Croatian centre-left candidate and strong backer of EU accession Ivo Josipovic has won a third of votes cast in the country's presidential election on Sunday (27 December), putting him in pole position ahead of a January run-off.

Mr Josipovic, the opposition Social Democrat leader, won 32.4 percent - the most votes out of the 12 candidates up for the post.

He topped the poll substantially ahead of his nearest rival, Milan Bandic, the mayor of Zagreb since 2000 and a former Social Democrat turned populist, on 14.8 percent, but still fell far short of the necessary 50 percent required to win without a second vote.

Businesses should find it easier from today to offer services in other member states because of the entry into force of EU legislation prohibiting the imposition of "discriminatory" requirements on businesses from other EU countries.

Examples of requirements that are banned under the legislation - known as the services directive - include economic needs tests and residency requirements.

The legislation also removes barriers to cross-border shopping and cross-border business-to-business sales, and obliges member states to create a website where foreign businesses can find and fill out all the administrative forms necessary to set up a branch or subsidiary in that country.

Russia has warned the European Union of oil supply cuts because of a dispute between Moscow and Kiev, the Slovak government said on Monday, hours after Russia played down worries about a new row with Ukraine over gas.

"There is an increased risk that there could be a halt in oil supplies from January 1. 2010. Three countries of the European Union - Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic - would be hit most," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said.

A European Union source said oil stocks in those countries were adequate to withstand possible cuts.

A growing roster of central bankers and politicians are opposed to the idea of an IMF bailout for Greece. They argue it would violate European Union law and that the bloc is big enough to solve the problem on its own.

It is becoming increasingly unlikely that the European Union will allow the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to step in and provide ailing euro zone member state Greece with a bailout. A growing number of politicians and central bankers are opposed to any form of IMF intervention.

"We don't need the IMF," Axel Weber, president of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, said, according to a report published in Monday's issue of SPIEGEL. Weber noted that it is illegal in Europe to finance budget deficits using the kind of central bank funds which are at the IMF's disposal. With his statement, Weber joins ranks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who believes IMF intervention would send the wrong political signal. The EU, she believes, is strong enough to handle Greece's problems on its own.

A one-page proposal gaining traction in Congress could turn back the clock on Wall Street 10 years, forcing the breakup of banks, including Citigroup Inc.

Lawmakers in both parties, seeking to prevent future financial crises while soothing public anger over bailouts and bonuses, are turning to an approach that's both simple and transformative: re-imposing sections of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking.

Those walls came down with passage of the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act of 1999. A proposal to reconstruct them, made by U.S. Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell on Dec. 16, would prevent deposit-taking banks from underwriting securities, engaging in proprietary trading, selling insurance or owning retail brokerages. The bill could also force the unwinding of deals consummated during the financial crisis, including Bank of America Corp.'s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

A 26-mile-long line of idled oil tankers, enough to blockade the English Channel, may signal a 25 percent slump in freight rates next year.

The ships will unload 26 percent of the crude and oil products they are storing in six months, adding to vessel supply and pushing rates for supertankers down to an average of $30,000 a day next year, compared with $40,212 now, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 15 analysts, traders and shipbrokers. That's below what Frontline Ltd., the biggest operator of the ships, says it needs to break even.

Traders booked a record number of ships for storage this year, seeking to profit from longer-dated energy futures trading at a premium to contracts for immediate delivery, according to SSY Consultancy & Research Ltd., a unit of the world's second- largest shipbroker. Ships taken out of that trade would return to compete for cargoes just as deliveries from shipyards' largest-ever order book swell the global fleet.

A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis", says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times.

Wolf, who has honorary doctorates from three universities, bases his argument in part on the Triffin dilemma, an economic paradox named after economist Robert Triffin. The paradox shows that the US dollar's role as a global reserve currency leads to a conflict between US national monetary policy and global monetary policy. It also points to fundamental imbalances in the balance of payments, particularly in the US current account.

