quarta-feira, 25 de fevereiro de 2015

Cientistas Ambientalistas admitem: Não há Aquecimento Global, nem vai ter em pelo menos 5 anos.


Pois é, 2014 foi declarado o ano mais quente da história, mas os dados eram falsos (como eu falei aqui) e mesmos os dados oficiais não aprovavam esta declaração (probabilidade abaixo de 50%). Nem muito menos os satélites que medem a temperatura da Terra.

Vejam agora o que revela o Daily Caller:

Study Predicts Another 5 Years Without Global Warming


U.K. scientists are saying the so-called “pause” in global warming could continue to the end of the decade. But scientists warned of accelerated temperature rises once the global warming hiatus has ended.

For the last 15 years, global surface temperatures have not been rising nearly as fast as most climate models predicted — a period called the “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming. Scientists have offered dozens of explanations for the warming hiatus, and now U.K. scientists are saying the 15-year pause could go on for at least another five years.

Scientists with the U.K.’s Met Office, the country’s top climate agency, and the University of Exeter report there is a 25 percent chance the hiatus in warming could go on for another 5 years, and a 10 percent chance warming could be on pause for another 10 years. The study found a less than 1 percent chance of another 20 years with little to no warming.

“[W]e should not be surprised if the current hiatus continues until the end of the decade,” U.K. scientists wrote in their paper. But scientists cautioned that there “is an increased likelihood of accelerated global warming associated with release of heat from the sub-surface ocean and a reversal of the phase of decadal variability in the Pacific Ocean.”

Scientists have struggled to explain why the world has not warmed to the extent initially predicted by climate models. There has been a rapidly growing disparity in the last 15 to 20 years between what climate models predicted and what observed temperature records have shown.

Satellite records show there has been no warming for more than 18 years. Satellites measure the lowest few miles of the atmosphere, not land and ocean surface temperatures. But scientists skeptical of global warming have used them to show warming has not been as extreme as government officials and environmentalists claimed.

For example, 2014 was declared the warmest year on record by government climate agencies, but satellite datasets show it was between the third and the sixth warmest years on record.

“2014 was warm, but not special,” said John Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where one of the major satellite datasets is housed. “The 0.01 degree Celsius difference between 2014 and 2005, or the 0.02 difference with 2013 are not statistically different from zero. That might not be a very satisfying conclusion, but it is at least accurate.

Increasingly, scientists are saying carbon dioxide emissions that would have warmed the atmosphere have been absorbed into the world’s oceans, causing temperatures to rise and the water to become more acidic.

Scientists, including the authors of the U.K. study, argue that if this heat is released it could accelerate global warming.

A recent study published in the journal Nature found that most of the excess heat is trapped in the tropical southern oceans. The study found that the top 1,600 feet of ocean water warmed 0.009 degrees Fahrenheit. The next 4,000 feet warmed just 0.0036 degrees since 2006.

But the data also shows that the ocean is able to absorb lots of carbon dioxide, or heat, without experiencing much of a temperature increase.


(Agradeço o texto do Daily Caller ao site Weasel Zippers)

quinta-feira, 19 de fevereiro de 2015

Dono do Nutella: Riqueza e Fé.



O dono das marcas Nutella, Tic Tacs e Ferrero Rocher, o italiano Michele Ferrero, faleceu no último dia 14 de fevereiro (que Deus o tenha). Li alguns textos sobre ele e todos lembraram a devoção que ele tinha a Nossa Senhora de Lourdes. Ele chegou a declarar que devia o sucesso dele à Nossa Senhora de Lourdes e todo ano visitava o santuário de Lourdes.

Mas hoje li um texto muito bom que fala de Michele e complementa com um debate sobre a relação riqueza e fé.

O texto é de Dawn Carpenter, disponível no site Catholic Stand.

Vejam parte do texto:

Michele Ferrero: What Does It Mean to Be Rich?

