Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

Tuesday 06.29.2010

The Banks Keep Stealing - Why Should You Keep Paying?
Dylan Ratigan - SilverBearCafe.com
The dire straits of the middle class of America has made it near impossible for our politicians to keep up the pretense that our current government truly works for the "people." Between the multiple overt and secretive bailouts, the massive bonuses and the circular use of our tax money to lobby for these continued handouts, you can no longer hide from the evidence.
When Senator Durbin said "The banks... frankly own this place," you realize it was not in jest.
Couple this with recent protections handed by the Supreme Court to corporations to directly influence elections and it can make things seem hopeless for those not on Wall Street or their chosen politicians. Favored CEOs and now even foreign countries get all the printed money they need, leaving us paying both our bills and theirs.

Dylan Ratigan On TYT: How Banks Rob Us

President Obama urges G-20 nations to spend;
they pledge to halve deficits
By Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson - Washington Post
TORONTO -- President Obama warned Sunday that the world economic recovery remains "fragile" and urged continued spending to support growth, an expansionist call at the end of a summit marked by an agreement among developed nations to halve their annual deficits within three years.
The president's remarks tempered the Group of 20's headline achievement at the summit, a deficit-reduction target that had been pushed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the host of the meeting and a fiscal conservative. Although there is broad agreement that government debt in the developed world needs to be reduced, there is concern that cutting too fast and too deeply will slow growth and possibly spark a new recession.

U.S. Treasury chief Geithner urges G-20 leaders to continue government spending
By Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times
The Treasury secretary, speaking at the summit in Toronto, says the global recovery remains fragile and that ill-timed austerity measures could derail gains. Obama meets privately with other leaders.
Reporting from Toronto - They smiled for photos and announced agreement on everything from nuclear containment to development efforts in Africa on Saturday, but world leaders gathered in Toronto have a tougher challenge as they get down to brass tacks on the best way to keep the global economic recovery from stalling.
Going into Sunday's meetings with the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging nations, the Obama administration was pressing leaders to stay the course they set more than a year ago to promote growth through government investment in the economy.

Did the G-8 Push Us Closer to Gold Confiscation?
By: Julian DW Phillips - MarketOracle.co.uk
The global economic recovery is not looking good. The G-8 meeting this weekend saw divisions that could lead [as the I.M.F. put it] to losses of trillions of dollars and millions of jobs. Now it is reported that Mr. Bernanke and his close allies at the board in Washington are worried by signs that the U.S. recovery is running out of steam. The E.C.R.I. leading indicator published by the Economic Cycle Research Institute has collapsed to a 45-week low of -5.7 in the most precipitous slide for half a century. Such a reading typically portends contraction within three months or so.

Markets seek new direction after G20
ByJamie Chisholm - FT.com
Like an England centre-half pairing, markets were unsure which direction to take, with investors relieved by a benign G20 meeting but still harbouring lingering concerns about the strength of the US and European economic recoveries.
The FTSE All-World index was up 0.2 per cent, commodities are mixed, and though the dollar is higher, the currency complex is struggling to establish its previously clearly-defined risk-on or risk-off trend.
In addition, the S&P 500 on Wall Street has endured a volatile session and finished 0.2 per cent lower as traders warily eyed the falling US 10-year bond yield, whose 14-month low suggests many remain worried about economic prospects, and the tumbling euro, which has fallen below the $1.23 level.

Fed Looks to Hyperinflate
The Daily Bell - SilverBearCafe.com
Dominant Social Theme:
We'll dump as much money into the market as necessary - until it surrenders and does our bidding.
Free-Market Analysis:
This potential move gives the deflation versus inflation debate a new perspective. We have written in the past that we had questions about the Great Depression based on conflicting opinions of Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman et. al. Living through the "Great Recession" has begun to clear them up. It is a little like being a lab rat; it is painful, but the experience gives you an insider's look at the scientific method. Or in this case a fiat-money economy.

Why the recent gold price surge is definitely not a bubble
In another excerpt from the Erste Bank Special report on Gold, Ronald Stoeferle explains why gold is not another example of a price bubble ready to burst.
Author: Ronald Stoeferle - Mineweb.com
Many market participants and commentators are obviously having a hard time distinguishing between a bull market and a bubble. More and more articles are referring to the imminent burst of the "gold bubble" and to an alleged "crowded trade". But are the authors of these articles crying wolf?

Recession worries may drive gold price to $5,000
By Jon Nadler - CommodityOnline.com
World leaders took the "oath of the deficits" over the weekend and gave every indication that they intend to cut difficult to sustain budget imbalances in their home countries. Although the Toronto G-20 communiquŽ faces the scrutiny of the markets this morning and appears to have been met with less than a convinced attitude, its substance points to significant changes on the horizon for the nations that have signed on its dotted lines.

