DailyMail.co.uk
By Mark Prigg
PUBLISHED: 10:42 EST, 19 July 2012
UPDATED: 14:05 EST, 19 July 2012
The astonishing moment when two young mountain gorillas were spotted working together to find and destroy traps in their Rwandan forest home.
Just days after a poacher's snare had killed one of their own, two young mountain gorillas have been spotted working together to take apart poachers traps.Staff at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund were stunned when they spotted the plucky young duo, called Dukore and Rwema, destroying a trap in their forest home.
'Today our field staff observed several young gorillas from Kuryama’s group destroying snares!' Veronica Vecellio, gorilla program coordinator at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Karisoke Research Center, which is in the reserve where the event took place, blogged.
To read the rest of this story and see more amazing photos, visit Mail Online.
7/21/2012
Astonishing pictures of the young gorillas who worked together to dismantle the poachers' trap that killed their friends | The Galactic Free Press
SOUTH AFRICA: The Sheriff of the Court has just served the four major banks, and the Reserve Bank, with a summons from the New Economic Rights Alliance | The Galactic Free Press
SOUTH AFRICA: The Sheriff of the Court has just served the four major banks, and the Reserve Bank, with a summons from the New Economic Rights Alliance: Case number 27478/12….YEPEEE….
Posted on July 21, 2012 by Experiment Planet EarthJul 21, 2012by NewERAThe Sheriff of the Court has just served the four major banks, and the Reserve Bank, with a summons from the New Economic Rights Alliance: Case number 27478/12.
Put simply, the NewERA is asking the High Court to declare our money lending system fraudulent and unconstitutional. We are not suing for money. Alternatively, we are asking the Court to suspend all legal action currently taken against every South African by the banks, until a full investigation has been undertaken into our banking system.It may be bold. It may be daring. But it is 100% correct. The banks are doing some terrible things behind our backs and two years of research by dozens of people around the country, working in their spare time and for no money, has culminated in this action. It is a miracle that we made it this far. We are very proud.
What can you do about it?
- Take an interest in our money system. Understand WHY we are taking action against the banks. Download and watch The Dark Secrets of Money here (or watch it on YouTube here). We cannot stress this enough – for the sake of your family’s future you need to know how the money system works. The legal document is available for download below, but it is complicated, so commentary will be available soon to guide you through it.
- Follow and comment on the case at www.thebigcase.co.za
- Become a paying member here or donate a small amount to our causehere. We are in urgent need of funds to survive.
The banking system is a greedy monster that is coming to eat us. Only we, the people, can stop it.
THE NEW ECONOMIC RIGHTS ALLIANCE
Join the discussion, share your thoughts
http://www.newera.org.za/class-action-lawsuit-against-the-banks/
Greg Giles: Timothy Geithner Message Correction | The 2012 Scenario
Greg Giles: Timothy Geithner Message Correction
Anthony: As various readers have pointed out and I have checked out myself, US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner has been seen in public since Greg Giles reported his ‘arrest’ on July 15.
As is stated below, channels can sometimes be misled by mischievous sources…
This message also contains a very brief mention of previous messages regarding possible rising sea levels. I suggest you refer to what our other sources are saying – that such things will not occur – and do not re-enter into fear on these matters.
Message from the Galactic Federation of Light – ‘Geithner Message Correction’
As channeled through Greg Giles – July 19, 2012
http://ascensionearth2012.blogspot.com.au/
Information has been provided to our channel Greg on two dates, 7/14/12 and 7/16/12, by sources that cannot be trusted. These sources are ‘employees’ of the Galactic Federation of Light and who cannot be trusted as they are not bona fide members of the Galactic Federation of Light and therefore do not possess the right to share information with Greg and through Greg to the public at large.
What transpired is an obscenity to use our channel in this manner. This has caused much confusion, debate and distrust and we see this as appalling, and we are doing what it is we can do to make amends of this negative situation.
What occurred is an offence beyond measure and what occurred will never be permitted to occur again as long as Greg is working as a channel for us. We apologize to Greg and hope that he remains a loyal and faithful channel for us and part of our team, the Galactic Federation of Light.
For a clearer explanation of what transpired we can tell you that what happened was individuals who do not possess the right to write messages out and read them to our channels to share with others got a hold of the methods or technologies that we utilize to send Greg our messages. They sent these messages without our consent, without our permission, without our knowledge.
We have rounded up these individuals and have incarcerated them for now until we decide how we wish to deal with these individuals who violated rules and laws that govern certain aspects of our alliance. What consequences they will experience and what justice will be dispensed we at this time do not know, as we are in the early stages of this ongoing investigation. We apologize again to Greg and say that this will never happen again to him
We would like to continue to send messages through Greg and we ask those that read his messages and follow his messages to continue to trust and have faith in the guidance that is sent through him, as this incident was the only incident in the long line of messages that have been shared through Greg.
All of the other messages besides the one about Timothy Geithner and the message describing gunfire during one of the arrests can be trusted and followed as guidance from us, higher dimensional beings from the Galactic Federation of Light. The message about Timothy Geithner being arrested and sentenced to a karmic debt and then released back in to your community on Earth is not accurate and is not what happened.
What happened is Timothy Geithner was apprehended and released because Timothy Geithner revealed secrets and testimony that will help us in our investigation and further arrests.
These kinds of deals will be made from time to time with those in positions that can be beneficial to us and our mission to assist you purify your world of these beings who have to go as they will not learn to live amongst you amicably, fairly, judicially, law-abidingly, nonviolently, nonthreatening, and constitutionally.
They only know illegality, deception, countermeasure and attack. They do not ever wish to be an equitable partner with you, the people of Earth. They wish instead to treat you like cattle and they only wish to be the herdsman. They must go, and this is why these arrests will continue.
The report that was issued two days ago discussing gunfire throughout certain areas where these arrests have been taking place is erroneous as well. That report came on the heels of the report about Timothy Geithner, and both of those reports are inaccurate.
We cannot say at this time how these individuals got a hold of our technologies to initiate this deception, but we will say that it will never happen again and that you may from this day forward and from the day before the message referring to Timothy Geithner trust in the messages shared through Greg, as he has been doing a very good job for us and has been relating very accurate information. And this includes the information that we have shared that there will be rising sea levels in your future that will necessitate, in some areas at least, relocations of your populations who do not wish to deal with floodwaters throughout their neighborhoods and even some cities.
