Thursday, 20 May 2010 09:13 'Shocked European ministers are preparing for emergency talks to shore up the euro after markets fell in reaction to panic measures in Germany. Angela Merkel stunned EU capitals by warning that the euro was in danger and triggered fears of a fresh financial meltdown by announcing a ban on risky trading practices by speculators. The German Chancellor’s actions opened up new cracks in the single currency, drawing sharp criticism from France and prompting Brussels to issue an appeal for unity.' Read more: Euro in Danger: Germans Trigger Panic Over Future of Single Currency Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:58 'If you smoked marijuana last week or even last month and you drive a car, you may be sent to prison under new guidelines drafted by the federal government. The Obama administration released its National Drug Control Strategy guidelines last week. The federal government wants all of the states to adopt its authoritarian and draconian diktat and expand the drug war.' Read more: Feds Move to Throw Pot Smokers in Prison for Impaired Driving Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:38 'If Los Angeles wants to boycott Arizona, it had better get used to reading by candlelight. That’s the message from a member of Arizona’s top government utilities agency, who threw down the gauntlet Tuesday in a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa by threatening to cut off the city’s power supply as retribution. Gary Pierce, a commissioner on the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission, wrote the letter in response to the Los Angeles City Council’s decision last week to boycott the Grand Canyon State — in protest of its immigration law — by suspending official travel there and ending future contracts with state businesses.' Read more: Arizona Official Threatens to Cut Off Los Angeles Power as Payback for Boycott Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:24 'In a recent New York Times’ article “Less Toxic Dispersants Lose Out in BP Oil Spill Cleanup”, journalist Paula Quinlan questions why BP is using the toxic dispersant Corexit to clean up the oil when twelve other dispersants proved more effective in EPA testing. Nowhere in the article does it mention that Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group and Apollo Management own Nalco, the producer of the 54 % effective, 100% toxic dispersant.' Read more: Media Ignores Goldman Sachs' Ties to Toxic Corexit Oil Dispersant Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:18 Kelly Cobiella reports that a CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum. Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:08 'Richard Russell, the famous writer of the Dow Theory Letters, has a chilling line in today's note: Do your friends a favor. Tell them to "batten down the hatches" because there's a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don't need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won't recognize the country. They'll retort, "How the dickens does Russell know -- who told him?" Tell them the stock market told him.' Thursday, 20 May 2010 08:00 Thursday, 20 May 2010 07:51 'Finally someone speaks the truth. In an interview with Spiegel Magazine, former Bundesbank chief Karl Otto Pohl, says it how it is: "Without a "haircut," a partial debt waiver, [Greece] cannot and will not ever [repay its debt]. So why not immediately? That would have been one alternative. The European Union should have declared half a year ago -- or even earlier -- that Greek debt needed restructuring." As for the reason for the bailout, Pohl's observation will not be a surprise to our readers "It was about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write offs." Is there any hope for Europe now? It appears no, as the right decision was to let Greece go bankrupt: "Investors would quickly have seen that Greece could get a handle on its debt problems. And for that reason, trust would quickly have been restored. But that moment has passed.' Thursday, 20 May 2010 07:32 'Rotavirus vaccines are commonly given to children, and this year's batch of vaccines made by GlaxoSmithKline and Merck are contaminated with a pig virus, the FDA recently discovered. So the FDA called a meeting to determine whether injecting a pig virus into the bodies of young children might be some sort of problem requiring a recall of the vaccines. Can you guess what conclusion the agency reached? As reported by Reuters, the FDA concluded "...it was safe for doctors to resume giving patients Glaxo's Rotarix and continue using Merck's Rotateq. The agency said there was no evidence the contamination caused any harm..." ' Read more: Pig Virus Contaminates Rotavirus Vaccines, But FDA Says No Problem Thursday, 20 May 2010 07:28 'UC Berkeley is adding something a little different this year in its welcome package -- cotton swabs for a DNA sample. In the past, incoming freshman and transfer students have received a rather typical welcome book from the College of Letters and Science's "On the Same Page" program, but this year the students will be asked for more. The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students own records.' Read more: Big Brother UC Berkeley Now Taking DNA Samples From New Students Thursday, 20 May 2010 07:17 'What is happening in Greece concerns all of us. The people are paying for a crisis and a debt that are not their own. Today it is the Greeks, tomorrow it will be others, for the same causes will produce the same effects if we allow it. First and above all, we express our full and unconditional solidarity with the people who are suffering from an austerity plan without precedent combined with contempt and an arrogance bordering on racism. The strikes and demonstrations are legitimate, and we support them. This is not the crisis of the Greek people, it is the crisis of the world capitalist system. What the Greek people are experiencing is revealing of today’s capitalism. The plan dictated by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rides roughshod over the most elementary rules of democracy.' Read more: The Greek People are the Victims of a Carefully Engineered Financial Extortion Racket
Thursday, 20 May 2010
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