Monday, November 28, 2011

60 Minutes Shows Us Austerity America (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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Former Mexico ruling party clears way for nominee (AP)

MEXICO CITY ? Enrique Pena Nieto is the sole candidate for the presidential nomination of Mexico's former ruling party now that the party's internal filing deadline has passed.

Pena Nieto was the only contender to register Sunday for the Institutional Revolutionary Party's nomination and he followed the formality with a speech to party supporters. The PRI is expected to certify his candidacy in December.

The PRI hopes to retake the presidency in next July's election. It lost the post in 2000 after holding it for 71 years.

One of the contenders in the ballot will be Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, who narrowly lost the 2006 election. President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party has not yet chosen a candidate.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111128/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_candidate

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Sunday, November 27, 2011

NASA launches super-size rover to Mars: 'Go, Go!' (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? A rover of "monster truck" proportions zoomed toward Mars on an 8 1/2-month, 354 million-mile journey Saturday, the biggest, best equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet.

NASA's six-wheeled, one-armed wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine and other devices to search for evidence that Earth's next-door neighbor might once have been home to the teeniest forms of life.

More than 13,000 invited guests jammed the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday morning to witness NASA's first launch to Mars in four years, and the first flight of a Martian rover in eight years.

Mars fever gripped the crowd.

NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, wore a bright blue, short-sleeve blouse emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words, "Next stop Mars!" She jumped, cheered and snapped pictures as the Atlas V rocket blasted off. So did Los Alamos National Laboratory's Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist in charge of Curiosity's laser blaster, called ChemCam.

Surrounded by 50 U.S. and French members of his team, Wiens shouted "Go, Go, Go!" as the rocket soared into a cloudy sky. "It was beautiful," he later observed, just as NASA declared the launch a full success.

A few miles away at the space center's visitor complex, Lego teamed up with NASA for a toy spacecraft-building event for children this Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The irresistible lure: 800,000 Lego bricks.

The 1-ton Curiosity ? 10 feet tall, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its mast ? is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and with unprecedented skill, analyze them right on the spot.

It's as big as a car. But NASA's Mars exploration program director calls it "the monster truck of Mars."

"It's an enormous mission. It's equivalent of three missions, frankly, and quite an undertaking," said the ecstatic program director, Doug McCuistion. "Science fiction is now science fact. We're flying to Mars. We'll get it on the ground and see what we find."

The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time ? or might even still be conducive to life now. No actual life detectors are on board; rather, the instruments will hunt for organic compounds.

Curiosity's 7-foot arm has a jackhammer on the end to drill into the Martian red rock, and the 7-foot mast on the rover is topped with high-definition and laser cameras.

With Mars the ultimate goal for astronauts, NASA will use Curiosity to measure radiation at the red planet. The rover also has a weather station on board that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer software app with daily weather updates is planned.

No previous Martian rover has been so sophisticated.

The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, which is more like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half those quests have succeeded.

Just two weeks ago, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in orbit around Earth, rather than en route to the Martian moon Phobos.

"Mars really is the Bermuda Triangle of the solar system," said NASA's Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science. "It's the death planet, and the United States of America is the only nation in the world that has ever landed and driven robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, and now we're set to do it again."

Curiosity's arrival next August will be particularly hair-raising.

In a spacecraft first, the rover will be lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and tether system similar to the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.

Curiosity is too heavy to use air bags like its much smaller predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, did in 2004. Besides, this new way should provide for a more accurate landing.

Astronauts will need to make similarly precise landings on Mars one day.

Curiosity will spend a minimum of two years roaming around Gale Crater, chosen from among more than 50 potential landing sites because it's so rich in minerals. Scientists said if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, it may well be there.

The rover should go farther and work harder than any previous Mars explorer because of its power source: 10.6 pounds of radioactive plutonium. The nuclear generator was encased in several protective layers in case of a launch accident.

NASA expects to put at least 12 miles on the odometer, once the rover sets down on the Martian surface.

McCuistion anticipates being blown away by the never-before-seen vistas. "Those first images are going to just be stunning, I believe. It will be like sitting in the bottom of the Grand Canyon," he said at a post-launch news conference.

This is the third astronomical mission to be launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA since the retirement of the venerable space shuttle fleet this summer. The Juno probe is en route to Jupiter, and twin spacecraft named Grail will arrive at Earth's moon on New Year's Eve and Day.

Unlike Juno and Grail, Curiosity suffered development programs and came in two years late and nearly $1 billion over budget. Scientists involved in the project noted Saturday that the money is being spent on Earth, not Mars, and the mission is costing every American about the price of a movie.

"I'll leave you to judge for yourself whether or not that's a movie you'd like to see," said California Institute of Technology's John Grotzinger, the project scientist. "I know that's one I would."

___

Online:

NASA: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

Lego: http://legospace.com/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111126/ap_on_sc/us_sci_mars_rover

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Video: Euro Crisis Continues

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/45434891/

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Friday, November 25, 2011

Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez Duet for First Time Ever! (omg!)

Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez Duet for First Time Ever!

Phenoms unite!

Taylor Swift had more than one very special guest join her onstage Tuesday night at a sold-out show at NYC's Madison Square Garden, her last stop on her worldwide "Speak Now" tour.

PHOTOS: Taylor Swift's high-profile love life

The country superstar, 21, invited fellow singer Selena Gomez for a duet -- their very first together!

As the crowd went absolutely wild, Swift and her "best friend" Gomez, 18, went pop for a live rendition of Gomez's hit "Who Says?"

PHOTOS: Taylor's red carpet evolution

Later on in the show, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Taylor graced the stage for another first-ever duet of his classic "Fire and Rain." Swift told the crowd that she was named after the legendary singer, 63. The elder Taylor stayed onstage to play guitar for Swift's hit "15"

When Gomez (Justin Bieber's love) later the stage for a bow, she'd changed out of her sparkly mini-dress -- and was wearing a Taylor Swift tour T-shirt!

PHOTOS: Selena and Justin's PDA-packed romance

Tell Us: Who would you like Taylor Swift to duet with next?