Gold, Silver, How High? When?
DeepCaster LLC - SilverBearCafe.com
Investors and Traders charged with deploying Assets to acquire Precious Monetary Metals are impelled to first Forecast the likely Future Course and Timing of the Price Moves of the Precious Metals, as they do with other prospective acquisitions. Then, they must actually Deploy Assets based on those Forecasts.
Therefore, it is important to make Educated Forecasts about Gold and Silver Prices. Specifically, one must forecast "How High?" (or "How low?") and "When?"

Silver Posting Best Streak Since Hunt Brothers
Nicholas Larkin and Pham-Duy Nguyen - SilverBearCafe.com
Silver, the precious metal most used in industry, is attracting investors betting on both faster and slower economic growth as prices extend the longest run of quarterly gains in three decades.
Doubling as a store of value for buyers concerned about the economy and as an industrial material for those bullish on growth, silver is outperforming metals from copper to zinc this year and keeping pace with gold. It will rise as much as 15 percent to $22 an ounce before December, from $19.145 today, according to Daniel Brebner, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG whose fourth-quarter outlook was accurate to within 0.7 percent.

Peter Schiff - GDP, Markets, Dollar, FinReg - June 25, 2010

Double Dip Economic Recession
This Chart Say's Its Guaranteed!
By: JD Rosendahl - MarketOracle.co.uk
With all the incessant analysis from economists, politicians, and bureaucrats of this nascent recovery sprouting wings, there is one great and simple chart that's screaming a "Double Dip" is guaranteed: See the weekly chart of the $BDI below.
The index had made classic bearish divergences on both the RSI and MACD. It has also made a bearish head and shoulders topping pattern. The technical analysis of the index is screaming economic collapse on the way.

US Double Dip Depression
Daily Bell - SilverBearCafe.com
. . . . What happens in a very bad recession - this one being called the Great Recession - is that many of the tools that mercantilist central banks use to manipulate the economy cease to work. This comes about because the central banks in question have printed too much money (electronically and otherwise) and flooded the economy with currency that has caused first a boom and then a bust.

US money supply plunges at 1930's pace
By Sol Palha
The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history. The M3 figures - which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance - began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened.

Dollar Faces Perfect Storm
By: Rick Ackerman - GoldSeek.com
For spin-free analysis of the global economy, the Australia-based The Privateer is one of our favorite reads. Amidst a cacophony of hubris and unwarranted optimism, its editor, William Buckler, provides a fact-filled perspective that reduces the mainstream media's reports of "recovery" to drivel. Buckler notes drily that "the signs that the party is indeed almost over are all around us and becoming very difficult to ignore." The same goes for the U.S. dollar. When Nixon cut off foreign holders from redeeming dollars for gold in 1971, says Buckler, the U.S. initiated a reckless global experiment with fiat paper. "Forty years later, the bill for this adventure has come due," he warns, "and there is nobody to pay for it."

Inside the United States How Bad is it?
William (Bill) Buckler - SilverBearCafe.com
It's pretty bad. All of a sudden, the recovery has almost officially become "fragile" in the US. The official version was stated in the Fed's press release following the FOMC meeting on June 22-23. "Financial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance", they said. Indeed they have. A recent report from a department of the US Treasury shows just how bad they have become.

Deflation, Inflation and Why Paul Krugman Fears Austerity
By Addison Wiggin - DailyReckoning.com
06/28/10 Baltimore, Maryland - This is very disconcerting, fellow forecaster. Paul Krugman is making sense up to a point.
"We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression," the Nobel laureate wrote in a NY Times Op-Ed yesterday, dipping his toes into a pool we've been sloshing around in for some time.
"It will probably look more like the Long Depression [of the late 1800s]," the Krug continues, "than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost - to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs - will nonetheless be immense."
We choke on our morning brew admitting it but Krugman is onto something.

Europe's banks are still on 'life support', BIS warns
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Europe's banks have yet to come clean over bad loans and may struggle to refinance short-term debt unless the region's bond crisis subsides soon, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has warned.
The BIS said in its annual report that banks on both sides of the Atlantic remain "highly leveraged and still appear to be on life support. The essential task of reducing leverage and repairing balance sheets is simply not finished. The Greek sovereign debt crisis shows just how fragile the financial system still is.

New general strike planned in Greece Tuesday
ATHENS (AP) - Greek public services will close down Tuesday and most transportation will be disrupted by a new general strike against proposed pension and labor reforms.
The debt-ridden country's two major private and public sector unions bitterly oppose draft legislation that will increase retirement ages and make it cheaper for companies to fire workers.

US expects yuan to keep rising
President Barack Obama said the US expects China's currency to appreciate as the Chinese government allows more flexibility and market forces take a bigger role in setting the value.
China's decision to lift a two-year-old policy of pegging the yuan to the US dollar and allow its currency to trade more freely was a first step and the US will monitor progress over the next ''several months,'' he said.

