European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Obama argues for strong financial watchdog agency | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama defended on Saturday a consumer watchdog agency the financial industry wants to weaken or strip from legislation that would strengthen the regulation of Wall Street.
Barack Obama | Economy
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Friday approved the biggest changes in financial regulation since the Great Depression -- a much-needed victory for Obama, whose job approval rating has fallen below 50 percent.
He and his fellow Democrats want to impose steps that would avoid a repeat of the meltdown that put the U.S. economy on the brink of collapse a year ago, and he used his weekly radio and Internet address to argue for "common-sense reforms."
The bill would create an inter-agency council to police systemic risk in the economy, crack down on hedge funds and credit rating agencies, set up a financial consumer watchdog agency, and expose Federal Reserve monetary policy to unprecedented congressional scrutiny, among other reforms.
Republicans and lobbyists for banks and Wall Street firms, whose profits could be threatened, have fought for months to weaken and delay reforms, criticizing what they call an unneeded and costly intrusion on business.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 01:09:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Conservatives say would cut debt swiftly | Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The Conservatives would cut a big chunk of the budget deficit within four years if they win an election as expected next year, Conservative shadow chancellor George Osborne said on Saturday.
Labour, behind the Conservatives in opinion polls with an election due by June 2010, laid out plans this week to halve the deficit -- set to near 13 percent of gross domestic product this year -- over four years.
The Conservatives have said they would act faster than that, aiming to keep interest rates as low as possible for as long as possible to aid recovery.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 01:12:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Osborne says he has the solution to Britain's £178bn problem - Times Online

A Conservative government would, he says, put spending cuts before tax rises. "I am quite clear that the bulk of this has to come from curbing public spending. The Government overspent and overborrowed, it's not that we were undertaxed."
Tory frontbenchers have been told to find substantial savings across the board. If Mr Osborne becomes Chancellor he intends to set up a "star chamber", including Cabinet ministers without spending departments, to decide where the axe should fall. Ministers would have to pitch to their colleagues for cash. "The Prime Minister and the Chancellor just hand out spending decisions. There is no collective bargaining. That's demeaning for government," he says. "What you need at a time of economic challenge is collective political will to deal with it."
Would he like to save money by scrapping Trident? "We need to look across the board at getting value for money and that includes defence projects," he says. The BBC should get into the real world. "The salaries need to reflect the economic conditions. As and when they find savings, I would want that money to go back to licence-fee payers."
Crossrail is less of a target. "I have a French view that these grands projets, when it comes to transport spending, are worth it. The [north-south] high-speed rail link is also enormously expensive, but I'd like to see it built. These big infrastructure projects will power the future." What about the third runway at Heathrow? "It's not going to happen."

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 01:21:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The [north-south] high-speed rail link is also enormously expensive, but I'd like to see it built.

What can I say, better late than never for the Tories to decide it's worth it to spend at least one penny of public money on high speed rail.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 03:04:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

He does not have a solution, he is talking of a few million here and a few million there. He needs to cut 10 or 20 thousand million, 3 orders of magnitude, before he'll even dent the deficit.

He has to cut defence but he won't. He needs to raise taxes on those most able to pay but he won't. He needs to tax City transactions but he won't.

so he's going to destroy the UK social security safety net while bleating that it's necessary pain to save jobs. The NHS will probably get gutted and private pensions will be wrecked again.

I would get angrier if that wasn't identical to what the conservatives dressed up as Labour would do; instead I just feel tired and helpless. We are becoming all of the bad bits of the USA, just what Brown and Cameron have always wanted.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 06:43:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Economy and Finance (4.00 / 3)

Let's see... The budget deficit could be something like this... starting from a 13% budgeted deficit in 2010:

11% in 2011
9% in 2012
7% in 2013
5% in 2014

That would be cutting the budget to about 40% rather than "by half" as suggested by Labour.

This would still increase the total government debt by 32% of GDP over the 4 years of a Tory administration.

To "cut debt" the Tories would have to come up with a way to expand GDP faster than Labour by at least 32% over 4 years. A tall order.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 03:02:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

cutting the budget deficit to about 40%

Important missing word...

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 07:31:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

ECB to help relaunch securitisation - Papademos | Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - Regulation and oversight will boost, not hinder, economic growth, and the European Central Bank plans to take initiatives to help relaunch securitisation "on a sound basis," the ECB's Lucas Papademos said on Saturday.
"The current economic and financial crisis...provides very convincing evidence that regulatory reform and macroprudential oversight will support sustainable growth," the ECB's vice-president said at an event in Berlin.
Papademos said policymakers could employ other instruments to foster growth and innovation in the financial sector, including measures to relaunch securitisation.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 01:13:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Merkel rules out tax on bonuses | Policies | Climate change | Politics | European Voice

German Chancellor Angela Merkel today ruled out joining France and the UK in introducing a one-off `super-tax' on large bonuses paid out by banks rescued from the brink of collapse by EU member states.
"A tax on bonuses is a charming idea, but we have constitutional concerns," Merkel said. "I can't just ignore the constitution
Merkel said the constitutional questions would prevent such a tax "this year", a comment that leaves open the possibility that Germany may eventually make possible a tax on bonuses.
Merkel said that, in any case, "a tax on bonuses is not sufficient, we also need a transaction tax" - a reference to her support for a global levy on cross-border financial transactions.
"It's unacceptable that people are returning to business as usual after what happened a year, a year and a half ago," Merkel said.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 02:23:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