Get more Us! Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Facebook, Subscribe to Us Weekly

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_taylor_swift_selena_gomez_duet_first_time_ever150548857/43694593/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/taylor-swift-selena-gomez-duet-first-time-ever-150548857.html

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Video: Happy feet release in New Zealand

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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45402148#45402148

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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

GOP insiders wonder if Gingrich's past, personality and immigrant stand will appeal to voters (Star Tribune)

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Vikings RB Peterson leaves game with ankle injury

(AP) ? Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson has left the game against Oakland with an ankle injury.

Peterson hobbled off the field at the end of the first quarter after a tough 12-yard run through heavy traffic. His left ankle rolled hard as he was brought down by the Raiders, and he could barely put weight on it as he was helped to the sideline by team trainers. Peterson grimaced on the table while his ankle was looked at and rode on a cart to the locker room for further examination.

Peterson entered the week fifth in the NFL in rushing with 846 yards. He scored his 11th rushing touchdown before he got hurt.

The Vikings said his return was questionable.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-11-20-FBN-Vikings-Peterson-Hurt/id-4900531f99f54466857f163f964202cc

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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

3D moon flyover reveals greatest detail ever

Chelsea Whyte, contributor

This flyover of the lunar surface gives the most comprehensive picture of the moon to date. Created by researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and NASA, the virtual ride is made up of 70,000 still images captured by a wide-angle camera aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) from an altitude of 50 kilometers.

The model highlights low-lying areas in blue and the highest regions in red and white. In the first clip, a full view of the lunar surface initially reveals the Earth-facing side of the moon, showing prominent flat plains that were used as landing sites for the Apollo missions.

As the model rotates, the dark side of the moon, which faces out toward space, becomes visible. It's home to the lowest crater, roughly 9100 metres deep, as well as the highest mountains that reach an altitude of 10,760 metres.

Subsequent clips zoom in on the South Pole-Aitken basin, a large impact crater on the far side of the moon, and the landing sites of Apollo 15 and Apollo 17.

The virtual flyover took two weeks to create and covers 98 per cent of the lunar surface.

Frank Scholten, a geodesic scientist at DLR, used a network of 40 computers outfitted with special software to compare still images from the LRO pixel by pixel. A 3D model was obtained by analysing the point of view of the camera in each shot as well as data from a laser-mapping instrument onboard the LSO. Laser readings were used to map topography at the poles, which is difficult to do otherwise due to persistent shadows.

"These 3D maps of the moon enable us to better evaluate future landing sites," says lunar researcher Ulrich K?hler from the DLR, who is part of a team working with NASA to survey the moon. "Whether manned or unmanned, future flights to the moon will benefit from the most detailed map of the lunar surface," he says.

If you enjoyed this video, watch how the LRO mapped the surface of the moon, see an animated map of the largest lunar craters or take a mind-bending tour of the solar system.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1a4e8a49/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cnstv0C20A110C110C3d0Emoon0Eflyover0Ereveals0Egreatest0Edetail0Eever0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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Monday, November 21, 2011

Oklahoma State mourns coaches, 2 others who died (AP)

STILLWATER, Okla. ? Kurt Budke's success coaching Oklahoma State University's women's basketball team was a testament to his work ethic and tireless preparation, but the women who played for him said it was the sense of family he fostered that they'll remember most.

Thousands of orange and black-clad mourners gathered Monday in Gallagher-Iba Arena to pay tribute to Budke, assistant coach Miranda Serna and two other people who were killed Thursday when their small plane crashed in Arkansas during a recruiting visit.

The bright orange blazer Budke wore for the Cowgirls' biggest games sat draped over his customary seat on the bench, as former players and school administrators spoke of the four who died, including pilot Olin Branstetter and his wife, Paula, and tried to make sense of the tragic crash ? the second in ten years involving members of OSU's basketball program.

"We have always been reminded that we are family and that the girls you play with are your sisters," said former OSU point guard Taylor Hardeman, who played for Budke from 2005 to 2009. "He was a father figure to us all while we were away from home."

If the coach was a father figure, his longtime assistant Serna was like a sibling, Hardeman said.

"I've never seen a woman with so much energy when it came to coaching. Her passion for basketball was contagious. Most of all, she was a big sister. She listened. She counseled. She cared for others much more than she cared for herself," she said.

Budke's other family ? his wife Shelley and their three children ? and the families of the other three crash victims attended the service, as did several rival Big 12 coaches, including Baylor's Kimi Mulkey, Texas A&M's Gary Blair and the University of Oklahoma's Sherri Coale.

Authorities are trying to determine what caused the crash, which happened late Thursday about 45 miles west of Little Rock, where the coaches planned to scout two prospective recruits.

Budke amassed a sparkling 456-130 overall record as a coach, leading four junior college teams to national titles, including one with Serna as his point guard. He led the Louisiana Tech women's team to three straight NCAA tournament appearances ? the last after Serna joined his staff ? before they left for OSU in 2005 and quickly turned around the flagging program. After going winless against Big 12 opponents in Budke's first season, the Cowgirls reached the NCAA tournament's round of 16 in his third.

The team is expected to resume play Saturday against Coppin State under interim head coach Jim Littell.

On campus, news of the crash brought back memories of the January 2001 plane crash in Colorado in which two members of OSU's men's team and eight people associated with the program were killed.

"It doesn't seem fair that a university should have to go through this twice," said Larry Reece, OSU's basketball announcer.

In the lobby of the arena, notes, candles and bouquets of black and orange flowers were scattered at the base of a memorial erected to honor those killed in 2001 ? a statue of a kneeling cowboy, hat in hand, surrounded by photographs of those killed in the crash.

"We just did our 10th anniversary memorial. It's just unreal that it could happen to us twice," said Derek Hartridge, 20, a sophomore from Kiowa, Okla. "I look around the arena today, and definitely feel like these are my brothers and sisters."

Changes were made to the university's travel policy after the 2001 tragedy. There was a new rule requiring two pilots to be on board for all OSU travel involving student athletes and a requirement that team aircraft be powered by two or more turbine engines. But OSU spokesman Gary Shutt said the policy doesn't apply to recruiting trips for coaches, who were allowed to make travel arrangements at their own discretion.

