Silencing the messenger / whistle blower!

Greece arrests editor for 'Lagarde list' leak | Published on Oct 28, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : Greek police arrested the editor of a weekly magazine for publishing a list of more than 2,000 names of wealthy Greeks who have placed money in Swiss bank accounts, police said.

The so-called "Lagarde List", which led to the arrest of editor Costas Vaxevanis on Sunday, was given to Greece by French authorities in 2010 with names to be probed for possible tax evasion - has been a topic of heated speculation in the Greek media. It is named after International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, who was French finance minister when the list was handed over.

UK out of recession with Olympic help

Published on Oct 25, 2012 by Euronews : Britain rebounded strongly from recession in the third quarter.GDP growth - up one percent - was the strongest in five years, partly thanks to ticket sales and other spending from the London Olympics.

London: Thousands take part in anti-austerity protest.

Published on Oct 20, 2012 by Euronews : Nurses, cleaners and ambulance drivers have joined thousands of other demonstrators in London, to vent their anger over public spending cuts and tax hikes. They claim austerity is not working in Britain and are calling on the government to do more to revive the country's struggling economy.

Meet Romney’s Economic Hit Man

Mark the name of R. Glenn Hubbard, the man who will make your life miserable if Mitt Romney is elected president. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the swindlers who has profited mightily from the nation’s economic pain. Then George W. Bush’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers R. Glenn Hubbard in 2001. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Hubbard is the ideological hit man instrumental in justifying the mortgage derivatives bubble that caused the Great Recession during the George W. Bush years. He now serves as Romney’s key economic adviser and is the front-runner to be the next Treasury secretary should the Republican win.

“Romney’s Go-To Economist” read the headline on a New York Timesprofile of the dean of Columbia University’s Business School, which notes that “During a stint as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Hubbard was known as the principal architect of the Bush tax cuts.” In that capacity, and after returning to Columbia, Hubbard was also the chief cheerleader for a runaway derivatives market that spiraled out of control and left the Great Recession in its wake.

While pocketing millions in fees from the financial industry that he was ostensibly studying as a neutral academic, Hubbard was an enthusiastic backer of the virtues of a burgeoning unregulated capital market that sold toxic derivatives to the world. In a landmark paper that he co-wrote in November 2004 with William C. Dudley, at the time the chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, it was asserted, “The capital markets have helped facilitate a major transformation of the U.S. mortgage financing system over the past 25 years. … The result has been a dramatic decline in the cyclical volatility of housing activity.” 

Their study was published by the Global Markets Institute of Goldman Sachs at the very time that Goldman, a leader in the capital market, was packaging and selling some of the toxic mortgage-based derivatives that would come close to destroying the world’s economy.

Hubbard’s article celebrated this “revolution in housing finance (that) has led to a large increase in mortgage equity withdrawal.” It extolled the madcap equity lending as “one reason why consumer spending held up well during the 2001-2003 period, even as employment and investment spending faltered.” 

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Gary McKinnon wins extradition battle

Published on Oct 16, 2012 by telegraphtv : Gary McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp praises Home Secretary Theresa May for her "incredibly brave decision" in blocking the extradition of her son to the US on human rights grounds.

Mr McKinnon is accused by US prosecutors of "the biggest military computer hack of all time", but he claims he was simply looking for evidence of UFOs.

Theresa May told MPs there was evidence that the 46-year-old, who suffers from Asperger syndrome, would try to kill himself if forced to stand trial in the US and therefore extraditing him breached his human rights.

Green Party Candidates Arrested, Shackled to Chairs For 8 Hours For Trying to Enter Debate.

Published on Oct 17, 2012 by democracynow : DemocracyNow.org - Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Cheri Honkala were arrested Tuesday as they attempted to enter the grounds of the presidential debate site at Hofstra University. Like other third party candidates, Stein was blocked from participating in the debate by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Republican and Democratic parties. Stein and Honkala were held for eight hours, handcuffed to chair. As she was being arrested, Stein condemned what she called "this mock debate, this mockery of democracy." Just hours after being released, Stein joins Democracy now! in their studio.

UK hacker to learn extradition fate.

Published on Oct 14, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : Gary McKinnon, a British computer hacker who has been fighting a ten-year battle against extradition to the United States is set to learn his fate. McKinnon was a Scottish systems administrator when he found himself labeled as the biggest military computer hacker of all time by the United States. He was accused of hacking into computers at the Pentagon and NASA.

Mogadishu's housing boom.

Published on Oct 14, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : The property market in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has boomed since the government pushed out al-Shabab fighters.

The most peaceful period in the city in over two decades has brought thousands of ex-pat Somalis back to their homeland.

But with speculators hoping to turn a profit behind most of the investments in new properties, prices are skyrocketing while hundreds of thousands of internally displaced, only kilometres away, live in poverty.