccurate.
  We wrote last year about how most of America's top college newspapers and major TV networks, including ABC, NBC and CNN, have vowed to stop using the term. Nearly half of Latino voters polled last year in a Fox News Latino survey said that they find the term "illegal immigrant" offensive. A coalition of linguists also came together last year to pressure media companies to drop "illegal immigrant," calling it "neither neutral nor accurate." And some critics of the term, like journalist Maria Hinojosa, argue that those newsrooms that have continued to classify people as "illegal" lack diversity.
  Last fall, the AP said they would restrict the usage of "illegal immigrant" to certain circumstances due to the complexity of the immigration experience. Paul Colford, the director of media relations for the AP, addressed the issue in an email, saying that "ongoing, lively, internal conversation" about "illegal immigrant" continued after that announcement.
  AP Stylebook editors sat down with a number of groups who were concerned about their entry on the the term in recent years and "sought the views of a cross section of AP staffers" on the issue, according to Colford.
  Kathleen Carroll also noted in the Tuesday blog post that the AP prefers to label "behavior" rather than "people," writing that instead of using the term "schizophrenic," the AP now prefers saying that one is "diagnosed with schizophrenia."
  "And that discussion about labeling people, instead of behavior, led us back to 'illegal immigrant' again. We concluded that to be consistent, we needed to change our guidance," Carroll wrote. "So we have."
  For many, the news will surely come as a huge victory. Charlie Garcia, an opinion columnist for Fox News, CNN and The Huffington Post who has spoken out against the term, said last year that getting the AP to drop the term was the "big fish" in the journalistic debate, because it is the most widely used styleguide in the U.S.
  "The AP is the main problem on this issue, because everybody uses them as an excuse," Garcia said.
  The "greater majority" of the 1,400 U.S. newspapers that make up the Associated Press Cooperative likely follow AP style, Colford wrote. Now that the AP has finally come around, making a decision that will affect the word choice of hundreds of outlets across the country, we're still waiting on one major U.S. company to drop the term.
  New York Times, it's your move.
  UPDATED 4:30 PM EST -- On Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times said that they are also currently considering revisions to their guidelines for using the term "illegal immigrant."
Australia launches child sex abuse inquiry
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: The Guardian World News
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:35
  Julia Gillard announced the commission in November after a string of sexual abuse accusations against Catholic priests. Photograph: Str/AFP/Getty Images
  Australia has launched a national inquiry into allegations of child sex abuse in state and religious institutions and NGOs, a process in which more than 5,000 victims are likely to give evidence.
  A panel of six commissioners launched the inquiry, known in Australia as a royal commission. Witnesses can be compelled to testify and risk imprisonment for lying.
  The inquiry was unlikely to achieve the late 2015 deadline set by the government because so many people wanted to give evidence, said Justice Pete McClellan, the commission's chairman.
  McClellan said he expected at least 5,000 people would want to give evidence, but the number could be much higher.
  "The task we have is large; the issues are complex," he said. "But we are now in a position to actively begin the work of gathering the stories and examining the responses of institutions."
  The prime minister, Julia Gillard, announced the commission in November in the face of a string of sexual abuse accusations against priests and claims of a Roman Catholic church cover-up.
  The New South Wales state government had ordered an inquiry a week earlier into allegations of a sexual abuse cover-up by Catholic priests in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney. Victoria state officials had also begun investigating a separate series of priest sex abuse allegations in their state.
  Since the federal inquiry was announced, more than 6,000 people have contacted staff in writing or by phone.
  The government has offered free legal advice to people who want to make submissions to the inquiry before public hearings begin after September.
  Gillard said the royal commission was an important "moral moment" for the country.
  "It is going to require our country to stare some very uncomfortable truths in the face," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
What is it like to get a caution?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:28
  3 April 2013Last updated at10:05 ETThe government is reviewing how police forces across the country issue cautions, over concerns that too many are being given at present.
  A caution is a formal warning issued by police to someone who has admitted to having committed a criminal offence. Cautions are issued at the discretion of police, and enable a sanction to be given without going before the courts.
  Last year more than 200,000 people who committed crimes in England and Wales were cautioned, although that figure is 42% lower than the number of cautions given in 2007.
  There are, however, concerns that some crimes are not being punished appropriately, and that some serious and repeat offenders are getting off lightly under the current system.
  Three people with experience of the way cautions are issued share their stories.
  Fourteen years ago I was cautioned by the police for pulling a panel off a man's garden fence.
  I soon realised how silly I'd been. I was assured that, if I was well behaved over the next seven years, the caution would be scrubbed by my 18th birthday.
  Two years ago I applied for my current job. During the application process I was required to provide a CRB [Criminal Records Bureau] form.
  It was only then that I learned that the caution is still on my record. What's more, due to an administrative error, it appears more than once.
  I'm lucky. The job I'm in is the first one I've ever been asked to provide a CRB form for. But I do fear that having multiple cautions will hold me back.
  Despite the issues I've had with the system, I do think that cautions work. I was shock-therapied into keeping on the straight and narrow with my head down.
  Without the caution I may not have sorted my life out. For certain age groups a caution has a major impact. But cautioning can't continue if people re-offend.
  My ex-husband was given a caution for leaving me with a head injury. He punched and kicked the back and side of my head over two dozen times.
  I hit him back using the telephone against his head. Then he called the police. When they arrived both of us were arrested and taken to custody.
  Continue reading the main storyIf officers think that the CPS will reduce the charge and waste hours of time spent on paperwork it's easier to give a caution.''
  End QuoteChris Hobbs (retired police officer)I was very ill in there but I was refused medical help. I'd stopped drinking six hours before arriving. My ex-husband, on the other hand, had been drinking most of the night. We were both offered cautions.
  It seemed as though the officers were desperate to get two cautions on their books. My ex-husband took the caution but I decided not to. I was prosecuted and I pleaded not guilty.
  I was found not guilty but despite that my history of being arrested for personal assault stays on my record. I've applied 12 times to the chief constable to have the record downgraded, because currently it crops up in every CRB check.
  I wasn't happy with the caution for [my husband]. I complained to the CPS and the police. It was far too lenient, particularly given that he'd assaulted me before and I'd called the police then. They denied having previously received any calls.
  I think cautions are completely inappropriate. They're more about police targets than anything else. They are a meaningless effort.
  With a caution the police can play judge and jury. They can complete the circle themselves - without justice being served.
  Cautions are a useful tool for an officer. In the evenings if you arrest someone you could be off the road for many hours. Arrests take a huge amount of paperwork - whereas a caution is quick, swift and can still form part of a criminal record.
  Contrary to what some people believe, a caution is not a complete "get out of jail free" card. A caution appears on your criminal record and can be used to decide what happens to you if you re-offend.
  Sometimes if you're not sure if the offender will be convicted, a caution is a good way to ensure that they get on the books.
  There are issues with cautions but the wider problems are arrest paperwork and how long it takes to bring someone before the courts, and the CPS. If officers think that the CPS will reduce the charge and waste hours of time spent on paperwork it's easier to give a caution.
  A caution can turn someone's life around. It's a nasty kick up the backside - but it says you deserve a second chance. Where [Justice Secretary] Chris Grayling does have a point is that someone shouldn't receive more than one caution for similar offences.
The Eurozone Unemployment Picture
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  Source: EconomicPolicyJournal.com
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:27
  The unemployment rate for the currency bloc's 17 nations was a seasonally adjusted 12% in February, up from 10.9% in February 2012. Among member nations with the lowest unemployment rates are Austria, at 4.8%, and Germany, at 5.4%, reports WSJ.. Among members with the highest unemployment rates is Spain, at 26.3%.
  Three things are going on here.
  1. Throughout the Eurozone benefits are substantial for the unemployed, providing the unemployed significant incentive to stay unemployed.
  2. The Eurozone is now in the down phase of the business cycle. Thus, there is a natural tendency during this phase for unemployment to be high.
  3. Government regulations, from minimum wage laws to regulations under which it is determined if and when a person can be fired, make it extremely difficult for firms to hire aggressively, if at all.
About the Foundation | The Monuments Men Foundation
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:58
  The Monuments Men remained in Europe for up to six years after the conclusion of fighting to oversee the complicated restitution of stolen works of art. During that time they played instrumental roles in rebuilding cultural life in the devastated countries of Europe by organizing temporary art exhibitions and music concerts. Art and culture mattered greatly then '' and today '' to the Monuments Men.
  Upon returning home, many of the Monuments Men and women had extraordinarily prominent roles in building some of the greatest cultural and educational institutions in the United States. They became directors and curators of world renowned museums such as the Met, the MOMA, the National Gallery of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and many others. Other revered institutions, such as the New York City Ballet, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts, were the tangible results of ideas of the Monuments Men.
  To preserve the legacy of the unprecedented and heroic work of the men and women who served in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (''MFAA'') section, known as ''Monuments Men,'' during World War II, by raising public awareness of the importance of protecting and safeguarding civilization's most important artistic and cultural treasures from armed conflict, while incorporating these expressions of man's greatest creative achievements into our daily lives.
  1. To identify, locate, and honor all those who served in the MFAA section, regardless of nationality, and those who were instrumental in protecting Europe and Russia's greatest cultural treasures during World War II.
  Continue research to identify remaining unknown members of the MFAACompile biographies on members of the MFAAConduct video interviews with surviving Monuments Men and other key participantsWork with organizations and institutions built by Monuments Men to honor them and their contributions2. The Foundation will seek to promote and support educational programs in schools and universities in furtherance of the Foundation's Mission Statement. We believe this story, with its exciting still and moving images, can be an excellent teaching tool. It is our goal to work with business and civic leaders to fund the placement of a unique multi-hour DVD including The Rape of Europa documentary plus never before seen footage along with copies of the related books to all schools and libraries in the country.
  3. To identify, honor, and bestow the annual ''Monuments Men'' Award to individuals and institutions that represent and uphold the principles and ideals of the ''Monuments Men'' by making an extraordinary contribution to the protection of civilization's most important artistic and cultural treasures.
  4. To facilitate the recovery and restitution of important artistic, cultural, and historic treasures and documents that were stolen during World War II and have yet to be located.
  Operating on a confidential basis, the Foundation will offer research services to advise people concerned about the provenance of certain belongings they ownAssist in the return of those items to their rightful ownerPossibly provide legal services for restitution claims at a greatly discounted fee in contrast to the exceedingly high contingency fees now being charged by many law firms5. Encourage institutions and collectors to comply with the American Association of Museums' guidelines concerning provenance research during the Nazi era.
  Work with museums and collectors to offer assistance and suggestions on how to begin historical research of art and cultural items in their collections and why compliance is both cost efficient and imperative.
The Monuments Men (2013) - IMDb
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:56
  The Monuments Men (2013) - IMDb
  In a race against time, a crew of art historians and museum curators unite to recover renown works of art stolen by Nazis before Hitler destroys them.
  First Look: George Clooney and Matt Damon in The Monuments Men
  See all news
Ettus Research - Product Detail
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:23
  $675.00 US list price only
  USRP Instant SDR Kit
  The USRP' (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) Instant SDR kit is an off-the-shelf package of hardware and software that sets new industry standards in terms of price, performance and most of all "ease-of-use". Customers ordering Instant SDR will be up and running in 5 minutes or less.
  The Instant SDR Kit includes:
  NOTE: See "Related Products" to purchase your desired antenna.
  The USRP B100 and installed WBX daughterboard provide a flexible hardware platform that can serve a wide variety of applications: amateur radio, cellular, aviation bands, etc. The LiveUSB SDR Environment includes Ubuntu, UHD' (USRP Hardware Driver) software, GNU Radio, and many sample applications. With these components, users can start experimenting with SDR within a few minutes of opening the box.
  Contribute to the Growing Open-Source Movement
  With the Instant SDR Kit, you can gain access to a vibrant community of enthusiasts, students, and professionals. As part of this community you can find assistance for application development, share knowledge to further SDR technology and contribute your own innovations. Product support is also available from Ettus Research.
  The schematics for the USRP B100 and WBX can also be found in the "Schematics" section below.
  Migrate to High-Performance and Embedded SDR Platforms
  The Instant SDR Kit is an ideal starting point for new users. The LiveUSB environment, GNU Radio and UHD software provides seamless compatibility to higher performance USRP devices. If your application requires higher bandwidth, more dynamic range, embedded deployment, or coherent processing capability (i.e. MIMO) you can migrate your applications to our family of Networked or Embedded Series USRP devices.
  For more information on selecting the right USRP hardware for your application, please see Selecting a USRP Device.
  Other Resources
  Assembly Video
  More Information on Rapid SDR Development with the Instant SDR Kit
  Tutorial Set on Software-Defined Radio, USRP, and GNU Radio
  Schematics
  WBX RF Daughterboard Schematic
  WBX Grand-daughterboard Schematic
  USRP B100 Transceiver
  Sample Applications
  FM Receiver
  ADS-B Receiver
  Wideband Spectrum Monitoring with HDSDR
Bitcoin goes mainstream, Rick Santelli at CNBC talks with a guy installing Euro to Bitcoin ATMs in Cyprus
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BlackListedNews.com
  Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:01
  Rick Santelli gets his mind blown a bit along with what must have been a good portion of CNBC's viewing audience. This video is a good introduction however for those who are unfamiliar with Bitcoin. At this point all I'll say is that it's a very interesting innovation.
Global-warming Computer Models Fail as Temps Remain Stable
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  Archived Version
  Source: Dave says...
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:57
  ''If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies,'' the environment editor for Australia's largest newspaper quipped March 30, ''then climate sensitivity '-- the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels '-- would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded.'' The Australian for March 30 concluded that ''the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.''
  The Australian was reacting to an article published the same day in the British magazine The Economist, which quoted David Whitehouse of the pro-regulatory Global Warming Policy Foundation as admitting that ''If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change." Whitehouse's statement means that even the hyper-regulatory zealots are now admitting their apocalyptic models are exaggerated.
  According to The Economist, the growing gap between predicted global warming in computer models and a flat average global temperature means the scientific ''consensus'' manufactured by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have been wrong all along:
  The IPCC's estimates of climate sensitivity are based partly on GCMs [general-circulation models]. Because these reflect scientists' understanding of how the climate works, and that understanding has not changed much, the models have not changed either and do not reflect the recent hiatus in rising temperatures.
  The mismatch might mean that '-- for some unexplained reason '-- there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before.
  The stable temperature of the Earth since industrial era highs in the 1990s '-- despite increasing CO2 emissions from virtually every country (and especially from developing economies) since then '-- has also meant increasing skepticism from within the scientific community. Back in February, James Taylor of the Heartland Institute stated in Forbes magazine,
  Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
  The study Taylor mentioned, ''Science or Science Fiction? Professionals' Discursive Construction of Climate Change,'' does not put scientific opinion into quite those simple terms. The November 2012 peer-reviewed journal article in Organization Studies concluded that scientists do not merely have ''a binary debate of whether climate change is 'science or science fiction.' There are more nuanced intermediary frames that are constructed by these professionals.''
  For example, the survey found that ''virtually all respondents (99.4%) agree that the climate is changing. However, there is considerable disagreement as to cause, consequences, and lines of action.'' The 36-percent figure mentioned by Taylor in Forbes refers to what survey authors Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer termed ''comply[ing] with Kyoto.'' "Kyoto" references the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 amendment to the 1992 international treaty signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, that calls for radical global regulations to combat greenhouse emissions. Only 24 percent say that climate change is exclusively natural, while most of the rest of scientists believe climate change is a combination of human and natural factors.
  The study did find that belief among scientists in ''anthropogenic [human-caused] climate change has fallen from 75% (for the period between 1993 and 2003) as of 2004 to 45% from 2004 to 2008.'' The Organization Studies analysis of scientific opinion did not update the figures after 2008, as computer models began to fail. The analysis also noted that many scientists who believe in man-made climate change do not see it as a disaster, as the Earth has experienced in its long history several periods of significantly warmer weather than in the last 100 years.
Justin Bieber reveals the one thing he always wears: Le Labo Santal 33 cologne
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  Source: 33 World News
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:45
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Audio Kits
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:40
  Circuit Specialists carries a wide range of affordable audio kits '-- AM radio, preamplifier, stereo amplifier module, and much more '-- for those looking for hands-on experience while learning about circuitry. Our audio kits are ideal for students and adults alike. We offer amazing savings on bulk purchases, making our audio kits a great choice for the classroom. Some of our audio kits (e.g., the stereo preamplifier tone control and amplifier kits) work in conjunction with one another.
Velleman, Inc.
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  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:34
  Velleman, Inc.Select your country
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Best Electronics Kits For Adults
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:26
  There's an excellent thread over on Slashdot ( yeah - who knew, right?) about electronic kits for adults. *Lots of great suggestions and links - check it out!Best Electronics Kits For Adults?Posted by kdawson on Friday June 20, @10:19AMfrom the resistance-is-futile dept.An anonymous reader writes"I'm an adult looking to learn how electronics work and have some fun building projects. But all the kits I've found online are for kids 8-10 years old, and they don't really explain the principles - they just color-code where to place components on boards. Are there any kits aimed at adults? I know if anyone has got the answer, it's this community."
  Here's a short selection of good links - many more to be found in the Slashdot thread itself:
  HeathKit and Velleman - The classics, but mostly mentioned as an example of the "not aimed at adults" or the "not as good as they used to be" category
  Quasar Electronics 200-in-1- 200 projects in one kit!
  MakerShed - bunch of cool projects, many of which you've seen here at Instructables!
  Electronics Learning Lab Designed by Forrest Mims and sold by radio shack.
  What is a Microcontroller - Another "exception to the rule" good Radio shack kit.
  Ramsey Electronics - Including some nice radio transmitter kits
  AdaFruit - Including the MintyBoost USB charger and Arduino kits.
  Nerdkit - For microcontroller and real-world/computer interaction.
  One other common recommendation is "You're an adult, you don't need to put up with big brightly colored components and "put tab A in slot B" diagrams - make your own kit!"
  US Navy Electricity & Electronics Training Series (NEETS) - All the practical electronics training you could want, in a free online PDF book format.
  Lessons In Electric Circuits - A free series of textbooks on the subjects of electricity and electronics.
  Sparkfun tutorials - Dozens of cool projects and tutorials from a major parts supplier.
  Getting Started in Electronics - By Forrrest Mims; cited by several readers as the de-facto standard for learning electronics.
Cebek Audio Compressor Audio Input Module | PM-9 (PM9)
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:34
  No reviews yet!