"Obviously, the high school season coincides with the college season, so if you want to go see players, you need to have the flexibility and ability to make quick trips," Shutt said.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, an OSU alumna who attended Monday's memorial, said she plans to encourage universities in Oklahoma to review their rules and restrictions for flights involving students and staff. Fallin said she plans to meet with university officials to see if additional flight regulations need to be put in place.

"As governor, we do want to make sure we protect our faculty, our students, our coaches, the team itself, when it comes to flying, make sure that we have appropriate airplanes, appropriate equipment, engines, pilots, and certainly that we have rules in place so that everybody knows this is the best way to do everything we can to avoid the unfortunate circumstance that we just had," Fallin said.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, already has ruled out weather as a factor. Investigators were still trying to determine whether the pilot radioed for help before the plane went down, NTSB spokesman Terry Williams said.

According to Federal Aviation Administration records, Branstetter passed a medical examination, was certified to be a commercial pilot and was flight-instrument rated.

___

Sean Murphy can be reached at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111122/ap_on_sp_co_ne/bkw_fatal_plane_crash_coaches_killed

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Is Windows Phone the Best Mobile Platform You're Not Using? (Mashable)

In the world of smartphones, Windows Phone 7 is barely a blip. It has, by some estimates less than 6% market share. Android now owns half the market and iOS about 26%. This isn?t right. You see, the Windows Phone 7 is a good -- possibly great -- mobile platform. It?s better, in my opinion, than Android and nibbling at the heels of my favorite, iOS and the iPhone.

To understand why things are so out of whack and why I believe they could change, we need to take a closer look at a Windows Phone?which I did.

[More from Mashable: Windows Phone Marketplace Hits 40,000 Apps]

It's now been a couple of weeks since I started using the HTC Radar 4G from T-Mobile. It's one of the new Windows Phone 7.5 or "Mango" phones. As a phone, it's good; calls come through loud and clear and the 4G is nice when I can get it. It's not a beautiful or particularly striking handle like the iPhone 4S or Motorola Razr. Yet the somewhat dull combination of pearl, bushed aluminum and one-too-many rounded corners quickly fade into the background as soon I start using the phone.

Microsoft's Windows Phone Metro interface is a malleable tower of hubs that brings more sense to your mobile world than virtually any other platform. Yes, it looks good. Windows Phone 7 features one of my favorite mobile interface color palettes--second only to the iPhone's gray, rain drop speckled backdrop and consistent, brightly colored app icons.

[More from Mashable: Inside the Making of Nokia Lumia 800 [VIDEO]]

Like the best smartphones, Windows Phone can use what you tell it to organize your friends, family, e-mail, appointments and more. It does a lot of what I like to call "connecting the dots" and creates a variety of serendipitous connections to your disparate world. The "Me" hub is one of my favorite innovations not only because it's all about me, but because it brings together everything that matters and relates directly to me in one place.

Windows Phone is full of sensible touches and navigation that should make sense to the both smartphone veterans and neophytes. You can swipe up and down to see all of your tiles (or hubs), and once you're inside a hub, you're usually scrolling left to right you see different facets of information for that hub. Yes, you can add and remove tiles. I added Gmail and Twitter.

Things don't disappear on the phone because they often bubble up to one of the hubs. The ever-present picture tile means my photos are one tap away, my always updating e-mail box (which automatically groups emails by sender) means I can find new messages in a tap. The People hub is an ever-rotating patchwork of smaller pictures of the people who are active in my social/digital world. In other words, I can learn a lot with very little effort.

That kind of one-click-away M.O. is evident throughout the phone and it points to Microsoft?s larger strategy: to simplify the smartphone experience. All Window Phones have a Windows Phone home button, a Bing search button and the ability to bring up the camera simply by holding down a physical camera button for a second or two. If I want to share a photo, I simply tap on the eclipses that appear at the bottom of each, picture, I can then share it on Facebook or Twitter, both smoothly integrated into the Windows Phone system.

For the most part, this simplicity matches much of what you can find on the Apple iPhone?which is my main phone, by the way. iOS 5, for example, integrates Twitter, just as smartly as Windows Phone does and the act of capturing?double tap the home button?and sharing out an image feels not dissimilar across platforms. It is notable, though, that the Windows Phone places your pictures not on Twitter's photo sharing service, but on SkyDrive?the Microsoft?s cloud-based storage and file-sharing service (Apple now uses iCloud and photo stream). And this points to another important, growing similarity between Apple and Microsoft's mobile platform.

The ecosystem. Yes, with Microsoft Windows Phone 7 you enter what appears to be an impressively well thought out ecosystem, driven largely by your Windows Live or Hotmail account. Once you use this, the Windows phone will bring in whatever contacts, calendar and more it can from your account and then weave it all together with other phone services (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Windows Phone is also, naturally, a perfect companion for anyone who lives in Microsoft Office. Office files you save on the phone are automatically saved to your SkyDrive account. From there you can share them via e-mail or directly from your SkyDrive account. It smart, and well integrated with the broader Windows Phone and Microsoft cloud ecosystem.

This ecosystem, however, is not a perfect circle yet. Windows Phones will still, for example, default to funneling your App purchases through the wireless carrier, unless you proactively add a credit card to your Windows Live account and then choose to use it. With the iPhone, my iTunes account is set-up offline and once I log in with my phone, it knows who I am and who to charge?the carrier never comes into play. I?m certain, though. Microsoft, will eventually match Apple on ecosystem simplicity.

Windows Phone 7.5 is not an iOS 5 doppelganger. The screen metaphors are all different. The keyboard, for instance, has a much sharper, almost sterner look. I?m just as poor a typist on it as I am on the iPhone?s virtual keyboard. The way each phone handles typos differs as well: instead of autocorrect, Windows Phones suggest words in a bar above what you?re typing (I prefer this). Text selection is different and, in some ways, more precise than on the iPhone?no magnifying bubble, just a cursor that sits above where you?re pointing. However, nothing in Windows Phone 7.5 should confuse any current iPhone or Android user.

Microsoft would be happy, I think, being a solid number three in the smartphone marketplace -- behind Android and iOS -- but why settle for #3? I actually prefer Windows Phone to most any Android device I?ve used and I think the Microsoft Windows Phone ecosystem, though still clunky at times, offers a better, smoother, more extensible experience than anything found on the multitude of inconsistent Android devices on the market today.

