Infinite Unknown

Flashback:

- Former SAS Comander: Afghan operation is ‘worthless’:

And, addressing the use of Snatch Land Rovers, which he deemed to be unsafe and prompted his decision to stand down, he said: “I had to resign.

“I had warned (the MoD) time and time again that there were going to be needless deaths if we were not given the right equipment, and they ignored this advice. There is blood on their hands.

“There was no other vehicle to use. The simple truth is that the protection on these vehicles is inadequate and this led to the unnecessary deaths.”

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The former head of the Army accuses Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of badly letting down the Armed Forces during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a damning verdict, General Sir Richard Dannatt accuses Mr Brown of being a “malign” influence by failing to honour guarantees on defence spending during his time at the Treasury, and charges Mr Blair with lacking “moral courage” for failing to overrule his chancellor.

Gen Dannatt’s book, Leading from the Front, which begins its serialisation in The Sunday Telegraph today, is the first major public critique of the Blair/Brown administration by a senior outside figure who served under both men. He was Chief of the General Staff from 2006-09.

He describes his efforts to persuade Mr Blair and Mr Brown that the Army - fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan and suffering heavy casualties - was facing almost unbearable pressures as “pushing a rock up a steep hill almost all the way through”.

His book is further evidence of the cripplingly dysfunctional nature of the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, which Mr Blair spelt out in his own memoir, A Journey, published this week.

The general also reveals in his book and in interviews for this newspaper that:

-By early 2009, at a time when the Army was suffering a punishing casualty rate in Afghanistan, he had not had a face-to-face meeting with Mr Brown for six months. Eventually he was forced to “ambush” the prime minister during a chance meeting in Horse Guards Parade to get his concerns across;

-The 1997-98 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which set out a “good framework” for future defence policy, could not cope with troops being committed to Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time and was “fatally flawed” through being underfunded;

-The intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, cited as the main reason for Britain joining the United States in the 2003 war, was “most uncompelling”. Planning for the aftermath of the conflict was, he said, an “abject failure”.

Gen Dannatt reserves his strongest criticism for Labour’s two prime ministers, accusing them of letting down the troops they sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

He writes in his book: “History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown’s malign intervention, when chancellor, on the SDR by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the en tire process from the outset.

“The seeds were sown for some of the impossible operational pressures to come.”

Mr Blair “lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own chancellor”.

The general also admits he was “bemused” by Mr Brown’s decision to write his book, Wartime Courage, about the generation that suffered so much in winning the Second World War. He adds: “I am still not sure whether he ever realised that by denying the proper funding of his own government’s declared policy, he was condemning more young men and women to the same sacrifices he railed against in a previous generation.”

Asked why he thought Mr Blair did not overrule Mr Brown, he replied: “To me it seems extraordinary that the prime minister, the No 1 guy, cannot crack the whip sufficiently to his very close friend apparently, his next door neighbour, the chancellor.

“In the war Cabinet that Margaret Thatcher put together in 1982 [during the Falklands conflict] there was no one from the Treasury. It’s tough to criticise lack of moral courage, but moral courage is what you need. Physical courage is a wonderful thing, but moral courage is actually doing the right thing at the right time.”

Gen Dannatt warns the Coalition that carrying on with the current rate of casualties in Afghanistan - where more than 100 servicemen were killed last year - would be unacceptable. “We’ve got to have cracked it by 2014, 2015,” he said.

By Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite
Published: 10:00PM BST 04 Sep 2010

Source: The Telegraph

More on the war on terror:

- American Deaths In Afghanistan Surpass Highest Annual Record

- US Colonel Lawrence Sellin Sacked After Afghan Rant

- Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist or How The US Created Al Qaeda (Documentary)

- 575 American Soldiers Have Died In Afghanistan During Barack Obama’s Presidency, The Same Number As During George Bush’s Entire Time In Office

- Afghanistan Discovers 1.8 Billion Barrel Oilfield

- US Afghan War: Unsustainable, Un-Winnable

- President Obama Kills 66 More US Soldiers in July

- Afghanistan War Logs: US Marines Sanitised Record of Bloodbath

- ‘Sangingrad’ Troop Withdrawal: Four Years In Hell, And Taliban Remain Undefeated

- Audit: US Can’t Account For $8.7 Billion In Iraqi Cash

- U.S. War Crimes: Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima

- Gordon Brown On Saddam Hussein: ‘This New World Order That We Were Trying To Create Was Being Put At Risk’

- Iraq inquiry: UK Government lied, ‘intentionally and substantially’ exaggerated WMD threat

- U.S. To Buy Russian M-17 Helicopters For Afghan Air Force

- The Truth About Afghanistan: ‘We’re f***ing losing this thing.’

