Gates cutting Pentagon budget by $78bn over five years

Robert Gates said it was imperative to make "every defense dollar count"

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• Gates seeks cuts in US military

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has announced a $78bn (£50.3bn) military budget cut, to be achieved in part by scrapping a $14bn amphibious vehicle.

The cuts over the next five years come in addition to $100bn in internal savings already announced.

Those savings will be redirected to other defence programmes, but the new cuts slow growth in the overall budget.

But cuts to weapons programmes are certain to encounter fierce opposition from members of Congress.

Much of the roughly $178bn in defence cuts will come through reduced administrative costs, new organisational efficiencies, and slashed personnel costs, which the defence department called a "vigorous scrub of bureaucratic structures".

The Pentagon's budget is expected to be $553bn in 2012, reflecting roughly 3% growth. After that, growth would slow and would be essentially flat in 2015 and 2016, the Pentagon said.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Nick Childs, BBC defence and security correspondent

---

This is the latest Pentagon acknowledgement that it can't be exempt from the need to make savings to cut the US government deficit.

American defence spending has ballooned with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the details of the proposed savings are sure to prove controversial - with some bound to argue they don't go far enough, while others will say they are too deep.

Even with these planned cuts, the US Army and Marine Corps will still be larger than when Mr Gates became defence secretary four years ago.

And the US will continue to spend a significantly bigger proportion of its national income on defence than any of its major allies.

The reduction in commitments in Iraq and the anticipated ones in Afghanistan in the next few years will help ease the strain.

But there will still be major upheavals for the US armed forces after the years of massive spending increases, and they come at a time when Washington feels its relative military strength is being challenged by emerging powers like China.

Mr Gates said much of the savings would be achieved by eliminating more than 100 general and flag officer positions, more than 200 top civilian defence positions, by cancelling redundant programmes and through reduced administrative costs.

As much as $100bn in savings would not be sliced from the overall budget, Mr Gates said, but would be reinvested in shipbuilding, missile defence, intelligence, reconnaissance, healthcare for wounded soldiers, and other programmes.

Among the major weapons systems set for the scrap heap is the amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), made by General Dynamics Corporation. In addition, the Pentagon will end an Army surface-to-air missile programme.

Mr Gates has been sceptical about whether large military vehicles, like tanks and EFVs, will continue to be crucial military instruments as engagement in modern warfare changes.

He has previously said the enemy has developed sophisticated weapons capable of attacking ships waiting close to shore.

Other cost-cutting measures announced by Mr Gates include plans to cut orders for the F-35 joint strike fighter over the next three to five years to compensate for repeated delays in development and testing.

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Programmes marked for new investment

• Repair and refurbishment of Marine Corps equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan
• New unmanned aircraft
• New ships, including a destroyer, a littoral combat ship and an ocean surveillance ship
• Updating the Army's tank fleet

He said he wanted to end the post-9/11 Pentagon's "culture of endless money where cost was rarely a consideration".

The major weapons programmes cuts are likely to encounter opposition from US congressmen and senators in whose constituencies the arms are manufactured.

"I'm not happy," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon told reporters. He said the cuts were greater than defence companies had been expecting.

Source

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Commentary

1 word: Amen.

Current Distribution of Worldwide Military spending

American Federal Discretionary Budget

America feels the need to spend more than the whole world combined...

Isn't that ambitious....

US oil spill: 'Bad management' led to BP disaster

The BBC's Iain Mackenzie said the report is "incredibly critical" of all of the companies involved.

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US Oil Spill

• BP 'not prepared' for Gulf spill
• Who's blamed by BP
• Biggest ever, but how bad?
• Timeline: BP oil spill

The companies involved in the BP oil spill had made decisions to cut costs and save time that contributed to the disaster, a US panel has found.

In a 48-page report, the presidential commission wrote that the failures were "systemic" and likely to recur without industry and government reform.

But it said BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure safety.

The April blast aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and caused one of the worst oil spills in history.

The Macondo well, about a mile under the sea's surface, eventually leaked millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, damaging hundreds of miles of coastline before it was capped in July.

BP said in a statement that the report, like its own investigation, had found the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple companies.

But, it said, the company was working with regulators "to ensure the lessons learned from Macondo lead to improvements in operations and contractor services in deepwater drilling".

Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, said that "the procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators".

'Avoidable' blow-out

The new report criticises BP, which owned the Macondo well, Transocean and Halliburton, which managed the well sealing operation, and blames inadequate government oversight and regulation.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The opening is worthy of any British tabloid - a picture of the inferno, a core as bright as the sun, surrounded by scarlet flames and billows of black smoke”

End Quote

Mark Mardell BBC North America editor

---

• Mardell: Failure of an industry

Specific risks the report identifies include:

• A flawed design for the cement used to seal the bottom of the well
• A test of that seal identified problems but was "incorrectly judged a success"
• The workers' failure to recognise the first signs of the impending blow-out

"Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blow-out clearly saved those companies significant time (and money)," the presidential panel wrote.

"BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure that key decisions in the months leading up to the blow-out were safe or sound from an engineering perspective."

Don Boesch, a member of the investigating commission, told the BBC's World Today programme they had identified "a whole sequence of poor decisions with unfortunate consequences when put together".

He said that not all the faults lay with BP, although the company did have overall responsibility.

"For example the lack of a proper test that was done and the cement that was used to seal the bottom of the well, that was pretty clearly the direct responsibility of Halliburton," he said.

"When the well started to blow there were decisions made by Transocean about how the material coming up the well was handled, and those were unfortunate, fateful, decisions which actually led to the explosion."

Mr Boesch said government regulators are also criticised in the report.

"What we found was very limited oversight of these various activities and decisions, that the agency responsible in the Department of the Interior was understaffed, [and] didn't have the inspectors and technical analysts who were up to the task fully."

The findings came in the final report of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which President Barack Obama convened in May to investigate the root causes of the spill and recommend changes to industry and government policy.

Though it lacked subpoena power, the panel reviewed thousands of pages of documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, and in the autumn conducted a series of public hearings.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Bob Graham, former Florida governor and a co-chairman of the commission, said the findings showed the blow-out was avoidable.

"This disaster likely would not have happened had the companies involved been guided by an unrelenting commitment to safety first," he said.

