First Minister Alex Salmond has said the Economist magazine will "rue the day" it published a front cover image likening Scotland to an impoverished nation.

The latest edition uses a map of the country, renamed "Skintland", with puns instead of place names such as "Glasgone", "Edinborrow" and the "Highinterestlands".

It is followed by an article concluding that independence would come at a high price and could leave Scotland as "one of Europe's vulnerable, marginal economies".

This after another below-the-beltline attack on France (see  TINA launches a preemptive strike).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The exchange came as another opinion poll by the LH2 agency showed Hollande winning the coming duel with Sarkozy.

With tensions between the two rivals mounting 10 days before the first presidential election round on April 22, Sarkozy has warned that markets could take flight from French securities if Hollande wins power in a May 6 runoff.

"The people do not want to have some kind of diktat imposed on them from outside, so when Nicolas Sarkozy tries to call the markets to come to his rescue, that is not in the country's interest," Hollande said on France 2 television.

"What is in France's interest is fighting speculation, not encouraging it under the pretext of helping him in the presidential election."

George Osborne appears to have sparked a decline in Tory fortunes by combining a cut in the 50p top rate of tax with a so-called "granny tax" for pensioners. Senior Tory MPs have protested to David Cameron that the two measures, while justified, should not have been announced in the same package. "The communications around the Budget were dreadful," one said.

..."March was very much a month of two halves," said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, who compiles the monthly weighted average of surveys conducted by ComRes, ICM, YouGov and Populus. In their polls before the Budget, Labour averaged 39 per cent and the Tories 37 per cent, but in their most recent surveys, Labour is up to 40 per cent, the Tories down to 34 per cent and the Lib Dems unchanged on 11 per cent.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė has turned down an invitation to a regional summit in Poland after Warsaw protested the situation of the Polish minority in the Baltic state. EurActiv Poland reports.

Grybauskaitė was invited by her Polish colleague Bronisław Komorowski, alongside Latvian and Estonian heads of state, to discuss a common stand ahead of the NATO summit in Chicago, on 20-21 May.

But Grybauskaitė saw the meeting as useless, saying she had already discussed the NATO summit with the Polish and Latvian presidents.

Austerity, the one-size-fits-all cure prescribed by Ms. Merkel, is not working anywhere. After weeks of misleading calm, and despite huge injections of liquidity by the European Central Bank, countries are slipping back into recession, unemployment is climbing and deficit forecasts are worsening. Bond markets are especially jittery about Spain and Italy, two of Europe's largest economies.

...

With no good way to achieve the numbers, Mr. Rajoy has proposed a number of bad ones, like cutting back on the public investment needed to improve economic competitiveness and worker retraining funds needed to lubricate labor market reforms. He has now proposed a second round of deep cuts targeting schools and health care. Shortchanging tomorrow's work force to pay for yesterday's housing bubble makes no economic sense.

These damaging cuts could have been less severe if the European Union had heeded Mr. Rajoy's plea for greater short-term budgetary flexibility. They could be avoided if Ms. Merkel and her misguided partners would finally recognize that restoring the competitiveness of Europe's economically weakened south requires more investment in reform and growth and less obsessive targeting of short-term deficit arithmetic.

It is important to understand here that the eastern parts of Europe are not happy about the copyright monopoly construct at all, nor about its invasion of civil liberties. Poland has been exemplary at mounting opposition, and in Serbia, the Creative Commons concept is even seen as a huge step backwards as it imposes restrictions on how you can use culture and knowledge. So it boils down to a united western Europe putting pressure on eastern Europe to keep pushing a repressive agenda. Break the unity, break the agenda. The emperor really is naked.

If the German Piratenpartei manages to get 10-15% in the national elections, comes out on top in the coalition game, and becomes a supporting part of the next German administration in return for the administration absorbing its policies, then the game is over, and we won. That development would set off a chain of events:

A policy designed to streamline trials in magistrates' courts in England and Wales is leading to miscarriages of justice, defence lawyers say.

