With 10 weeks to go until the German elections, a new poll give a glimpse as to what Germans may decide on election day. Right now, all bets are on current Chancellor Angela Merkel keeping her job. 

As Germany gears up for nationwide elections on September 27, the latest poll released by Emnid reveals that 80 percent of German citizens expect conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to remain in office for a second term.

"We have not measured such a high approval rating for an incumbent chancellor in decades," the head of Emnid, Klaus-Peter Schoeppner told the Bild newspaper's Sunday edition. "Especially unheard of is the high expectation of losing among SPD supporters."

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Symbolbild Koalition SPD CDU neu!!

Those surveyed give Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier only a 13 percent chance of beating Merkel and becoming chancellor. And among SPD supporters, 53 percent do not want to see the party work with the CDU and the CSU coalition.

The expression "smoke like a Turk" seems destined for the rubbish bin of history after Turkey introduced Sunday some of the toughest anti-smoking legislation in Europe. 

Smoking has been banned from all closed public areas, bars, cafes and restaurants, and even extends to patrons sitting outside cafes. Anyone caught puffing away in a non-smoking area faces an on-the-spot 45-euro fine, while cafe owners face penalties of up to 2,500 euros.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an avid anti-smoker, has instructed the country's governors to rigorously enforce the ban. He has even called for officials who fail to do so to be punished. The new law is being seen as the final nail in the coffin for one of the country's most ancient traditions.

Turkey has one of the highest rates of smoking in the world, and the legislation is expected to cause troubles for cafes, bars and restaurants in cities like Istanbul, where the hospitality industry is bracing for a hit to profits.

Officials in southern Austria have declared the city of Graz a disaster zone after torrential rains caused flooding. 

Officials told citizens to keep children and animals inside as temperatures dropped to 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) and the snow line came down to 1,500 meters (4,900 feet).

Heavy rains in recent days had saturated the ground and streams burst their banks flooding streets and cellars in the southern city of 250,000.

European Union justice and home affairs ministers met in Stockholm this week to kick-start a plan to coordinate their approaches to asylum seekers and create an EU-wide application process. 

Southern European countries on the border between the EU and the developing world have seen a surge of asylum seekers in recent years, and have complained that they must bear a heavier burden than northern EU states.

Some countries have taken drastic measures to deal with these rising numbers, such as turning boats of people back to Africa without checking if some of the passengers are legitimate asylum seekers. These measures have in turn been heavily criticized by other EU countries.

Russian rights group Memorial has suspended operations in Chechnya following the murder of prominent activist Natalya Estemirova, which the group's head has blamed on pro-Kremlin Chechen leader Ramzon Kadyrov.

AFP - Russian rights group Memorial suspended operations in Chechnya on Saturday following the murder this week of prominent activist Natalya Estemirova.
   
"This murder has shown that working in Chechnya is fatally dangerous and we cannot risk the lives of our colleagues even if they are ready to carry on their work," said Memorial's Alexander Cherkasov.
   
"We are suspending the activities of our office in Chechnya," he added, without saying for how long.

The Lisbon EU reform treaty received a significant boost last night when the Irish Green party backed a "yes" vote in the republic's second referendum to be held this autumn.

At a special delegates' conference in Dublin yesterday, the junior coalition partner in the Irish government narrowly supported a yes vote in the forthcoming plebiscite. A total of 214 delegates (66%) supported the motion calling for a yes vote, with 107 voting no (33%). The motion making a yes vote official Green policy was then passed by the required two-thirds majority.

One of the reasons for the Green leadership's win was that many of the Green eurosceptics have already left the party. A "no" vote would have been a serious setback for Green ministers in the coalition and created renewed clamour for the party to pull out of government with Fianna Fáil.

The Irish minister of the environment and Green leader John Gormley admitted that the party was going through "a very trying and difficult period" since its electoral setbacks last month and the country's continuing economic crisis.

Airlines offer guidance to check-in staff to help them prevent customers boarding flights if they appear to have the virus

Passengers with swine flu will be stopped from boarding flights, two major airlines confirmed today, as the Department of Health warned tourists who contract the illness abroad not to travel home until their symptoms have gone.

Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said they had provided check-in staff and cabin crew with guidance on how to act if they believe a passenger is unwell. Medical advice would be taken to assess the condition of passengers exhibiting symptoms, including having a headache, sore throat, runny nose, and aching muscles.

Virgin Atlantic said those suffering from the condition would be prevented from flying until they could provide a fit-to-fly certificate from their doctor or a hospital.

As more people decide to forgo vacations abroad due to the state of the global economy, regions dependent on tourism are worried, especially during the critical summer season. Italy, for one, is shaking in its boot.  

The sight of water swishing around craggy rocks and wooden fishing boats in Vernazza's tiny harbor is postcard perfect. The village is just one of several in Italy's Cinque Terre region that are strung along the coastline like gems on a necklace. 

In Vernazza, vineyards perch on the cliffs above and the harbor is rimmed with pastel-colored homes and restaurants - a perfect setting for a romantic getaway.  The problem is, fewer are deciding to get away to this picturesque region as the world stumbles through the global economic crisis.

"Vernazza and tourism are like husband and wife," said Edoardo Basso, restaurateur at the Taverna del Capitano. "And if the wife leaves? Now is a problem in the house, there's a crisis." 

Volkswagen is planning to purchase all of sports carmaker Porsche, which has run into massive financial problems linked to its overly ambitious plan to take control of VW. The attempted takeover, which had been financed using loans, ultimately failed because of the credit crunch and ensuing liquidity problems that almost saw Porsche go bankrupt.

SPIEGEL has obtained information that Volkswagen is planning a complete takeover of beleaguered sports carmaker Porsche in a series of two transactions. The company is planning the imminent purchase of 50 percent of Porsche shares and will purchase the remaining shares in the Stuttgart, Germany-based automobile manufacturer in a second step. Once completed, Porsche will become the 10th brand in the stable of Volkswagen, the world's largest carmaker.

Porsche headquarters in Stuttgart: VW has won the power struggle between the two companies. VW's move to acquire Porsche follows a power struggle between the companies. Porsche had sought to buy VW through complicated loan transactions that collapsed when the sports carmaker's liquidity dried up as a result of the credit crunch. It has already been reported that Wolfsburg-based VW would purchase 49.9 percent of Porsche, but SPIEGEL has learned it is now planning a complete acquisition in a second purchase of shares.

The deal envisions a payout to Porsche Automobil Holding of €8 billion ($11.3 billion), enabling it to pay off the bulk of its crippling debts. VW is also considering acquiring Porsche's Salzburg-based network of dealerships from its family owners, a move that could raise an addition €3 billion for Porsche.

There are still lots of question marks surrounding the three bids for a majority stake in Opel, Germany's economy minister has said.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said that the bidders needed to take on more risk if any deal was to be agreed.

The German government is closely involved in talks between Opel's owner General Motors and the bidders, having pledged considerable financial support.

If a deal is not agreed, he said, Opel could ultimately face bankruptcy.

Yes, let us celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, an amazing human achievement.

But remember something else as well: The U.S. space program turned out to be one of the great economic and innovative failures of our time. For a decade it absorbed a big chunk of the country's scientific and technical resources, while producing very few economically useful spinoffs.

I'm just making the economic point that we used large amounts of scarce scientific and technical labor and money for one activity which at least up to now, has not produced big economic payoffs.

Finally, how much of this problem was due to the heavy hand of government? I've got another post coming up where I'll look at the recent history of private-sector space activity.

Timothy Geithner, architect of bank, auto and economic rescue plans, has another high-stakes job these days: traveling bond salesman

Geithner, who traveled last week to the Middle East and Europe, has to convince foreign investors to keep buying Treasury bills, notes and bonds; they hold nearly half of the government's roughly $7 trillion in publicly traded debt.

"He's a smart guy but it's a very, very big task," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning Washington think tank.

If foreign demand for U.S. debt sags, that could drive up interest rates and spell big trouble for an economy hobbled by 9.5 percent unemployment. Higher rates would make it more expensive for consumers to buy homes and cars, and for businesses to finance their operations.

Is this stuff still rated AAA+?


You're clearly a dangerous pinko commie pragmatist.