 • February 19, AD2015 
For some, the answer to the question “what does it mean to be rich?” is revealed every year in the Forbes magazine list of the World’s Billionaires.  This list ranks the richest people on the planet, and in 2014, their collective wealth exceeded $6.4 trillion USD.  Of those on the list in 2014, roughly 66% built their own fortunes, and 21% added to their existing wealth.  The remaining 13% people on the list inherited their wealth.  For the man in the number 22 spot on the Forbes 2014 Billionaires List, the answer might have been a bit different.  That man is Michele Ferrero, Italy’s richest man.
On Valentine’s Day 2015, the world said good-bye to the 89 year old father of Italian chocolate, Michele Ferrero.  He leaves behind a family business that is responsible for bringing the world Nutella, Mon Cheri, Tic Tacs and Ferrero Rocher, among other iconic confectionery brands.  With an estimated net worth of approximately $26.5 billion USD, we would arguably call Michele Ferrero rich.  He would likely agree.  But what must be said about Michele Ferrero is that his faith teaches that wealth means so much more

Faith is the Secret of Ferrero’s Success

Really, it was no secret.  Michele Ferrero was a man of faith.  His was a Catholic faith, and it was very much a part of both his personal and professional life.  In 1996, at the 50th Anniversary of the founding of Ferrero, Michele Ferrero was quoted as saying: “The success of Ferrero we owe to Our Lady of Lourdes, without her we can do little.”
Without knowing this famously private man, we can see his faith through his actions.  Michele was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family and educated as a young man by the Somaschi Fathers.  Shortly after World War II, the Ferrero family founded their chocolate business with an eye toward equity and sustainability well before these business notions were in vogue.
When Michele took over the family business upon the death of his uncle Giovanni 58 years ago, it is reported that he wrote a letter to his employees stating “I pledge myself to devote all my activities and all my effort to this company.  And I assure you that I shall only feel satisfied when I have managed, with concrete results, to guarantee you and your children a safe and tranquil future.”
Michele was a leader.  This commitment lead to free healthcare and other welfare services—resulting in productive dedicated workers.  Michele’s commitment to his workers is legendary, and he was quoted as once saying: “My only concern is that the company is increasing solid and strong to guarantee all workers a secure place.”  Today, Ferrero’s over 34,000 employees produce iconic brands that are sold in over 53 countries around the world.

Wealth and Faith are Connected

One of the most famous discourses on wealth is given to us in Matthew 19:16-21.  This is the story where Jesus instructs the young man, who has inquired about how to obtain eternal life, to keep the commandments.  When the young man presses further by insisting that he observes the commandments, Jesus explains that if he wishes to be perfect, he must “go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.”  The Gospel goes on the say that the young man was saddened by this response because he had many possessions.  Then addressing his disciples, Jesus said: “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
It is clear from the words of Jesus that the issues of faith and wealth belong together.  The notions of faith and wealth are elevated to theological issues by their very nexus to the plan and promise of salvation.  Justo Gonzalez, in Faith and Wealth, opines that not one of the Fathers of the Church as held that the issue of faith and wealth should be held separate.  In his analysis of the issue, Gonzalez notes the remarkable unanimity among the Fathers as evidence by the similar themes that they draw from Scripture and the similar emphasis they find from the classical wisdom of Greece and Rome.

A Spiritual Understanding of Wealth

Wealth is often best understood by defining its opposite: poverty.  Simply stated, poverty is the state in which you have no more than you need.  And if one is poor in the fully Christian sense, you wish for no more than you need.  Using this definition, we understand both the physical (what one has) and the spiritual (what one desires) dimensions of the wealth/poverty dichotomy.  Through deduction, then you can assert that wealth is having more than you need and still being unsatisfied.
St. Clement of Alexandria, in Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved, was one of the earliest Church Fathers to expressly address an allegorical interpretation of the notions of wealth and poverty.  However, this dual (physical and spiritual) understanding of the definition of wealth and poverty has long been a part of Tradition.  Walter Shewring in Rich and Poor in Christian Tradition reminds us that in the Psalms, “it may be said that the word ‘poor’ is extended beyond its common significance to mean anyone, of whatever status, who is in distress of any kind, material or spiritual; that David himself, for instance, calls himself ‘poor and needy’ in spite of much outward prosperity.”
In The Instructor, St. Clement of Alexandria defines “true wealth” as something that resides in the heart.  A rich person, piling up gold for no purpose save his own pleasure is “like a dirty purse.”  He reminds us that only good people possess good things.  These things are the source of genuine wealth and can never be taken away.  He notes that:  “If a man abstains form desiring thing that are beyond his reach but possesses by asking from God the things he desire in a holy way, is not that man abundantly wealthy, and indeed possesses of all things, since he has God as his everlasting treasure?”