FT.com / Markets - Easy money could have a high price

From the perspective of US financial markets, a Japanese-style lost decade has defined the performance of equities and bonds since the start of 2000.
From the heady days of the technology bubble, the S&P 500 is 11 per cent lower over the decade, when you include the reinvestment of dividends. In contrast, an index of long-term Treasury bonds has risen more than 116 per cent, according to Barclays Capital.
The doubling in the value of long-term Treasuries helps explains why the famed "bond vigilantes" of prior decades have been missing in action. This has largely been a decade of disinflationary forces thanks to the internet and globalisation. There have been two very aggressive cycles of rate-cutting since 2000 by the Federal Reserve and it is little wonder that bonds have been the big beneficiary. Instead of "bond vigilantes" worried about inflation and rising deficits, the decade is described by some as one where "risk vigilantes" have ruled the roost.
When the technology bubble popped, the risk of a nasty recession and deflation meant markets moved quickly to price in big rate cuts. On that score, the Fed delivered - an extended period of easy money softened the blow of recession in 2001, sowing some of the seeds of a massive mortgage and credit bubble which culminated in the financial crisis of 2007/2008.
Today, the current policy prescription of even cheaper money has many worried about the value of the dollar and the risk of higher inflation in coming years, given the outlook of massive budget deficits and record issuance of US Treasuries. Amid fears of a new financial bubble in commodities and bonds, some forecast the Fed could start raising rates late next summer and wean the US economy off easy money.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 03:06:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

BBC News - How Sharia-compliant is Islamic banking?

Instead of "bond vigilantes" worried about inflation and rising deficits, the decade (2000-2010?) is described by some as one where "risk vigilantes" have ruled the roost.

Risk vigilantes just blew my cognitive dissonance fuse!

Oh, wait! Vigilantes. Quantrill's Raiders? With whom Jesse James and much of the James-Younger Gang served during the Civil War. They fancied themselves "vigilantes" to the end, robbing banks from Coffeyville, Kansas to Northfield, Minnesota. Perhaps FT means that modern "risk vigilantes" rob banks from the inside. Or is that just because my dissonance fuse is blown?

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 08:25:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: 21st Century Indulgences (4.00 / 2)

The Islamic finance industry has often battled with the question: How Islamic is Islamic banking?
The question's pertinence was raised in March last year, when Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani, of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Finance Institutions (AAOIFI), a Bahrain-based regulatory institution that sets standards for the global industry, said that 85% of Sukuk, or Islamic bonds, were un-Islamic.

Recognisable products
The products that modern-day Islamic bankers have created are very similar to conventional products. So similar, in fact, that to an outside observer they could be considered the same.
Islamic banks now offer Islamic mortgages, Islamic car loans, Islamic credit cards, Islamic time deposit and guaranteed return accounts, Islamic insurance and some even offer Islamic managed and hedge funds.
This point is conceded by Samir Alamad, Sharia, or Islamic law, compliance and product development manager of the Islamic Bank of Britain.
"The industry does not want to alienate its products," he says.
"They have to be recognisable, produce the same outcome as conventional products, but remain within the guidelines of Sharia.

Banking is banking
This makes it more important to be in the consensus, and so getting a favourable ruling from a leading Sharia scholar is important for a product manager.
That is why the top scholars can earn so much money - often six-figure sums for each ruling.
The most creative scholars are the ones in the most demand, says Tarek El Diwany, analyst at London-based Islamic financial consultancy Zest Advisory.
"To date, most Islamic financiers have been looking at examples of financing in Islamic history and figuring out how to apply them to today's financial products."
But banking is banking.
It is the taking of a deposit and then using it to finance a purchase or business.
The lender pays the depositor compensation for the opportunity cost of his money, and the person borrowing the money "rents" it off the bank.
The same symbiotic relationship occurs whether it is conventional banking, ethical banking, Islamic banking or Presbyterian banking.
As Majid Dawood, chief executive of Yasaar, a UK-based Islamic finance consultancy says: "Everything that is not forbidden in the Holy Qur'an is OK.
"Yes, the industry has to evolve, but it is only 40 years old and its competing with a conventional finance system that is over 800 years old."

Interesting article.

Firstly, the sheer hypocrisy of this so-called "Islamic" banking shines through. It is simply putting lipstick on the pig. If there is such a thing as Islamic leverage, I have never seen it justified.

Secondly, it repeats the general misapprehension that banks take in deposits and lend them out again. That is not the case: banks create credit (and this is our money) 'ex nihilo' as interest-bearing debt based upon an amount of regulatory capital.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 05:49:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: 21st Century Indulgences (4.00 / 2)

The key quote:

They have to be recognisable, produce the same outcome as conventional products, but remain within the guidelines of Sharia.

If something produces the same outcome it is the same product and so either traditional finance is already Sharia-compliant or "Islamic finance" as currently practised is a sham.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 06:40:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: 21st Century Indulgences (4.00 / 2)

But just think of the newly found income opportunities for humble Islamic scholars steeped in Sharia. Who could have imagined this in 1960?

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 08:31:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: 21st Century Indulgences (none / 0)

Shows how supposedly "cast in the concrete laid down by Mohammed" inflexible sharia can be easily re-cast when the clerics deem it desireable.

Religious hypocrisy rules

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 06:47:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: 21st Century Indulgences (none / 1)

ChrisCook:

It is simply putting lipstick on the pig.

Banking makes all pigs halal.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 10:43:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

All Bubbles Pop, No Matter What Color They Are Mish

I frequently agree with ideas expressed on New Geography but certainly not Ian Abley's article There is no "Free Market" Housing Solution
Home Price IndexHome Price Index

