Murder trial grips South Africa as Oscar Pistorius set free on bail

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By Alex Eliseev, Special to SI.com

Oscar Pistorius' murder trial is becoming South Africa's version of the O.J. Simpson case.

TJ LEMON/EPA

PRETORIA, South Africa -- The Oscar Pistorius murder trial has gripped South Africa, and in a span of seven days it seems like the nation has traveled light years.
Oscar Pistorius has been set free, having been granted bail (1 million Rands, $112,000 U.S.) by a South African magistrate last Friday; the investigating officer has been pulled off the case after it emerged he was facing seven charges of attempted murder; the country's top detective has been brought in to clean up the mess; Pistorius has turned over his cards, revealing to the world what his defense will be when this case goes to trial; and South Africa is working its way towards the "acceptance" phase of Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief.
It has been a dramatic and emotional week. And that's just the bail battle. The court case is now due to resume in early June and will almost certainly be postponed. As we enter the eye of the storm, it's time to reflect on what has transpired and what we can expect over the next few months. The media hype will die down, Pistorius will fade from front page headlines temporarily. And that's when it all gets interesting.
Before us we have two opposing versions of events. Prosecutors have set out to prove "premeditated murder" (the gunning down of an innocent woman after a domestic fight), while the world's best-known paralympian says he woke up in the dead of night, heard an intruder and -- after experiencing a sense of terror -- fired to protect himself and his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Tragically, he says, she turned out to be the person hiding in the toilet.
The police's investigating officer, Hilton Botha, seemed -- for a moment -- set to ruin the state's case through shoddy police work. But he managed to pass the baton while his bosses spun a tale about him being a seasoned detective who did the best he could considering the time available.
ELISEEV: South Africa paralyzed by Pistorius murder charge
Botha admitted to several mistakes including: he contaminated the crime scene; didn't check telephone records; shot his mouth off without having the forensic/ballistic evidence to back up his claims; first told Pistorius he would not object to bail and then changed his mind; and stumbled over key evidence, ranging from how far away the witnesses were to the substance (testosterone or herbal remedy) seized from the house.
Last Thursday, I wrote a story for Johannesburg-based Eyewitness News about Botha's pending criminal charges, which date back to December 2011. He and two other officers were arrested in a nearby province for shooting at a taxi carrying seven people. The officers were, at the time, also accused of being drunk while driving a police vehicle and using their state firearms. The charges against them were initially withdrawn in court, but were re-instated two weeks before the Pistorius shooting on Valentine's Day.
The same afternoon the story broke, national police commissioner Riah Phiyega held an urgent press conference to announce Botha was being taken off the case. She tried to convince a skeptical nation that the reason was because the bail process had ended (only the court ruling was outstanding) and more experienced detectives were needed to prepare the case for trial. She praised Botha, refused to suspend him and claimed the whole saga was not an embarrassment to the police.
It's no secret police officers are often accused of crimes by those they arrest. It's part and parcel of the job -- sometimes, it's a strategy to ruin the case. The allegations against Botha are yet to be tested and he is certainly innocent until proven guilty. But the breakdown in communication between the National Prosecuting Authority and his bosses, along with his performance in court, are -- no matter what Phiyega says -- deeply embarrassing. The charges against him are serious. On Sunday, one of South Africa's main newspapers, the Sunday Times, described the scandal around Botha with the following headline: "A shameful day for policing in SA". The question was asked: if this is how the most high-profile cases are treated, imagine what happens to the every-day ones?
The new team is unlikely to make the same mistakes. A well-known and respected detective, Mike Van Aardt, has been brought in to do the legwork. Van Aardt has proved himself as a behind-the-scenes wizard on some of the most high-profile cases South Africa has seen.
Last week's three-day marathon bail hearing was a preview of the case against Pistorius with detailed arguments over the legal principle governing "premeditated murder" and an avalanche of detail about the shooting. As both sides stated their case, the media produced a flurry of stories, including info graphics and video walk-throughs of the house, and spoke to many experts. There was a frenzy like South Africa had not seen before. A single reporter's Twitter following increased from 10,000 to nearly 150,000 in the space of a few days. Social media experts described the court hearing as the country's "Mumbai moment", when the world turned to Twitter to follow the 2008 bombing in India. Emails came from as far away as Moscow, praising local journalists for their work. A tweet from media law expert Emma Sadlier summed it up: "To say that Twitter has been a game-changer for the way we report the courts is like saying that Mozart wrote a couple of catchy tunes."
Last Friday, Magistrate Desmond Nair delivered an agonizing but detailed ruling, which lasted nearly two hours. Listening to it felt like conquering a storm out at sea, with the boat rocking one way, then the other, and then back again. His sentences crashed like waves, carrying frothy legal principles. Public opinion pelted down like rain. The tension was unbearable. Often a magistrate will make it clear early which way he will rule, but Nair gave nothing away.
In the end, he granted Pistorius bail. His decision boiled down to this: while Nair believes prosecutors have a compelling case and Pistorius has many questions to answer, the athlete is not a flight risk. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel summoned the words of South Africa's president Jacob Zuma (who spoke about violence against women) and used Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as an example of a famous person who remains untouchable, hiding in a foreign embassy. He spoke about Shrien Dewani, who's fighting extradition to South Africa to stand trial for the murder of his wife, Anni, and the violent gang-rape and murder of 17-year-old Anene Booysen, a crime that shocked South Africa earlier this year. Nair stood firm, but did shackle Pistorius with some harsh bail conditions: he is not allowed to leave the city of Pretoria without permission, has to surrender his passport, cannot be found in any departure terminal of an airport, can't drink, contact certain witnesses and will have to allow random inspections from various officials. Importantly, Nair also said the defense had failed to weaken the state's case.
Nel and his team did not oppose the court's decision, supporting a suggestion that they never had their hearts set on opposing bail. Their plan may have simply been to use the bail hearing as a Trojan Horse to get inside Pistorius' defense and to lock him into a version which can't be changed later. In South African law, anything said during a bail application can, and does, get used during trial.
So while many may have been surprised that the bail application turned into a mini-trial, that's exactly what Nel was counting on. The hearing has also given us an idea of what aspects Pistorius' legal team will need to focus on in the trial. Magistrate Nair said he had difficulty understanding why Pistorius "ventured into danger" instead of escaping through the bedroom door, why he didn't try to find out where Steenkamp was or try to verify who was in the toilet. Nair also questioned why Steenkamp would not have screamed back from the toilet if he was yelling at the "intruder". Expect these questions to echo throughout the trial.
While police wait for fast-tracked forensic evidence to come back, they are likely to focus on cellphone records in an attempt to reconstruct what happened the night before and immediately after the shooting. They will interview more witnesses and investigate Pistorius' so-called "dark side". They will work on punching holes through the version he painted, in such detail, while trying to secure his freedom. Investigators will clear up confusion surrounding neighbors who claim to have heard Pistorius and Steenkamp argue for an hour before the shooting. Sources told Eyewitness News that, at this stage, police are not looking for a "silver bullet" but are exploring all angles to stitch together a narrative. They hope all the different bits of evidence (forensic, circumstantial, etc.) will align into an explanation the defense won't be able to break apart.
Meanwhile, Pistorius' p.r. machine will chug along, trying to squash scandals or negative stories. This weekend it had to deal with an alleged hacked Twitter account and revelations that Oscar's brother, Carl, is on trial for culpable homicide, following a 2008 car accident. Those involved in the trial have a tough job ahead as public interest in the case is immense.
The Steenkamp family have hired a private investigator to help them monitor the case and continue to remind the world about the victim in this tragedy.
The trial is not likely to get underway soon. In South Africa, a year is not an unusually long time to wait to have your day in court, especially if the case needs to be moved from a lower court to a higher one. With appeals, the process stretches even further. It took four years from the time former police chief Jackie Selebi was arrested for corruption to the time he was sent to jail (by the same prosecutor, Gerrie Nel).
As the world watches, a country anxiously awaits.
Alex Eliseev is a South African writer and senior reporter at Eyewitness News. You can follow him at @alexeliseev.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/news/20130225/oscar-pistorius-update/#ixzz2Ly3FC3bM