Account deficit

Speaking at an event organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Wolf said Triffin believed that the host nation of a global reserve currency will inevitably run up a huge current account deficit that would consequently undermine the credibility of its currency and adversely impact the global economy. "You can't have an open globalised economy that relies for its ultimate liquidity on the currency of one country. That was his [Triffin's] argument. And, therefore, he said the Bretton Woods system would break, which it did. And exactly the same thing happened with Bretton Woods II, which is the system of pegging.

"So I agree with this. And I'm absolutely convinced now, in a way that I was not three or four years ago, that we cannot continue with a genuinely global economy which relies on national money, and that's not sold by just adding another couple (of currencies). It actually means having a global money."

The US Treasury and the Federal Home Finance Administration took a bad news dump on Christmas Eve. The tactic didn't seem to work for them, but perhaps it further buried the news released the day before, (See Gretchen Mortensen's fine article in the Dec. 24 NYT, posted late on the evening of the 23rd, if memory serves.) regarding how Goldman Sachs, Deutch Bank and others appear to have deliberately set out to trash the US residential real estate market for fun and profit.

If you are reading this you know the story. Treasury ponied up for another $200b for Fannie and Freddie and the management of these entities are getting serious paychecks. The former clearly establishes that Fannie and Freddie have been nationalized. I don't care what they say any longer. The numbers speak for themselves. The $400 billion the taxpayers have signed up for far exceeds any theoretical value for these two important institutions. Sadly, `the people' own these things at this point.

The notion that the Agencies are private sector companies with influential shareholders is over. These entities are no longer big shot players on Wall Street. There is no earnings prospect for these behemoths. There is no upside. There is no justification for multimillion dollar salary packages.

The Agencies fund themselves with lines of credit from Fed and Treasury. The Fed is buying 1.45 Trillion of their dodgy paper. Why in the world do we need to pay someone $6mm per year to run that mess?

A question for Mr. Geithner; What are the salaries and bonuses being paid to the people who run FHA? These are government salaries. FHA is a part of HUD. Compensation for Fannie and Freddie Exec's should conform to those guidelines. Not the other way around. We need to end the myth that F/F are private sector entities. They are not.

We are not stupid Mr. Geithner. We watch what you are doing very closely. There are a significant number of us who flat out do not trust you. You have given us good reason in the past and you have proven again that you are not trustworthy. You tried to `Sneaky Pete' some important information past us. In my view you owe us an apology and explanation, or better still, a letter of resignation. This Administration has promised a much higher standard than you have delivered.

Backtracking from a widely criticized assertion over the weekend, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, said in a televised interview on Monday that the thwarted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas represented a failure of the nation's aviation security system, not a success.

Ms. Napolitano said on the "Today" program on NBC that her remark on Sunday that the system worked had been taken out of context. "Our system did not work in this instance," she said on the program. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."

As criticism mounted that security lapses had led to a brush with disaster, President Obama on Sunday ordered a review of the two major planks of the aviation security system -- the creation of watch lists and the use of detection equipment at airport checkpoints. Some members of Congress urgently questioned why, eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, security measures still cannot keep makeshift bombs off airliners.

A number of opposition figures were arrested Monday in the wake of violent nationwide protests a day earlier, Web sites reported, including three top aides to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and the leader of a banned political group, Ibrahim Yazdi.

Mr. Moussavi's 43-year-old nephew, Ali Moussavi, was among 10 people reported killed during the protests, which came on religious holiday during which violence of any kind is normally forbidden, worsening the tensions in the conflict.

If the 10 deaths are confirmed, it would be the highest toll since the summer, when huge crowds took to the streets to protest what they said was rampant fraud in the presidential election won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Protests and clashes were reported not only in Tehran, but in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh. Foreign journalists have been banned from covering the protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.

At least 20 people have been killed and 60 injured, many critically, in a suicide bomb attack on a religious procession of Shia Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.

Furious participants in the ceremony turned on police, soldiers and media after the blast which sent smoke billowing over the centre.

Film footage showed police and ambulances with broken windows, as Karachi's mayor, Mustafa Kamal, appealed for calm. The suicide bomber evaded heightened security during the traditionally tense month of Muharram when Shias mourn the death in a 7th-century battle of Mohammed's grandson Ali which led to their split with mainstream Islam.

