Forex Exchange

The following IP seems to be closely associated with denial of service attacks: Domain Name netvision.net.il ? (Israel) IP Address 212.143.134.# (NV1378-RIPE) ISP NetVision Location Continent : Asia Country : Israel (Fac ts) State/Region : Hefa City : Haifa Lat/Long : 32.8156, 34.9892 (Map) Should there now be a DOS attack against blogspot, Google's anti-hacking crew will know exactly where to start looking, as will NETCU and SOCA.

Now that it seems as if the "greatest ecological disaster in American history" was largely politically-motivated hype, see link, then one must return to Medawar's comment at the outset of the saga, which was that the real tragedy was the eleven men who died, and that it was amazing that American public and political opinion was outraged about something else. And it has to be said, that actions by Transocean, particularly turning alarms off to keep things nice and quiet at night, and disabling automatic mechanisms that closed vents to stop explosive gases getting inside inhabited and control modules, will have contributed, hugely, to the death toll. And none of the lessons learned by British authorities from the Piper Alpha disaster, were paid any heed at all either by Transocean or by the American regulating authority, the MMS (see post below!) And, yes, the governor of Mississippi was completely right to say that the political reaction to the "disaster" wa...

The following is reproduced from Richard Silverstein's blog, " Tikun Olam" simply because it would appear to be the trigger for a sustained denial of service attack against his site. Reproduction shouldn't be taken as an endorsement of all of Mr Silverstein's views and actions (Lord knows: he might have done all sorts of bad stuff that Medawar doesn't know about.) But DOS attacks, particularly when it seems as if Israeli police computers may have been hacked or infected in order to launch it, are as threatening to modern society as piracy on the High Seas and Cash in Transit Robberies. Medawar hasn't reproduced any of the comments that were on the blog, because it is impossible to assume the commentator's permission and some of them were obscene. The article was headed by a picture of an alleged Israeli torturer, which was obtained by Mr Silverstein in the pixellated condition you see below. A lot of the embedded links below seem to work now: presumab...

The father of modern economics - Adam Smith - is used as a poster child to support the status quo that we have today. Smith is invoked as the patron saint of free market economics. In fact, Smith would neither recognize or approve of our current financial, monetary, economic or legal systems. I noted last year: Americans have traditionally believed that the "invisible hand of the market" means that capitalism will benefit us all without requiring any oversight. However, as the New York Times notes , the real Adam Smith did not believe in a magically benevolent market which operates for the benefit of all without any checks and balances: Smith railed against monopolies and the political influence that accompanies economic power ... Smith worried about the encroachment of government on economic activity, but his concerns were directed at least as much toward parish councils, church wardens, big corporations , guilds and religious institutions as to the national gover...

Moody's announced today: Moody's Investors Service has placed under review for possible downgrade the Aaa ratings of 177 public finance credits , affecting a combined $69 billion of outstanding debt. The credits include 162 local governments in 31 states, 14 housing finance programs and one university . A complete list of affected securities and additional analysis is available at www.moodys.com/USRatingActions. These actions relate to Moody's July 13 decision to place the Aaa government bond rating of the United States under review for downgrade, and reflect the rating agency's assessment that some Aaa public finance ratings would likely be indirectly affected by potential credit deterioration of the sovereign. *** In a previous action on July 19, Moody's placed the ratings of five Aaa U.S. state governments under review for possible downgrade , affecting approximately $24 billion of general obligation and related debt. Those states are Maryland...

Preface: As I've previously noted, I think that there are arguments for doing away with all taxes. However, if we're going to have taxes, the top 1% should pay their fair share. Of course, if we prosecuted fraud and clawed back ill-gotten gains we wouldn't be in such a deep hole. Reagan's domestic policy advisor (Bruce Bartlett) said Wednesday that it was a myth that tax cuts are the key to prosperity, that higher taxes may actually help the economy, and reminded people that Reagan raised the capital gains rate: (Reagan actually raised taxes 11 times ). Bartlett also recently pointed out : Taxes were cut in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006. It would have been one thing if the Bush tax cuts had at least bought the country a higher rate of economic growth, even temporarily. They did not. Real G.D.P. growth peaked at just 3.6 percent in 2004 before fading rapidly. Even before the crisis hit, real G.D.P. was growing less than 2 percent a year... According ...

As I've pointed out for years, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is owned by the world's central banks, which are in turn owned by the big banks. See this and this . It turns out there may be a very interesting wrinkle to the private ownership issue. By way of background, BIS is often called the "central banks' central bank", as it coordinates transactions between central banks, and which is the entity determining the level of reserves banks are required to keep worldwide. As Spiegel reported in 2020: The BIS is a closed organization owned by the 55 central banks . The heads of these central banks travel to the Basel headquarters once every two months, and the General Meeting, the BIS's supreme executive body, takes place once a year. But as the New York Federal Reserve Bank currently states on its website: As of March 2006, the BIS had 55 shareholding central banks from around the world. As of March 2006, the Bank’s assets were ...

