A couple of weeks back Lech Walesa caused mutterings in the Irish and Polish press for having been a guest speaker at the Libertas convention in Rome. Papers speculated whether this was not a ringing endorsement of Irishman Declan Ganley's crusade against the Lisbon Treaty on a "pro Europe - anti EU" ticket.

"We need to heed the Libertas message and put the people back at the heart of the project," he said. Rumours soon surfaced that for such chiselled gems the Nobel Prize winner and former Polish president had received €50,000 for his pains. A week later Polish daily Gazeta Wyborsza reported the figure was €100.000 and called him a "disgrace". A tightlipped Declan Ganley refused to disclose. "Gentlemen do not talk about money to other gentlemen. The word honorarium includes the word honour."

Spanish writer and former minister César Antonio Molina remembers Brussels : the city's unique atmosphere, the warmth of relations with colleagues, cultural and linguistic diversity, and ponders the future of Europe.

When I got off the plane in Brussels, the snow and rain reminded me of a line by the American poet Archibald MacLeish: "All night in Brussels the wind had tugged at my door."

It's four in the afternoon and already dark as night. When I get to the Hotel Amigo, rue de l'Amigo 1-3, I feel at home again. Voices in every language, a bustling coming-and-going, but these discreet, comforting walls soothe my nerves. When I get to my room, I draw the curtains to find the familiar next-door office building facing me. Were I to open the window, I could easily start up a conversation with the tenants, those sedulous civil servants who work, while I sleep, till the wee hours of the morning. If I had the time to poke my head out, I could imagine seeing in their faces all those lives happy with failure. The delays they inflict upon their files are the royal jelly that feeds the State larvae. Above all, the civil servants administer time - a rare and priceless item.

In the outsized oval assembly hall, European ministers of culture also greeted us as though this was our last meeting. The wheel of fortune never stops turning, and many changes can occur in six months.

Experts from Washington have called on the EU to be more daring and propose closer ties with its large Eastern neighbour. But European Commission officials told EurActiv that the current mood in Europe was not exactly in tune with such an approach.

Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, called on the EU to conclude an 'Association Agreement' with Ukraine.

He was speaking at a conference organised yesterday (28 May) by the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.

However, such agreements have so far been concluded with countries that are now members of the EU, and candidates currently hoping to join the 27-member club were proposed so-called 'Stabilisation and Association Agreements' instead.

After the EU's 'big bang' enlargement to ten countries in 2004 and the accession of Romania and Bulgaria three years later, the mood in European capitals is not in favour of further eastern expansion.

She was nicknamed "Red Rosa" and millions of Germans still make the pilgrimage to an unremarkable suburb of east Berlin to pay their respects at her grave. But now it has emerged that the body of the assassinated revolutionary heroine, Rosa Luxemburg, may never have been buried at all.

Pathologists at Berlin's main Charité hospital claimed yesterday that a headless, handless and footless "mystery corpse" that had been lying unidentified deep in its mortuary for decades was almost certainly that of the early 20th century leftist leader who was shot in the head in 1919. "The corpse reveals evidence which bears a striking similarity to the body of the real Rosa Luxemburg," said Dr Michael Tsokos, head of the hospital's pathology department. "I doubt that she was ever buried."

In its latest annual report published on Thursday, UK-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International pointed to "new allegations of ill treatment inflicted by French police, which, in at least one case, has had fatal consequences".

 Amnesty was referring to the case of Abdelhakim Ajimi, 22, who died of suffocation in May 2008 during his detention in Grasse, in south-east France.

Only a third of Poles plan to vote in the EU elections, according to the latest TNS opinion poll commissioned by the European Parliament. Meanwhile the two main parties, the ruling liberal Civic Platform (PO) and the opposition conservative Law and Justice (PiS) are arguing about history and Polish-German relationship, reports EurActiv.pl.

Despite prominent personalities calling on the Polish electorate to vote in the EU elections, Poland is sailing towards the poll with no real debate on Europe, its institutions, the Lisbon Treaty or entrance to the euro zone

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso seems well-placed to win a second term after the leader of Germany's Social Democrats, Franz Müntefering, said yesterday (27 May) that there was little point in the European Socialists naming their own alternative candidate in an attempt to halt the incumbent's re-appointment.