Warnings of possible attacks had increased overnight after a suicide bombing yesterday killed eight and wounded 80 in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. Scores of lesser incidents of violence between Shias and Sunni Muslims have been reported in the run-up to Ashura, the holiest day of Muharram, which the Karachi march was marking.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday raised publicly for the first time the prospect of maintaining Israeli forces along the eastern border of a future Palestinian state to prevent arms smuggling.

"The problem of demilitarization must be resolved effectively and this entails effectively blocking unauthorized entry, first and foremost from the east, wherever the border is defined," Netanyahu said in a speech to Israeli ambassadors.

"I doubt whether anything except a real presence of the State of Israel, of Israeli forces, can accomplish that," he said, expanding on his vision of a nation with only limited sovereignty.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who leads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has a vision of "tomorrow's war."

...

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), also appearing on the program, seemed to agree, calling an attack against Yemen "something we should consider."

"Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the Army officer who killed 13 people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in November -- was linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric now based in Yemen," The Hill noted.

A new report on the community group Acorn by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has found no evidence of fraudulent voting or of violations of federal financing rules by the group in the past five years.

Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, requested the report along with Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Conyers released the report on Tuesday.

Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has drawn fire from conservative activists who have accused it of conducting fraudulent voter registration drives in poor neighborhoods, adding imaginary voters like Mickey Mouse to the rolls. The report by the research service, an arm of the Library of Congress, said, however, that a search using the Nexis news database "did not identify any reported instances of such individuals attempting to vote at the polls."

A group calling itself Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has said it was behind the failed attempt to bomb a US aircraft on Christmas day.

The group said on its website on Monday that the attempt had been carried out to avenge US operations in Yemen.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, attempted to light an explosive device on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with nearly 300 people onboard.

KABUL -- As the U.S. and its allies try to overcome logistical hurdles and rush some 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010, intelligence officials are warning that the Taliban-led insurgency is expanding and that "time is running out" for the U.S.-led coalition to prove that its strategy can succeed.

The Taliban have created a shadow "government-in-waiting," complete with Cabinet ministers, that could assume power if the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails, a senior International Security Assistance Force intelligence official said in Kabul, speaking only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of ISAF policy.

As the Obama administration and its European allies face dwindling public and political support for the eight-year-old Afghan war, the Taliban now have what the official called "a full-fledged insurgency" and shadow governors in 33 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, including those in the north, where U.S. and other officials had thought the Islamic extremists posed less of a threat.

The Taliban's return to the northern provinces, including Baghlan, Kunduz and Taqhar -- which McClatchy reported Aug. 28 -- poses serious security, logistical and political problems for the U.S.-led ISAF and Karzai's government.

The northern region is under the command of German forces, but they and other European contingents operate under restrictions imposed by their governments that limit offensive operations against the Taliban.

"We should get comprehensive information about people with high potential danger and keep a close eye on them to maintain social stability," Yang Huanning, vice-minister of Public Security, said recently, according to a transcript posted on Xinhua.net yesterday.

<...>

Zhang Wuli, 38, killed his wife and son on the morning of Dec 27 in a residential community in Daxing district, Beijing. Zhang was allegedly suffering from mental health problems.

On the night of Nov 23, Li Lei, 29, killed his wife, parents and two sons, a 7-year-old primary school student and a 1-year-old baby, also in Daxing.

Currently, around 170 million people in China suffer from mental health problems and nearly 16 million of them need medical treatment, statistics show.

<...>

Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing-based lawyer said the remarks showed that police would pay more attention to opinions expressed online.

Hawaii H1N1 Resolution Advances Vaccination Exemptions Favoring Americans' Growing Demand for Health Freedoms
Hilo, HI--Department of Health officials in Hawaii were overruled by County of Hawaii directors supporting a resolution favoring First Amendment constitutional rights and vaccination exemptions for everyone demanding them.