  Login to rate or review this productEach pre'--assembled circuit module may be used with Cebek amplifiers, or any audio amplifier having a line level input. Microphone and guitar input modules feature board mounted level adjustments. The four channel mixer is unity gain on all channels, unless individual (optional) potentiometers are used. The stereo magnetic cartridge module also features RIAA equalization circuitry. All will operate from a single DC power supply, and require less than 50mA (#28-6225 requires 100mA). All boards are pre'--tested and include a three year limited war ...(read more below)
Georgia says it will further monitor Russian naval exercises
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: StratRisks
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:00
  Source: Azer
  The Georgian Foreign Ministry has announced that Tbilisi expresses deep concern about the unplanned and sudden exercises of the Russian military which go beyond the territory defined by the Vienna Agreement.
  Speaking at a briefing on Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani said that Georgia will continue to inform the international community on Russian military exercises being held near the maritime borders of the country.
  The Georgian side is distressed with the fact that near its borders large-scale exercises are conducted, with the date of completion and objectives not reported.
  Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the start of exercises in the Black Sea. It envisage about 7,000 troops, 30 ships, 250 armored vehicles and 50 artillery pieces for different purposes, up to 20 combat aircraft and helicopters, rapid deployment forces, airborne troops and Special Forces. The exercises held in the region, where in less than a year, the Olympic Games in Sochi to be held. Thus, the security of this region has been declared a priority for law enforcement bodies and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
  Zalakaliani stressed that Russia has completed naval exercises and all ships have returned to the place of deployment.
  ''According to the information received today [Apr.1], all Russian warships returned to the place of deployment and presumably exercises have been completed. However, we are closely monitoring the situation and informing the international community,'' he said.
  Meanwhile, Moscow officially dismissed Tbilisi's condemnation of the Russian military drills in the Black Sea region on Monday, RIA Novosti reported.
  Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich stated that the outgiving made from the Georgian side over threats to regional stability in connection with the Russian military exercises in the Black Sea are groundless and are irrelevant with the statements seeking to normalize relations with Russia.
  Georgia and Russia, its giant northern neighbor, have maintained no diplomatic relations since a brief war in 2008.Tbilisi broke off relations with Moscow in August 2008 when Moscow crushed a Georgian assault to reassert control over the two rebel regions '-- South Ossetia and Abkhazia '-- and later recognized the breakaway regions. Georgia announced the two unrecognized republics as occupied territories in September 2008.
  Tags: Abkhazia, Alexander Lukashevich, Armed Forces, Black Sea, community, diplomatic, Georgia, law, Moscow, Olympic Games, relations, russia, Russian Federation, Russian Foreign Ministry, Russian President Vladimir Putin, security, Special Forces, Vienna Agreement, war
President Obama Speaks on the BRAIN Initiative and American Innovation
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Video Feed
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:00
  East Room
  10:04 A.M. EDT
  THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Please have a seat. Well, first of all, let me thank Dr. Collins not just for the introduction but for his incredible leadership at NIH. Those of you who know Francis also know that he's quite a gifted singer and musician. So I was asking whether he was going to be willing to sing the introduction -- (laughter) -- and he declined.
  But his leadership has been extraordinary. And I'm glad I've been promoted Scientist-in-Chief. (Laughter.) Given my grades in physics, I'm not sure it's deserving. But I hold science in proper esteem, so maybe that gives me a little credit.
  Today I've invited some of the smartest people in the country, some of the most imaginative and effective researchers in the country -- some very smart people to talk about the challenge that I issued in my State of the Union address: to grow our economy, to create new jobs, to reignite a rising, thriving middle class by investing in one of our core strengths, and that's American innovation.
  Ideas are what power our economy. It's what sets us apart. It's what America has been all about. We have been a nation of dreamers and risk-takers; people who see what nobody else sees sooner than anybody else sees it. We do innovation better than anybody else -- and that makes our economy stronger. When we invest in the best ideas before anybody else does, our businesses and our workers can make the best products and deliver the best services before anybody else.
  And because of that incredible dynamism, we don't just attract the best scientists or the best entrepreneurs -- we also continually invest in their success. We support labs and universities to help them learn and explore. And we fund grants to help them turn a dream into a reality. And we have a patent system to protect their inventions. And we offer loans to help them turn those inventions into successful businesses.
  And the investments don't always pay off. But when they do, they change our lives in ways that we could never have imagined. Computer chips and GPS technology, the Internet -- all these things grew out of government investments in basic research. And sometimes, in fact, some of the best products and services spin off completely from unintended research that nobody expected to have certain applications. Businesses then used that technology to create countless new jobs.
  So the founders of Google got their early support from the National Science Foundation. The Apollo project that put a man on the moon also gave us eventually CAT scans. And every dollar we spent to map the human genome has returned $140 to our economy -- $1 of investment, $140 in return. Dr. Collins helped lead that genome effort, and that's why we thought it was appropriate to have him here to announce the next great American project, and that's what we're calling the BRAIN Initiative.
  As humans, we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than an atom. But we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears. (Laughter.) But today, scientists possess the capability to study individual neurons and figure out the main functions of certain areas of the brain. But a human brain contains almost 100 billion neurons making trillions of connections. So Dr. Collins says it's like listening to the strings section and trying to figure out what the whole orchestra sounds like. So as a result, we're still unable to cure diseases like Alzheimer's or autism, or fully reverse the effects of a stroke. And the most powerful computer in the world isn't nearly as intuitive as the one we're born with.
  So there is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked, and the BRAIN Initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember. And that knowledge could be -- will be -- transformative.
  In the budget I will send to Congress next week, I will propose a significant investment by the National Institutes of Health, DARPA, and the National Science Foundation to help get this project off the ground. I'm directing my bioethics commission to make sure all of the research is being done in a responsible way. And we're also partnering with the private sector, including leading companies and foundations and research institutions, to tap the nation's brightest minds to help us reach our goal.
  And of course, none of this will be easy. If it was, we would already know everything there was about how the brain works, and presumably my life would be simpler here. (Laughter.) It could explain all kinds of things that go on in Washington. (Laughter.) We could prescribe something. (Laughter.)
  So it won't be easy. But think about what we could do once we do crack this code. Imagine if no family had to feel helpless watching a loved one disappear behind the mask of Parkinson's or struggle in the grip of epilepsy. Imagine if we could reverse traumatic brain injury or PTSD for our veterans who are coming home. Imagine if someone with a prosthetic limb can now play the piano or throw a baseball as well as anybody else, because the wiring from the brain to that prosthetic is direct and triggered by what's already happening in the patient's mind. What if computers could respond to our thoughts or our language barriers could come tumbling down. Or if millions of Americans were suddenly finding new jobs in these fields -- jobs we haven't even dreamt up yet -- because we chose to invest in this project.
  That's the future we're imagining. That's what we're hoping for. That's why the BRAIN Initiative is so absolutely important. And that's why it's so important that we think about basic research generally as a driver of growth and that we replace the across-the-board budget cuts that are threatening to set us back before we even get started. A few weeks ago, the directors of some of our national laboratories said that the sequester -- these arbitrary, across-the-board cuts that have gone into place -- are so severe, so poorly designed that they will hold back a generation of young scientists.
  When our leading thinkers wonder if it still makes sense to encourage young people to get involved in science in the first place because they're not sure whether the research funding and the grants will be there to cultivate an entire new generation of scientists, that's something we should worry about. We can't afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead. We have to seize them. I don't want the next job-creating discoveries to happen in China or India or Germany. I want them to happen right here, in the United States of America.
  And that's part of what this BRAIN Initiative is about. That's why we're pursuing other ''grand challenges'' like making solar energy as cheap as coal or making electric vehicles as affordable as the ones that run on gas. They're ambitious goals, but they're achievable. And we're encouraging companies and research universities and other organizations to get involved and help us make progress.
  We have a chance to improve the lives of not just millions, but billions of people on this planet through the research that's done in this BRAIN Initiative alone. But it's going to require a serious effort, a sustained effort. And it's going to require us as a country to embody and embrace that spirit of discovery that is what made America, America.
  They year before I was born, an American company came out with one of the earliest mini-computers. It was a revolutionary machine, didn't require its own air conditioning system. That was a big deal. It took only one person to operate, but each computer was eight feet tall, weighed 1,200 pounds, and cost more than $100,000. And today, most of the people in this room, including the person whose cell phone just rang -- (laughter) -- have a far more powerful computer in their pocket. Computers have become so small, so universal, so ubiquitous, most of us can't imagine life without them -- certainly, my kids can't.
  And, as a consequence, millions of Americans work in fields that didn't exist before their parents were born. Watson, the computer that won ''Jeopardy,'' is now being used in hospitals across the country to diagnose diseases like cancer. That's how much progress has been made in my lifetime and in many of yours. That's how fast we can move when we make the investments.
  But we can't predict what that next big thing will be. We don't know what life will be like 20 years from now, or 50 years, or 100 years down the road. What we do know is if we keep investing in the most prominent, promising solutions to our toughest problems, then things will get better.
  I don't want our children or grandchildren to look back on this day and wish we had done more to keep America at the cutting edge. I want them to look back and be proud that we took some risks, that we seized this opportunity. That's what the American story is about. That's who we are. That's why this BRAIN Initiative is so important. And if we keep taking bold steps like the one we're talking about to learn about the brain, then I'm confident America will continue to lead the world in the next frontiers of human understanding. And all of you are going to help us get there.
  So I'm very excited about this project. Francis, let's get to work. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. Thank you. (Applause.)
  END
  10:16 A.M. EDT
  Close Transcript
WaPo Fact Checker Gives Obama ''Three Pinnochios'' For Repeatedly Claiming 40% Of Gun Sales Don't Undergo Background Checks'...
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Weasel Zippers
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:58
  The real number is 21%, and the vast majority of those are gifts between family members, which would still be exempt in the Senate's bill on universal background checks.
  ''Why wouldn't we want to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases to take place without a background check?''
  '-- President Obama, remarks on gun safety, March 28, 2013
  ''FACT: Nearly 40% of all gun sales don't require a background check under current law. #DemandAction''
  '-- tweet from @BarackObama, March 28
  . . . Why is it important to make a distinction between purchases and transactions? For one thing, the Senate bill that would expand background checks '-- supported by the White House '-- specifically makes an exception for ''a bona fide gift between immediate family members, including spouses, parents, children, siblings'' as well as ''the death of another person for whom the unlicensed transferor is an executor or administrator of an estate or a trustee of a trust created in a will.'' As noted above, such transactions can change the results.
  The Police Foundation report did not break out gun purchases, so in January we asked Ludwig to rerun the data, just looking at guns purchased in the secondary market. The result, depending on the definition, was 14 percent to 22 percent. That's at least half the percentage repeatedly cited by Obama.
  Since our initial report on this statistic appeared, The Washington Post in February included a question on background checks on a survey of Maryland residents, asking whether they went through a background check during a gun purchase in the past 10 years. The result? Twenty-one percent say they did not.
  Coincidentally or not, 21 percent falls within the 14-to-22 percent range for gun purchases without background checks in the 1994 survey. (Note: Because so few Marylanders buy guns, there is a large potential margin of error with this result.)
  A White House spokesman declined to comment on why the president keeps using the ''up to 40 percent'' statistic.
  The Pinocchio Test
  When we first looked at this issue, we noted that congressional foes of gun control had made it difficult for the federal government to conduct research on guns. But, as shown by the Washington Post survey of Maryland gun buyers, there is nothing stopping private pollsters from producing a more up-to-date survey.
  In the meantime, we have documented that (a) the survey numbers are about two decades old, so they include purchases that predate any background checks; (b) the survey sample is rather small; and (c) the results are significantly different when adjusted for ''purchases'' or ''sales'' '-- the phrasing used by the president.
  Two months ago, we were willing to cut the White House some slack, given the paucity of recent data. But the president's failure to acknowledge the significant questions about these old data, or his slippery phrasing, leaves us little choice but to downgrade this claim to Three Pinocchios.
After Benghazi, Marines approved for crisis response force
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  Archived Version
  Source: CNN Security Clearance
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:58
  By Barbara Starr
  The Pentagon has approved a Marine crisis response force for North Africa with air transport and combat capabilities, Defense Department officials said, a response to criticism the military was unable to get any forces to the scene of last September's deadly terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
  The plan for a force of 500 Marines that can arrive at a crisis point within 12 hours has been in the works for weeks.
  Details are being discussed with the Italian government and others in southern Europe, officials said.
  The United States hopes to quickly reach a final agreement for a base of operations, most likely in Italy. For now, the force will be based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
  The unit will be equipped with rifles, mortars, and other infantry weapons, and also will have six V-22 Osprey aircraft for quick transport.
  It will be able to conduct limited combat and security operations at U.S. facilities under attack as well as evacuate Americans, search for downed pilots, and offer humanitarian assistance.
  Eventually, it will also conduct training with military forces in the region.
  The Marine force is tailored to address what the military was not able to do in Benghazi last September 11.
  Militants attacked the compound without warning, essentially in two waves about six hours apart. The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed.
  Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a congressional hearing in February there was not enough time given the speed of the attack and the lack of "adequate warning" for the United States to respond militarily. There might have been an opportunity to act had it been a "prolonged or continuous assault," he said.
  At that same hearing, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said it would have taken up to 20 hours to mount an air attack, which may not have been effective anyway due to the type of assault that unfolded, with crews that were not alert status to begin with.
  "Frankly, even if we were able to get the F-16s or the AC-130s over the target in time, the mission still depends on accurate information about what targets they're supposed to hit. And we had no forward air controllers there. We had no (inaudible) - no communications with U.S. personnel on the ground. And as a matter of fact, we had no idea where the ambassador was at that point to be able to kind of conduct any kind of attacks on the ground," Panetta said.
  The Marine unit is supposed to solve that problem by putting troops directly into a specific area, officials said.
Obama $100 Million Plan to Map Brain
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  Archived Version
  Source: EconomicPolicyJournal.com
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:55
  Obama's so-called BRAIN Initiative, will spend $100 million beginning in 2014 to map the complex interactions between brain cells and neurological circuits. The goal is to find treatments for some of the most common brain disorders, led by Alzheimer's, epilepsy and brain injuries, Obama said today in the East Room of the White House.This is being promoted as an attempt to solve brain disorders, however, there is much more that can be done with a map of the brain and the idea that government will have this map is a very chilling thought.
U.N. approves first-ever global arms trade treaty
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  Archived Version
  Source: The Daily Star >> Live News
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:52
  UNITED NATIONS: The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday the first-ever treaty on global arms trade that seeks to regulate the $70 billion international business in conventional arms ranging from light weapons to battle tanks and warships.
  There were 154 votes in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions.
  Iran, Syria and North Korea last week prevented a treaty-drafting conference at U.N. headquarters from reaching the required consensus to adopt the treaty. That left delegations that support it no choice but to turn to a General Assembly vote to adopt it.
  The Iranian, Syrian and North Korean delegations cast the sole votes against the treaty on Tuesday.
  Iran, which is under a U.N. arms embargo over its nuclear program, is eager to ensure its arms imports and exports are not curtailed, diplomats said. Syria's government is embroiled in a two-year civil war and relies on Russian and Iranian weapons, they added.
  North Korea is also under a U.N. arms embargo due to its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
  The treaty will be open for signature June 3 and will enter into force 90 days after the 50th signatory ratifies it.
  Major arms producers China and Russia joined Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries in abstaining. A number of countries, led by India, which also abstained, complained the treaty favors exporting over importing states.
  The United States, the world's No. 1 arms exporter, voted in favor of the treaty despite opposition from the National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobbying group.
  The NRA opposes the treaty and has vowed to fight to prevent its ratification by the U.S. Senate when it reaches Washington. The NRA says the treaty would undermine domestic gun-ownership rights, a view the U.S. government rejects.
  The American Bar Association, an attorneys' lobby group, has said that the treaty would not impact the right to bear arms.
  Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari repeated that his government opposes the arms trade treaty because it does not ban the sale of weapons to non-state actors and "terrorists" like those allegedly active in Syria. The civil war there has claimed at least 70,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates.
  Syria routinely refers to rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad as "terrorists" supported by foreign governments.
  The treaty does not ban transfers to armed groups but says all arms transfers should be subjected to rigorous risk and human rights assessments first.
  British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the vote as a "landmark agreement that will save lives and ease the immense human suffering caused by armed conflict around the world."
  U.N. member states began meeting on March 18 in a final push to end years of discussions and hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over cross-border conventional arms sales.
  Arms control activists and human rights groups argued that a treaty was needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of arms and ammunition that they say fuels wars, atrocities and rights abuses.
  The arms trade treaty aims to set standards for all cross-border transfers of conventional weapons. It also would create binding requirements for states to review all cross-border arms contracts to ensure that arms will not be used in human rights abuses, terrorism or violations of humanitarian law.
  "The agreement of the arms trade treaty sends a clear message to arms dealers who supply warlords and dictators that their time is up," said Anna Macdonald of the global development group Oxfam. "They will no longer be able to operate and arm themselves with impunity. The world will be watching and will hold them accountable."
  Amnesty International's Frank Jannuzi said the NRA, which claimed credit last year for persuading the United States to block the treaty in July 2012, had failed this time.
  "Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked consensus at the U.N., while the NRA cynically - and ultimately unsuccessfully - tried to erode the U.S. government's support through a campaign of lies about the treaty," Jannuzi said. "But in the end, the global call for responsibility in the arms trade won out."
  The main reason the arms trade talks took place at all is that the United States - the world's biggest arms trader - reversed U.S. policy on the issue after President Barack Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.
French doctor commits suicide after appearing on hit reality television show
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  Archived Version
  Source: Stuff Ain't Right » Uncategorized
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:51
  The suicide of a doctor on a hit French reality TV show sparked shock on Tuesday, with some blaming media pressure for his death while others urged restrictions on reality programmes.
  Thierry Costa, a physician on ''Koh Lanta'' '-- the French version of ''Survivor'' '-- killed himself Monday in Cambodia just over a week after a candidate died on set, citing ''unfair accusations'' against him in the media.
  ''I hope the witnesses and websites that published these horrors about the Koh Lanta doctor had a bad night,'' @Sarah_IC said on Twitter, one of many who blamed sites and social networks for spreading misinformation about the candidate's death.
  The candidate '-- 25-year-old Gerald Babin '-- died of a heart attack on the first day of filming on the tropical island of Koh Rong on March 22, prompting French broadcaster TF1 to axe the show's 2013 season, its 16th.
  His death on March 22 '-- the first in any French reality TV programme '-- sparked questions about the way the show was run, and Costa was at the receiving end of accusations he failed to do his job properly.
  One widely used anonymous witness statement published on popular website Arret sur Images had questioned his handling of the candidate's death.
  ''Koh Lanta'' production firm Adventure Line Productions, meanwhile, has lodged an official complaint for ''slander'' over the statement.
  The two deaths have also sparked a wider debate in France over reality TV shows, which are hugely popular but are sniffed at by most opinion-makers.