Müntefering's comments came as a boost to the former Portuguese prime minister's hopes of retaining his post when his five-year mandate expires later this year.

Müntefering told reporters that Barroso, backed by his party, the European People's Party, had done a competent job as head of the EU executive and had the support of some centre-left governments in Europe, including his native Portugal, neighbouring Spain and the UK.

Asked if Europe's centre-left would put up a challenge, he replied: "What would the point of that be?" "It would be naive to do that. There are 27 EU countries and 21 of those are led by conservative governments. And at least two others, Portugal and Spain, are for Barroso. Do you think the other four should put up a challenge?" he said.

Portugal has begun its campaigning for the European Parliamentary elections. Only eight percent of the Portuguese know the ballot for them will be held on June 7, and turnout is being predicted to reach only 24 percent.

Launch of the campaigns has come with squabbling over how much the competing parties aim to spend. As the ruling Socialists's top candidate is Vital Moreira, an academic and specialist in constitutional law, began his rounds, the party was tipped to take 39 percent of the vote.

A group of Tory grandees and former senior diplomats will tomorrow launch a devastating attack on David Cameron's flagship Eurosceptic policies, warning that they pose a threat to British influence in the European Union.
On the eve of the European elections, the Tory leader stands accused of adopting a "rigid commitment to impotence" after he pledged to withdraw from the main centre-right grouping in the European parliament.
Cameron, who will appear alongside highly conservative EU allies in Warsaw tomorrow, goes into the European elections next Thursday on the most hardline Eurosceptic ticket of any mainstream political leader since Britain entered the EEC in 1973.

A growing desire to claw down corruption is expected to bring higher-than-average numbers of Bulgarians out to vote in the European Parliamentary elections.

Last year, the EU punished Sofia for failing to crack down effectively by freezing some 500 million euros in EU aid.

Surveys show most Bulgarians approve of the EU measure and trust the EU institutions more than the Balkan country's own parliament and government.

Paragraphs on the right have been rearranged to match the ones on the left.

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler

* Germany agrees deal with Magna, GM, governments

* Obama phone call helped seal deal - Merkel

* Deal to shield Opel from GM bankruptcy

* Workers celebrate rescue with spontaneous hugs

(Updates with labour leader comments, Opel workers reaction)

By Gernot Heller and Madeline Chambers

BERLIN, May 30 (Reuters) - Germany heaved a sigh of relief on Saturday over a deal with Canadian auto parts group Magna (MGa.TO), General Motors (GM.N) and the U.S. government to save carmaker Opel from the imminent bankruptcy of its U.S. parent.

The accord sealed after six hours of talks in Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices still needs final approval but seemed set to ringfence Opel and its 50,000 workers in Europe from a GM Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing widely expected for Monday.

Merkel said U.S. President Barack Obama -- due to visit Germany next week -- helped swing the deal with a telephone call on Friday.

That helped clear hurdles over financing that had threatened to scupper the entire transaction and allowed GM to agree the deal with Magna about the future of its European operations, of which Opel is the centrepiece.

Nearly every state park in the Bay Area -- from the towering redwoods at Big Basin to Angel Island, Mount Tamalpais to Mount Diablo and every state beach from Año Nuevo in San Mateo County to Big Sur -- would close as part of budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In all, 220 of California's 279 state parks, about 80 percent, would be padlocked starting as soon as Labor Day, under details of a historic closing plan released Thursday night by the state parks department.

"We've never been in as serious a predicament as we are facing right now. It is potentially devastating," said state parks spokesman Roy Stearns.

Layoffs could hit 1,500 or more of the 2,900 state parks employees,  Stearns added.

"This is a clear indication of the absolute seriousness of the state budget deficit. We have driven to the cliff and some would argue we are already falling off the cliff."

On Tuesday, as part of an effort to close the state's $24 billion deficit, Schwarzenegger unveiled a series of proposed cuts. They included a plan to eliminate $70 million in state general fund money to parks in the year that ends in June 2010 and $143 million of that funding by June 2011. The latter number represents 40 percent of the state park system's $387 million operating budget.

WASHINGTON, May 29 (IPS) - A broad coalition of civil society groups, as well as some U.S. lawmakers, is fighting what they call a "blank cheque" from the U.S. to expand funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On May 22, the Senate passed a 91.3 billion-dollar-wartime spending bill that included 108 billion dollars for the Washington-based Fund. The bill will now have to be reconciled in a conference committee between the Senate and the House of Representatives whose own version omitted any IMF funding.