It?s true, Microsoft and its partners did a terrible job positioning and promoting Windows Phone over the last 12 months, and it still makes dumb moves. My biggest peeve is the lack of screen capture. Microsoft figures only developers and media folks like me care about it. That may be true, but how do you think we're going to spread the word on those gorgeous Windows Phone screens if we can?t grab a good copy and post it online? I?m sure this is something Apple considered when including the feature in the iPhone.

Despite this, Microsoft?s approach to marketing Windows Phones is clearly changing. It?s undertaken and aggressive campaign (they threw a huge, day-long-bash in Herald Square New York) and I think the carrier partners may finally be getting behind the platform. Plus, there are now a number of excellent, lust-worthy and super affordable Windows Phone 7.5 devices on the market. The time is ripe for Windows Phone 7.5 to grab the spotlight. Now, are you ready to grab a Windows Phone? Let me know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20111119/tc_mashable/is_windows_phone_the_best_mobile_platform_youre_not_using

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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Post-9/11 tradeoff: Security vs. civil liberties (AP)

NEW YORK ? In the early months after the 9/11 terror attacks, America's visceral reaction was to gird for a relentless, whatever-it-takes quest to punish those responsible and prevent any recurrences.

To a striking extent, those goals have been achieved. Yet over the years, Americans have also learned about trade-offs, about decisions and practices that placed national security on a higher plane than civil liberties and, in the view of some, above the rule of law.

It's by no means the first time in U.S. history that security concerns spawned tactics that, when brought to light, troubled Americans. But the past decade has been notable, even in historical context, for the scope and durability of boundary-pushing practices.

Abroad, there were secret prisons and renditions of terror suspects, the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that critics denounced as torture, and the egregious abuse of detainees by U.S. military personnel at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

At home, there has been widespread warrantless wiretapping authorized by the National Security Agency and the issuance of more than 200,000 national security letters ordering an array of Americans ? including business owners and librarians ? to turn over confidential records.

Now, in the very city that suffered most on 9/11, new information has emerged about the New York Police Department's intelligence operations ? ramped up after the attacks in ways that critics say amount to racial and ethnic profiling, though the department denies that charge.

Since August, an Associated Press investigation has revealed a vast NYPD intelligence-collecting effort targeting the city's Muslims. Police have conducted surveillance of entire Muslim neighborhoods, monitoring where people eat, pray and get their hair cut. Dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups were infiltrated. The CIA helped develop some of the programs.

The FBI also has intelligence-gathering operations that target Muslim and other ethnic communities. Both the bureau and the NYPD defend the programs as conforming to guidelines on profiling, while critics brand the tactics as unconstitutional and ineffective.

"Targeting entire communities for investigation based on erroneous stereotypes produces flawed intelligence," says Michael German, a former FBI agent who's now senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Law enforcement programs based on evidence and facts are effective, and a system of bias and mass suspicion is not."

The FBI, which in 2003 was authorized to conduct racial and ethnic profiling in national security investigations, says its community assessments are legal and vital. "Certain terrorist and criminal groups are comprised of persons primarily from a particular ethnic or geographic community, which must be taken into account when trying to determine if there are threats to the United States," the bureau said in response to ACLU criticism.

But some feel the perpetual safety-vs.-civil-liberties balancing act has been knocked askew since 9/11. In a recent assessment of national security response to the terror attacks, the ACLU faulted policies it said had undermined the Constitution.

"We lost our way when, instead of addressing the challenge of terrorism consistent with our values, our government chose the path of torture and targeted killing ... of warrantless government spying and the entrenchment of a national surveillance state," its report said. "That is not who we are, or who we want to be."

To be sure, Americans have been spied on before by their law enforcement and security agencies, usually in periods of national anxiety.

During the Red Scare of 1919-20, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer responded to labor unrest and bombings ? including an attack on his own house ? by overseeing mass roundups of thousands of suspected anarchists and communists, hundreds of whom were deported. In the aftermath of the raids, he was assailed by eminent legal experts for allowing raids without warrants and for denying detainees legal representation.

In the 1950s, the FBI under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover abetted Sen. Joe McCarthy and other zealous anti-communists with various domestic spying tactics, including opening of mail and unauthorized wiretaps. The bureau also kept civil rights leaders under surveillance during the late `50s and 1960s, again claiming in some cases that unproven communist ties represented a security threat.

Many of these covert FBI activities took place under the aegis of its covert Counter Intelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO. Its targets included the Nation of Islam, Students for a Democratic Society and various groups opposed to the Vietnam War.

A Senate committee headed by Frank Church, D-Idaho, investigated COINTELPRO in 1975-76 and denounced it as a "sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association."

To civil libertarians, the upsurge of post-9/11 intelligence-gathering is distinctive from these previous endeavors in some key respects. To a large extent, it has the imprimatur of Congress, in the form of the Patriot Act and other legislation, and it makes use of astounding technical advances that have vastly broadened surveillance capabilities.

"What we've seen is an unprecedented perfect storm of a sense of national vulnerability, coupled with technological developments that have made specter of 1984 look kind of hokey," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "We don't know what the lasting effect will be ... We don't know how permanent the `new normal' is."

Nationally, civil liberties advocates have taken numerous legal steps, including lawsuits, to challenge some of the federal surveillance practices or find out more about their scope. In New York, some elected officials are calling for federal and state investigations of the NYPD spying on Muslim neighborhoods.

Yet top politicians ? including President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ? are generally reluctant to criticize homeland security operations.

"I believe we should do what we have to do to keep us safe. And we have to be consistent with the Constitution and with people's rights," Bloomberg said ahead of the 10th anniversary commemorations of 9/11.

"We live in a dangerous world," he added, "and we have to be very proactive in making sure that we prevent terrorism."

Many Americans seem to agree. According to a poll in September by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, two-thirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism.

The bottom line, say those who support the post-9/11 tactics, is the government's success in thwarting new terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. James Jay Carafano, a security expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, credits aggressive surveillance for helping uncover roughly 40 terror plots since 2001.

