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Dollar

Nigeria: Thrown into Chaos and a State of Civil War: The Role of the IMF

F. William Engdahl
Global Research
Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Global Research
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria's population.

The recent strikes protesting the government's abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was "shock therapy" to put it mildly.

Nigeria today is one of the world's most important producers of light, sweet crude oil - the same high quality crude oil that Libya and the British North Sea produce. The country is showing every indication of spiraling downward into deep disorder. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States and twelfth largest oil producer in the world on a par with Kuwait and just behind Venezuela with production exceeding two million barrels a day. 1
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Dollar

Abstractions Versus the "Real World": Economic Models and the Apologetics of Greed

Prof John Kozy
Global Research
Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Global Research
Economists build models by subtracting from reality the characteristics they deem unessential to the economic situations they model. The result is a bare bones description consisting of what economists deem economically essential. Everything that is discarded (not taken into consideration in the model) is called an "externality." So the models only work when the externalities that were in effect before the models are implemented do not change afterward. The realm of economic models can be likened to the realm of Platonic Ideas. Both realms are static and unchanging throughout all time. Unfortunately the real world constantly changes. Since externalities are excluded from all economic models and can be expected to change after any model is implemented, all economic models necessarily fail. Economists are frauds and economics amounts to nothing but an apologetics of greed.

In the 1980s, manufacturers of apparel began offshoring their production to underdeveloped countries, one of which was Bangladesh. Economists endorse this practice; they have a model that justifies it.
Offshoring production to underdeveloped nations gives needy people jobs, increases their incomes, reduces poverty, and expands their nations' GNPs. It also enables people in developed nations to purchase products produced offshore at lower prices enabling them to consume a wider range of things. As a result, everyone everywhere is better off.
Convinced? Most economists are, but it hasn't worked that way. Everyone everywhere is not better off - as the whole world now knows. Why?
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Evil Rays

US: 2 Shot, 1 Dead at Wal-Mart Distribution Center in Virginia

Michael Felberbaum
The Associated Press
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:00 UTC
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© AP Photo
Dinwiddie - An employee of a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. distribution center in Virginia shot and wounded his manager Wednesday, then killed himself as deputies approached him, authorities said.

Dinwiddie County Sheriff D.T. Adams said deputies who were summoned to the center along rural U.S. 460 shortly after noon encountered a 32-year-old man standing outside the entrance. When deputies approached, he shot at them with a handgun, then fatally shot himself in the chest.

Witnesses said the man went to lunch at 11 a.m., walked to the back of the center and shot his 40-year-old manager in the shipping department in the leg, Adams said. She sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital.

The motive for the shooting wasn't immediately known, and Adams said there was no evident dispute between the shooter and the wounded woman. The man had worked at the center for nine years, the woman 18 years.
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Vader

US: Woman left brain dead after being tasered while handcuffed

KnewWorldNoing
YouTube/Press TV
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:11 UTC
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Dollar

How Europe's Year of Indecision Sowed the Seeds of Future Conflict

George Soros
Project Syndicate
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
Closer fiscal union and the emergence of a two-speed Europe threaten a vicious deflationary debt spiral from which the eurozone will struggle to escape
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© Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated PressPolicy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines.

The dire economic situation in which most of the rich world found itself in 2011 was not merely the result of impersonal economic forces, but was largely created by the policies pursued, or not pursued, by world leaders.

Indeed, the remarkable unanimity that prevailed in the first phase of the financial crisis that began in 2008, and which culminated in the $1 trillion (£645bn) rescue package put together for the London G20 meeting in April 2009, dissipated long ago. Now, bureaucratic infighting and misconceptions are rampant.

Worse still, policy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines. The centre of fiscal conservatism is Germany, while Anglo-Saxon countries are still drawn to John Maynard Keynes. This division is complicating matters enormously, because close international co-operation is needed to correct the global imbalances that remain at the root of the crisis.
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People

Constitution Halts Sheriff: Irish citizens using Common Law to challenge Banksters reposession of their homes

freedomefromalldebt
YouTube
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:31 UTC
On the 20 February 2012 the deputy Sheriff arrived at another Irish family's home to repossess it and give the keys to the bank in Co Laois. Thus putting another Irish family onto the streets.

People from DefendOurHomesLeague.ie, ItsNotOurDebt.com, FreedomFromAllDebt.com, UnitedLeftAlliance.org, AntiEvictionTaskForce.com and everyone else that was there.

Ben Gilroy from "Freedom From All Debt.com" questions the sheriff outside the gates to the house and does an interview at the end of the video.