  In a Tuesday interview in Le Parisien newspaper, Jeremie Assous '-- the lawyer for Babin's family '-- hit out at what he said were ''many labour code breaches but also breaches in hygiene and security rules'' in TV reality shows.
  Meanwhile Francoise Laborde '-- a journalist and member of state media regulator Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel '-- suggested that reality shows needed to be better monitored.
  ''We could require them to use a psychologist'' who would monitor the mental health of reality TV participants during and after filming, she said on Europe 1 radio.
  French authorities have already opened a preliminary enquiry into ''involuntary homicide'' to determine the cause of Babin's death, although the Cambodian authorities have determined that Babin died of natural causes.
  According to judicial sources, videos shot while the television programme was being made will be handed over to police on Tuesday, to help with the investigation.
  French doctor commits suicide after appearing on hit reality television show | The Raw Story.
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NYPD boss said stop-and-frisk designed to 'instill fear' in minorities
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  Archived Version
  Source: BadChad's ThoughtPile
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:49
  A New York State Senator testified in federal court Monday that New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly explained the city's controversial stop-and-frisk program as a means of instilling fear in young African American and Hispanic men.
  Twenty-two year NYPD veteran and State Senator Eric Adams told the court that in 2010 he traveled to Albany to voice his support to a bill that would forbid the NYPD from keeping a database of information pulled from stop-and-frisks that did not lead to an arrest. That bill would ultimately pass, but Adams testified on Monday that, upon telling Kelly the program disproportionately targeted young black and Latino men, the commissioner was far from concerned.
  The new testimony follows evidence from more than one New York cop indicating that the department has set, officially or unofficially, quotas for stop-and-frisks. There has also been recent testimony from those officers that the program specifically targets people of color.
  Kelly ''stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time they left their homes they could be targeted by police,'' Adams said.
  He said Kelly justified his reasoning by asking, ''How else would we get rid of guns?''
  ''I was amazed,'' Adams said in court. ''I told him that was illegal.''
  Under Kelly and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg the NYPD has stopped an estimated 4.4 million people, most of whom have been in the demographic Kelly allegedly described to Adams. The policy allows officers to stop pedestrians on the street if they perceive that person is on the way to committing a crime, is in the process of committing a crime, or leaving the scene of a crime. Roughly 94 per cent of the stops result in no charges.
  The program has come under attack in recent months as civil rights lawyers try to prove stop-and-frisk is a violation of the 4th and 14th amendments. Adams' testimony comes after previous witnesses told the court that NYPD officers have acted with impunity since the program began in 2002.
  Adams said stop-and-frisk is a ''great tool'' to stopping crime but mentioned that ''nowhere'' does it empower the NYPD to ''use the tool to instill fear. Nowhere.''
  City attorney Heidi Grossman questioned Adams' recollection of the conversation while claiming Kelly meant officers should ''instill belief'' in young men of minority backgrounds, not ''instill fear,'' though she did not specify what such a belief would be in.
  ''I don't think anyone in their right mind would believe the police commissioner would say the police department is targeting, just for targeting, blacks and Hispanics,'' Grossman said.
  She also tried to read from a written statement from Kelly denying the claim before being stopped by Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin.
  ''If he'd like to come here, he's welcome in this courtroom,'' Scheindlin said, regarding Grossman's attempted ''backdoor'' testimony from Kelly.
  Outside the courthouse Adams told reporters that because his Brooklyn district has one of the highest crime rates in the city, it is also heavily policed. He said his constituents find themselves trying to stay away from crime as well as overbearing law enforcement.
  ''They feel trapped,'' he said, adding that ''Cops don't want to do this. Cops are so frustrated they are wearing wires to roll call.''
Federal Register | Designation & Determination Pursuant to the Foreign Missions Act; Concerning the Provision of Application Services for Visas, Passports and Similar Documents by Private Entities to Foreign Missions in the United States
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:02
  Sections 202(a), 203, 204, and 207 of the Foreign Missions Act (codified at 22 U.S.C. 4301et seq.) (hereinafter ''the Act'') authorize the Secretary of State to designate benefits and provide or assist in the grant of benefits for or on behalf of a foreign mission. Therefore, pursuant to such authority, vested in me by Delegation of Authority No. 198, dated September 16, 1992, in order to protect the interests of the United States and to adjust for costs and procedures of obtaining benefits for missions of the United States abroad, I hereby designate the provision of application services with respect to visas, passports and similar documents by private entities on behalf of foreign missions in the United States as a benefit under the Act. For this purpose, such application services include, but are not limited to, appointment management, fee collection, document delivery, and the collection of biometric data from applicants.
  Additionally, I hereby determine the provision of such application services by private entities for foreign missions in the United States to be subject to such terms and conditions as may be established by the Department's Office of Foreign Missions and that any state or local laws to the contrary are hereby preempted.
  In accordance with § 211(a) of the Act, it shall be unlawful for any person to make available any benefits to a foreign mission that are contrary to the Act. The United States, acting on its own behalf or on behalf of a foreign mission, has standing to bring or intervene in an action to obtain compliance with this chapter, including any action for injunctive or other equitable relief.
  Dated: March 18th, 2013.
  Patrick F. Kennedy,
  Under Secretary for Management.
  [FR Doc. 2013-07628 Filed 4-1-13; 8:45 am]
  BILLING CODE 4710-43-P
Richard Dawkins on science: 'it works, bitches' | The Verge
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:18
  Author, evolutionary biologist, and militant atheist Richard Dawkins evoked a little XKCD magic on stage at Oxford's Sheldonian Theater recently. After speaking on "the major issues of importance to humanists and atheists at a time when opposition to rationalist thought appears to be on the rise," Dawkins fielded questions from the audience. When quizzed on the evidence for scientific theory in relation to evidence for any other belief system, Dawkins reeled off numerous examples for proving science works, before saying "it works, bitches." There's been some debate among Verge academics as to whether Dawkins was channeling Breaking Bad's Jesse Pinkman or referring to the famous XKCD comic, but popular consensus is with the latter.
Hairball Audio
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:56
  Product Name+ Stock Price Buy Now FET Compressor Hardware Bundle 113 $40.00 FET Compressor Rev A Bundle 41 $210.00 FET Compressor Rev A Bundle With Blackface Enclosure 41 $365.00 FET Compressor Rev A Bundle with Bluestripe Enclosure 41 $365.00 FET Compressor Rev D Bundle 41 $210.00 FET Compressor Rev D Bundle With Blackface Enclosure 41 $365.00 FET Compressor Rev D Bundle with Bluestripe Enclosure 41 $365.00 FET Compressor Rev F Bundle 41 $205.00 FET Compressor Rev F Bundle with Blackface Enclosure 41 $360.00 FET Compressor Rev F Bundle with Bluestripe Enclosure 41 $360.00 FET Compressor Rev G Bundle 90 $140.00 FET Compressor Rev G Bundle with Blackface Enclosure 89 $295.00 FET Compressor Rev G Bundle with Bluestripe Enclosure 90 $295.00 SA-2A Meter and Knob Bundle 21 $80.00 Stereo FET Compressor Rev A/D Bundle 10 $305.00 Stereo FET Compressor Rev F Bundle 10 $300.00 Stereo Link Kit 31 $9.00
PAiA - 9745ASM Mixer ASSEMBLED & TESTED, Odds and Sods, 9745ASM
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:02
  Assembled and Tested modules are custom built on demand and are typically shipped within two weeks of your order.This second-generation 9700-series processing element for modular sound synthesizers is designed to provide great sound and excellent value. This module is designed to be compatible with most modular synthesizer systems with little or no modification. Most active components are already mounted, making assembly a snap.
  A three-input one-output active mixer, the 9745 features 1/8" jack (tip-sleeve phone, aka 3.5mm mono) connectors with input level controls. Inputs to the module may be audio or control signals, or both. Individual level controls set the mix of each input to the output from none to full amounts and with as much as 5x gain.
  To purchase the do-it-yourself kit, click on the 9745K product page.
Portable Mixer - RED - Page53
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:55
  Design description:The target of this project was the design of a small portable mixer supplied by a 9V PP3 battery, keeping high quality performance.The mixer is formed assembling three main modules that can be varied in number and/or disposition to suit everyone needs.The three main modules are:
  Input Amplifier Module: a low noise circuit equipped with a variable voltage-gain (10 - 100) pre-set, primarily intended as high quality microphone input, also suitable for low-level line input.
  Tone Control Module: a three-band (Bass, Middle, Treble) tone control circuit providing unity-gain when its controls are set to flat frequency response. It can be inserted after one or more Input Amplifier Modules and/or after the Main Mixer Amplifiers.
  Main Mixer Amplifier Module: a stereo circuit incorporating two virtual-earth mixers and showing the connection of one Main Fader and one Pan-Pot.
  The image below shows a Block diagram of the entire mixer featuring four Input Amplifier Modules followed by four in-out switchable Tone Control Modules, one stereo Line input, four mono Main Faders, one stereo dual-ganged Main Fader, four Pan-Pots, a stereo Main Mixer Amplifier Module and two further Tone Control Modules switchable in and out for each channel, inserted before the main Left and Right outputs.Obviously this layout can be rearranged at everyone wish.An astonishing feature of this design lies in the fact that a complete stereo mixer as shown below in the Block diagram draws less than 6mA current!
  Block diagram:Input Amplifier ModuleCircuit diagram:Parts:R1,R2,R7_______22K 1/4W ResistorsR3,R4,R5_______47K 1/4W ResistorsR6______________4K7 1/4W ResistorR8,R13________220R 1/4W ResistorsR9______________2K 1/2W Trimmer Cermet (See Notes)R10___________470K 1/4W ResistorR11___________560R 1/4W ResistorR12___________100K 1/4W ResistorC1____________470nF 63V Polyester CapacitorC2,C8_________100µF 25V Electrolytic CapacitorsC3,C4,C5________2µ2 63V Electrolytic CapacitorsC6_____________47pF 63V Ceramic CapacitorC7______________4µ7 63V Electrolytic CapacitorQ1____________BC560C 45V 100mA Low noise High gain PNP TransistorQ2____________BC550C 45V 100mA Low noise High gain NPN TransistorIC1___________TL061 Low current BIFET Op-AmpCircuit description:The basic arrangement of this circuit is derived from the old Quad magnetic pick-up cartridge module. The circuit was rearranged to cope with microphone input and a single-rail low voltage supply.This low-noise, fully symmetrical, two-transistor head amplifier layout, allows the use of a normal FET input Op-Amp as the second gain stage, even for very sensitive microphone inputs.The voltage-gain of this amplifier can be varied by means of R9 from 10 to 100, i.e. 20 to 40dB.
  Notes:R9 can be a trimmer, a linear potentiometer or a fixed-value resistor at will.When voltage-gain is set to 10, the amplifier can cope with 800mV peak-to-peak maximum Line levels.Current drawing for one Input Amplifier Module is 600µA.Frequency response is 20Hz to 20KHz - 0.5dB.Total Harmonic Distortion measured with voltage-gain set to 100: 2V RMS output =
Rolls MX42 | Performance Audio
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:24
  Write a review of the Rolls MX42Review Guidelines''' Explain why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product's features & functionality and your own experience using the product.
  ''' Avoid single-word reviews, bad language, contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.), URLs, time-sensitive material or alternative ordering information.
  ''' Avoid comments about non-product related issues such as service and support, resellers, shipping, sales policies, or topics not directly related to the product's features or functionality.
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  Title of the review(please limit to 10 words)Rate this product(your overall rating of this product)Body of the reviewYour Name(nicknames are fine)Your Email(will not be displayed with the review)
ST-UMX3 '� 3x1 Universal Audio Mixer '� 3 microphone or line inputs x 1 microphone or line output
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:29
  STICK-ON SERIESSTICK-ONs are the original application-specific modules for the A/V, recording and broadcast industries. Module functions include signal detection, switching, pre-amplification, format conversion, line driving, power amplification, mixing, distribution, gain control, equalization, routing and more. Each STICK-ON is an ultra-compact module engineered to provide higher performance and longer life than other industry products. STICK-ON modules are solid encapsulated hybrid circuits in durable industrial black plastic enclosures (1.55", 3.94 cm x 3", 7.62 cm x 0.65", 1.65 cm) with clear bold white lettering for the terminal block connections, recessed trimming controls and switches.
  Since RDL first originated application-specific modules, STICK-ONs have led the industry in economical, high-performance and cost-effective long life solutions in system designs. Multiple STICK-ON modules can be interconnected to form all or part of an A/V system. A single STICK-ON module may be mounted right where its function is needed, often to add an input, output, or gain adjustment to existing equipment. STICK-ON modules allow customizing an A/V system to precisely match users' needs. Adding STICK-ONs to an existing system can extend system life by adding updated features, resulting in considerable cost savings. A complete range of backboard and rack mounting options is available for systems comprised of multiple STICK-ON modules.
  The technology used in STICK-ON modules has been regularly updated over the years to insure industry-leading performance. Functions and features provided by STICK-ONs, since their introduction, are still available today. This continuity in product offering and support makes STICK-ON modules the preferred long-term resource for system design solutions. STICK-ON SERIES modules are designed and manufactured in the U.S.A.
5-Input Stereo Mixer Kit with Monitor - SMART 1010
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:03
  5-Input Stereo Mixer Kit with Monitor - SMART 1010Professional quality STEREO mixer with five inputs and a monitor output that will satisfy even the most demanding user. It can be used to mix and fade in/out different stereo music and audio sources. Its high quality makes it suitable for disco, stereo FM transmitter, home hi-fi system, live recording and studio work.
  It has two stereo preamps for magnetic pick-up inputs incorporating RIAA correction, two stereo preamps for AUX inputs (Tape, Tuner or CD), one mono preamp microphone input. It also offers a Monitor output that can be connected to a pair of 8 Ohm stereo headphones (not supplied).
  Supplied complete with all board components including 5 sliding potentiometers (one for each input) that mount on the solder side of the board, a rotary pot for L/R Balance and a rotary switch for Input Selector. Kit includes solder for assembly.
  Software: EuropaCart, Copyright 1999-2013 Kryptronic, Inc. Exec Time: 0.183457 Seconds Memory Usage: 7.929962 Megabytes
Mixers Selector Electronic Project Kits - Modules
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:02
  Mixers Selector Electronic Project Kits - ModulesMixers Selectors from our Electronic Kits & Modules range for industrial, professional, educational and hobby applications
  Software: EuropaCart, Copyright 1999-2013 Kryptronic, Inc. Exec Time: 0.269601 Seconds Memory Usage: 8.152138 Megabytes
Rolls Corporation - Real Sound Rolls
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:46
  Rolls Corporation is an innovative audio electronics manufacturer specializing in interface accessories, mixers, amplifiers, signal processors and signal sources.
News | miniDSP
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:08
  2011 was an amazing year full of great partnerships and new product introductions! 2012 will be even better and here is a sneak-peek at what's to come..
  Introducing the OpenDRC platform, a new range of digital audio processor with floating point capabilities. Powered by Analog Devices ADSP21369 Sharc DSP, the OpenDRC engine easily handles complex audio filtering processing such as room correction, FIR crossover filtering, reverb engines... Flexibility, high performance and low cost are the obvious hallmarks of the OpenDRC series.
  As an all digital solution, the OpenDRC-DI (DI for Digital) carries the most common stereo digital audio formats (AES-EBU, SPDIF and Toslink) to match your existing equipment. Combined with an high quality Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter, the processor also easily adapts to any sample rate. The IR learning remote feature and/or rotary encoder will allow control of your source, active preset or master volume without the need of any PC once the unit configured. The perfect convolution engine in a box and without a PC in your Hifi system.
  Check out the product page and miniDSP webstore for more info.
  About us
  miniDSP Ltd is a company focusing on Flexible & Low cost digital signal processor kits. We strive to provide DIYers and OEM manufacturers Digital Signal Processing solutions that are simple to use, yet powerful. Stay tuned for upcoming product releases!
Zinc Negative Resistance Crystal Oscillators.
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:06
  Zinc Negative Resistance Crystal Oscillators.A Continuation Of My Original Zinc Negative Resistance Oscillator Article.By Nyle Steiner K7NS Feb 2008.Update March 23 2008. 1.3 mile to 3.5 mile distance.
  Update April 28 2008. 3.5 mile to 5 mile distance.
  Zinc Negative Resistance Flea Powered 80 Meter CW Transmitter.While listening to a hand size short wave receiver with BFO (Degen 1103), I could hear the flea powered transmitter pictured above from a distance of 5 miles (straight line GPS distance).
  Transmitter antenna was a random length wire run through a hole in the wall and thrown into a tree. Ground was a clip lead connected to the screw of an electrical outlet cover.
  The snow has finally receded enough that I could get to this 5 mile distant location up the mountain. From here, I could hear the transmitter located in the small town below.
  Zinc Negative Resistance Flea Powered 80 Meter CW Transmitter. Clip Kludge Style.This 80 meter transmitter using simpler construction, is identical to the one pictured above and works just about as well.
  Notice the "Rock Stable" mount for the zinc strip.
  Schematic of CW transmitters shown above.
  The 10k resistor provides a dc path from antenna to ground. This helps to prevent static discharges from the antenna. A jumper across the 10k resistor is usually necessary when running this transmitter without an antenna.
  Zinc Negative Resistance Ham Band Oscillators.This is a continuation of my previous article on negative resistance oscillators built using the homemade zinc negative resistance diode.
  My first article mainly described zinc negative resistance LC oscillators that I had made to run anywhere from sub audio up to 2 mhz. I had not put a lot of effort into making a zinc oscillator run above 2 mhz nor did I have much faith that one could run above that frequency. After all, this zinc negative resistance device was already running much faster than I had ever seen any unijunction transistor run back in the 1970's when unijunction transistors were popular. Making these zinc negative resistance oscillators was a very exciting experience but it left me with pipe dreams of being able to make them run on a ham band above 160 meters.
  Many of the rewards from writing web page articles come in the form of emails and gems of information from readers. I recently received an email from Robert Nickels W9RAN who had read my first article about the zinc oscillator. He reported success in making a zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator run at 3.579 mhz (middle of 80 meter ham band). I had not tried using crystals with the zinc oscillator in the past and was excited to hear of his success at 3.58 mhz.
  As you can imagine, I soon had my zinc negative resistance stuff back out on the table along with my box of collected crystals. I also had no difficulty in getting 80 meter crystals to oscillate. In fact with some experimenting and circuit refinement, I soon had a zinc crystal oscillator running at 10 mhz.
  If I could now figure out how to couple a zinc oscillator to an antenna, I could experience the thrill of being able to transmit on a ham band using just a homemade semiconductor and no tubes or transistors.