"Do we live with more surveillance than we used to? You could make a case for that," he said. "But it's very difficult to make a serious case we've migrated to a state where civil liberties have been impinged because of the war on terror."

Peter Chase tries to make precisely that case. Longtime director of the public library in Plainville, Conn., he was one of four Connecticut librarians who sued the federal government after they received a national security letter demanding some library patrons' computer records without a court order.

More than 200,000 of those FBI directives, which place their recipients under gag orders, have been issued since 2003. Chase and his colleagues are among a tiny handful who have fought back in court and gained the right to speak out about their case.

"When people come in to public libraries, they expect that what they're going to borrow is confidential," said Chase, 61. "Letting others know what they're reading is like spying on the voting booth, it's like spying on what they are thinking."

Tim Lynch, head of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice and an expert on civil liberties, says most Americans are unaware of the extent to which basic liberties are being undermined by new, security-motivated legal precedents.

"The average person only comes face-to-face with some of these policies at the airport," he said. "They feel, `Oh, it hasn't been that bad.'

"But those of us trained in the law are alarmed," Lynch said. "Lawmakers are too willing to pass laws that would give more power to the FBI and the executive branch."

Such a law, critics say, was the sweeping Patriot Act, which was swiftly drafted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed into law on Oct. 26th of that year. Among its provisions, it allows government agents to conduct broad searches for records in national security investigations without court warrants.

The only Senate vote against the act was cast by Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who lost his seat in 2010. This fall, in the forward to a report by a Muslim-American legal advocacy group, Feingold blasted the Patriot Act as "a blatant power-grab that gave unprecedented, unchecked power to the government to arrest, detain and spy on our nation's citizens."

A few current senators have called for the act to be reined in, but Congress this year reauthorized some of its most controversial provisions ? such as roving wiretaps to monitor multiple communication devices. A Senate committee also rejected an effort by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Mark Udall, D-Colo., to obtain more information from top security officials about what they describe as secret interpretations of domestic surveillance law.

Some of the post-9/11 intelligence operations potentially affect almost all Americans, such as so-called data-mining systems capable of sifting through vast quantities of personal records.

"Fusion centers" have been set up in every state since 9/11 for the purpose of sharing tips, crime reports and other information among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. In some cases, the military and private companies have participated.

The centers' purpose is to spot potentially dangerous individuals or patterns that might otherwise have been overlooked, and thus avoid a repeat of missed opportunities before the 9/11 attacks. However, civil liberties advocates have voiced fears that the centers could be used to spy on Americans who have no link to suspected terrorism, and some missteps have been documented.

In 2009, Missouri's fusion center asserted that some supporters of GOP Rep. Ron Paul of Texas posed a security threat. In Tennessee, the ACLU affiliate sent a letter to public schools warning them not to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday; the state fusion center put the communication on a map of "terrorism events and other suspicious activity."

Overall, however, it is the Muslim-American community that considers itself the prime target of heightened surveillance efforts.

The concerns are summarized in an impassioned report titled "Losing Liberty," released last month by Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco-based legal advocacy group.

"The Patriot Act opened the floodgates to a plethora of discriminatory and invasive laws, policies, and practices in the name of national security of which Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have borne the brunt," says the report. "It is difficult to find a Muslim today who has not been contacted by law enforcement or affected by these policies."

The executive director of Muslim Advocates, Farhana Khera, hopes Congress will hold hearings on a bill recently introduced by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., that would prohibit racial, ethnic and religious profiling at the federal and state level.

"Much of what the FBI has been doing has been shrouded in secrecy, and the American people have a right to know how these unprecedented powers are being used," Khera said. "We have something pretty special in our country and its founding principles, and we need to return to them."

Targets of the NYPD surveillance range from obscure Moroccan immigrants in hard-scrabble New York neighborhoods to Reda Shata, a New York-area imam. Shata eagerly cooperated with the police and FBI, invited officers to his mosque for breakfast, even dined with Mayor Bloomberg ? yet according to NYPD files examined by the AP, he was under police surveillance at the time.

"You were loving people very much, and then all of a sudden you get shocked," Shata said last month after learning he was monitored. "It's a bitter feeling."

The NYPD has defended its surveillance efforts as vital to the city's security, while insisting its actions are lawful and respectful.

"The value we place on privacy rights and other constitutional protections is part of what motivates the work of counterterrorism," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told city councilors recently. "It would be counterproductive in the extreme if we violated those freedoms in the course of our work to defend New York."

Among the prominent Muslims affected by intensified post-9/11 security is Jawad Khaki, who for 20 years was a globe-trotting executive with Microsoft Corp. before leaving in 2009 to found a nonprofit community group.

Starting in 2007, Khaki says he was subjected to intensive airport interrogations and searches each time he returned to the U.S. from abroad, including inspections of data on his smartphone. One customs agent advised him to cut back on his travels if he didn't like the hassles, he says.

Against the advice of his attorney, Khaki decided to go public with his dismay.

"It's not just about my individual rights ? it's about everybody's rights," said Khaki, a native of Tanzania who moved to the U.S. in 1985 and lives in the Seattle suburb of Sammamish.

"I chose to become an American citizen," he said. "One of my patriotic duties is to uphold the constitution, and the constitution is about justice and liberty for all."

___(equals)

ACLU: http://www.aclu.org/

Muslim Advocates report: http://bit.ly/rVFyN2

FBI: http://www.fbi.gov/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111119/ap_on_re_us/us_nypd_intelligence_brave_new_world

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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Fossilized skin shows predator's sharklike moves

More than 80 million years ago, a giant reptile called a mosasaur likely glided gracefully through the water with the help of tiny scales covering its tough skin, and a powerful tail to boot, suggests the soft-tissue remains of one such aquatic beast.

The fossilized pieces of mosasaur skin, discovered in Kansas in the 1950s but not analyzed thoroughly until now, give researchers a view of ancient lizard skin, inside and out. The marine animal's skin was pulled taut around the upper end of its body, which would have restricted its swimming motion to the lower half, they found.