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Health

49 Killed, Hundreds Hurt as Argentine Train Crashes into Station


MSNBC
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:19 UTC
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© Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty ImagesPolice and rescue workers surround a train that crashed at Once train station in Buenos Aires Wednesday.
Carnage among morning commuters at Buenos Aires station

More than 600 people are injured, officials say, with reports of some passengers still trapped in carnage at Buenos Aires station

Buenos Aires - A packed train slammed into the end of the line in Buenos Aires' busy Once station, killing 49 people and injuring hundreds of morning commuters in Argentina's worst train accident in decades.

Federal Police Commissioner Nestor Rodriguez said Wednesday's dead included 48 adults and one child.

Officials said more than 600 people were injured out of more than 800 people who were reportedly on the train.

The death toll was Argentina's highest from a train accident since 1970, when 200 were killed.

Officials said the train was unable to stop and it slammed into the buffers inside the centrally located station.

"The train entered the Once station at 26 kilometers per hour (16 mph)... we suppose there was some flaw in the brakes," Transport Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi told state news agency Telam.

"The train was full and the impact was tremendous," a passenger named Ezequiel told local television, AFP reported.

Comment: Is there any possible connection?: Israeli agents operate in Argentina (Sun, 09 Oct 2011)
"..Could this be then analyzed as a sign of controlling Zionist Interests in Argentina? According to Mr. Salbuchi, Israel organizations have enormous advantage in Argentine politics, media and lifestyles, which could have tracked back to the times of the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl.

...

The question of Israeli lobbies and their influence in Argentina also hit headlines back in September [2011] when leaders of the Jewish community showed their strong disapproval on President Fernandez decision to accept Iran's call to hold "constructive dialogue" regarding the investigation of the 1994 AMIA bombing attack."
See link for Video.

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House

US: Marine makes last stand in foreclosed home

Kari Huus
MSNBC
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:30 UTC
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© UnknownArturo de los Santos takes part in a demonstration in front of Freddie Mac's Los Angeles offices on Feb. 2, demanding the mortgage company halt efforts to forcibly remove him and his family from their single-story house in Riverside, Calif.
Arturo de los Santos lost his home to foreclosure more than a year ago and was evicted. But because he felt he was treated unfairly, he moved back into his home of 10 years in an effort to force the lender, Freddie Mac, to back down.

"I'm just a regular guy who gets up each day, takes the kids to school and goes to work," said de los Santos, a retired Marine who is hunkered down in the modest three-bedroom house in Riverside, Calif., surrounded by an encampment of Occupy Riverside protesters and housing activists. "We've done everything the way we were supposed to. We're not going to just sit back and let Freddie Mac steal our home."

A new eviction order aimed at forcing de los Santos, a 46-year-old metal worker, and his family out of the house took effect Tuesday, meaning that sheriff's deputies could arrive at any time. Arturo de los Santos also has been served a court summons threaten[ing] him with arrest if he doesn't leave his house.

De los Santos' story is similar to thousands of other American homeowners who claim that banks mishandled mortgage modifications.

When the economic crisis hit in 2008, the factory where he worked cut his hours, so de los Santos pursued a modification based on his lower income with JP Morgan Chase, servicer of the loan.
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2 + 2 = 4

UK: 25% of Kids Aged 10-12 Can't Do Basic Addition

Suzannah Hills
The Daily Mail
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:12 UTC
student @ chalkboard
© n/a
Young children are leaving primary school unable to spell, add up or do their times tables because their parents are too busy to help them practise, a survey revealed today.

Half of children aged between 10 and 12 do not know what a noun is or cannot identify an adverb - while almost a third, 31 per cent, cannot use apostrophes correctly.

More than one in five - 22 per cent - could not use the correct version of 'they're', 'there' and 'their' in a sentence and more than four in 10 couldn't spell the word 'secretaries' correctly.

Maths didn't fare much better in the survey by online tutor, mytutor, with more than a quarter of children being unable to add two small sums of money without using a calculator as they can't do division and basic algebra.

Twenty-seven per cent of children surveyed could not add £2.36 and £1.49 to get £3.85. In addition, more than a third, 36 per cent, could not divide 415 by five and a quarter did not know the answer to seven multiplied by six.
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Sheriff

Spying on Campus: New York Police Caught Monitoring Muslim Student Groups Throughout Northeast

Amy Goodman
Democracy NOW!
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
The Associated Press has revealed the New York City Police Department monitored Muslim college students at schools throughout the Northeast, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In one case, the NYPD sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed. We speak to one of the students on the trip, Jawad Rasul. He is the only student who was under surveillance to now publicly speak out about his experience. "[This is] hurting NYPD's try and attempt at finding homegrown terrorism, because these kind of tactics actually create more hatred towards them and the other law-enforcement agencies and really destroys the trust that any youth might have developed with the government," Rasul said. We're also joined by Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Connecticut chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is calling for a state probe into the spying on Muslims.

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