This is all we will say for now about this matter, and once again we apologize to Greg and say to him that he can have faith in the messages and the mechanisms used to send him these messages from this moment forward. We apologize for this occurrence and say that this will not happen again.
We are the Galactic Federation of Light, and we will pick up tomorrow and begin once again sharing our messages to you.
Mish/ Mike Shedlock – S & P Revises Pennsylvania’s Outlook To Negative Citing Public Pensions; Compton CA Ponders Bankruptcy; Victorville; Montebell; Los Angeles; Oakland Coming Up Eventually – 20 July 2012 | Lucas 2012 Infos
Compton, Calif. could be the fourth city in the Golden State to seek bankruptcy protection.At a city council meeting Tuesday, officials announced that Compton is set to run out of funds by Sept. 1. Compton, which has only 93,000 residents, faces a deficit of $43 million after having depleted a $22 million reserve, reports Reuters.
“I have $3 million in the bank and $5 million in warrants due in the next 10 to 12 days,” said city treasurer Doug Sanders during the live-streamed city council meeting. “By then, the council will have a decision to make: don’t pay the bonds, default on them, or have a serious talk about bankruptcy.”
Standard & Poor’s put Compton’s revenue bonds on a negative credit watch last Friday, citing concern over allegations of “abuse of public moneys” and fraud, reports the Los Angeles Times.
S&P also warned that unless they receive independently audited financial information from Compton, the city’s ratings — already at BB, or “junk” status — could be withdrawn or suspended.
Compton may not be able to meet S&P’s demands in time. The city’s independent auditor, Mayer Hoffman McCann, recently declined to sign off on the city’s financial statements and quit the account entirely, reports the Times. The firm stated that they couldn’t get anyone at the mayor’s office to cooperate with the audit inquiry.What’s to Consider?
Compton is clearly broke so there is noting to consider. The LA Times has more grim details in Compton on brink of bankruptcy.City officials announced that Compton could run out of money by summer’s end, with $3 million in the bank and more than $5 million in bills due.
A longer-term problem is a $43-million deficit that the city amassed after years of improperly using money from water, sewer and retirement funds to balance its general fund. Compton will have to pay the money back at a time when it has no reserves and has been frantically cutting costs.
The state of these cities underscores the complexity of the fiscal crisis roiling California municipalities this year, with Stockton and Mammoth Lakes already in Chapter 9 bankruptcy. While ballooning public pensions and falling property tax revenues have hit many cities hard, bad accounting practices and improper use of funds have also taken a toll.
In many cases cities resorted to these measures because they could not balance their books or raise revenues but were loath to make cuts.
A recent grand jury report found that the High Desert city of Victorville used a series of disparate, possibly illegal measures to stave off insolvency. Those included dipping into sanitation funds to help keep the city’s treasury afloat, loaning water agency funds to bail out the city’s electric utility and siphoning $2 million in airport bond funds to buy land for a city library.
The inter-agency borrowing was so questionable — with $69 million sloshing around City Hall as of June 2011 — that the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation, which is ongoing.
In Montebello, state auditors last year said they were troubled to learn that the city regularly used money designed for specific purposes to balance its budget — in apparent violation of the law.
“It appears that the City moved money wherever it wanted, whenever it wanted, regardless of the law or the intended purpose of those taxpayer dollars,” Controller John Chiang said in a statement.Victorville, Montebello, Los Angeles, Oakland
It’s a safe bet to add Montebello and Victorville to the list. Moreover, some of the big guns will eventually go under as well.
Unsound pension problems will be the death of many cities. I consider Oakland and LA to be sure things. It’s just a matter of time.
Delays in filing will only waste more taxpayer money. Eventually cities will catch on and there will be a flood of bankruptcies.
S&P Revises Pennsylvania’s Outlook to Negative
Citing pension problems and a slowing economy, S&P Revises Pennsylvania’s Outlook to Negative
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services changed its outlook to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’ for Pennsylvania’s general obligation debt because of growing spending pressures, particularly for public pensions, and a slow-growing state economy, the agency said on Thursday.S&P affirmed the ‘AA’ credit rating on the state’s general-obligation debt, but said it could lower that rating a notch in the next two years if Pennsylvania does not enact pension reform.
Stephen Cook – The New Way Of Banking? Co-Op Buys 632 Lloyds Branches – 20 July 2012 | Lucas 2012 Infos
Lloyds TSB logo (left) and a computer generated image of TSB under the Co-op’s ownership.
The New Way of Banking? Co-op Buys 632 Lloyds Branches
Stephen: Late last year we took all our money – the little we had – and our ‘business’ account and moved it out of one of the big banks (the world’s most profitable banks are here in Australia!). We joined a co-op, where we are also now shareholders, as are all the members.
While this below, regarding the purchase of the big UK bank, Lloyds, is not NESARA – nor is it the future, where we will need no money whatsoever – it is a prelude to the new, equipollent way the banks will soon be operating.
The bank’s new owners, The Co-operative, will form the Trustee Saving Bank. Just as the current ways of banking are exposed, and their owners are reformed or removed, I expect it will live up to its name.
Co-op Pledges Shakeup of High Street Banking After Lloyds Deal
Co-operative secures cut-price deal to take over 632 Lloyds branches in sale ordered after breach of EU rules on state aid
By Jill Treanor, City Editor, The Guardian – July 19, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/19/co-op-lloyds-branches-high-str...
The Co-operative has pledged to shake up the closed shop of high-street banking after clinching a cut-price deal to take control of 632 Lloyds Banking Group branches in a move that will triple its branch network and bring back the centuries-old TSB brand.
Some 4.8 million Lloyds customers will transfer to the Co-op along with up to 7,000 staff who currently work in the branches that are to be sold. The deal is expected to give the Co-op some muscle in high-street banking.
It will create a 974-strong branch network with a 7% share of current accounts – propelling it to become a major competitor to the big four high-street lenders, Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland. The Co-op currently has just 2% of accounts.
The branches changing hands, however, will not operate under the Co-op banner, but will be rebranded as TSB – the name of the Trustee Saving Bank, the one-time mutual taken over by Lloyds in the 1990s – by next autumn.
Unions welcomed the certainty for staff after months of on-off negotiations – although the deal could yet be halted by regulators.
Analysts said the branches had changed hands at a rock-bottom price, equal to just £553,000 each.
