Greece Considering Legal Action Against U.S. Banks for Crisis

May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Greece is considering taking legal action against U.S. investment banks that might have contributed to the country’s debt crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou said.

“I wouldn’t rule out that this may be a recourse,” Papandreou said, in response to questions about the role of U.S. banks in the crisis, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” The program, scheduled for broadcast today, was taped on May 13. Neither Papandreou nor Zakaria mentioned any banks by name.

U.S. stocks fell and the euro slumped on concern that Europe wouldn’t be able to contain the debt crisis stemming from Greece. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index declined 1.9 percent May 14, while the euro fell below $1.24 for the first time since November 2008.

Papandreou said the decision on whether to go after U.S. banks will be made after a Greek parliamentary investigation into the cause of the crisis.

“Greece will look into the past and see how things went,” Papandreou said. “There are similar investigations going on in other countries and in the United States. This is where I think, yes, the financial sector, I hear the words fraud and lack of transparency. So yes, yes, there is great responsibility here.”

Speculators

In the days leading up to the May 10 announcement of a loan package worth almost $1 trillion to halt the spread of Greece’s fiscal woes, European Union regulators were examining whether speculators manipulated the prices of bonds and equities and contributed to the crisis.

The Committee of European Securities Regulators said on May 7 it was investigating “exceptional volatility” in the markets and would work with other regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as part of a coordinated clampdown.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said May 6 that he was concerned about speculation in bond markets using credit default swaps. “By first buying the CDS and then trying to affect market sentiment by going short on the underlying bond, investors can make large profits,” he said.

Credit-default swaps are derivatives that pay the buyer face value if a borrower -- a country or a company -- defaults. In exchange, the swap seller gets the underlying securities or the cash equivalent. Traders in naked credit-default swaps buy insurance on bonds they don’t own.

In the CNN interview, Papandreou said many in the international community have engaged in “Greek bashing” and find it easy “to scapegoat Greece.” He said Greeks “are a hard-working people. We are a proud people.”

“We have made our mistakes,” Papandreou said. “We are living up to this responsibility. But at the same time, give us a chance. We’ll show you.”

Proposal Would Delay Hearings in Terror Cases

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s legal advisers are considering asking Congress to allow the government to detain terrorism suspects longer after their arrests before presenting them to a judge for an initial hearing, according to administration officials familiar with the discussions.

If approved, the idea to delay hearings would be attached to broader legislation to allow interrogators to withhold Miranda warnings from terrorism suspects for lengthy periods, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed last week.

The goal of both measures would be to open a window of time after an arrest in which interrogators could question a terrorism suspect without an interruption that might cause the prisoner to stop talking. It is not clear how long of a delay the administration is considering seeking.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is still being developed, cautioned that it was not clear what the final proposal would include. Several aides to leading Democratic members of Congress said the administration had not approached their offices for detailed discussions of the matter, and the administration declined to comment on the internal deliberations.

Benjamin Wittes, a terrorism policy specialist at the Brookings Institution, said the issue of the timing of a Miranda warning was generating much more political attention because people were familiar with Miranda rights from television shows. But, he said, the need for an early “presentment” hearing is even more likely to disrupt an interrogation because it involves transporting a suspect to a courtroom for a formal proceeding.

“I would be very surprised if, when we see the proposal that they are cooking up, there weren’t a significant component of it that is about a window of detention,” said Mr. Wittes, who argued in favor of delaying initial hearings in an opinion column published by The Washington Post on Friday.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, assailed the Obama administration for considering such ideas. He noted that the administration of President George W. Bush, which was heavily criticized by civil-liberties groups, never proposed such modifications to criminal procedures.

“It’s highly troubling that the Obama administration might propose to lengthen the time in which a potential defendant would come before a judge,” Mr. Romero said. “Both proposals would severely undercut the Obama administration’s assertion that they believe in the rule of law.”

The administration’s flirtation with the ideas follows the arrest last week of Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square. Federal interrogators questioned Mr. Shahzad for several hours before warning him that he had right to remain silent and consult a lawyer, citing an exception to the Miranda rule for immediate threats to public safety.

Officials have said that Mr. Shahzad waived those rights, as well as his right to a quick initial hearing before a judge, and has continued cooperating with interrogators. But, worried that suspects in future cases may not do likewise, or that law enforcement officials will be confused about the rules, the administration has decided to push for changes.

There is a federal rule of criminal procedure that requires law enforcement officials to take a prisoner to a judge for an initial hearing “without unnecessary delay.” But specialists in criminal law said it would be a fairly simple matter for Congress to pass a statute exempting terrorism cases.

But they said it would be trickier to get around a Supreme Court precedent that governs when people must get initial hearings before a judge in cases in which the police have arrested someone without a warrant. The court has ruled that such prisoners must generally get a hearing within 48 hours to ensure there is probable cause to believe they committed a crime.

Congress has no authority to override the Supreme Court’s constitutional rulings. But several legal specialists said the court might be more willing to approve modifications if lawmakers and the executive branch agreed that the changes were necessary in the fight against terrorism.

One idea, Mr. Wittes said, would be for prosecutors to ask a judge for permission to continue holding a terrorism suspect who had been arrested without bringing the prisoner to the courtroom. As a safeguard, he said, Congress could require a high-level Justice Department official to certify that delaying the suspect’s initial appearance in court was necessary for national-security reasons.

The Obama administration’s consideration of the proposal comes against the backdrop of Republican attacks for its decision to handle some terrorism cases in the criminal justice system instead of declaring the suspects to be “enemy combatants” and holding them in military detention.

Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia University law professor and a former federal prosecutor, said the administration might be considering such a bill as much for the political message it would send as for any substantive changes it would make.

“It may well be that the law could use some clarification on these points and that courts would be receptive to a more detailed framework for how to handle these cases,” Professor Richman said. “But what’s certainly true is that the public could use a signal from the administration that criminal procedure is a lot more flexible in handling terrorism cases than critics have suggested.”

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Mr. Holder emphasized that the administration envisioned changes that would affect only a small number of terrorism cases.