  The schematic above and the section below "Coupling The Oscillator To An Antenna" describe how I was able couple the zinc oscillator to an antenna making it into a transmitter.
  The diagram above shows the zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator. C1 is usually not necessary for 80 meter crystals (3.5 - 4 mhz) but C1 makes it much easier with higher frequency crystals such as 7 mh to 10 mhz.
  As can be seen above, it is now routine to make an 80 meter (3.5 to 4 mhz) cw transmitter using a zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator. At this point I have been able to make zinc oscillators run up to about 13 mhz but stable and reliable operation for a 40 meter (7 mhz) transmitter seems more difficult. A 40 meter transmitter is definitely possible but so far most of my effort has been concentrated on making an 80 meter transmitter.
  I will report later on making a 40 meter transmitter if I can get one working well some time.
  I have identified some key refinements that help make these zinc oscillators able to run at frequencies in excess of 10 mhz. The explanation is straightforward and intuitive. No mural of mathematical hieroglyphics is necessary here. I don't speak that language anyway.
  1: These zinc negative resistance oscillators are basically working as relaxation oscillators. They will run just fine using just a capacitance across the zinc diode. In fact I was able to obtain frequencies up to about 13 mhz just by running an oscillator in the relaxation oscillator mode.
  When a crystal is placed across the zinc diode, a relaxation oscillator is formed from the capacitance of the crystal and the charging resistance comprised of the 25k pot and 1k resistor. This relaxation oscillator can easily run at frequencies below the crystal frequency while the crystal remains inactive. If the frequency of this relaxation oscillator is increased to match that of the crystal resonant frequency, the crystal pops into action and has a tendency to lock the oscillator to the crystal frequency. The relaxation oscillator must be able to run at the crystal frequency by it's self in order to activate the crystal.
  Difficulty is encountered when you have a high frequency crystal with too much built in capacitance to allow the relaxation oscillator to reach the crystal resonant frequency. By putting in a very small capacitance of several pf C1 in series with the crystal, the overall capacitance is made small enough to allow the relaxation oscillator to reach the higher crystal frequencies.
  It seems that crystals up to about 4 mhz work well when connected directly across the zinc diode whereas higher frequency crystals around 7 to 10 mhz work much easier with C1 in series. I have been able to make C1 just by disconnecting one of the crystal clip leads and laying it over the point where it was previously connected. A couple of insulated wires two to three inches long twisted together also work well for C1.
  2: I find it easier to get these oscillators running by using 18 vdc from two nine volt batteries in series instead of using just 9 vdc from one battery. With a given amount of current through the charging pot and 1k resistor, the capacitor can charge faster when using 18 volts because it is charging more on the steeper part of the capacitance charge curve.
  3: It seems much easier to get these oscillators running if the zinc strip is positive with respect to the catwhisker. This is a bit interesting since these zinc negative resistance devices display very similar curves in both the positive and negative direction.
  4: I have been having great success at using a multiple tip catwhisker. I take a piece of stranded 26 gauge wire, strip 1/4" insulation from the end and arrange the protruding wires in the shape of a fan. I then cut the end of the fan straight with a pair of scissors. When using this as a catwhisker, I find the time looking for good spots on the zinc strip much shorter.
  Zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator running at 7.038 mhz.
  Zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator running at 10 mhz.
  Coupling The Oscillator To An Antenna.Realizing that the zinc negative resistance oscillator can easily run at ham band frequencies was exciting but I still had to figure out a way of coupling it to an antenna. As mentioned above, any extra capacitance placed across the crystal will swamp the relaxation oscillator and an antenna has plenty of capacitance.
  I had success by coupling the antenna to the ground side of the crystal and running the signal through the crystal into the antenna as shown in the 80 meter transmitter schematic above. The antenna now provides a load for the crystal to work into instead of swamping the circuit. The 10k resistor is simply a dc path to reduce static buildup and discharges from the antenna. A jumper across the 10k resistor is usually necessary when running the 80 meter transmitter without an antenna.
  My favorite antenna is a plain old random length long wire run through a hole in the wall and thrown into a tree. I love the simplicity, no coax, no separate lead in, no bother with swr etc. Each different length of wire will present its own impedance value to the transmitter. If you can match and drive whatever impedance the random length wire is presenting, it will radiate and you are ready to go.
  Contrary to what many articles on antennas seem to imply, an antenna does not need to be resonant in order to radiate a good signal. I believe that the biggest reason so much effort is put into making antennas resonant is because the resonant condition is part of a total configuration designed to present a 50 ohm impedance to the transmitter. 50 ohms is what most modern transmitters are designed to match. In the good ole days, many transmitters could be adjusted to drive almost any impedance whether it be 50 ohm coax, a random length of wire or even a light bulb dummy load.
  In years past, I have had many amazing cw qso's across the pacific ocean and across the united states using less than one watt and a wire thrown into a tree. One one occasion while using less than one watt near Los Angeles, I was having a qso with a ham in Japan using the random length wire thrown into a tree. He said that I sounded like 100 watts into a dipole.
  Flea Powered Transmitter Output Levels.The output power from a zinc negative resistance transmitter is very small (usually less than one milliwatt) but as pointed out above, a signal with very little power can be heard at unbelievable distances.
  It can be difficult to determine how much power is being fed to random length long wire antennas because of their wide variations of impedance but I believe you can get a reasonable idea of how much power a transmitter will put into an antenna by driving resistive loads and calculating the power dissipated by them. The zinc negative resistance transmitter seems to be able to drive a wide range of load impedances reasonably well.
  Different catwhisker settings produce various negative resistance characteristics and therefore have an effect on the amplitude of oscillations and amount of output power. Power output into a load seems to depend more upon a good catwhisker setting than it does upon an exact impedance match with the load. Almost any ballpark load impedance from an antenna therefore appears to be suitable for this transmitter.
  I experimented with several output load resistor values in place of the antenna to get an idea of how much power can be obtained from the 80 meter zinc transmitter. Using a 3579 khz crystal, I took measurements with four separate resistor load values placed between the antenna connection point and ground: 56 ohms, 150 ohms, 220 ohms and 510 ohms. The output power was derived by reading the peak to peak voltage across the load with an oscilloscope, dividing it by two and multiplying by .707 to get the rms voltage value. The rms voltage value was then squared and divided by the load resistance according to ohms law to obtain the power being fed into the load resistor.
  56 Ohms: Average 41.95 micro watts80 mv = 14.3 micro watts100 mv = 22.3 micro watts200 mv = 89.25 micro watts
  150 Ohms: Average 79.74 micro watts240 mv = 48 micro watts250 mv = 52 micro watts300 mv = 75 micro watts330 mv = 90.7 micro watts400 mv = 133 micro watts
  220 Ohms: Average 65.16 micro watts200 mv = 22.7 micro watts380 mv = 82 micro watts400 mv = 90.8 micro watts
  510 Ohms: Average 73.3 micro watts400 mv = 39 micro watts500 mv = 61 micro watts700 mv = 120 micro watts
  I do not believe there was enough inductance in the resistors or capacitance in the scope probe to adversely effect the quality of the above measurements. The output voltage readings were essentially the same when the scope probe was switched between X1 and X10.
  I was able to obtain higher levels of power output using a 1 mhz crystal. A few measurements were in excess of 1000 micro watts. In other words, a whopping 1 milliwatt.
  Transmitter Adjustment and Keying.Being a crystal oscillator, it is easy to adjust the transmitter by setting a nearby digitally tuned receiver to the crystal frequency and turning on the BFO. I usually set the 25k pot to approx 1/3 of its max resistance value, close the key and slowly slide the catwhisker along the zinc strip while listening to the receiver. As the catwhisker slides a few bursts of oscillations will be heard through the receiver as "chich" type sounds. When a steady oscillation is heard, I let go of the catwhisker and adjust the pot for the most stable oscillation. If it is unstable with a lot of warbles or does not key well with any pot setting, I look for a better catwhisker spot. While some catwhisker settings produce unstable, warbly and chirpy signals when keyed, other catwhisker settings will produce very stable signal that sounds near perfect when keyed. These of course are the desired settings for the catwhisker.
  I personally would not complain anyway about a few warbles or chirps especially in light of the tiny output power level and massive thrill level that this transmitter delivers using a simple homemade semiconductor.
  Sparkbangbuzz Home Page.Zinc Negative Resistance Crystal Oscillators.A Continuation Of My Original Zinc Negative Resistance Oscillator Article.By Nyle Steiner K7NS Feb 2008.Update March 23 2008. 1.3 mile to 3.5 mile distance.
  Update April 28 2008. 3.5 mile to 5 mile distance.
  Zinc Negative Resistance Flea Powered 80 Meter CW Transmitter.While listening to a hand size short wave receiver with BFO (Degen 1103), I could hear the flea powered transmitter pictured above from a distance of 5 miles (straight line GPS distance).
  Transmitter antenna was a random length wire run through a hole in the wall and thrown into a tree. Ground was a clip lead connected to the screw of an electrical outlet cover.
  The snow has finally receded enough that I could get to this 5 mile distant location up the mountain. From here, I could hear the transmitter located in the small town below.
  Zinc Negative Resistance Flea Powered 80 Meter CW Transmitter. Clip Kludge Style.This 80 meter transmitter using simpler construction, is identical to the one pictured above and works just about as well.
  Notice the "Rock Stable" mount for the zinc strip.
  Schematic of CW transmitters shown above.
  The 10k resistor provides a dc path from antenna to ground. This helps to prevent static discharges from the antenna. A jumper across the 10k resistor is usually necessary when running this transmitter without an antenna.
  Zinc Negative Resistance Ham Band Oscillators.This is a continuation of my previous article on negative resistance oscillators built using the homemade zinc negative resistance diode.
  My first article mainly described zinc negative resistance LC oscillators that I had made to run anywhere from sub audio up to 2 mhz. I had not put a lot of effort into making a zinc oscillator run above 2 mhz nor did I have much faith that one could run above that frequency. After all, this zinc negative resistance device was already running much faster than I had ever seen any unijunction transistor run back in the 1970's when unijunction transistors were popular. Making these zinc negative resistance oscillators was a very exciting experience but it left me with pipe dreams of being able to make them run on a ham band above 160 meters.
  Many of the rewards from writing web page articles come in the form of emails and gems of information from readers. I recently received an email from Robert Nickels W9RAN who had read my first article about the zinc oscillator. He reported success in making a zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator run at 3.579 mhz (middle of 80 meter ham band). I had not tried using crystals with the zinc oscillator in the past and was excited to hear of his success at 3.58 mhz.
  As you can imagine, I soon had my zinc negative resistance stuff back out on the table along with my box of collected crystals. I also had no difficulty in getting 80 meter crystals to oscillate. In fact with some experimenting and circuit refinement, I soon had a zinc crystal oscillator running at 10 mhz.
  If I could now figure out how to couple a zinc oscillator to an antenna, I could experience the thrill of being able to transmit on a ham band using just a homemade semiconductor and no tubes or transistors.
  The schematic above and the section below "Coupling The Oscillator To An Antenna" describe how I was able couple the zinc oscillator to an antenna making it into a transmitter.
  The diagram above shows the zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator. C1 is usually not necessary for 80 meter crystals (3.5 - 4 mhz) but C1 makes it much easier with higher frequency crystals such as 7 mh to 10 mhz.
  As can be seen above, it is now routine to make an 80 meter (3.5 to 4 mhz) cw transmitter using a zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator. At this point I have been able to make zinc oscillators run up to about 13 mhz but stable and reliable operation for a 40 meter (7 mhz) transmitter seems more difficult. A 40 meter transmitter is definitely possible but so far most of my effort has been concentrated on making an 80 meter transmitter.
  I will report later on making a 40 meter transmitter if I can get one working well some time.
  I have identified some key refinements that help make these zinc oscillators able to run at frequencies in excess of 10 mhz. The explanation is straightforward and intuitive. No mural of mathematical hieroglyphics is necessary here. I don't speak that language anyway.
  1: These zinc negative resistance oscillators are basically working as relaxation oscillators. They will run just fine using just a capacitance across the zinc diode. In fact I was able to obtain frequencies up to about 13 mhz just by running an oscillator in the relaxation oscillator mode.
  When a crystal is placed across the zinc diode, a relaxation oscillator is formed from the capacitance of the crystal and the charging resistance comprised of the 25k pot and 1k resistor. This relaxation oscillator can easily run at frequencies below the crystal frequency while the crystal remains inactive. If the frequency of this relaxation oscillator is increased to match that of the crystal resonant frequency, the crystal pops into action and has a tendency to lock the oscillator to the crystal frequency. The relaxation oscillator must be able to run at the crystal frequency by it's self in order to activate the crystal.
  Difficulty is encountered when you have a high frequency crystal with too much built in capacitance to allow the relaxation oscillator to reach the crystal resonant frequency. By putting in a very small capacitance of several pf C1 in series with the crystal, the overall capacitance is made small enough to allow the relaxation oscillator to reach the higher crystal frequencies.
  It seems that crystals up to about 4 mhz work well when connected directly across the zinc diode whereas higher frequency crystals around 7 to 10 mhz work much easier with C1 in series. I have been able to make C1 just by disconnecting one of the crystal clip leads and laying it over the point where it was previously connected. A couple of insulated wires two to three inches long twisted together also work well for C1.
  2: I find it easier to get these oscillators running by using 18 vdc from two nine volt batteries in series instead of using just 9 vdc from one battery. With a given amount of current through the charging pot and 1k resistor, the capacitor can charge faster when using 18 volts because it is charging more on the steeper part of the capacitance charge curve.
  3: It seems much easier to get these oscillators running if the zinc strip is positive with respect to the catwhisker. This is a bit interesting since these zinc negative resistance devices display very similar curves in both the positive and negative direction.
  4: I have been having great success at using a multiple tip catwhisker. I take a piece of stranded 26 gauge wire, strip 1/4" insulation from the end and arrange the protruding wires in the shape of a fan. I then cut the end of the fan straight with a pair of scissors. When using this as a catwhisker, I find the time looking for good spots on the zinc strip much shorter.
  Zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator running at 7.038 mhz.
  Zinc negative resistance crystal oscillator running at 10 mhz.
  Coupling The Oscillator To An Antenna.Realizing that the zinc negative resistance oscillator can easily run at ham band frequencies was exciting but I still had to figure out a way of coupling it to an antenna. As mentioned above, any extra capacitance placed across the crystal will swamp the relaxation oscillator and an antenna has plenty of capacitance.
  I had success by coupling the antenna to the ground side of the crystal and running the signal through the crystal into the antenna as shown in the 80 meter transmitter schematic above. The antenna now provides a load for the crystal to work into instead of swamping the circuit. The 10k resistor is simply a dc path to reduce static buildup and discharges from the antenna. A jumper across the 10k resistor is usually necessary when running the 80 meter transmitter without an antenna.
  My favorite antenna is a plain old random length long wire run through a hole in the wall and thrown into a tree. I love the simplicity, no coax, no separate lead in, no bother with swr etc. Each different length of wire will present its own impedance value to the transmitter. If you can match and drive whatever impedance the random length wire is presenting, it will radiate and you are ready to go.
  Contrary to what many articles on antennas seem to imply, an antenna does not need to be resonant in order to radiate a good signal. I believe that the biggest reason so much effort is put into making antennas resonant is because the resonant condition is part of a total configuration designed to present a 50 ohm impedance to the transmitter. 50 ohms is what most modern transmitters are designed to match. In the good ole days, many transmitters could be adjusted to drive almost any impedance whether it be 50 ohm coax, a random length of wire or even a light bulb dummy load.
  In years past, I have had many amazing cw qso's across the pacific ocean and across the united states using less than one watt and a wire thrown into a tree. One one occasion while using less than one watt near Los Angeles, I was having a qso with a ham in Japan using the random length wire thrown into a tree. He said that I sounded like 100 watts into a dipole.
  Flea Powered Transmitter Output Levels.The output power from a zinc negative resistance transmitter is very small (usually less than one milliwatt) but as pointed out above, a signal with very little power can be heard at unbelievable distances.
  It can be difficult to determine how much power is being fed to random length long wire antennas because of their wide variations of impedance but I believe you can get a reasonable idea of how much power a transmitter will put into an antenna by driving resistive loads and calculating the power dissipated by them. The zinc negative resistance transmitter seems to be able to drive a wide range of load impedances reasonably well.
  Different catwhisker settings produce various negative resistance characteristics and therefore have an effect on the amplitude of oscillations and amount of output power. Power output into a load seems to depend more upon a good catwhisker setting than it does upon an exact impedance match with the load. Almost any ballpark load impedance from an antenna therefore appears to be suitable for this transmitter.
  I experimented with several output load resistor values in place of the antenna to get an idea of how much power can be obtained from the 80 meter zinc transmitter. Using a 3579 khz crystal, I took measurements with four separate resistor load values placed between the antenna connection point and ground: 56 ohms, 150 ohms, 220 ohms and 510 ohms. The output power was derived by reading the peak to peak voltage across the load with an oscilloscope, dividing it by two and multiplying by .707 to get the rms voltage value. The rms voltage value was then squared and divided by the load resistance according to ohms law to obtain the power being fed into the load resistor.
  56 Ohms: Average 41.95 micro watts80 mv = 14.3 micro watts100 mv = 22.3 micro watts200 mv = 89.25 micro watts
  150 Ohms: Average 79.74 micro watts240 mv = 48 micro watts250 mv = 52 micro watts300 mv = 75 micro watts330 mv = 90.7 micro watts400 mv = 133 micro watts
  220 Ohms: Average 65.16 micro watts200 mv = 22.7 micro watts380 mv = 82 micro watts400 mv = 90.8 micro watts
  510 Ohms: Average 73.3 micro watts400 mv = 39 micro watts500 mv = 61 micro watts700 mv = 120 micro watts
  I do not believe there was enough inductance in the resistors or capacitance in the scope probe to adversely effect the quality of the above measurements. The output voltage readings were essentially the same when the scope probe was switched between X1 and X10.
  I was able to obtain higher levels of power output using a 1 mhz crystal. A few measurements were in excess of 1000 micro watts. In other words, a whopping 1 milliwatt.
  Transmitter Adjustment and Keying.Being a crystal oscillator, it is easy to adjust the transmitter by setting a nearby digitally tuned receiver to the crystal frequency and turning on the BFO. I usually set the 25k pot to approx 1/3 of its max resistance value, close the key and slowly slide the catwhisker along the zinc strip while listening to the receiver. As the catwhisker slides a few bursts of oscillations will be heard through the receiver as "chich" type sounds. When a steady oscillation is heard, I let go of the catwhisker and adjust the pot for the most stable oscillation. If it is unstable with a lot of warbles or does not key well with any pot setting, I look for a better catwhisker spot. While some catwhisker settings produce unstable, warbly and chirpy signals when keyed, other catwhisker settings will produce very stable signal that sounds near perfect when keyed. These of course are the desired settings for the catwhisker.