Risk factors

In a months-long investigation, the panel found that mistakes and "failures to appreciate risk" compromised safeguards "until the blow-out was inevitable and, at the very end, uncontrollable".

BP's "fundamental mistake", the panel wrote, was failing to exercise proper caution over the job of sealing the well with cement.

"Based on evidence currently available, there is nothing to suggest that BP's engineering team conducted a formal, disciplined analysis of the combined impact of these risk factors on the prospects for a successful cement job," the report reads.

The conclusions run counter to industry efforts to portray the Deepwater Horizon disaster as a rare occurrence, as oil companies prod the US government to open greater areas of the US coast to oil exploration.

"The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again," the report read.

"Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."

Source

Many confess to crime but are innocent, study shows

By JOHN SCHWARTZ | New York Times | Posted: Monday, September 13, 2010 11:50 pm

Steve Hebert for The New York Times

Eddie Lowery spent 10 years in prison after confessing to a rape he did not commit. He got a $7.5 million settlement.

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James Estrin/The New York Times

Jeffrey Deskovic spent 16 years in prison for murder. DNA evidence cleared him before trial, but he was convicted anyway.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Eddie Lowery lost 10 years of his life for a crime he did not commit. There was no physical evidence at his trial for rape, but one overwhelming factor put him away: He confessed.

At trial, the jury heard details that prosecutors insisted only the rapist could have known, including that the rapist hit the 75-year-old victim in the head with the handle of a silver table knife he found in the house. DNA evidence would later show that another man committed the crime. But that vindication would come only years after Lowery had served his sentence and was paroled in 1991.

“I beat myself up a lot” about having confessed, Lowery said in a recent interview. “I thought I was the only dummy who did that.”

But more than 40 others have given confessions since 1976 that DNA evidence later showed were false, according to records compiled by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Experts have long known that some kinds of people — including the mentally impaired, the mentally ill, the young and the easily led — are the likeliest to be induced to confess. There are also people like Lowery, who says he was just pressed beyond endurance by interrogators.

New research shows how people who were apparently uninvolved in a crime could provide such a detailed account of what occurred, allowing prosecutors to claim that only the defendant could have committed the crime.

An article by Garrett draws on trial transcripts, recorded confessions and other background materials to show how incriminating facts got into those confessions — by police introducing important facts about the case, whether intentionally or unintentionally, during the interrogation.

To defense lawyers, the new research is eye opening.

“In the past, if somebody confessed, that was the end,” said Peter J. Neufeld, a founder of the Innocence Project, an organization based in New York. “You couldn’t imagine going forward.”

The notion that such detailed confessions might be deemed voluntary because the defendants were not beaten or coerced suggests that courts should not simply look at whether confessions are voluntary, Neufeld said.

“They should look at whether they are reliable,” he said.

Garrett said he was surprised by the complexity of the confessions he studied.

“I expected, and think people intuitively think, that a false confession would look flimsy,” like someone saying simply, “I did it,” he said.

Instead, he said, “almost all of these confessions looked uncannily reliable,” rich in telling detail that almost inevitably had to come from the police. “I had known that in a couple of these cases, contamination could have occurred,” he said, using a term in police circles for introducing facts into the interrogation process. “I didn’t expect to see that almost all of them had been contaminated.”

Of the exonerated defendants in the Garrett study, 26 — more than half — were “mentally disabled,” under 18 at the time or both. Most were subjected to lengthy, high-pressure interrogations, and none had a lawyer present. Thirteen were taken to the crime scene.

Lowery’s case shows how contamination occurs. He had come under suspicion, he now believes, because he had been partying and ran his car into a parked car the night of the rape, generating a police report. Officers grilled him for more than seven hours, insisting from the start that he had committed the crime.

Lowery took a lie detector test to prove he was innocent, but the officers told him that he had failed it.

“I didn’t know any way out of that, except to tell them what they wanted to hear,” he recalled. “And then get a lawyer to prove my innocence.”

Proving innocence after a confession, however, is rare. Eight of the defendants in Garrett’s study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before trial, but the courts convicted them anyway.

In one such case involving Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., prosecutors argued that the victim may have been sexually active and so the DNA evidence may have come from another liaison she had. The prosecutors asked the jury to focus on Deskovic’s highly detailed confession and convict him.

While Garrett suggests that leaking facts during interrogations is sometimes unintentional, Lowery said that the contamination of his questioning was clearly intentional.

After his initial confession, he said, the interrogators went over the crime with him in detail — asking how he did it, but correcting him when he got the facts wrong. How did he get in? “I said, ‘I kicked in the front door.’” But the rapist had used the back door, so he admitted to having gone around to the back. “They fed me the answers,” he recalled.

Some defendants’ confessions even include mistakes fed by the police. Earl Washington Jr., a mentally impaired man who spent 18 years in prison and came within hours of being executed for a murder he did not commit, stated in his confession that the victim had worn a halter top. In fact, she had worn a sundress, but an initial police report had stated that she wore a halter top.

Steven A. Drizin, the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, said the significance of contamination could not be understated. While errors might lead to wrongful arrest, “it’s contamination that is the primary factor in wrongful convictions,” he said. “Juries demand details from the suspect that make the confession appear to be reliable — that’s where these cases go south.”

Jim Trainum, a former policeman who now advises police departments on training officers to avoid false confessions, explained that few of them intend to contaminate an interrogation or convict the innocent.

“You become so fixated on ‘This is the right person, this is the guilty person’ that you tend to ignore everything else,” he said. The problem with false confessions, he said, is “the wrong person is still out there, and he’s able to reoffend.”

Trainum has become an advocate of videotaping entire interrogations. Requirements for recording confessions vary widely. Ten states require videotaping of at least some interrogations, like those in crimes that carry the death penalty, and seven state supreme courts have required or strongly encouraged recording.

These days Lowery, 51, lives in suburban Kansas City, in a house he is renovating with some of the $7.5 million in settlement money he received, along with apologies, from officials in Riley County, Kan., where he was arrested and interrogated.

He has trouble putting the past behind him.

“I was embarrassed,” he said. “You run in to so many people who say, ‘I would never confess to a crime.’”

He does not argue with them, because he knows they did not experience what he went through.