“We now find ourselves in 2010 dealing with very complicated terrorism matters,” Mr. Holder said. “Those are certainly the things that have occupied much of my time. And we think that with regard to that small sliver — only terrorism-related matters, not in any other way, just terrorism cases — that modernizing, clarifying, making more flexible the use of the public safety exception would be something beneficial.”

The "War on Terrorism" for Oil: Folly of the Imperial Oil Adventure. Tolling Bells for Humanity

Faced with the end of the age of oil and systemic collapse, the leaders of the Anglo-American empire have engaged in increasingly violent and transparently futile zero-sum games to salvage what is left of a corrupt governmental and economic milieu.

Empire in crisis

From the BP-Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, crashing stock markets, and the bloody consequences of manufactured wars, it clear that the empire has lost control of its own criminal system.

As Michael C. Ruppert wrote in his 2004 book Crossing the Rubicon:

“There are many factors that the rulers of the American empire now have to manage as they read their own delusional map of the world. They have to:

• Apportion dwindling resources among competitors, some of whom possess nuclear weapons;
• Maintain and expand their control over enough of the oil and gas remaining to ensure their global dominance and maintain order among the citizens of the Empire;
• Simultaneously manage a global economic system, made possible by hydrocarbon energy that is collapsing and in which the growing population is demanding more things that can only be supplied by using still more hydrocarbon energy;
• Acknowledge that they cannot save their own economy without selling more of these products;
• Control the exploding demand for oil and gas through engineered recessions and wars that break national economies;
• Hide the evidence that they are systematically looting the wealth of all the people on the planet---even their own people---in order to maintain control;
• Maintain a secret revenue system to provide enough off-the-books capital for military advantage; improving their technological posture, and funding covert operations;
• Repress any dissent and head off any exposure to their actions;
• Convince the population that they are honorable;
• Kill off enough of the population so that they can maintain control after oil supplies have dwindled to the point of energy starvation.”

Never has this agenda, its tragic consequences and ultimate futility, been more obvious that with the unprecedented events of the past weeks.

BP-Deepwater Horizon: an “extinction event”

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the resulting oil super spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst man-made disaster, and the largest and most heinous act of environmental destruction in history.

This floating super-bomb remains completely out of control, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf, spreading in directions that cannot be predicted, becoming exponentially worse by the second. It threatens to dwarf the entire Gulf of Mexico, the entire southern and southeastern coast of the United States and Mississippi River, and is poised to spread into all of the world’s oceans. Wildlife, human life, industries, economies and livelihoods, all potentially face permanent damage and destruction. It is even possible that the Gulf will be rendered impossible to navigate.

What is certain is that this catastrophe, made possible by the oil agenda of the Anglo-American empire--- will continue to kill for generations, potentially rendering the entire Gulf of Mexico a dead zone.

For weeks, BP, government officials, and the corporate media have been engaged in a massive cover-up, lying about the unspeakable actual scale of the disaster, and lying about its clean-up and containment efforts. According to a spokesperson for Greenpeace, there has never been a successful response to an oil spill, and that what BP is doing at present is nothing but “response theater”. All attempts to contain the geyser----each of them series of failed experiments and theories--- have been futile and ineffective.

BP’s use of toxic chemical dispersants has been, at least in part, an attempt to obscure the visual horror of the spill from news cameras. The highly toxic dispersants themselves have further added to the toxicity of the spill, without actually removing any of the oil.

According to this frightening analysis by an experienced expert, what is visible on the surface, already the size of the state of Maryland may be as little as 20% of the actual scale of the spewing man-made volcano of toxic sludge being reported. Gigantic emissions of natural gas threaten to deplete the oxygen of the water in the Gulf.

The unprecedented amount of oil bursting out---perhaps as much as 4 barrels of oil per second---also raises questions about the actual size of the reservoir itself. Quoting the same analysis:

“This is an out of control volcano of oil spewing up with 70,000 psi behind it, from a reservoir nearly the size of the Gulf, with an estimated trillions of barrels of oil and gas tucked away. It is this deposit that has me reminding people of what the Shell geologist told me about the deposit. This was the quote, ‘Energy shortage..., Hell! We are afraid of running out of air to burn.’ The deposit is very large. It covers an area off shore something like 25,000 square miles. Natural Gas and Oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. What we are seeing now could be small compared to what may yet unfold if things break apart, as they can do under such circumstances. If this thing blew, it could be like the Yellowstone Caldera, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it.

That would be an extinction event.”

Leaked memos suggests that government officials were aware of a potential for a nightmare scenario. Will it simply be “allowed to happen” as the days, weeks and months pass?

BP, Halliburton and Transocean---notorious icons of “disaster capitalism”---enjoy long and enduring ties to the world governments, and their worldwide oil strategies.

Both the Bush-Cheney and Obama administrations, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) directly involved with allowing BP to operate Deepwater Horizon in reckless fashion, sheltering BP from regulatory requirements. This despite the fact that BP has a history of recklessness and disaster, known throughout the energy industry.

The case implicates Dick Cheney and the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), Cheney’s secret “energy task force”, which may have provided BP and other oil giants with the license to “fast track” into production without proper safeguards, and without proper regard to potential catastrophic spills or permanent environmental damage.

What, if any, punishment will BP face for turning the entire Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone; for threatening all of humanity? A series of useless hearings in which corrupt and feckless members of Congress help the directors of BP, Halliburton and Transocean maintain their innocence, conceding “mistakes”? Fines? Promises that “it will never happen again” while an apocalypse is happening?

Transocean has in fact, already profited from the disaster. The corporation was just paid $ 401 million in insurance, while petitioning to cap its liability for the disaster.

The economic cost alone can potentially bring down a world economy already teetering on the brink of collapse. Oil prices will be disrupted for decades

It is bitterly ironic that the Deepwater Horizon, which just weeks ago was viewed as the empire’s last greatest hope, will instead serve as its suicide.

Yet, even as the mega-volcano of toxic sludge relentlessly dwarfs more geography over the coming weeks and months, the empire’s leaders still refuse to stop.

The Obama administration has granted 27 new waivers to big oil companies since the BP explosion, allowing them to engage in yet more drilling and exploration, without proper environmental review---in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Kerry-Lieberman energy bill, pushed through Congress in recent days, establishes yet more offshore drilling around the country, along with “clean coal” (a fraud and myth, perpetrated by the coal industry, that Congress and the Obama administration continue to push).