  I personally would not complain anyway about a few warbles or chirps especially in light of the tiny output power level and massive thrill level that this transmitter delivers using a simple homemade semiconductor.
  Sparkbangbuzz Home Page.
Global warming has INCREASED ice around Antarctica - | Mail Online
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:48
  Melted ice re-freezes faster than sea water in winter-studyAntarctica's expanding ice at odds with melting ArcticBy Mark Prigg
  PUBLISHED: 11:22 EST, 1 April 2013 | UPDATED: 11:24 EST, 1 April 2013
  Global warming is expanding the extent of sea ice around Antarctica, researchers have revealed.
  They say in winter a shift is caused by cold plumes of summer melt water that re-freeze fast when temperatures drop.
  An increasing summer thaw of ice on the edges of Antarctica, twinned with less than expected snowfall on the frozen continent, is also adding slightly to sea level rise in a threat to low-lying areas around the world, the report said.
  A Pod of orcas amongst the breaking sea ice, Ross Sea, Antarctica 2009. Researchers now believe the ice is increasing
  Climate scientists have been struggling to explain why sea ice around Antarctica has been growing, reaching a record extent in the winter of 2010, when ice on the Arctic Ocean at the other end of the planet shrank to a record low in 2012.
  'Sea ice around Antarctica is increasing despite the warming global climate,' said Richard Bintanja, lead author of the study at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
  'This is caused by melting of the ice sheets from below,' he told Reuters of the findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.
  Ice is made of fresh water and, when ice shelves on the fringes of Antarctica thaw in summer because of upwellings of warming sea water, the meltwater forms a cool layer that floats on the denser, warmer salty sea water below, the study said.
  In winter, the melt water readily turns to ice because it freezes at zero degrees Celsius, above sea water at -2C (28.4F).
  September 26, 2012, when ice covered more of the Southern Ocean than at any other time in the satellite record.
  At a winter maximum in September, ice on the sea around Antarctica covers about 19 million sq kms (7.3 million sq miles), bigger than Antarctica's land area. It then melts away into the ocean as summer approaches.
  Among other scientists, Paul Holland of the British Antarctic Survey stuck to his findings last year that a shift in winds linked to climate change was blowing a layer of melt water further out to sea and adding to winter ice.
  'The possibility remains that the real increase is the sum of wind-driven and melt water-driven effects, of course.
  'That would be my best guess, with the melt water effect being the smaller of the two,' he said.
  Bintanja's study also said the cool melt water layer may limit the amount of water sucked from the oceans that falls as snow on Antarctica. Cold air can hold less moisture than warm.
  'Cool sea surface temperatures around Antarctica could offset projected snowfall increases in Antarctica, with implications for estimates of future sea-level rise,' it said.
  The U.N. panel of climate scientists has estimated that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 cm (7-24 inches) this century, more if thaws of Antarctica and Greenland accelerate.
  The British Antarctic Survey and Nasa believe wind in behind the rise in ice levels in the Antarctic
  The panel's main scenarios assume that Antarctica alone will make sea levels fall by between 2 and 14 cms this century because more snowfall will extract water from the sea.
  But Sunday's study said that Antarctica was losing about 250 billion tonnes of ice a year - equivalent to 0.07 millimetre(0.003 inch) of sea level rise a year, Bintanja said.
  'Antarctic mass loss seems to be accelerating,' it said.
  Another study in Nature Geoscience said Antarctica's snowfall had been over-estimated by between 11 and 36.5 billion tonnes a year because of fierce winds blasting many regions.
  Strong winds created conditions to "sublimate" snow, or make it pass from a frozen state to a gas without first becoming liquid, a U.S.-led team wrote.
US Air Force to test possible death rays on the Slaves in San Antonio. Isn't that near Austin? HELLOO... Obama Hint No. 2 to AdamC
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: What Mel Cooley is saying.
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:46
  The Air Force is preparing to spend millions researching the biological effects of non-lethal directed-energy weapons, like these two versions of the Active Denial System.Photo: Marine Corps
  The Air Force is preparing to spend millions researching how unknown ''bioeffects'' happen when the human body is blasted by radiowaves and high-powered microwaves '-- which the Air Force hopes could lead to exotic new energy weapons.
  Recently, the Air Force Bioeffects Division announced it's exploring how radiation from non-lethal energy weapons can causes changes to the body at the molecular level. The Air Force is pretty broad about what kind of weapons it wants to test: ''directed energy, riot control agents, broadband light, acoustic sounds, and blunt impact materials.'' An award for a $49 million contract to conduct studies, laboratory tests and field experiments is expected in September, and tests in San Antonio are expected to last for seven years.
  If those weapons are developed by another nation and used on Americans, the Air Force wants to know what kind of unusual health effects its troops might encounter. But there's a flipside. The announcement notes that discovering new bioeffects on the human body could have ''defensive or offensive'' uses, and lead to the ''development and deployment of future DE [directed energy] weapons.'' Hmm.
  The Air Force still has to do the research first. For that, it'll carry out ''proteomic, genomic, and metabolomic studies that identify critical biochemical or molecular changes following exposure to DE [directed energy weapons] prior to or during mission operations.'' That could mean looking at how concentrated blasts of radio frequency waves and high-power microwaves manipulate our proteins, DNA and metabolites.
  To be clear: The Air Force doesn't want to kill you by messing with your DNA. These are explicitly tests for non-lethal weapons. The announcement notes that the tests may involve human subjects (and animals), and that it will ''prohibit research that presents unacceptable hazards or otherwise fails to comply with DoD procedures.''
  Most directed-energy weapons are also '-- in theory '-- supposed to leave you unharmed after you've run fleeing from them, possibly puking your guts out. If the Air Force wants to stop a stranger from approaching a base, a heat-ray or sound-blaster are useful ''escalation of force options,'' as the announcement sensitively describes it.
  That's somewhere on the scale between an audio warning and shooting the person. And these machines are not exactly new. Sound cannons like the Long-Range Acoustic Device use a combination of audio frequencies that are so loud and horrible it can make you vomit. Being blasted by a pain-ray like the Air Force's Active Denial System '-- which uses millimeter waves to make you feel like you just stepped into an oven '-- will still hurt, but the idea is that you'll survive. Turn it up to full power, though, and you could put someone in a hospital burn unit.
  The weapons also pose something of a diplomatic problem. The Active Denial System was sent to Afghanistan '-- briefly '-- before it was recalled without ever being used, considering the propaganda value it would have given to the Taliban. But in the aftermath of the assault on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi and the killing of the U.S. ambassador there, the State Department touted non-lethal energy weapons as one potential defense against embassy attacks.
  Though the Air Force building exotic weapons that mess with your biology in unknown ways probably wouldn't help, diplomatically.
It Can Happen Here: The Bank Confiscation Scheme for US and UK Depositors
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Dprogram.net
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:45
  (GlobalResearch) '' Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone ''troika'' officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed in my last article here, indicating that this isn't just an emergency measure for troubled Eurozone countries. New Zealand's Voxy reported on March 19th:
  The National Government [is] pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts . . . .
  Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English's favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank's bail out.
  Can They Do That?
  Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor's funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank's, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into ''bank equity.'' The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.
  The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called ''Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.'' It begins by explaining that the 2008 banking crisis has made it clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts is needed to maintain ''financial stability.'' Evidently anticipating that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite, the authors state:
  An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositors] into equity [or stock]. In the U.S., the new equitywould become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself'--thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution.
  No exception is indicated for ''insured deposits'' in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. The FDIC is an insurance company funded by premiums paid by private banks. The directive is called a ''resolution process,'' defined elsewhere as a plan that ''would be triggered in the event of the failure of an insurer . . . .'' The only mention of ''insured deposits'' is in connection with existing UK legislation, which the FDIC-BOE directive goes on to say is inadequate, implying that it needs to be modified or overridden.
  An Imminent Risk
  If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be ''at risk'' and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008. That this dire scenario could actually materialize was underscored by Yves Smith in a March 19th post titled When You Weren't Looking, Democrat Bank Stooges Launch Bills to Permit Bailouts, Deregulate Derivatives. She writes:
  In the US, depositors have actually been put in a worse position than Cyprus deposit-holders, at least if they are at the big banks that play in the derivatives casino. The regulators have turned a blind eye as banks use their depositaries to fund derivatives exposures. And as bad as that is, the depositors, unlike their Cypriot confreres, aren't even senior creditors. Remember Lehman? When the investment bank failed, unsecured creditors (and remember, depositors are unsecured creditors) got eight cents on the dollar. One big reason was that derivatives counterparties require collateral for any exposures, meaning they are secured creditors. The 2005 bankruptcy reforms made derivatives counterparties senior to unsecured lenders.
  One might wonder why the posting of collateral by a derivative counterparty, at some percentage of full exposure, makes the creditor ''secured,'' while the depositor who puts up 100 cents on the dollar is ''unsecured.'' But moving on '' Smith writes:
  Lehman had only two itty bitty banking subsidiaries, and to my knowledge, was not gathering retail deposits. But as readers may recall, Bank of America moved most of its derivatives from its Merrill Lynch operation [to] its depositary in late 2011.
  Its ''depositary'' is the arm of the bank that takes deposits; and at B of A, that means lots and lots of deposits. The deposits are now subject to being wiped out by a major derivatives loss. How bad could that be? Smith quotes Bloomberg:
  . . . Bank of America's holding company . . . held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June . . . .
  That compares with JPMorgan's deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm's $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.
  $75 trillion and $79 trillion in derivatives! These two mega-banks alone hold more in notional derivatives each than the entire global GDP (at $70 trillion). The ''notional value'' of derivatives is not the same as cash at risk, but according to a cross-post on Smith's site:
  By at least one estimate, in 2010 there was a total of $12 trillion in cash tied up (at risk) in derivatives . . . .
  $12 trillion is close to the US GDP. Smith goes on:
  . . . Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. . . . Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.
  But it's even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors.
  Perhaps, but Congress has already been burned and is liable to balk a second time. Section 716 of the Dodd-Frank Act specifically prohibits public support for speculative derivatives activities. And in the Eurozone, while the European Stability Mechanism committed Eurozone countries to bail out failed banks, they are apparently having second thoughts there as well. On March 25th, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who played a leading role in imposing the deposit confiscation plan on Cyprus, told reporters that it would be the template for any future bank bailouts, and that ''the aim is for the ESM never to have to be used.''
  That explains the need for the FDIC-BOE resolution. If the anticipated enabling legislation is passed, the FDIC will no longer need to protect depositor funds; it can just confiscate them.
  Worse Than a Tax
  An FDIC confiscation of deposits to recapitalize the banks is far different from a simple tax on taxpayers to pay government expenses. The government's debt is at least arguably the people's debt, since the government is there to provide services for the people. But when the banks get into trouble with their derivative schemes, they are not serving depositors, who are not getting a cut of the profits. Taking depositor funds is simply theft.
  What should be done is to raise FDIC insurance premiums and make the banks pay to keep their depositors whole, but premiums are already high; and the FDIC, like other government regulatory agencies, is subject to regulatory capture. Deposit insurance has failed, and so has the private banking system that has depended on it for the trust that makes banking work.
  The Cyprus haircut on depositors was called a ''wealth tax'' and was written off by commentators as ''deserved,'' because much of the money in Cypriot accounts belongs to foreign oligarchs, tax dodgers and money launderers. But if that template is applied in the US, it will be a tax on the poor and middle class. Wealthy Americans don't keep most of their money in bank accounts. They keep it in the stock market, in real estate, in over-the-counter derivatives, in gold and silver, and so forth.
  Are you safe, then, if your money is in gold and silver? Apparently not '' if it's stored in a safety deposit box in the bank. Homeland Security has reportedly told banks that it has authority to seize the contents of safety deposit boxes without a warrant when it's a matter of ''national security,'' which a major bank crisis no doubt will be.
  The Swedish Alternative: Nationalize the Banks
  Another alternative was considered but rejected by President Obama in 2009: nationalize mega-banks that fail. In a February 2009 article titled ''Are Uninsured Bank Depositors in Danger?'', Felix Salmon discussed a newsletter by Asia-based investment strategist Christopher Wood, in which Wood wrote:
  It is . . . amazing that Obama does not understand the political appeal of the nationalization option. . . . [D]espite this latest setback nationalization of the banks is coming sooner or later because the realities of the situation will demand it. The result will be shareholders wiped out and bondholders forced to take debt-for-equity swaps, if not hopefully depositors.
  On whether depositors could indeed be forced to become equity holders, Salmon commented:
  It's worth remembering that depositors are unsecured creditors of any bank; usually, indeed, they're by far the largest class of unsecured creditors.
  President Obama acknowledged that bank nationalization had worked in Sweden, and that the course pursued by the US Fed had not worked in Japan, which wound up instead in a ''lost decade.'' But Obama opted for the Japanese approach because, according to Ed Harrison, ''Americans will not tolerate nationalization.''
  But that was four years ago. When Americans realize that the alternative is to have their ready cash transformed into ''bank stock'' of questionable marketability, moving failed mega-banks into the public sector may start to have more appeal.
  Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of eleven books, includingWeb of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.comand ellenbrown.com. For details of the June 2013 Public Banking Institute conference in San Rafael, California, see here.
  Source: Global Research
No April Fools: Obama's Green Energy Stimulus is Officially a Joke. Did a $5.9 billion loan guarantee to Ford Motor Company really convert 33,000 employees to 'green jobs'?
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  Source: 33 World News
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:41
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The Gates of Berlin
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  Archived Version
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:21
  For those of the tourists and tots who do not know who David Stockman was, this gentleman was President Ronald Reagan's budget director. Mr. Stockman was part of the triad targeted by the media for ruin, who included James Watt of the Interior and Ray Donovan who uttered the famous lines after those heinous liberals at Justice dragged him into court to "get Reagan" and the jury acquited him as innocent, in the words, "Now where do I go to get back my good name".
  This was all part of the Buckley, Bush and Rockefeller RHINO's of the cartel softening up Reagan in the same way that they did Richard Nixon all to overthrow the Government of America.
  The puppy press in that time smeared Mr. Stockman, by stating that he wanted on school lunch programs to make ketchup a vegetable on the menu.There was great fodder made of that ridiculous assertion as the press with the same attack as on Sarah Palin in vehemence went on to political rapine.
  David Stockman took the burnt of the blows like all of these good men who were honest and were serving Ronald Reagan and Americans completely for America. It was criminal and is criminal in what was done to these gentlemen, as much as Linda Chavez when President Reagan tried to get her elected to the Senate and that ass Ed Rollins of the feudalcrats destroyed her campaign.
  I would that each of you, as you ponder Mr. Stockman's book in knowing the realities he is speaking of in Americans have been lied to and robbed, to also note one thing as it is getting less and less noticable now as the Reagan people are dying. That reality is something missing from politics, and that includes Big Gulp Palin, who this blog is attempting to drag from the feudal brothel and wash this whore up to be presentable again, and that is, ALL of the Ronald Reagan people were and are titans in their presence.
  Mr. Stockman was a young man in those days and not exactly thought of as a heavyweight like the inside group, but as they years have passed one notes that when he speaks now his words have immense weight to them, compared to what is on the political stage now, led by this Birther Obama Chin.
  One does forget things, even in reviewing media files what Reagan's people were all about in Cap Weinberger, Richard Pearle, Bud MacFarland, Richard Secord etc... Yet when someone like Ed Meese weighs in on "law of the sea" that Obama was trying to pass to give up American rights, one hears Reagan speaking in that thunder and clash of lightniing in simply explaining "law of the sea" was another rapine of America in taking their work, technology and money and redistributing it to the 3rd world welfare state.
  The Reagan people were gifted in cutting through subjects complex and telling you exactly the way it was. One gets glimpses of that in Mark Levin, but Levin bows to his Mockingbird Ashkenaz wages of lying to people just enough at times from sodomy to bio fuels to be outed as a liar serving someone else like Peggy Noonan or Ann Coulter.
  Mr. Stockman might have his own verbiage of DEFORMATION, while I utilize STRANGULATION and the FEUDAL STATE, but his words are a thunder clap and lightning strike in simply and completely explaining all what has taken place, in exact ways that the legendary Milton Friedman spoke in teaching the ignornant about economics.
  Ronald Reagan had the best people by God in the world and 30 years later, those people who were children then, still sound with that same great communication clarity.
  Mr. Stockman does not address the wholesale Giethner Obama illegal running the stock market for bribes and revenue gleaning, in the US Treasury now the multi trillion dollar debt holder of stock margins, along with the using of US funds to create the Neo Roman and New Asian empires for spheres of rule, so he is either ignorant or intelligent enough to know if he spoke of those things he would end up like Andrew Breitbart, but he reality is David Stockman in a concise discourse explains what is wrong, what was wrong, and that nothing is fixed by Obama Bernanke, and the entire system is in worse shape, since the second 9 11 economic attack on America in the 2008 Obama Super Depression which installed him from the Gates of Berlin to ruin America as a competitor to the global feudal state.
  It is at times like this that I miss Ronald Reagan and his Americans. They were leaders and that is they the Rovians and Obamaniacs have deprived America of them. One hears in them leadership compared to the lies of Obama, McCain and whatever else is puking out deceptions as the minders in the media like Mark Levin rant about STATIS and other uncomprehensible terms to cloud American minds from that shining city on a hill which spoke a concise America language all could comprehend.
  I post Mr. Stockman's interview below, but offer that you at least click on the link as traffic flow assists paying the bills on some sites who advertise. It certainly is better to help a page which produces David Stockman than some Ulsterman type insider disinformation.
  nuff said
  agtG
  Adam Taggart, Peak Prosperity Then, when the Fed's fire hoses started spraying an elephant soup of liquidity injections in every direction and its balance sheet grew by $1.3 trillion in just thirteen weeks compared to $850 billion during its first ninety-four years, I became convinced that the Fed was flying by the seat of its pants, making it up as it went along. It was evident that its aim was to stop the hissy fit on Wall Street and that the thread of a Great Depression 2.0 was just a cover story for a panicked spree of money printing that exceeded any other episode in recorded human history.David Stockman, The Great Deformation
  David Stockman, former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, and veteran financier is an insider's insider. Few people understand the ways in which both Washington DC and Wall Street work and intersect better than he does.
  In his upcoming book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America[37], Stockman lays out how we have devolved from a free market economy into a managed one that operates for the benefit of a privileged few. And when trouble arises, these few are bailed out at the expense of the public good.