“You’ve never been in a situation so intense, and you’re naive about your rights,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ll say to get out of that situation.”

Source 1 , Original Source 2

Anti-Mosque Coalition’s Website Owned By Neo-Conservative Islamophobe Frank Gaffney

Anti-Mosque Coalition’s Website Owned By Neo-Conservative Islamophobe Frank Gaffney

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for “transparency” about who is funding the ugly attacks against the construction of a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York City. “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she told KCBS radio.

Naturally, right-wing opponents of the mosque blasted Pelosi for the comments, claiming the opposition is an organic, spontaneous uprising of concerned Americans. However, the coalition leading the charge against the mosque, the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero, appears to be funded by a major neo-conservative advocacy group, with deep-pocketed donors, and extensive connections to the conservative establishment. As Glenn Greenwald noted, the coalition’s website StopThe911Mosque.com is registered to the Center for Security Policy, a neo-conservative think tank and advocacy group run by Reagan defense official and far-right hawk Frank Gaffney:

The coalition’s partners include a who’s who of far-right pundits, politicians, and neo-conservative advocacy groups, such as Keep America Safe, the attack group formed by Liz Cheney and hawkish Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Another coalition partner is 911FamiliesForAmerica.org, a group run by Tim Sumner and Debra Burlingame, who also happens to be a founding board member of Keep America Safe.

The Center for Security Policy, of which Gaffney is the founder and president, appears to be leading the charge, thanks to its network of big-time right-wing funders like the Bradley Foundation and, presumably, its board of directors. Gaffney’s board includes the vice president of Van Scoyoc Associates, which touts itself as the “largest independent lobbying company in Washington, D.C,” with numerous defense clients and $15.93 million in lobbying revenue over the first six months of 2010. Other members of Gaffney’s board include the former vice president of Boeing’s missile defense division, and the head of the investment firm American Securities LP, which is invested in, among other companies, Potbelly’s Sandwich Works. The group paid Gaffney $288,300 in 2008, according to its most recently available 990 form.

Another partner in StopThe911Mosque.com is the anti-Muslim hate group ACT! For America, whose “radical Islamophobe” founder Brigitte Gabriel has said that Muslims should not be allowed to hold public office, and that an American Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen” because Islam is the “real enemy.”

Gaffney himself has long history of advocating outrageous and bigoted positions about Islam, and has repeatedly questioned President Obama’s birthplace and religion.

The StopThe911Mosque.com campaign reflects Gaffney’s radical views, declaring that it is not opposed to only the “mega-mosque and Islamic Center at Ground Zero,” but to many mosques, because they may be “‘Trojan Horses,’ masquerading as places of worship when they in fact have proved to be sources of extremist activities and terror plots against America.” The New York mosque is just “a prominent example of this kind of ‘Trojan Horse.’” Indeed, the website also targets mosques in Boston and London.

Update The original post conflated American Securities LLC -- whose leadership is not affiliated with the Center for Security Policy -- with American Securities Management, L.P., whose managing director David P. Steinmann is on the Center's board. American Securities LLC is the company invested in Potbelly Sandwich Works, not American Securities Management, L.P. We apologize for the error and have corrected the post for accuracy.

Source

Chum Mey: Tuol Sleng survivor

By Zoe Murphy BBC News

Chum Mey visits his former cell in the Tuol Sleng prison

For more than three decades Chum Mey has carried the physical and emotional scars inflicted on him by agents of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.

Khmer Rouge Trials

• 'I want to know why'
• Chum Mey: Tuol Sleng survivor
• In pictures: Tuol Sleng prison
• Duch: Symbol of horror

He is one of a only handful of people to have survived Tuol Sleng prison, code-named S-21 - the regime's interrogation centre and site of torture and mass murder.

Last year, from behind bullet-proof glass in a Phnom Penh courtroom, Chum Mey finally told his story to the world.

He was a leading witness in the first trial of a senior Khmer Rouge figure, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch.

Duch was the head of Tuol Sleng, were as many as 17,000 men, women and children were detained and then killed.

Chum Mey's testimony to the United Nations-backed court could perhaps help bring them a degree of long-delayed justice.

Forced exodus

In 1975, Chum Mey - originally from Prey Veng province - was working in Phnom Penh as a mechanic. He was married with three young children.

Cambodia at that time was in political turmoil, with the leaders of a 1970 military coup locked in civil war against Pol Pot's forces.

Who were the Khmer Rouge?

Continue reading the main story

• Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979 - also known as Angkar
• Founded and led by Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot
• Abolished religion, schools and currency in effort to create agrarian utopia
• Up to two million people thought to have died of starvation, overwork or were executed
• Defeated in Vietnamese invasion in 1979
• Pol Pot fled and remained free until 1997 - he died a year later

On 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.

"When they entered everybody including myself raised a white flag to congratulate them; everybody cheered," Chum Mey told the war crimes tribunal.

Just hours later, Khmer Rouge representatives went door-to-door telling people to evacuate to the countryside. Chum Mey said those who did not co-operate were shot dead.

He gathered his wife and children and joined the exodus. His two-year-old son fell ill and died during the journey. Chum Mey was forced to bury him in a shallow grave and move on.

Later, he was sent back to the capital by the Khmer Rouge to repair sewing machines for a co-operative manufacturing the new revolutionary uniform, black pyjamas.

On 28 October 1978 he and other workers were told they were being sent to fix vehicles for an offensive against Vietnam.

In reality, Chum Mey was about to enter the darkest period of his life, as he was taken to Tuol Sleng.

Conspirator

There he was imprisoned in a brick cell about two metres by one metre wide, blind-folded and shackled to the floor.

For 12 days and nights, Chum Mey says he was tortured, as his interrogators tried to make him confess to spying for the US and Russia.

"If you refuse to confess I'll beat you to death. You must tell the truth then I won't kill you. If not I must kill you," he quoted his tormentors as saying.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I cry every night - every time I hear people talk about Khmer Rouge it reminds me of my wife and children”

End Quote Chum Mey Tuol Sleng survivor

He was whipped repeatedly about the body with a switch of bamboo sticks. When he held up his hands to try to shield himself his fingers were broken.

His toenails were pulled out with pliers while his legs were shackled. When he still refused to confess, the nails were twisted and pulled off his other foot.