Lloyds, 40% owned by the taxpayer since the financial crisis, was forced to lower its sights to push through the deal after months of delays. This could result in a loss of up to £1.2bn for the bailed-out bank, which is also providing sweeteners to help the Co-op pay for the branches. The sale was ordered by the EU because the £20bn taxpayer bailout of Lloyds breached EU rules on state aid.
Peter Marks, chief executive of the sprawling Co-op group, which also includes supermarkets, pharmacies and a funeral business, said: “People have lost trust in the financial services sector. Now we can provide a big bank, a challenger bank, that people can really trust.”
At a time of scandals involving the traditional players – Barclays over the Libor inter-bank interest rate, HSBC over money laundering and RBS over disruption caused by a serious computer breakdown – Marks said in the past six weeks there had been a 60% increase in customers “banging on our doors, wanting to join us”.
Kevin Mountford, head of banking at financial website MoneySupermarket, said that a new challenger bank might be the “antidote” the banking sector needed during the current reputational crisis. “It may encourage a culture of switching [bank accounts], which has been lacking over the past few years, especially as the Co-operative Bank is seen as a more trusted brand,” said Mountford on Thursday.
The management for the enlarged bank will be provided by Lloyds, which is also providing finance for the Co-op to complete the deal.
The chancellor, George Osborne, said: “The sale of hundreds of Lloyds branches to the Co-operative creates a new challenger bank and promotes mutuals.” The government is hopeful that the big four banks will face more competition from Virgin, which has bought Northern Rock, and from Marks & Spencer, which this week launched a current account.
The City minister, Mark Hoban, worked behind the scenes to facilitate the deal between Lloyds and the Co-op, holding as many as 30 meetings including discussions with the EU, which is yet to approve the deal.
The Financial Services Authority, which has had concerns about the deal and is understood to be calling for the Co-op board to be bolstered, also needs to approve it. Last night the rating agency Fitch downgraded the Co-op and warned that another downgrade could come because of the risks attached to the bank’s rapid growth.
Labour, which gets some of its funding from the Co-operative movement, welcomed the transaction but repeated its call for more branches to be spun out of the existing high-street players.
Under fire for the price achieved, Lloyds insisted the deal was the best available, preferable to a flotation of the branches or a sale to NBNK, a bid vehicle run by the former Northern Rock boss Gary Hoffman who was said to have been ready to pay more than twice the price agreed with the Co-op.
The Co-op will pay just £350m initially through an issue of bonds which will be underwritten by Lloyds in a highly unusual move. Another £400m could be handed over by 2027, depending on the performance of the enlarged group, while Lloyds is also providing £1.5bn of capital for the branches.
Marks, who warned in March that a deal might not be done, admitted it could take years for the branches to be completely separated from Lloyds and would give no timetable for when the TSB branches would be rebranded as part of the Co-op.
Lloyds is to provide the computer systems for the branches being sold, resolving a key concern for the Financial Services Authority, particularly since the computer meltdown at RBS. The bailed-out bank will continue to get a share of the business, which will be rebranded to TSB during summer 2013. The actual split of the business may not take place until November – the deadline set by the EU.
Peter Marks – Co-op through and through
Only four months ago the chief executive of the Co-operative Group, Peter Marks, was concerned that the Lloyds deal might not happen. A deal now looks likely, provided regulators can be convinced, that will shift the mutual from grocery and funeral care in to banking and put the blunt-talking Bradford City football fan at the centre of the government’s plans to bolster competition on the high street.
It has been a life’s work. Marks started working for the Co-op at 17 – he is now 62. He stands astride the country’s biggest convenience store chain, largest farming group and a major high street travel agency. But the Rolling Stones fan, who plays drums in a local band, may find banking his toughest challenge yet.
During rounds of interviews on Thursday, Marks was often left searching for detailed answers often expected of bankers in the midst of takeover deals. But the Lloyds deal brings with it new management, notably Paul Pester, who will run the enlarged bank. An ex-competitive swimmer and keen sportsman, Pester will be the one who will soon need all the answers at his finger tips.
Ellen Brown – Titanic Banks Hit LIBOR Iceberg: Will Lawsuits Sink The Ship? – 20 July 2012 | Lucas 2012 Infos
At one time, calling the large multinational banks a “cartel” branded you as a conspiracy theorist. Today, the banking giants are being called that and worse, not just in the major media but in court documents intended to prove the allegations as facts. Charges include racketeering (organized crime under the US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO), antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid rigging and price fixing. Damning charges have already been proven and major damages and penalties assessed. Conspiracy theory has become conspiracy fact.
The whole story you can read at: www.truth-out.org link to original article / www.jhaines6.wordpress.com l
Greg Giles – Message From The Galactic Federation Of Light – 20 July 2012 | Lucas 2012 Infos
(Lucas : Discern yourselves as it maybe not the truth, your truth or even a distorted truth. Some truths are blatant lies, but all is still a matter of your chosen perspective.)
‘S and S Bonds’ are security and safety measures that we of the Galactic Federation of Light employ to protect and secure our personnel, our information, our ships, equipment, technologies, and our missions. These security and safety measures were violated over the past few days by members of our personnel who found a means to penetrate this protective system and access equipment and technologies they did not possess the clearance or permission to utilize. They have been reprimanded, and these beings will not be permitted to continue their employment with our organization. This is the justice that has been handed out in this matter, and we feel this is an appropriate means to resolve this situation. Again, we apologize to anyone who has been affected by this breach of security and protocol and again state that nothing like this will ever be permitted to happen again as long as we, the Galactic Federation of Light, can do anything about it.
We have had security breaches in our past history, we will not pretend that we have not. Our organization is a massive organization with many millions of members, ships, stations, platforms, planets of visitation and missions that go beyond this current mission, of course, at this time. It is exceedingly difficult to secure and protect each and every area of our operation at all times, and trust is a large part of a smooth and successful operation. The beings that took part in this breach of protocol have not been members of our organization for very long, rather, they are newcomers, and felt that their escapades were exciting and worth the risk of finding themselves in hot water, as it were, and accountable for their actions. What they have done amounts to a little more than a harmless prank, and therefore we felt we had no choice but to return them to where it is they call home, finalizing their partnership with us. This is a shame, for they held such promise and many doors have been opened for them once they had joined our organization and these doors have now closed on them and this is the really saddening part, as members of our organization enjoy such benefits, freedoms, gifts, pleasures, and treats, if you will, as our organization is a generous, kind and giving organization to partner with.
