Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

Monday 05.31.2010

Memorial Day 2010

Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally (2009)

Witness to War
Preserving the Oral Hisories of Combat Veterans
The Witness to War Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving the stories and unique experiences of combat veterans. It was founded in an attempt to answer the unanswerable: What was it like to be there?
These are the stories of scared 18 and 19 year olds thrust into circumstances of such intensity and violence, that they became the defining moments of their lives.

Ron Paul: The Founding Fathers Were Libertarian

Barack Obama's credibility hits rock bottom after oil spill and Sestak scandal
by Toby Harnden in Washington - Telegraph.co.uk
The combination of Obama's passivity over the Gulf oil spill catastrophe and his cynical political maneuverings could spell disaster for him, argues Toby Harnden
The first thing Barack Obama probably should have done was to order the livestreaming Oil Spill Cam to be turned off. As the President insisted to Americans that he was "singularly focused" on staunching the flow, there was that mesmerizing image on their television screens of plumes of hydrocarbons gushing relentlessly into the Gulf of Mexico.
When any political leader feels they have to declare that they are "fully engaged" in an issue, it is clear that they are in trouble. Talking about it undermines the very point you are trying to make - not to mention that pesky Oil Spill Cam showing that, 38 days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, not a whole lot had been achieved.

Sestak vs. the White House: Issa on High-Stakes Dodgeball

BP says crude may continue flowing into gulf until August
By David S. Hilzenrath and Matt DeLong - Washington Post
As BP prepared to implement another fallback plan to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history, Obama administration and BP officials said crude could continue flowing into the Gulf of Mexico until August. The "American people need to know that it is possible we will have oil leaking from this well until August when the relief wells will be finished," presidential adviser Carol Browner said on the CBS show Face the Nation.

BP Oil Spill: Chemical Dispersants Threaten Gulf
By JUSTIN VOGT, The Fiscal Times
A fter 38 days of suspense, anxiety and frustration, Gulf Coast residents are hoping that BP's latest attempt to stop the oil leaking from its blown-out Deepwater Horizon well will succeed. But even as reports emerge that the "top kill" may be working, experts are focusing on another aspect of the disaster: its potential impacts on public health.
BP's controversial decision to break down the oil and keep it from reaching the shore by applying massive quantities of toxic chemicals known as dispersants has set off alarms among ecologists and other scientists who think the government and BP have yet to sufficiently address this possible threat.

U.S. Plans 'for Worst' in Gulf, Seeing Risk in Leak Strategy
By JOSEPH BERGER and LESLIE KAUFMAN - NYTimes.com
After the failure of an effort to seal off a well spewing oil one mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, a top Obama administration environmental official said the government is "prepared for the worst" in case oil keeps gushing until relief wells are finished sometime in August.
The chance that some oil will continue to leak for months was underscored by the managing director of BP, Robert Dudley, who described plans to put in place a second version of a containment dome, a strategy that failed earlier this month. Mr. Dudley, speaking on ABC's "This Week" program, said that attempt had given the company's engineers valuable lessons that would be applied to the new dome. But he added that even if it worked, some oil would seep out until the relief wells provided an"end point" by cutting off the flow beneath the seabed.

BP fails to plug oil well with "top kill"
Ed Stoddard and Mary Milliken
La./HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc said on Saturday the complex "top kill" maneuver to plug its Gulf of Mexico oil well has failed, crushing hopes for a quick end to the largest oil spill in U.S. history already in its 40th day.
"We have not been able to stop the flow," said Doug Suttles, the London-based oil giant's chief operating officer. "We have made the decision to move on to the next option," he added. That next option is called the lower marine riser package cap, one that captures oil from the well rather than plug it. Suttles said it could take four days or longer to show results.

Did North Korea Torpedo Oil Rig In US Gulf?
The destruction of a BP oil rig in the Gulf Coast has led to a lot of speculation and rumor-mongering on the Internet, focusing on the possibility that rogue Communist dictatorship North Korea was at fault.An explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20th killed 11 people and eventually collapsed the rig into the Gulf, sending 5,000 barrels of oil a day out and into the water.