The BBC has learned that in some cases defendants have been asked to enter guilty or not guilty pleas without seeing all the evidence against them.

The initiative was introduced this year to try to limit hearings to six weeks.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it provided all relevant information to the defence in good time for a trial.

A small makeshift bomb exploded outside a branch of Greece's second largest lender, Eurobank, in central Athens early on Saturday, causing no injuries or serious damage, a police official said.

The device consisted of two gas canisters but only one of them blew up, blackening the shutters of the branch, the official said.

There have been several low-level attacks on businesses and politicians in Greece since the cash-strapped nation adopted tough austerity measures under the terms of two successive bailouts by the EU and the IMF.

British MEP David Martin, in charge of steering the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) through the European Parliament, said yesterday (12 April) that he would urge lawmakers to reject the controversial treaty.

Martin (Socialists and Democrats) cited fears that the agreement could discourage generic drug supplies to developing countries, and presents an outdated concept of intellectual property.

"We have to modernise our approach to intellectual property rights. There is a risk that ACTA will freeze it in its current form," he said.

The Parliament's approval is necessary to ratify the international agreement (see background).

BRUSSELS - Austrian centre-right MEP Othmar Karas has called for an end to massive bankers' bonuses, which in some cases amount to 10 times the basic salary.

"We are looking at a set limit," Karas told the parliament's economic affairs committee in Brussels on Thursday (12 April). He explained that under his model, bonuses should not surpass a ratio of one-to-one on fixed salaries.

Union of European Football Associations chief Michel Platini said Thursday he was concerned about rising accommodation costs in Ukraine for the Euro 2012 championships, claiming "bandits and crooks" were inflating their prices to rip off soccer fans.

Europe's regions and smaller airlines are urging the European Commission to allow more flexible rules for government support of non-hub airports, which they contend are a vital economic lifeline for communities and islands.

The EU executive this year is revising its guidelines on the financing of airlines and airport operations. In response to allegations of lax enforcement, it has also recently launched probes of state aid provided to airfields in at least five countries.

Commission figures show there are more than 460 airports in the EU and 77% are publicly owned. More than half lose money and small airports in particular struggle because of limited revenue from landing rights and retail concessions.

BRUSSELS - China's economy so far this year grew slower than ever in the last three years, spelling bad news for its biggest trading partner, the European Union.

The second-biggest economy in the world grew by a mere 8.1 percent on a one-year-basis during the first quarter of 2012, the country's national statistics bureau announced on Friday (13 April), down from 8.9 percent during the last quarter of 2011 and "significantly lower than expected," Maarten-Jan Bakkum, emerging market analyst at ING, told EUobserver.

On Thursday, it emerged that one of the few achievements of Spanish foreign policy in recent years is also being damaged as former Cuban political prisoners set up camp outside the foreign ministry building in Madrid to protest cuts in welfare.

...The Cubans in a communique handed to Spanish media urged "all European Union member states to intercede with the Spanish authorities so that [they] are allowed to move to other countries" because Spanish unemployment is so high they cannot find jobs.

One of the group's spokesmen, Juan Antonio Bermudez, told Spanish news agency Efe that children and elderly people who came to the EU thinking it was the land of milk and honey now face living on the streets and begging for spare change.

Euro: Was gesagt werden muss

| Drucken |

09.04.2012

Das Euro-Theater geht in den finalen Akt. Die Politik-Schauspieler in Brüssel versuchen nach Kräften, das Publikum in die Irre zu leiten. Mit lautstarker Propaganda und Durchhalteparolen kann das Ende aber lediglich verzögert, jedoch nicht verhindert werden.   von Michael Mross Das Euro-Theater gleicht einer Groteske, die in der Geschichte Ihresgleichen sucht. Dass die Kunstwährung nicht funktioniert, war von Anfang an klar. Dass niemand den Euro wollte, wurde von der Politik ignoriert. Nun sind die Probleme da und sie werden immer größer. Doch anstelle von Einsicht und Abwicklung treten Propaganda und Durchhalteparolen. Nach drei Jahren Euro-Krise: was muss denn eigentlich noch passieren, bis jeder begreift, dass die Gemeinschaftswährung nicht funktioniert?

finanzeteknologie kaput! achtung, do not pass go.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

Why should just banks have all the fun? Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair proposes EVERYONE get access to the Fed window for free loans and 0% money.