These beings will, in the future, be given another opportunity to work with us, however, things must change within them before they are once again considered for any post with us. This is a prerequisite of their future employment with us, as we will not take another chance on them until they show much growth, maturity, education, and gain more wisdom through experience, for we will not take another chance on them until we are convinced they have grown and matured. This is the way it must be and this is the way it will be, and we wish now at this time to move on from this interruptive chapter in our work together.
Let us begin today to discuss with you advancements in the front lines of the arrests of the members and associates of your criminal cabal. We are monitoring heavily these arrest procedures and we are very delighted to report that these arrests are proceeding very smoothly, without any gunfire or need for heavy artillery in any way, shape, or form. These raids on homes and some businesses alike are transpiring without any resistance by members of your cabal, and at this time there is no need for air coverage from our organization as the skies are quieted as there have been no attempts in any way by any of your rogue military outfits to interfere in any way with these proceedings, this we wish to make very clear. There has been no hostility on any of the fronts where these arrests are taking place. We feel we have made ourselves clear on that, and now we would like to move on and discuss what it is that will happen with these members of the cabal that are taken into custody.
These men and even some women will be incarcerated for a certain period of time until we of the higher realms can decide upon justice and proper rehabilitation. These members of your cabal that have plotted, schemed, conspired and acted against you, the people of Earth, will not be reinstituted into your society unless certain deals are made, deals that we feel give us as well as you adequate compensation for their return to freedom. By adequate compensation we certainly do not mean monetary payment as money, of course, means nothing to us, and money to you which does mean a lot will be reinstituted into your societies anyway without their consent or permission, as the money they possess, in large part, has been stolen from you and will be returned to you. That is one of the conditions that there is no necessity to bargain for, as that condition will be fulfilled no matter what the sentencing and rehabilitation will be for these many individuals. We wish to be clear on that as well.
The deals that are made with these individuals are made just as they are made in your world, and many of you should be already familiar with defendants offering information and testimony in an offer to assist an ongoing investigation that can benefit from their assistance. These are the deals that are being offered to only a certain number of individuals, as the crimes that these individuals have committed, although serious in nature, did not deal with the physical harm of your people. They dealt more with financial gain, and we feel it is these individuals that can be offered a certain amount of leniency for their cooperation, if their cooperation assists us in our ongoing prosecution and mission to purify your world of the cabal and their many members and sworn associates. We hope that you understand that although many of you wish to arrest and lock away forever every single member and associate of the cabal, we feel justice would better be served by striking some deals with some of these individuals, especially the ones who have been seated in positions of power where a great deal of information has been shared with them, that once shared with us, can assist us in our ongoing efforts.
We are very confident that you, the people of Earth, will be very pleased with the outcome of this process, and we say to you do not feel for a moment that there will be any chance that the cabal will be able to regroup and regain their power because a few of their members or associates have been given another chance at freedom in your world, as this will never be permitted to happen and you do have our word on that, and that is all we will say about this matter for now.
For today, we would like you, our friends and our family, to think about how close it is that you are to everything that has been spoken of, everything that you have dreamed about, as all of this is so very close to you right now. Keep up your great work doing what it is you are all doing. Do your best to get along with each other as best as you can, for these interactions between yourselves are the bricks that are building your new roads, your new cities and your new world.
We are your fellow builders and your friends of the Galactic Federation of Light.As channeled through Greg Giles
TheIntelHub – Madison Ruppert – Russia And China Slap Down Yet Another – 21 July 2012 | Lucas 2012 Infos
As I have pointed out in the past, Russia and China have been providing a pretty significant stumbling block for the Western nationswhich have so clearly been attempting to ratchet up the United Nations sanctions against Syria, likely in an effort to legitimize foreign intervention.
This has led to some heated statements, especially from Hillary Clinton. The most astounding, however, came earlier this month when she actually said that Russia and China “will pay” for supporting the sovereignty of Syria.
On July 19, Russia and China stepped up and vetoed yet another resolution which threatened Syria with even more crippling sanctions. According to the Washington Post this left “the United States and its allies grappling for a new strategy to end the violence at a time of spreading chaos within the country.”
This move supposedly “upended months of U.N. diplomacy aimed at stemming the crisis,” which, if true, would make both Russia and China look like vicious nations which could not care less about human life.
In reality, however, the West has been fueling the conflict for quite some time now, and has no interest in peace. Furthermore, a significant number of the attacks pinned on government forces are actually the work of rebel terrorists.
The Washington Post also throws out what seems like a ludicrously inflated casualty number of “at least 14,000,” a number which is compiled from an assortment of dubious sources including, “Syrianshuhada.com via United Nations Institute for Training and Research; Institute for the Study of War; State Department; CIA; syriamap.wordpress.com; [and] staff reports.”
Unsurprisingly, Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations was quick to condemn China and Russia’s decision, which marks the third time they have vetoed a Western effort to pass an anti-Syrian resolution.
“The Security Council has failed utterly in its most important task on its agenda this year,” Rice said, adding that the Russia and Chinese decision was “pitiful and deeply regrettable.”
In defense of the move, Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin pointed out that the resolution was inherently “biased.”
He said that it targeted only the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, not the heavily armed opposition which has engaged terrorist activity for quite a while, although just recently it has become increasingly hard to ignore, even for the mainstream media.
However, since the West blindly supports these terrorists, they can never actually call a spade a spade, instead opting to call the terrorist attacks “violent attacks against government targets.”
Of course, if these same attacks were to occur anywhere else there would be no hesitation in rightfully labeling them as terrorist incidents. Yet since we are supposed to picture the Syrian opposition as some kind of lovey-dovey peaceful pro-democracy movement, no such factual statements can be made.
With the UN’s monitoring mission in Syria’s mandate set to expire at the end of the day Friday, there is much left uncertain about what strategy the West will use moving forward.
Meanwhile, there are reports of armed Syrian rebels (read: terrorists) seizing border crossings on the borders between Syria and Iraq and Syria and Turkey. Yet the most touted capture on the border with Turkey was not actually held “because they knew they couldn’t withstand the superior firepower of Assad’s troops,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Clearly, they’re not going to push through a Security Council resolution any time soon, no matter how much heated rhetoric and attempts at demonization are used.
“It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria, and the escalations we have witnessed in Damascus over the past few days is a testimony to that,” said Major General Robert Mood, the head of the monitoring mission, at a news conference before the vote.