  By manipulating the price of money through sustained and historically low interest rates, Greenspan and Bernanke created an era of asset mis-pricing that inevitably would need to correct. And when market forces attempted to do so in 2008, Paulson et al hoodwinked the world into believing the repercussions would be so calamitous for all that the institutions responsible for the bad actions that instigated the problem needed to be rescued -- in full -- at all costs.Of course, history shows that our markets and economy would have been better off had the system been allowed to correct. Most of the "too big to fail" institutions would have survived or been broken into smaller, more resilient, entities. For those that would have failed, smaller, more responsible banks would have stepped up to replace them - as happens as part of the natural course of a free market system:
  Essentially there was a cleansing run on the wholesale funding market in the canyons of Wall Street going on. It would have worked its will, just like JP Morgan allowed it to happen in 1907 when we did not have the Fed getting in the way. Because they stopped it in its tracks after the AIG bailout and then all the alphabet soup of different lines that the Fed threw out, and then the enactment of TARP, the last two investment banks standing were rescued, Goldman and Morgan [Stanley], and they should not have been. As a result of being rescued and having the cleansing liquidation of rotten balance sheets stopped, within a few weeks and certainly months they were back to the same old games, such that Goldman Sachs got $10 billion dollars for the fiscal year that started three months later after that check went out, which was October 2008. For the fiscal 2009 year, Goldman Sachs generated what I call a $29 billion surplus '' $13 billion of net income after tax, and on top of that $16 billion of salaries and bonuses, 95% of it which was bonuses.
  Therefore, the idea that they were on death's door does not stack up. Even if they had been, it would not make any difference to the health of the financial system. These firms are supposed to come and go, and if people make really bad bets, if they have a trillion dollar balance sheet with six, seven, eight hundred billion dollars worth of hot-money short-term funding, then they ought to take their just reward, because it would create lessons, it would create discipline. So all the new firms that would have been formed out of the remnants of Goldman Sachs where everybody lost their stock values '' which for most of these partners is tens of millions, hundreds of millions '' when they formed a new firm, I doubt whether they would have gone back to the old game. What happened was the Fed stopped everything in its tracks, kept Goldman Sachs intact, the reckless Goldman Sachs and the reckless Morgan Stanley, everyone quickly recovered their stock value and the game continues. This is one of the evils that comes from this kind of deep intervention in the capital and money markets.
  Stockman's anger at the unnecessary and unfair capital transfer from taxpayer to TBTF bank is matched only by his concern that, even with those bailouts, the banking system is still unacceptably vulnerable to a repeat of the same crime:The banks quickly worked out their solvency issues because the Fed basically took it out of the hides of Main Street savers and depositors throughout America. When the Fed panicked, it basically destroyed the free-market interest rate '' you cannot have capitalism, you cannot have healthy financial markets without an interest rate, which is the price of money, the price of capital that can freely measure and reflect risk and true economic prospects.
  Well, once you basically unplug the pricing mechanism of a capital market and make it entirely an administered rate by the Fed, you are going to cause all kinds of deformations as I call them, or mal-investments as some of the Austrians used to call them, that basically pollutes and corrupts the system. Look at the deposit rate right now, it is 50 basis points, maybe 40, for six months. As a result of that, probably $400-500 billion a year is being transferred as a fiscal maneuver by the Fed from savers to the banks. They are collecting the spread, they've then booked the profits, they've rebuilt their book net worth, and they paid back the TARP basically out of what was thieved from the savers of America.Now they go down and pound the table and whine and pout like JP Morgan and the rest of them, you have to let us do stock buy backs, you have to let us pay out dividends so we can ramp our stock and collect our stock option winnings. It is outrageous that the authorities, after the so-called ''near death experience" of 2008 and this massive fiscal safety net and monetary safety net was put out there, is allowing them to pay dividends and to go into the market and buy back their stock. They should be under house arrest in a sense that every dime they are making from this artificial yield group being delivered by the Fed out of the hides of savers should be put on their balance sheet to build up retained earnings, to build up a cushion. I do not care whether it is fifteen or twenty or twenty-five percent common equity and retained earnings-to-assets or not, that is what we should be doing if we are going to protect the system from another raid by these people the next time we get a meltdown, which can happen at any time.
  You can see why I talk about corruption, why crony capitalism is so bad. I mean, the Basel capital standards, they are a joke. We are just allowing the banks to go back into the same old game they were playing before. Everybody said the banks in late 2007 were the greatest thing since sliced bread. The market cap of the ten largest banks in America, including from Bear Stearns all the way to Citibank and JP Morgan and Goldman and so forth, was $1.25 trillion. That was up thirty times from where the predecessors of those institutions had been. Only in 1987, when Greenspan took over and began the era of bubble finance '' slowly at first then rapidly, eventually, to have the market cap grow thirty times '' and then on the eve of the great meltdown see the $1.25 trillion to market cap disappear, vanish, vaporize in panic in September 2008. Only a few months later, $1 trillion of that market cap disappeared in to the abyss and panic, and Bear Stearns is going down, and all the rest.
  This tells you the system is dramatically unstable. In a healthy financial system and a free capital market, if I can put it that way, you are not going to have stuff going from nowhere to @1.2 trillion and then back to a trillion practically at the drop of a hat. That is instability; that is a case of a medicated market that is essentially very dangerous and is one of the many adverse consequences and deformations that result from the central-bank dominated, corrupt monetary system that has slowly built up ever since Nixon closed the gold window, but really as I say in my book, going back to 1933 in April when Roosevelt took all the private gold. So we are in a big dead-end trap, and they are digging deeper every time you get a new maneuver.
Remarks by the President and First Lady at the 2013 White House Easter Egg Roll
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  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:21
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  April 01, 2013
  South Lawn
  10:48 A.M. EDT
  THE PRESIDENT: This is Jessica Sanchez, everybody! Give her a big round of applause. (Applause.) Kid President -- give Kid President a big round of applause. (Applause.) The Easter Bunny is here. Give the Easter Bunny a big round of applause. (Applause.)
  It is wonderful to see all of you. And I just want to say welcome. You guys brought the great weather. It was a little shaky this morning, but all of you did a great job sending a message upstairs, and now we've got beautiful weather.
  And I now want to introduce the star of the Obama family, my wife, the First Lady, Michelle Obama. (Applause.)
  MRS. OBAMA: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Kid President, Robbie Novak. Isn't he wonderful? (Applause.) Robbie, we're so proud to have you here. You have been so inspiring. I can't imagine that there's anyone who hasn't seen your video, right? You make us all want to work hard and be better. That's right. So you're going to spend a little time in the Oval Office just fixing things up for this President, aren't you? All right, well, it's good to have you here.
  And it's great to have everyone here this morning. We are so excited. The Easter Egg Roll is the biggest event that we have here on the South Lawn of the White House each year. Today we're going to have more than 30,000 people who will pass through this yard in celebration of nutrition and health and activity. And we could not do this if it were not for all of our wonderful volunteers, our staff, all of the terrific performers and athletes who have taken time out of their lives and their busy days to make this important. So we need to give all of them a round of applause for all their hard work. (Applause.) Yes, indeed!
  So today, we want you to have a great time. We want you to run around. We want you to go over and see the White House Garden. We want you to learn about making tasty, healthy food. We're going to come down and do some Easter egg roll. We're going to read some stories. But overall, we want you guys to have a good time and keep moving and be healthy. And, kids, eat your vegetables, okay?
  All right, you all, take care. We'll see you down there. Bye-bye. Thank you. (Applause.)
  END
  10:51 A.M. EDT
President Obama To Nominate Brian Deese to Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget
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  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:19
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  April 01, 2013
  WASHINGTON, DC '' Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:
  Brian Deese '' Deputy Director, Office of Management and BudgetPresident Obama said, ''From helping to navigate our rescue of a financial system on the brink of collapse to retooling a flatlining auto industry to crafting a policy to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable path, Brian Deese has proven an indispensable member of my economic team. He has a deep and intuitive understanding of economic and budgetary policy, and I am confident he will serve America well in this new role. As we continue to pursue a balanced approach that significantly reduces the deficit while investing in economic growth, job creation and the middle class, there's no one better suited to take on this important role than Brian.''
  "Brian has impressed me and our entire team with his strong leadership and sound judgment, but most importantly, he never loses sight of who we are fighting for. I am grateful for his outstanding service on behalf of America's families, and I look forward to working with him in the years to come.''
  President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:
  Brian Deese, Nominee for Deputy Director, Office of Management and BudgetBrian Deese is Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. From 2009 to 2010, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Prior to joining the Administration in 2009, Mr. Deese worked as a member of the Economic Policy Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Team and was the Deputy Economic Policy Director for the Obama for America Campaign. He served as Economic Policy Director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign from 2007 to 2008. Previously, Mr. Deese was with the Center for American Progress from 2002 to 2005 where he worked as a Senior Policy Analyst for Economic Policy and focused on fiscal policy, international trade, and globalization. He also worked from 2001 to 2002 at the Center for Global Development and from 2000 to 2001 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Deese received a B.A. in Political Science from Middlebury College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
China and Australia to say goodbye to U.S. dollar - Business & Economics - Catholic Online
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  Archived Version
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:57
  Countries are working to remove the U.S. dollar as their reserve currency
  China, in collusion with Australia, is preparing to deal a blow to the sluggish and fragile U.S. economy. China is preparing to enable direct currency exchanges with Australia, in what many believe is a pilot program to see if the U.S. dollar can be ousted as the world's reserve currency.
  LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Chinese and Australian move to oust the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency gained full steam over the weekend with Australian officials agreeing to start making direct currency exchanges with China.This will ultimately harm the U.S. economy, although only slightly in the short term. In the long run, as other countries join Australia, it could unseat the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency.
  The U.S. dollar has been the world's reserve currency since the end of World War II, when it was made such by deliberate international agreement. As reserve currency, most international exchanges are made with the U.S. dollar. This requires foreign traders to convert their money to U.S. dollars to enter the market. When cashing in their profits to spend at home, traders must usually exchange their dollars back into their native currency.
  Each exchange costs a fee, which is usually passed along to the final consumer in the form of higher prices. American consumers normally enjoy a break on prices because U.S. merchants don't have to exchange their currencies, meaning the cost of doing business is lower.
  Large countries tend to get better exchange rates too.
  However, China and Australia are major trading partners, and cutting the U.S. dollar out of their deals means less money for the United States. Furthermore, it could establish a long-desired trend to oust the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
  It is uncertain which currency could replace the dollar, if any. Certainly the euro is a contender, but Eurozone instability continues to block significant progress for the euro. The Yuan could also be a contender, given the increasing global presence and economic dominance of China.
  It could also happen that world economies dispense entirely with the notion of a reserve currency and all exchanges start happening directly. However, such a system would be much more complex and powerhouse nations will compete to place their currency as the international reserve.
  Australian and Chinese businesses stand to save a lot of money over the years by abandoning the U.S. dollar. If both economies benefit and grow as a result, China could then invite others to trade directly with the Yuan instead of the dollar, which would increase China's economic vitality while reducing that of the United States.
  While consumers may not see much change in the near-term, major traders and currency speculators have a lot to watch as two of the world's largest economies start dumping the U.S. dollar once-and-for -all.
  (C) 2013, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
  Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.
  Disclaimer: The columns, articles, advertisers claims and any other features provided on Catholic Online Business & Economics are provided for personal finance and investment information and are not to be construed as investment advice. Under no circumstances does the information in this content represent a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. The views and opinions expressed in an article or column are the author's own and not necessarily those of Catholic Online and there is no implied endorsement by Catholic Online of any advice or trading strategy.
Fresh Thoughts from Authors of a Paper on 11,300 Years of Global Temperature Changes
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  Archived Version
  Source: Yaël's linkblog feed
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:58
  April 1, 12:17 a.m. | Update below |There's been vigorous discussion here and elsewhere (e.g., Climate Audit and Skeptical Science) of the methods and findings in ''A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years,'' a recent Science paper by Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark and Alan C. Mix.
  One author, Jeremy Shakun (currently at Harvard) weighed in via Skype for Dot Earth. When more questions came in, the group of authors wrote that they would respond more completely to questions about the work and now they have done so, on the RealClimate blog. Here's a short excerpt and link to the rest:
  What do paleotemperature reconstructions show about the temperature of the last 100 years?
  Our global paleotemperature reconstruction includes a so-called ''uptick'' in temperatures during the 20th-century. However, in the paper we make the point that this particular feature is of shorter duration than the inherent smoothing in our statistical averaging procedure, and that it is based on only a few available paleo-reconstructions of the type we used. Thus, the 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions. Our primary conclusions are based on a comparison of the longer term paleotemperature changes from our reconstruction with the well-documented temperature changes that have occurred over the last century, as documented by the instrumental record. Although not part of our study, high-resolution paleoclimate data from the past ~130 years have been compiled from various geological archives, and confirm the general features of warming trend over this time interval (Anderson, D.M. et al., 2013, Geophysical Research Letters, v. 40, p. 189-193).
  Is the rate of global temperature rise over the last 100 years faster than at any time during the past 11,300 years?
  Our study did not directly address this question because the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of ~120 years on average, which precludes us from examining variations in rates of change occurring within a century. Other factors also contribute to smoothing the proxy temperature signals contained in many of the records we used, such as organisms burrowing through deep-sea mud, and chronological uncertainties in the proxy records that tend to smooth the signals when compositing them into a globally averaged reconstruction. We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2000-year periods and longer. Our Monte-Carlo analysis accounts for these sources of uncertainty to yield a robust (albeit smoothed) global record. Any small ''upticks'' or ''downticks'' in temperature that last less than several hundred years in our compilation of paleoclimate data are probably not robust, as stated in the paper.
  There's much more at RealClimate, although there's also room for more questions '-- one being how the authors square the caveats they express here with some of the more definitive statements they made about their findings in news accounts.
  [April 1, 12:17 a.m. | Insert | Roger A. Pielke, Jr., of the University of Colorado has compared the new output from the authors with the paper and related news releases and coverage (including mine) and finds some very big differences.]
  The managers of RealClimate offered their own reaction to the paper and the authors amplification on their methods and conclusions:
  Our view is that the results of the paper will stand the test of time, particularly regarding the small global temperature variations in the Holocene. If anything, early Holocene warmth might be overestimated in this study.
  [April 1, 9:25 a.m. | Insert | They also helpfully point to three illuminating posts on the paper at the Open Mind blog (by "Tamino").]
  For convenience, here's Shakun's discussion of the paper when it was published in Science:
French Government Wants To Extend Ban On Muslim Headscarf Into The Private Sector
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  Archived Version
  Source: TPM News
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:57
  ASSOCIATED PRESS April 1, 2013, 9:05 AMLE BOURGET, France (AP) '-- Because of her choice to wear a Muslim hijab headscarf, Samia Kaddour has all but abandoned trying to land a government job in France. Soon some private sector jobs could be off limits, too.
  French President Francois Hollande says he wants a new law that could extend restrictions against wearing of prominent religious symbols in state jobs into the private sector. It comes amid a political backlash after a top court ruled that a day care operator that gets some state funding unfairly fired a woman in a headscarf.
  Kaddour was on hand in Le Bourget, north of Paris, for the four-day Annual Meeting of Muslims of France that ends Monday. The conference last year drew 160,000 faithful and is billed as the largest gathering of its kind in Europe.
  Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
James White on IRS Collecting Taxes and Operational Issues
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  Archived Version
  Source: Programs Recently Aired - C-SPAN Video Library
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:39
  1
  C-SPAN | Washington Journal
  James White discussed how IRS operations, problems it has faced and improvements it has made.'‚He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.
  James White discussed how IRS operations, problems it has faced and improvements it has made.'‚He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.
  39 minutes | 5 Views
  View Full Event (4 Programs)
Federal Register | Call for Expert Reviewers to the U.S. Government Review of the Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability
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  Archived Version
  Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:52
  The United States Global Change Research Program, in cooperation with the Department of State, request expert review of the Second Order Draft of the Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability.
  The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established the IPCC in 1988. In accordance with its mandate and as reaffirmed in various decisions by the Panel, the major activity of the IPCC is to prepare comprehensive and up-to-date assessments of policy-relevant scientific, technical, and socio-economic information for understanding the scientific basis of climate change, potential impacts, and options for mitigation and adaptation. The IPCC develops a comprehensive assessment spanning all the above topics approximately every six years. The First Assessment Report was completed in 1990, the Second Assessment Report in 1995, the Third Assessment Report in 2001, and the Fourth Assessment in 2007.
  Three working group volumes and a synthesis report comprise the Fifth Assessment Report. Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change; Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, potential negative and positive consequences, and options for adapting to it; and Working Group III assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change. Procedures for the IPCC and its preparation of reports can be found at the following Web sites: http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_review.shtml#.UEY0LqSe7x8http://ipcc.ch/organization/organization_procedures.shtml
  In October 2009, the IPCC approved the outline for the Working Group II contribution to the 5th Assessment Report (Working Group II Table of Contents: http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/AR5_documents/doc20-rev1.pdf). Authors were nominated starting in January 2010 and selected in May 2010. All IPCC reports go through two broad reviews: a ''first-order draft'' reviewed by experts, and a ''second-order draft'' reviewed by both experts and governments. The Second Order Draft of the Working Group II contribution to the 5th Assessment Report will be available for review beginning on 29 March 2013.
  As part of the U.S. Government Review of the Second Order Draft of the Working Group II Contribution to the 5th Assessment Report, the U.S. Government is soliciting comments from experts in relevant fields of expertise (Again, the Table of Contents for the Working Group contribution can be viewed here: http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/AR5_documents/doc20-rev1.pdf)
  Experts may now register to review the draft report at: http://review.globalchange.gov; the report will be available for download once it is released, 29 March 2013. To be considered for inclusion in the U.S. Government submission, comments must be received by 01 May 2013.
  The United States Global Change Research Program will coordinate collection and compilation of U.S. expert comments and the review of the report by a Review Committee of Federal scientists and program managers in order to develop a consolidated U.S. Government submission, which will be provided to the IPCC by 24 May 2013. Expert comments received within the comment period will be considered for inclusion in the U.S. Government submission. Instructions for registering as a reviewer, the process of the review itself and submission of comments'--as well as the Second Order Draft of the report'--are available at: http://review.globalchange.gov.
  Experts may choose to provide comments directly through the IPCC's expert review process, which occurs in parallel with the U.S. government review. More information on the IPCC's comment process can be found at http://www.ipcc.ch/activities/activities.shtml and http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/review_of_wg_contributions.pdf. To avoid duplication, those participating in the U.S. Government Review should not also participate in the Expert Review process which submits comments directly to the IPCC Secretariat. Comments to the U.S. government review should be submitted using the Web-based system at: http://review.globalchange.gov.
  This certification will be published in the Federal Register.
  Dated: March 27, 2013.