Pres Obama "Armed Swat Teams To Inspect Oil Rigs In Gulf"

Obama Sends Bomb, Mars Experts to Fix BP Oil Spill
By Jessica Resnick-Ault and Katarzyna Klimasinska
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP Plc’s leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving.Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five "extraordinarily intelligent" scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.

US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., that has caused great loss of life, untold billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States.Most important to understand about this latest attack by North Korea against its South Korean enemy is that under the existing “laws of war” it was a permissible action as they remain in a state of war against each other due to South Korea’s refusal to sign the 1953 Armistice ending the Korean War.

Oil spill: BP admits its latest attempt to stem the leak has failed
By Philip Sherwell in New Orleans and Kamal Ahmed - Telegraph.co.uk
BP has admitted that its latest effort to stem the 40-day flow of oil into the Gulf has failed.
Speaking at a news conference at Fourchon Beach in Louisiana, Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said that attempts to plug the oil leak with a mixture of mud and debris had done nothing to stem the flow. The attempt was later abandoned. "I don't think the amount of oil coming out has changed," said Mr Suttles. "Just by watching it, we don't believe it's changed."

BP, Obama face clamor to halt oil spill "crime"
Ed Stoddard and Sarah Irwin
Louisiana (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers and the American public clamored on Sunday for BP and the Obama administration to do more to save the U.S. Gulf Coast from an out-of-control oil spill that one congressman called an "environmental crime".
The failure on Saturday of a "top kill" technique attempted by British-based BP to try to seal its leaking Gulf of Mexico well unleashed a surge of anger and frustration that poses a major domestic challenge for President Barack Obama,
Obama, who has called the leaking BP well a "manmade disaster", is trying to fend off criticism that his administration acted too slowly in its response to the nearly six-week-old spill, now known to be the worst in U.S. history.

Documents Show Early Worries About Safety of Rig
By IAN URBINA - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON - Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week. The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on the rig. The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of "well control." And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

Why gold is world's lowest risk investment
By Stewart Thomson - CommodityOnline.com
Those sure that Tuesday's Dow action marked the bottom, (the "hammer" on the candle charts) were shocked 24hrs later, as the Dow posted a mirror image reversal day to the downside. This morning the Dow is once again surging, stunning the bears.
This is classic whipsaw action, a saw operated by the banksters, cleaning both shorts and longs off the stock market souvlaki stick. It is also only example number 800 billion, of why you must allocate your capital in a pyramid formation, not a huge price plop.

Market instability may push gold prices sharply
CommodityOnline.com
Gold prices may move between $1,180 and $1,230 this week, although there still is potential for gold to head toward $1,250. Prices moved back above $1,200 last week as investment demand surged. Prices below this level drew buying interest. Combined exchange traded fund gold holdings were a record 62.85 million ounces as of 27 May, up 1.64 million ounces from the end of the previous week. This was the largest weekly increase since February 2009. Gold prices also were aided by the contract roll in the New York market. While investor concerns over European sovereign debt problems remain, the level of anxiety seems to have eased, which could allow for prices to ease a bit this week.

The Depression Of 2011? 23 Economic Warning Signs
From Financial Authorities All Over The Globe
Could the world economy be headed for a depression in 2011? As inconceivable as that may seem to a lot of people, the truth is that top economists and governmental authorities all over the globe say that the economic warning signs are there and that we need to start paying attention to them. The two primary ingredients for a depression are debt and fear, and the reality is that we have both of them in abundance in the financial world today. In response to the global financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008, governments around the world spent unprecedented amounts of money and got into a ton of debt. All of that spending did help bail out the global banking system, but now that an increasing number of governments around the world are in need of bailouts themselves, what is going to happen? We have already seen the fear that is generated when one small little nation like Greece even hints at defaulting. When it becomes apparent that quite a few governments around the globe cannot handle their debt burdens, what kind of shockwave is that going to send through financial markets?