From Wealth Comes Responsibility

St. Gregory of Nazianzen explains in On the Love of the Poor one of the most direct and hopeful lessons for the wealthy when he says in that treatise: “Give thanks to God that you are among those who can do favors and not among those who need to receive them; that you need not look up to the hands of others but others to yours.  Do not be rich only in your wealth but also in your piety; not only in your gold but also in your virtue, or better still, only in the latter.”
What Can the Church and Michele Ferrero Teach us About Being Rich?
Christianity requires social solidarity.  No matter how challenging, even the poor must think of their neighbors—and the wealthy carry a heavier burden.  In his Homily on Lazarus and the Rich Man, St. John Chrysostom warns that anything less is not real Christianity: “he who lives for himself only and overlooks all others, is useless.  He is not even a man and he does not belong to the human race.”
Using this standard, Michele Ferrero was a man larger than life.  He was a man who lived his faith and who lived for others.  Giving people the opportunity for work provided for a richness measured in currency, spirituality and chocolate—arguably a richness that far exceeds what can be measured on theForbes list.
(Agradeço o texto ao site New Advent)

segunda-feira, 16 de fevereiro de 2015

HSBC, Adam Smith, Companhia das Índias, Ópio, Guerra, Terrorismo,...Ufa.


O foco principal do texto é a participação do HSBC na lavagem de dinheiro do tráfico de drogas. Mas conta a longa história do tráfico do ópio e com isso inúmeros personagens "ilustres". O relato do GreatgameIndia é impressionante. Deveria ser um livro mais compassada, poderia assim se tornar mais crível.

Em todo caso, é verdade que a lógica do tráfico de drogas gerou e gera muito dinheiro para bancos e governos. Meus amigos que idolatram o capitalismo, deviam ser cientes do que acontece quando a busca por lucro anda solta sem qualquer moral para evitar suas desgraças.

O texto cita inclusive como o idolatrado Adam Smith entra incentivando esta o tráfico do ópio, além de "ilustres" banqueiros.