Why the Chinese Cyber Threat is a Bunch of Baloney

John Glaser, February 25, 2013

http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/02/25/why-the-chinese-cyber-threat-is-a-bunch-of-baloney/

The Obama White House seems to be launching a public relations campaign against China, drumming up hatred and fear about alleged cyber-espionage activities of the Chinese government against the US. The President is reportedly even considering imposing economic sanctions on China.
This is absurd on several levels. First of all, economic sanctions are not a policy option aimed at resolving diplomatic antagonism. It is a tool of coercion with no utility except to project dominance and ratchet up hostility between nations.
Secondly, the economic ties between China and the US are unprecedented at the moment. Imposing sanctions on them now would inflict self-harm on a US economy that is already struggling.
Also keep in mind that recent reports about China’s cyber-warfare against us include no solid proof that it is condoned by the Chinese government. The US Computer Security firm Mandiant released a report identifying the city the cyber-attackers came from, but that’s all.
“What is surprising,” writes Haroon Meer at Al Jazeera, ”is the unfaltering belief that since attacks come from IP addresses in the same geographic region as a [People's Liberation Army] unit, ipso facto, the attacks are state sponsored and need some sort of government response.”
“For context,” Meer adds, “the area in question is about the size of Los Angeles and houses over 5 million people (making it roughly the equivalent of the second most populated US city). Claiming that attacks originating from anywhere in this city must imply the involvement of Unit 61398 is a stretch and ignores a raft of other possibilities.”
Even so, what if they were state-sponsored? Is this anything Washington should get on its high-horse about? The largest government-sponsored cyber-attack to date came out of Washington, aimed at Iran. And that’s not all: The US government routinely conducts cyber-warfare. Meer cites a European Parliamentary Session document from way back in 2001 that detailed some examples:

• The NSA intercepted communication between Airbus and the Saudi Arabian government during contract negotiations and forwarded this communication to Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas (who went on to win the contract instead).
• The NSA forwarded technical details of an engineering design to a US based firm (who then patented the design before the original inventors).
• The CIA hacked into the Japanese Trade Ministry to obtain details informing their negotiation on quotas for US cars.
• The NSA intercepted communications between VW and Lopez (and then forwarded this information to General Motors).
• The NSA surveillance of the Thomson-CSF/Brazil negotiations (for a billion dollar contract) were forwarded to Raytheon (who were later awarded the contract instead).

Since 2001, technology has become exponentially more capable, so the US government undoubtedly has increased such operations, in number and severity.
So China is not alone in its cyber operations. But the Obama administration’s trumpeting of Beijing’s alleged behavior is not mere happenstance.
For at least two years now, the Obama administration has engaged in an explicit policy of military containment towards China, aggressively surging military presence and activities in the Asia-Pacific and bolstering China’s regional geo-political competitors with increased military and diplomatic backing. China’s economy is growing and Beijing is becoming a more powerful state. Washington can’t have that.
So, what better way to demonize non-threatening enemies of the state than to hypocritically highlight their alleged cyber-warfare? After all, the American people need to be fed a pretext for initiating aggression towards China; a bigger economy and more geo-political sway won’t do.
In sum, Washington’s charges against Beijing should be taken with a grain of salt, to say the least. But we can expect much more talk of it as Obama’s “Asia-Pivot” evolves

Poisoned by every day life: Landmark study warns gender bending chemicals in your home, food and car ARE linked to a huge range of diseases

• Phthalates is used to soften plastic and improve consistency of cosmetics
• Chemical commonly found in children's toys, make up, cars and PVC flooring
• Could cause breast cancer, asthma, infertility and birth defects, WHO says

By Fiona Macrae
PUBLISHED: 19:01 EST, 19 February 2013 | UPDATED: 19:01 EST, 19 February 2013

Possible danger: Chemical phthalates is used to soften plastics and can be found in children's toys

Chemicals found in every home may cause breast cancer, asthma, infertility and birth defects, global health chiefs said yesterday.
They warn the gender-bending compounds – used in toys, PVC flooring, car dashboards and credit cards – have ‘serious implications’ for health.
In a landmark report, the World Health Organisation suggested a ban might be needed to protect future generations.
It says it is ‘reasonable to suspect’ chemical substances called phthalates of harming female fertility and linked them with rising rates of childhood illnesses including leukaemia.
Also under suspicion is bisphenol A, which is found in a host of daily items including tin cans and sunglasses.
The man-made compounds are thought to interfere with the natural hormones that are key to our growth, development and overall health.
The WHO said there was ‘very strong evidence’ in animals they can interfere with thyroid hormones – something that can cause brain damage, stunted intelligence, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism.
For prostate cancer ‘significant evidence’ exists of a link with agricultural pesticides.
And there was some evidence linking exposure in pregnancy to weight gain in infants and children and potential links to breast cancer.
In the same report ten years ago, the UN agency said there was only ‘weak evidence ’ that gender-bending chemicals were harming human health.

Declaring the chemicals a global threat, the new report’s authors said humans and animals were exposed to hundreds of compounds, many of which have yet to be identified or properly studied.
Some are inhaled in dust, others make their way into our bodies from food or simply licking our fingers.

 

More...

• Heart attack survivors who live in polluted areas are more likely to die young
• Eating chips more than once a week raises the risk of prostate cancer by a third
• Professor of dentistry told woman suffering from tumour in her jaw to chew sugar-free gum and misdiagnosed 32 others, tribunal hears

The WHO stops short of saying the chemicals actually caused the illnesses but did say that in some cases, the evidence was very strong.
The report – State of the Science of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals – is the most comprehensive of its kind because rather than focusing on one chemical or one illness, it evaluates all the evidence.
It says: ‘The diverse systems affected by endocrine-disrupting chemicals likely include all hormonal systems and range from those controlling development and function of reproductive organs to the tissues and organs regulating metabolism and satiety.
‘Effects on these systems can lead to obesity, infertility or reduced fertility, learning and memory difficulties, adult-onset diabetes or cardiovascular disease, as well as a variety of other diseases.’