The nearly unanimous 7-1 Big Island of Hawaii Council vote sent a strong message to State and Federal policy makers to consider a majority of people who solidly distrust risky vaccines in general, and health officials' claims of safety regarding H1N1 vaccines in particular.

The vote demonstrated the power of local community activists to rebuke "top down" policies advancing "mandatory" vaccinations during declared emergencies. The Council's decision backed the majority of people unwilling to lose health freedoms to Federal governors directing State health officials on behalf of BigPharma special interests.

The Resolution (237-09) urges State and Federal legislators in Hawaii "to amend vaccine laws to include medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions from any vaccine program," including those declared urgent by health officials.

Proponents declared this a victory for health freedom--a warning to health officials seeking mandatory vaccination authorizations under Federal "national emergency" codes that expand State health official powers under the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act.

The vote reflects a nationwide trend of increasing public distrust of official proclamations of vaccination safety and efficacy. A solid majority of medical doctors, and nearly 70% of parents polled by Consumer Reports, feared the new vaccines and were determined not to recommend them.

After exhaustive research conducted by Council researchers and attorneys, and many drafts, the Resolution stated, "there is insufficient scientific evidence proving that vaccines are safe or effective, therefore it is not in the best interest of public health to recommend vaccinations without exemptions."

"WHEREAS, in the wake of potential harm to the individual and the public from vaccinations, and the vacillating interpretation of 'vaccine science,'" the Resolution declares, "it is in the public's best interest to amend the vaccine laws to include the right of medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions from any vaccination program."

The Resolution was advanced by native Hawaiian County Councilwoman,  Emily Naeole-Beason, who heard from several constituents concerned about vaccine-injuries. Many complaints received by the Council cited the toxic ingredient mercury linked to neurodevelopmental and behavioral disorders in children denied by public health officials.

"This is a victory for health freedom, common sense, and U.S. Constitutional entitlements," Council Vice Chair Naeole-Beason said. "I am very proud of our Council who put public safety ahead of special interests."

"We are compelled by science and history to not repeat deadly mistakes," said Rev. RJ Hampton, Legislative Aide to Naeole-Beason. "Our office studied vaccine science, and edited the Resolution to read, 'that any vaccine known to contain harmful viruses or any materials known to prompt autoimmune diseases or cancer risks shall provide cause for exemption for any person in the State of Hawai'i who so desires such exemption.'"

"This is a win for 'We the People,'" said Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard-trained authority  in vaccinations and emerging diseases who advised the research committee that considered opinions of several leading U.S. Constitutional attorneys.

Opposition came from the Department of Health Director, Chiyome L Fukino, along with Sarah Y. Park, Chief of the State's Disease Outbreak Control Division. The two medical doctors, heavily supported by the Honolulu Star Bulletin, wrote that "a number of inaccuracies pertaining to immunization were cited in the Resolution . . . ," but failed to show any or send anyone to the County meeting to defend their views.

Dr. Horowitz responded to the Park-Fukino indictment by encouraging Council members to resist health officials' gross conflicting interests and perverse pseudoscientific, and otherwise baseless, testimony.
In an Affidavit to be mailed to Hawaii's State and Federal lawmakers who will vote on the Resolution next, Dr. Horowitz revealed a "conspiracy to cover-up media relations between FUKINO's press officers and agents for the Honolulu Star Bulletin . . ." The Bulletin feeds and publishes Associated Press (AP) propaganda advancing vaccination agendas on behalf of AP director, Rupert Murdoch, and his politically-powerful partners in the Partnership for New York City (PFNYC), the world's wealthiest biotechnology investment group.

Besides this conflicting interest, Murdoch's son James directs GlaxoSmithKlein that markets one of the best selling H1N1 vaccines, and Tamiflu, also purchased by the Fukino's department.

Plus, Rupert Murdoch's Co-Chairman of PFNYC, Lloyd Blankfein, owns a majority share of MedImmune that produces the H1N1 FLUMIST vaccine that Dr. Fukino additionally stockpiled for Hawaiian distribution.
 

murdoch AND blankfein

alcoa sombrero in place...

