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Way back on February 13, 1960, France tested its first atomic bomb, "Gerboise Bleue" (Blue Jerboa). Declassified documents released recently show that radiation from the test in the Algerian Sahara desert reached much further than they said at the time.
In fact, the radiation fallout is likely to have reached as far as the southern coast of Spain as well as Sicily and Sardinia in Italy, within just 13 days of the blast.
The French daily newspaper Le Parisien published the military papers on February 14.
Originally the affected zone was said to be restricted to within the Sahara desert in Algeria, but it can be seen from the image below that in reality, it affected northern, eastern and central Africa plus southern Europe.
© James ShiellThe European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.
It would be nice to think that this is just another case of vacuous people producing verbal vacuums, but it's more complex than that, as The Daily Mail explains:
The EU is trying to erase 'bankruptcy' from the English language and replace it with the term 'debt adjustment'.Ah, er, um, hang on... "Making it less troublesome to open bank accounts in different countries and easier to escape from debt...?"
The idea is being considered as part of wider reforms to harmonise financial arrangements across the EU, including making it less troublesome to open bank accounts in different countries and easier to escape from debt and be 'given a second chance'.
Less troublesome for whom?
Easier for whom?
I feel that this is one of the most important investigations I've ever done. If my findings are correct, each of us might soon experience a severe, if not crippling blow to our personal finances, the confiscation of any wealth some of us have been able to accumulate over our lifetimes, and the end of the financial world as we once knew it. The evidence to support my findings exists in the trail of dead bodies of financial executives across the globe and a missing Wall Street Journal Reporter who was working at the Dow Jones news room at the time of his disappearance.
If the bodies were dots on a piece of paper, connecting them results in a sinister picture being drawn that involves global criminal activity in the financial world the likes of which is almost without precedent. It should serve as a warning that we are at the precipice of something so big, it will shake the financial world as we know it to its core. It seems to illustrate the complicity of big banks and governments, the intelligence community, and the media.
Although the trail of mysterious and bizarre deaths detailed below begin in late January, 2014, there are others. Not only that, there will be more, according to sources within the financial world. Based on my findings, these are not mere random, tragic cases of suicide, but of the methodical silencing of individuals who had the ability to expose financial fraud at the highest levels, and the complicity of certain governmental agencies and individuals who are engaged in the greatest theft of wealth the world has ever seen.
© Dan Himbrechts/AAPRupert Murdoch delivers the 2013 Lowy lecture in Sydney.
Rupert Murdoch's media group received a $882m tax rebate from Australia last year in a revelation that is likely to reignite the debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations.
The payment by a "foreign tax authority" was revealed in accounts published by News Corporation in the US earlier this month and related to a $2bn claim by News Corp for historic losses on currency transactions by its Australian subsidiaries.
The payment was estimated to be worth $600m to News Corp but the final figure grew to $882m after interest charges.
It was one of the the biggest single factors in the multi-billion dollar federal budget blowout announced by Australian treasurer Joe Hockey in December.
The Australian Tax Office wanted to challenge the claim but was overruled by the Federal Court of Appeal in July last year, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday.
The refund amounted to one of the largest ever faced by the ATO but a decision over whether to appeal against the ruling came amid the build-up to the federal election with News Corp's Australian titles launching a series of attacks on the then Labor government.
© Le Nouvel Observateur
To discuss these issues, Oksana is joined by the President of Iceland, Olafur Grimsson.
Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society's merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.Until recent years, the struggle between the forces of "centralization" and "decentralization" was more of a full on slaughter-fest than an actually battle or war. As Americans sat there blissfully asleep for decades, every facet of our lives has been carefully consolidated into the hands of a smaller and smaller group of corporations, and hence individual executives. This trend is undeniable in everything from food, banking, media and everything in between.
-Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World Revisited (1958)
Myself and many others saw the financial crisis of 2008 as a gigantic wakeup call. The disasters caused by powerful financial institutions and the greedy people that ran them should have been used as a rallying cry to break these institutions up. To recognize the dangers of too much power in one particular place.This is especially important in something as crucial as banking. However, as we are all painfully aware, this is not what happened. Rather, the institutions were bailed out, the industry consolidated even more than it was before, and the perpetrators of the crisis emerged from it even more wealthy and powerful.