On 24 November 2009 the Housing Minister John Healey confirmed that Britain will be the first country in the world to require zero carbon homes as a matter of law from 2016. Britain is the world leader in green ideology.
All of the newly built British housing will have much better insulated walls, windows, roofs and floors. The clear aim of the government is to keep reducing the energy consumption of all new homes to be measured in kilowatt-hours per square metre of floor area per year.
The commitment to "zero carbon" allows government to appear virtuous in its legislation for the new build sector.
This suits the financial markets as well, since it guarantees house price inflation by making it difficult to meet the demographic demand for homes. Environmentalism offers more and more reasons not to build. Green thinking ensures that house price inflation can be sustained through a bubble, and projected beyond the bursting of that period of financialisation into the next.
....
The market is not capable of being a "free market". Capitalism is a system of control by political and commercial elites, and their professional employees. British capitalists tend to be less interested in industry, which is held to have caused Climate Change, and more interested in finance these days.
Missing The Free Market BoatMissing The Free Market Boat Ian Abley misses the boat. I would agree that "there is no free market". However, it is foolish to say "there is no free market solution". The solution is there, the problem is government pandering for social and political goals interferes with the solution.
Common Sense vs. Green Thinking
This is not a "space issue" or a "green issue". That bubbles eventually pop is both a mathematical certainty and common sense. Temporarily, credit bubbles, green policies, and ownership societies can prop up home prices. However, once consumer attitudes change, there is nothing government can do to prop up prices of homes or anything else, short of causing hyperinflation.
....
I find it amazing that anyone can watch the US housing bubble bust wide open, yet propose "Green thinking ensures that house price inflation can be sustained through a bubble, and projected beyond the bursting of that period of financialisation into the next".
....
Common Sense vs. Green Thinking
This is not a "space issue" or a "green issue". That bubbles eventually pop is both a mathematical certainty and common sense. Temporarily, credit bubbles, green policies, and ownership societies can prop up home prices. However, once consumer attitudes change, there is nothing government can do to prop up prices of homes or anything else, short of causing hyperinflation. Once attitudes change, if "zero carbon" or other government nonsense makes homes cost more than people are willing to pay, all economic homebuilding activity will simply cease!
....
In this sense, the free market cannot and will not be defeated. How long it takes for the bubble to blow up in the UK, Australia, and Canada is at this point the only question. I find it amazing that anyone can watch the US housing bubble bust wide open, yet propose "Green thinking ensures that house price inflation can be sustained through a bubble, and projected beyond the bursting of that period of financialisation into the next".

A stunning graph! I recall Helen's comments about U.K. house prices. And I thought U.S. prices had risen to dizzying heights. What proportion of U.K. households can qualify for a mortgage on a median priced house in the U.K.? Has housing policy in "free market" Britain created a housing shortage that in quantity, if not quality, is comparable to what was the case in the Soviet Union? Or do the prices in the graph reflect a bubble in the London Metropolitan Area with prices in other areas less inflated?

It would appear that Ian Abley would like to attribute problems with housing shortages to attempts to deal with climate change. A typical Neo-Classical Economics ploy: frame the issue as one of a choice of two equally unpalatable choices. Different arrangements surely could result in more affordable "green" housing, even if it had to entail "planning", a choice NCE would not like to contemplate.

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 10:39:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Median house price is £160k. The median in London will be much higher.

Median income is £22k.

What has happened is that people are renting, sharing, or both. Or they're not leaving home at all. We have an entire generation of people under thirty who have almost no prospect at all of owning a house - especially in London.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 11:16:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

And this week it was reported that even though prices fell they are pushing back up again towards pre-crash leveels, having risen by 1 1/2% over the last year, now the initial fall is out of the figures. This is on prices that it was reported that at their peak needed to fall by 35%, or stay flat for seven years to allow wages to catch up.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 11:44:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

So who is buying these houses? Is there a slow moving version of the mortgage disaster we had in the US?

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 03:49:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

there are a large number of very well off people in london who can afford those mortgages. and second and third houses out in the country to prevent property prices dropping out there

Also a lot of property was bought on "buy to let" mortgages (pay off interest only) which catastrophically distorted the market.Plus people are beggaring themselves to get on the housing ladder.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 06:51:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

We have an entire generation of people under thirty who have almost no prospect at all of owning a house - especially in London

Welcome to the club. See this and that.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 05:08:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Hundreds of bosses flee UK over 50% tax - Times Online

Britain's financiers and entrepreneurs are quitting the UK at a rate of 10 a week to avoid Labour's new 50% taxes.
The burgeoning exodus threatens to deepen a £178 billion black hole in the public finances and leave middle-class voters with higher taxes for years to come, figures obtained from Companies House reveal.
The number of directors of British businesses registered as living in the low-tax centres of Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man has risen by almost 500 to 6,729 in the past 12 months.
The British Virgin Islands is also a popular destination, with 615 directors of UK companies now based in the Caribbean tax haven -- an 18% rise on a year ago.

[Murdoch Alert]

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 12:03:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Make sure they actually leave. Make sure that when they work in london their work is taxed.

for chrissakes why are nation states so weak when faced with the rolling coup that global finance represents ? This is becoming an existential threat where states must determine what they exist to do. If they serve international capital then the interests of the citizenry must be sacrificed. Its either/or time and I think that they're making the finacier's preferred choice.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 06:57:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The number of directors of British businesses registered as living in the low-tax centres of Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man has risen by almost 500 to 6,729 in the past 12 months.

That's nothing UK tax law cannot fix, is it? We're talking directors of British businesses establishing residence in known tax havens on British Crown Dependencies. Why can't Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs exact revenue from them in those locations?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 07:05:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Yes, there's much that they could do to fix this. but there's an awful lot the Executive won't do in case it is inconvenient.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 08:13:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Lebanon pressing US to deliver military aid - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

Yves Smith, in her Links 12/12/09 provides a link to a WSJ article entitled: Goldman Fueled AIG Gambles

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. played a bigger role than has been publicly disclosed in fueling the mortgage bets that nearly felled American Insurance Group Inc. Goldman was one of 16 banks paid off when the U.S. government last year spent billions closing out soured trades that AIG made with the financial firms. A Wall Street Journal analysis of AIG's trades, which were on pools of mortgage debt, shows that Goldman was a key player in many of them, even the ones involving other banks.
Goldman originated or bought protection from AIG on about $33 billion of the $80 billion of U.S. mortgage assets that AIG insured during the housing boom. That is roughly twice as much as Société Générale and Merrill Lynch, the banks with the biggest exposure to AIG after Goldman, according an analysis of ratings-firm reports and an internal AIG document that details several financial firms' roles in the transactions.
In Goldman's biggest deal, it acted as a middleman between AIG and banks, taking on the risk of as much as $14 billion of mortgage-related investments. Then Goldman insured that risk with one trading partner--AIG, according to the Journal's analysis and people familiar with the trades.