Her gleeful take:

   "Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy.)

    Think of what we can do with all that money. We can pay off our underwater mortgages and replenish our retirement accounts without spending one day schlepping into the office. With a few quick keystrokes, we'll be golden for the next 10 years."

One can only wonder how long the 0.01% can maintain control while extending their blatant looting to traders, doctors, lawyers, etc. Fortunately for them, their most numerous base is amongst the passionately deluded.

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

Bahraini opposition activists have lambasted a former British police chief who suggested that the Gulf kingdom is now safer than London, pointing out that extra-judicial killings, torture and kidnappings have continued since he was hired to reform the nation's security forces.

John Yates, the former Metropolitan police chief who was heavily criticised for his handling of the investigation into phone hacking by News of the World journalists, began working as an advisor by the al-Khalifa dynasty in December.

AFP - Guinea-Bissau's president and prime minister were in army custody on Friday after troops staged an apparent coup just two weeks ahead of a presidential run-off vote in the chronically unstable west African country.

A bodyguard of interim president Raimundo Pereira said soldiers arrested him at his home during the putsch on Thursday and took him to an "unknown destination."

Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior -- tipped to win the ballot set for April 29 -- was also arrested and whisked away in a pickup truck, his wife Salome told AFP earlier.

AP - In the first major test of a U.N.-brokered truce, thousands of Syrians poured into the streets Friday for anti-government protests, activists said. Security forces responded by firing in the air and beating some protesters, but there was no immediate sign of widescale shelling, sniper attacks or other potential violations of the cease-fire.

AFP - Thousands of Islamists demonstrated in Egypt on Friday to demand that members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime be barred from standing in next month's presidential election.

They gathered in an upbeat mood in the capital's iconic Tahrir Square, symbol of the popular protest movement that led to last year's downfall of Mubarak, amid chants of "No to leftovers from the old regime!"

"We don't want Omar Suleiman!" they cried, referring to Mubarak's former intelligence chief who was also briefly vice president, and who had sought to make a return to political life as a candidate in the May 23-24 election.

REUTERS - North Korea said its much hyped long-range rocket launch failed on Friday, in a very rare and embarassing public admission of failure by the hermit state and a blow for its new young leader who faces international outrage over the attempt.

The isolated North, using the launch to celebrate the 100th birthday of the dead founding president Kim Il-sung and mark the rise to power of his grandson Kim Jong-un, is now widely expected to press ahead with its third nuclear test to show its military strength.

RIO DE JANEIRO:  -- The fate of Argentina's largest oil company, YPF, was thrown into doubt on Thursday as reports that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was preparing to nationalize the company drew a warning from Spain that it would consider such a move a hostile action.

Colombia:

Colombia Reports:  YouTube reactivated the account of an exiled Colombian key witness in the "parapolitics" case against the country's former prosecutor general Thursday, three weeks after suspending the account.

CARTAGENA: Colombia -- The stereotype of Colombia -- violent, chaotic, backward -- seemed to be born out in recent days...  As President Obama arrived Friday in this coastal colonial gem, joining presidents and CEOs at the Summit of the Americas, he heard about another Colombia: prosperous, a magnet for investment, ever more urban and modern. It is the Colombia that attracted record levels of foreign investment and whose economy grew nearly 6 percent last year, that was awarded investment-grade status and can borrow more cheaply than some countries in Western Europe.

See Obama's Colombia visit itinerary.  Boz examines eight issues at the summit.