HSBC Bank : Secret Origins To 26/11 Mumbai Attacks
#SwissLeaks what the media has termed it is a trove of secret documents from HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm that reveals names of account holders and their balances for the year 2006-07. They come from over 200 countries, the total balance over $100 billion. But nowhere has the HSBC Swiss list touched off a more raging political debate than in India.
That’s why to obtain and investigate the Indian names, The Indian Express partnered in a three-month-long global project with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the Paris-based Le Monde newspaper. The investigation revealed 1,195 Indian HSBC clients, roughly double the 628 names that French authorities gave to the Government in 2011. The new revelation— published as part of a global agreement — is expected to significantly widen the scale and scope of the ongoing probe by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court.
For years, when banks have been caught laundering drug money, they have claimed that they did not know, that they were but victims of sneaky drug dealers and a few corrupt employees. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that a considerable portion of the global banking system is explicitly dedicated to handling the enormous volume of cash produced daily by dope traffickers.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is not “demand” from the world’s population which creates the mind destroying drug trade. Rather, it is the world financial oligarchy, looking for massive profits and the destruction of the minds of the population it is determined to dominate, which organized the drug trade. The case of HSBC underscores that point. Serving as the central bank of this global apparatus, is HSBC.
ast India Company Origins
The opium trade began in the early 1700s as an official monopoly of the British East India Company, which conquered India, and ran it on behalf of the British Crown and the financiers operating through the City of London. Indian-grown opium became a key component in the trade for tea and silk in China.  The East India Company had a thriving business selling British textiles and other manufactured products in India, and selling Chinese silk and tea in Britain. But the Company ran into problems with the opium end of the trade. The influx of opium caused major problems for China, and led the Emperor to issue an edict in 1729 prohibiting opium consumption. Then, in 1757, the Emperor restricted all foreigners and foreign vessels to a trading area in the port city of Canton. A stronger edict in 1799 prohibited the importation and use of opium under penalty of death.
None of this stopped the British from continuing to flood China with opium, creating millions of addicts, but it did cause the East India Company to protect its tea and silk trade by shifting its Chinese opium operations to nominally independent drug runners who bought opium legally from the East India Company in Calcutta, and smuggled it into China. The most prominent of these drug-running firms was Jardine Matheson & Co. It was founded in 1832 by two Scotsmen, William Jardine and James Matheson.  Jardine had been a ship’s surgeon with the East India Company, while Matheson was the son of a Scottish baronet. The firm today is controlled by the Keswick family. In 1839, the Chinese Emperor launched an anti-opium offensive, which included the confiscation of all opium stocks in the hands of Chinese and foreign merchants. The merchants put up a fight, but were ultimately forced to concede, turning in their opium stocks after being indemnified against losses by British officials.
In response, however, the British launched a propaganda campaign against China, accusing it of violating Britain’s right to “free trade.” Britain sent its fleet to China, to force the Chinese to capitulate to the opium trade. The action, known as the First Opium War, resulted in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, under which China not only capitulated to the opium trade, but also agreed to pay reparations to the opium runners and gave the British control of the island of Hong Kong. However, the treaty did not specifically legalize opium, so the British launched a second Opium War, which resulted in the 1856 Treaty of Tientsin, which legitimized the opium trade and opened China up to foreigners even more.
As the opium and other trade with China expanded, Britain’s new territory of Hong Kong became a major imperial commercial center. The opium dealers gathered together to form a bank, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, as the financial flagship of the British opium trade. Over time, the bank—now known as HSBC—would extend its reach into the drug fields of the Middle East and Ibero-America, as befitting its role as the financial kingpin of Dope, Inc.
Role of Secret Societies
In 1783 Lord Shelbourne launched the Chinese opium trade with Scottish merchants from the East India Company and members of the House of Windsor-allied Knights of St. John Jerusalem.
Shelbourne’s chief propagandist was Adam Smith who worked for East India Company, which emerged from the slave-trading Levant Company and later became known as Chatham House, home to the powerful Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA). In 1776 the high seas pirate Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, which became the bible of international capitalism.
In the Far East the British organized the Chinese Triad Society, also known as the Society of Heaven and Earth, to smuggle their opium.  Beginning in 1788 the Freemason Grand Lodge of England established lodges in China, one of which was the Triad Society.  Another was known as the Order of the Swastika.
In 1839 William Jardine- a Canton-based opium trafficker- steered Britain into the first Opium War after Chinese officials confiscated his stash. The second Opium War lasted from 1858-1860.  Lord Palmerston commanded both expeditions for the Brits.  He was also the High Priest of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the British Empire.
Throughout the 19th century the British families of Matheson, Keswick, Swire, Dent, Inchcape, Baring and Rothschild controlled the Chinese heroin traffic.  The Inchcape’s and Baring’s Peninsular & Orient Steam Navigation Company (PONC) transported the dope around the world.
To the US West Coast, the families brought Chinese coolies to build JP Morgan’s railroads, slave laborers who were kidnapped (shanghaied) by the Triads.  The Triads came along too, setting up opium dens in San Francisco and Vancouver and using a network of Chinatowns as a channel for heroin.  This network exists today.  To the US East Coast the families brought African slaves and cotton.  These same families built plantations and became kings of southern cotton on the backs of shanghaied Africans.