Earlier reports had indicated that Goldman bought CDOs from AIG rather than from the monoline insurers because AIG would agree to post additional collateral if the value of the CDO declined, which the monolines would not do. This WSJ article indicates that GS sold CDOs to the same banks that it sold CDSs and then laid off the risk on AIG for less than GS charged its own customers. And when AIG couldn't post as much additional collateral as GS asked for, GS bought default insurance from other banks on AIG. This was before AIG's meltdown. This casts the following two quotes from the WSJ article in a different light:

A Goldman spokesman says that up until AIG was rescued by the government, the insurer "was viewed as one of the most sophisticated financial counterparties in the world. It wasn't until the government intervened in September 2008 that the full extent of AIG's problems became apparent."
"What is lost in the discussion is that AIG assumed billions of dollars in risk it was unable to manage," the Goldman spokesman added.

It seems as though GS itself did not share the view that AIG was "one of the most sophisticated financial counterparties in the world."

Former AIG chief executive of financial products until 2000, Tom Savage, is quoted saying: "It seems shocking to me that Goldman would become so exposed to AIG and kept doing deals with them and laying on the risk," In fact there is question that the banks from which GS purchased default insurance on AIG would not have been able to cover the loss either.

The one scenario that makes sense is that "the smartest guys in the room" planned going in for the FRB of New York, the Chairman of the Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury to bail them out if things went really bad, as they had good reason to fear they would. It appears "possible" GS knew this was a game of "pass the time bomb" and GS had the best read on when the clock was going to time out.

Yves also has some interesting speculation on the timing and nature of the information disclosed in this WSJ article in her Links 12/12/09.

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 12:28:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

World (none / 1)

WORLD

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 12:49:41 PM EST

Re: World (4.00 / 2)

BEIRUT - Lebanon's president will urge U.S. officials to speed up delivery of weapons for the nation's army during a trip to Washington in which he will meet with President Barack Obama, a Lebanese official said Saturday.
The appeal from President Michel Suleiman, who arrives in Washington Saturday, is at the heart of much of the country's political turmoil. Lebanon's government is a shaky coalition of Western-backed factions and Syrian-supported groups led by Hezbollah, a militant group that has its own arsenal with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles.
The United States has long provided military assistance to Lebanon -- including $410 million to the military and the police. But America has not handed over any sophisticated arms for fear they could end up in the hands of Hezbollah, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist group.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 02:53:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (4.00 / 4)

Update on the democratic renaissance now flourishing in Honduras:

"Bajó un busito blanco (van) y hombres de moteado nos dijeron que nos tiráramos al suelo, cuatro policías encapuchados con gorros negros" y después les dispararon, explicó la mujer tras haber salido del centro asistencial.
La mujer relató a Radio Globo que los cuatro hombres los tiraron al suelo y luego les dispararon. Instantes después fue cuando uno de los sujetos la levantó del pelo para ver su reacción, pero ella se hizo la muerta.

translation:

A white van came down and {mottled?} men told us to throw ourselves on the ground, four masked police with black caps, and then they shot them, explained the women after coming out of the help center. She told Radio Globo that the four men threw them to the ground and then shot them. It was instants later when one of the men lifted her by her hair, but she feigned to be dead.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

by maracatu on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 07:39:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (none / 0)

I am sure Hillary will send her condolences.

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 08:49:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (4.00 / 5)

The newspaper that I occasionally write a column for is now online!

A joint lawsuit including about 1,000 defendants and seeking $500 million in damages has been filed against the Caribbean Petroleum Co., the tanker Cape Bruny and 23 other defendants linked to the Oct. 23 explosion at Capeco's Bayamón storage facility.
The federal suit, filed by the Quetglas Law Office and attorney John Nevares, is the third such legal action against Capeco. The Quetglas brothers and Nevares have already filed two separate suits seeking damages. (...) The latest lawsuit differs from the first two in that it vastly expands the list of defendants, which now include all holding companies associated with Capeco and Cape Bruny, businesses that stored oil at the facility and Capeco President Gad Zeevi and his son Ram, Capeco's managing director.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

by maracatu on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 08:17:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (4.00 / 3)

Arizona sheriff ups the ante against his foes LA Times

Reporting from Phoenix - The day after the federal government told Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that he could no longer use his deputies to round up suspected illegal immigrants on the street, the combative Arizona sheriff did just that.
He launched one of his notorious "sweeps," in which his officers descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest hundreds of people for violations as minor as a busted headlight and ask them whether they are in the country legally. "I wanted to show everybody it didn't make a difference," Arpaio said of the Obama administration's order.
Arpaio calls himself "America's toughest sheriff" and remains widely popular across the state. For two decades, he has basked in publicity over his colorful tactics, such as dressing jail inmates in pink underwear and housing them in outdoor tents during the brutal Phoenix summers.
But he has escalated his tactics in recent months, not only defying the federal government but launching repeated investigations of those who criticize him. He recently filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure. On Thursday night, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued an emergency order forbidding the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office from searching the home or chambers of a Superior Court judge who was named in the racketeering case.
Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio's immigration enforcement, the Sheriff's Office demanded to see Gordon's e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars. When the police chief in one suburb complained about the sweeps, Arpaio's deputies raided that town's City Hall. A local television station, KPHO, in a 10-minute-long segment last month, documented two dozen instances of the sheriff launching investigations of critics, none of which led to convictions.

At this rate we could have a shoot-out between the Maracopa County Sherrif's Department and the Arizona Highway Patrol and/or the U.S. Marshall's Service, ICE, etc. Right wing populism at its finest.

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 10:51:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (4.00 / 2)

after this wierd story last week

The Drama Builds in Marakafka County | The Agitator

As I wrote in a previous post, yesterday was the deadline by which Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe gave Dep. Adam Stoddard to apologize for swiping documents from a defense attorney's file in open court last month. In response, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio vowed that Stoddard will not apologize.
Sure enough, last night Stoddard called a press conference to announce that he wouldn't be apologizing to anyone. Here's the video:

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 11:47:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (none / 0)

Laws! We don' need no stinin' laws. We are the law!