"We previously had thought that they swam like snakes, that they used most of their body to make these undulating waves," study researcher Johan Lindgren, of Lund University in Sweden, told LiveScience "What we see is they are gradually pushing the part being used in swimming to the back." [ T-Rex of the Seas: A Mosasaur Gallery ]

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Moving mosasaurs
Mosasaurs include a group of swimming reptiles thought to have evolved from an ancient relative of the monitor lizard, which left the land and returned to the sea during the early Cretaceous Period. Then more than 90 million years ago, mosasaurs quickly evolved to life in the water and soon became a top predator throughout the world's seas. They died out with the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

In the fossilized skin samples, the researchers can see not only the animal's scales, but also imprints of the protein fibers that made up its skin. They saw that these fibers often crisscrossed, suggesting that at least this front half of the mosasaur's body was stiff.

Rather than slithering through the water like today's water snakes, by moving their vertebrae from side to side, this tough, taut skin indicates that the mosasaur used its tail to propel itself forward. As such, the animal would've moved more like modern sharks and whales than snakes.

"They [the mosasaurs] have, for 200 years, been reconstructed as these serpentine creatures," Lindgren said. "An emergence of evidence, including the stuff we found, indicates that they underwent the same kind of evolution as whales, and they became streamlined."

Fossilized skin
As a group, the mosasaurs varied from a little over 3 feet to almost 50 feet long. The fossilized skin and skeleton unearthed in Kansas in 1953 belonged to a mosasaur ? Ectenosaurus clidastoindes ? stretching some 16 feet in length, though only the front half of its body was discovered. It is a relatively primitive specimen and is estimated to be about 85 million years old.

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The fossils suggest the mosasaur's scales were less than a tenth of an inch long (only a few millimeters). These scales were oval-shaped and had a ridge along the middle to help them lock together, channel water, and also to provide an area for the skin to attach underneath.

"You could see the scales from both the outside and the inside. That's a first. On the inside they have special supportive structures that ? anchor to the soft tissue, and they provide a more efficient cover," Lindgren said. "The scales have a ridge on each scale that helps channel the water and provides a thin layer, you see the same thing in sharks today."

The study was published Nov. 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

? 2011 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45330711/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Friday, November 18, 2011

Today is Galaxy Nexus day in the UK

Shut up and take my money!

If you're in the UK and want to buy a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, you can now hand over your hard-earned cash and do just that -- with a few conditions. The phone is now available from brick-and-mortar Phones4U shops, as well as the retailer's online store. It seems Phones4U has been given a one week head-start on other vendors, however it's not selling the phone without a contract online -- you'll need to head in-store if you want a SIM-free Nexus.

Most retailers are now expecting to stock the ICS-powered Nexus next Tuesday or Wednesday -- Nov. 22/23. So if you're not up for committing to another 24-month contract, and aren't near a Phones4U store, you may have to endure another week with whatever smartphone is currently in your pocket.

If you are after a new contract, you'll be able to sign up for a variety of 18 to 24-month plans with Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange or O2 over on the Phones4U website (check the source link). Notably absent from the list is Three, which appears to be in the same boat as everyone else, shipping on the 22nd or 23rd. See the source link for more info.

Source: Phones4U



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/QfLC95ste6E/story01.htm

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Loss for Woods; Americans lead at Presidents Cup

U.S. golfer Tiger Woods, left, shakes hands with his former caddie Steve Williams after the Presidents Cup Golf Tournament at Royal Melbourne Golf Course in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. The handshake between Woods and Williams was routine. The loss by Woods and Steve Stricker turned out to be the real drama in the Presidents Cup. (AP Photo/David Callow)

U.S. golfer Tiger Woods, left, shakes hands with his former caddie Steve Williams after the Presidents Cup Golf Tournament at Royal Melbourne Golf Course in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. The handshake between Woods and Williams was routine. The loss by Woods and Steve Stricker turned out to be the real drama in the Presidents Cup. (AP Photo/David Callow)

U.S. team's Tiger Woods, left, walks past his former caddie Steve Williams, second right, on the 9th fairway during the Presidents Cup golf tournament at Royal Melbourne Golf Course in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. (AP Photo/David Callow)

Tiger Woods, back to camera, of the U.S. team shakes hands with his former caddie Steve Williams on the first tee during the first round of the Presidents Cup golf tournament at Royal Melbourne Golf Course in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Tiger Woods, left, of the U.S. team and his former caddie Steve Williams stand on the first tee during the first round of the Presidents Cup golf tournament at Royal Melbourne Golf Course, in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Dustin Johnson of the U.S. team hits out of the rough on the 10th hole during the first round of the Presidents Cup golf tournament at Royal Melbourne Golf Course, in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

(AP) ? Tiger Woods made the first move, reaching out to shake hands with his ex-caddie, that went a long way toward dousing the endless chatter over their acrimonious breakup.

Twelve holes later, as short a Presidents Cup match that has ever been played, Steve Williams had the last laugh.

In the 112 matches of various formats that Woods has played in his professional career, he never had a loss like this one. Playing again with Steve Stricker, an American tandem that was unbeatable two years ago, they didn't win a hole and didn't make a birdie in tying the Presidents Cup record for the worst loss ever, 7 and 6.

Adam Scott ? with Williams on his bag, kept his distance from Woods until they shook hands on the 12th green ? and K.J. Choi rarely missed a shot in piling up pars and more than enough birdies. The foursomes match ended with Scott rolling in a 25-foot birdie putt on the 11th, and stuffing his approach into 10 feet for Choi's birdie on their final hole.

"We were just slightly off," Woods said. "On a golf course like this, it doesn't take much."

The caddie squabble meant nothing to Scott, who has tried to stay out of the fray, even after Williams disparaged Woods with a racial comment while getting roasted at a caddies award dinner two weeks ago in Shanghai.

Woods didn't make too much of it, either.

"I put my hand out there to shake it, and life goes forward," he said. "There's some great things that Steve and I did, and that's how I look at it. I know he probably looks at it differently than I do, but hey ? life goes forward, and I'm very happy with what we've done in our career together."

That match was the biggest surprise on an opening day that featured a few unlikely twists at the end, with the Americans making two late rallies to halve matches for a 4-2 lead over the International team.