Report: The compounds, also found in PVC floors, can have 'serious implications' the World Health Organisation warned

Daily risks: The dangerous chemical is found in many objects we touch with out bare hand every day, such as credit cards and car dashboards

Worryingly, it warns the chemicals assessed so far by scientists may only be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ – and there could be many other potentially harmful compounds out there.
It cautions that the key role of hormones in the development of tissues and organs means that unborn babies and young children may be particularly vulnerable.
The report – written over two years by international experts who collated and weighted scientific studies on the topic – also states the rise in some conditions is too rapid to be blamed on genes alone.
‘The prevalence of paediatric asthma has more than doubled over the past 20 years and is now the leading cause of child hospitalisations and school absenteeism,’ it said. ‘Certain birth defects, such as those of the male reproductive organs are on the rise. The incidence of paediatric leukaemia and brain cancer have risen, as has the incidence of testicular cancer. These are stark health statistics.’
The WHO says wildlife is also at risk and calls for much more research into the chemicals and their effects – and says that there may be a case for banning or restricting them.

Dr Maria Neira, the WHO’s director for public health and environment, said: ‘The latest science shows that communities around the globe are being exposed to endocrine-disrupting chemicals and their associated risks. We all have a responsibility to protect future generations.’
Elizabeth Salter Green, of the campaign group CHEM Trust, said the EU was trying to tighten up the regulation of gender-bending chemicals but the UK was in favour of the least stringent measures.
She added: ‘This report bears testimony to the on-going failure of regulatory agencies to reduce  exposure to hormone disrupting chemicals, which are implicated in the increased rates of hormone-related cancers and other diseases.
‘Thankfully, the EU is now trying to come to agreement on how to identify such hormone disrupting chemicals, so that they can be effectively regulated, but unfortunately the UK is trying to thwart this process in a bid to limit the number of chemicals that will fall under the regulatory axe.’
The Chemical Industries Association said it was important to note that naturally-occurring substances in beer, chocolate and coffee can have more powerful effects on the body’s hormones than man-made chemicals.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281394/Poisoned-day-life-Landmark-study-warns-gender-bending-chemicals-home-food-car-ARE-linked-huge-range-diseases.html#ixzz2Lxv3QeAk
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You have been lied to by the Government, again – and here’s how you can know

February 18, 2013 Filed under PPRN Posted by James Smith

By James Smith
18 Feb 2013         http://www.prepperpodcast.com/you-have-been-lied-to-by-the-government-again-and-heres-how-you-can-know/#axzz2Lxr3pENV

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.”
― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

As an investigator I learned early two things: How to lie well enough to get the information I wanted, and the other is never to believe what you’re told. As Ronaldus Magnus (Ronald Reagan) love to repeat, “Trust, but verify”. It is an old Russian proverb that I’m afraid many people have never learned.
Fox News recently ran a story by the Associate Press, presenting the Government’s case in the ammunition purchase. But it was poorly written and the reporter did not ask the right questions, nor did they do all their homework.
From the story:

ICE’s ammunition requests in the last year included:

• 450 million rounds of .40-caliber duty ammunition
• 40 million rounds of rifle ammunition a year for as many as five years, for a total bullet-buy of 200 million rounds
• 176,000 rifle rounds on a separate contract
• 25,000 blank rounds

This small segment highlights the poor research conducted by the AP reporter. Right off the top – The 176,000 rifle rounds were cancelled. As we reported 2 October 2012:

“Put this in the “I don’t believe it” file, but something unusual has happened. The Department of Homeland Security /Immigration Customs Enforcement (DHS/ICE) has CANCELLED their request to purchase 176,000 rounds of .308 hollow point boat tail ammunition. According to an email that was passed onto me, Harry at the Federal Service Desk stated that a notice could be cancelled for a variety of reason.”

Another glaring issue is the “450 million rounds purchased”. What are not considered are prior year purchases. The following chart provides the breakdown of three branches of DHS that purchases ammunition: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs Border Protectorate (CBP), and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) over the past four years.

2009 2010 2011 2012 ICE 575,759,800 487,200 350,004,000 165,012,000 CBP 1,000 77,400 88,000 250,000,000 FLETC 69,920 20,000 154,000 63,742,350

I could present a chart, but ICE’s purchases make the others seem insignificant.  The large numbers are taking the total number of contracted purchases to the date the contract was signed. Many contracts were for 4 or 5 years. Click HERE for the Excel file.
If Mr. Obama’s administration had no ammunition at the very beginning, they certainly develop a stockpile very quickly.
Had the Associated Press reporter had done their job; they would have asked the following questions:

1. If FLETC requires 15 million rounds a year, how did they get their required ammunition in 2009, 2010, and 2011?
2. If FLETC borrowed ammunition from ICE, is it not possible that ammunition could be allocated to Mr. Obama’s Civilian Army Corps without public notification?
3. If FLETC has contracted out for 63,000,000 rounds of various ammunition in 2012, why then are they purchasing 200,000 rounds of .40 caliber JHP ammunition in December 2012 and 140,000 rounds of 9 mm and 100,000 rounds of .40 caliber February 2013?
4. If over 15 million rounds of .40 caliber JHP ammunition is required per year, why did ICE order 38 years of ammunition in 2009, and another 23 years in 2011?
5. If over 15 million rounds of .223 EP ammunition is required per year, why did ICE order 11 years of ammunition in 2012?
6. If over 15 million rounds of .40 caliber JHP ammunition is required per year, why did CPB order 13 years of ammunition in 2012?
7. Does the DHS Inspector General know that the December 2012 contract may have been fraudulently awarded?
8. If the grand total that we’ve come up with is: 1,405,455,670. That roughly translates to 1,000 people firing 1 round a second for 16 days, at what point has too much ammunition has been purchased?

Transferring assets from one Department or Agency is as easy as filling out a sheet of paper listing the departments, assets, and quantities involved. Don’t be fooled. Bureaucracy has been around since Roman times. Bureaucrats know how to manipulate paper, and how to make it disappear.
And the silence becomes the lie.

Find this at Prepper Podcast Radio Network You have been lied to by the Government, again – and here’s how you can know | Prepper Podcast Radio Network http://www.prepperpodcast.com/you-have-been-lied-to-by-the-government-again-and-heres-how-you-can-know/#ixzz2LxrFFgLH
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Conan O'Brien Exposes The Totally Controlled And Scripted Mainstream Media

Saturday, 23 February 2013 05:48 Brandon Smith

The Liberty Movement has been pointing out for a very long time that all major news media outlets, from MSNBC to FOX, perpetrate almost the exact same propaganda.  Just as both major parties follow the same strategy book and support nearly identical policy initiatives, the MSM is notorious for pretending to be decentralized and objective, while in reality all channels are reading from the same script.  It is good to be vindicated every once in a while by a mainstream icon like Conan O'Brien, who in this segment exposes just a single instance of the media manipulation machine in action.