Finally, Chum Mey said he was subjected to electric shocks several times with a wire from a 220-volt wall socket.

On each occasion he passed out. When he came round, he was asked again to confess. Eventually he said he confessed to anything so that the torture would be over.

In his confession Chum Mey wrote that he was working for the CIA and had recruited dozens of agents in Cambodia.

He gave the names of dozens of acquaintances, innocent men and women who, it is presumed, were later arrested, tortured and murdered.

"People who had been arrested and killed previously had implicated me, and I implicated others. So did other people.

"It was just like rear waves pushing the front waves forward. So people would die one after another, after another, after another," he said in a BBC interview in 2002.

Further tragedy

Chum Mey believes he was allowed to live because he was of use to the regime, fixing sewing machines in the prison workshop.

At night he was chained to a long iron bar with 40 other prisoners. He says they were forced to live in silence.

Chum Mey hopes the war crimes trial might bring some belated justice for himself and his country

"When I wept I could not make any noise. I wept a lot and I had no more tears to weep, I was only waiting for the day that I would be killed," he later told the war crimes trial.

On 7 January 1979, Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh from the Khmer Rouge, and the prison staff fled.

Chum Mey was marched at gunpoint by prison guards into the provinces, where he had a chance meeting with his wife, and held for the first time his fourth child - a boy, just two months old.

For two days they travelled together to an isolated area with a group of other prisoners. They were then ordered to walk into a paddy field, where their captors opened fire on them.

The soldiers shot dead his wife and baby. Chum Mey escaped alone and hid in a forest.

Justice

"I cry every night. Every time I hear people talk about the Khmer Rouge it reminds me of my wife and children," Chum Mey told the public gallery at Duch's trial.

He has said that only the court can help to "wash away" his suffering.

Last year he was elected as the head of the newly-formed Association of Victims of the Khmer Rouge Regime.

Speaking to the BBC just weeks before the verdict, Chum Mey said he hoped Duch would be sentenced to life in prison.

But he said he felt cheated by the court, which he said seemed to place most of the responsibility for crimes committed on those perpetrators already dead, rather than focusing on the accused.

Although the trial has not brought closure for Cambodians, he told the BBC's Guy De Launey he was satisfied that a judicial system was now in place.

Most days Chum Mey can be found at the former prison, which is now a genocide museum, housing the photographs and written confessions of many of the victims.

"I come every day to tell the world the truth about the Tuol Sleng prison... so that none of these crimes are ever repeated anywhere in the world."

Source

Senator Sanders Unfiltered: Real Financial Reform, Now!

Price of Bailout: Greece told to 'sacrifice' as govt spends more on military

US oil spill 'threatens way of life', governor warns

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal warned the spill threatened their way of life

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has warned that the sprawling Gulf of Mexico oil slick threatens the very way of life of people in his state.

As President Barack Obama prepared to fly in to see the devastation for himself, experts said the slick had tripled in size in just days.

Attorneys general from five affected US states will meet to discuss legal options, as pressure mounts on BP.

Choppy seas and strong winds have been hampering the clean-up operation.

The BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig sank on 22 April, two days after a huge explosion that killed 11 workers.

The spill is expanding much quicker than they estimated Hans Graber Miami University Voices: Fearing the worst An 'oil Katrina'? Few clues to fate of oil workers

Later on Sunday, Louisiana's Republican governor will meet Mr Obama to discuss the disaster, for which the president has warned BP will be held ultimately responsible.

Mr Jindal told a news conference on Saturday: "This oil spill threatens not only our wetlands and our fisheries, but also our way of life."

Keeping up pressure on the British energy giant, Mr Jindal said he had still not received detailed plans from the firm on how it would stop the spill.

As sheen from the slick began washing up on the shore, the governor said "BP will need to fund these plans" to protect coastal communities.

The energy giant's chief executive, Tony Hayward, is also expected in Louisiana on Sunday. The company has said it will honour legitimate claims for damages.

'Puerto Rico-sized slick'

The US Coast Guard initially estimated about 200,000 gallons of oil a day were gushing from the well, but conceded on Saturday it was nearly impossible to be sure how much is leaking.

Satellite images analysed by the University of Miami suggest the slick has ballooned to an area the size of Puerto Rico.

Hans Graber, a professor of applied marine physics based at the university, estimates the slick has expanded three-fold in just days to some 3,850 sq miles (9,900 sq km).

"The spill is... expanding much quicker than they estimated," he told AP news agency.

'Largest mop-up ever'

There have been warnings that within weeks the spill could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster as the worst in US history.

Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida have all declared a state of emergency.

Maps, graphics on dealing with slick Oil spill: Join the debate

Attorneys general from those four states and Texas are meeting in Alabama on Sunday to discuss their legal options and how to respond to the disaster.

The BBC's Andy Gallacher, in Louisiana, says the slick is threatening some of America's most important eco-systems.

The Louisiana wetlands host a multi-billion-dollar fishing industry and is a prime spawning area for fish, shrimp, crabs and oyster beds.

Forecasters said there would be no let up on Sunday of the strong winds that have been pushing the oil towards the Louisiana shore.

Andrew Gowers, from BP, said the oil firm had launched the "largest maritime mop-up operation ever mounted, by far".

He told the BBC they had a flotilla of 76 boats trying to contain the spill, as well as a million feet of booms and five planes spraying oil dispersants.

As rescue centres took in seabirds coated in oil, environmental groups warned the impact would be felt for a long time.

One Louisiana resident told the BBC the disaster was more serious than Katrina, the hurricane which devastated the region in 2005.

"This is worse than Katrina, much worse," he said. "Because it'll take years and years to fix this."

BP has sent six submarines to try to activate a blowout preventer that could turn off the oil supply, so far without success.

The firm is also drilling a relief well that would divert the flow of oil, although this could take three months.

Source

Gulf oil spill could be unprecedented disaster - Obama

President Obama said he would ''spare no effort'' in responding to the crisis

US President Barack Obama has described a sprawling oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico as a "potentially unprecedented" environmental disaster.

Speaking in Louisiana, Mr Obama said his government would do whatever it takes to clean up the oil, adding that BP was responsible and must pay.

He said the focus was now on preventing any further damage to the Gulf coast.

BP says it will be at least a week before temporary measures to stem the leak are in place.