The U.S. Government Bond Bubble
By: Moses Kim
What follows will read like an indictment on our entire economic system. But underlying my (relatively mild) harangue is an observation that people are ignoring the most obvious bubble out there; that is, the bubble in U.S. government bonds. The following is my attempt to figure out why.
Efficiency Market Theory
Let's face it, markets are inefficient. The efficient market theory, manufactured from the ivory towers of academia, poses perhaps the greatest threat to the stability of our system. Here's why.

What Is It About the Sestak Mess That Sounds So Familiar?
By John Lillpop - CapitolHillCoffeeHouse.com
As the cover up of the Sestak fiasco absorbs more and more of President Obama‰Ûªs time and energy, one has a vague recollection of a similar crisis involving a senate seat some where in the bowels of the American heartland. A recent crisis it was, if memory serves.
Unfortunately, age diminishes the ability to immediately recall every finite detail, but as the haze clears ever so slightly, one remembers that the previous scandal involved a vacant U.S. Senate seat in-was it Illinois?
By gosh, I believe it was.
Connect the dots!

Preparing for What's Next
By David Galland, GoldSeek.com
Oh, what a tangled web we live in. On one side of the Atlantic, there is a fundamentally broke European Union. On the other, the world's largest debtor nation, these United States.
Rotate the globe and you discover China, the world's most populous nation: a nation whose economy is desperately dependent on export revenues, without which its government may find it hard to meet the population's soaring aspirations. And who is China's largest trading partner? The European Union, that's who.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,
When is the Next AIG to Fall? | Marc Faber

Uncertainty Reigns Supreme
by John Browne - FinancialSense.com
Just a few weeks ago, most financial analysts continued to insist that the road to recovery stretched far into the future. Now, uncertainty has returned with a vengeance and the stock market has booked its first official 10% correction since this tenuous 'bull' market began in the spring of 2009. In recent days, markets have shown signs of life - but nascent rallies have been quickly smothered. I believe there are five fundamental reasons for this persistent uncertainty. First, the world's second most held currency, the euro, is threatened with possible extinction. The massive $750 billion bailout package for Greece will not cure Greece's dependence on entitlements, and will likely only buy time until a debt restructuring.

The Path to Hyperinflation
Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT - 321Gold.com
As we've discussed recently, persistent deflationary forces do not augur for a repeat of Japan circa 1990s or the US in the 1930s. Instead, because of the inability of government's to finance their current and future debt burden (there is a dearth of domestic savings and global capital), deflationary forces will ultimately lead to severe inflation or hyperinflation. In today's piece, I explain how this will happen but in various stages.
In the first stage, the economy enters a recession after a large credit bubble. The recession and end of the credit bubble lead to deflation. As a result, the US Dollar and US Treasuries outperform. Think 2008.

BankWatch: Big Banks Face Financial Doomsday in 2012
By PALLAVI GOGOI - DailyFinance.com
The cost of borrowing funds for the largest American banks is going to skyrocket in the coming years -- and that's just the beginning of their troubles. A confluence of factors are coming to a head: First, the credit ratings of large Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and Citigroup (C) are all under siege due to aspects of the financial reform bill, which was passed by the Senate last week. Second, that bill will restrict their lucrative derivatives and trading businesses, which is sure to put a crimp on their earnings. Finally, the vast amounts of government-backed cheap capital that these banks raised in the financial markets in 2009, will all have to be refinanced in 2012 at interest rates that could be as much as five times higher than those they got last year.

The Great Deceit
Kenneth J. Gerbino - 321Gold.com
It is the paper money created out of thin air that creates the unfair distribution of wealth that is making the middle class fall more behind and the poor more poor. Newly created money and credit in a paper money system benefits those that can access the money first and buy capital goods and real property at one price before the new money circulates and makes all prices go up. Wages also do not keep up with inflation and that creates another squeeze on the middle class.

Euro bailout "welfare for the rich" - Jim Rogers

Spain orders banks to come clean on debts to restore shattered faith
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
The Bank of Spain has ordered the country's lenders to face up to bad debts and set aside reserves of up to 30pc on property holdings in a bid to restore global confidence in the Spanish financial system after weeks of investor flight.
The new rules target the savings banks or cajas that account for the lion's share of the €445bn (£377bn) of property debt accumulated during the credit boom, when real interest rates were negative. The authorities acted after severe strains in the inter-bank market had begun to raise questions about the ability of Spanish lenders to access routine funds from global peers. Deutsche Bank said Spanish lenders need to refinance €125bn by late 2011. "Liquidity is our main area of concern. Savings banks are in a very weak and risky position," it said.