  Trigg Talley,
  Director, Office of Global Change, Department of State.
  [FR Doc. 2013-07505 Filed 3-29-13; 8:45 am]
  BILLING CODE 4710-09-P
Legendary Music Producer Phil Ramone Dies at 79
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  Archived Version
  Source: LIVE@LEEDS
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:47
  Mike Barnes 03/30/13 The Hollywood Reporter
  A former violin prodigy and expert engineer, he worked with Dylan, Sinatra, McCartney, Bennett, Charles, Streisand, Simon, Joel and Bacharach and spent more than 50 years in the business.
  Phil Ramone, the instinctive music producer whose mixing mastery for Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Paul Simon and Billy Joel helped fashion some of the most sumptuous and top-selling albums of his era, has died. He was 79.
  The 14-time Grammy winner and 33-time nominee once dubbed ''The Pope of Pop'' was hospitalized in late February [3] with an aortic aneurysm in New York and died Saturday morning at New York Presbyterian Hospital, according to Ramone's son Matt.
  A native of South Africa who at age 10 performed as a violinist for Queen Elizabeth II, Ramone spent years working as a songwriter, engineer and acoustics expert in New York before charting a path that would make him a trusted studio partner in the eyes (and ears) of the industry's biggest stars.
  Among the albums on which he worked were Streisand's 1967 live A Happening in Central Park; Paul & Linda McCartney's Ram (1971), sandwiched between the Beatles and Wings eras; Dylan's aching Blood on the Tracks (1975); Simon's pop classic Still Crazy After All These Years (1975); Joel's critical and commercial breakthrough The Stranger (1977); Sinatra's last-gasp Duets (1993), a model of technical wizardry; and Charles' final album, the mega-selling Genius Loves Company (2004).
  Ramone served as a songwriter in New York's famed Brill Building music factory and worked early on with Quincy Jones, Tom Dowd, Creed Taylor, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller and Burt Bacharach & Hal David, among others. In 1959, he launched the A&R Recording studios on Seventh Avenue in New York, where Blood on the Tracks and so many other classics were recorded.
  Asked to describe his philosophy as a producer, Ramone told Sound on Sound [9]magazine in 2005: ''I served a long time as an engineer and watched many famous producers work, and I decided on the personality that came most easily to me, which is the more relaxed; to give artists encouragement when needed.
  ''Players are like prodigies, thoroughbreds,'' he added. ''You have to handle them with care.''
  Born on Jan. 5, 1934, Ramone at age 3 began studying the piano and violin, and he attended the Juilliard School in New York as a teenager. Although he was an accomplished performer and composer, he was attracted to the technical side of music and became a wizard working with the dials.
  In 1964, Ramone engineered the classic bossa nova album Getz/Gilberto, from American saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian guitarist Joao Gilberto. It would become one of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time and earn him his first Grammy, for best engineered recording. It also won the album of the year Grammy.
  Later in the decade, he worked with folk superstars Peter, Paul and Mary, then won another Grammy in 1969 as co-producer of the original Broadway cast album of Promises, Promises, with music and lyrics by Bacharach and David.
  Ramone's career reached another level in 1975 when he produced Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years '-- which featured the No. 1 single ''50 Ways to Leave Your Lover'' and won Ramone a Grammy for album of the year '-- and Blood on the Tracks.
  About the Dylan album, Ramone said: ''It turned out to be the best four days of what Bob Dylan does, which is he wanders from song to song, sometimes coming back to the first one. Other than changing the roll of tape, you just had to let it all happen.''
  In 1977, he produced Kenny Loggins' Celebrate Me Home, Phoebe Snow's Never Letting Go and Joel's The Stranger, which kicked off a seven-album, decade-long relationship with the Long Island-raised singer-songwriter. He and Joel were ''both lunatics,'' he once said.
  For the screeching tires on ''Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)'' from The Stranger, Ramone recorded bassist Doug Stegmeyer's Corvette peeling out, taping a microphone to the tailpipe. He also added a bit of echo to Joel's whistling throughout the album.
  ''There's nothing like the challenge of devising and reproducing an effect you're looking for,'' Ramone wrote in his 2007 book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music. ''Sometimes that chase is more exciting than the catch.''
  Ramone won the record of the year Grammy for Joel's ''Just the Way You Are'' from the album (after removing a ''cha-cha-cha'' background from the song), captured album of the year for the follow-up 52nd Street and was named producer of the year in 1980 after guiding the rock-infused Glass Houses, which featured Joel's first chart-topping single, ''It's Still Rock and Roll to Me.''
  On Oct. 1, 1982, 52nd Street became the first commercially released compact disc, and Ramone later received a Technical Grammy for his lifetime of innovative contributions to the industry.
  In 1993, Ramone produced Duets, a comeback album for Sinatra. The legendary singer never sang in the same studio with his duet partners, who included Streisand, Natalie Cole, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Bono and Kenny G. Ramone used an EDNet fiber-optic system to record the artists in different locations in real time.
  The first of two Sinatra Duets albums sold more than 3 million copies in the U.S. and made it to No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart.
  For Genius Loves Company, Ramone and fellow producer John Burk provided a clean, retro setting for the pop classics sung by Charles with James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Elton John, Norah Jones and others. The album, recorded over a period of nine months and released in August 2004 '-- two months after Charles' death '-- earned triple-platinum status, made it to No. 1 and raked in eight Grammys.
  ''If Ray is looking upon us now, he's just made his career last another 50 years,'' Ramone said as he accepted the Grammy for Album of the Year.
  Ramone also produced Bennett's Duets II, the 2011 release famous for the crooner's collaboration with Amy Winehouse. With that album, Bennett became the oldest living artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
  Other Ramone-produced albums include Lesley Gore's I'll Cry If I Want To (1963), Julian Lennon's debut Valotte (1984), the Broadway cast album for Passion (1994), Liza Minnelli's live Liza's Back (2002), Rod Stewart's It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook (2002) and recent works from George Michael, Dionne Warwick and Glee star Matthew Morrison [5].
  Ramone recorded Streisand and Kris Kristofferson live during filming for A Star Is Born (1976) and co-wrote ''Imagination,'' sung by Laura Branigan in Flashdance (1983), good for another Grammy. He also contributed to the films Midnight Cowboy (1969), Ghostbusters (1984) and Beyond the Sea (2004), with Kevin Spacey acting and singing as Bobby Darin.
  Ramone also recorded Marilyn Monroe's boozy rendition of ''Happy Birthday to You'' sung to President John F. Kennedy in 1962 and received an Emmy in 1973 for his work as an audio designer on the NBC special Liza With a Z.
  In a Recording Academy statement confirming his passing, the Grammy organization also credited Ramone as ''a pioneer of audio technological developments '-- creating new innovations for the compact disc and surround sound technologies.''
  In an interview with Music Radar in November [13], Ramone credited his ability to seize upon spontaneity as one reason he became such a prolific hitmaker.
  ''You have to be able to run as fast as the artist, capture the magic early on,'' he said. ''After a few takes, people start intellectualizing what they're doing, and it loses something. What's special happens right away '-- so you have to be ready for it.''
  In addition to his son Matt, Ramone is survived by wife Karen and sons BJ and Simon.
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Sundown in America - NYTimes.com
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  Archived Version
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:56
  GREENWICH, Conn.
  The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor's 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market's last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.
  Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later '-- within a few years, I predict '-- this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.
  Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the ''bottom'' 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.
  So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation's bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.
  When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today's feeble remnants of economic growth.
  THIS dyspeptic prospect results from the fact that we are now state-wrecked. With only brief interruptions, we've had eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market and its purported tendency to underproduce jobs and economic output. The toll has been heavy.
  As the federal government and its central-bank sidekick, the Fed, have groped for one goal after another '-- smoothing out the business cycle, minimizing inflation and unemployment at the same time, rolling out a giant social insurance blanket, promoting homeownership, subsidizing medical care, propping up old industries (agriculture, automobiles) and fostering new ones (''clean'' energy, biotechnology) and, above all, bailing out Wall Street '-- they have now succumbed to overload, overreach and outside capture by powerful interests. The modern Keynesian state is broke, paralyzed and mired in empty ritual incantations about stimulating ''demand,'' even as it fosters a mutant crony capitalism that periodically lavishes the top 1 percent with speculative windfalls.
  The culprits are bipartisan, though you'd never guess that from the blather that passes for political discourse these days. The state-wreck originated in 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt opted for fiat money (currency not fundamentally backed by gold), economic nationalism and capitalist cartels in agriculture and industry.
  Under the exigencies of World War II (which did far more to end the Depression than the New Deal did), the state got hugely bloated, but remarkably, the bloat was put into brief remission during a midcentury golden era of sound money and fiscal rectitude with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House and William McChesney Martin Jr. at the Fed.
  David A. Stockman is a former Republican congressman from Michigan, President Ronald Reagan's budget director from 1981 to 1985 and the author, most recently, of ''The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.''
Bitcoin total value tops $1 billion '-- RT News
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  Archived Version
  Source: BadChad's ThoughtPile
  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:06
  Already bigger than many sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has broken the $1 billion in value mark this week. In the wake of continuing economic crises and liquidity shortages, this new virtual currency is poised to challenge the euro and US dollar.
  By not being tied to any particular financial institution and independent from world governments, Bitcoin will become a safe haven for anyone trying to save their money from the crippled international banking system, claimed Max Keiser, the host of RT's Keiser Report.
  ''It is inevitable that Bitcoin will become a multi-trillion dollar enterprise because every other currency in the world is tied to dying central banks that are encumbered with impossible-to-pay debts and bankrupt counter-party risks,'' Keiser said.
  Crypto-currencyBitcoin emerged in 2009 amid the global financial meltdown. The digital currency was created by someone who identified himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. It is based on open-source software, and uses peer-to-peer connections for monetary transactions to avoid centralized authorities.
  Bitcoin aims to provide safe and secure exchange by verifying transactions with encryption that is used in military and government applications. And unlike bank services, the Bitcoin network is free, except for a voluntary to speed up transaction processing.
  Issuance of the currency is completely automated, with 25 new bitcoins generated every 10 minutes; inflation is set to be halved every four years, until a total of 21 million bitcoins is reached. In theory, the currency would not lose its purchasing power unless individuals and businesses refused to use bitcoins.
  With numerous financial companies already exchanging bitcoins into any of the world's currencies, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, estimated that Bitcoin could capture between 1 and 10 percent of the global foreign exchange market. This implies that the price of each and every bitcoin would rise to between $100,000 and $1 million, Max Keiser explained.
  ''I have stated that myself,'' Keiser said. ''I think bitcoin's price will reach $200,000 per bitcoin before Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's stock.''
  Ten years ago, few predicted that Facebook would have more than 1 billion users worldwide/ By the same token, few today imagine bitcoin could take on the G20 nations, but Keiser believes this may soon take place: ''Bitcoin's valuation, already bigger than many sovereign currencies, will challenge the most-traded currencies today, including the US dollar, the euro, the yen and the renminbi.''
  Regulatory hand reaches outBecause the virtual currency bypasses authorities and cannot be taxed unless the person deliberately reveals his transactions, the US government and the Treasury Department are seeking to enact stricter regulations and new money-laundering rules.
  It is difficult to predict this new policy would play out: Patrick Murck, a legal counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, a trade group promoting industry standards, said the framework ''would be infeasible for many, if not most, members of the Bitcoin community to comply with.''
  Keiser believes that Bitcoin users and the currency itself have little to worry about, unlike most of Internet startups feeling themselves suddenly vulnerable to government oversight. Bitcoins are not issued by a central body, and rely on a network of verification nodes to regulate transactions; in the future, Bitcoin users may achieve enough political clout to defend itself in traditional arenas.
  ''As Bitcoin's price increases, the new Bitcoin millionaires and billionaires will use their economic clout to rewrite laws in favor of Bitcoin, the same way banks like JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs lobby government to write laws that favor them,'' he explained.
  Web 3.0?Bitcoin could also offer relief to debt-stricken countries such as Cyprus. ''Cyprus was Bitcoin's 'come to Jesus' moment and it's fitting it happened around the Easter Holiday,'' Keiser said.''For millions of people around the world who have been victimized by banksters and their corrupt politician friends, the light bulb went off and they suddenly realized they could save their wealth by parking it in Bitcoin and no government or bankster could stop them.''
  After the initial rush of interest in the Internet in the mid-1990s, and the follow-up boom of Web 2.0 and the growth of social networking, Bitcoin is the third and ''perhaps the most disruptive wave of all,'' Keiser said.
  ''This is Web 3.0,'' he said. ''For me it's extremely exciting since I pioneered the idea of virtual currencies back in the mid 1990s and have four US patents in my name covering virtual trading and virtual currencies. Most people I talked to back then about these ideas and the possibility that something like Bitcoin could exist didn't think it was possible. They were wrong.''
Surging Student-Loan Debt Is Crushing the System
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  Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:01
  Student-loan defaults surged in the first three months of 2013, while efforts to collect bad loans are faltering, according to credit analysts and government audits. It is the latest twist in a college debt crisis that is hanging over recent graduates and dragging on the broader economy.
  Credit-rating firm Equifax said $3.5 billion in government and private student loans went bad in the first three months of 2013, the most since the company began keeping track. The U.S. Department of Education said 6.8 million federal student loan borrowers are now in default, representing $85 billion in debt. And the department's systems for collecting the bad loans are struggling to keep up.
  The Department's Office of Inspector General found in December that more than $1.1 billion in defaulted student loans were stuck in a sort of computer limbo.
  (Read More: Study: Student Loan Balances Are Up, and So Are Delinquencies)
  "The Department is not pursuing collection remedies and borrowers are unable to take steps to remove their loans from default status," wrote Assistant Inspector General for Audit Patrick Howard in the December 13 report, which blames a system installed in 2011 by Xerox that is supposed to transfer defaulted loan accounts from servicing companies to private collection agencies. Those collection firms have considerable power, including the ability to garnish up to 15 percent of a borrower's wages. But none of that can happen until the accounts are transferred.
  A Xerox spokesman declined to comment, referring inquiries to the Department of Education.
  "While we regret this delay, we are taking active steps to work with the vendor to resolve the problem," Department of Education spokesman Chris Greene said in an e-mail. He denied that borrowers who have cleared up their defaults are not being removed from defaulted status, but acknowledged "a small percentage" of bad loans have been caught up in the problem.
  He said some $600 million of the affected loans will be transferred "in the coming weeks."
  (Read More: How the Student Loan Crisis Drags Down Home Prices)
  But government auditors say some damage is already done. The Inspector General's office says the collection problem led to a "material weakness" in the department's financial controls last fiscal year'--an issue Education Secretary Arne Duncan has vowed to address. Nonetheless, spokesman Chris Greene says the numbers came out right in the end.
  "Taxpayers and borrowers can rely on the integrity and accuracy of our financial reporting," Greene said.
  Critics say the collection issues are a sign of a much larger problem.
  "I take personal responsibility for the situation beginning, but personal responsibility does not mean you spend the rest of your life financially compromised," said Jason Paskowitz, a financial analyst from Tenafly, NJ.
  (Read More: Student-Loan Delinquencies Now Surpass Credit Cards)
  Paskowitz is 46 years old, but still owes more than $39,000 on loans he took out to finance his college education at Binghamton University in New York in the 1980s.
  He borrowed only about $20,000. But after Paskowitz fell ill during his first year of law school in 1989 and dropped out, his loans went into default. Interest and fees began piling up, so even though records show he has paid roughly $26,000, he still owes nearly twice his original principal'--25 years after graduation.
  He says he was hounded for years by collection agents'--"they called me every name in the book"'--and in 2008 was hit with an "administrative garnishment" seizing nine percent of his debt. He says the collection agencies did not give him the full range of options available to him under the law.
  "Their primary motivation is just to get as much as they can as quickly as they can," he said.
  Persis Yu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston says keeping borrowers on the hook or not providing them with information can be in the collection firms' best interests.
  "Their incentives aren't necessarily aligned with protecting borrowers' interests," she said.
  (Read More: Lenders Mobilize to Help College Kids Manage Student Loans)
  The Department recently attempted to address those concerns by lowering some of the commissions it pays the collection firms. Converting a defaulted loan to a "rehabilitation loan"'--which rolls outstanding loan balances and fees into a new loan that removes the borrower from default'--now pays the collection firm as little as eleven percent of the outstanding loan balance, compared to as much as 15 percent previously. But the option is still far more lucrative than a disability discharge, which wipes out the loan entirely and pays the collection firm a few hundred dollars in administrative fees.
  "The Higher Education Act is a very complicated statute," Yu said, "and debt collectors aren't necessarily in the best position to explain options to borrowers."
  But spokesman Chris Greene says the Department of Education is keeping tabs on the collection firms and looking out for borrowers' interests'--including a new "one-stop" portal for complaints about the firms at https://www.myeddebt.com.
  "Our entire approach to default collections is structured to encourage full repayment while ensuring borrowers understand both the consequences of their failure to repay and the options available to help them get out of default."
An interview with Athanasios Orphanides: What happened in Cyprus
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  Sun, 31 Mar 2013 23:48
  Though Cyprus only hit the front pages in the last month, its crisis has been years in the making. Athanasios Orphanides was governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus from 2007 to 2012, giving him a seat on the European Central Bank's governing council and oversight of Cyprus' banks. In an interview with The Economist, Mr Orphanides gives his views on how the crisis came about: exposure to Greece and the global financial crisis; decisions by the former communist government (with whom Mr Orphanides had a strained relationship); and flawed decisions by Europe's governments. Mr Orphanides was raised in Cyprus, received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an adviser at the Federal Reserve Board. He is now a lecturer at MIT and a fellow at the Center for Financial Studies at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. The following is an edited transcript of the interview, conducted over the telephone and in writing in the last week.
  Give us the political and historical background for how Cyprus ended up in the euro area.
  Cyprus joined the EU in 2004 and immediately wanted to get into the euro area for the express purpose of completing as quickly as possible the union with the core of Europe. It was done because the public thought that would be beneficial for political reasons, not economic reasons. The strategic location of the island has made it a target over the millennia of various powers, and the country is just too small and weak.
  How did it come to have such a large financial sector with such large Russian deposits?
  Cyprus had developed its financial center over three decades ago by having double taxation treaties with a number of countries, the Soviet Union for example. That means if profits are booked and earned and taxed in Cyprus, they are not taxed again in the other country. Russian deposits are there because Cyprus has a low corporate tax rate, much like Malta and Luxembourg, which annoys some people in Europe.
  In addition, Cyprus has a legal system based on English law and follows English accounting rules. It has a well-educated work force that can provide financial services, and a high concentration of lawyers and accountants. As a result of that a lot of foreign interests, including from Russia, have a number of corporations based in Cyprus and organize their international business globally from Cyprus. This model is similar to what you see in other countries: for example, there are even more Russian interests in the Netherlands and in Luxembourg.