A spokesman for the UN-Arab League emissary to Syria, Kofi Annan, stated that he was “disappointed that at this critical stage the U.N. Security Council could not unite and take the strong and concerted action he had urged and hoped for.”
Why Annan would ever be silly enough to hope for such a thing is beyond me, especially when we have such a clearly established precedent.
Russian envoy Churkin also stated that the West’s approach to Syria is actually designed to “fan the flames” of violence and it is actually about making way for a military intervention and regime change. I couldn’t agree more. To posit otherwise seems ludicrous at this point.
Churkin said that Russia “simply cannot accept” any resolutions which could make the way for foreign military intervention.
They can hardly be condemned for taking such an approach after seeing how Libya turned out.
Unsurprisingly, the West disagrees, with British UN envoy Mark Lyall saying that Russia and China’s “arguments are irrational.”
Regardless of these claims and baseless attacks seen above, an informed individual can likely see through the thickening smokescreen of lies and obfuscation in order to see the truth: the West is backing the terrorists once again in an effort to topple the Syrian government, just as they helped topple that of Gaddafi.
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This article originally appeared on End the Lie
Common Dreams – Matt Taibbi – From An Unlikely Source, A Serious Challenge To Wall Street – 21 July 2012
Something very interesting is happening.
There’s been so much corruption on Wall Street in recent years, and the federal government has appeared to be so deeply complicit in many of the problems, that many people have experienced something very like despair over the question of what to do about it all.
But there’s something brewing that looks like it might be a blueprint to effectively take on Wall Street: a plan to allow local governments to take on the problem of neighborhoods blighted by toxic home loans and foreclosures through the use of eminent domain. I can’t speak for how well the program will work, but it’s certaily been effective in scaring the hell out of Wall Street.
Under the proposal, towns would essentially be seizing and condemning the man-made mess resulting from the housing bubble. Cooked up by a small group of businessmen and ex-venture capitalists, the audacious idea falls under the category of “That’s so crazy, it just might work!” One of the plan’s originators described it to me as a “four-bank pool shot.”
Here’s how the New York Times described it in an article from earlier this week entitled, “California County Weighs Drastic Plan to Aid Homeowners“:
Desperate for a way out of a housing collapse that has crippled the region, officials in San Bernardino County … are exploring a drastic option — using eminent domain to buy up mortgages for homes that are underwater.
Then, the idea goes, the county could cut the mortgages to the current value of the homes and resell the mortgages to a private investment firm, which would allow homeowners to lower their monthly payments and hang onto their property.
I’ve been following this story for months now – I was tipped off that this was coming earlier this past spring – and in the time since I’ve become more convinced the idea might actually work, thanks mainly to the extremely lucky accident that the plan doesn’t require the permission of anyone up in the political Olympus.
Cities and towns won’t need to ask for an act of a bank-subsidized congress to do this, and they won’t need a federal judge to sign off on any settlement. They can just do it. In the Death Star of America’s financial oligarchy, the ability of local governments to use eminent domain to seize toxic debt might be the one structural flaw big enough for the rebel alliance to fly through.
The plan only makes sense in the context of America’s overall economic paralysis. Right now the economy is stuck in a standstill, largely because of the housing bubble. Five or six or ten years ago, when Wall Street was cranking out trillions of dollars of cheap home loans so that they could later be chopped up, pooled, and sold to unsuspecting investors in the form of high-grade securitized bonds, millions of ordinary people jumped on the housing comet, buying big houses for big money.
The problem is, if you bought a house for $300,000 then, it might be worth $200,000 now. When you’re $100,000 in debt, you’re not rushing out to buy washing machines, new cars, new DVD players. As Paul Krugman put it in his column today:
There’s no mystery about the reasons the economic recovery has been so weak. Housing is still depressed in the aftermath of a huge bubble, and consumer demand is being held back by the high levels of household debt that are the legacy of that bubble.
Then there’s the other problem. Even if you manage to keep making your payments on your house, your neighbor might not. Whoever used to live next door has left after a foreclosure: there are squatters building a meth lab in the basement now. Two more houses are being boarded up down the street. So now the value of your house is getting lower and lower every day. No matter how fast you make your payments, your debt situation is still going to be moving in the wrong direction.
Instead of letting everyone be slowly ground into dust under the weight of all of that debt, the idea behind the use of eminent domain is to pull the Band-Aid off all at once.
The plan is being put forward by a company called Mortgage Resolution Partners, run by a venture capitalist named Steven Gluckstern. MRP absolutely has a profit motive in the plan, and much is likely to be made of that in the press as this story develops. But I doubt this ends up being entirely about money.
“What happened is, a bunch of us got together and asked ourselves what a fix of the housing/foreclosure problem would look like,” Gluckstern. “Then we asked, is there a way to fix it and make money, too. I mean, we’re businessmen. Obviously, if there wasn’t a financial motive for anybody, it wouldn’t happen.”
Here’s how it works: MRP helps raise the capital a town or a county would need to essentially “buy” seized home loans from the banks and the bondholders (remember, to use eminent domain to seize property, governments must give the owners “reasonable compensation,” often interpreted as fair current market value).
Once the town or county seizes the loan, it would then be owned by a legal entity set up by the local government – San Bernardino, for instance, has set up a JPA, or Joint Powers Authority, to manage the loans.
At that point, the JPA is simply the new owner of the loan. It would then approach the homeowner with a choice. If, for some crazy reason, the homeowner likes the current situation, he can simply keep making his same inflated payments to the JPA. Not that this is likely, but the idea here is that nobody would force homeowners to do anything.
On the other hand, the town can also offer to help the homeowner find new financing. In conjunction with companies like MRP (and the copycat firms like it that would inevitably spring up), the counties and towns would arrange for private lenders to enter the picture, and help homeowners essentially buy back his own house, only at a current market price. Just like that, the homeowner is no longer underwater and threatened with foreclosure.
In order to make MRP work, Gluckstern and his partners needed to find local officials with enough stones to try the audacious plan. With so many regions in such desperate straits thanks to the housing mess, that turned out to be not as hard as perhaps might have been expected.
First in line was San Bernardino County in California, not coincidentally located at ground zero of a subprime bubble blown to gigantic proportions by Southern Californian mortgage giants like Countrywide and Long Beach. San Bernardino is more or less a poster child for the mortgage crisis; more than half of its homeowners are underwater on their homes, unemployment is past 12%, and the county recently had to file for bankruptcy.