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 02:30:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (none / 1)

Well, when the Executive can say "if the president says it, then it's legal" you've got a recipe for lawlessness.

And that attitude is contagious, police forces around the world regard the public in terms of their level of compliance. Anything other than instant obescience can be construed as a challenge to authority, rights or law be damned.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 07:03:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: World (4.00 / 2)

CB Richard Ellis to market $2 billion in state buildings LA Times

The 17-story Ronald Reagan State Building on Spring Street
CB Richard Ellis intends to sell 17 state buildings in 11 locations and has started marketing the properties to investors globally.
The state Department of General Services hopes to have the sales completed by the middle of next year. State employees would continue to occupy the buildings as tenants with 20-year leases.
"This will be the largest office portfolio available for sale in the nation," said Kevin Shannon of CB Richard Ellis. The state hopes to net $660 million in profit on the sales.
The Los Angeles properties on the block are the 17-story Ronald Reagan State Building on Spring Street, completed in 1990, and the Junipero Serra Building, a 10-story former department store on Broadway built in 1914 and renovated in 1999.

If only the new owner would re-name the Ronald Reagan State Building The Jimmy Carter State Building the irony would be complete.

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 11:14:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Living Off The Planet (none / 0)

LIVING OFF THE PLANET
Environment, Energy, Agriculture, Food

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 12:51:29 PM EST

Re: Living Off The Planet (4.00 / 3)

SNAP ANALYSIS-Iraq flush with oil deals, but will they succeed? | Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Oil Ministry awarded seven oilfields to global oil majors this week, bringing its potential output capacity in six or seven years to a potential 12 million barrels per day.
That would make Iraq a close second to the world's top oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and provide the billions needed to rebuild after decades of economic decline and war.
But even as Iraq contemplates a dizzying increase in oil activity, questions persist about whether such plans will become a reality and, if so, what political and social changes they will bring to a country still battling to end years of conflict.
WILL IT REALLY HAPPEN?
It's one thing for Iraq to herald a multibillion-dollar deal in a flag-draped conference hall. It's another thing to actually implement a contract and, most importantly, for foreign firms to fulfill stated output goals.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 01:11:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living Off The Planet (4.00 / 4)

CLIMATE CHANGE: Small Farmers Can Cool the World - IPS ipsnews.net

COPENHAGEN, Dec 12 (IPS/TerraViva) - Industrial agriculture may emit nearly half of climate-heating greenhouse gases, but that reality has gone unrecognised by negotiators at the climate treaty talks here, say farmers with La Via Campesina, an international movement of hundreds of millions of small-scale peasant farmers.

"Small-scale farmers use 80 percent less energy than large monocultures," said Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian farmer with Mouvement de Paysan, through a translator.

"Peasant farmers from La Via Campesina and others can help cool the planet," Jean-Baptiste told a press conference at the Klimaforum09, the alternative climate action talks being held here in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18.

Unlike the official talks, set in a remote location surrounded by police and razor wire, Klimaforum09 is being held in the city's community centre and is free and open to the public.

"System Change for Climate Change" - that's the phrase most often heard at the Klimaforum09 and in parts of Copenhagen.

La Via Campesina's claim that industrial agriculture is by far the biggest source of carbon emissions is based on a recent study that looked at all emissions from the global food system.

This includes oil-dependent industrial farming, together with the expansion of the meat industry, the destruction of world's savannahs and forests to grow agricultural commodities, the use of fossil fuel energy to transport and process food, and the extensive use of chemical fertilisers.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 02:31:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living Off The Planet (4.00 / 3)

ENVIRONMENT: Europeans Pay Companies to Pollute More - IPS ipsnews.net

BRUSSELS, Dec 12 (IPS) - Some of the world's most polluting companies are receiving financial support from the European taxpayer to promote the continued use of the fuels that cause global warming, according to a new report.

In 2005, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, set up a group known as the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) to advise it on the possibility of capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and burying it underground. Dominated by large energy firms, ZEP has secured 1.5 billion euros (2.2 billion dollars) in public subsidies and is busily lobbying for support from policy makers at the international climate change talks now under way in Copenhagen.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an organisation which monitors the influence of big business on the EU's institutions, deems it inappropriate that such vast sums are being allocated to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects when the technology they employ has not yet proven to be environmentally benign.

In a report titled 'Public funds used to lobby for fossil fuels in Copenhagen', CEO notes that the proponents of carbon storage admit that it will not be ready for use before 2020. As a result, it will not help realise the EU's objective of reducing by 20 percent its greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the next decade.

Yet while the technology it is extolling is still in its infancy, ZEP is holding an event in the Danish capital this weekend to urge that carbon storage should be eligible for funding under the United Nations' clean development mechanism. This mechanism allows industrialised countries to invest in low- polluting projects in poorer nations as an alternative to cutting their own emissions of greenhouse gases.

ZEP's 23 members mainly represent major energy companies including Shell, BP, Vattenfall, E.ON, Alstom, Siemens and Statoil.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 02:34:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living Off The Planet (4.00 / 3)

Carbon storage emerges from underground | Presseurop

Numerous companies and organizations, including Shell, have proposed capturing CO2 for storage underground; and scientists who were sceptical about the technique are now rallying to the cause. However, in view of the economic interests at stake, it is hard to tell the independent experts from the lobbyists.
In early September, a 32-man line-up of big hitters including the CEOs of major industrial players such as Shell, Siemens, DSM (mines and chemicals), Nuon and Gasunie (power companies) and former prime minister Ruud Lubbers wrote to the Dutch parliament announcing that they were in favour of "Carbon capture and storage as an essential weapon in the fight against climate change." The open letter, which was published in the daily NRC Handelsblad, was also backed by a plethora of researchers and teachers from independent research centre TNO, and the universities of Delft, Groningen, Utrecht and Wageningen. With so many powerful and informed advocates onboard, you might be forgiven for thinking that this was one technical development that could not fail to make an impact, but it almost vanished without a trace in the Netherlands where authorities and inhabitants in the town of Barendrecht were none too happy about the creation of a CO2 storage facility underneath their homes [an experiment conducted by Shell and approved by the Friesian local government].
With the provision of grants both from the Dutch government and the European Union, CO2 storage may soon become a high stakes business--a potential that has not escaped the attention of Shell, which has abandoned wind and solar power to focus on CO2 capture and alternative fuels similar to oil.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 03:02:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living Off The Planet (4.00 / 4)