Welcoming the Failure of the Economic Recovery Team
By Bill Bonner - DailyReckoning.com
06/28/10 Waterford, Ireland - The latest from the G20 meeting in Toronto. As you recall, the meeting was billed as a showdown between the Germans and the Americans that is, between the deficit cutters and the big spenders
That is, between the people without a hope and the people without a clue.
TORONTO (AP) - World leaders must work together to make sure the global recovery stays on track, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Saturday.

Gerald Celente: Wall Street Bill a Joke

States of Crisis for 46 Governments Facing Greek-Style Deficits
By Edward Robinson
June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Californians don't see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end.
Unemployment was 12.4 percent in May, 2.7 percentage points higher than the national rate. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the main welfare program for 1.3 million poor families or borrowing more than $9 billion in the bond market. California, tied with Illinois for the lowest credit rating of any state, is diverting a rising portion of tax revenue to service debt, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August issue.

Congress blasts Medicaid hole in states' budgets
By Tami Luhby,
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Young children in Massachusetts will lose state-funded mental health services. Welfare recipients will see their employment and training programs slashed. And homeless families will lose nearly all their state assistance to move into more permanent housing.
Massachusetts lawmakers had to make these and other difficult cuts last week after discovering they had to slash another nearly $700 million out of the state budget. The Bay State had assumed Congress would pass $24 billion in additional Medicaid funding for states before their fiscal years start on July 1.

U.S. Credit Metrics Will Continue To Weaken
GoldSeek.com
The fiscal situation in Greece has brought new attention to the fiscal situations of countries around the world, including the United States. We have written several times that the U.S. budget deficit and overall debt load have passed the point of no return, whereby further borrowing to stimulate growth or cutting the budget deficit through austerity measures could threaten the U.S. credit standing in global markets. Recently, two noteworthy events have transpired which support our thesis. First, Alan Greenspan's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled "U.S. Debt and the Greece Analogy," reflects a growing concern that the United States' borrowing needs will lead to a dramatic rise in long-term interest rates. Second, the Senate voted against extended unemployment benefits, once considered a rubber-stamp process, which exemplifies voters' increasingly negative sentiment towards Government deficit spending.

Report Warns That Many Banks Still Vulnerable to Crises
By JACK EWING - NYTimes.com
BASEL, SWITZERLAND - An organization that brings together most of the world's major central banks said Monday that the easy money that has propped up the banking system during the financial crisis must soon be withdrawn - even as it warned that many banks are still in fragile health.
"Exceptional government and central bank support was needed to quell the enormous uncertainty and market disruption during the crisis," said Jaime Caruana, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, whose board includes the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, and the European Central Bank president, Jean-Claude Trichet.

Treasury Yield Near 14-Month Low as Consumer Confidence May Ebb
By Wes Goodman
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury yields were near a 14-month low before a private report that economists said will show consumer confidence fell in June.
U.S. government securities returned 4.4 percent this quarter, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes, as investors sought the relative safety of debt on speculation global economic growth will slow. The MSCI World Index of shares declined almost 10 percent in the period as a debt crisis in Europe led investors to shun higher-yielding securities.

Corporate Anarchy: Wall Street and BP Criminals At Large
Danny Schechter - SilverBearCafe.com
In this era of corporate anarchy, legal, ethical and financial rules have all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit.
It seems clear that BP can't seem to fix the catastrophic gusher the press calls a "leak," and that President Obama can't fix the economy because its problems are structural and won't respond to soaring rhetoric emanating from his bully pulpit.
Meanwhile, most of the world's people really don't get the fix we are all in. I take that back; the million Americans who have just lost their benefits probably do. The deficit hawks voted that down without doing anything about the growing deficit of jobs.

Deepwater Horizon and Pandora's Box
by Cris Sheridan - FinancialSense.com
Today we are able to sustain billions of people due to genetically modified food products, fight wars without having to use actual soldiers, build twirling skyscrapers thousands of feet into the air, and drill miles down into the ocean floor while floating precariously above its surface. Every day technology takes us further and further into uncharted depths, pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Little, it seems, is beyond our reach. With all that we've accomplished, however, there's a feeling we've built a civilization - a way of life - that is unsustainable. That we've reached a point where we are no longer able to fully understand or control the consequences of our technology; and for each day the oil spews relentlessly in the deep, the effects of this reality become more profound, more troubling.