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen talks to SPIEGEL about the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, why neither China nor the US can take the lead in the fight against global warming and Germany's role in the new world order.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Röttgen, Chancellor Angela Merkel says we shouldn't bad mouth the outcome of the world climate summit in Copenhagen. Please tell us, as a minister who is loyal to the chancellor, exactly what good came out of it.

Norbert Röttgen: First and foremost, the result is a great disappointment. But one should not overlook the fact that one thing has been achieved and secured: The goal of keeping global warming from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius is included in the closing document and there is a stated desire to provide aid worth billions for sustainable development in developing nations. China has also agreed for the first time to allow its emissions cuts to be tracked. We agreed to this because it is better than doing nothing. We will now continue on this basis. The alternative would have been a total collapse of the climate protection process.

It's been several days since the chaotic end to the Copenhagen climate conference but the aftershocks from its failure are still reverberating. As John Prescott points out in his letter to the Guardian, the pointing of fingers in the blame game does not help the regaining of trust needed for the positive resumption of talks early next year and to complete them by December 2010, the new deadline agreed to in Copenhagen.

First, the misinformation put out in the past few days has to be corrected. The UK climate secretary, Ed Miliband, backed by individuals such as Mark Lynas (both writing in the Guardian) have turned on China as the villain that "hijacked" the conference. The main "evidence" they gave was that China vetoed an "agreement" on a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050 and an 80% reduction by developed countries, in the small meeting of 26 leaders on Copenhagen's final day.

There was indeed a "hijack" in Copenhagen, but it was not by China. The hijack was organised by the host government, Denmark, whose prime minister convened a meeting of 26 leaders in the last two days of the conference, in an attempt to override the painstaking negotiations taking place among 193 countries throughout the two weeks and in fact in the past two to four years.

German solar companies in industry association BSW are proposing to cut subsidies faster than planned, Solarworld Chief Executive Frank Asbeck told a German magazine.

So far, plans had called for a 10 percent reduction of feed-in tariffs -- incentives utilities are obliged to pay for power generated from renewable sources -- in early 2010 and another 10 percent a year later. BSW is now proposing to add a cut in mid-2010.

"Some 10 percent on January 1, 5 percent at mid-year and then another 10 percent at the move into 2011," Asbeck said, according to an excerpt of an interview to be published in weekly Focus-Money magazine on Wednesday.

A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.

The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.

The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to "determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period."

Boeing and other enterprises are voluntarily doing what some might fiercely resist being forced to do: submitting detailed reports on how much they emit, largely through fossil fuel consumption, to a central clearinghouse.

The information flows to the Carbon Disclosure Project, a small nonprofit organization based in London that sifts through the numbers and generates snapshots by industry sectors in different nations.

By giving enterprises a road map for measuring their emissions and pointing out how they compare with their peers, experts say, the voluntary project is persuading companies to change their energy practices well before many governments step in to regulate emissions.

<...>

In contrast to the United States, European Union countries already regulate carbon dioxide emissions from their most energy-intensive industries through a cap and trade program, and Japan polices energy consumption itself.  ...

RICHMOND, Ky. -- After years of planning and design, the pilot plant that will destroy 523 tons of chemical agent in is finally taking shape.

Two 300-ton cranes are moving steel and rebar in place for the buildings going up on a 50-acre site at Blue Grass Army Depot south of Richmond. Site preparation and preliminary construction actually began in 2006, but it wasn't until late summer that the first vertical steel began reaching for the sky.

"Now that we're coming out of the ground with the steel, everybody's enthusiastic about that," site project manager Jeff Brubaker said during a tour in early December.

Earlier this year, Congress appropriated more than $500 million -- the largest amount ever appropriated for the program -- to accelerate the disposal of weapons in Madison County and Colorado's Pueblo Depot Activity. That means more people can be put on the job and more material and equipment can be purchased, Brubaker said.

That shortens completion of the Madison County plant by two years to 2016, although testing of the equipment means the plant won't start destroying the mustard, VX and sarin nerve agents until 2018. Then it will take until 2021 to completely destroy the agents, well past the deadlines set by international treaty and by Congress to finish the job.