- Sacked General Stanley McChrystal created special forces military command centre ‘Death Star’ with ‘Kill TV’, led secret war raids

- General Stanley McChrystal Recalled To Washington Over Rolling Stone Article

- US ‘Discovers’ Vast Mineral Riches Worth Nearly $1 Trillion In Afghanistan

- US ’secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces are deployed in 75 countries

- German President Horst Köhler had to resign for telling the truth (!)

- Afghans Are Convinced That The US Is Funding The Taliban

- Taliban get £1,600 bounty for each Nato soldier killed

- Taliban attack biggest NATO base in Afghanistan

- President Obama Wins The Right to Detain People With No Habeas Review

- Law Prof. David Glazier: CIA Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for ‘War Crimes’

- German troops in Afghanistan call on Angela Merkel to explain why they are at war

- Rioters vent fury at US after Nato troops kill Afghan civilians on bus

- WikiLeaks Release: Classified US Military Video Depicts The Indiscriminate Slaying of Over a Dozen People in Iraq - Incl. Two Reuters News Staff

- WikiLeaks Plans to Post Video Showing US Massacre of Afghani Civilians

- Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ‘Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent’

- Obama Administration Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric

- WikiLeaks Release: Classified US Military Video Depicts The Indiscriminate Slaying of Over a Dozen People in Iraq - Incl. Two Reuters News Staff

- US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened

- John Pilger: Have a Nice World War III, Folks

- US shipping hundreds of powerful bunker buster bombs for coming attack on Iran

- Secret Pentagon Spy Network Hired To ‘Track And Kill’

- Rep. Ron Paul: Five Minute Speech in Support of Rep. Kucinich’s Afghanistan Resolution

- US Drone Strikes in Pakistan: 1 in 3 Killed Are Civilians

- US officials puzzle over millions of dollars in cash, well over $1 billion a year, leaving Afghanistan by plane for Dubai

- Blackwater Guards Stole Hundreds Of Weapons In Kabul And Went On Deadly Rampage

- Judge Napolitano and Angela Keaton on Freedom Watch: Obama’s Bush Foreign Policy

- Cynthia McKinney at Munich Germany NATO Peace Rally: ‘My Country Has Been Hijacked By A Criminal Cabal’

- The New Vision of the Obama Administration: War Without End

- International Fund to Buy Off Taliban Leaders in Afghanistan Will Cost Hundreds of Millions

- Ron Paul: US Foreign Policy is Bankrupting America

- Pentagon backtracks after Defense Secretary Robert Gates ‘admits’ Blackwater operating in Pakistan

- US Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes (ABC News Investigation)

- US Marine Commander: Afghan surge troops won’t target drug crops

- Nobel Peace Laureate Obama seeks additional $33 billion for wars, on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department

- Top US intelligence officer: ‘Afghan Insurgency Can Sustain Itself Indefinitely’ and ‘Time Is Running Out’

- Afghanistan: Suicide bomber ‘kills four CIA agents’ after attacking CIA base, at least 8 Americans killed

- Afghan CIA suicide bomber ‘was courted as potential informant’

- 857 US Soldiers Died in Afghanistan Region Since 2001

- Obama’s surge comes at a cost: At least $57,077.60 per minute

- Nato appeals to Russia for more help with the war in Afghanistan

- US Forces Chief Admiral Mike Mullen Warns of More Fighting And Casualties in Afghanistan

- Robert Fisk, The Independent’s award-winning Middle East correspondent: Obama is a Disaster, Worse than Bush

- Rep. Dennis Kucinich: ‘These Wars Are Corrupting The Heart Of Our Nation!’

- Rep. Dennis Kucinich: The Truth About Afghanistan

- Obama administration tells Pakistan: Tackle Taliban or we will

- Dennis Kucinich: ‘The war in Afghanistan is a threat to our national security’; ‘America is in the fight of its life and that fight is not in Afghanistan - it’s here’

- Dennis Kucinich: Afghans ‘don’t want to be saved by us, they want to be saved from us.’