More “war on terrorism” for more oil

As unintended oil calamity unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, the planned oil chaos in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It is not clear if the foiled Times Square bombing was an attempted act of “real” terrorism or revenge, a false flag incident, a military-intelligence double or triple cross carried out by competing intelligence agencies, or a complete fabrication.

While the specifics of the case against alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad remain in the hands of deceptive US officials and law enforcement, the foiled plot provides the Obama administration with a twofold propaganda bonanza. The administration now has the pretext with which it can expand the “war on terrorism” into Pakistan, Waziristan and Iran, and further strengthen the foothold on the largest remaining oil and gas supplies of the Middle East and Central Asia. It was also a “wag the dog” diversion from the BP cataclysm in the Gulf of Mexico and crashing world stock markets.

Shazad’s connections to the CIA and MI6 raise immediate suspicions:

“A man arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square car bombing attempt who had traveled with accused bomber Faisal Shahzad is a member of a terrorist organization that is controlled by British MI6 and the CIA.

“Jaish-e-Muhammad, the group now emerging in connection with the Times Square incident, was founded by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 9/11 bagman who delivered $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. Mahmud Ahmed, the man who ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to bankroll the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, was meeting with Republican Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington DC on the morning of 9/11. In the days before and after the attack, Ahmed also met with CIA Head George Tenet as well as current Vice-President Joe Biden, then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In a report on Jaish-e-Muhammad’s involvement in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was investigating the ISI, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Pakistani government, “Believe that Saeed Sheikh’s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.”

Other suspicious factors include the presence of Special Forces immediately on scene, and the “mysterious white men” captured on video initially believed to be part of the bomb plot. According to an early CNN report, “a video obtained from a tourist in the area shows a person apparently running north on Broadway, while another video shows a balding man with dark hair removing a shirt and putting it in a bag before walking out of view of the camera, which was inside a restaurant.

Regardless of how the Times Square bombing case develops, “war on terrorism” is a perpetual covert operation designed to justify perpetual war, and endless new resource conflict.

As noted in Michel Chossudovsky’s America’s “War on Terrorism”, “the significant development of ‘radical Islam’ in the wake of September 11, in the Middle East and Central Asia, is consistent with Washington’s hidden agenda. The latter consists of sustaining rather than combating international terrorism, with a view to destabilizing national societies…” Virtually all of the world’s “Islamic terror” fronts---Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc.---are manipulations by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI (a branch of the CIA) and nurtured for years with US government support.

The US government has been funding Taliban militants, and buying off defectors of various tribal factions, at the same time as Washington decries the “resurgent” Taliban.

The initial reporting of the Times Square plot in the mainstream corporate media linked Shahzad to Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, brother of slain former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

Subsequent reporting has been rife with conflicting information, from quotes of Mehsud promising new attacks on the US, denials, counter-denials, speculation, and confusion that becomes even more complicated when one traces recent events involving the Mehsuds and the Taliban going back two years.

Qari Zainuddin, Mehsud’s Taliban rival, was shot dead in late 2009. Zainuddin, who had split from Mehsud’s Taliban faction, was accused of being a top Al-Qaeda asset.

In early 2010, seven CIA agents were killed by militants supposedly avenging Baitullah Mehsud, who was believed by many to be an Al-Qaeda ally, and a CIA asset, linked to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Other Pakistani men alleged to have direct connections to Shahzad have been arrested in Massachusetts Although it is “unclear whether they were witting accomplices or simply innocent money dealers”, the connection to Pakistan itself may prove enough to serve the purposes of war hawks in Washington.

The FBI has sent agents into Pakistan. The Obama administration and members of Congress, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, are, in typical post-9/11 fashion, complaining about “intelligence failures” and vowing yet more aggressive domestic security. The “certain” ties to Pakistan, Waziristan, Iran, etc. will be used as fodder towards the next military attack..

The final hour

The signs are unavoidable and clear: the Anglo-American empire has run out of time, and oil, and humanity itself has paid the steepest cost.

From war and chaos, catastrophic financial meltdowns, or the mega-disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that could ultimately render all else moot, events are well beyond the empire’s ability to control or hide any of it.

Larry Chin is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Larry Chin

Knowledge, Truth and Human Action: America Hits the Wall

"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true." [paraphrased Buddhist saying]

Americans have a problem with the truth. They seem to be unable to accept it, which is difficult to understand at a time in history when knowledge plays a larger and larger role in determining human action. Recognition of this problem is widespread. Beliefs and lies somehow always overwhelm truth, even when they are so contradictory that any effective action becomes impossible. A kind of national, psychological paralysis occurs. Nothing can be done because one belief contradicts another, and for some unknown reason, the facts don't matter. Even during those times when an overwhelming belief does compel action, Americans rush headlong into it neglecting the adage that headlong often means wrong.

The number of programs enacted by the Congress that don't work is huge. The war on drugs which began in 1969 has shown no measurable results; yet it continues unabated and has resulted in destabilizing other nations, especially Mexico. Various immigration reforms have proven so ineffective that the people are turning to their own solutions. Tough on crime programs have been enacted numerous times without any measurable reduction in criminal behavior. Educational reforms have proven to be illusionary. Inconclusive wars have been and continue to be fought. No one, it appears, ever wants to measure anything by its results. The nation continues to do the same things over and over again expecting different results, an activity Einstein described as insanity.

Paul Craig Roberts writes, "Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it. Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded 'anti-American,' 'anti-semite' or 'conspiracy theorist.' Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government. Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt. Truth is inconvenient for ideologues." Unfortunately he casts the blame on the characters of people: "economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. . . . medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted 'studies' that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the 'studies. . . .' Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money."

Honoré de Balzac said, "behind every great fortune lies a great crime." So too, behind every dumb practice lies a dumb idea.

This debasement of truth stems from two misguided beliefs that many Americans hold. They affect much of American society and define the American psyche. One belief is that the truth emerges from a debate between adversaries. The other is the belief that everyone has a right to his/her own opinion.