Ask yourself, if all media companies are separate companies, separate entities with their own writers and editors; if they truly are independent from one another and reporting the news from their own unique vantage point, then HOW is it possible that they are ALL reporting the same exact story written the SAME exact way with the same exact wording?  The only explanation is that every MSM outlet is being fed a portion (if not all) of their content from a single central source.  Who is this source?  Who is scripting the mainstream reality?

Mexican Cartel War: Profiling an Unorthodox Insurgency

Christopher S. Ljungquist - Feb 04, 13

Geopoliticalmonitor.com 

In a previous Geopolitical Monitor analysis on Mexico’s bloody drug wars, we explained the existential logic that forces the government’s actions against the powerful trafficking cartels: By 2006 the Mexican state was facing the very real prospect of degenerating into functional irrelevance as a result of the increasing power and audacity of the criminal organizations. Governmental power, which must include the monopoly on the use of force, control of national territory, and the allegiance of public servants, was on the verge of disintegrating, giving rise to credible speculation that America’s giant southern neighbor might be dangerously close to state failure. By 2013, the government has dealt crucially damaging blows to certain cartels, including capturing or killing twenty-five of the top thirty-seven kingpins, yet it is arguably no closer to humbling them to desired levels, that is, of dismantling the vast resources and territory they control, and curbing their lethal, state-threatening potential.
With the return to power of the once omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the person of President Enrique Peña Nieto, there has been widespread speculation that a certain accommodation with the cartels is in order, in essence, a return to the relatively peaceful status quo ante that existed during the seven decades of unquestioned PRI rule. During the election, this speculation, publicly whispered by PRI partisans in favor and PAN loyalists against, yielded significant returns to the popularity of Peña Nieto, as the 50,000 plus death toll kept on rising.
This being said, any possible return to the old Pax Mafiosa between the government and the cartels is absolutely impossible at the moment, and the PRI will be forced to wage the PAN’s war until the objectives of the war are met, however ambiguous the objectives may be. The PRI’s incentives for fighting the cartels are as pressing as those of the PAN, primarily because the decision to wage the war was decided not on ideological grounds, but on the more critical imperative of state survival.
The Mexican state is fighting powerful and multiple atypical insurgencies, armed with virtually unlimited access to firearms, including anti-aircraft batteries, and funded by an export trade in illegal narcotics worth billions of dollars.
Labeling the Mexican Drug War an insurgency is not merely a question of semantics, but of concrete and very controversial political considerations. In Mexico it means labeling groups that the government has been endlessly demonizing using a term once reserved for heroes of the country’s past; it means further hurting Mexico’s embattled tourism industry. Using it in the United States implies seeing Mexico as posing a potentially tremendous threat to national security. Still, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applied it to Mexico, though the Obama administration has not kept the designation. A typical objection to the labeling of the drug cartels as insurgencies has been made by think-tanks and the academic community, and it contends that the cartels are fighting for a sort of entrepreneurial independence, and not for political power or much less for ideological reasons. This position, though, is ignorant of the history of the drug movement in Mexico before President Calderon began the government’s assault, and this view is absolutely incapable of perceiving the essence of the aims of the cartels in the current war.
It is true that the insurgents are not motivated by ideology, but they are indeed motivated by power, and political power, albeit a nuanced and highly “Mexican” version of it. An insurgency need not be fought along ideological fault-lines, but it is always political, and there is nothing more political than wanting to pummel a country’s government into submission and therefore make it complicit in the massive northward flow of illegal narcotics. The cartels pay off government functionaries and hire them as “lookouts”; they corrupt local and state police forces, oftentimes recruiting active officers and use them in operations; they mobilize bribed police chiefs against rival cartels; they seek to shape public opinion against the government’s efforts by perpetrating acts of terrorism against civilians; they practice media censorship by threatening and murdering journalists, and effectively giving permission to print certain stories and not others; they wage war against each other endlessly, with no concern for commerce or the authority of the state. If this were not an insurgency, then few armed conflicts today would be. In a graphic example of total local cartel usurpation of power in 2009, the La Familia Cartel launched an attack against federal police forces in Michoacán, and the vehicles used in the assault against the federales came from the local police force! The Mexican state, especially at the regional and local levels, was increasingly becoming a “captive state.”
We will briefly profile two of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, and thus show in clear relief the colossal predicament the Mexican state is in. There are two main groups to which most of the others have allied themselves, and so they can be considered to be representative of the entire insurgent phenomenon in Mexico.  

Sinaloa, the “Sicily of the Americas”
The story of the Sinaloa Cartel is the story of drug trafficking in Mexico. During colonial times the region was infamous for its cannibalistic inhabitants, and to this day it remains one of the most lawless regions of the Mexican Republic. Long before cocaine came into the picture, farmers in Sinaloa’s Golden Triangle were growing poppies for opium sold in the United States, a smuggling trade first exploited by Chinese-Mexicans.  Sinaloans managed to wrestle the poppy trade from the Chinese through a rough program of ethnic cleansing in the 1930s, killing or expelling them from the state.
But the Sinaloa Cartel, as we know it today, hails back to 1987, when, in a move reminiscent of Alexander the Great dividing his kingdom, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias “El Padrino” (“The Godfather”), in a council of the Mexican crime families in the port of Acapulco, partitioned his empire, disintegrating the once grand Guadalajara Cartel and “privatizing” the trade amongst his lieutenants.
The Sinaloa Cartel, back then called the Cartel of the Pacific, came under the joint leadership of Ismael Zambada Garcia, alias “El Mayo,” and, more importantly, Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias “El Chapo” (“The Shorty”), the current and only head of the cartel, and now that Osama bin Laden is dead, the most wanted man in the world. Of all the cartels in Mexico, none is as identified with its leader as Sinaloa, formerly called the “Alianza de Sangre” (“Blood Alliance”). A larger-than-life personality, “El Chapo” is idolized in his native Sinaloa and beyond as a Mexican Robin Hood of mythological proportions, where ballads are dedicated to his exploits, and songs narrate his “benevolence” towards “his people”—and his relentless fury towards his enemies. His appearances are legendary, he is nowhere and everywhere, and his very name has become an iconic symbol of social mobility, resistance, and national pride, as he has endlessly eluded American anti-drug investigators. Everything the man does, or that his loyalists say he does, is intentionally clouded in the mists of war, making tracking his ambitions nigh on impossible. Heralded by Forbes Magazine as possessing a personal fortune of one billion dollars, “El Chapo’s” Sinaloa Cartel employs close to one million people, and directly controls over 25,000 miles of drug territory, including virtually the entire states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Sonora, Durango, and Chihuahua, and has active and significant operations in 12 other states. The long-arm of “El Chapo” is seen throughout Central and South America, and smuggling operations has extended Sinaloa’s empire to the far-off corners of Australia—and the United States, with a base of operations in Atlanta. Sinaloa is larger and grander than anything the Medellin Cartel of Colombia ever came close to being.
Sinaloa, one could say, is Mexican drug trafficking in the “old school” tradition. Unlike other cartels, it has, for the most part, limited its activities to traditional drug smuggling, and prefers to bribe government officials and police rather than killing them. Ever eyeing the long-term benefit of the cartel, Sinaloa has a vast and sophisticated intelligence apparatus that recruits young officials and functionaries at the beginning of their careers, often helping them financially, and “clearing away” any obstacles to promotions. Suffice it to say, “El Chapo’s” arrest could implicate and tarnish untold numbers of Mexican public servants. In other words, loyalty is valued more than fear, a trait that has entrenched the cartel in all levels of society. Consistent with this is the cartel’s relatively less violent nature, which bodes well for its long-term survival. “El Chapo’s” supporters have heralded his opposition to the random slaughters that his rival cartels inflict upon civilian populations, and have appealed to the government to join forces with him to destroy them. A prominent “narco-ballad” performed by El Grupo Cartel has made this appeal famous, and in a society that values its antique minstrel tradition, it has had a significant impact upon the Sinaloa Cartel’s public image. Sinaloa is further credited with fighting one of its rivals, the Tijuana Cartel, into a non-aggression pact, which contributed to lessening the violence in that crucial border city in 2010.
Sinaloa is seen as the most sober of the cartels, and it is also the largest. This is not to say that it doesn’t commit acts of brutal violence; but it is true that its modus operandi is more geared towards bribery. Its views are towards the future, and consequently it cares very much about its public image, exploiting to the fullest the Mexican people’s rather grandiose perception of outlaws and natural distrust of government, along with their respect for the cartel’s idiosyncratic and violent cowboy intrepidness. Image is carefully kept, and this becomes a potent tool against Sinaloa’s most powerful enemies, the Zetas, with which it has been fighting a relentless and bloody war for years.