The American families Perkins, Astor and Forbes made millions off the opium trade.  The Perkins’ founded Bank of Boston, which is today known as Credit Suisse First Boston.  The Perkins and Morgan families endowed Harvard University.  William Hathaway Forbes was a director at Hong Kong Shanghai Bank shortly after it was founded in 1866.  John Murray Forbes was the US agent for the Barings banking family, which financed most of the early drug trade.  The Forbes family heirs later launched Forbes magazine. Steve Forbes ran for President in 1996.  John Jacob Astor invested his opium proceeds in Manhattan real estate and worked for British intelligence.  The Astor family home in London sits opposite Chatham House.
These families launched the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC) after the second Opium War as a repository for their opium proceeds.  HSBC, a subsidiary of the London-based HSBC Holdings, today prints 75% of Hong Kong’s currency, while the British Cecil Rhodes-founded Standard Chartered Bank prints the rest.  HSBC’s Hong Kong headquarters sits next to a massive Masonic Temple.
Freemasonry is a highly secretive society, making it an ideal vehicle for global drugs and arms trafficking.  According to 33rd Degree Mason Manly Hall, “Freemasonry is a fraternity within a fraternity – an outer organization concealing an inner brotherhood of the elect…the one visible and the other invisible.  The visible society is a splendid camaraderie of ‘free and accepted’ men enjoined to devote themselves to ethical, educational, fraternal, patriotic and humanitarian concerns.  The invisible society is a secret and most august fraternity whose members are dedicated to the service of an arcanum arcandrum (sacred secret).”
Wealth derived from selling this Chinese opium during British colonial rule, helped build many landmarks on India’s west coast. The Mahim Causeway, The Sir JJ School of Art, David Sassoon Library and Flora Fountain, landmarks in modern Mumbai, were built by prominent Parsi and Jewish traders from profits made by a flourishing opium and later cotton trade with China.
Prominent families from Mumbai’s past, names that adorn today’s famous institutions such as the Wadia’s, Tata’s, Jejeebhoy’s, Readymoney’s, Cama’s and Sassoon’s sold opium to China through the British. By the end of the nineteenth century, when the opium trade went bust, cotton from India’s western state of Gujarat, which had already developed strong trade links with Canton profited. The Paris’s ploughed profits from the trade with the Chinese back into India, setting up several schools, hospitals and banks. Historical records prove that some of India’s prominent Parsi traders at the time, were founders of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) founded in 1865. For a detailed report read Rothschild colonization of India.
It is this deadly opium empire that Gandhiji was very much conscious about and spoke out against for which he was jailed in 1921 by India’s British rulers for “undermining the revenue”. Having seen generations of Chinese youths rendered docile and passive Gandhijis was concerned over opium and its deadly effects on India which is clear from his letters. These opium production activities ran until 1924 in India and were stopped with the heroic efforts of Mahatma Gandhi who first agitated to remove opium production from India and destruction of China using Indian soil. Finally the British transferred the entire production to Afghanistan in 1924 handing the production to southern Afghani tribals which after 90 years became the golden crescent of opium production. Though the production is in the hands of Afghan tribals the distribution finance market control is still exercised by the same old British business houses or their proxies.
Afghan Opium for Bankers and Terrorists
There is a general impression that Afghanistan has always been the center of opium production. In fact, it has not. Prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979, opium production in Afghanistan was less than 1,000 tons; that grew to 8,200 tons (based on conservative UN Office on Drugs and Crime/UNODC figures) in 2008. Throughout this period, Afghanistan was in a state of war. Following the Soviet invasion, the anti-Soviet powers, particularly, the US, UK, and Saudi Arabia, began generating larger amounts of drug money to finance much of the war to defeat the Soviets. Since 1989, after the Soviet withdrawal, there has been an all-out civil war in Afghanistan, as the US-UK-Saudi-created mujahideen dipped further into the opium/heroin money.
What was happening in Afghanistan during this period that caused opium production to soar to those levels? History shows that the US invasion in 2001 came close to wiping out the Taliban forces; the Afghan people, at least at that point in time, because of the Pakistani-Saudi links to the Taliban and the oppressive nature of the Wahhabi-indoctrinated regime, supported the invading American and NATO forces. That began to change in 2005.
The year 2005 is important in this context, since one of the most damning parts of the US Senate report details HSBC’s relationship with the Saudi-based Al Rajhi Bank, a member of Osama bin Laden’s “Golden Chain” of important al-Qaeda financiers. The HSBC-Al Rajhi relationship has spanned decades; perhaps that is why, even when HSBC’s own internal compliance offices asked that it be terminated in 2005, and even when the US government discovered hard evidence of Al Rajhi’s relationship with terrorism, HSBC continued to do business with the bank until 2010.
In fact, the report said, Al Rajhi’s links to terrorism were confirmed in 2002, when US agents searched the offices of a Saudi non-profit US-designated terrorist organization, Benevolence International Foundation. In that raid, agents uncovered a CD-ROM listing the names of financiers in bin Laden’s Golden Chain. One of those names was Sulaiman bin Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, a founder of Al Rajhi bank.
Recently an operation by German Customs official revealed that the British Queen financed Osama Bin Laden. German officials in an operation raided two containers passing through Hamburg Port and seized 14,000 documents establishing that Osama bin Laden was funded by UK Queen’s bank Coutts, which is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
HSBC & 26/11 Mumbai Attacks
Why did HSBC not terminate its links with the Al Rajhi in 2005? The answer lies in what was then put in place in Afghanistan to generate large amounts of cash. When it comes to opium/ heroin and offshore banks, Britain rules supreme. In 2005, poppy fields in southern Afghanistan began to bloom, and it became evident to the bankers and the geo-politicians of Britain and the US that cash to support the financial centers and the terrorists could be made right there.
It was announced on Jan. 27, 2006 in the British Parliament that a NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would be replacing the US troops in Helmand province as part of Operation Herrick. The British 16 Air Assault Brigade would make up the core of the force. British bases were then located in the districts of Sangin, Lashkar Gah, and Gereshk.