The funding was the U.S. part of a larger package agreed by the G20 leaders at their April meeting in London, where they pledged to provide 1.1 trillion dollars in additional funding to the IMF.

The goal is to boost lending to cash-strapped developing countries during the current economic crisis, which has drastically reduced the flow of private investment to emerging markets and the earnings of many poor countries that depend on their commodity exports.

Opponents of the funding are concerned about the conditions the IMF usually imposes upon low-income countries when they accept these funds, conditions which, according to many NGOs, actually do more harm than good, particularly for the most vulnerable sectors of the recipients' populations.

Typically, the IMF requires recipient countries to reduce their budget deficits and increase interest rates, both of which can produce the opposite effect of the economic stimulus the funds are meant to provide. As a result, countries have been forced to cut essential social programmes, like unemployment insurance and other safety-net mechanisms.

"It makes no sense to provide money intended to support global stimulus spending to the IMF when the IMF is demanding developing countries employ recessionary policies," says Robert Weissman, director of Essential Action, a non-profit organisation that advocates, among other things, change in what it considers to be harmful IMF and World Bank practices.

TALLINN - Eesti Energia, the state owned oil-shale energy company, has announced it will commission a new 3 billion kroon (190 million euro) plant that should open in 2011. In a company statement Juri Kao, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Eesti Energia, said the project would help boost the local economy and ensure the company's future.

First, regarding the financial collapse of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Polanyi writes:

    "In the 1920s, the gold standard was still regarded as the precondition of a return to stability and prosperity, and consequently no demand raised by its professional guardians, the bankers, was deemed too burdensome, if only it promised to secure stable exchange rates; when, after 1929, this proved impossible, the imperative need was for a stable internal currency and nobody was as little qualified to provide it as the banker."

This is terribly important today. If you simply replace the gold standard with our last few decades "financial innovations," we have a very similar situation. In the last year and half, every action taken by the Federal Reserve and Treasury has been an attempt to return to the "stability" of the last decades' casino banking of derivatives and securitization. This isn't going to work. Just like then, the bankers who provided us with securtization and deviravtives are the least qualified to bring about the changes we are of (which we are) in such desperate need.

Polanyi noted the vital importance of locality.  The value of a place is the result of generations of improvements and that "all permanent and immovable improvements that tie a human community to the locality where it is. They cannot be improvised, but must be built up gradually by generations of patient effort,and the community cannot afford to sacrifice them and start afresh elsewhere. Hence that territorial character of sovereignty, which permeates our political conceptions - for a century (prior to 1944) these obvious truths were ridiculed."  (In the interests of aggrandizement of states and empires, I think he means.  Costelo quotes some of Yves Smith's own writing on that subject as applied to the causes of the mortgage debacle and notes:

We must rethink our institutions of political economy away from centralization and the seductive but wrong-headed notion of ever more efficient control from the top, both practices are antithetical to democracy.

Instead, we need to reform our institutions of political economy, not based on mathematical models, don't misunderstand, they still can be useful tools, but instead founded on the principles that people with all their human complexities and the localities in which they live and work must always be preeminent. We must understand that in order to create truly adaptive systems of political economy, which grow ever more necessary with the evolution of technology, we must allow our political economy to evolve and adapt. Centralization is not only the least conducive and the least democratic to these means, it eventually becomes truly reactionary.

In 1944, Polanyi had lived through the great cataclysms brought about by self-regulating market utopia. With the rise of the New Deal and the defeat of fascism, Polanyi thought he was witnessing, "a development which the economic system ceases to lay down the law to society and primacy of society over that system is secured." Yet four decades later, the myth of the market once again rules and has led once again led to crisis.

It has been close to twenty years since I read The Great Transformation and I recall others of Polanyi's insights, but not these.  Time for a re-read. I would also recommend a full read of Costelo's current review.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Tim Giethner is going to China.  Simon Johnson has some observations on the financial situation between the USA and China:

China refuses to talk politely about its exchange rate and rebuffs all sensible diplomatic initiatives on this front - they have held the IMF at bay for nearly 2 years on this exact issue.  The rhetoric is that their fiscal stimulus will bring down their current account surplus without need for significant exchange rate appreciation.  This is smokescreen.