Los Zetas: A profile in Overkill
If Sinaloa is the “godfather” of the cartels, traditional, highly Mexican, folkloric and historically deferential to more “respectable” parameters of narco action, their primary enemies, the Zetas, are the marauding Huns by comparison. Possessing more tactical capabilities in the United States than Al Qaeda, and more absolute power over their territories than terrorist organizations like ETA or the IRA, they are a phenomenon seemingly taken from kitsch cinema portrayals of aesthetically grand acts of over-kill violence: Tarantino characters on steroids! In Mexico they parade their power by patrolling their territory in convoys of 20 to 30 armored, tinted trucks, flaunting their impunity before a besieged populace—more daring than any other criminal cartel, and more akin to the textbook notion of armed insurgency.
Whilst not as driven by personality and regional allegiance, the Zetas are driven more by an extreme type of corporate loyalty, perfecting a fanatical code of silence born out of their intense, militaristic training. The group was created as the enforcement force of the Gulf Cartel in 1999, recruited from deserters from Mexican Army Special Forces, frighteningly well trained in counterinsurgency tactics by elements of the U.S. intelligence community and even by Sayeret Matkal units from Israel. When Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas was extradited to the U.S. in 2007, the Zetas began pronouncing more and more their functional independence, departing from Gulf Cartel protocols, until they finally broke away from the cartel in 2010, declaring war on their former bosses. Since then the Gulf has aligned itself with Sinaloa against the Zetas, thereby creating the line in the sand that persists to this day in the cartel versus cartel dynamic.
Recruits are routinely chosen amongst very young Mexican and Mexican-American adolescents—sometimes as young as 13—are initiated by the ritualized execution of a prisoner at point-blank range, and are then sent to a training camp at a ranch or an estate somewhere in Mexico. There they are trained in the use of virtually all types of guerrilla tactic firearms, including grenade launchers, anti-aircraft guns, bazookas, and improvised explosive devices. To solidify the young trainees’ tolerance to torture, they are subjected to brutal sessions of beatings and burnings, sometimes even their fingernails and ears are torn off, all to psychologically condition them to hold their tongue should they get caught by a rival cartel or the government.
Most visible in the United States at Laredo, Texas, they are fighting a crucial war against the Sinaloa Cartel over control of the I-35 corridor, a fight based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas—the Zetas base of transnational operations in North America, with operations that routinely reach Canada. In Mexico they control 11 states, the southern territories, and their power spills over to Guatemala, where they have a significant recruitment presence. Unlike the other cartels, drug smuggling accounts for approximately only 50% of Zeta income, the rest coming from kidnappings, extortion, protection rackets, assassinations, human trafficking, amongst other illegal activity.
The Zetas have become quite dexterous in media manipulation tactics and outright censorship, often brutally murdering journalists and attaching messages to the mangled corpses. Attacks against civilians are a common tactic of terror to cower public opinion, especially in the Nuevo Laredo area, where the message for the government to stand back is mind-shatteringly clear. An often cited execution procedure for a “serious enemy” of the cartel is called “el guiso”—“the stew”—where the victim is placed in a 55-gallon drum, often filled with diesel as opposed to gasoline, because diesel burns slower. Then the drum is set alight, and after four to eight hours, depending on his/her size, all that remains of the victim is a fragile, charred cluster of bones later to be picked up by authorities aghast at the crime scene. Victims have been dissolved in acid and have been fed to wild animals, amongst many other forms of extravagant murder and torture.
Their macabre public image includes a pietistic devotion to “La Santa Muerte” (“Holy Death”), an idol of a skeletal female grim-reaper, usually garbed in women’s dresses, to which devotees pay homage of fruits, animal bones, and even human deaths. The Catholic Church in Mexico has condemned the homage of “La Santa Muerte” as satanic idolatry, warning that anyone who worships the image falls into grievous mortal sin. The votaries of the death cult, however, have despaired of traditional Catholicism’s consolation because of the proscription on murder, and they hope “Santa Muerte” will shield them from God’s wrath at their death. Altars to death pervade Nuevo Laredo’s streets, grim reminders of the devotion of the city’s rulers.
There have been cases of hits ordered against American citizens—orders given by Zeta commanders in Mexico, and executed in the United States. Though it is usually gang on gang killings in the U.S., the scenario could very well broaden to include police chiefs or even politicians. Authorities estimate that there are sleeper cells of Zeta hit-men in cities all across the United States, and they are infiltrating American street gangs, including the Latin Kings and MS-13, bringing these gangbangers closer to a more lethal and previously undreamed of level of professional sophistication. It is primarily through these gangs that they distribute their merchandise in America.