Wind farms don't affect property prices - environment - 12 December 2009 - New Scientist

SOME homeowners consider a wind farm about as appealing a neighbour as a pig farm. Contrary to popular belief, however, it seems they have no effect on house prices.
The findings should reassure wind-energy producers, property developers and homeowners that turbines and houses can happily coexist, says Ben Hoen, an analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
As part of a US government-funded study, Hoen's team recorded the sale price of around 7500 homes in nine states and then devised mathematical models to reveal how, all other things being equal, proximity to a wind farm affected their value.
Not much, it turns out. Homes less than 1.5 kilometres from a wind farm sold for no less, on average, than homes 8 kilometres away. Similarly, home values tended to remain stable long after wind farms sprung up.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 02:53:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living Off The Planet (4.00 / 2)

Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition - Home

On Thursday, the government reached a decision on a comprehensive water management plan for the period from 2010 to 2015 that will cover all of Mainland Finland.
      The resolution is that further actions are needed in all sectors, and particularly in agriculture.
      At the moment, most of Finland's inland waters are in excellent or good ecological condition.
      However, there are problems mainly with rivers and coastal waterways. Some 60% of the surface area of the coastal waters and around 40% of the river lengths are only in satisfactory, below-average, or poor condition.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 02:58:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living Off The Planet (none / 1)

Germany shows government role is key to thriving solar industry LA Times

Reporting from Lieberose, Germany - It's another drizzly, dreary day in eastern Germany -- oddly perfect, it turns out, for demonstrating the potential of solar energy....Raindrops splotch their faces, and the steely gray clouds curtain the sun. But the panels remain busy absorbing solar radiation to convert into electricity.
....
The energy generated by the Lieberose plant, which went fully on line in October, should be enough to supply electricity for 15,000 households a year while reducing the use of pollution-generating fossil fuels. The plant is the latest piece in the ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle of solar power in this often overcast and soggy country, which has emerged, somewhat incongruously, as the global leader in harnessing the sun for clean energy.
Home to some of the world's largest solar parks and dozens of companies that manufacture, distribute and install photovoltaic panels, Germany proves you don't have to be blessed with Hawaii's weather to grow a thriving solar industry. What you do need, energy experts say, is a national government willing to foster the development of renewable energy. Leaving it purely to market forces -- or piecemeal local incentives, as in the U.S. -- doesn't work as well.

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 11:00:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Living On The Planet (none / 1)

LIVING ON THE PLANET
Society, Culture, History, Information

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 12:52:09 PM EST

BBC News - Pope shares Irish 'abuse outrage'

Pope Benedict has expressed "outrage, betrayal and shame" over the sexual abuse of children by priests in Ireland.
A major re-organisation of the Irish Catholic church is planned and there are reports that some Bishops will resign over the scandal, which was exposed in a government report two weeks ago.
On Friday one victim condemned the Pope's statement as "just words".

Video report at link.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 01:31:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

RFI - A half-century homage to France's master-prankster

Hmm

Pope Benedict has expressed "outrage, betrayal and shame"

[mental reservation] at the Catholic church getting caught[/mental reservation]

Stand by for distraction announcements such as .. oooh attacks on gay people.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 07:08:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On The Planet (4.00 / 3)

Boris Vian, the provocative writer, singer, poet, inventor and jazz trumpeter, was underestimated during his short, fast lifetime. Yet he had - and still has - a huge impact on French cultural and intellectual life. Fifty years after his death, Boris has come of age.
In the preface to his perhaps finest and most famous novel L'Ecume des jours (Froth on the Daydream) Vian wrote: "There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music...of Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly".
Wilfully provocative maybe, but there was more than a hint of truth in those words: Vian loved jazz and everything frivolous.
He refused to take himself seriously.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 03:11:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The artwork of the Martian landscape | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

It's been a while since I've sung the praises of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera, which takes incredibly hi-res images of the surface of Mars. Thanks to the HiRISE Twitter feed, I found this incredible picture:

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 05:42:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

dont think ive seen this here yet (4.00 / 3)

Bah humbug! St Nick prevented from giving gifts to detained children | Ekklesia

The police were called on the patron saint of children and the imprisoned today, as he tried to deliver Christmas gifts to children at a detention centre.
The inspiration for the modern day Father Christmas, St Nicholas of Myra, was turned away at the gate of the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire when he tried to deliver presents to the children locked up inside for administrative purposes.
Jolly Old St Nick brought with him £300 worth of gifts donated by several London churches for the estimated 35 children currently detained.
Dressed in a red robe, long white beard, and a bishop's mitre and crook, and accompanied by the Rev Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey, they hoped to spread some St Nicholastide cheer among the children of migrants detained there.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 05:50:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Hullabaloo

There's a lot of chatter on twitter and elsewhere about Matt Taibbi's scathing report on the Obama administration's economic team. The criticisms seem to be more matters of interpretation than matters of factual errors although you can decide for yourself by comparing this piece by Tim Fernholz at TPM to the article itself. Felix Salmon weighs in here. Taibbi responds here.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 07:36:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The believuhs and the supporters are beginning to take sides.