But it could take up to three months to drill relief wells that could fully contain the spillage, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar warned on Sunday.

BP is responsible for this leak, BP will be paying the bill Barack Obama Strong winds drive slick onshore Voices: Fearing the worst In pictures: Oil spill clean-up

The BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig sank on 22 April, two days after a huge explosion that killed 11 workers.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has warned the spill threatens the way of life in his state.

Mr Obama flew to Louisiana on Sunday to see for himself the damage.

Speaking in the town of Venice, he said: "We're dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.

"The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our Gulf states.

"And it could extend for a long time. It could jeopardise the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home."

'Mitigate the damage'

The president said the slick was now nine miles (14km) off the coast of south-eastern Louisiana.

BBC meteorologist Daniel Corbett explains how the weather will affect the slick

And he warned: "BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill."

BP chief executive Tony Hayward, who is in Louisiana to oversee the company's clean-up, said: "I agree with the president that the top priority right now is to stop the leak and mitigate the damage."

The company has said it will honour legitimate claims for damages.

BP chairman Lamar McKay said they hoped to lower a hastily made dome a mile below the surface to cap the wellhead in the next six to eight days, as a short-term option.

There have been warnings that within weeks the spill, if unchecked, could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster as the worst in US history.

The Louisiana wetlands host a multi-billion-dollar fishing industry and are a prime spawning area for fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters.

Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have also declared a state of emergency and are considering their legal options.

Source

American Oil Spill -- Republicans -- Drill Baby Drill

Palin's 'Drill Baby Drill' Vs. Oil Spill

Oil Industry Insider: Offshore Drilling Dangerous

Oil Spill Kills Obama Energy Bill

Oil Spill - Inside Documents Show $ More Important Than Lives, Environment

Don't Drill. The amount of Oil you get from drilling offshore meets less than 5% of our energy demand and for less than 5% we'd sell the environment of America?

How Sad, How Pathetic, How Unjust would that be? Offshore drilling is in no way a means of helping America through it's energy issues. Offshore drilling is simply a way for corporations to line their pockets with more wealth. Don't be fooled by the Republicans that say, "Drill Baby Drill".

US releases damning Afghan report ahead of Karzai visit

The Pentagon says people support President Karzai in 29 key districts

The US defence department has said that only a quarter of what it regards as key regions in Afghanistan support the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The Pentagon said in a report that much of the population was either neutral to the central Afghan authorities or supportive of the Taliban insurgency.

It blamed government corruption and lack of efficiency as major reasons for people's distrust of the authorities.

Afghanistan has seen a sharp increase in violence in the past year.

The Pentagon said that despite this, opinion polls suggested Afghan people believed their security was improving.

Widespread fraud

In its 152-page report, released ahead of President Karzai's upcoming visit to Washington, the Pentagon said: "While Afghanistan has achieved some progress on anti-corruption... real change remains elusive and political will, in particular, remains doubtful."

The establishment of effective governance is a critical enabler for improving development and security Pentagon report

It said people support President Karzai's government in only 29 of the 121 Afghan districts considered most strategically important in the war effort.

President Karzai won the 2009 presidential election, which was criticised for widespread fraud.

Separately, the report said that Taliban militants were coming under "unprecedented pressure".

"From the insurgents' perspective, this strain has been compounded by the recent high-profile arrests of several Pakistan-based insurgent leaders by the Pakistani authorities and the removal of many Afghanistan-based commanders," it said.

Correspondents say that the reputation of President Karzai - once a darling of the international powers - has plummeted following repeated accusations from the US and other nations that he has allowed unchecked corruption.

The report said that popular anger at his government, which is widely seen as corrupt and inefficient, has allowed the Taliban to "perceive 2009 as their most successful year".

"Expanded violence is viewed as an insurgent victory, and insurgents perceive low voter turnout and reports of fraud during the past presidential election (in August 2009) as further signs of their success," it said.

Pentagon figures show that "violence is sharply above the seasonal average for the previous year - an 87% increase from February 2009 to March 2010".

"Although the overall security situation has stabilised somewhat since the end of 2009, violence during the current reporting period is still double that for the same period in 2008-2009," the report said.

Source

MSNBC: Cenk On The State of The Dem Party w/ Ratigan & Ezra Klein

Cenk on MSNBC - Goes Off On Tea Party

"To Cenk's point, who are we voting for in November?"

It's why I have a clean conscience when i don't throw my vote away for the two big parties.

It's why I have a clean conscience when I voted third party.

It's why you would have a better future, if you voted third party.

Michael Moore on Larry King Live - 4/27/10

Goldman Sachs boss Blankfein to defend bank's record

LLOYD BLANKFEIN Chairman and chief executive of world's biggest investment bank, Goldman Sachs Earned more than $70m in 2007 - a record for a Wall Street boss. Took home less than $1m in 2009 Told magazine interviewer last year "I'm doing God's work".

Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein will deny his investment bank bet against its own clients in the US property market at a Senate hearing later.

The under-fire banker will argue that Goldman was simply "managing [its] risk" in betting on market falls.

He will also say that the bank lost $1.2bn (£779m) as a result of the collapse in house prices in 2008.

On Monday, the US Subcommittee on Investigations accused Goldman of profiting at its clients' expense.

According to the subcommittee's chairman Senator Carl Levin, investigations show that Goldman bet on property prices falling, while selling clients investments that depended on a rising market in order to be profitable.

"Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars from betting against the housing market, and it placed those bets in some cases at the same time it was selling mortgage related securities to its clients," he said.

"They have a lot to answer for."

Charge disputed

The investment bank is also accused of fraud by the US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), relating to a specific deal selling mortgage-backed securities.

It is alleged that the bank sold the securities to clients without telling them that a hedge fund involved in putting the deal together had bet on the securities falling in value.

Mr Blankfein will be among the Goldman executives to appear before the committee later.

In a text of his prepared testimony, he said the bank "strongly disagreed" with the SEC's complaint, calling the episode "one of the worst days in my professional life".

"We have been a client-centred firm for 140 years and if our clients believe that we don't deserve their trust, we cannot survive."

He added that the accusation that the bank made money from bets on market falls ("short" positions) was simply not true.

"We didn't have a massive short against the housing market and we certainly did not bet against our clients," he said.