The basic banking business of Chase is hurting badly, as seen in this quarter's meager return on equity of 3% (or 6% if you ignore the $1.16 billion non-cash cost to Chase of paying back its TARP money this quarter). These are the sorts of returns banks made in the 1970s, before they discovered ways to lure Americans into debt servitude. One of the reasons Chase has such a low return on equity is that it has built up what it calls a "fortress balance sheet", with common equity of $146.6 billion this quarter. Such a high level of equity drives down the return on equity ratio, but think how much higher the capital would be if Chase hadn't received so much government support. Without the government bailout, banking would require so much capital as to offer hardly any return to its shareholders.

In fact, it sounds more and more like commercial banking, in a world where risks are priced and capitalized properly, is a world of modest profit and modest returns for shareholders. Doesn't that sound like a utility to you? That's what banks were for most of the past century, until free market theory was used to push banking into a world of aggressive risk taking, outsized profits, and Midas-like bonuses. It worked only because banking has a "put" to the federal government to come to its rescue in times of trouble.

This put has never been applied so vigorously as today, now that Chase and its big competitors have become the ultimate conduit financial vehicle for the federal government. The Treasury and the Fed are propping up so many different markets that it is estimated some 30% of all finance comes from Washington now. Chase is one of the selected vehicles for channeling all this money, and it is allowed to take a generous transaction fee on every dollar. This is no longer banking, but rentier finance for a few institutions granted monopoly rights - again, the classic definition of a public utility.

Despite all this, Chase, as one of the biggest and best of its breed, is unable to generate anything but a 6% return on equity, and that is a variable 6% at that, prone to disappear in any quarter. What must life be like at Bank of America or Citigroup, where the troubles are worse? Or at Goldman Sachs, which is operating in an alternate universe that allows it to receive bank benefits without any of the discipline?

Continuing the series of State Street presentations on relevant market topics, the latest piece "What are the Implications of the Growing Use of Electronic Trading" focuses on the nuanced difference between "real liquidity" and "liquidity hazard", depending on whether one is a price taker or market maker. Yet based on limited available public disclosure, non-premium clients of the NYSE and other PT-espousing exchanges have no visibility of who and under what conditions any given broker/dealer and quant become one or the other. And while merely a few years ago HFT was less than half of traded stock volume, recent data indicates high frequency trading now accounts for over 70% of US volume, and thus it is important to reassess what is the relevant set of data disclosure by dominating broker/dealers. The risk is palpable - as State Street itself notes, there is "equity capital at risk."

And closing off this weekend's program reading series is the following 2005 panel piece from Euromoney, which captures the insights of insiders such as John Elay of Hotspot FX, Scott Freeman of GFX, Bank of America, George Houlihan of GETCO, Ed Hulina of UBS, Ulf Lindahl of A.G.Bisset & Company and Mark Robson of Reuters. Particularly notable is the disclosure by Ed Hulina who discusses the liquidity mirage: "There are a lot of banks making prices and there's ultimately only so much end-user volume to support those prices. So, yes, I think there is a risk of a liquidity mirage in some respects if there is a proliferation of platforms and people providing prices and representing more liquidity at any given time than is actually there." (My bold)

Zero Hedge has disclosed how HFT/PT is now unquestionably dominating the markets as traditional trading mechanisms have fallen on the sidelines. Hulina's point in 2005 is exponentially more relevant now: how can we possibly know what liquidity is real in this market dominated by intermediaries and evaporating end-users? Absent regulatory reform, the only way to know would be a forensic analysis once the current topology breaks and the components are analyzed in retrospect. Of course, by then it would be too late.

The Euromoney link didn't work but there is a State Street slide show on Zero Hedge.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Recent data suggest that job market conditions are not improving in the United States and other advanced economies. In the US, the unemployment rate, currently at 9.5 per cent, is poised to rise above 10 per cent by the fall. It should peak at 11 per cent some time in 2010 and remain well above 10 per cent for a long time. The unemployment rate will peak above 10 per cent in most other advanced economies, too.

These raw figures on job losses, bad as they are, actually understate the weakness in world labor markets. If you include partially employed workers and discouraged workers who left the US labor force, for example, the unemployment rate is already 16.5 per cent.