Taibbi is doing his job; how people interpret the results of that depends on the particular barricade they shelter behind.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 07:11:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Bell Labs' latest Nobel laureates, creators of 4bn images and counting | Technology | The Observer

FOR MUCH OF the 20th century, the world's premier industrial research facility was Bell Labs, research wing of the giant AT&T telephone corporation, in Murray Hill, New Jersey. From it came many key technologies which define the contemporary world. All of modern electronics, for example, stems from the invention of the transistor by three Bell scientists, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley.
Bell scientists also were responsible for the laser, many of the technologies used in radio astronomy and mobile phones, wireless local area networking, information theory, the Unix operating system and the C programming language. Seven Nobel prizes have been awarded for work done at Murray Hill.
The latest of these (for physics) was presented in Oslo last week to Willard Boyle and George Smith, who on 17 October 1969 were trying to come up with an idea that would stop their boss's boss switching resources from their work to another department working on sexy new kinds of computer memory. In a discussion that lasted "not more than an hour" (as Smith later recalled) they came up with a device that changed the way we see the world. They called it a charge-coupled device or CCD, and it developed into the sensor at the heart of most digital cameras in use today.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 08:15:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/semiconductors/devices/tech-talk/nobel-controversy-who-deserves-credit -for-inventing-the-ccd

So who deserves the accolades for inventing the charge-coupled device? "It depends on what you're celebrating," says Carlo Sequin, who joined the team at Bell Labs developing the CCD a few months after the project began.
"My initial assumption was the Nobel in physics goes to fundamental concepts," says Sequin, now a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. "If the fundamental concept was the charge transfer principle, then that goes to [Willard] Boyle and [George] Smith, and maybe Gene Gordon."
But while Boyle and Smith, who were initially trying to design something analogous to magnetic bubble memory for computers in silicon, sketched out the charge transfer concept, they were not the ones who actually built the CCD, Sequin says.
"If we try to find out who made the first practical image sensor, credit would go to Mike Tompsett, possibly [Gilbert] Amelio," he says.

by asdf on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 10:39:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Op-Ed Columnist - Hollywood's Brilliant Coda to America's Dark Year - NYTimes.com

ON Christmas Day, Hollywood will blanket America with a most unlikely holiday entertainment. That's when "Up in the Air," the acclaimed new movie starring George Clooney, will spread from its big-city engagements to more than 2,000 screens. Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate road warrior for a small, Omaha-based contractor hired to lay off employees for companies that prefer to outsource that unpleasant task. Ryan has fired so many people in so many cities that he is approaching a frequent-flier status unknown to all but a few Americans.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Dec 12th, 2009 at 09:36:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On The Planet (4.00 / 3)

New Star in Big Dipper By JOHN TIERNEY NYT

Astronomers have discovered that Alcor, a star in the middle of the Big Dipper's handle, has a red dwarf companion. They found the new star, Alcor B, by using a mask called a coronagraph to block out nearly all of the light from the previously known star, now called Alcor A. In the above close-up, the actual diameter of each star is less than a pixel; the large halo of speckles surrounding Alcor A results from star's residual glare visible around the mask.
When our ancestors looked at the Big Dipper, they sometimes used it as a vision test: Could you see make out two distinct stars at the point where the handle bends? The sharp-eyed could distinguish the "rider" from the "horse" -- the small star we call Alcor sitting above the larger star we call Mizar.
Now it turns out that there are actually two riders on that horse.
Alcor has a red dwarf companion that has just been discovered by Project 1640, a team that includes astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The newly discovered star, named Alcor B, is about a quarter the mass of our Sun, and about an eighth the mass of its companion, now called Alcor A. By using a mask to cover the Alcor A, the astrophysicists spotted a faint light nearby, and then they were able to show that this was from a red dwarf orbiting the larger star.
"We used a brand new technique for determining that an object orbits a nearby star, a technique that's a nice nod to Galileo," says Ben R. Oppenheimer, an astrophysicst at the Museum of Natural History. "Galileo showed tremendous foresight. Four hundred years ago, he realized that if Copernicus was right--that the Earth orbits the Sun--they could show it by observing the parallactic motion of the nearest stars. Incredibly, Galileo tried to use Alcor to see it but didn't have the necessary precision."

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

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 12:42:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Aid agencies 'must use new tools'

Self-organizing comes to disaster management.

"The top-down and centralised nature of aid agencies fails to take advantage of the potential offered by the technologies. It's really quite a different approach from what they've done traditionally, which is that when there's an emergency, they go and sort things out," she told BBC News.
Instead, she said, aid agencies and government disaster relief agencies could work best by simply providing a framework for the use of the technologies, coordinating their use by people in affected areas and allowing the free flow of information among those people.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 03:22:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

PhysOrg.com: Research backs theory on autism, schizophrenia (November 30, 2009)

New research by Simon Fraser University evolutionary biologist Bernard Crespi reinforces his theory that autism and schizophrenia are diametric or opposite conditions based on genes.

In other words, the "Autism spectrum" extends through "normalcy" all the way to schizophrenia?

...
"Our findings provide new insights into the 'genomic architecture' of these major human mental illnesses," says Crespi, who a year ago stunned the global scientific community with his theory suggesting that genes passed on from either parent can steer brain development in certain directions.
...
Among their findings, data from studies of head and brain size "phenotypes" -the physical or biochemical characteristics of organisms as determined by genetics and the environment - show that autism is commonly associated with developmentally enhanced brain growth, while schizophrenia is characterized by reduced brain growth.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 05:42:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Search for Crespi and Badcock, "Psychosis and Autism as Diametric Disorders of the Social Brain" Behavioral and Brain Science, 2007. 102pp pdf.

(I downloaded it sometime during '08 I suppose, attracted to the concept of a "social brain" which I considered an literary novelty apropos a body of research into cognitive development that has been published by psychologists since, oh, Freud. This construct or qualification of mental functions I find interesting because it reveals a persisting dichotomy or research biases among so-called cognitive scientists in hypothesizing primacy among mental pathologies, environmental (stimulants) or genetic (chemical). The findings, as enter public discourse, also contain moral and political values which bureaucrats lever into policy prescriptions. See for example Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics , NYT)

"Abstract: Autistic-spectrum conditions and psychotic-spectrum conditions (mainly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression) represent two major suites of disorders of human cognition, affect and behavior that involve altered development and function of the social brain. We describe that a large set of phenotypic traits exhibit diametrically-opposite phenotypes in autistic-spectrum vs. psychotic-spectrum conditions, with a focus on schizophrenia. This suite of traits is inter-correlated, in that autism involves a general pattern of constrained overgrowth, whereas schizophrenia involves undergrowth. These disorders also exhibit diametric patterns for traits related to social brain development, including aspects of gaze, agency, social cognition, local vs. global processing, language and behavior. Social cognition is thus under-developed in autistic-spectrum conditions, and hyperdeveloped on the psychotic spectrum."