Many American activities are based on the these beliefs. In law, the system is called adversarial. The prosecutor and defense attorneys are adversaries. Each side presents its evidence and the truth is somehow supposed to emerge. In journalism it is called balance. Two adversaries are asked to give their sides of an issue, and the truth is somehow supposed to emerge. In politics, it is called the two party system, where the majority party and the minority party, often called the opposition, are adversaries who present their sides of the issue. Again, somehow it is believed the truth will emerge and effective legislation will then be enacted. But it doesn't work, never has, never will.

Suppose two people who lived in the same community at a specific time in the past are talking about the weather on February 14th of some year. One says, "We had three inches of snow that day." The other says, "No, we had heavy rain and flash flood warnings." Who is right? Unless someone checks the weather bureau's records, the argument can't be resolved. And what if the weather bureau's records show that the weather on that day was clear with no precipitation? Neither adversary is right; the truth never emerges.

So do these adversaries have the right to their own opinions? The belief that everyone has a right to his/her own opinion is ludicrous. If your bank sends you a notice saying that you've overdrawn your account, can you counter with, "Not in my opinion"? If this maxim had any validity, truth and falsehood would have equal value. No dispute could ever be settled because the facts don't matter. Yet many in America seem to hold this view.

The point is that no debate between adversaries will reveal the truth if neither is willing to check the facts, or as is often the case in politics, just lying. But why would adversaries do that? In a legal action, because both sides want to win and will reveal only what is favorable to their sides. "As everybody knows, at least one of the lawyers in every case in which the facts are in dispute is out to hide or distort the truth or part of the truth, not to help the court discover it. . . . The notion that in a clash between two trained principle-wielders, one of whom is wearing the colors of inaccuracy and falsehood, the truth will always or usually prevail is in essence nothing but a hang-over from the medieval custom of trial by battle and is in essence equally absurd."

Peter Murphy in his Practical Guide to Evidence cites this story (likely apocryphal): A frustrated judge in an English adversarial court, after witnesses had produced conflicting accounts, finally asked a barrister, "Am I never to hear the truth?" "No, my lord, replied counsel, merely the evidence."

In politics, each side has a favored constituency to protect. In journalism, the journalist doesn't want to be accused of bias. In 2006, Dan Froomkin, former columnist at the Washington Post, wrote, "There’s the fear of being labeled partisan. . . ." But that fear would be dispelled if journalists checked the facts.

Listening to politicians or pundits debate issues should prompt listeners to ask, "Am I never to hear the truth?" The answer would always the same, "No, just our opinions." Yet basing public policy on the opinions of journalists, pundits, politicians, and even jurists is a hazardous endeavor. Since everyone has a right to his/her own opinion, why should anyone care about the opinions of others? None of us should, but somehow the establishment believes we do.

Consider so called experts, for example. Can two "experts," each with different points of view really be experts? "Expert" economists contradict each other all the time. One "thinks" this and another "thinks" that, but neither "knows" anything. Writing teachers routinely tell students, "Don’t tell me what you think. Tell me what you know." Apparently our economists never studied composition. Harry Truman once said, "If you took all the economists in the world and laid them end to end, they'd still point in different directions!" Right up until the economic crash of 2007, experts were telling us that "the economic fundamentals were sound." After the crash occurred, the logical thing to do would have been to conclude that the fundamental economic indicators were misleading at best and shouldn't be relied upon. Yet three years hence, economists are still basing their conclusions (estimates, opinions) on the same fundamental economic indicators. But suppose a chef had an oven that consistently undercooked his baking. Would s/he continue to rely on the thermostat's readings or would s/he replace it? How can such people be considered experts? Nevertheless they are.

Republican politicians, political consultants, and political commentators are fond of saying that Social Security was never meant to serve as a retirement program but only as a supplement. Ed Rollins made this claim on CNN even though the claim can't possibly be true, not even in one's wildest imagination, and Ed Rollins and others should know it. Social Security was signed into law in 1935, but in the 1930s, fewer than 25 percent of workers were covered by private pension plans. So exactly what was Social Security supposed to supplement? Only the pension plans of this 25 percent of workers? What about the 75 percent of workers not covered by private plans? Social Security certainly applied to them too, but they had no private plans to supplement. Even by 1960, only about 30 percent of the labor force had private pension plans, which means that 70 percent had no plans to supplement, and 1960 was a good year. Surely, in the 1930s Social Security was not meant to supplement personal savings, since there were hardly any, and IRAs were not authorized until 1974.Yet Ed Rollins, politicians, and political consultants are still considered "experts." No interviewing journalist ever questions their veracity even when all s/he would have to do is look up some facts.

Military officers, especially generals, are often cited as experts. But for every general who wins a battle there is another on the other side who loses. Is the losing general an expert too? And what general, facing a upcoming battle would have the integrity to say he can't win it?

By calling people with opinions experts and relying on adversarial debate between them, not only is the language debased, so is thought. Conclusions drawn from false premises are always false. Just as something cannot be created from nothing, truth cannot be revealed by falsehood. Belief never yields knowledge, but questioning belief often does.

Public policy based on mere beliefs or opinions sooner or later crashes headlong into the wall of reality causing disastrous consequences, for in the end, the truth cannot be denied. "Trust, but verify," a phrase often used by Ronald Reagan when discussing relations with the Soviet Union is a translation of the Russian proverb Доверяй, но проверяй. Perhaps better maxims would be, "Reject when suspect" and "Belief brings grief." Yet the fundamental question that goes unanswered is why so many people continue to trust all those "experts" who have shown themselves to be inveterate liars? Has the populace really become that dumb? If the truth is emancipating, the false is enslaving. Indeed Americans are serfs ruled by an oligarchy devoted to the promotion of dumb ideas.

John Kozy is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by John Kozy

Greek leader considers action against US banks

ATHENS, Greece – Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou declared he is not ruling out taking legal action against U.S. investment banks for their role in creating the spiraling Greek debt crisis.

Both the Greek government and its citizens have blamed international banks for fanning the flames of the debt crisis with comments about Greece's likely default, actions that are causing the country's borrowing costs to soar.

"I wouldn't rule out that (legal action) might be a recourse. But we need to let due process (take its course) and then make our judgments once we get the results from the investigations," Papandreou said in a CNN interview broadcast Sunday.