- MSNBC Rachel Maddow: War President Obama

- Ron Paul: ‘Obama is Actually Preparing Us For Perpetual War’

- Afghanistan Surge to Cost At Least $40 Billion, That Is $1.333.333 For One US Soldier Per Year

- President Obama ‘to deploy 30,000 troops to Afghanistan’

- Obama: ‘I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.’ (!)

- CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy Outside Vilnius, Lithuania

- British military forces told to ‘bribe’ the Taliban with ‘bags of gold’

- Afghanistan: New 67-Million-Dollar US Prison At Bagram

- The ‘Obama Market’ in Kabul: US Military Rations, Sleeping Bags, Tactical Goggles on Sale

- Paul Craig Roberts: Republic of Fools & The Evil Empire

- Rep. Eric Massa on Afghanistan: 2950 Days, 300 Billion Dollars, 911 Dead Americans - End the War, Bring back the Troops

- Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’ (Must-read):

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

“The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.

“There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, it’s about oil, it’s not about democracy.”

- US official resigns over Afghan war: Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting:

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”

- Three US helicopters crash in Afghanistan, 14 Americans killed

- Morale dips for American marines in Afghanistan:

“I’m not much for this war. I’m not sure it’s worth all those lives lost,” said Sergeant Christian Richardson as we walked across corn fields that will soon be ploughed up to plant a spring crop of opium poppy.

- Afghanistan opium production reaches 6,900 tons:

Opium production rate has soared to 6,900 tons in Afghanistan in the past 10 years ‘despite‘ the presence of 100,000 foreign troops in the country for nearly eight years.

A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said on Wednesday that Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium that has devastating global consequences.

The UN report also noted that Afghanistan’s illegal opium production is worth 65 billion dollars.

The heroin and opium market feeds 15 million addicts, with Europe, Russia and Iran consuming half the supply, UNODC reported.

- Ron Paul: ‘The more troops we send the worse things get!’

- Ron Paul On The US Afghanistan War Policy

- Italians bribed the Taleban all over Afghanistan, say two senior Afghan officials

- Pentagon spends $400 per gallon of gas in Afghanistan

- I was ordered to cover up President Karzai election fraud, sacked UN envoy says

- President Obama quietly deploying 13,000 more US troops to Afghanistan

- Congressman Alan Grayson on Afghanistan

- Ten more US soldiers killed in Afghanistan

- Leaked Report: US Top Commander In Afghanistan Calls For More Troops Or War ‘Will Likely Result In Failure’

- ‘We’re pinned down:’ 4 US Marines die in Afghan ambush

- Top US commander in Afghanistan: The Taliban have gained the upper hand:

The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

- General Sir David Richards: Afghanistan will take 30 to 40 years

- Former SAS Comander: Afghan operation is ‘worthless’

Tags: Afghanistan, Gordon Brown, Government, Iraq, Military, Politics, Soldiers, Tony Blair, U.K., U.S., War

Blackwater Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials.

While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates, according to a United States government official.

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week released a chart that identified 31 affiliates of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. The network was disclosed as part of a committee’s investigation into government contracting. The investigation revealed the lengths to which Blackwater went to continue winning contracts after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. That episode and other reports of abuses led to criminal and Congressional investigations, and cost the company its lucrative security contract with the State Department in Iraq.

Continue reading »

Tags: Blackwater, Economy, Government, Military, Politics, U.S., Xe

Just that there never was a defense. This entire financial crisis has been engineered.

This will also not be a double-dip recession, but the Greatest Depression ever.

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The United States, Japan and large parts of Europe have exhausted their policy arsenal, leaving them defenceless against a double-dip recession as recovery slows to ’stall speed’.

Nouriel Roubini said the US growth rate was likely to fall below 1pc in the second half of the year Photo: BLOOMBERG

“The US has run out of bullets,” said Nouriel Roubini, professor at New York University, and one of a caste of luminaries with grim forecasts at the annual Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como.

“More quantitative easing (bond purchases) by the Federal Reserve is not going to make any difference. Treasury yields are already down to 2.5pc yet credit spreads are widening again. Monetary policy can boost liquidity but it can’t deal with solvency problems,” he told Europe’s policy elite.

Dr Roubini said the US growth rate was likely to fall below 1pc in the second half of the year, despite the biggest stimulus in history: a cut in interest rates from 5pc to zero, a budget deficit of 10pc of GDP, and $3 trillion to shore up the financial system.

The anaemic pace compares with rates of 4pc-6pc at this stage of recovery in normal post-war recoveries.