etc etc

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 03:14:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

PS. genetic defect evidentally wins out (4.00 / 2)

per 2007 paper

"'People divide roughly, it seems to me, into two kinds, of rather a continuum is stretched between two extremes. There are people people and things people.' W.D. Hamilton (1996, Kyoto Prize lecture)

"1. Introduction

"We describe a new hypothesis that seeks to conceptually unify the analyses of psychosis and autism, two disorders of the human social brain (Burns 2004, 2006; McAlonan et al. 2005). The core of this hypothesis is that psychosis and autism represent two extremes on a cognitive spectrum with nomality at its center [descriptive stats SOP]. Social cognition is thus underdeveloped in autism, but hyperdeveloped to dysfunction in psychosis. We also suggest that these forms of deviation from normal social development [read, normative] in either direction are mediated in part by alterations in developmental and metabolic systems affected by genomic imprinting, notably via effects of genes that are imprinted in the brain and in the placenta [ht mercury birthers] (Tycko & Morison 2002; Davies et al. 2005)."

emphasis added, etc etc

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 03:38:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: PS. genetic defect evidentally wins out (none / 0)

I just love how you highlight the descriptive-to-normative sleight of hand.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 04:13:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: PS. genetic defect evidentally wins out (none / 0)

If it wasn't for the appalling consequences of bad-to-horrible Behavioral Genetic studies it would be rather fun to poke holes in their findings (sic.) Some of the junk published makes NCE appear to be solidly founded on RW evidence.

I'm not indicting the whole field, but all too often these studies get picked-up, used, and broadcast by bigots - of one variety or another - to feed their paranoia, neuroses, or Domination Fixation.

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 04:35:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: PS. genetic defect evidentally wins out (4.00 / 2)

heh. My first instruction in stats occured pretty late in life, about your age now. My instructor was a kind of stereotypical mathematician; chalk prints on his ass 24/7; he taught from his own textbooks and supplemented this formal tuition with assignments that required his pupils to investigate headline claims of press releases and to verify statistical methodology and data purportedly substantiating authors' inferences.

By the by, I largely owe my sensitivity to normal-normative sleight o' hand to one reading, if you can believe it, of Shelby Hunt, Foundations of Marketing Theory. Let me see... marginalia ... ah:

Is the positive/normative dichotomy unnecessary? Do normative statements play a role in scientific explanation? To evaluate these questions, we must refer to the meaning of positive statements versus normative statements. Recall that the positive/normative dichotomy provides categories based on whether the focus of the analysis is primarily descriptive or prescriptive. Positive marketing [read, distribution or logistical system] adopts the perspective of attempting to describe, explain, predict, and understand the marketing activities, process, and phenomena [read, metaphysical] that actually exist. This perspective examines what is. In contrast, normative marketing adopts the perspective of attempting to prescribe [read, remediate] what marketing organizations and individuals ought to do or what kinds of marketing systems a society ought to have. That is, this perspective examines what ought to be and what organizations and individuals ought to do Thus, one signal (but not the only one) of a normative statement is the extence of an ought or should or some similar term.

The telelogical certainty of these remarks left a profound impression on my comprehension of the possibilities and limitations (calculus) of organizational strategy.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 06:38:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: PS. genetic defect evidentally wins out (none / 0)

NB. The Inamori Foundation awarded Hamilton a 1993 Kyoto Prize. Text of his commemorative lecture, "Sex, Health and Social Behavior: Search for a Unifying Theory", is unavailable to the general public, and he did not present a lecture to commemorate any laureate in 1996. Error in Crespi orginal.

Fancy that.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 07:23:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

"Ha-rumpf," he said, in his mostest professorial manner.

;-)

The interactions of environment - writ large - and brain chemistry - writ large - are very much a topic of research. The Behavior Genetics people face a major problem separating the two for analytical purposes. My opinion is the two are so intimately connected it is impossible to achieve a valid Categorical distinction. For example, that Danish study on schizophrenia showed the highest level of children developing the dysfunction was when they had a genetic disposition for it (9%) AND there was an environmental (parental) exhibition of the dysfunction (16%.)

Enculturation (Environment) studies of African American and European Americans show the WORST possible outcomes of Public Policy stem from policy and decision makers being uninformed by the Body/Mind Unity and an over-reliance on - let me put it - "tenuous" conclusions from Behavioral Genetic (BG) reseach. The same happens with BG Gender Differences studies as applied to educational policies and practices for girls, notably in regards to mathematical education.

It's possible to go one step further and question a definition of "normal" - aka, that which no one is - based on Information derived from the extremes. Schizophrenia is a disabling disease. Those who are schizoid have some of the Attributes and Properties of schizophrenia but are typically high functioning with regard to cognition, social intelligence, and RW skills. It can be stated the "male" brain has a tendenz for schizoid because it is a "male" brain plus Environmental influences that support "male" brain behavior, including but not limited to, "male-as-gender" socialization. It is here that it is possible to really study, gain knowledge, for informing Public Policy. With schizophrenics about the only intervention is: drugs or, at worst, institutionalization. With schizoids there are Public Options (that may be) available for those at or approaching dysfunction.

But we don't know because most of the research is directed at the extremes.

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 04:26:09 PM EST
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It can be stated the "male" brain has a tendenz for schizoid because it is a "male" brain plus Environmental influences that support "male" brain behavior, including but not limited to, "male-as-gender" socialization.

Yeah, except that

An extension, the extreme male brain theory, hypothesizes that autism is an extreme case of the male brain, defined psychometrically as individuals in whom systemizing is better than empathizing; this extension is controversial, as many studies contradict the idea that baby boys and girls respond differently to people and objects.

(wikipedia: Neuropsychology of Autism)

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 13th, 2009 at 05:44:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]