It’s not surprising, then, that local officials like Acquietta Warren, mayor of the city of Fontana, were receptive to the eminent-domain plan.
“Sooner or later,” Warren told the New York Times, “all these people who are upside down on their homes are just going to leave the keys out on the door and say forget it. This was supposed to be the promised land, and now we have people waiting in some kind of hellish purgatory.”
San Bernardino County officials, along with two of its bigger cities (Fontana and Ontario), have set up the legal mechanisms needed to condemn and seize home loans, but the details of the plan haven’t been completely worked out yet. Still, officials say about 20,000 homeowners in San Bernardino would be eligible for the program; how many will get to use it is unknown.
In the meantime, other counties in other parts of the country are considering the plan. MRP has been courting local officials in Nevada, Florida, and in parts of the Northeast. In New York, officials in Suffolk County on Long Island, where 10% of homes are underwater, are seriously considering the plan.
The role of MRP and the presence of businessmen like Gluckstern in this whole gambit is going to tempt some reporters to pitch this story as a purely financial story, and certainly it does have interest as a business headline.
But MRP’s role aside, this is also a compelling political story with potentially revolutionary consequences. If this gambit actually goes forward, it will inevitably force a powerful response both from Wall Street and from its allies in federal government, setting up a cage-match showdown between lower Manhattan and, well, everywhere else in America. In fact, the first salvoes in that battle have already been fired.
For instance, the Wall Street trade association, SIFMA, this past week issued a denunciation of the eminent domain plan that includes a promise of a legal challenge. “We believe the MRP proposal is unlikely to survive a judicial challenge,” one of SIFMA’s lawyers wrote. Other trade groups are lining up to describe the tactic as illegal or “unconstitutional.”
More insidiously, however, SIFMA pledged that its members will not allow future home loans originated in counties that use the eminent domain tactic to participate in something called the To-Be-Announced (TBA) markets for mortgage-backed securities. Explaining this would require a sharp detour into a muck of inside-baseball mortgage terminology, but the long and the short of it is that SIFMA is promising to make it difficult for any community that tries this tactic to obtain private mortgage financing in the future.
Essentially, SIFMA is promising a kind of collusive financial lockout of uncooperative communities. The threat would appear to be a high-handed form of redlining that raises serious antitrust questions, but in a way, that kind of response is to be expected.
Ultimately, the MRP tactic will be a fascinating test case to see exactly how much local self-determination will be allowed by the centralized financial oligarchy and its allies in the federal government.
If through boycotts, collusion, federal pressure and other forms of encirclement, local governments can be stripped of their right to condemn blighted property, we’ll know that the guts have been cut out of the very idea of regional self-rule. It will be fascinating to watch. At the very least, this story has the potential to be the first true open, pitched battle between Wall Street and the homeowners and communities who have been the primary victims of financial corruption.
Tune in for more on this front soon.
Editor’s note: Readers interested in learning more about this would do well to read North Carolina congressman Brad Miller’s piece on this in American Banker. Miller is not necessarily a proponent of the exact mechanism proposed by MRP, but he is intrigued by the general idea of using eminent domain to address the blighted-loan problem, and seems particularly interested in the strategic possibilities of addressing the problem at the local level. He writes:
The biggest banks have used their political power in Washington to defeat any effort that would effectively reduce foreclosures, such as allowing judicial modification of mortgages in bankruptcy, allowing a federal agency to use eminent domain to buy mortgages, or providing teeth for the chronically ineffective Home Affordable Modification Program, because those efforts would also require the immediate recognition of losses on mortgages.
But Wall Street’s power in Washington may be as useless in defeating a proposal in San Bernardino County as strategic nuclear weapons are in fighting an insurgency. No wonder Wall Street is panicked.
Also, here’s a piece Miller wrote a couple of years ago in The New Republic suggesting the use of eminent domain through the use of a public vehicle similar to FDR’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, or HOLC.
Again, there’s going to be a lot of heated discussion about this, and it’s sure to get ugly in the near future. This idea will be portrayed as radical and unrealistic, but in reality it’s neither terribly radical nor even all that new. What it is, more than anything else, is uncomfortable. Anyway, more on this to come.
© 2012 Rolling Stone
UBS Issues Hyperinflation Warning For US And UK, Calls It Purely "A Fiscal Phenomenon" | The Galactic Free Press
Uploaded On 10 July 2012 door TheHealthRanger.
War on Health – Gary Null’s documentary exposing the FDA. Posted with permission. A must-see documentary. Learn more from Gary Null at the Progressive Radio Network: www.PRN.fm /www.garynull.com Video for educational and informational purpose. Thanks Dennis!
UBS Issues Hyperinflation Warning For US And UK, Calls It Purely "A Fiscal Phenomenon" | The Galactic Free Press
GFP Note: This is a very interesting article. I suggest you pay close attention to the discussion of the gold market at the end. Given that we know that the gold and silver markets are manipulated and that central banks have been buying up tons (literally) of gold, it will be interesting to see what happens.
ZeroHedge.com
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/18/2012 14:22 -0400
Supposedly warnings about the latent inflationary threat posed by simply ridiculous non-financial debt levels (as presented most recently here yesterday), not to mention financial debt (which as MF Global's rehypothecated implosion demonstrated so vividly can be any number between minus and plus infinity, thank you London "regulators") from the blogosphere can be ignored ($15 trillion melting ice cube that is shadow banking which also doubles as the best inflationary buffer known to man, notwithstanding).
After all, what does the blogosphere know: remember, Libor has been repeatedly proven to not be manipulated, as the mainstream media so strenly claimed year after year after year until it had no choice but to do a 180 and pretend its advertiser paid for lies in the past 3 years never existed. But when these same warnings emanate from the "very serious people" at UBS, economists with a Ph.D. at that, it may be a little more difficult to dismiss them. So here it is: "Hyperinflation Revisited" from Caesar Lack, PhD, economist.
From UBS, highlights ours.
Global Risk Watch: Hyperinflation Revisited
Hyperinflation: Paper money only has a value because of the confidence that the money can be exchanged for a certain quantity of goods or services in the future. If this confidence is eroded, hyperinflation becomes a threat. If holders of cash start to question the future purchasing power of the currency and switch into real assets, asset prices start to rise and the purchasing power of money starts to fall. Other cash holders may realize the falling purchasing power of their money and join the exit from paper into real assets. When this self-reinforcing cycle turns into a panic, we have hyperinflation. The classic examples of hyperinflation are Germany in the 1920s, Hungary after the Second World War, and Zimbabwe, where hyperinflation ended in 2009. Indeed, hyperinflation is not that rare at all. Economist Peter Bernholz has identified no fewer than 28 cases of hyperinflation in the 20th century.