Colombia Reports: Former President Alvaro Uribe continued his denial of paramilitary ties in an interview with RCN Radio Friday. Uribe denied accusations that he helped found paramilitary groups during his 1995-1997 tenure as the governor of Antioquia, despite having openly acknowledged in the past that he supported CONVIVIR, a network of anti-guerrilla neighborhood watch groups formed in the 1990s.

Colombia Reports:  More than 60 indigenous communities are in danger of disappearing as they fall victim to hunger and the ongoing armed conflict, the president of National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) said Thursday.

Reuters:  Mexican President Felipe Calderon met with his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, on Wednesday as the two sought to restore friendly relations and explore new trade opportunities after rocky times between their two countries. Calderon's office said the two men agreed on "the importance of the bilateral relationship, based on mutual respect, the observance of the norms of international law and the close friendships of the Cuban and Mexican peoples."

IPS:  MÁLAGA, Spain, Apr 12, 2012 - A group of former political prisoners from Cuba and their family members gathered in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square and in front of the foreign ministry Tuesday to protest the unexpected cut-off in aid from the government.

The Economist:  A popular student rebellion shows that, as Chileans become better off, they want the government to guarantee a fairer society. Politicians are struggling to respond.

Al Jazeera: Springfield, MA - Honduras now claims the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of the world as drug trafficking and gangs play an undeniable role in the violence plaguing the small central American country.

CARACAS - Russia's Gazprombak Latin America Ventures will operate two oil fields in northwestern Venezuela in a joint venture with Corporacion Venezolana del Petroleo, or CVP, the government said.

The study by conservationists into the impacts on 10 of the key species of British upland bird, including several suffering serious population declines, concluded that a large majority of species can co-exist or thrive with windfarms once they are operating.

But the study, the largest carried out in the UK into the impact of onshore windfarms on bird life, also found strong evidence that some species suffered serious harm while windfarms are being built.

"It shows that there can be serious species-level impacts in the construction phase, so construction in the right place is absolutely key. But what it hasn't shown is that windfarms are 'bird blenders'. There is no impact from the turning of the blades," said Martin Harper, the RSPB's UK conservation director.

And what if the remaining problem of construction-time impact can be solved not by constraints on the place but the time (season) of construction?

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Germany's solar industry expects an installation rush over the next six months as developers try to beat planned subsidy cuts in the second-biggest market for sun power.

...Lawmakers approved the cuts in a March 29 vote after the government had given developers of larger ground-mounted power plants until June 30 to complete projects. It had also pushed back reductions for solar plants built on sites such as former garbage dumps or former military bases until Sept. 30.

...Electricity from solar panels rose 40 percent in the first quarter compared with a year ago, the BSW said this week. Solar panels generated 3.9 billion kilowatt-hours in the first three months of the year, enough for about 4 million households.

Japan could become the next boom market for solar after it rolls out feed-in tariffs (FiT) for renewable energy in July, and several large projects have already been announced.

With its nuclear plants shuddered there's a big energy hole that needs to be filled. Strict energy conservation efforts are helping, and the country will increasingly rely on renewable energy.

Solar projects could produce equity returns of as much as 44%, and wind 51%, if the proposed rates are finalized, says Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The Fit could result in 10 GW of solar and 0.7 GW of wind capacity by 2014, representing an investment of $37.5 billion. That would make Japan the third largest solar market in the world.

But the FiT rates have yet to be finalized, which could postpone the July 1 launch. Many proposed projects in solar, wind and geothermal are on hold, pending pricing decisions.

AP - Lawyers for 15 French people, either black or of Arab descent, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the state for abusive identity checks based on alleged racial profiling.

A lawyer for the group said they were routinely targeted for police identity checks that often included humiliating public body pat downs, insults and even threats because of the way they look.

The plaintiffs' lawyers said this was the first such collective action in France to tackle abusive identity checks, a problem documented by several studies. The lawsuit against the French state targets the Interior Ministry, which oversees police.