Papandreou also said a parliamentary investigation will examine the rapid swelling of Greece's debt and international banking practices to examine whether the financial sector engaged in "fraud and lack of transparency."

The European Union and the International Monetary fund have approved a euro110 billion ($136 billion) bailout package for Greece, part of an overall euro750 billion ($1 trillion) rescue loan package to protect the euro, the common currency of 16 European nations.

The Greek leader also urged more regulation of the markets which, in his view, are now betting against the European governments that have poured billions into them since the global financial crisis began in 2008.

Some European governments plan to push for tighter regulation of hedge funds this week — a move opposed by Britain, home to the financial hub of London.

Papandreou also tried to counter criticism, expressed mainly in Germany, that Greeks are getting a free ride and rejected widespread international skepticism about Greece's ability to pay back its loans. Greek debt is scheduled to exceed 140 percent of its economic output in 2012.

"We are paying back the loans we are getting ... this saying that 'we are handing out money to Greece' is not true," he told the CNN show "Fareed Zakaria GPS." "It is very easy to scapegoat Greece and Greece bashing very often gets entangled in regional politics."

He insisted his government has made the unpopular but necessary decision to implement austerity measures.

"We are ready to make the changes ... we have made our mistakes. We are living up to this responsibility. But at the same time, give us a chance," Papandreou said.

Still, another top German economist expressed doubts Sunday about Greece's ability to repay.

Deutsche Bank AG's Chief Executive Josef Ackermann created an uproar Thursday for mentioning the possibility that Greece might have to restructure its debt — but Dekabank's chief economist, Ulrich Kater, was quoted as agreeing with him Sunday in the German news website Handelsblatt.

"It will be very, very difficult for Greece to orderly repay its debt," Kater was quoted as saying, adding that Greece's new austerity measures and its lack of competitiveness were dooming the country's prospects for economic growth, making debt reduction difficult.

Despite widespread anger about tax hikes and other austerity measures imposed by Papandreou's Socialist government, his party still enjoys more support than its predecessor, the discredited conservative party.

According to a poll published Sunday in conservative-leaning newspaper Kathimerini, Papandreou's popularity has plunged from 53 percent in January to 43 percent in May. The same poll showed that opposition leader Antonis Samaras has sunk from 26 percent approval in February to 18 percent in May.

On the other hand, 76 percent of respondents also say they are unsatisfied with the Socialist government's performance.

The poll was conducted May 6-10 with a sample of 1,006. Its margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percent.

Gulf oil spill: real disaster might be lurking beneath the surface

New research suggests that huge plumes of oil might be spread at all levels of the water column, showing how much scientists don't yet know about the complex Gulf oil spill.

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An aerial view of oil strips floating off the coast of Mobile, Ala., near the site of the sunk BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico Friday. New research suggests the only a fraction of the oil from the leak might be making it to the surface.

Zhu Wei/Newscom

From the first moments that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank last month, it has been apparent that the blooming Gulf oil spill has been an oil disaster unlike any other. But the full truth of that statement is perhaps only now beginning to become apparent.

The oil that can be seen from the surface is apparently just a fraction of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, according to an assessment the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology. Significant amounts of oil are spreading at various levels throughout the water column, says the report, which was posted online a week ago but first published by The New York Times Saturday.

IN PICTURES: Louisiana oil spill

The research, combined with other emerging data, could fundamentally alter researchers’ understanding of the oil spill. It suggests that vastly more oil than previously reported could be spilling from the wellhead and the attached riser pipe that now lies crumpled on the seafloor like a kinked and leaking garden hose.

Moreover, it suggests that serious environmental degradation could take place in the open ocean, creating massive “dead zones” where no creature can live because of the lack of oxygen in the water. The spread of oil at all levels of the Gulf also could become a concern for shore communities in hurricanes, which stir up the water column as they come ashore.

Scientists looking at video of the leak, suggest that as many as 3.4 million gallons of oil could be leaking into the Gulf every day – 16 times more than the current 210,000-gallon-a-day estimate, according to the Times.

The depth of the problem

The fact that the spill could possibly be so radically misunderstood nearly a month after it began speaks to the unique nature of this spill. In particular, it’s depth – 5,000 feet below the ocean surface – makes it both unprecedented and difficult to study.

For experts, “most of their experience is with shallow-water spills that quickly bleed black goo onto beaches that are cleaned up relatively quickly,” says the Los Angeles Times.

That is clearly not what has happened in the Gulf, where shorelines have, so far, emerged relatively unscathed.

The nature of the oil in the Gulf oil spill could be relevant – it is of a lighter grade than that in the Exxon Valdez spill, for example.

More relevant could be the dispersant that BP is applying to the oil at the source. BP officials have hailed the process as a success, noting diminishing oil at the surface. But the dispersant breaks the oil into smaller drops, which might instead be spreading throughout the water column, instead of rising to the surface.

It is not clear what this would mean environmentally, though past research indicates that oil can be trapped in the seabed for decades after oil on the surface is cleaned away.

Complicating projections

It would, however, make predictions for the spill far more complex.

"We have no idea where the oil that isn't reaching the surface is going," James Cowan Jr., an oceanography professor at Louisiana State University, to the Los Angeles Times. "It could go everywhere.

The Gulf currents operate differently at different levels, making the exact location and spread of the oil at different depths hugely important to predictions of where it might end up. Indeed, the system so complex that in time, oil could be taken anywhere from the Mexican Coast to Florida’s Palm Beach, research suggests.

BP has so far rejected any efforts toward pinpointing the exact amount of oil entering the Gulf, saying that effort would detract from other containment efforts, such as the current effort to stopper one of the leaks with a siphon. But getting a more accurate sense of how much oil in leaking could be vital to trying to account for all of it, scientists say.

S Korea fires shots at North's ships

South Korea says its navy has fired warning shots to drive away North Korean patrol ships that had crossed the western maritime border between the two countries.

The two North Korean vessels violated a disputed inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, known as the 'Northern Limit Line', on Saturday night, South Korea's military said.

"Two patrol boats crossed on two separate occasions and warning shots were fired," BBC quoted a South Korean official as saying on Sunday.

The first North Korean vessel retired after a South Korean ship broadcast a warning and the second vessel retreated after a couple of warning shots were fired, said the official, on condition of anonymity.