As of Summer 2006, Helmand was one of the provinces involved in Operation Mountain Thrust, a combined NATO/Afghan mission targeted at Taliban fighters in the south of the country. In July 2006, the offensive essentially stalled in Helmand, as NATO (primarily British) and Afghan troops were forced to take increasingly defensive positions under heavy insurgent pressure. In response, British troop levels in the province were increased, and new encampments were established in Sangin and Gereshk. In Autumn 2006, some 8,000 British troops began to reach “cessation of hostilities” agreements with local Taliban forces around the district centers where they had been stationed earlier in the Summer, and it is then that drug-money laundering began in earnest.
This drug money, at least a good part of it, is generated in this area with the help of Dawood Ibrahim, who also played a role in helping the Mumbai attackers by giving them the use of his existing network in Mumbai. At the time, Ibrahim worked on behalf of the British, and ran his operation through the British-controlled emirate of Dubai. Drugs came into Dubai through Dawood’s “mules,” protected by the Pakistani ISI and British MI6; the dope was shipped in containers which carried equipment sent there for “repair” from Kandahar and elsewhere in southern Afghanistan. British troops controlled Helmand province, where 53% of Afghanistan’s gargantuan 8,200 tons of opium was produced in 2007.
The drugs were converted, and still are today, to cash in Dubai, where Dawood maintains a palatial mansion, similar to the one he maintains in Karachi. Dubai is a tax-free island-city, and a major offshore banking center. The most common reason for opening an offshore bank account is the flexibility that comes with it.
With the development of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), which is the latest free-trade zone to be set up there, flexible and unrestricted offshore banking has become big business. Many of the world’s largest banks already have significant presence in Dubai – big names such as Abbey National Offshore, HSBC Offshore, ABN Amro, ANZ Grindlays, Banque Paribas, Banque de Caire, Barclays, Dresdner, and Merrill Lynch, all have offices in the Emirate already.
In addition to Dubai, most of the offshore banks are located in former British colonies, and all of them are involved in money laundering. In other words, the legitimization of cash generated from drug sales and other smuggled illegitimate goods into the “respectable banks” is the modus operandi of these offshore banks. The drugs that Dawood’s mules carry are providing a necessary service for the global financial system, as well as for the terrorists who are killing innocents all over the world.
In December of 2007, this Britain-run drug-money-laundering and terrorist-networking operation was about to be exposed when Afghan President Hamid Karzai learned that two British MI6 agents were working under the cover of the United Nations and the European Union behind his back, to finance and negotiate with the Taliban. He expelled them from Afghanistan. One of them, a Briton, Michael Semple, was the acting head of the EU mission in Afghanistan and is widely known as a close confidant of Britain’s Ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. Semple now masquerades as an academic analyst of Afghanistan, and was associated with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center. The second man, an Irishman, Mervin Patterson, was the third-ranking UN official in Afghanistan at the time that he was summarily expelled.
These MI6 agents were entrusted by London with the task of using Britain’s 7,700 troops in the opium-infested, Pushtun-dominated, southern province of Helmand to train 2,000 Afghan militants, ostensibly to “infiltrate” the enemy and “seek intelligence” about the lethal arms of the real Taliban. Karzai rightly saw it as Britain’s efforts to develop a lethal group within Afghanistan, a new crop of terrorists.
The drug money thus generated to fund the financial centers and terrorists through HSBC was also responsible for ongoing terrorist attacks that have destabilized most of South Asia. The most important of these was the massive attack on Mumbai.
The mode used to launder such drug money is through diamonds. A 2003 Report assessed various alternative financing mechanisms that could be used to facilitate money laundering and or terrorist financing. Trading in commodities, remittance systems, and currency were assessed on each of their abilities to earn, be moved, and store value. Diamonds were the only alternative financial device that fit into all of these assessment criteria.
Diamonds can be vulnerable for misuse for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes because they can transfer value and ownership quickly, often, with a minimal audit trail. They provide flexibility and an easy transportation of value.
Top diamond traders of the country, several of whom are now settled abroad, figure on what the media calls as the #SwissList, with mostly Mumbai addresses given. Many persons on the list are Gujarati diamond merchants with offices all over world having roots in Palanpur.
However their involvement in not just limited to money laundering. Almost 6 months before 26/11 2008 Mumbai Attacks the Financial Intelligence Unit of India (FIU-IND) (the central national agency responsible for receiving, processing, analyzing and disseminating information relating to suspect financial transactions) was already tracking the diamond industry for suspicious activities by terrorists.
“A year ago, some people from Mumbai began purchasing diamonds worth crores of rupees. When the industry tried to trace the traders, they turned out to be non-existent,” said Vanani.
The FIU traced all foreign transactions of Surat’s diamond industry, especially those emanating from Belgium. It found that a great deal of money was being invested by terrorist groups.
However in May 2014 eight of these Belgium based diamond dealers were given a clean chit by the Income Tax department in the black money case. The I-T department said a probe was initiated against the eight individuals, but there was no proof of tax evasion by them. Why is the Government reluctant in disclosing Black Money related data; be it NDA and even UPA before it ? For a detailed report on the issue read 26/11 – The Black Money Trail.
From the Far East to the Middle East to Ibero-America to India, everywhere the drug trade is flourishing, you will find HSBC. It may not handle the dope, but it does handle the money, making sure that the “citizens above suspicion” who run the empire get their cut of the proceeds.  Now HSBC has been caught red-handed laundering money in the U.S., India, China, Argentina almost everywhere the sun shined through the colonies. This is a bank which has abused us, assaulted our people, and violated the law with abandon. Isn’t it time we set an example and revoke its charter to do business here in India ?