Little wonder, then, that we are now witnessing a significant correction in equity, credit, and commodities markets. The irrational exuberance that drove a three-month bear-market rally in the spring is now giving way to a sober realisation among investors that the global recession will not be over until year end, that the recovery will be weak and well below trend, and that the risks of a double-dip W-shaped recession are rising.

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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The American Choice: Break up and regulate companies or suffer another crisis 2009 July 16 by Ian Welsh

Too big to fail means to big to live. This is the mantra which many people have taken up since the financial crisis exploded last year, and 15 trillion dollars or so was spent, loaned, committed and guaranteed by the government in response to systemic failures both in and out of the financial sector (the latter stemming mainly from financial sector failure.)

Or, as Frank Borman put it, capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.  (Perhaps I should capitalize Capitalism, since it's become a religion).

bold mine

i like this one too:

Too Big To Fail . . . You Know The Rest | The Agonist

Just as a gravitational point mass -- a black hole -- is the failure point of Einsteinian physics, so too a monopoly or cartel is the failure point of free enterprise. Would that people would understand it that way.

apologies to the maths-physics brigade if that's nonsense, lol!

or how about this?

"Boomers - Winter is Coming" by James Quinn. FSO Editorial 07/13/2009

We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik's Cube. Behind each problem lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can't do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that's impossible unless we fix crime. There's no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted - but that's an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we're in deep denial.  - Strauss & Howe - The Fourth Turning

calling rubik, stat!

If'Madness is the absence of work'(Foucault), then Sanity is the presence of play..

Paul Krugman on Joseph Stieglitz:

But the larger story is the absence of a progressive-economist wing. A lot of people supported Obama over Clinton in the primaries because they thought Clinton would bring back the Rubin team; and what Obama has done is ... bring back the Rubin team.

Joe Stiglitz stands out because in addition to being on the progressive wing, he's also, as I said, a giant among academic economists. But I think the real story is more about excluded points of view than excluded people.

Perverse Incentives. This is potentially very broad, and it doesn't always require a break up.  For example, the ratings agencies, because they were paid by the firms whose securities they rated, had perverse incentives to rate securities higher than they deserved.  Breaking the companies up wouldn't fix the problem, changing how they get paid is required (I am aware, so far, of no serious proposals to do so.)

But the main perverse incentive I have in mind is high pay.  When decision makers or important workers in a company are paid too much their incentives change.  If you are, say, earning $200,000 a year, even though that's a lot of money to ordinary people, it's not enough so that you don't need to keep your job.  Even 20 years from now, you're still going to need a job.  So it's in your interest to make sure that your employer survives, and that you don't take on risks you can be blamed for.  Old style loan officers in banks, for example, were conservative because if a loan went bad 10 years from when they approved it, they'd be in their managers office justifying it.  If too many loans went bad, well, they'd be out of a job.  When I worked in insurance, the underwriters were paranoid of having too many claims on the policies they approved.  So they only approved good risks.  Why?  Because if they approved too many bad risks, they'd be out of a job.

On the other hand, if you're being paid 5 million or 10 million (or more) a year, what matters is your bonus this year and next year.  If your company goes under you'll still be rich for the rest of your life.  You don't need a job after the first few years at these compensation rates, so it becomes just a game for you.  Long term risk means nothing compared to next month's commission or next year's bonus season.  And if it does all fail, heck, you may even get a golden parachute of 10 million dollars or more.  Failure looks pretty good in the world of high paid executives.

To a lesser extent this is true down the chain.  If you're a loan broker paid on commission, and you can make a million a year, well, you're in the same boat.  A few good years and you can retire for life.  Maybe, unlike your bosses, you can't live in the Hamptons for the rest of your life, but you'll certainly never need a job again.

the whole article is very clear.

If'Madness is the absence of work'(Foucault), then Sanity is the presence of play..

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Republicans and Democrats alike embraced legislation last Friday that would make California IOUs legal tender for all taxes, fees and other payments owed to the state.

Effectively, California is using its IOUs to create a currency. If this bill passes it would allow California to deficit spend just like the Federal Government and with the IOU's acceptable as payment of state taxes, it instantly imparts value to them (see here and here). In effect, what you have is a state of the union creating a sovereign currency right under the noses of Treasury, Fed. They are stumbling their way into it, and as they do so, some of the true nature of contemporary money is being revealed. It will be viewed as a stop gap measure at first, and then could very well become entrenched as states realize they have a way to escape balanced budget requirements.