The Salafist Muslim minority group has announced a plan to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran for free in Germany. The operation is expected to begin this weekend in 40 cities across the country.

"Of course we have nothing against the Koran," said the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency in a statement. But they point out that the group that intends to give out the Islamic holy texts for free in the pedestrian zones of Germany's cities are already under surveillance.

This is the organization "The True Religion," which belongs to the puritanical, literalist Islamic group the Salafists. The group, led in Germany by Cologne-based preacher Ibrahim Abou-Nagie has printed around 300,000 copies of the Koran in German since October 2011.

But Rauf Ceylan, professor of religion at the University of Osnabrück, dismisses the campaign to distribute millions of books as pure PR. "The group just wants to get attention and make new connections," he says.

The Jews had significant competition in antiquity when it came to worshipping Yahweh. Archeologists have discovered a second great temple not far from Jerusalem that predates its better known cousin. It belonged to the Samaritans, and may have been edited out of the Bible once the rivalry had been decided.

...the most exciting indication of how history actually transpired has now been unearthed by Yitzhak Magen. Working behind security fences, the archaeologist has been digging on the windswept summit of Mount Gerizim.

His findings, which have only been partially published, are a virtual sensation: As early as 2,500 years ago, the mountain was already crowned with a huge, dazzling shrine, surrounded by a 96 by 98-meter (315 by 321-foot) enclosure. The wall had six-chamber gates with colossal wooden doors.

At the time, the Temple of Jerusalem was, at most, but a simple structure.

Magen has discovered 400,000 bone remains from sacrificial animals. Inscriptions identify the site as the "House of the Lord." A silver ring is adorned with the tetragrammaton YHWH, which stands for Yahweh.

The article also tells about new evidence in the Dead Sea scrolls on explicit references to Mount Gerizim which were edited out of the Bible. The archaeological evidence starts to get firmer that the unified kingdom of David and Solomon never existed, Judah (with the capital Jerusalem) and Israel (which later became Samaria) were always separate, Israel was older, and their cults started to merge after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

In tests, the monkeys learned to distinguish between genuine English words and "nonsense" sequences of letters. Recognising words in this way was previously assumed to require the kind of language skills only humans possess. Experts now believe when people read written words they draw on an ability that predates human evolution.

Silvio Berlusconi has allegedly paid €127,000 (£100,000) to three women including Imma and Eleonora De Vivo, two twin TV showgirls.

Along with the third woman, Nicole Minetti, an alleged madam who is also his former dental nurse, the women are expected to testify in a trial where he is accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute, it was reported.

Blythe Sally Jess Masters née le 22 mars 1969 à Oxford au Royaume-Uni est un opérateur de marché de la banque JP Morgan Chase qui a eu la première l'idée, en 1994, du principe du Credit Default Swap (CDS) ou couverture de défaillance. Voilà pour la présentation Wikipedia.

Blythe Masters a été accusée par le journal britannique The Guardian d'être « la femme qui a inventé les armes financières de destruction massive ». Voilà pour la partie qui commence à nous intéresser.

Je viens de terminer ce livre édifiant de Pierre Jovanovic (dont je vous conseille le blog: http://www.jovanovic.com/blog.htm à doses homéopathiques si vous ne voulez pas vous défenestrer de suite - oui la réalité des choses est cruelles - ). Cette jeune femme est, en résumé, une des instigatrices majeures du bordel financier sans nom qui secoue notre planète depuis 2008. Pierre Jovanovic nous retrace donc, à travers ce livre les raisons véritables des troubles historiques actuelles qui nous obligent notamment, par voie de conséquence, à bosser 2 ans de plus afin de permettre la compensation de monumentales pertes de Wall Street. Ceci en parallèle, des nombreuses taxes et hausses prix  que nous devrons, nous pauvres consommateurs, assumer bien évidemment.

i saw this journalist interviewed on max keiser, good stuff.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

1931 - Spanish Cortes depose King Alfonso XIII and proclaims the 2nd Spanish Republic.