"Rather, we believe that we managed our risk as our shareholders and our regulators would expect."

Other Goldman executives due to appear at the hearing include the chief financial officer David Viniar, and the London-based trader Fabrice Tourre, named in the SEC charges.

Source

Goldman Sachs 'profited at clients' expense'

Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein will speak about the importance of trust

Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars at the expense of its clients during the collapse of the housing market, a US Senate investigation has found.

The investigation - which obtained Goldman e-mails - said bank executives had misled investors over mortgage-related investments that turned sour.

The Senate panel released its findings ahead of its hearing on Tuesday into the Goldman affair.

Goldman vigorously denies any wrongdoing.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has been sifting through e-mails and other Goldman documents obtained in an 18-month investigation.

Excerpts from the documents were published Monday, a day before Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman executives appear before the committee.

'Conflict of interest'

On 16 April, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed civil fraud charges against Goldman and one of its executives alleging they failed to disclose a conflict of interest.

If our clients believe [the charges] we don't deserve their trust Lloyd Blankfein

The SEC claims that Goldman arranged mortgage investments without telling clients that the portfolio was put together with help from a hedge fund that was betting on them to fail.

Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein released his own statement ahead of the hearing, saying that the firm did not mislead clients and could not survive without their trust.

Mr Blankfein also said that the day he learned that regulators were filing fraud charges against Goldman was the worst of his professional life.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said on Monday: "I think [Goldman is] misleading the country. There's no doubt they made huge money betting against the [mortgage] market."

The committee provided excerpts of e-mails showing a progression from late 2006 through to the full-blown mortgage crisis a year later.

Mr Levin said the emails show Goldman shifted in early 2007 from neutral to a short position, betting that the mortgage market was likely to collapse.

"That directional change is mighty clear," Mr Levin said. "They decided to go gangbusters selling those securities while knowing they were toxic."

'Widows and orphans'

Goldman, arguably the world's most prestigious investment bank, rejects the SEC charges as wrong in "fact and law".

At the hearing, Mr Blankfein will repeat the firm's argument that it lost $1.2bn (£776,000) in the housing mortgage market during 2007 and 2008.

"If our clients believe [the charges] we don't deserve their trust, we cannot survive," Mr Blankfein says in the prepared remarks.

He also acknowledges that "we have to do a better job of striking the balance between what an informed client believes is important to his or her investing goals and what the public believes is overly complex and risky."

The Senate panel will also hear on Tuesday from Fabrice Tourre, the London-based bond trader who is named in the SEC charges.

On Saturday, Goldman released a series of e-mails from Mr Tourre, in one of which he jokes that he has sold doomed investments to widows and orphans.

Source

Shops agree to £20m pay-out over 'toxic sofas'

Yvonne Dalton, speaking in 2009: "The skin just started peeling away"

A number of High Street chains have agreed to pay up to £20m ($31m) to 2,000 people who received chemical burns from anti-fungal agents in sofas.

The victims are expected to get £1,200-£9,000 each plus other expenses for loss of weddings, holidays and wages.

The group that owns Argos and Homebase, furniture chain Walmsleys and other smaller firms had admitted liability for selling the Chinese-made sofas.

Some Land of Leather customers will not get a pay-out, after an earlier ruling.

'Swift compensation'

Richard Langton, solicitor for law firm Russell Jones and Walker, said: "People's lives were put on hold. Some people thought that they were dying, that they had skin cancer.

"Their doctors couldn't tell them what was wrong, a lot of psychological symptoms.

"Some cases were not so severe, fortunately, but for many people they say it was the worst period of their lives ever."

Mr Justice MacDuff was told in court that a "claims handling agreement" had been reached that did not resolve the whole of the litigation, but would "open the way to swift compensation for many hundreds" of people.

Mr Langton said there would be another hearing on 21 May when 2,500 further cases would be considered.

The £20m figure includes legal costs, as well as compensation.

Burned through clothes

Up to 100,000 of the sofas were sold with "highly sensitising" fungicidal chemical dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inside.

The substance was designed to stop the furniture, manufactured by Chinese companies Linkwise and Eurosofa, going mouldy in storage.

When the sofas went into people's homes the solid sachets turned into gas that burned through clothes and on to skin.

Chemicals used to protect the sofas caused burns

The claimants were said to have suffered severe skin or eye complaints, breathing difficulties or other medical conditions.

Solicitors said the EU had now banned the use of DMF after consumers in at least five European countries suffered skin burns and breathing problems.

Another High Court judge previously ruled more than 300 customers were not entitled to compensation from Land of Leather's insurers Zurich, after the furniture firm went into administration in January 2009.

That decision is expected to be challenged in the Court of Appeal.

Source

Manipulating Gold and Silver: A Criminal Naked Short Position that Could Wreck the Economy

Manipulating Gold and Silver: A Criminal Naked Short Position that Could Wreck the Economy

Posted on 02 April 2010 by Mark Mitchell
Tags: Andrew Maguire, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, gold, manipulation, media, metals, naked short selling, short selling, silver, stock manipulation

Everyone from U.S. Senators to prominent hedge fund managers say that criminal naked short sellers had a hand in the financial collapse of 2008, but the regulators aren’t listening. Not a single criminal has been prosecuted. Indeed, the regulators continue to allow the miscreants to manipulate the markets — not just the stock markets, but also the markets for corporate bonds, derivatives, U.S. Treasuries, and all manner of commodities – even when the regulators are provided with indisputable evidence of a massive crime in progress. They could easily fix the flaws in the settlement system that allow much of the manipulation to occur, but they refrain from doing so either because they are too captured by the miscreants or too cowed by the possible consequences of throwing the lights on what may be an enormous confidence game.

So I am inclined to say that it is hopeless. Everyone loves an optimist – but, yes, it is hopeless. We are like the audience in one of those cheesy horror flicks – yell and scream all you like, but the dumb blonde is still going to walk into that room and get hacked to pieces. Except that it is not a movie. It is real. And it’s not just the dumb blonde who is going to get slaughtered. It is all of us. It is our economy. It is our standard of living. It is our financial system – the lifeblood of the nation.