Contrary to most conventional economic thought, whereby people think we pay taxes to create revenue, in fact, it works the other way around under a fiat currency system. The government doesn't need money to spend, but in fact uses tax to manipulate aggregate demand, not raise funds to "pay" for government. The tax is what gives the currency its value insofar as taxes function to create the demand for federal expenditures of fiat money, not to raise revenue per se. Value has been given to the money by requiring it to be used to fulfill a tax obligation, but the money is already in existence, not "created" by the revenue.

The right-wing coup d'état is faltering, but its supporters have powerful friends in Washington.

The international group of right-wingers who staged the coup d'état against the democratic government of Honduras on 28 June are watching their plot fast unravel.

There is stiffening international opposition to their protégé, Roberto Micheletti, who, in his capacity as President of Congress, ordered President Manuel Zelaya to be expelled from the country by plane in his pyjamas.

Mr Zelaya gave negotiators meeting in Costa Rica until midnight yesterday to restore him to office, threatening to secretly return to Honduras and attempt to retake power on his own if no agreement is reached. At a news conference at the Honduran embassy in Nicaragua, he said: "I am going back to Honduras, but I am not going to give you the date, hour or place, or say if I'm going to enter through land, air or sea." But indications last night suggested the interim government would call his bluff. Related articles

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Sunday an American call to hold off on a planned Jewish housing development in East Jerusalem, saying Israel's sovereignty over the disputed city could not be challenged.

Mr. Netanyahu issued the statement because State Department officials had raised concerns over the project with Israel's new ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, during discussions last week on a range of issues. The American officials suggested that going ahead with the development now would cause problems in negotiations toward a two-state solution.

"I would like to re-emphasize that united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel," the prime minister said. "Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged; this means -- inter alia -- that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city."

ISTANBUL -- With all eyes on the pullout of U.S. troops from major Iraqi cites in June, another milestone on its road to full sovereignty passed relatively unnoticed: Iraqi Kurds exported oil to Turkey for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.

Situated to the southeast of Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan may well already have realized its potential to be the world's newest petrostate were it not for a long-running struggle between Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government.

Better late than never would appear to be the reigning sentiment in the international oil sector, with energy companies are scrambling to gain a foothold in Kurdish Iraq.

The restarting of exports, meantime, is a source of pride for Iraq's Kurds, as the oil is flowing from fields that they control. 

An American soldier, who went missing on June 30 from his base in eastern Afghanistan and was later confirmed captured, has appeared on a video posted on a website by the Taliban, the Associated Press news agency says.

The soldier was shown in the 28-minute video on Saturday with his head shaved.

The Pentagon on Sunday identified the soldier as 23-year-old private Bowe Bergdahl of Ketchum, Idaho.

His status was changed two weeks ago from "whereabouts unknown" to "missing-captured".

The video shows Bergdahl in traditional Afghan dress, being prompted in English by his captors to call for forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Time for a Green Shoots alert?

A brand new book is available online from this week, completely free of charge. Anyone who wants to is welcome to download it as a PDF file, without paying a penny. It will only go on sale in book stores from 21 July. The book in question is the Dutch translation of US author Chris Anderson's Free, The Future of a Radical Price.

In his book, Chris Anderson demonstrates how companies can earn money by giving away products for free. The book's Dutch publisher Uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam is therefore putting this theory into practice.

Martijn Aslander, who describes himself on his website as a "lifehacker, connector and resourcer", is one of the leading champions of Anderson's ideas in the Netherlands. Free can also be downloaded from Aslander's website. He explains why, in these times of economic crisis, a commercial publisher is prepared to give away a book for free over the Internet.

"The idea is: why shouldn't you give something away for free if it costs you no effort and no expense whatsoever? People who really want the book will go out and buy it anyway. And there are plenty of these people around. Just take a look at the sales figures for books nowadays. Because a book is a whole different entity to a digital version of a book."

Britain is preparing to repatriate more than 1,400 tonnes of toxic waste that it is claimed to have illegally exported to Brazil for recycling.