In Arkansas one had the pleasure of watching vague but alarming adverts asking if your family had their Chemical Emergency Preparedness Plan prepared and rehearsed.  The Pine Bluff Arsenal is ~150 miles south east of where I live, but sometimes we get southerly winds.  Freedom isn't free.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Henry Hudson bobblehead? Check.

One-legged Peter Stuyvesant statuette? Yes.

A mirror emblazoned with the logo of New Amsterdam beer? Absolutely.

These are office knickknacks that only a true connoisseur of Dutch Americana could love. And there surely is no one who loves Dutch Americana more than Charles T. Gehring.

How else to describe a man who has spent the past 35 years painstakingly translating 17th-century records that provide groundbreaking insight and renewed appreciation for New Netherland, the colony whose embrace of tolerance and passion for commerce sowed the seeds for New York's ascendance as one of the world's great cities.

Chinese archeologists have unearthed a large third-century tomb, which they say could be that of Cao Cao, the legendary politician and general famous throughout East Asia for his Machiavellian tactics.

The tomb, discovered in Xigaoxue village near the ancient Chinese city of Anyang, Henan Province, has an epitaph and inscription that appear to refer to Cao Cao, Central China Television said on Sunday.

A Chinese proverb, "speak of Cao Cao and he appears," is the equivalent of "speak of the devil" in English.

A Turkish archaeologist has called on his government to demand that Italy return the bones of St Nicholas to their original resting place.

The 3rd Century saint - on whom Santa Claus was modelled - was buried in the modern-day town of Demre in Turkey.

But in the Middle Ages his bones were taken by Italian sailors and re-interred in the port of Bari.

The Turkish government said it was considering making a request to Rome for the return of the saint's remains.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that people don't have enough to do between Christmas and New Year, but need something to blog and Twitter about. Or it could be due to the slight rise in republicanism in the Netherlands of late. Whatever the cause, the Internet is crawling with criticism of Queen Beatrix's Christmas message.

"The Queen doesn't know what she's talking about," and "she's just denying that society has changed," are just two of the many responses to the speech from Internet experts and media watchers. In her annual Christmas address, the Dutch monarch warned about the dangers of the Internet. According to the queen, even though social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter appear to bring people closer together, people remain "at a distance, safely ensconced behind their screens". Briefly summarised, people are spending more and more time with vague Internet friends and less time with their neighbours.

One of Scotland Yard's most senior minority officers has accepted a substantial payout and an apology from the News of the World for false allegations arising from an investigation by the "fake sheikh" Mazher Mahmood.

The paper has backed down in the face of legal action from Commander Ali Dizaei after Mahmood, its star investigative reporter, claimed the officer "employed an illegal immigrant as his right-hand man and took him to the heart of the British establishment".

The subject of the story, Ace Bakhtyari, of Iran, was subsequently jailed for having a fake passport and deported. Dizaei, one of the Met's most high-profile officers, complained that the story implied he knew that Bakhtyari was an illegal immigrant but nevertheless employed him.

 Crises are moments of paradox and possibilities.

So what will happen this time around?  If we are to get back to three-percent growth, then this means finding new and profitable global investment opportunities for $1.6 trillion in 2010 rising to closer to $3 trillion by 2030.  This contrasts with the $0.15 trillion new investment needed in 1950 and the $0.42 trillion needed in 1973 (the dollar figures are inflation adjusted).  Real problems of finding adequate outlets for surplus capital began to emerge after 1980, even with the opening up of China and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.  The difficulties were in part resolved by creation of fictitious markets where speculation in asset values could take off unhindered.  Where will all this investment go now?