Although as far as the oil industry is concerned, the Minerals Management Service performs the same safety regulation function in the United States as the Health and Safety Executive does in the United Kingdom, the two bodies are subtly different. Without wishing to appear too moralistic, inspection and regulation of highly complex oil rigs undertaking drilling operations in very deep ocean waters, requires concentration, persistent attention to detail and good judgment. The consumption of copious quantities of Cocaine and Methamphetamine, albeit provided at no cost to either the inspector or the taxpayer, interferes with all of these mental functions in such a way as to entirely neutralize an inspector's value to industry and the wider society. It is difficult to entirely suppress the suspicion that some of the blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster lies with the remarkably complete failure of the Federal Government to provide competent regulation of a complex and inherently ha...

The UK's Health and Safety Executive has confirmed to Medawar that: "In the UK Continental Shelf, the operator of a drilling rig has a general duty to control the risk of major accidents and comply with statutory provisions. It is most likely that the stated alarm systems will form part of a duty holders major hazard risk control measures. If these control measures are inhibited, in by-pass, or in silent logging modes during operations with risks of major accidents without other effective measures in place then it is likely they would be in breach of health and safety legislation." Bad news for Transocean and the company's worldwide policy of turning safety alarms off at night to make things quieter in the control room! Deepwater Horizon had alarms that would automatically close vents to stop explosive gas mixtures penetrating to habitation and control modules of the rig. They turned them off. Mr Obama still thinks that BP is solely to blame for everything....

Economist Dean Banker notes : Wall Street will suffer more than anyone from a default and it will not let it happen. The public should know this, certainly Wall Street does. No wonder the fatcats running the giant banks which received tens of trillions in bailouts, loans and guarantees from the American public are screaming loudly that the debt ceiling must be raised. Robert Reich points out : Why has Standard & Poor's decided now's the time to crack down on the federal budget -- when it gave free passes to Wall Street's risky securities and George W. Bush's giant tax cuts for the wealthy, thereby contributing to the very crisis its now demanding be addressed? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Street pays Standard & Poor's bills? Remember, the big 3 government-sponsored rating agencies routinely took bribes as their normal business model , committed massive fraud which greatly contributed to the financial crisis , covered up imprope...

Preface: There is an argument for repealing all taxes. I have a strong libertarian streak, and there are arguments that government is wasting our tax money on imperial wars which weaken our national security and other shenanigans. There are also various legal arguments alleging that income taxes are illegal. This essay solely asks how taxes - if we do have them, and given that tax and other government policy has radically redistributed wealth upwards, creating current below-third-world-levels of inequality (greater than seen for many years before the Great Depression) - effect the economy. Extreme conservatives push for tax cuts ... but just for the wealthy. Extreme liberals are against all tax cuts, believing that we need higher taxes to pay for government programs ... and that taxes somehow won't create any drag on the economy. Both extremes are wrong. In fact, tax cuts for the middle class and poor stimulate the economy, but tax cuts for the wealthy hurt the economy. T...

Glenn Greenwald points out the hypocrisy in coverage of the Norwegian terror attack: When it was widely assumed, based on basically nothing, that Muslims had been responsible for this attack and that a radical Muslim group likely perpetrated it, it was widely declared to be a "terrorist" attack. That was the word that was continuously used. And yet, when it became apparent that Muslims were not involved and that, in reality, it was a right-wing nationalist with extremely anti-Muslim, strident anti-Muslim bigotry as part of his worldview, the word "terrorism" almost completely disappeared from establishment media discourse. Instead, he began to be referred to as a "madman" or an "extremist." And it really underscores, for me, the fact that this word "terrorism," that plays such a central role in our political discourse and our law, really has no objective meaning. It’s come to mean nothing more than M...

According to Reuters, a majority of economists now think that U.S. credit will be downgraded. The debt ceiling plans being proposed likely will not avoid a debt downgrade . Indeed, as Zero Hedge notes , the cuts being proposed in the debt ceiling proposals would be offset by the costs of the downgrade: The US downgrade alone, now virtually taken for granted by everyone, will offset any beneficial impact from any deficit reduction that will have to happen for the debt ceiling to be increased. Indeed, many are starting to say that a downgrade is inevitable . In truth and in fact, we could still avoid a downgrade ... but only if we immediately: (1) End the imperial wars, which reduce - rather than strengthen - national security (and see this and this ); (2) End the never-ending bailouts for Wall Street; (3) Prosecute fraud and claw back ill-gotten gains ; (4) End the Bush tax cuts, which Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman said were the worst fiscal mistake in hist...

Huffington Post notes : House Speaker John Boehner says ... "Unfortunately, the president would not take yes for an answer," he said. "Even when we thought we might be close on an agreement, the president's demands changed." While it may be tempting for liberals to write this statement off as mere right-wing positioning, prominent liberal writers agree . For example, Jeff Cohen writes : Liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White House and reported deals that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. They accuse President Obama of being weak and willing to “cave” to corporate and conservative forces bent on cutting the social safety net while protecting the wealthy. Those accusations are wrong. The accusations imply that Obama is on our side. Or was on our side. And that the right wing is pushing him around. But the evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant of corporate interests -- not someone reluctantly doing...