Visit ZeroHedge to read the rest of this story and see the graphs.
HSBC’s criminal clients | The Galactic Free Press
Salon.com
By Andrew Leonard
Tuesday, Jul 17, 2012 11:05 AM EDTMoney laundering for drug dealers, terrorists and gangsters is the latest evidence of financial sector corruption
(Credit: Reuters/Toby Melville)And you thought bankers fixing interest rates and playing games with mortgage-backed securities was bad? How about laundering money for Mexican drug dealers, the Russian mafia and Mideast terrorists?
OK, if we’re talking about the potential economic impact on the average person, the interest rate and mortgage shenanigans are really bad, probably more so than the money laundering apparently brokered on a massive scale by the huge international bank HSBC. But even so, the new report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations detailing HSBC’s multiple failings over the past years is quite the doozy. It reads like a treatment for a villain in a James Bond thriller that never got greenlighted because it was too unrealistic. We could accept getting in bed with the Russians — but the drug dealers and the terrorists as well? That’s overkill.
To read the rest of this story, visit Salon.com
Tunisia's ex-dictator Ben Ali sentenced to life in jail | The Galactic Free Press
PressTV.ir
Thu Jul 19, 2012
2:14PM GMTFile photo shows Tunisia's ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.Tunisia's ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been handed a life imprisonment sentence for complicity in the murder of anti-regime protesters prior to his ouster in 2011.
Ben Ali received the life sentence in abstentia for involvement in the murdering of 43 protesters and wounding 97 others before he was toppled by a popular revolt last February, a judge for the Tunis military court said on Thursday.Hedi Ayari said the former dictator was tried with around 40 of his former officials, including the former head of presidential security, General Ali Seriati, who received a 20-year prison term.
Former Interior Minister Rafik Belhaj Kacem was sentenced to 15 years, while charges were dropped against Ahmed Friaa, who was named interior minister shortly before Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011.
The ousted dictator has already been sentenced in his absence to a number of heavy sentences.
Ben Ali has been sentenced to more than 66 years in prison in three separate trials, for charges including embezzlement, illegal possession of weapons and narcotics, housing fraud and abuse of power.
According to United Nations figures, more than 300 people were killed and many others wounded in the former government crackdown on protests over corruption, unemployment, and high food prices.
Many of the victims died by live rounds fired by security forces during the January 2011 pro-democracy protests.Saudi Arabia has refused to hand over Ben Ali and his wife to Tunisian authorities despite the fact that they are the subject of an international arrest warrant.
MRS/PG/SS/IS
Source: PressTV.ir
How Weed Can Protect Us From Cancer and Alzheimer's | The Galactic Free Press
AlterNet.org
July 19, 2012By Clint WernerHardly the harmful intoxicant that many once thought it was, cannabis is a nourishing plant that actually improves and prolongs life.
Photo Credit: Pablo Evans
The following is an excerpt from MARIJUANA: GATEWAY TO HEALTH—How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease.
For thousands of years cannabis has been used as a medicine for a remarkably broad range of ailments. Opponents of medical marijuana have claimed that nothing works on so many diverse illnesses and that the only relief offered was one of stupor from being stoned. But in 1988, the first cannabinoid receptor was discovered and since then researchers have learned that there are two types of cannabinoid receptors which are distributed throughout our bodies and that we make chemicals within our bodies—endocannabinoids—that are similar to the cannabinoids made by the cannabis plant. Both plant and human cannabinoids bind to and influence these receptors in order to discourage the rise and progression of numerous disease processes.
The discovery of the cannabinoid receptor system has changed our entire understanding of cannabis and its effects. In fact, from the inception of the anti-marijuana campaign of the 1930s and its subsequent prohibition until today, almost everything we believed about it was wrong. Hardly the harmful intoxicant that many once thought it was, cannabis is a nourishing plant that can improve and prolong life.
We have recently learned that cannabinoids can help bring our bodies and nervous systems into balance, but what happens when certain compounds block the interaction between endocannabinoids and their receptors, effectively depriving our bodies of sufficient cannabinoids?
It is well known that one of marijuana’s most notable effects is appetite stimulation, or what is colloquially referred to as the “munchies,” a compelling drive to eat and snack. Researchers studying the endocannabinoid system have found that this phenomenon is linked to the activation of the CB1 receptor in the part of the brain that regulates appetite. With the increasing incidence of obesity becoming a public health crisis, scientists have begun to explore the effect of cannabinoids on the regulation of appetite. Researchers working for the international pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis, for example, began looking for chemical agents that effectively block CB1 receptor activity (known as CB1 receptor antagonists), which they reason could help suppress appetite and reduce compulsive eating. The company eventually developed a compound called rimonabant, which appeared to effectively inhibit the ability of cannabinoids to activate the CB1 receptor.
The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) approved rimonabant for use in Europe in mid-2006, and it was soon available in Great Britain as an over-the-counter drug available without prescription.By early 2008, the drug was available in 56 countries. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, refused to approve it for distribution in the United States due to concerns about its possible side effects. This decision was based on the recommendation of an FDA review panel, which in mid-2007 unanimously concluded that rimonabant was associated with unacceptable increases in the risk of adverse psychiatric events, suicidality, neurological problems, nausea, vomiting, and more. Then, in late 2008, the EMEA decided to review the drug’s post-marketing data. Agreeing with the FDA’s belief that the risks of rimonabant outweighed its benefits, the European regulators revoked its previous approval and suspended Sanofi-Aventis’ marketing authorization for the drug.
The first cannabinoid-blocking drug turned out to be a disastrous failure. An alarming number of research subjects in clinical trials around the world (which included 16,000 subjects in the U.S. alone) experienced severe neuropsychiatric side-effects including anxiety, depression, panic attacks, sleep disorders, amnesia, and psychomotor agitation leading to contusions, concussions, falls, traffic accidents, and whiplash injuries. Others had gastrointestinal symptoms and erectile dysfunction at a rate three times higher than those who had not received the drug. One patient experienced an increase in multiple sclerosis symptoms and another developed optic neuritis. Two committed suicide. Rimonabant also appeared to promote the development of neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease.