The incident is the most serious skirmish between the two nations since a South Korean warship was mysteriously sunk in March.

Seoul suspects that a North Korean torpedo hit the military vessel but Pyongyang has denied being responsible for the sinking.

The Northern Limit Line was set in the 1950s in the wake of the Korean War. North Korea does not recognize the United Nations-specified border, but South Korea keeps it as a de facto border.

Thailand Protests Worsen For Third Straight Day, Gov't Declares 'Live Fire Zone'

BANGKOK — Thailand's leader defended the deadly army crackdown on protesters besieging the capital's heart, saying Saturday the country's very future was at stake. Protesters dragged away the bodies of three people from sidewalks – shot by army snipers, they claim – as soldiers blocked major roads and pinned up notices of a "Live Firing Zone."

"I insist that what we are doing is necessary," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a defiant broadcast on national television, making it clear he would not compromise. "The government must move forward. We cannot retreat because we are doing things that will benefit the entire country."

On Saturday, the protesters launched a steady stream of rudimentary missiles at troops who fired back with live ammunition in several areas around a key commercial district of Bangkok.

Army snipers were perched with high-powered rifles atop tall buildings, viewing the action below through telescopic sights. Thick black smoke billowed from tires set ablaze by demonstrators as gunfire rang out.

The spiraling violence has raised concerns of sustained, widespread chaos in Thailand – a key U.S. ally and Southeast Asia's most popular tourist destination that promotes its easygoing culture as the "Land of Smiles."

"The situation right now is getting close to a civil war each minute," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader, told reporters. "Please don't ask us how we are going to end this situation, because we are the ones being killed."

Since Thursday, the once-bustling commercial and shopping district has become a war zone with Red Shirt protesters firing weapons, throwing homemade explosives, and hurling rocks at troops firing live ammunition and rubber bullets.

The violence ignited after the army started forming a cordon around the protesters' encampment and a sniper shot and gravely wounded a rogue general reputed to be the Red Shirts' military adviser.

At least 24 people have been killed and more than 194 wounded since Thursday. Previous violence since the protest began in mid-March caused 29 deaths and injured 1,640.

This is the most prolonged and deadliest bout of political violence that Thailand has faced in decades despite having a history of coups – 18 since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

The protesters have occupied a tire-and-bamboo-spike barricaded, 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) zone in one of the capital's ritziest areas, Rajprasong, for about two months to push their demands for Abhisit to resign immediately, dissolve Parliament and call new elections.

The crisis had appeared to be near a resolution last week when Abhisit offered to hold elections in November, a year early. But the hopes were dashed after Red Shirt leaders made more demands.

The political uncertainty has spooked foreign investors and damaged the vital tourism industry, which accounts for 6 percent of the economy, Southeast Asia's second largest.

Abhisit, in his first comments since Thursday, said the protesters have "held the people of Bangkok hostage" and described them as "armed terrorists" who attacked security forces.

"Officers on duty have the right to defend themselves," he said.

The Red Shirts, drawn mostly from the rural and urban poor, say Abhisit's coalition government came to power through manipulation of the courts and the backing of the powerful military, and that it symbolizes a national elite indifferent to the poor.

The fighting is taking place in the no man's land between the encampment and the army cordon, a normally bustling area with hotels, businesses, embassies, shopping malls and apartments. Most of them are now shut and public transport is off the roads.

The army said its cordon has been effective, and the number of protesters at the encampment has dwindled by half. Water and power also were cut off to the area Thursday.

About 5,000 hard-core demonstrators held their ground under threat of military operations to oust them, down from about 10,000 days earlier, army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

"If the protesters will not end the situation, we will have to enter the encampment," Sansern said.

The army says it is not shooting to kill, but protesters crawled along sidewalks to slowly drag away corpses of three people near the city's Victory Monument traffic circle in the Ratchaprarop area. Demonstrators accused army snipers of shooting all three in the head.

On Saturday, soldiers unrolled razor wire across roads leading to Ratchaprarop – a commercial district north of the main protest site – area and pinned up Thai and English-language notices saying "Live Firing Zone" and "Restricted Area. No Entry."

Ratchaprarop houses high-rise buildings, posh hotels and designer shops. It was the scene of some of the worst fighting Friday night between troops and anti-government protesters.

Amid the violence, the rest of the capital has remained largely normal with shops, restaurants and cinemas open and busy, albeit with customers and workers expressing concern about the clashes. Rural Thailand also has not seen violence, though demonstrations and other protest-related activity has occurred in the rural home provinces of many Red Shirts and supporters.

The Red Shirts especially despise the military, which had forced Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist premier favored by the Red Shirts, from office in a 2006 coup. Two subsequent pro-Thaksin governments were disbanded by court rulings before Abhisit became prime minister.

"The reality is that this conflict also draws heavily on the frustrated political aspirations of a large numbers of rural voters," said Andrew Walker, a political scientist at The Australian National University.

"If election results are going to be overturned, people's political aspirations and frustrations will find expression in other forms," he said.

Defense Ministry spokesman Tarit Pengdit said 27 protesters have been sentenced to six months' jail for joining an illegal protest. He did not elaborate.

The U.S. Embassy said it will evacuate family members of its staff who want to leave Bangkok.

Embassy spokeswoman Cynthia Brown said the U.S. State Department also issued a "travel warning advising all citizens to defer travel to Bangkok."

___

Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone, Denis D. Gray, Grant Peck and Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report. Additional research by Warangkana Tempati.