  What was the role of decisions by Cyprus, decisions by Europe, and other factors in producing the crisis we see now?
  A number of factors played a role. The global financial crisis and exposure to Greece made Cyprus vulnerable. But the outcome was determined by decisions taken by the previous government in Cyprus as well as the broader malfunction of the euro area over the past three years.
  Two months after Cyprus joined the euro area [in January, 2008], there were presidential elections and the Cypriot public elected as president a communist, Demetris Christofias. The public was convinced he could solve the political problem we had with Turkey and reunify the island. The issue was not economic.
  If one thing has become clear over the last five years in Cyprus, it is that the euro area, which is not just a market economy but a currency union with strict rules, is not compatible with a communist government. Why is this important? This government took a country with excellent fiscal finances, a surplus in fiscal accounts, and a banking system that was in excellent health. They started overspending, not only for unproductive government expenditures but also they raised implicit liabilities by raising pension promises, and so forth.
  What precipitated Cyprus' need for a bailout?
  Because of the fiscal policies the government pursued, it damaged the confidence of international investors and lost access to international capital markets in May of 2011. If the government had behaved as other governments did, they would have asked for assistance from the EU at that time, in May of 2011. The size of the banking sector and exposure to Greece were known risks but at that time there was no banking problem in Cyprus and the structural adjustments necessary to restore fiscal stability in the country were rather minor. As with any country with a large financial sector, a solid fiscal position was crucial to avoid creating doubts about the ability of the sovereign to serve as a temporary backstop, in case that became necessary. I was there at the time and as the central bank governor I was warning them all the time that not dealing with this issue in the context of the euro area crisis was extremely dangerous. Others had also warned the government, including ECB President Trichet. They were not willing to do anything because as a communist party they did not want to incur the political cost of adopting consolidation measures.
  Then on July 11, 2011 there was an explosion that destroyed the power station producing more than half the power supply of the island. It was triggered by 100 or so containers of ammunition stored in the sun for two years next to the power station. The containers were part of a shipment going from Iran to Syria that was intercepted in Cypriot waters after a tip from the U.S. The president took the decision to keep the ammunition. [NOTE: An independent prosecutor found that Christofias has ignored repeated warnings and pleas to destroy or safeguard the ammunition, apparently in hopes of one day returning it to Syria or Iran.] Cyprus did not have a severe recession in 2009 from the global crisis. The slowdown was fairly mild. But after the explosion, the economy was thrown into a recession. I recall that on July 18 I sent a confidential letter to the president and leaders of all parties calling for urgent measures to avert a crisis. Instead of heeding the warning, my letter was leaked to the press and my calls for action severely criticized by the government.
  The same month the European Banking Authority put the two largest Cypriot banks, which are being targeted now, through a stress test along other banks in the EU. The results were published on July 15, 2011. Both banks passed the stress tests. If the government had applied at that time for a reasonably small package from the troika, they could have fixed the fiscal problem fairly easily. Again, they didn't, because they didn't want to do structural adjustments. Instead, they started lobbying the Russian government to give them a loan that would help them finance the country for a couple more years, and Russia came through, unfortunately, in retrospect, with 2.5 billion euro which is a big chunk of money for a country with a 17 billion euro GDP. I say unfortunately because as a result the government could keep operating and accumulating deficits without taking corrective action.
  What was the impact of the Greek debt writedown?
  The next important date was the October 26-27, 2011 meeting of the EU council in Brussels where European leaders decided to wipe out what ended up being about 80% of the value of Greek debt that the private sector held. Every bank operating in Greece, regardless of where it was headquartered, had a lot of Greek debt. There were subsidiaries of French banks operating in Greece, a Portuguese bank, that were wiped out. Our two largest banks had major operations in Greece and significant exposure, so the Greek part of the operation and the bond holdings suffered a lot of damage. For Cyprus, the writedown of Greek debt was between 4.5 and 5 billion euro, a substantial chunk of capital.
  The second element of the decision taken by heads of states was to instruct the EBA to do a so- called capital exercise that marked to market sovereign debt and effectively raised abruptly capital requirements. The exercise required banks to have a core tier-1 ratio of 9%, and on top of that a buffer to make up for differences in market and book value of government debt. That famous capital exercise created the capital crunch in the euro area which is the cause of the recession we've had in the euro area for the last 2 years.
  For Cyprus, the combination of haircut and stress test meant that after taking measures the two largest banks needed about 2 billion euro of additional capital to be recapitalized according to the guidelines of the EBA. That's the first time someone could say: 'Your banks require assistance.' After losing more than 4.5 billion on the haircut on the Greek debt, this suggests how much capital they held before.
  The heads of states decision also said that if banks were not able to raise capital on their own, then the country is responsible for finding the capital and injecting it. The president of Cyprus agreed and did not ask for any provision to protect the country. Since all the holdings of Greek debt were public information (they had been published with the July EBA stress test), everyone could calculate what the haircut meant for the banks and since the Cypriot government was out of the markets the implications could be foreseen. You could say, well if they hadn't entered a programme before, they should have considered it now. But again they did not want to ask for assistance, because the troika would have forced them to make structural adjustments which the government did not want to do.
  What did you, as central bank governor, do with respect to the prudential oversight of the banks?
  The Basle II framework that governments adopted internationally, and that the EU supervisory framework during this period also incorporated, specifies that holdings of government debt in a states' own currency are a zero-risk-weight asset, that is they are assigned a weight of zero in calculating capital requirements. This is the reason why [ECB] President [Jean-Claude] Trichet and most central bankers and supervisors were so alarmed at the prospect of the governments introducing credit risk (as was done in Deauville in October 2010) and at the prospect of considering defaults (as was done starting in late July 2011) in euro area sovereigns. It turned the supervisory framework in place upside down.
  To mitigate risks, the supervisor can ask a bank to raise additional capital. In Cyprus this was done and the two large banks raised significant amounts in 2009, 2010 and even as late as early 2011. After the government lost access to markets in May 2011 this became much harder, virtually impossible.
  Still, by spring 2012, with an additional 2 billion the banks could have met the EBA 9% plus capital buffer core-tier 1 set for the capital exercise. That was roughly 11% of GDP and would not have been an issue if the government had not lost market access as in that case the government could have injected this amount in any bank that needed it by issuing public debt.
  Given the government's lack of market access, was it inevitable that the stress tests, by exposing the banks' capital shortfall, would put the country's solvency in doubt?
  The ECB and the governors in general had been arguing before that capital exercise was done that the governments should have agreed to make the EFSF/ESM available for direct recapitalization of banks instead of asking each government to be responsible for the capitalization. That element created the adverse feedback loop between banks and sovereigns. They forced the stress test and recapitalization before they could reach an agreement on how to find resources for the recapitalization. Mario Draghi characterized the PSI [private sector involvement] on Greek debt, in association with these elements, as similar to a European Lehman in an FT interview.
  When my term ended on May 2, 2012, the recapitalization had not been completed. Instead of focusing on a solution, however, the government engaged on an assault on the banking system and started rallying on the slogan that the banks were responsible for all ills in the economy in preparation for the February 2013 election.
  What led to questions of debt sustainability and haircuts?
  Starting in July 2012, the press started reporting that the banking system needed 10 billion euro of capital, citing sources at the central bank. Some reports suggested the numbers were deliberately exaggerated as the issue had become part of the February 2013 presidential election campaign. When the press started reporting such unrealistically high numbers I became extremely concerned and warned in an interview that if the central bank was generating such high numbers it risked putting into question the sustainability of the country's debt. Under standard IMF sustainability analysis, the country's debt could be deemed unsustainable and the troika might ask for some form of a haircut. Indeed, the debt sustainability analysis created the debate over whether there should be some form of bail-in associated with the programme in Cyprus.
  How did the troika get involved?
  Following a downgrading in late June 2012, all three major rating agencies rated the sovereign paper Cyprus below investment grade. According to ECB rules, that made the government debt not eligible as collateral for borrowing from the eurosystem, unless the ECB suspended the rules, as it had done for the cases of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. In the case of Cyprus, the ECB decided not to suspend the eligibility rule. This was important because if Cyprus debt had remained eligible as collateral, Cyprus banks could continue to buy treasury bills and continue financing the needs of the country for some time. The ECB was trying to convince the Cyprus government that it had to make structural adjustments and fiscal adjustments and by that point in June, get into a programme.
  By triggering the loss of eligibility of the government debt as collateral, the ECB telegraphed to the government it had to go to the troika. The Cyprus government did formally ask for troika assistance in June of 2012, on the same day the Spanish government asked for assistance for its banking system. Even then, had the government accepted that they needed to make structural adjustments and negotiated a programme, which could have been done over two weeks, the government would have obtained financial assistance. If capital needs of banks had not been exaggerated, there would be no sustainability issue.
  Again, the government did not do that. They did not want to negotiate. According to press reports, the ECB communicated to the Cyprus government around November that if it did not engage in serious negotiations, it would consider cutting off liquidity. When that occurred the government agreed to bring the troika back and negotiate a programme. That programme and MOU was complete in December. Its elements included major reductions in pension benefits, major reductions in wages and salaries for the broader public sector and privatizations of government owned or semi-government owned corporations. It also included the suspension of cost of living adjustments, which were incompatible with being in the euro area.
  All these were agreed to in principle by an MOU. The government took them to parliament and the parliament immediately adopted them. What was not clear was what was negotiated about the banking system.
  The communist candidate was defeated in the February election and a conservative is now president. How did that affect the bailout?
  The new president, Nicos Anastasiades, took over on March 1 and wanted to complete the adjustment program that had been delayed so long as soon as possible in an honest manner. Cyprus expected a programme with similar terms to those faced by the other countries. Instead, he was effectively ambushed by the other governments at the very first meeting of the European council that he attended and the associated eurogroup meeting. On March 15-16, the other governments confronted the new president and new finance minister with blackmail: either you haircut deposits or we shut down the economy; the ECB would cut off liquidity to the banks.
  Why, in your view, was the March 16 plan flawed?
  The Cyprus parliament had passed a number of laws that influenced the current and future spending and pensions. And they were also in the process of finalizing how they would do privatizations of the semi public companies. So all the standard elements you'd expect in other programmes had been done or were being done.
  Why did they attack retail deposits in this manner? This had never before been a requirement of any other programme. And why did the German government insist in the last three days that there should be a bail-in? The only logical explanation I could see is that Angela Merkel's government faces re-election in September of 2013 and the SPD [the Social Democratic party, the principal opposition to Ms Merkel's Christian Democratic Union] has made it an issue: it does not want to support a loan by the German government to Cyprus because, they claim, that would be like bailing out the Russian oligarchs. This is how Cyprus got caught up in the German election.
  In the previous three programmes [Greece, Ireland and Portugal] the SPD supported Merkel's government on making the loans, but they were not as close to the election as this one. The SPD, I believe was trying to differentiate its position. This presented a dilemma for Merkel's government. If she suggested that a loan be given to Cyprus to bail out money from Russia, this would not go well with the debate in Germany. So it was incredibly convenient to say that all the depositors, including Russian depositors, be asked to be bailed in. To support this reasoning, unsubstantiated statements were being made in German press that deposits in Cypriot banks reflect money laundering and that the banking model of Cyprus could not be allowed to continue. The objective of the March 16 plan to confiscate part of deposits was none other than to damage irreparably the Cypriot banking system.
  The politics, in my mind, is what makes this episode so ugly, that some governments, to serve their own national or narrow political interests, arrived at a decision that inflicts irreparable damage to Cyprus.
  What will the implications be for Europe and the stabilization of the euro zone?
  This is similar to the blunder in Deauville with PSI that injected credit risk into sovereign government debt. The governments have created risk in what before last week were considered perfectly safe deposits. This is going to have a chilling effect on deposits in any bank in a country perceived to be weak. This will mean the cost of funding will increase in the periphery of Europe and as a result, the cost of financing for businesses and households will increase. That will add to the divergences we already have and make the recession in the periphery of Europe deeper than it already is. This is really a disaster for European economic management as a whole.
The First Honest Cable Company
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  Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:26
The Yellow Man Obama
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  Archived Version
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sun, 31 Mar 2013 14:22
  This blog calls upon Mr. Obama to not stop being yellow, but stop being a coward in hiding as a Designer Negro, pretending he is black when his genetics no matter from the fraud Obama fiction has him mostly White Arabic to his reality of being born from a Chinese anchor Mum impregnated by a peppered white dock worker as Obama Sr. was pumping dust, has him around 80% white in that reality too. OBAMA SERMON: 'It drives me crazy when captains of religious right are always calling us back, for blacks to be in back of bus... MORE...
  This is a most dangerous thing as Obama targets, expectant father to be, Kim Jong Un, Dynastic Leader of North Korea in another one of these Obama feudal wars. First Obama was blood feuding with Muslims. Then Obama was patting Queen Liz on the arse like a pet pussy. Now we have Obama trying to mix it up with a real man like Dynastic Un, because Un just does not care for fags like the Peking girls do and Putin does in waiting for Obama to be flexible.
  Asian blood feuds are very dangerous, worse than Irish, American or Arab. This must be addressed as the little Indonesian social retardio Barry Soetoro, simply has been looking out over his plate of poi and beheld a real man like Kim Jong Un, who has an extremely Gangnum wife, while Obama is stuck with that Mrs. Ed man thing named Muchelle.Obama sees in Dynastic Un, a real erection as Un has in the baby hopper a Kim IV and Obama had to get Afro Ribs to come in and deliver some special sauce to Muchelle for his two daughters who look like Scottie Pippen and Stevie Wonder.
  Obama hiding as a street tough black is ridiculous as his trying to hide as Rosa Parks.
  Say did you see that Rosa Parks stamp the Post Office has? Fricking hey what is that about in she was like 500 years old on the bus and that stamp is like some Diana Ross porn stamp, as Rosa on the stamp has this come on board as I will give you a ride.........
  Obama knows nothing of this as a real Nigger like Jesse Jackson wants to castrate him as Obama if fag and someone like Rosa Parks would never get mounted by an Obama as she wants that white power penis instead like all black women desire.
  That is what is reprehensible in this, in Obama is going ghetto and breaking Kim Jong Un's pecker missiles in trying to she he is gangsta, and then telling these black folks that he is one of them....and who do you think Kim is going to nuke, but big Obama voting cities filled with black folks.
  Homey and ho, you got to get your shit together as Obama is jacking off on the cute Asian and then running home to you and on his tail are nuclear missiles.
  Mr. Obama needs an intervention to deal with admitting he is Asian and not Afroid. He has no American black experience as you do not get it from Horn of Africa dock worker nailing a China whore at Lederer's Bar, while being raised in South Asia and Polynesia Hawaii.Obama has told the Filipino President as was featured here, that the most important lines are Filipino American offspring. An off the walls statement until one knows Mr. Obama was speaking of his own Asian majority roots.
  Mr Obama is not a black man, but is a yellow man. Mr. Obama is Barry Chin and not Barack Hussein Obama.II. All of this denial has Mr. Obama now wanting to supplant the sexiest, most powerful and most virile male in the orient in Kim Jong Un, the Dynastic Leader of North Korea. This is all dangerous and until the world faces Mr. Obama is Yellow and not Black. Just looking at him, with those Asian lips and Asian eyes and Asian yellow Chinaman skin......yes Mr. Obama is CANTONESE TRADER fresh of the Junk selling his wares outside Manilla and buying a Filipino wife and mixing in with some Japanese who liked to buy comfort women......yes that is the Obama heritage and he should be proud of it, instead of trying to hide in blackness.
  I realize Mr. Obama is not smart enough to be an Asian. I realize that Mr. Obama is not good looking enough to be an Asian. I realize that Mr. Obama will never be Heinz Ward in such a splendid Afroid Asian, because Obama is a Chinoid or a Cantonoid, but all the same his slumming with the black folks and taking their heritage is unacceptable when he is hauling Kim's nuclear bombs back to the ghetto.Welfare checks and sneakers will not survive atomic bombs.
  For that reason, Mr. Obama must face is Yellowness in public. He must essentially referred to like Ivan the Terrible, but in his case he is not Alfred the Great, but just Obama the Yellow.Granted some might double entrende call that cowardice, but Obama is a coward for hiding in a race he is only peppered with.
  Look when you eat mashed potatoes, you don't say, "Oh I'm eating PEPPER POTATOES" just because a few black flecks are in them.
  Look when you eat Sesame Chicken, you don't say, "Oh I'm eating PEPPER CHICKEN", just because a few bits of pepper are peppered in there.
  No, you can not deny the potatoes or the sesame, you must not focus on the pepper, but on the reality that the whole is what gives the dish title and not some flakes of black.
  Mr. Obama can not be a better black man by tearing down a better yellow man in Kim Jong Un. Mr. Obama must face the reality he conned blacks to steal the White House, mounted that she male Muchelle to appear black to get into the club and he can not become more black by getting into a nuclear war with Kim Jong Un, the superior Asian.
  Not all can be Gangnam Style. Asian men like Psy are just cooler than blacks. Asian women have a superior taste and do not go home with blacks of inferior complexes. It all adds up to Obama trying to pass as a black man as he knows from being in Asia he could never measure up to their superior nature.Of course it is Obama is just sloven naturally and uses that black stereotype to hide behind being what an Asian never would, but all the same Kim Jong Un is a real Gangnam Cowboy. He is the one going over maps to blow things up instead of looking for gays to blow him.
  Yes that Kim Jong Un is a man who does it all in the sack in knocking up the communist Mrs. to firing his missiles off to the nether depths of the seas. Obama just .....well Obama just .......just pretends to be Martin King preaching on Easter about being black in a nether crowed of Afroids he plunges into every once in awhile to keep the illusion going.
  I believe Mr. Obama's real quote was:
  "I'm crazy when the leaders of the right call us black".
  Yes Obama's sea of black folk Afroids are 60% plus white, just like Obama is 80% Asian.
  It would be nice if Mr. Obama had actually ever been on the bus for blacks. It would be nice if Mr. Obama had ever been on the junk for Asians in freeing them from industrial slavery.
  There is a Chinese actor, Korean artist and Japanese model in the above photo. All have yellow skin. What does that tell you about their all being Mongoloids?
  Did you see Psy is selling Persian pistachios in America now on television commercials? Those Asians just turn peanuts into a fortune.......well Asians who embrace their skin at least as Obama needs help in all he does in white folks solving things in his Designer Negro persona.
  PSY- Gangnam Style (Official Music Video) - YouTubewww.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQOct 23, 2012 - Uploaded by DanceGangnamStylePSY- Gangnam Style (Official Music Video) ... Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail ...agtG