The latest case of regulatory indolence was recently exposed by Andrew Maguire, a successful metals trader and whistleblower who went to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with data that strongly suggested that a small number of criminal short sellers had rigged the markets for silver and gold. Maguire not only provided the regulators with a Dummies’ guide to how the manipulation generally worked, but also warned them of a specific crime – a dramatic take-down of the gold and silver markets – that he said would occur at an exact time on a specific date in the near future. That is, Maguire told the regulators that a massive crime was about to happen, and the crime happened precisely as he predicted it would.

With Maguire’s warning, the regulators were able to watch a crime unfold, right before their eyes, in real time. Then the regulators thanked Maguire by saying, in essence, “you’re a nuisance, go away.” This is not just appalling, but scary, because the criminal activity that Maguire exposed is much bigger than the Madoff Ponzi scheme, and more likely to result in serious damage to the American economy. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that our national security is at stake. As Maguire stated in a recent interview with King World radio, the manipulators have likely created a massive naked short position that can easily be exploited by foreign entities who might see financial or even political gain in eviscerating the dollar.

Maguire’s email exchange with the CFTC is remarkable reading. In one email he writes:

“Thought it may be helpful to your investigation if I gave you the heads up for a manipulative event scheduled for Friday, 5^th Feb. The non-farm payrolls number will be announced at 8:30 ET. There will be one of two scenarios occurring, and both will result in silver (and gold) being taken down with a wave of short selling designed to take out obvious support levels and trip stops below. While I will no doubt be able to profit from this upcoming trade, it is an example of just how easy it is to manipulate a market if a concentrated position is allowed by a very small group of traders…I sent you a slide of a couple of past examples of just how this will play out.

“Scenario 1. The news is bad (employment is worse). This will have a bullish effect on gold and silver as the U.S. dollar weakens and the precious metals draw bids, spiking them higher. This will be sold into within a very short time (1-5 mins) with thousands of new short contracts being added, overcoming any new bids and spiking the precious metals down hard, targeting key technical support levels.

“Scenario 2. The news is good (employment is better than expected). This will result in a massive short position being instigated almost immediately with no move up. This will not initially be liquidation of long positions but will result in stops being triggered, again targeting key support levels.

“Both scenarios will spell an attempt by the two main short holders to illegally drive the market down and reap very large profits.”

It would be hard to get more specific than that. As Maguire says in the same email: “The question I would expect you might ask is: Who is behind the sudden selling and is it the entity/entities holding a concentrated position? How is it possible for me to know what will occur days before it will happen? Only if a market is manipulated could this possibly occur.”

The CFTC had previously had the courtesy to call Maguire and listen to his concerns, but by the time Maguire sent the message laying out the crime, the CFTC had stopped returning his emails. The regulator showed no real interest, and let the crime happen. After the crime occurred, Maguire wrote another email:

“A final email to confirm that the silver manipulation was a great success and played out EXACTLY to plan as predicted. How would this be possible if the silver market was not in the full control of the parties we discussed in our phone interview?…I hope you took note of how and who added the short sales (I certainly have a copy)…Surely some discussions should have taken place between the parties by now. Obviously they feel they can act with impunity…”

After that, Maguire sent several more emails detailing manipulation of the gold and silver markets. He received no replies. So he wrote a final email, providing still more evidence in support of his case and stating: “I have honored my commitment to assist you and keep any information we discuss private, however if you are going to ignore my information I will deem that commitment to have expired.”

To that email, a CFTC official finally replied: “I have received and reviewed your email communications. Thank you so very much for your observations.” That was it. Thanks a lot and goodbye. No follow up questions. No acknowledgement that a crime had occurred. No apparent interest whatsoever.

Maguire was understandably peeved. As he said in his radio interview, “I kept a live commentary going on that entire scenario. How they were going to flush it down below 15, how it then went down below 15, and how then they were putting big block offers hitting all the bids to stop it getting back through the technical level of 15 so as not to trigger covering by the shorts and inviting longs to get long again. To me, you don’t get any better than that, how could anyone predict that unless they knew what was going to happen, not just saying it’s going to move in one direction, but it’s going to move in one direction then another direction – all in a matter of minutes.”

Not long after the massive crime took place, the CFTC held a public hearing on manipulation of the metals markets. Maguire was specifically barred from participating. He told King World radio that he believed one CFTC official, Bart Chilton, wanted him to attend the hearing, but Chilton is a lone “Elliot Ness” crime fighter working in an agency that is dominated by the feckless and the corrupt. “There are a lot of people at CFTC wanting to look the other way,” Maguire said.

However, the hearing (a partial transcript and video of which can be found at the excellent financial blog Zero Hedge) did yield an interesting piece of information. In the course of answering an unrelated question, Jeffrey Christian, a former Goldman Sachs staffer who is now the head of a metals trading firm called CPM Group, stated that “precious metals…trade in the multiples of a hundred times the underlying physical…” (the italics belong to me and a lot of other people whose eyes popped out of their heads when they heard this).

What Christian was saying is that every ounce of gold or silver is being sold 100 times. This would not be problematic if we were speaking of some dusty market in Central Asia with rows of traders’ stalls wherein some commodity (such as gold, silver, radios or Kalashnikovs) were being sold and resold in rapid-fire succession: there, our sensibilities about scarcity, value, and price discovery would actually grip reality. Here, however, we are talking of markets where the distinction between reality and representation has become as blurry as the last round of a game of musical chairs, enabling some sellers to offload paper IOUs promising eventual delivery of silver and gold – promises that would be impossible to keep if some small segment of the buyers were to demand delivery of the real thing.

This is quite similar to the naked short selling of stocks, where traders sell stock that does not exist, but enter IOUs in their computers, and then “fail to deliver” what they have promised. It is hard to distinguish this from fraud (notwithstanding the Efficient Market Hypothesis of financial theory, which maintains, essentially, that it shouldn’t matter). Christian, the fellow who inadvertently revealed the massive naked short positions in gold and silver, said that he didn’t see this as a problem because “there are any number of mechanisms for cash settlement,” and “almost all of these short positions are in fact hedges…”

This is slightly absurd. Later in his testimony, Christian himself said that it was “exactly right” to say that the hedges are nothing more than hedges of “paper on paper” – a particular sort of merry-go-around where one IOU is settled by another IOU, with these IOUs outnumbering real gold and silver by multiples of a hundred times.