(Agradeço o texto ao site Zero Hedge)

segunda-feira, 9 de fevereiro de 2015

O Maior Escândalo Científico do Aquecimento Global


O site mais lido dos Estados Unidos (Drudge Report) chamou do maior escândalo de todos na pesquisa científica sobre Aquecimento Global, que saiu no jornal The Telegraph.

Certa vez, eu escrevi um artigo reunindo todos os escândalos científicos sobre este assunto, ainda precisa ser publicado.

Vejam o novo escândalo:

The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever

New data shows that the “vanishing” of polar ice is not the result of runaway global warming


When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.
Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.
This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.
Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.
Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded. This has surprised no one more than Traust Jonsson, who was long in charge of climate research for the Iceland met office (and with whom Homewood has been in touch). Jonsson was amazed to see how the new version completely “disappears” Iceland’s “sea ice years” around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.
One of the first examples of these “adjustments” was exposed in 2007 by the statistician Steve McIntyre, when he discovered a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen, the scientist (later turned fanatical climate activist) who for many years ran Giss. Hansen’s original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since. But as Homewood reveals in his blog post, “Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history”, Giss has turned this upside down. Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years.
Homewood’s interest in the Arctic is partly because the “vanishing” of its polar ice (and the polar bears) has become such a poster-child for those trying to persuade us that we are threatened by runaway warming. But he chose that particular stretch of the Arctic because it is where ice is affected by warmer water brought in by cyclical shifts in a major Atlantic current – this last peaked at just the time 75 years ago when Arctic ice retreated even further than it has done recently. The ice-melt is not caused by rising global temperatures at all.
Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record – for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained – has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.

quarta-feira, 4 de fevereiro de 2015

Mundo está mais Endividado que Antes da Crise de 2008



Texto alarmante do Financial Times, e as instituições de controle financeiro global, como FMI, Banco Mundial e Federal Reserve (e mesmo os jornais especializados como o próprio Financial Times), não podem alegar inocência.

 Leiam todo texto no site, aqui vai apenas parte do texto.


Debt mountains spark fears of another crisis


The world is awash with more debt than before the global financial crisis erupted in 2007, with China’s debt relative to its economic size now exceeding US levels, according to a report.

Global debt has increased by $57tn since 2007 to almost $200tn — far outpacing economic growth, calculates McKinsey & Co, the consultancy. As a share of gross domestic product, debt has risen from 270 per cent to 286 per cent.

McKinsey’s survey of debt across 47 countries — illustrated in an FT interactive graphic — highlights how hopes that the turmoil of the past eight years would spur widespread “deleveraging” to safer levels of indebtedness were misplaced. The report calls for “fresh approaches” to preventing future debt crises.

“Overall debt relative to gross domestic product is now higher in most nations than it was before the crisis,” McKinsey reports. “Higher levels of debt pose questions about financial stability.”

Overall, almost half of the increase in global debt since 2007 was in developing economies, but a third was the result of higher government debt levels in advanced economies. Households have also increased debt levels across economies — the most notable exceptions being crisis-hit countries such as Ireland and the US.

...

China’s total debt, including the financial sector, has nearly quadrupled since 2007 to the equivalent of 282 per cent of GDP. That was higher than in the US — although China is lower if financial sector debt is excluded to avoid double counting. McKinsey warns of risks in China’s property sector, local government financing and a rapidly expanding “shadow” banking system.