Spain is trapped in a 'perverse spiral' as wage cuts deepen the crisis
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
The Spanish Inquisition used to burn Englishmen in Sevilla's Plaza de San Francisco when they had the chance. There must have been some nostalgia for this practice when the news hit that Fitch Ratings had stripped the country of its AAA status.
The downgrade could not have come at a more dreadful moment. The EU's Û750bn "shield" for eurozone debtors has halted an incipient run on Club Med banks, but it has failed to restore full confidence for the obvious reason that such a guarantee cannot plausibly be extended from Greece to Portugal and then to Spain. The sums are too large, the number of solvent creditors too reduced, the intra-EMU politics too poisonous.

How Far Will Europe's Economic Tremors Reach?
By PAUL J. LIM - NYTimes.com
THE debt crisis in Europe has already had a significant psychological impact on Wall Street, sending the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index down 10.5 percent from its April high. But if investors are afraid that Europe's woes could retard the recovery in the United States, a question arises: What does the crisis in Europe really mean for domestic growth? The answer depends on which aspect of the crisis you're looking at. The possibility of another shock to global financial institutions is certainly cause for concern, as we shall see. But if investors focus solely on the fundamental health of Europe's economy, and its ties to the United States, the situation may not look all that worrisome.

European Market Overview

Geithner tells Europe: emulate China
The Sidney Morning Herald - AU
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday Europe should follow China's lead and boost growth since US consumers can no longer support the global economy alone. Geithner also said ahead of a summit of the G20 group of leading economies in Canada in late June that the United States and Europe were in "broad agreement" over the need to put into place tighter lending rules for banks.

Federal Reserve Is Intervening in the Currency Markets While Wall Street Whines about Reform
JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
I think we all already knew this, but I wanted to bookmark it on my site for some future occasion when the government and the Fed deny it, probably in a response to a question from Ron Paul. The question I have in my mind is where does this show up on their books, and what other markets are they active in?
It also seems a bit ironic, since the current topic of discussion on Bloomberg TV is "investor trust in freefall?" The consensus of the talking heads is that Wall Street's holy men are under attack by evil governments, particularly those of the European persuasion, and the odd US regulatory agency.

Wall Street's War - RollingStone.com
Congress looked serious about finance reform - until America's biggest banks unleashed an army of 2,000 paid lobbyists
This article originally appeared in RS 1106 from June 10, 2010.
It's early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act - the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp - word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once- indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.

Senate Considers Union Pension Bailout
By Christopher Neefus - CNSNews.com
(CNSNews.com) - A Senate committee will consider on Thursday a bill introduced by Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) that critics say would create a taxpayer-backed bailout of multi-employer pension funds that are in critical financial condition. "Pension plans across the country have taken major losses because of the near economic collapse and the decline in the stock market," Casey said in a statement upon introducing the bill in March. "My legislation would help correct these problems to protect the pensions of workers and unburden companies stuck paying a crippling expense that threatens its existence and the jobs of its employees."

Obama Talks Left To Move Right, As Wall Street Criminals Are Given A Free Pass And Reforms Are Watered Down
By Danny Schechter - MediaChannel.org
Is The President The Kind of Leader Chairman Mao Warned Us About?
We now know that it was the Obama Administration, led by the President himself, who used techniques well understood and denounced decades earlier by none other than Mao TseTung.
He talked left, to move right.
In several high profile speeches, he lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting, if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.
But even as he was feigning left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right, to kill off amendments that the bankers hated, like Senator Bernie Sanders's proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America.