As for the notion that cash settlement solves the problem, Maguire noted in his radio interview that cash settlement “is the very definition of default. If somebody wants to buy gold and silver and instead they’re given cash, that is a default.” In addition, “there are people who will not want cash – Chinese, Vietnamese, Russians – people looking for the metal, they will want to take it, and that will cause a default on the Comex [the metals exchange] because the Comex will be drained…that was the word that was used by several people making testimony [at the CFTC meeting], that the Comex would be drained…”

Maguire added: “What’s going to happen, if you’re an Asian trader, or a non-Western trader, who has no loyalty, or doesn’t care about homeland security or anything else, who says, now wait a minute, if I can establish in my mind that there is 100 ounces of paper gold, paper silver for example, for each ounce of real silver, than I have a naked short situation here that I can squeeze and they can go on the spot market which is basically a foreign exchange transaction, short dollar, long silver to any amount they want – billions, trillions — whatever they want, and they can take this market, squeeze this market, and blow it up…”

In other words, the problem isn’t just that criminal naked short sellers manipulate the metals market downwards. It is that they have created a condition where a foreign entity can merely demand delivery of real metal to induce a massive “squeeze” that sends the price of metals skyrocketing, putting huge downward pressure on the dollar. Meanwhile, says Maguire, with prices rising, “for 100 customers who show up there is only one guy who is going to get his gold or silver and there’s 99 who will be disappointed, so without any new money coming into the market, just asking for that gold and silver will create a default.”

“There are no prisoners taken in this kind of environment,” Maguire added. “All they need to establish is that it is naked, and by the admission of [former Goldman staffer] Christian at the meeting…we have a definition of physical actually being paper…They get that in their heads and its locked, it’s a done deal, then we don’t have to wait…there is a profit to be made here, and there is nothing [anybody] can do about it because it’s a foreign exchange transaction, and there are no limits on a foreign exchange transaction, and obviously foreign exchange transactions are coming to light, there [is talk] of manipulation…”

Indeed, Maguire says that he has received phone calls from wealthy individuals in Asia looking for the go ahead to exploit the naked short position. “The only question they have in their mind is can we establish that this is a naked short position, that’s the only thing they had to clarify, it’s become clear, it is now clear [that the naked short position is massive], and no doubt they do their own due diligence, but basically [the naked short position] has been admitted at the only metals meeting [the CFTC hearing] that we’ve ever had…”

Maguire says that the naked short selling scam is in the trillions of dollars, making it by far the biggest financial fraud in history. He calls it “financial terrorism” and accuses the naked short sellers of “treason” for putting national security at risk. It might be hard to believe that foreign entities are plotting to crush the U.S. economy, and perhaps they are not, but there is no doubt that loopholes in the clearing and settlement system – not just for metals, but also stocks, bonds, Treasuries, and derivatives – could quite easily be exploited by any foreign entity desiring to do harm to the U.S. economy. The only dispute is whether such a desire exists.

Maguire and Adrian Douglas of GATA, an organization that lobbies against manipulation of the metals market, took their concerns to the mainstream media and had a number interviews scheduled. However, every one of those interviews were suddenly cancelled. This is not surprising. The mainstream media has consistently shied away from stories about illegal naked short selling and market manipulation, partly because the media outlets are captured by the powers that be on Wall Street, and partly because investigative journalism is now viewed as an anachronism – a time-consuming effort that might have been suited to Woodward and Bernstein back in the 70s, but not to the downsized news rooms tasked with churning out tepid and meaningless “he said, she said” mimeographs for a population of readers who (so it is said) want their “news” fast, and don’t care a whit for in-depth reporting.

Meanwhile, just as the stock manipulators have engaged in a coordinated effort – deploying threats, ruthless smear campaigns, and slick lobbying – to keep their crimes out of the spotlight, so too will the gold and silver manipulators. Adrian Douglas of GATA notes that at the precise moment that his GATA colleague Bill Murphy began to speak at the CFTC meeting, the video camera recording the event experienced “technical problems” – problems that were fixed at the precise moment when Murphy stopped talking. Douglas concedes that this might have been a coincidence, but when this sort of thing happens often enough, a little healthy paranoia is probably a good thing. That said, everyone loves an optimist, so I’ll say the camera really went kaput.

But…ack…another coincidence: The day after Maguire gave his radio interview, he was the victim of a hit and run collision. Somebody sped out of a side alley at top speed, smashed into Maguire’s car, and then tried to escape. A high-speed chase ensued, and the perpetrator was caught by police. The British press has reported that this might have been an assassination attempt, or a threat, but as yet there has been no word from the police. Maguire was injured, but not seriously. Let’s be optimistic, and say this was an accident – assassinations and threats only happen in the movies.

But…ack…another coincidence: Shortly before somebody crashed into Maguire’s car, the CFTC caught on fire. This fire happened to be located in the one small basement room where gold and silver trading data and other pertinent documents were kept. The CFTC claims that its investigation of metals manipulation, for what it was, did not burn. So maybe it was just an accident. Maybe some eager CFTC regulators were down there smoking cigarettes. Maybe it was stress. Maybe they’ll keep investigating. Maybe they’ll bust the criminals.

Maybe, just maybe…yes, everyone loves an optimist, so let me make this clear – the horror show that is our regulatory system is going to have a happy ending. There will be no massacre. The financial system will be just fine…really…maybe… or maybe not.

* * * * * * * *

Update: Another coincidence: GATA reported recently that there has been an attack on the King World website — the website that contains the radio interview of Maguire and his emails to the CFTC. This was an apparent attempt to shut down the website and prevent the scandal from being exposed further. The Internet company that hosts the King World website reported to King World the following: Your hosting account is the target of a distributed denial of service attack…Computers were attacking your account.”

Steps were taken to protect the website, which is once again up and running.

Source

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Commentary

The hero in this case is Mcguire, and the CEO of overstock.com that has a very nice site up called deepcapture.com. It tries to put some light on the issues of financial crimes and it has some very nice articles currently.

This is one of the most important articles and it shows that if you are a billionaire, you could in a matter of days, single-handedly, destroy our currency and destroy the metals market, simply by mass buying gold and asking them to give you the gold you paid for.

Naked buying in selling in stocks was banned a long time ago, i would have thought the same was true for the metals market.