A Corrupt State is NOT a “Captive State”: A Conclusion
The state’s interest lies in diminishing the immense power of the criminal cartels, even if a truce or “agreement” is later on the agenda. The state, in order to properly function as such, and interestingly enough, in order to reap any benefit from such a truce, needs to show a preponderance of power. It needs to show that it is the state that allows any organization to live and prosper, and that without the state they are nothing—for that is what distinguishes a corrupt state from a “captive state.” A corrupt state can function; a “captive state” is far too erratic. Such was the agreement during the PRI’s “perfect dictatorship,” when the PRI occasionally flexed its muscle against the cartels as well, and the cartels showed a sort of respectful deference. Such was the power of the PRI, and such was the deference of the cartels, that in 1989 President Carlos Salinas de Gortari arrested Mexican “Godfather” Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the then unquestioned and sole drug lord, without firing a shot, while the latter was sitting quietly in a Guadalajara restaurant! How things have changed. 

Christopher S. Ljungquist is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com 

Capital Flight from Russia Tells a Tale About Regime Failure

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=40499&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=7d90aad71230f3e6e39658cccb9a1257

February 25, 2013

Capital Flight from Russia Tells a Tale About Regime Failure

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 10 Issue: 35

February 25, 2013 02:46 PM Age: 5 hrs

By: Pavel K. Baev

Sergei Ignatiev, chairman of the Central Bank of Russia (Source: RIA Novosti)

Last week marked the anniversary of the shocking performance staged by the Pussy Riot punk rock group in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. And this year saw a spectacular increase in the density of “patriotic” political noise silencing common sense in debates over such matters as separation of church and state, homosexual “propaganda” or the adoption of Russian children by American families. This noise has obscured one truly sensational news item produced by the Chairman of the Central Bank Sergei Ignatiev who confirmed that Russia, which should have been—and needs to be—a net importer of capital, lost through capital flight $57 billion in 2012, including $35 billion in “dubious operations” (Vedomosti, February 20). There is nothing new about these figures, but Ignatiev asserted that more than a half of the dubious money outflow is controlled by “one well-organized group of people,” which should have been identified and terminated.

This informed estimate provides a rare insight into the maturity of organized crime in Russia and the scope of the country’s corruption. This criminal group necessarily includes not only dirty bankers, who create disposable companies, but also tax authorities, who write down the non-payments, and even the Federal Security Service (FSB), which monitors financial flows (Novaya Gazeta, February 21). The organized crime group in question has built a reputation for reliably servicing the vast “shadow economy” and is well-protected against criminal investigations, so Ignatiev dares to spell out his frustration only because he is due to leave the position he has held for 12 years in a few months (Kommersant-FM, February 20). This invincibility of a flourishing criminal organization sheds new light on the plight of Sergei Magnitsky, who discovered a fragment of its activity and paid with his life for the attempt to stop it (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, February 23). In fact, the hysterical political reaction to every examination of the Magnitsky case in the United States or, more hesitantly, in the European Union can be largely explained by the inability to investigate this crime determined by the unbreakable chain of mutual commitments inside the group of money-exporters (Novaya Gazeta, February 20).

President Vladimir Putin is probably irked and alarmed by the absolute indifference within the corrupt bureaucracy to his supreme orders, and he also begins to suspect that the non-stop parade of raspil and otkat (these expressive terms for embezzlement and bribe have enriched the financial lexicon) threatens the sustainability of Putinism’s economic model. He tries to strike some fear back into the predatory bureaucracy by expressing outrage over the most blatant “privatization” of budgets designated for top-priority projects in Vladivostok, which hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, and in Sochi, where the Olympic construction has entered its final desperate phase (New Times, February 18). His search for scapegoats remains, however, as unconvincing as is the legislation forbidding top-level bureaucrats the elementary convenience of owning bank accounts abroad (Kommersant, February 22). This “frown on corruption” only further encourages capital flight, which reached $10 billion in January and is no longer officially forecasted to cease, but rather to stay at the level of $50 billion in 2013 (RBC Daily, February 22).

This sustained outpouring of money affects economic growth, which Putin perceives as the crucial condition for stabilizing his suddenly shaky presidency. He has little interest in the services sector and is a firm believer in re-industrialization. But it is exactly the industrial production that registered contraction going into the fifth straight month, so that the output in January 2013 was 0.8 percent lower than in the same month of 2012 (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 22). The defense-industrial complex is supposed to be the “locomotive” of growth in manufacturing, but the ambitious re-armament program is advancing well only on paper where target figures are routinely corrected to fit the actual results. The “patriotic” lobbyists have successfully derailed most proposals for importing high-tech weapons from Western producers, popular with former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. His successor, Sergei Shoigu, prefers to defuse the conflict with the industry but cannot ignore the results of a recent audit, which established that only 20 percent of enterprises could qualify as “modern.” Whereas, in more than half of them modernization makes no sense, so only political orders postpone their overdue shutdown (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, February 22). Putin has committed himself to feeding a “black hole” that aggravates the shortage of investment resources in other sectors (Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, February 15).

The squeeze is acutely felt in the oil and gas industry, which was the main provider of prosperity for the petro-addicted country but now is facing technological challenges and saturation on the key export market in Europe, and so contributes to the trend of extra slow growth (Forbes.ru, February 21). Putin’s particular attention to every oil contract and gas deal used to be an attraction for Western investors, who valued his guarantees, but now it is seen as a factor worsening the “Siberian” investment climate. With a wary sense of déjà vu, European consumers follow the current Russian-Ukrainian quarrels as President Viktor Yanukovich refuses to pay the $7 billion fine to Gazprom, speculating that Putin will not risk another “gas war” (Kommersant, February 22). The Russian President is indeed more preoccupied with the fierce court intrigues, suspecting that the government’s forays against his loyal lieutenant Igor Sechin, who fancies himself an “energy tsar,” are merely a means for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to position himself as a smarter economic “modernizer” (Novaya Gazeta, February 22).

Jealously guarding his privilege of economic commander-in-chief, Putin cannot fail to see that his instructions to secure stable growth and to keep the working class employed depart further and further from the reality of inescapable stagnation. The slowdown is not externally-induced or cyclical but determined by escalating bureaucratic predation, which escapes Russia through “dubious operations” that roughly equal what Gazprom earns in net profit. Putin is helpless to curtail the corruption, which is the organizing principle of his system of power and the only guarantee of loyalty of his subordinates. The pivotal institution of the Russian presidency is quickly losing legitimacy—a stronger signal to the elites than any “stay home” order from Putin that it is time to pull their ill-gained fortunes out of the country. The regime’s failure is, therefore, gaining momentum.

you expect anything but !!!  Isn't her "claim" to fame a porn video  Lol ....promoted by her Mom !!!   what a parent hum :0                   

Officially shameless: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West pose nude on the cover of French magazine

By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 17:30 EST, 25 February 2013 | UPDATED: 17:32 EST, 25 February 2013

She recently said she's working on being more guarded with her private life.
But perhaps Kim Kardashian meant after her baby with Kanye West is born.
The couple pose nude on the cover of French fashion magazine L'Officiel Hommes, the reality star caught in an expression sure to make her daughter blush as Kanye reveals his bare back, wrapping his arms around her.