My personal focus on this website has been to expose the unique dangers presented by centralization in the financial industry and the monetary system. However, many others are dedicated to the equally important and disturbing trends in other industries. Consumer goods is one of these areas, and a very telling diagram went around late last year showing how 10 companies basically control everything you buy. Take a look below:
Arian Azarbar says Israeli spy was granted news passport after participating in the 2010 plot to kill Hamas terrorist leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel.
An Israeli Mossad agent living in Canada was secretly provided a new identity and passport by the government, a Canadian-Iranian businessman alleged in an interview, the Canoe website reported Saturday.
Arian Azarbar says the Israeli spy was granted the new identity after participating in the 2010 plot to kill Hamas terrorist leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel. Al Mabhouh, part of the military wing of Hamas, was wanted by the Israeli government for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.
Al-Mabhouh was killed on January 19, 2010 when a team of assassins broke into his hotel room and killed him silently, leaving a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. The hotel security cameras caught images of the alleged killers sharing an elevator ride with Mabhouh prior to the assassination.
© Courtesy Ch. 2Mossad operatives who allegedly assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010, dressed in tennis garb.
Arian Azarbar says the Israeli spy was granted the new identity after participating in the 2010 plot to kill Hamas terrorist leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel. Al Mabhouh, part of the military wing of Hamas, was wanted by the Israeli government for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.
Al-Mabhouh was killed on January 19, 2010 when a team of assassins broke into his hotel room and killed him silently, leaving a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. The hotel security cameras caught images of the alleged killers sharing an elevator ride with Mabhouh prior to the assassination.
© AP/Sergei GritsProtesters chant slogans outside the Parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013. Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday opened a high-tension session in which the opposition aims to put forward a vote of no-confidence in the government in the wake of both the president's shelving an agreement with the European Union and police violence against demonstrators protesting that decision.
Nine years ago, the Orange Revolution was organized with massive political and financial support from the US government and American NGOs such as the Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros. These forces were able to annul the presidential election and ensure that the pro-EU and pro-US tandem of Viktor Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko took over as head of state and head of government in place of Viktor Yanukovich, who was considered to be in the pocket of Russia. The duo quickly fell out, however, and Yanukovich was able to assume the post of president in 2010.
Now another attempt is being made to bring a regime to power that will subordinate the former Soviet Republic and granary of the Russian Empire to the EU. An examination of the political leadership of the protests reveals their reactionary character. They are led by three parties, two of which have close relations with the conservative camp in the EU, while the third is openly fascist.
The 'terra threat', made in the UK
Senior security officials say the high number of "returnees" - five times the figure that has been previously reported - underlines the growing danger posed by "extremist tourists" going to the war-torn region.
MI5 and police have already thwarted one serious plot last autumn by a cell of "returnee" jihadis who were allegedly preparing a Mumbai-style gun attack on civilians, probably in a crowded public place in London.
The security services are closely monitoring the 250 returnees, who include several veteran hardliners who have fought in Afghanistan or Pakistan. They are suspected of wanting to carry out attacks here or of inciting others to do so.
© Unknown
Before Shatter, the Irish government had taken steps to reduce non-European immigration, including abolishing automatic citizenship for children born to foreigners in Ireland and drastically reducing the admission of asylum seekers. Since taking office in early 2011, after his Fine Gael party ousted the ruling Fianna Fail amid Ireland's continuing economic woes, Shatter has busied himself with increasing the numbers of Africans and Asians resident in Ireland.
Immigration to Ireland from outside Europe during 2011 was twice that of the previous year. Last year, the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service granted visas to 91 percent of the 88,000 non-Europeans who applied for them (citizens of the twenty-six other member states of the European Union can travel to Ireland without having to obtain a visa). An additional 115,000 migrants from outside Europe were given permission to remain in Ireland in 2012, with India, China, Nigeria, Turkey, and the Philippines among the top six countries of origin. To be sure, the number of permits to non-Europeans to reside in Ireland has declined over the previous two years - but only because Shatter's ministry has been granting them citizenship, at several times the rate of the preceding years.
Comment: Mossad Psychopaths Behind Murder of Hamas Official In Dubai