Leaving aside the undisputable constraints in the relation to nature (with global warming of paramount importance), the other potential barriers of effective demand in the market place, of technologies, and of geographical/geopolitical distributions are likely to be profound, even supposing, which is unlikely, that no serious active oppositions to continuous capital accumulation and further consolidation of class power materialize.  What spaces are left in the global economy for new spatial fixes for capital surplus absorption?  China and the ex-Soviet bloc have already been integrated.  South and Southeast Asia is filling up fast.  Africa is not yet fully integrated but there is nowhere else with the capacity to absorb all this surplus capital.  What new lines of production can be opened up to absorb growth?  There may be no effective long-run capitalist solutions (apart from reversion to fictitious capital manipulations) to this crisis of capitalism.  At some point quantitative changes lead to qualitative shifts and we need to take seriously the idea that we may be at exactly such an inflexion point in the history of capitalism.  Questioning the future of capitalism itself as an adequate social system ought, therefore, to be in the forefront of current debate.

No one seems to be worrying about the recession as, once again, the country grinds to a halt for two weeks. GP surgeries have been besieged with punters who "wouldn't normally have bothered you, but as it's Christmas . . ." "Quite, madam. And I wouldn't normally have treated your runny nose with an enema, but as it's Christmas . . ." Hospitals, meanwhile, are geared up for the "granny dumping" season. During the brief annual flying visit, the "caring" family, having dispensed the small glass of cooking sherry, for the first time notices that auntie is demented. "Something must be done, doctor, she wasn't like this last Christmas" - and so it's off to the local A&E department with her

Twitter appears to have learned from its security scare earlier this year and seems to be taking password security more seriously than most Internet services.

TechCrunch and a few other people noticed this list of 370 passwords that Twitter bans its members from using when they sign up for new accounts. They range from the obvious -- "password," "twitter," etc. -- to the obscene and bizarre.

A Paris judge on Monday asked two medical experts to determine whether rock star Johnny Hallyday was the victim of a botched operation that landed him in hospital with a severe infection.

Hallyday's lawyer described the decision as an "important step" in the case against Stephane Delajoux, dubbed the "surgeon to the stars", who performed the operation in Paris in November to correct a herniated disc.

An infection specialist and a neurosurgeon will take several months to study Hallyday's medical records before making a decision, lawyer Virginie Lapp said.

A four-time Olympic ski jump champion is being investigated for an alleged Christmas Day knife attack on his wife, Finnish police say.

Finnish legend Matti Nykanen, 46, was arrested after an incident that left his wife with head and hand injuries.

Police said the man known as the flying Finn was suspected of trying to stab Mervi Tapola and then strangle her.

Yesterday I watched a CNN host ask two experts: "Is stepping up the war in Afghanistan really the best use of our tax dollars?" The killing, maiming and displacement of untold thousands is discussed in terms of the best use of capital. A dehumanized and monetized capitalist society sees everything in dollars and cents and return on investment. Even infant mortality is rated that way, though seldom does anyone admit it. Saving a black ghetto baby has a low return on investment, according to some human services analysts, as regards their lifetime contribution to the gross national product. I actually heard an expert on a television panel show say this.

Yet Americans sitting in front of their TV sets do not find this one bit odd. Or even mean spirited, much less an indication of a cruel society. No American thinks of himself or herself as cruel, or connected in any way with the world's largest human and environmental killing machine. No American doubts his inalienable right to drive around or run air conditioning or drink wine from grapes grown in Chile at the expense of a national war on the environment and those of the world's people who have been born amid energy resources. If there are things such as cruelty and injustice, we the people aren't the ones doing it. We the voters and taxpayers are not the CIA snatching people off to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to be raped with broken bottles and boiled alive to extract those "terrorist confessions" that keep the war on terror alive. We simply finance such operations.

With a bend of the knees and an arch of the back, a Japanese engineer today set a world flight record for a paper plane, keeping his hand-folded construction in the air for 26.1 seconds.

Using a plane specially designed for "long haul" flights, Takuo Toda narrowly failed to match his lifetime best of 27.9 seconds, a Guinness world record set in Hiroshima earlier, but achieved with a plane that was held together with cellophane tape.

Today's flight, inside a Japan Airlines hangar near Haneda airport in Tokyo, was the longest by an unadulterated model. "I felt a lot of pressure," Toda told the Associated Press after his feat. "Everything is a factor ‑ the moisture in the air, the temperature, the crowd."

Today's Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don't; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!