Your Survival Depends On The Passage Of Cantwell-McCain's Glass Steagall

(LPAC) -- Lyndon LaRouche today declared that the only hope for avoiding a near-term collapse of the entire global financial system is for the U.S. Senate to pass the Cantwell-McCain amendment, reinstating the Glass Steagall Act, that separated commercial banks from brokerage and insurance firms in 1933. "If the White House and the Senate Democratic leadership don't succeed in sabotaging the vote on the Cantwell-McCain amendment next week, I believe it will pass with significant bipartisan support,'' LaRouche said. LaRouche reiterated his warning of May 11, that the $1 trillion-plus 'super-TARP' bailout of the entire bankrupt European Monetary Union, which was announced on Sunday night by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank, is doomed to fail. "The entire purpose of the way the Greek debt crisis was handled, was to destroy the United States," LaRouche declared. "The Greek debt crisis could have simply been handled by a sovereign restructuring of their own debt. Instead, they saddled the Greek debt, and then the Portuguese, Spanish, Irish and Italian debt on Germany, which has no capacity to pay. So, now the United States has been drawn in, courtesy of President Obama and Tim Geithner, to subsidize the whole mass of unpayable and, for the most part, illegitimate debt. This will destroy the United States, just as I warned. If President Obama were not such a toy of the British, none of this would be even conceivable.'' LaRouche declared that the only option is for the U.S. Senate to pass the Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd bill, that would reinstate the Glass Steagall separation of commercial banking from the speculative mess. "Otherwise, under the policy announced on Sunday night by the Fed, the United States and Europe are headed for 1923 Weimar-style hyperinflation, right now! Unless we stop this madness through the restoration of Glass Steagall, the entire planet is doomed to a rapid plunge into a new dark age.'' British Foreign Office Declared War LaRouche reported that "reliable sources have informed me that they have first-hand knowledge that the British Foreign Office has communicated direct threats to the U.S. Department of State, warning, in effect, that any move to reinstate Glass Steagall will be considered an act of agression against the British government, by which they mean the British Monarchy and the City of London financiers. Wall Street is not the center of the problem. Wall Street is merely an appendage of the British. That is an old story. It goes back to the time of the British East India Company, and the actions of traitors like Aaron Burr and August Belmont. "The question, therefore, that must be asked, is: How many members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, today, are prepared to kiss the Queen's rump? It really comes down to that. The Foreign Office has made a direct threat, that the only sane action for the United States at this time--the reinstatement of Glass Steagall as a first step towards re-establishing a viable commercial banking system, freed from the trillions of dollars in illegal speculative debt--is considered an act of agression against Britain.'' LaRouche reiterated that "over 80 percent" of the American people support the restoration of Glass-Steagall. The Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd bill, now being debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate, is scheduled to be taken up early next week, perhaps as early as Tuesday. LaRouche called on all of his supporters to "turn the country upside down, mobilizing support for the passage of the Cantwell McCain amendment." "Senators Cantwell and McCain have shown what it means to be a true patriot at a moment of grave crisis," LaRouche concluded. "I know something about why they have taken up this responsibility at this time. They deserve our total support. The Cantwell-McCain Glass-Steagall amendment is the true test of patriotism at this moment. Whether you realize it fully or not, trust me: The very survival of the United States is on the line in this vote. And if the U.S. goes down, in a hyperinflationary collapse, due to a failure to stand up against the British, then all of the planet is doomed. That is no exaggeration."

Our Sympathies To The People Of Greece

When Argentinians watch the news today and see the terrible things that are happening in Greece, we cannot but say, "Hey!! This is EXACTLY like Argentina in December 2001 and beginning of 2002!". Then too, Argentina underwent its worst systemic banking, public debt and monetary collapse which led to social turmoil, mad violence, rioting, and social war. The turmoil was so bad, that it forced then president Fernando de la Rúa's government to resign, especially because of his notorious pro-banker cartel economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, generating a political vacuum that led to Argentina having 5 (five!!) presidents in that terrible last week of December 2001. What triggered social chaos in Argentina was the attempt by president De la Rúa to implement the grossly unjust austerity measures imposed by the IMF that required, as usual, utmost sacrifice from the people ­ more taxes, less social spending, "balanced budgets", zero deficit spending, amongst other anti-social measures ­ which led to a fall of almost 40% in Argentina's GDP. Half of all Argentinians fell below the poverty line (most were never to make it back to the traditional Argentina middle class), private banks were allowed to legally retain everybody's savings, US dollar deposits were arbitrarily changed into Pesos at whatever rate of exchange the government and bankers decided (the dollar was devalued 300% from one peso to the dollar, to 4 pesos the dollar in just weeks) and yet. Not one bank fell ! ! ! Indeed, since then they're all back in "business as usual", however the poor and impoverished are today totally out of business Throughout 25 years of successive caretaker governments in Argentina, the IMF-led Global Banking Cartel artificially generated a basically illegal ­ or at best, illegitimate ­ Sovereign Debt that grew so huge, that it ended up collapsing the entire financial and economic system. That was no coincidence. It was part of a highly complex model, engineered to control entire countries, through a cycle having sequential stages and identifiable parts that has one basic overriding goal: when the finance economy is fueled to run in an artificial "growth mode", the bulk of all profits are privatized into the hands of their "friends", managers and operators. However, when the whole scheme ­ like all Ponzi schemes - reaches its climax and total collapse is at hand, they revert the process and then socialize all losses. (This is more fully explained in my video "Global Financial Collapse", see links below). That's what Mr. Cavallo - a Rockefeller protégé - achieved, ensuring that the Argentine people bore all the losses, whilst the international banksters took all the profits. The mainstream media ­ both global and local ­ willingly obliged; The New York Times went so far as to suggest that the entire Patagonian region (i.e., the 5 southern provinces of Argentina accounting for 35% of Argentina's territory and having immeasurable energy, mining, foodstuff, water resource wealth), should secede from the rest of the country as a way of "resolving our foreign debt woes" Now, that was Argentina 2001/2002 but, isn't that also the case when today's US taxpayer bails out Goldman Sachs, AIG, CitiCorp and GM whilst losing his house, pension and job? Isn't that what is happening to Greece today? And Iceland? And the UK? And Ireland? And ­ anytime soon ­ Spain? Portugal? Italy? In Argentina, our people ended up getting used to being much poorer, so when "normal" times returned, the Goldman Sachs and Citicorp controlled local media were able to ensure that a new puppet regime subservient to the money interests should come to power: i.e., the husband and wife pro-banking mafia team of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner And the merry-go-round keeps turning and turning, whilst the Argentine people keep paying and paying Today, we look at Greece and see the same tell-tale signs: the IMF imposing strict austerity measures as a condition for the banks to lend more money to them (as if a country collapsing under the burden of debt can overcome that by getting into even more debt!!), the mainstream media speaking vociferously on the need for "Greece to do things correctly and responsibly" (as if the US FED, the Bank of England, Goldman Sachs and the US Treasury, Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson, Brown, Geithner, Blankfein, Greenberg were examples of responsible accountability), local caretaker governments doing all they can on behalf of banking interests (George Papandreou is a regular at the Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission meetings, as was Fernando de la Rúa, a founding member of the local chapter of the Council on Foreign Relations in Argentina called CARI), major banks such as Goldman Sachs trying to collect their pound of flesh in the midst of all the turmoil and hardship; all of this against a backdrop of desperate citizens taking to the streets to express what is obvious to all: that international bankers and local caretaker government form a complex association of thieves and robbers. The inevitable then occurs: the Government sends the police out to the streets to protect the bankers, themselves and New World Order power elite interests... Then violence flares up, people get hurt and die. The poor (police) battle against the poor (population), whilst the rich look on from a safe distance with a chuckle Make no mistake: this is a Global Model. Make no mistake: there is NO democracy, not even in Athens, its birthplace. What we people suffer the world over ­ be it in Greece, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Indonesia, or Spain, or Iceland, or the US or the UK - is a mechanical mass vote-counting system, that is totally dependent on huge quantities of money, necessary to finance costly political campaigns, purchase radio, TV and press coverage, pay for grotesque political party structures, journalists, analysts, and of course to pay for the well-marketed candidates themselves: that vast array of decrepit stooges we read about in the papers every day: Bush, Blair, Papandreou, Obama, Clinton, Menem, Kirchner, Lula, Uribe, Sarkozy, Rodriguez Zapatero, Merkel... What we have is a "democracy" that is totally subservient to money, however we need to understand that money is NOT democratic (nor should it be). Money is controlled by the mega-Banking structure that uses the IMF, World Bank, FED, BIS, ECB as its global regulating entities, and pays to run the whole "Democracy Show". Ergo, we end up having "the best democracy that money can buy"... which is no Democracy at all... The results of this could be tragically seen in Argentina, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, yesterday; in Greece, Iceland, the US and the UK, today... So, who's next? Spain?, Italy? Portugal? Will the European Monetary System just blow up to pieces? A 750 Billion Euro Bail-out will send the recently born (still in diapers) Euro into a tailspin Will the Euroipean Monetary Mechanism fall apart? Will germany be the first to revert to the gold old Deutsch-Mark? Will the collapsing Euro and the technically hyper-inflated US Dollar (Shhh! Don't say that aloud!!) pave the way for a new, essentially private Global Currency to be managed on a planetary scale by the private money cartel of the Goldman Sach's, HSBC's, CitCorp's, Deutsche Bank's of this world? Stay tuned There is much, much more to come Adrian Salbuchi www.asalbuchi.com.ar - arsalbuchi@gmail.com Watch my "Global Financial Collapse" (filmed April 2009) video on the following links: 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlDNMB6wYmI 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ddURofMWs