The reality is that the administration is afraid that China will shift out of its dollar holdings, pushing up interest rates on Treasury debt and jeopardizing their Fiscal First reflation strategy. The Chinese have played up these fears by speaking obliquely on the desirability of a non-dollar international reserve currency - this is a pipedream, but you get the point.

The administration has essentially blinked in the face of Chinese growling.  This is strange for two reasons.

First, where would China move its reserve holdings?  The other reserve currencies are generally considered to be the pound, the yen, and of course the euro.  Which one would you definitely prefer to the dollar these days?

Second, any shift in the Chinese portfolio would also tend to depreciate the dollar - depending on what else is going on at that time - and this would likely push up inflation.  However, the administration might welcome some inflation right around now, reducing real debt burdens, and helping banks' balance sheets and their operating profits.  And a depreciated dollar would raise exports, greatly facilitating our economic recovery.  It would be awkward for this to be explicit US policy, but any Chinese move would provide the administration with plausible deniability.

General Motors Corp. on Saturday readied for a bankruptcy filing amid signs that a majority of its largest creditors had backed a revised debt-equity exchange, a move that would potentially smooth its progress through court.

The company, the U.S. Treasury and an ad hoc committee representing large institutional creditors all declined comment after the expiration of a 5 p.m. EDT deadline for acceptance of the exchange. However, one member of the ad hoc committee said Saturday that the sweetened deal was expected to be approved by a majority of noteholders, though any number of GM's large retail creditor base remained opposed.

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A fresh union pact won employee backing Friday, while marathon efforts to stabilize its European unit through a partial sale to a consortium led by Canada's Magna International Inc. were finalized early Saturday.

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Initially, the company said getting bondholders to agree to a debt swap was its best chance for avoiding Chapter 11. But the plan is designed to expedite a bankruptcy filling more than to avoid it. As part of the agreement, bondholders pledged not to oppose GM's reorganization in court. Bondholders had until Saturday evening to voice support for a new offer that would give them more than a 20% stake in GM -- a 10% share of the restructured company and warrants for another 15%. It was up to the U.S. Treasury, which brokered the deal, to determine whether enough bondholders agreed for the offer to stand.

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The ad hoc committee representing major bondholders agreed to support and encourage other big investors to back the deal. Under the plan, the Treasury would provide GM with $30 billion in loans to keep running through a bankruptcy, in addition to $20 billion already given to the company. GM won't have to repay the loans, instead, the government will turn them into a controlling stake in the company. The UAW would end up with at least a 17.5% stake in the new company after agreeing to concessions that will save GM about $10 billion in obligations to retiree health care as well as billions more in labor costs.

What Was THAT? (Friday Market Close) - The Market Ticker

Here's a chart of Friday's price action in the /ES, the S&P 500 "Electronic" Futures:

Notice the huge volume spike (the blue underlay) on the chart at the close.

There were 146,083 contracts traded in that one-minute period between 14:59 and 15:00 (Central); the next minute, when the real dislocation hit, traded 91,774 - after the cash market bell had rung.

The closing bell is usually busy.  But this sort of volume is absolutely unheard of.  To put it in perspective yesterday the same time recorded 26,540 contracts, and 36,642 the minute after.

Volume was light all day, as is somewhat common in the summer on a Friday.  The close started its usual increase, and was up to 23,000 contracts at 14:57 with two minutes remaining.

Then all hell broke loose.

"Paper", or institutional representation, was stalking the close; the pit audio feed so stated.  Directly in front of the bell 1,000 contracts were bought - as near as I could tell at the market.

Those are "Big" contracts, each being 5 of the /ES minis; this was, in effect, a 5,000 contract /ES market order.

The reaction was instantaneous.  The offer side of the market collapsed and the /ES rocketed higher.  In the pit, trades went off as high as 925, but on the E-Mini trades were recorded as high as 927.75.  As quickly as it got there, it collapsed back to 922 - a nearly six-handle (3/4 of one percent) straight-up and down spike.

Now here's the problem:

For me to believe this was "organic", that is, this was an un-forced order, I have to believe that someone wanted to go home net long the equivalent of 5,000 /ES contracts into the weekend at a severely disadvantaged price.  The market had been calm all day; if you wanted to buy 1,000 spoos (equivalent to 5,000 E-Minis) there was plenty of opportunity to do so all day long.  This sort of market order was guaranteed to dislocate the market - so the buyer had to simply not give a damn what sort of price they got.