It was the third straight time the Americans have won the opening session.

"We are more excited than we were an hour-and-a-half before the day ended," U.S. captain Fred Couples said. "Our guys fought hard."

Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar, 3 down with seven holes to play, won the last two holes with pars to halve their match against the Aussie duo of Jason Day and Aaron Baddeley. Nick Watney and Bill Haas were 2 down with four holes to play and managed a halve against Geoff Ogilvy and Charl Schwartzel.

"My guys felt like they let a few matches slip away, no question about it," International captain Greg Norman said. "But they all understand. It's the game of golf. It does happen. Their heads are really held high. They are not worried about the next three days going forward. They all feel like they are playing extremely good golf."

The other matches were never close.

Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk, partners for the first time since the Ryder Cup in 1999, won five holes in a six-hole stretch for a 6-and-5 win over Retief Goosen; Bubba Watson and Webb Simpson were 7 under through 16 holes in a 4-and-2 win over Ernie Els and Ryo Ishikawa; and David Toms and Hunter Mahan took advantage of sloppy play by K.T. Kim and Y.E. Yang in a 4-and-3 win at Royal Melbourne.

But it was that last match that brought so much scrutiny ? first with the handshake, then with the way Scott and Choi slapped around an American team that had been 6-1 going into the Presidents Cup.

They were the last to tee off, and the second match to finish. That's how big this blowout was.

"K.J. and I didn't get it out of position today, which is a good thing on this golf course," Scott said. "We both played very well. They got out of position a couple of times, and they didn't play their best. Yeah, a good win. Because they were a tough team last time, took a lot of points off us. So it was pleasing to get one up there."

Stricker was playing for the first time since Sept. 25 at the Tour Championship because of a neck injury that weakened his left arm. He hooked a tee shot on the par-5 second that kept them from a birdie, though neither of them played well. It was Woods who put them in a bunker on the fifth, and whose tee shot went through the fairway and into an unplayable lie in a bush, both leading to bogeys during a key stretch early in the round when fell 4 down.

The only other match in Presidents Cup history that lasted 12 holes was in Sunday singles in 1996, when David Frost beat Kenny Perry.

Woods and Stricker started their partnership by winning six straight matches, though the last two were big losses ? 6 and 5 against Lee Westwood and Luke Donald at the Ryder Cup last year in Wales, and the 7-and-6 loss to Scott and Choi.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that while the Americans staked themselves to the 4-2 lead, their only loss ? and their weakest team ? was Woods and Stricker. Couples split them up for Friday's fourballs ? Woods with Johnson, Stricker with Kuchar, although that was the plan earlier in the week.

It will be the first time since the 2007 Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal that Woods has another partner besides Stricker.

The greater concern for the International team was making up yet another deficit. It led in five matches at some point during the opening session, and the Americans never led in three of the six matches.

The last match might have hurt the worst, with Aaron Baddeley hitting his tee shot into the right rough, leading to a second straight bogey, and Johnson holing a 6-foot par on the 18th to earn a half-point.

"There's no worse feeling than letting down your other 10 team members," Norman said. "Sometimes you feel worse for the player than the player feels for himself. These guys are trying their guts out to put points on the board and they were playing very, very well coming to the end of the day. It's just the way it played out, unfortunately for us."

Norman hopes a change in weather helps with his team's experience at Royal Melbourne. Storms are expected, along with a change in wind, forcing the matches to start Friday morning.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-11-17-GLF-Presidents-Cup/id-0e1cfd29bfa641d7b3c5688662720680

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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Big Finance Moves In - OpEd

Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have both been forced from office and replaced by representatives of big finance. Mario Monti, who will replace Berlusconi, was formerly the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a member of the Bilderberg Group. He is also listed on Goldman Sachs board of international advisers.

Lucas Papademos, who will replace Papandreou, was formerly the Vice President of the European Central Bank (ECB), and served as Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1980. He?s also been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998.

It?s also worth noting that the ECB?s new president, Mario Draghi, is a trustee at the Brookings Institution, a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a former member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and a former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.

Global banking is an incestuous business where pedigree is everything. One?s personal history indicates their commitment to the system and whether they can be trusted to implement the policies that directly benefit finance capital. This new group of so-called ?technocrats? will use their power to impose harsh austerity measures aimed at crushing the unions, dismantling the pension system, and privatizing public assets. Their belt-tightening policies will intensify the slump, shrink government revenues, increase unemployment and foment social unrest. As more of the eurozone?s leaders are replaced by bank hirelings, opposition to further eurozone integration will appear in the form of nationalist groups demanding a withdrawal from the 17-member monetary union. Peaceful protests will turn in pitched battles with police and state security forces as working people fight to have their voices heard. These confrontations will grow more commonplace as the economy deteriorates and desperation increases. Here?s an excerpt from an article in the World Socialist Web Site titled ?Greece and the Dictatorship of Finance?:

?The situation is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. Then, German Chancellor Heinrich Br?ning, a centrist politician, sought to impose the impact of the international financial and economic crisis on the population with drastic austerity measures. He ruled through emergency measures, relied on the powers of the president and the parliamentary support of social democracy, and suppressed opposition to his austerity policies with brutal police operations. Br?ning paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and their subsequent takeover of power.

The development in Greece is heading in the same direction. This follows inexorably from the logic of the ?government of national unity.? Declaring its austerity program to be an expression of supreme national interests, the government will denounce all resistance as treason to be forcibly suppressed.? (?Greece and the Dictatorship of Finance?, World Socialist Web Site)

Papademos and Monti have already pledged that they?ll faithfully execute the terms of their agreements with the Troika (The European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the ECB) even though austerity measures have failed wherever they?ve been implemented. Greece?s deficits have ballooned in the two years since Papandreou agreed to follow the EU?s hairshirt policies putting the country on the fasttrack to default. Unemployment has soared to a record 18.4 percent in August, up 2 percent in a matter of months. Even so, EU leaders remain stubbornly committed to the policies of economic strangulation. In other words: ?The beatings will continue until morale improves?.