Wall Street Operative Geithner Rebuffed in Berlin on Mission to Make World Safe for Derivatives
Webster G. Tarpley - TARPLEY.net
On the most important stop of last week's desperate mission to make the world safe for derivatives, US Treasury Secretary Geithner has been dealt a decisive rebuff. Geithner's obvious attempt to sabotage the recent prohibition enacted by the German government against naked credit default swaps (among the most toxic of derivatives) was rejected in Berlin on Thursday by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

Tarpley: "A casino economy of globalization"

Social Security's Accounting Fiction
By GEORGE HAGER - FinancialTimes.com
I must be missing something. I've read the blog pieces here by Henry Aaron and Larry Haas in which they take issue with a March 24 story in The New York Times noting that Social Security is operating in the red this year, taking in less money than it pays out. Henry and Larry say The Times is wrong. I disagree. The story is correct. (Every bit as correct, by the way, as the virtually identical story my USA TODAY colleague Richard Wolf wrote back on Feb. 8.)
Let's take a look at Henry Aaron's math. He says Social Security is projected to take in $819 billion in income this year against expenses of $714 billion, leaving a hefty surplus and a growing trust fund. Where do those revenues come from? He says there are three sources: payroll tax revenues, taxes on Social Security benefits and interest on the trust fund. The problem is that only two of these are real money, in the sense that they're "revenues" created by the Social Security system. Those interest payments aren't "real," and without them, Social Security is running a deficit.

Three American cities on the brink of broke
By Sara Behunek - CNNMoney.com
FORTUNE -- Several downtrodden cities are on the verge of defaulting on their debt, putting financially encumbered states and taxpayers on the hook to pick up the tab. The National League of Cities says municipal governments will probably come up $56 billion to $83 billion short between now and 2012. That's the tab for decades of binge spending; municipal defaults could be our collective hangover.
Municipal bonds, issued to fund public projects such as roads and public buildings, have historically been seen as one of the safest places to invest, which is why 80% of municipal bond holders are individual households and mutual fund investors, explains Jeffrey Cleveland, municipal bond analyst at Payden & Rygel Investment Management.

Bankers' 'doomsday scenarios' under fire
By Chris Giles in London - FT.com
Banks are exaggerating the economic effects of the regulations they are likely to face in the coming years, the economist running an international impact study has told the Financial Times.
In a pre-emptive blast before the banks launch their own lobbying effort on June 10, Stephen Cecchetti, chief economic adviser to the Bank for International Settlements, said the banks' "doomsday scenarios" were based on their assuming "the maximum impact of the maximum change with the minimum behavioural change".

As Harvard Law Dean, Kagan Did Not Require Study of U.S. Constitutional Law But Did Require Study of International and Foreign Law
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) - Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, is best known for moving Harvard Law School away from the 100-year old "case-law method" of legal study. But in the process, critics say, she moved the nation's premier law school away from requiring the study of U.S. constitutional law towards the study of the laws of foreign nations and international law. As dean, Kagan won approval from the faculty in 2006 to make major changes to the Harvard Law's curriculum.

Fox News Freedom Watch's Judge Napolitano w/ Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director of NORML

Net Neutrality: Unwarranted Intervention
Mises Daily: by Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez
With the recent sentence on the Comcast affair, it seems that the debate about net-neutrality regulation has paused. Feeling the carpet pulled out from under it, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is struggling to find a new legal ground for its intervention. In the meantime, the stakeholders should reflect on the consequences a lobbying success would bring: the creation of regulations on net neutrality. The position of telecom operators is clear enough, as they have opposed from the beginning this attack on their assets and their businesses.

We Are On the Brink of a New Age of Rage
On May 21, 2010, Simon Schama published a commentary piece in the Financial Times. Its title, On the Brink of a New Age of Rage caught my attention, and my regular readers I'm quite sure will soon know why, if they don't know already.
For anyone new to Mandelman Matters, let's just say that I'm angry about what's been allowed to go on in this country, angry at the bankers that have become our American oligarchy, angry that the people haven't already done more to put the fear of God into our elected representatives, and angry that our government has done little in an attempt to reverse our course and stop the foreclosure crisis, and failed at what little they have attempted. But... I'm also fearful about the future.
I'm fearful that we have become a country so polarized by our media and our own beliefs, that we now require tragedy on at least the scale of 9/11 to bring us together to fight a common enemy. Anything less, and we're as likely to direct our anger at sideline issues, as we are to become absorbed in who's winning and losing on America Idol.