Shameless: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West pose on the cover of the spring issue of French magazine L'Officiel Hommes

The black and white image features on the spring issue of the men's magazine, shot by Nick Knight.
Its release comes just days after Kim was forced to shut down rumours she is planning her exit from Keeping Up with the Kardashians after season nine.
It had been suggested that Kim may want to leave the show following the birth of her first child with Kanye West, after claiming her baby will not appear on television.

 

More...

• Of course she's there! Pregnant Kim Kardashian scores an invite to Elton John's Oscars bash
• 'This is where I always should have been!' Kim Kardashian reveals plans to wed Kanye West as she shows off her curves in Cosmo

Kim had told DuJour magazine: 'I think there's always an evolution of, you know, what you want to do in life. It's all about finding things that really excite you and motivate you and spark you all over again.
'I'm realising that no matter what, if you go into something with all these expectations and plans, once you're actually living it, it could be completely different.'
Kim also told the publication that rapper Kanye has taught her 'a lot about privacy', and after his own reluctance to appear in the series, perhaps it wouldn't be a surprise if she did decide to bid farewell to the Kardashian bubble.

Baby on the way! Kim cradled her bump as she arrived for the Elton John Oscar Viewing Party in Hollywood, California on Sunday evening

All white: Kim held a fur stole as she vamped it up in her plunging dress

'I'm ready to be a little less open about some things, like my relationships,' Kim added. 'I'm realising everyone doesn't need to know everything. I'm shifting my priorities.'
Addressing the reports on her Celebuzz page earlier this month, Kim admitted she doesn't know where life will take her, but said she is 'staying on through at least season 10' of Keeping Up (the E! show is currently in season seven).
She wrote: 'As everyone knows, we are extremely proud of the show and all of us are staying on through at least season 10. The show remains to be my number 1 priority and it’s a big part of my life and I enjoy every moment of it.
'It has given me such a rare opportunity to share more of my life with all of you and has brought my family closer to each other. I’m looking forward to the new season and beyond.'
The 32-year-old added: 'The fact is that I have many goals that I still need to reach and accomplish and I (like so many of you) don’t know where my life will be in the next couple of years, but I’m looking forward to continuing this journey.'

Missing her man: Kim posted this picture of herself with Kanye on Instagram on Monday

Kim is expected to give birth to her first child in July this year.
The couple announced that they were expecting on December 30.
The happy news was first revealed by Kanye onstage during his concert in Atlantic City as Kim watched from the audience.
The rapper said 'stop the music', then announced 'make noise for my baby mama right here,' with a wide smile.
Kanye's announcement prompted a flurry of excited tweets from the audience.
Kim, who was sat in the audience during the show, is said to have not known that her man would reveal their pregnancy and was in shock like many of the rappers fans.
She confirmed the news in a message to her fans titled 'New Year, New Beginnings' not long after.
She wrote: 'It’s true!! Kanye and I are expecting a baby. We feel so blessed and lucky and wish that in addition to both of our families, his mom and my dad could be here to celebrate this special time with us. Looking forward to great new beginnings in 2013 and to starting a family. Happy New Year!!! Xo

Addressing the claims: Kim wrote about suggestions she was planning to quit Keeping Up with the Kardashians on her blog last week, after telling DuJour magazine she wanted more privacy

The couple have been dating since April last year, and before the pregnancy was announced previously denied rumours that Kim was expecting.
Kim is currently thought to be around the four month mark in her pregnancy.
The reality star is still married to her estranged second husband Kris Humphries. The pair's divorce has been prolonged as the basketball star has insisted on a court case, claiming the marriage should be annulled as it was 'fraud'.
Since Kim and Kanye began dating in April they have rarely been apart.
Despite the shortness of their relationship, the two have been friends for years.
It has even been speculated that the rapper had been in love with Kim back in 2009, when he appeared to refer to her in his track Knock You Down.

Lovers' stroll: Kim and Kanye looked blissful as the couple shopped in Paris on January 25

At the time the song was penned, Kim was in a relationship with NFL star Reggie Bush, whom she went on to date on and off for three years.
The song includes the lines: 'You was always the cheerleader of my dreams... To seem to only date the head of football teams... And I was the class clown that always kept you laughing... We were never meant to be, baby we just happened.' 
He then goes on to rap: 'You should leave your boyfriend now.'
Kim made it clear she was missing Kanye when she took to Instagram on Monday.
A picture she posted of the pair with the caption, 'I miss him too!!!!', garnered nearly 140,000 likes within the first hour.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2284441/Kim-Kardashian-Kanye-West-pose-nude-cover-French-magazine.html#ixzz2LxkQdpzM
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A Trail of Breadcrumbs: The Resignation of Pope Benedict and the Great Financial Collapse

February 15, 2013

http://www.blacklistednews.com/A_Trail_of_Breadcrumbs%3A_The_Resignation_of_Pope_Benedict_and_the_Great_Financial_C.../24245/0/0/0/Y/M.html?morestories=obinsite

Source: Richard Gleaves

On Tuesday, February 12^th, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world and his congregation with news that he was resigning the papacy; this is entirely unprecedented in the modern age. The last pope to resign, Gregory XII, did so only to solve a dilemma of leadership in the church. That was 600 years ago, and it hasn’t happened since. Every pope in 600 years has died in the arms of the church.

But not this pope. Regardless of what you believe, it is hard to fathom how, within the Catholic framework, he can justify rejecting the papacy theologically or practically. Despite the advantages of medical care and luxury, despite the prospect of remaining servant of God and meeting his creator as pope, he is rejecting his position in relation to God and walking away.

 

When something extraordinary happens, one must look for extraordinary circumstances. I think I can explain this sudden resignation, if the reader is prepared to follow a trail of breadcrumbs, link after link in a chain that connects five men. This is not a chain of five conspirators, necessarily, but is intended to show the links between our politics, our financial gurus, and our religious leaders.