In Italy, it?s more-of-the-same; contractionary policies that are only deepening the slump and adding to the misery. The austerity regime has no pro-growth component at all; there?s not a whiff of Keynesian stimulus to be found anywhere. Italy is expected to shrink its way back to health, a notion that flies in the face of basic economic theory and boggles the mind. Here?s an excerpt from the New York Times that outlines Italy?s cost-cutting program:

?The legislation includes selling $21 billion of state assets and increasing the retirement age to 67 from 65 by 2026. It also sets the stage for a liberalization of closed professions and labor laws, a gradual reduction in government ownership of local services and tax breaks for companies that hire young workers.? (New York Times)

The near-Depression on the EU periphery has led to a slowdown in the core countries and the prospect of another recession. Last week, the IMF released a report for the G-20 conference in Cannes stating:

?Recovery remains in low gear in major advanced economies with elevated risk of falling back into recession. Policy paralysis and incoherence have contributed to exacerbating uncertainty, a loss of confidence, and heightened financial market stress?all of which are inimical to demand rebalancing and global growth prospects.

Thus, understanding large imbalances within and across countries has taken on renewed importance. Policy makers need to move with a greater sense of urgency on reaching an agreement on policies that will reduce imbalances and lay the foundation for restoring the global economy to health.?

While the IMF is correct in pointing to the bulging account imbalances that are at the root of the present crisis (and not ?profligate spending or ?lazy Greeks? as many believe), their agents, who have been sent to Rome and Athens to monitor progress, are only adding to the seething resentment directed at the IMF, the ECB and Germany. Also?as a practical matter?slashing public spending in the middle of a downturn is a prescription for disaster as British PM David Cameron recently discovered. This is from Econbrowser:

?UK GDP grew by 0.5%? in Q3, but the position the economy is in is now officially worse than it was in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Add to this the weakening in the composite PMI survey for October (particularly the manufacturing report), also published this week, and escalating risks for a sharper euro area recession, and the stage possibly looks set for a much bleaker picture by the end of this year.? (?Has Austerity Brought a Boom in the UK??, Econbrowser)

And this is what?s going on in Spain according to the Financial Times blogsite:

?The economic recovery in Spain has ground to a complete halt. According to first estimates by INE, Spanish real GDP was unchanged in the third quarter (0.8% YoY), after growing a modest 0.2% QoQ in the second quarter. The outcome was less bad than had been suggested by lead indicators such as the purchasing managers? indices, but bang in line with the initial estimate of the Bank of Spain. No expenditure breakdown is available at this stage, but we suspect that a positive contribution from net exports was offset by a further contraction in domestic demand.

Looking ahead, we fear that the Spanish economy might slip into recession soon ? perhaps as soon as the current fourth quarter. Our base case scenario envisages no economic growth in 2012. The worsening economic outlook poses significant risks to Spain?s fiscal consolidation efforts.? (?The Pain in Spain?, FT.Alphaville)

In a report released on Monday,? the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirmed that all the world?s major economies?are heading for?a slowdown. According to Reuters: ?The Paris-based organization?s composite leading indicator (CLI) for its members fell for the seventh straight month to 100.4 in September? hitting the lowest reading since December 2009.?

So austerity has been a bust. Contractionary policies lead to retrenchment and recession, not fiscal expansion and recovery.(as many conservatives claim) In every case, austerity has added to deflationary pressures, increased turmoil in the credit markets, and shrunk GDP. Still, EU leaders refuse to adjust their policies so they?jibe with the data. In fact, the ECB now uses its bond purchasing program as a form of blackmail to ensure that their orders are strictly followed. Case in point: The ECB intervened in the bond market?on Friday (sending the yield on the Italian 10-year plunging) after suspending bond purchases for two full days during which yields skyrocketed above 7 percent.(?unsustainable? levels) The ECB?s absence from the market created an atmosphere of crisis which ultimately forced Berlusconi to resign and paved the way for the passing of the new austerity bill in the Italian parliament.

Regardless of how one may?feel?about Berlusconi, this?type political meddling is unacceptable. It just shows that the ECB is prepared to use its power to impose its own political vision of Europe on the member states and to force policymakers to comply with its dictates. The incident brings to mind a quote by Meyer Rothschild:

?Give me the right to issue and control a nation?s money and I care not who governs the country.? Leaders across Europe are just now beginning to grasp the ominous meaning of Rothschild?s words. By?surrendering?control of their currencies (and their ability to act as lender of last resort), they have inadvertently given up?their sovereignty.

Mario Draghi, a man who has never been elected to public office, is now arguably the most powerful man in Europe. So far, he appears to be less interested in ?price stability? or ?transmission of monetary policy? than he is with subverting the democratic process and conducting all-out class warfare.

So, where is Europe headed?

Professors Markus Br?ckner and Hans Peter Gr?ner have explored the relationship between economic crises and political extremism, and presented their findings in an article?titled ?The OECD?s growth prospects and political extremism.? Here?s an excerpt:

?Higher per capita GDP growth is significantly negatively linked to the support for extreme political positions. While estimates vary between specifications, we find that roughly a one percentage point decline in growth translates into a one percentage point higher vote share of right-wing or nationalist parties?.

Our results therefore make clear that countries should not expect right-wing parties to get majorities unless growth declines quite as much as in the 1920s. Nevertheless, even with a less significant fall in economic growth rates, a rise in support for extreme parties is likely to change political outcomes ? for example through their impact on incumbent parties? political platforms?.

Our results lend support to Benjamin Friedman?s view that economic growth determines the direction in which a democracy develops. This also implies that solving Europe?s growth problem may have important consequences that lie outside the purely economic sphere.? (?The OECD?s growth prospects and political extremism?, VOX EU)

If Professors Br?ckner and Gr?ner are right, then we can expect to see a steady rise in right wing groups sprouting up in countries across the south. Their popularity, in large part, will depend on their ability to rekindle nationalism and to?pin the ongoing depression on the troika?s policies. If they succeed, then their ranks will swell and their demands ?of an immediate withdrawal from the?17-member monetary union?and?a restoration of national sovereignty?will?lead to a splintering or, perhaps, breakup of the eurozone.

About the author:

Mike Whitney

Mike Whitney writes on politics and finances and lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Source: http://www.eurasiareview.com/15112011-big-finance-moves-in-oped/

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