IRS wants a cut of online sales on eBay, Craigslist
By Tom Herman for The Washington Post
Many people think of online auction sites, such as eBay and Craigslist, as virtual garage sales -- a convenient way to clean out cluttered closets and attics stuffed with old clothes, books and knickknacks inherited from Aunt Gladys. But if you're a frequent or big-time seller, the government might consider your proceeds to be income and could come after you for taxes.

Huge profits result from foreclosure procedure
By RICHARD WILNER - NYPost.com
A new gold rush is sweeping the country -- only this time the speculators are looking to get fat off the $4 billion home foreclosure industry by promising banks a streamlined and low-cost method to kick folks out of their homes.
In the last two years, as the mortgage meltdown intensified, four companies have gone public or filed papers to go public -- each looking to get their hands on cash to help grow into a national powerhouse quickly to take advantage of the soft housing market.

Totalitarian Collectivism: Part 10 -- GLOBAL CONTROLLERS
By James Hall - CapitolHillCoffeeHouse.com
As difficult as it is for most people to deal with the savage events that shape and manipulate humanity, it is nearly impossible to get the multitude to admit that they are expendable bondage slaves to a global system of hideous design and sinister purpose. The illusion that governments, serve the people is a total denial of history and especially, current events. Human nature requires an eternal struggle against the evil committed in the name of the "public good". Honesty about their plight under the boot of oppression is too hard to digest. The cause of their captivity refuses to identify their own role and compliance within the cancerous organism that rules the planet.

Kyrgyzstan at the Cross-Roads
Written by Uddipan Mukherjee - OilPrice.com
Not only should Kyrgyzstan's future after the April ousting of the government be a central focus, but the future of the other 'stans' as well
When riots broke out in Petrograd, it was March 8, 1917. The subalterns clashed with Tsar's infantrymen. In the process, 40 people were killed. But any 'revolution' can claim a resounding success and more to be embedded in the annals of History, if and only if the civilians and the army act in unison. And that's what happened on that day in St. Petersburg.

2nd Iceland Volcano Issues Warning
A second, much larger volcano in Iceland is showing signs that it may be about to erupt, scientists have warned. Since the start of the Eyjafjallajškull eruption, which caused cancellations of thousands of flights in Europe because of a giant ash cloud, there has been much speculation about neighboring Katla. An initial research paper by the University College of London Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction said: "Analysis of the seismic energy released around Katla over the last decade or so is interpreted as providing evidence of a rising ... intrusive magma body on the western flank of the volcano."

2010 On Track to Be Deadliest Year for U.S. Forces in Almost Nine-Year-Long Afghanistan War
By Edwin Mora
(CNSNews.com) -- 137 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan since the first of the year, making the first five months of 2010 the deadliest January-through-May period of any year of the almost nine-year-long war. The 137 casualties so far this year more than double the 59 that occurred last year from January through May. Thus far, 2009 has been the deadliest year of the war, but the high current casualty count for this year, and the heavy fighting anticipated in Kandahar this summer, put 2010 on track to be even deadlier.

Gaza aid flotilla 'leaves Cyprus'
A flotilla of ships sailing towards Gaza with aid and activists on board has left Cyprus and will reach its destination on Monday, organisers say.
But Israel says it will stop the boats, calling the campaign a "provocation intended to delegitimise Israel". The Palestinian territory has been under an Israeli and Egyptian economic blockade for almost three years, with only limited humanitarian aid allowed. The activists, from the Free Gaza Movement, want to break the blockade. Israel imposed the measures after the Islamist movement Hamas took power in Gaza.

China fails to censure North Korea at warship summit
China has held back from censuring North Korea at a summit in South Korea dominated by the issue of a sunken warship.
South Korea has accused North Korea of torpedoing the Cheonan, which sank on 26 March with the loss of 46 lives. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the priority was to reduce tensions and avoid a clash over the incident. But he did not mention North Korea by name or show support for possible UN sanctions against Pyongyang.

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