Continue reading »

Tags: China, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Government, Japan, Nouriel Roubini, Politics, Recession, U.S.

Related article:

- Several Dozen Pentagon Workers Used Their High-Level Security Clearances To Purchase And Download Child Pornography

Criminals!

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A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department — including some with the highest available security clearance — who  used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.

The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.

In a related inquiry, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child  pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.

The Boston Globe first reported the Pentagon’s role in Project Flicker in July, citing DCIS investigative reports (PDF) showing that at least 30 Defense Department employees were investigated.

But new Project Flicker investigative reports obtained by The Upshot through the Freedom of Information Act, which you can read here, show that DCIS investigators identified 264 Defense employees or contractors who had purchased child pornography online. Astonishingly, nine of those had “Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information” security clearances, meaning they had access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets. All told, 76 of the individuals had Secret or higher clearances. But DCIS investigated only 52 of the suspects, and just 10 were ever charged with viewing or purchasing child pornography. Without greater public disclosure of how these cases wound down, it’s impossible to know how or whether any of the names listed in the Project Flicker papers came in for additional scrutiny. It’s conceivable that some of them were picked up by local law enforcement, but it seems likely that most of the people flagged by the investigation did not have their military careers disrupted in the context of the DCIS inquiry.

Among those charged were Gary Douglass Grant, a captain in the Army Reserves and a judge advocate general, or military prosecutor. After investigators executing a search warrant found child pornography on his computer, he pleaded guilty last year to state charges of possession of obscene matter of a minor in a sexual act in California. Others included contractors for the NSA with Top Secret clearances; one of them — a former contractor — fled the country after being indicted and is believed to be in Libya.

Continue reading »

Tags: Children, Crimes, Department of Defense, Global News, Government, Internet, NSA, Pentagon, Politics, Porn, Sex, U.S.

Added: 2. September 2010

Related information:

- Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Being Sued By Federal Government

- Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu: ‘Mexican Drug Cartels Literally Do Control Parts Of Arizona’

- Mexican Drug Cartel Puts $1 Million Bounty On Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Head

- Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’

Tags: Arizona, Barack Obama, Government, Joe Arpaio, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.

Related information:

- Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Responds to Federal Government Suit

- Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu: ‘Mexican Drug Cartels Literally Do Control Parts Of Arizona’

- Mexican Drug Cartel Puts $1 Million Bounty On Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Head

- Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’

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An Arizona sheriff is being sued by the US Justice Department after refusing to hand over records for a year into an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio Photo: AFP/GETTY

The lawsuit claims that they have been trying since March last year to get Sheriff Joe Arpaio and officials to comply with its investigation of alleged discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures.

Sheriff Arpaio called the actions harassment, adding that his office will not hand over additional documents because the federal authorities have not said exactly what they are investigation.

“They have hundreds of thousands of reports, hundreds of thousands,” he said. “They’re so broad, we’re trying to narrow it down. We’re trying to work with them.”

The lawsuit is the latest action against Arizona by the federal government, which earlier sued the state to stop its strict new immigration law that requires police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally.

“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division. “It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Arizona, Barack Obama, Government, Joe Arpaio, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.

Ecstasy destroys the liver and the brain!

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A pair of psychiatric experts think they’ve got the answer to the soaring number of troops coming back from war with PTSD: have them undergo intensive psychotherapy - while they’re rolling on ecstasy.

Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Anne Mithoefer, a psychiatric nurse, are the South Carolina pair who’ve been spearheading research into ecstasy, known clinically as MDMA, since 2000. After one successful study on 21 PTSD patients between 2004 and 2008, they’ve now received the final okay from FDA and DEA officials to start a study entirely devoted to former military service members.

“My sense is that, especially after we published the results of the first study, these institutions are more open to the idea,” Dr. Michael Mithoefer tells Danger Room. “Obviously, this is still new and experimental, and it can take time to get through to big institutions.”

With $500,000 in funding from MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), the two are recruiting 16 veterans - they’re hoping for a 50-50 split between men and women, and want most of the participants to have been diagnosed within the last 10 years.

“These will mostly be veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, because longer duration of PTSD means more complicating factors,” Dr. Mithoefer says, adding that he does anticipate enrolling 4 vets from earlier wars and is still accepting applications.

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Tags: DEA, Drugs, Ecstasy, FDA, Global News, Government, Health, Medicine, Military, PTSD, Science, Soldiers, U.S.