The Environment Agency said that it would pay for the return of 90 shipping containers of waste that have arrived at several South American ports in the past few months.

The allegations have increased concern about the illegal trade in hazardous waste, despite international laws preventing export without strict safeguards.

One of the British waste-processing companies accused of sending the containers had been advertising for 5,000 tonnes of plastic waste a month, it emerged.

More than 50 food products and supplements have been exposed by a Europe-wide investigation for making unproven claims about their health benefits.

Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Lipton black tea and some probiotic supplements are among the items whose claimed health benefits are scientifically unproven, according to an investigation by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Fish oil supplements which purport to improve brain growth in babies and children have come under particular scrutiny, with the agency rejecting most of the benefits claimed by manufacturers.

The initial results of the inquiry suggest that consumers could be wasting millions of pounds each year on products they think will improve their diet and lifestyle.

The world is on the verge of new manned exploration of the solar system - and, this time, environmentalists are backing it

This weekend, 40 years after man first landed on the Moon, more human beings than ever before are orbiting on a single spacecraft. In 1969, three men squeezed into Apollo 11's command module, a craft little bigger than a Mini.

Yesterday, the International Space Station, now as large as a four-storey house, yet speeding at 17,239mph, took on board the crew of the shuttle Endeavour: 12 men, one woman - seven Americans, two Russians, two Canadians, one Japanese and a Belgian. During a two-man space-walk, the crew added a four-ton porch - an outdoor shelf for experiments - to the station.

It is yet another small step in space exploration. But next month, a far bigger one could be taken. A panel of specialists will advise President Barack Obama on whether the US should embark on an ambitious 21st-century space programme that could see Americans return to the Moon, and eventually venture further to near-Earth asteroids and Mars. It is an issue that rouses not just space enthusiasts but those who think the world should have other, greener priorities. Related articles

PRAGUE -- Call it what you will: the Blob, the Octopus, the Eye -- by any name the saga of the chosen library design refuses to die.

Officially known as The Eye Above Prague, the futuristic-looking library would have a malleable-looking shape bereft of corners, sides and sharp edges. Atop the eight-story building would be a cafe open to the public, with a huge window looking out over the city (hence the name).

Many Czechs like the design, unconventional as it might be. Architects laud its contribution to Prague's cultural scene and decry the city's lack of modern architecture. Everyone acknowledges the city needs more space for its expanding book collection. But this is not merely a question of art.

The ostensible kickoff for WWII was British / European leaders' perceived need to crush a deliberately re-armed Germany, while the US and other major Western European powers conspired to pit Germany against the Soviet Union.

From WW II To WW III: Global NATO And Remilitarized Germany

In commenting on the rising tide of WWII revisionism in the West, reaching its nadir - to date - on this July 3rd with the passage of a resolution called Reunification of Divided Europe by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which in effect makes the former Soviet Union (and by implication current Russia) co-responsible for provoking WWII, veteran Russian journalist Valentin Zorin reminded his readers of several events usually swept under the carpet by leading Western circles and their compliant media and scholars:

"The infamously failed Munich conspiracy of the western politicians and the Nazi Fuehrer sought to make the German Army march against the Soviet Union. In those days Moscow was pressing for forming an anti-Hitler coalition and invited a British and French delegation to that end. The talks proved long and fruitless. London and Paris actually sabotaged the talks while urging the Fuehrer to attack the USSR.

"Even after the war had broken out, top-echelon leaders in London and Paris would not give up their attempts to make Hitler's divisions turn about and attack the Soviet Union. A several-month-long period of strange developments came to be known as a Phoney War. While deliberately inactive at the front, the British and French rulers engaged themselves in secret bargaining with Hitler.

Fascinating article, which I'd encourage all to read. Over 70 years later, we're only now beginning to understand the forces that were in play during WWII, much less WWI, which was equally conspiratorial in nature.

See also: Operation Unthinkable

Unthinkable, indeed.

What might this tell us about the wars that have been fought since the late 1940s, and those that are being waged today?

There's a pattern, here. What is its common denominator?

The historic flight lifts off July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center.