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Meltup

Click this link ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb1n1X0Oqdw&feature=player_embedded

Crisis in New Zealand climatology

The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.

The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.

The NSS is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.

For nearly 15 years, the 20th-century warming trend of 0.92°C derived from the NSS has been at the centre of NIWA official advice to all tiers of New Zealand Government – Central, Regional and Local. It informs the NIWA climate model. It is used in sworn expert testimony in Environment Court hearings. Its dramatic graph graces the front page of NIWA’s printed brochures and its website.

Internationally, the NSS 0.92°C trend is a foundation stone for the Australia-New Zealand Chapter in the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. In 1994, it was submitted to HadleyCRUT, so as to influence the vast expanses of the South Pacific in the calculation of globally-averaged temperatures.

The Minister of Research Science and Technology, the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp, has finally become alarmed at the murky provenance of the NSS. The Government has directed and funded a 6-month project to produce a new national temperature record, with published data and transparent processes. The replacement record is to be the subject of a scientific paper, which is to be peer-reviewed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Hon Rodney Hide, a climate sceptic who is a Minister in the current Government and leader of the junior coalition partner, the ACT Party, has called upon his ministerial colleagues to formally repudiate the NSS and to withdraw all publications and formal papers which are based on the spurious warming trend of 0.92°C. The Government has not yet responded to this challenge.

New Zealand is a small country, with a strong tradition of open Government, and is not an easy place to keep secrets. The acceptance of the NSS for so long offers evidence of the dictum: “you can fool all of the people some of the time..” But if that can happen in New Zealand, how much greater is the probability that similar shenanigans could be happening in larger, more complex, jurisdictions?

BACKGROUND

The New Zealand Meteorological Service, with its forebears, has been measuring and recording our weather since 1861. In 1992, it published a booklet containing a detailed history of all its weather stations, along with 140 years of climate data. In that year, NIWA came into being and has now published most of the Met Service data online.

In 2007, the then Prime Minister announced her party’s intention that New Zealand should lead the world in fighting climate change, and aim to be the world’s first carbon-neutral country by 2025.

Earlier in 2007, NIWA produced a web page, followed by a printed brochure, with a graph showing that New Zealand had already warmed by an amount far in excess of global averages. The web page claimed a temperature increase of 1.1C during the 144 years of Met Service records, and a 0.92°C trend during the 20^th century.

These are remarkable claims. They came out of the blue and do not accord with any written histories, or the personal impressions of our older generations. They don’t square with “hottest day” records held in provinces and city archives. They were not accompanied by big changes in rainfall or winds or sea levels. In these claims, NIWA is a very lonely orphan.

So Much for Europe's Superiority

According to the most conservative estimates, the United States by 2050 will be home to at least 400 million people, roughly 100 million more than live here today. In contrast, the populations of much of the EU, as well as most of East Asia, will be stagnant or falling over the next few decades. Like other advanced countries, the United States will be aging but not nearly as quickly. By 2050, there may be close to 40 percent of the population in Japan and Germany over 65; in the United States that proportion should be closer to 25 percent.

If there’s going to be a European dream, they better start importing people or creating them. Otherwise, the European workforce will be dying out, literally. Between 2000 and 2050 the population of the U.S. between 14 and 64 is projected to expand by some 44 percent, while that of the EU contracts by 25 percent and Japan’s by over 40 percent.