How bad of a fill was this?  To put this in perspective each /ES point is worth $50 per contract. 

Each single point that was disadvantaged to the buyer by this execution cost him a cool quarter-million bucks, and on average, the "disadvantage" was likely around five full handles, meaning that the buyer of these contracts, if this was an "organic" order, willingly ate $1.25 million dollars.

I don't believe for one second that is what happened.

rosining bows at the fiddlefest

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

For example, the press keeps on parroting the Washington line that Asians "save" too much, causing them to lend their money to America. But the "Asians" saving these dollars are the central banks. Individuals and companies save in yuan and yen, not dollars. It is not these domestic savings that China and Japan have placed in U.S. Treasury securities to the tune of $3 trillion. It is America's own spending - the trillions of dollars its payments deficit is pumping abroad, in excess of foreign demand for U.S. exports and purchases of U.S. companies, stocks and real estate. This payments deficit is not the result of U.S. consumers maxing out on their credit cards. What is being downplayed is the military spending that has underlain the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit ever since the Korean War. It is a trend that cannot continue much longer, now that foreign countries are starting to push back.

Inasmuch as China's central bank is now the largest holder of U.S. government and other dollar securities, it has become the main subsidizer of the U.S. payments deficit - and also the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit. Half of the federal budget's discretionary spending is military in character. This places China in the uncomfortable position of being the largest financier of U.S. military adventurism, including U.S. attempts to encircle China and Russia militarily to block their development as rivals over the past fifty years. That is not what China intended, but it is the effect of global dollar hegemony.

Another trend that cannot continue is "the miracle of compound interest." It is called a "miracle" because it seems too good to be true, and it is - it cannot really go on for long. Heavily leveraged debts go bad in the end, because they accrue interest charges faster than the economy's ability to pay. Basing national policy on dreams of paying the interest by borrowing money against steadily inflated asset prices has been a nightmare for homebuyers and consumers, as well as for companies targeted by financial raiders who use debt leverage to strip assets for themselves. This policy is now being applied to public infrastructure into the hands of absentee owners, who will build interest charges into the new service prices they charge, and be allowed to treat these charges as a tax-deductible expense. Banking lobbyists have shaped the tax system in a way that steers new absentee investment into debt rather than equity financing.

The cheerleaders applauding a bubble economy as "wealth creation" (to use one of Alan Greenspan's favorite phrases) would like us, their audience, to believe that they knew that there was a problem all along, but simply could not restrain the economy's "irrational exuberance" and "animal spirits." The idea is to blame the victims - homeowners forced into debt to afford access to housing, pension-fund savers forced to consign their wage set-asides to money managers for the large Wall Street firms, and companies seeking to stave off corporate raiders by taking "poison pills" in the form of debts large enough to block their being taken over. One looks in vain for an honest acknowledgment of how the financial sector turned into a Mafia-style gang more akin to post-Soviet kleptocrat insiders than to Schumpeterian innovators.

animal spirits, my ass...

life in the shark tank, more like.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Pakistan's army has gained control of the main city in the Swat valley after several days of street-to-street battles with Taliban fighters, a military spokesman has said.

Major-General Athar Abbas said on Saturday that the centre of Mingora had been secured, but
troops were still facing some resistance on the outskirts of the city.

"As far as Mingora city, security forces have taken over," Abbas said.

"There are still pockets of resistance. They are on the periphery of Mingora city."

There was no immediate comment from the Taliban on the reports.

SEOUL, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) appears to be preparing for a long-range missile test, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported on Saturday, citing an informed source.<p> &nbsp; &nbsp; The source, asking not to be identified, said an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was recently spotted on a cargo train near Pyongyang

Tony Blair has appeared to wash his hands of the extraordinary rendition scandal, claiming he was not aware of Britain's involvement under his watch as Prime Minister. The former premier was yesterday accused of "evasiveness" and failing to ask "awkward questions" when he was in Downing Street about the UK's role in the rendition of two terror suspects in 2004.

Mr Blair, in an interview, failed to condemn the controversial practice, which the British Government denied involvement in until only February this year, by saying: "The Obama government is going to continue [with them] in certain circumstances anyway."