First, Barack Obama. The president is bent on running the national debt to its limit. He is pushing to eliminate the debt ceiling, and calling for chump-change revenue while the government wastes trillions pouring cash down sinkhole after sinkhole of boondoggles, swindles and schemes. Every move he makes promises a parabolic curve of rising debt. Why? There are three opinions. Firstly, it is possible that he believes increased spending is the way to save the economy; perhaps his advisors have told him that the depressionary forces of the market must be countered by an inflationary monetary policy or else the economy will collapse. The second possibility is that he knows a collapse is inevitable and is buying time, either for noble motives (sparing Americans the pain in the hope that some last minute save appears) or venal (a shopping spree of spending while the reserve status makes it possible, to secure his constituency and reward his cronies). The third opinion is more sinister. Could Obama be running up the debt to cause the collapse? Who would stand to benefit? And what would happen afterwards? It is difficult to believe that this is the case. How would the man look in the mirror?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/opinion/krugman-kick-that-can.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/opinion/an-escape-hatch-for-the-debt-ceiling.html


 

The second link is Paul Volcker. Volcker is former chairman of the Federal Reserve. He knows the dangers of monetary inflation, having fought back the post-Nixon Shock inflationary wave of the 70s. He was Obama’s advisor on the financial crisis until January, 21^st2011. On that date, he resigned his position, ceding it to G.E. CEO Jeffrey Immelt. What had he been working on in his last months? In September 2010, a self-appointed group convened at the grand Palais-Royal in Paris for what became known as the Palais-Royal Initiative. These men were former central bankers from around the world, acting (we are told) on their own. The group was assembled by Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an Italian banker considered to be the“Father of the Euro”. (He is also adored by George Soros, who named his own Euro-solution the “Padoa-Schioppa plan”) The purpose of the Palais-Royal initiative? To create a framework for the next phase of monetary policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/economy/22immelt.html

http://www.georgesoros.com/articles-essays/entry/how_to_save_the_euro

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/03/camdessus.htm 
 

On December 18^th, just before the penultimate meeting of the group, Padoa-Schioppa died, and the third man in our trail of breadcrumbs appears. The new leader of the Palais-Royal group: Michel Camdessus, French economist and former Managing Director of the IMF. The group came to its conclusion. The report of the Palais-Royal Initiative, issued in January of 2011 (and revised the next month) calls for the creation of a supranational banking power, outside the control of any government, which would issue the global reserve currency in the form of SDRs, a unit of account created at Bretton Woods in 1944. Essentially, Camdessus’ old colleagues at the IMF (and the Bank of International Settlements) want to take over international finance. We can't blame them for trying, right? Camdessus presented the document to French President Sarkozy, and the report was disseminated on October 5^th, 2011 among the papers of the G-20, appearing on the abstract as a paper written specifically for the G-20.

 

http://www.imsreform.org/reserve/docs.html

 

http://www.global-currencies.org/smi/gb/telechar/news/Rapport_Camdessus-integral.pdf

One may well imagine the response to this paper: "This new banking takeover might work, Monsieur Camdessus, but is it right? Is it moral?" And now the Vatican comes in. We come to our fourth name, that of Cardinal Peter Turkson. Turkson is president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. On October 23^rd, 2011 (18 days after the G-20 presentation) the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace surprised many by coming out with a proposal that damned “the idolatry of the market” and called for a supranational banking authority identical to the one recommended by the Palais-Royal group. What are the chances? Coincidence? Not when you look on the list of advisors to the Council. There among the names is Michel Camdessus.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/24/idUS264245887020111024

http://www.omearaferguson.com/in-house-news/expert-encourages-culture-of-global-solidarity-in-response-to-financial-crisis/

http://www.justpax.it/pcgp/eng/membri.html

And so we come to the last name on our list, full circle to Pope Benedict XVI. Why is he stepping down so unexpectedly? The answer is to be found, I believe, in the name of the man considered to have the best odds of being our next pope: Cardinal Peter Turkson. According to the Pope’s own brother, Benedict is tormented by the “Vatileaks” scandal, involving leaked Vatican documents indicating money laundering and corruption. This is not to say that Benedict himself is implicated, but he may well be resigning to protect the church, as acquiescence to someone’s threat to release more. Who would possess such documents? The financiers who are on the opposite side of the Vatican trades, naturally. Those financiers who want a new pope in power:Peter Turkson, who is fully on board, and who will declare the IMF schemes to be moral and just when the time comes, a man who is unassailable due to his skin color, who will be commanding the obedience of 1.2 billion Catholics.

If there is any truth to these speculations, whether you believe in a divinity or you don’t, I think you can appreciate and share the sentiment: God help us all.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100450439

http://www.policymic.com/articles/25679/cardinal-peter-turkson-5-facts-about-the-potential-first-black-pope

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/popes-brother-speaks-georg-ratzinger-vatileaks-scandal_n_2669964.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/pope-benedict-and-vatileaks-2013-2

 

China admits pollution has caused ‘cancer villages’

Source: UKT

The admission by China’s Environment ministry came in a five-year plan on tackling pollution.

“In recent years, toxic and hazardous chemical pollution has caused many environmental disasters, cutting off drinking water supplies, and even leading to severe health and social problems such as ‘cancer villages’” the document says.

Environmentalists have long campaigned for the government to recognise and help the hundreds of cancer clusters caused by poisoned soil, water or air. In 2009, Deng Fei, an investigative journalist helped to plot some of the worst-hit villages on a Google map.

“I do think this shows a positive development,” said Ma Jun, one of China’s leading environmentalists. “The recognition of the existence of problems is the very first step and the precondition for us to really start solving these problems.”

“Before there was always this tendency to play down or even cover up the issues. If that continues then all these problems with air, water, soil and groundwater pollution and their health impact could drag on for a long, long time.”

The plan outlines a clampdown on the use and production of 58 types of toxic chemical.
“The document warns that China faces a grave situation in terms of chemical pollution control, citing inadequate pollution risk control by enterprises, a lack of systematic policies to restrain the making and use of highly toxic and dangerous chemicals and authorities’ insufficient pollution monitoring and supervision capabilities,” state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.
The plan’s publication comes amid a growing public outcry over the toll pollution is taking on public health. Cancer is now China’s biggest killer, and cancer rates have surged since the beginning of China’s economic miracle. One in four Chinese now die from cancer, and there has been an 80pc rise in the mortality rate from cancer over the past 30 years.
Experts predict that lung cancer rates will continue to skyrocket because of air pollution, even if China’s addiction to cigarettes is brought under control.
Since January, repeated bouts of toxic smog in Beijing and other major cities have thrust the issue of air pollution to the top of China’s political agenda.
This month the focus has shifted underground, with a series of local media reports on how factories are allegedly pumping huge quantities of toxic waste into groundwater supplies.
The issue of groundwater pollution hit the headlines after Mr Deng launched an online campaign inviting internet-users to post photographs of polluted rivers near their homes.
Mr Deng said he was “petrified” by the state of China’s waterways. “If things continue like this, we will all be doomed,” he said.
“If the issue [of ground water pollution] is not properly solved, not only will it kill people but it will also drag down the entire healthcare system because of the number of cancer patients it causes.”
Ma Jun, who runs the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said government officials had traditionally claimed there was insufficient scientific evidence to link “cancer clusters” and pollution.
While more research was required to establish a clearer connection, Mr Ma said China urgently needed to follow in the footsteps of the United States and Japan by adopting “precautionary” measures.
“We cannot just say that until all these links have been proved 100 per cent, scientifically and medically, [we do nothing].”
Mr Ma said the government’s acknowledgement of “cancer villages” was part of an ongoing shift towards greater environmental transparency.
“Recently the government, especially the central government, has been more open about these environmental pollution problems, much more open than before. The health impact used to be considered a highly sensitive issue because it matters to (political) stability.”