Evidence also suggested that rimonabant could increase the likelihood of colon cancer. A study at the University of Texas published in August 2008, for example, found that mice treated with a CB1 receptor blocking drug—like rimonabant—had increases in the size and number of colon polyps, which are benign tumors that can become cancerous if not removed. Conversely, the study found that treatment with endocannabinoid activators—like THC from marijuana—decreased the number of polyps. In other words, while blocking the cannabinoid receptor increased the likelihood of colon polyps, stimulating it decreased that likelihood. Rimonabant and marijuana apparently have opposite effects on the likelihood of developing colon cancer. This suggests that it would be wise to conduct follow-up studies to assess the impact of rimonabant on increases in colon cancer. The damage already done by rimonabant may be beyond calculation. By 2007, before the EMEA suspended its approval, about 37,000 patients in the U.K. were using the drug. Even worse, although it is prohibited in both Europe and the U.S., rimonabant is still marketed over the Internet to unsuspecting consumers as a weigh-loss drug by Indian pharmaceutical companies.
The global policing organization INTERPOL states on its Web site that “member countries remain firmly committed to their enforcement efforts against the cultivation and trafficking of cannabis products.” Given what we know about the beneficial nature of cannabis and the harmful effects of cannabinoid-blocking drugs, it makes little sense that the eradication efforts of INTERPOL and other law enforcement organizations are more focused on marijuana than they are on drugs that are—like rimonabant—actually proven to be dangerous.
The suppression of the endocannabinoid system has been connected to numerous health-related problems, involving cognitive function, sleep cycles, digestion, sexual response, physical coordination, and overall happiness. In order to study the endocannabinoid system scientists have selectively bred mice with a specific genetic mutation that disables the CB1 receptors. Studies of these “CB1 knockout mice” have shown that an absence of activity at the CB1 receptor has devastating effects on the physical and mental health of these animals. These effects include:
- Increased anxiety, increased susceptibility to the depressive effects of chronic stress
- Reduced responsiveness to rewarding experiences
- Reduced appetite and pronounced weight loss
- Reduced ability to forget traumatic memories
- Increased activity in the HPA axis, an area of the brain associated with stress and fear
- Increased susceptibility to neurotoxins
- Reduced ability to regenerate neurons in the hippocampus
- Reduced amounts of trophic factors (biological compounds associated with cellular growth and healing) in response to damage
The CB1 Knockout mice also had a greater risk of developing neurological problems (such as seizures) and had a greater overall mortality. One group of researchers was somewhat mystified at the severity of the effects, going so far as to comment that “the CB1 knockout animals died suddenly without any obvious signs of disease." (It is also worth noting that taranabant, another cannabinoid-blocking diet drug, manufactured by Merck, has proven to have similar negative psychiatric and GI side effects as rimonabant.)
The side-effects of cannabinoid blockers and the results of experiments on CB1 knockout mice point to the existence of what we could call the “Cannabinoid Deprivation Syndrome.”
Cannabinoid researcher Ethan Russo, M.D., theorizes that endocannabinoid deficiency might well offer an “alternative biochemical explanation for certain disease manifestations.” It appears that a number of hard-to-treat diseases such as migraines headaches, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) may well be related to a lack of proper endocannabinoid activity—implying that supplemental cannabinoids derived from or based on marijuana could be of great value. Russo reasons that some people could be “endocannabinoid deficient” and has labeled the syndrome Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency (CECD). Cannabis won’t kill you, but a lack of cannabinoids could.
Let’s re-examine the evidence. Taking a drug that inhibits cannabinoid activity—like rimonabant—can cause agitation, anxiety, depression, vomiting, sleep disorders, suicidal tendencies, and an increase in accidents and injuries. On the other hand, drugs that increase the activity of the endocannabinoid system—like marijuana—result in euphoria, laughter, suppression of nausea, better sleep, resistance to cancer and dementia, and increased brain cell production. The implications are clear: When our cannabinoid receptors have an adequate supply of cannabinoids, we experience a heightened state of health. When they do not, we suffer from Cannabinoid Deprivation Syndrome. The rimonabant debacle and scientific studies have given us even more evidence that maintaining a well-nourished and active cannabinoid receptor system is vital to our health.
Clint Werner is a journalist and medical marijuana advocate, and is the author of Marijuana: Gateway to Health - How Cannabis Protects us from Cancer and Alzheimer's Disease.Source: AlterNet.org
UK firefighters protest against govt. plan to cut services | The Galactic Free Press
PressTV.ir
Thu Jul 19, 2012 6:8PM GMT
Hundreds of British firefighters protest against the Coalition government’s plans to cut frontline services on July 18, 2012.Hundreds of firefighters from across England, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken to the streets of Chelmsford's city centre in order to demonstrate against the British government’s budget cuts.
On Wednesday July 18, about 800 members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) in Essex staged a 24-hour strike, which was the latest in a series of strikes in a long-running row over the British government’s planned changes to frontline services.The union said the Coalition government’s current plans for cuts would cause the loss of one in five frontline crews in Essex since 2008.
"No one wants to go on strike. We have only done so in what is a third year of continuing cuts in frontline services and imposition,” said FBU official Alan Chinn-Shaw.
"Strike action is a last resort and we are calling only short periods of lawful strike to limit the risks to the public whilst highlighting the very serious concerns of frontline professionals. Left unchallenged, the frontline cuts would hit public and firefighter safety 24 hours every day, 365 days a year.”
Meanwhile, FBU general secretary Matt Wrack announced further strike actions such as four three-hour strikes on July 26, August 11, September 5 and October 18.
Furthermore, Wrack declared that the fire service will only respond to 999 emergencies on July 27 and 28, and August 12 and 13.
SSM/SS/HE
Source: PressTV.ir
JPMorgan pressed on emails in US energy prices probe | The Galactic Free Press
BBC.co.uk
18 July 2012 Last updated at 13:02 ET
Energy regulators have subpoenaed the
emails twice as part of an investigation
US authorities investigating claims JPMorgan manipulated the electricity market have challenged the bank's refusal to hand over subpoenaed emails.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc) is looking into complaints from grid operators in California and 11 Midwestern states.
The bank is accused of profiting from loopholes in the bidding process to drive up prices by some $73m (£47m).
To read the rest of this story, visit BBC.