In the July issue of Esquire, Mr Blair also spoke for the first time about the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed, saying people should "wait for the facts" of his case.

A huge volcanic eruption in China some 260 million years ago led to the sudden extermination of marine life clear around the world, British paleontologists announced Thursday, in a report being published this week in the journal Science.

The researchers were able to pinpoint the exact timing of the massive eruption thanks to a layer of fossilized rock which showed mass extinction of different life forms -- clearly linking the volcanic blasts to a major environmental catastrophe.

"The abrupt extinction of marine life we can clearly see in the fossil record firmly links giant volcanic eruptions with global environmental catastrophe," said Paul Wignall, a professor and palaeontologist at the University of Leeds, who was the lead author of the research paper in the May 29 edition of Science.

The eruption in southwest China unleashed about a half million cubic kilometers of lava, covering an area five times the size of Wales, according to the research by scientists at the British university.

The Mistle Thrush had built her nest on top of a downpipe, blocking the water's passage and causing the gutter to flood.

But desperate to protect her young, she puffed herself up to twice her size and sat in the drainpipe to stop the tide of rain water swamping the nest.

She was so occupied with her task that her mate was left to feed her and their young.

It has been described as a "tubby spaniel" by its admirers and as a "destructive nocturnal rat" by its critics. Now, the beaver is officially back in the wild in Britain.

At least two centuries after the species was hunted to extinction in the UK, three beaver families have been released into three lochs in forest unpopulated by people near the Sound of Jura in Argyll.

The release marks the most ambitious mammal reintroduction programme to date in Britain.

A new paper in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE from scientists at the University of Iceland and Marine Research Institute in Reykjavik provides insights into possible mechanisms of the collapse of fisheries, due to fisheries-induced evolution.

Cod fishing is of highest intensity in shallow water in Iceland and it selects against genotypes of cod adapted to shallow water. The PLoS ONE paper reports a significant difference in Darwinian fitness (relative survival rate) between shallow-water and deep-water adapted cod.

The shallow-water fish have only 8% of the fitness of deep-water fish. This difference can lead to rapid elimination of shallow-water fish in only a few generations with drastic effects on the population and the fishery.

Using molecular population genetics, the authors reports steep changes in the frequency of genotypes at a single genetic locus with depth: a gradient of nearly one half percent drop in frequency per meter. The genotypes at the locus are directly related to behavioral types that select deep vs shallow water habitat by genotype.

"There is no direct targeting of specific genotypes. Instead the intense selection results from the interaction of fish that select their habitat by genotype and fishermen choosing to fish in the preferred habitat of the fish," said Einar Arnason, professor of population genetics and lead author.

ATLANTA, Georgia, May 30 (IPS/IFEJ) - In the face of an economic system which seems to be premised on environmental harm and profit-driven growth, a handful of communities across the U.S. and the globe have begun experimenting with alternative forms of local currency as a pathway to sustainability.

Local currencies existing today in the U.S. include the Humboldt Community Currency in Eureka, California; Berkshares in the Massachusetts Berkshire region; Bay Bucks in Traverse City, Michigan; Ithaca Hours in Ithaca, New York; Cascadia Hours, Corvalis Hours, and RiverHours in Oregon; Equal Dollars in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Madison Hours in Madison, Wisconsin, according to the E. F. Schumacher Society, which runs Berkshares.

Canadian community currencies are located in Calgary, Alberta; Salt Spring Island, British Columbia; Tamworth, Toronto and the Madawaska Valley, both in Ontario, which is promoting a "usury-free dollar".

There are also community currencies in Tlaxpana, Mexico; and East Sussex and Devon, England; as well as a regional currency based in Basel, Switzerland, which can also be exchanged in parts of Germany and France.

What these currencies have in common is that they represent an effort to respond to the pressures of globalisation, like the advent of massive chain stores competing with local merchants.

The Mistle Thrush had built her nest on top of a downpipe, blocking the water's passage and causing the gutter to flood.

But desperate to protect her young, she puffed herself up to twice her size and sat in the drainpipe to stop the tide of rain water swamping the nest.

She was so occupied with her task that her mate was left to feed her and their young.

Boosting levels of vitamin D could cut the incidence of breast cancer by a quarter, bowel cancer by a third and it should be offered to the population as part of a public health drive, scientists say.