A photo of M1 Garands (National Park Service)

The South Korean government, in an effort to raise money for its military, wants to sell nearly a million antique M1 rifles that were used by U.S. soldiers in the Korean War to gun collectors in America.

The Obama administration approved the sale of the American-made rifles last year. But it reversed course and banned the sale in March – a decision that went largely unnoticed at the time but that is now sparking opposition from gun rights advocates.

A State Department spokesman said the administration’s decision was based on concerns that the guns could fall into the wrong hands.

“The transfer of such a large number of weapons — 87,310 M1 Garands and 770,160 M1 Carbines — could potentially be exploited by individuals seeking firearms for illicit purposes,” the spokesman told FoxNews.com.

“We are working closely with our Korean allies and the U.S. Army in exploring alternative options to dispose of these firearms.”

Gun control advocates praised the Obama administration for taking security seriously.

“Guns that can take high-capacity magazines are a threat to public safety,” said Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Even though they are old, these guns could deliver a great amount of firepower. So I think the Obama administration’s concerns are well-taken.”

But gun rights advocates point out that possessing M1 rifles is legal in the United States — M1s are semi-automatics, not machine guns, meaning the trigger has to be pulled every time a shot is fired — and anyone who would buy a gun from South Korea would have to go through the standard background check.

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Government, Guns, Obama administration, Politics, Second Amendment, U.S.

Just wait for the currency markets meltdown!

Expect another ‘Problem - Reaction - Solution’ scenario created by the elite anytime soon.

Here is some background on the BIS (Bank for International Settlements):

- BIS: Currency Collapse May Stimulate Economic Expansion (Bloomberg)

Remember?

- President Medvedev Shows Off Sample Coin of New World Currency at G8 (Bloomberg)

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Percentage share of the U.S. dollar has continued its (not so) slow decline

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Daily turnover in the world’s foreign-exchange markets has soared to $4 trillion, the Bank for International Settlements said Wednesday.

In its survey, conducted every three years, the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS found that global turnover in April 2010 was up 20% from $3.3 trillion in April 2007.

Spot transactions led the rise, increasing to $1.5 trillion a day in 2010 from $1 trillion in 2007. Other forex instruments saw turnover rise 7%, for an average daily turnover of $2.5 trillion.

Britain retained its title as the top player in the forex market, with British-based banks accounting for 36.7% of daily turnover, up from 34.6% in 2007.

The United States followed with 18%, while Japan accounted for 6%. Rounding out the top players, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong accounted for 5% each, while Australia-based banks accounted for 4%.

The percentage share of the U.S. dollar has continued its slow decline witnessed since the April 2001 survey, while the euro and the Japanese yen gained relative to April 2007.

Among the 10 most actively traded currencies, the Australian and Canadian dollars both increased market share, while the pound sterling and the Swiss franc lost ground. The market share of emerging-market currencies increased, with the biggest gains for the Turkish lira and the Korean won.

The U.S. dollar had a share in 85% of all transactions, continuing a “slow retreat” from its 90% peak in 2001 just after the introduction of the euro, the BIS said.

The euro gained two percentage points since the 2007 survey to account for 39% of all transactions. The Japanese yen also increased its market share by two percentage points to 19%, but remained below its 2001 peak of 23.5%.

Continue reading »

Tags: BIS, Dollar, Economy, Global News, U.S.

See also:

- Mexican Drug Cartel Puts $1 Million Bounty On Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Head

- Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’

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Signs in Arizona warn of smuggler dangers

Drivers advised to travel north

ASSOCIATED PRESS Federal police stand guard by Texas-born kingpin Edgar ASSOCIATED PRESS Federal police stand guard by Texas-born kingpin Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez during his presentation to the press in Mexico City on Tuesday. Valdez, who was captured on Monday by federal police, faces drug-trafficking charges in the U.S. and has been blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico.

The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8″ and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,” he said. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

“This is going on here in Arizona,” he said. “This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.”

He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government’s “continued failure to secure our international border,” saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.

In a recent campaign video posted to YouTube, Mrs. Brewer - standing in front of one of the BLM signs - attacked the administration over the signs, calling them “an outrage” and telling President Obama to “Do your job. Secure our borders.”

- Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Slams President Obama: Warning Signs Are Not Enough

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.

Continue reading »

Tags: Arizona, Barack Obama, Crimes, Drugs, Global News, Government, Immigration, Mexico, Obama administration, Police, Politics, Society, U.S.