The country’s overall debt “appears manageable”, McKinsey says, but its indebtedness would restrict its ability to compensate for slower long-term growth in advanced economies.
“Before the [post-2007] crisis there was one area where debt was very low and stable, and that was China,” says Luigi Buttiglione, head of global strategy at hedge fund Brevan Howard and co-author of a report in September on global indebtedness. “When there was a crisis in the west, China could lever up. Now that is not the case.”

“Before the [post-2007] crisis there was one area where debt was very low and stable, and that was China,” says Luigi Buttiglione, head of global strategy at hedge fund Brevan Howard and co-author of a report in September on global indebtedness. “When there was a crisis in the west, China could lever up. Now that is not the case.”

The report is likely to fuel debates among economists about what is an appropriate level of debt in an economy. McKinsey argues much of the expansion in developing countries has reflected the healthy development of financial markets, but in advanced economies high debt could constrain growth and create fresh financial vulnerabilities.

...

McKinsey’s conclusions echo warnings by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, which acts as a think-tank for central bankers. BIS research had found that “when private sector credit-to-GDP ratios are significantly above their long-term trend, banking strains are likely to follow within three years”, Jaime Caruana, BIS general manager, said in a speech late last year.


domingo, 1 de fevereiro de 2015

Auschwitz - Prisioneiro 4859



Que história fantástica, leiam sobre Witold Pilecki, o homem que se voluntariou para Auschwitz, e for morto pelos comunistas. Que vida, que exemplo!


Aqui vai apenas parte do texto, leiam todo no site do The Atlantic.

The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz


WARSAW -- There are very few places that can accurately be described as hell on Earth. One of these is the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, where as many as 1.5 million people died during the five years the camp was in operation.
The Polish resistance had been hearing horrific first- or second-hand accounts about the conditions inside Auschwitz. These early accounts came primarily from released prisoners, but also from casual observers like railway employees and residents of the nearby village of Oswiecim. The resistance decided they needed someone on the inside.
It is into this environment that Witold Pilecki, a 39-year old veteran of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 who fought against the initial Nazi invasion and a member of the Polish resistance, volunteered himself in 1940. Pilecki's mission was to allow himself to be arrested and, once inside Auschwitz, to collect intelligence for the Polish resistance in the country and the government-in-exile in London, and to organize a resistance from inside the camp.
"I think he knew, he realized what he was getting himself into," said Jacek Pawlowicz, a historian at Poland's Institute of National Remembrance. "But even so, he was not prepared for the things he was actually able to witness."
During the next three years, Pilecki was involved in one of the most dangerous intelligence-gathering and resistance operations of the war. He authored three reports about life inside the camp for the Polish resistance. During his incarceration, Pilecki witnessed from the inside Auschwitz's transformation from a detention facility for political prisoners and Soviet soldiers into one of the Nazis' deadliest killing machines.
An English translation of Pilecki's third and most comprehensive report -- a primary source for this article -- was recently published as a book titled The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery . It is a fascinating first-hand account of virtually all aspects of life inside the camp. The original document is in the custody of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London.
"He was there in all of Auschwitz's worst periods, because he arrived at the moment when the camp was being created and was there until [1943]," Pawlowicz explained. "So while there he saw the camp growing, he saw [Birkenau] being built -- where the ovens were. But the ovens were not only in [Birkenau], there were gas chambers and crematoria on the territory of Auschwitz I."
Pilecki's family was kept out of the loop regarding his activities for security reasons. His son Andrzej Pilecki recalls, "There was secrecy because of the danger, so that the children would know as little as possible. But I felt something. My father was in Warsaw. We were 100 kilometers away. We came to visit him sometimes and my father would teach us how to behave during the occupation."
Pilecki began preparations for his mission in the late summer of 1940. While staying at a safehouse, he found identity papers belonging to a man named Tomasz Serafinski, who was erroneously presumed killed in September of 1939. Because the Nazis asked for the names and addresses of inmates and their relatives as a method to keep the population under control, Pilecki wisely decided not to give his real name or those of his immediate family. Pilecki placed his photograph on Serafinski's papers and memorized his details. His plan was to be arrested and booked under the Serafinski alias.As he was saying goodbye to Ostrowska, he quietly whispered to her, "Report that I have fulfilled the order."


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Continue lendo no The Atlantic.