The finding is based on a review of 2,750 research studies involving vitamin D, sometimes called "bottled sunshine", which show that taking daily supplements of the vitamin could do more for cancer prevention than a library full of lifestyle advice.

Vitamin D is made by the action of sunlight on the skin but the gloomy weather and long winter in countries north of 30 degrees latitude, such as the UK, means that a large part of the earth's population is deficient between October and March.

New software has enabled researchers to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus.

The 2.4m (8ft) long trumpet-like instrument was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago.

Bach's motet (a choral musical composition) "O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht" was one of the last pieces of music written for the Lituus.

Now, for the first time, this 18th Century composition has been played as it should have been heard.

To change the bulbs in the 60-foot-high ceiling lights of Buckingham Palace's grand stairwell, workers had to erect scaffolding and cover precious portraits of royal forebears.

So when a lighting designer two years ago proposed installing light emitting diodes or LEDs, an emerging lighting technology, the royal family readily assented. The new lights, the designer said, would last more than 22 years and enormously reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions -- a big plus for Prince Charles, an ardent environmentalist. Since then, the palace has installed the lighting in chandeliers and on the exterior, where illuminating the entire facade uses less electricity than running an electric teakettle.

In shifting to LED lighting, the palace is part of a small but fast-growing trend that is redefining the century-old conception of lighting, replacing energy-wasting disposable bulbs with efficient fixtures that are often semi-permanent, like those used in plumbing.

Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. A recent report by McKinsey & Company cited conversion to LED lighting as potentially the most cost effective of a number of simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology.  ...

Contractors vie for 'plum work': Hacking for Defense USA^TM
Young talent flocks to companies that seek $100Bs in new tax spending
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JOHN MARKOFF
updated 1:27 p.m. PT, Sat., May 30, 2009

MELBOURNE, Fla. - The government's urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of "hacker soldiers" within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation's war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies -- including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon -- have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies. There are dangerous bogeymen under every rock!!

--

And because counter-terrorism requires constant system testing, they will actually be using our life savings to hire cyber-spy's to hack into our systems on a constant basis, and whenever Defense funding expansion starts to dry up in Congress, hire more cyber-spy's to hack Congress and hack the Kettering-Sloane Cancer Foundation, to put a real scare into the American people.

The most perfect of profit-centers! An invisible enemy, undetectable friend or foe or friend-foe, and total mil.gov control of international cyber space.

Posted by: Pierre Trudeau

Phil Spector stared straight ahead. It was the appointed hour for the legendary music producer's six-year murder case to come to a close and the courtroom was packed with reporters, fans and detractors eager to hear his sentence. But he did not look at the judge, take notes or whisper to his lawyer.

For Spector, it seemed, it wasn't worth it. A life sentence is mandatory for second-degree murder and the only decision before the judge Friday was whether Spector, 69, should have his first parole hearing in 2027, 2028 or 2034.

After listening to arguments, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler chose 2028. As the judge told Spector that he would have to serve at least 19 years in prison -- at which time he would be 88 -- he remained stoic.

Spector declined an opportunity to address the court and moments later, surrounded by court officers, he shuffled out a side door.

A Buckinghamshire man diagnosed with terminal cancer is to collect a second winning payout of £5,000 after betting he would stay alive.

Jon Matthews, 59, from Milton Keynes, was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer linked to asbestos, in 2006 and told he had months to live.

He placed two bets, each with a £100 stake at odds of 50/1, that he would be alive in June 2008 and in June 2009.

A third wager will earn him a further £10,000 if he lives until 1 June 2010.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has cancelled an official visit to Sweden in reaction to comments made by Sweden's foreign minister advocating Turkish EU membership, according to French media reports.
Sarkozy had planned to meet Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt next Tuesday but pulled out of the engagement with just a few day's notice.

Official sources in France and Sweden claim the French president was forced to pull out because of an over-booked diary. But an unnamed French government minister claimed that Sarkozy's volte face had come about in response to an interview with Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt published in Le Figaro on Monday.

The paper also features an ICM poll which suggests more people intend to vote Liberal Democrat than Labour in the next general election.

The survey put Gordon Brown's party in third place for the first time since 1987 on just 22% - three points behind the Lib Dems and 18 behind the Conservatives.