Engines for the massive Saturn V rocket were developed and built in Southern California.
The young scientists who created the Saturn V rocket that powered Aldrin and Armstrong to the moon on Apollo 11 in July 1969 were the unsung heroes in the space race with the Soviet Union.
The success of America's big bet in space depended on the ability of young, unheralded engineers to build rocket engines that were both powerful enough and reliable enough to wrench the spacecraft from Earth's jealous grasp and send it winging to the lunar surface.

The result of their work was the mammoth Saturn V, the largest and most powerful launch vehicle of its time. It was as tall as a 40-story building, with engines that gulped swimming pools worth of fuel every second. Producing 7.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, Saturn V was so powerful that during a test at Cape Canaveral, it rained ceiling tiles on the head of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, watching from four miles away.

"What set us apart was our ability to build a very big rocket to get us to the moon," said Roger Launius, the Smithsonian Institution's space historian, reflecting on the U.S.' race with the then-Soviet Union to reach the moon first. "The Russians were never able to do that."

-Skip-

The massive engines that would power each of the stages were the responsibility of Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, then a division of North American Aviation and now managed by Pratt & Whitney. As NASA management fretted that precious time was ticking away, Rocketdyne's engineers battled combustion problems and a dangerously faulty start-up sequence on the first-stage engines, and the failure of two second-stage engines in a key test less than a year before Apollo 11's scheduled launch.

Those engineers were every bit the typical post-war working stiffs. Newly married and raising families, these men set up housekeeping in the fast-growing suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and threw themselves into the work of a lifetime.

From 1979 to 2006 we drove past the Rocketdyne facility on Canoga Avenue any time we went to the Topanga Shopping Center.  I knew people who worked there.  I hired engineers part time from similar aerospace industries for the development of the Digital Editor for the 3M Digital Audio Mastering System.  I visited another aerospace facility to talk with an engineer about providing an inertial reference unit for a remotely piloted underwater vehicle.  His company did guidance systems.  Models of spacecraft they had worked on hung above cubicles.  I loved it.  Sadly, never got funds for the "underwater airplane."

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

THE president's entourage pays attention whenever Chantal Jouanno gets up to speak. Nicolas Sarkozy's junior environment minister is probably the only one among them who can kill with a single blow.

Jouanno is a karate black belt and winner of nine national championships, an unusual distinction in the corridors of French power. It has also helped her into the limelight.

After the fall from favour of other "Sarkozettes", Jouanno, a 40-year-old mother of three, is being described in the French press as his latest "pet".

She laughs at the epithet, blushing slightly, but is clearly pleased by it. "We cannot spend the whole time in government asking if we are loved or not loved," she said in an interview. "There are much more serious things to worry about."

Mandela birthday party in New York sees singer make first public performance since becoming France's first lady

She spoke in her trademark husky drawl and sported the centre-parting of a 70s folk singer, but there was still something unmistakably sober about Carla Bruni-Sarkozy when she stepped in front of a star-studded crowd for her first public performance since becoming France's first lady.

Dressed in a plain black trouser suit and standing almost immobile next to British songwriter Dave Stewart, the supermodel-turned-musician was faced with the tricky balancing act of being both a president's wife and pop star as she serenaded the audience at a concert for Nelson Mandela's 91st birthday.

Informing New York's Radio City Music Hall that she was "gonna play ... a little French song and a little English song" in honour of the anti-apartheid hero, Bruni-Sarkozy began her performance with a dreamy ballad called Quelqu'un m'a dit. It was, she explained, "not very good for dancing but very good for dreaming".

Impact mark on Jupiter, 19th July 2009

Observation Report

I started this imaging session on Jupiter at approximately 11pm local time (1300UTC). The weather prediction was not promising, clear skies but a strong jetstream overhead according to the Bureau or Met. The temperature was also unusually high for this time of year (winter), also a bad sign.

The scope in use was my new 14.5" newtonian, in use now for a few weeks and so far returning excellent images.

I was pleasantly surprised to find reasonable imaging conditions and so I decided to continue recording data until maybe 1am local time. By 1am I was ready to quit, and indeed I had hovered the mouse over the exit button on my capture application (Coriander for Linux) and then changed my mind and decided to carry on for another half hour or so. It was a very near thing.