Oil spill: Is Gulf safe for swimming?
KIMBERLY BLAIR - Pensacola News Journal
EPA opening public "Decontamination Stations"; 400 people seek medical care after visiting Florida beach
The Escambia County Health Department lifted a health advisory on Pensacola Beach on Friday on the advice of a beach official and against the advice of a federal environmental official.
But the advisory was not lifted for Gulf Islands National Seashore's Fort Pickens beach, immediately west of Pensacola Beach or Johnson Beach on Perdido Key.
And hours after the Pensacola Beach advisory was lifted, the health department asked for state approval to issue an oil-impact advisory that leaves the decision to swim in the Gulf of Mexico up to the discretion of individual beachgoers.

The Coming Gulf Coast Firestorm: How the BP oil catastrophe could destroy a major U.S. city
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger - NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) It's hurricane season in the Atlantic, and that means Mother Nature could be whipping up fierce storms and sending them charging into the Gulf Coast any day now. In a normal hurricane season, that's bad enough all by itself... remember Katrina? But now there's something even more worrisome in the recipe: There's oil in the water.
So what happens when a Katrina-class hurricane comes along and picks up a few million gallons of oil, then drops that volatile liquid on a major U.S. city like Galveston or New Orleans?

162 cases of illness linked to oil spill reported in Louisiana
By the CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) -- Exposure to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in 162 cases of illnesses reported to the Louisiana state health department, according to a report released Monday. Of those cases, 128 involved workers on oil rigs or individuals involved in the oil spill cleanup efforts, the report said.
Among the most common reported symptoms were throat irritation, shortness of breath, cough, eye irritation, nausea and headaches, according to the department's oil spill surveillance report.

When wind, water and oil mix
TRAVIS GRIGGS- Pensacola News Journal
In 1993, as a powerful Atlantic storm approached, the tanker MV Braer ran aground on a Scottish island, spilling directly onto the rocky coastline twice as much oil as the Exxon Valdez..
Hurricane-force winds pounded the coast the following week, driving the spill ashore, whipping oily spray miles inland, contaminating crops, coating houses and smearing cars with crude oil.
With estimates between 69 million and 132 million gallons of oil currently in Gulf waters as a result of the Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20, and with a good portion of that off the coast of Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key, chilling questions emerge:

BP Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales

Gulf Oil Spill - The Greatest Disaster Since The Flood?
MarketOracle.co.uk
Joshua S. Burnett writes: Most articles begin with a purpose statement revealing what the author desires to convince the reader of. This article is different. These few paragraphs begin with a plea for someone to tell me that I've got the evidence all wrong and that what I see and know is a smoke filled illusion void of reality. I want someone who knows differently to tell me. So as you read this article please understand that I'm not attempting to be a fear-mongerer. Please know I'm no prophet or guru, just a guy who looks at all the evidence he has and draws conclusions. And if you know I'm wrong and why, please write and tell me. First, let's review the facts:

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Should 'Unwind' Portfolios, Pimco Says
By Jody Shenn - BusinessWeek.com
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing-finance companies supported by U.S. taxpayers, should take advantage of demand for government-backed mortgage debt and sell their holdings, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.
"Since the government's going to want to unwind them at some point anyway, why not do it at the best levels ever?" Scott Simon, the mortgage-bond head at Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, manager of the world's biggest fixed- income fund, said in a telephone interview. "It's good for taxpayers, good for stakeholders, good for everybody."

Nearly One in Five Mortgage Defaults Are 'Strategic'
By Nick Timiraos
A new report estimates that nearly one in five mortgage defaults through the first half of 2009 were "strategic," where borrowers who appeared to have the capacity to pay their mortgages stopped doing so.
The research follows on an earlier report by Experian and Oliver Wyman that first aimed to quantify the share of mortgage defaults that are "strategic." Strategic defaulters are defined as those who miss six straight mortgage payments without missing multiple payments on auto loans and other consumer debts for the six months after they first fell behind on mortgage payments.

Gary Shilling: Expect Housing Prices to Continue to Fall
By NIKHIL HUTHEESING - DailyFinance.com
DailyFinance recently met with Gary Shilling, president of A. Gary Shilling & Co. to discuss China, the economy, housing prices, and to learn a little about Gary Shilling himself. In this video segment, Shilling focuses on the housing market.
Shilling explains that when an economy starts to recover, there are four cylinders that need to get fired up but so far, the economy is running on one: It's unwinding the inventory cycle so that production actually fulfills final sales instead of old inventory. But the other three cylinders -- employment growth, consumer spending, and housing -- are not yet working. Worse, there is no sign that any of these will improve.

The Next Crisis: Public Pension Funds
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN - NYTimes.com
Ever since the Wall Street crash, there has been a bull market in Google hits for "public pensions" and "crisis." Horror stories abound, like the one in Yonkers, where policemen in their 40s are retiring on $100,000 pensions (more than their top salaries), or in California, where payments to Calpers, the biggest state pension fund, have soared while financing for higher education has been cut. Then there is New York City, where annual pension contributions (up sixfold in a decade) would be enough to finance entire new police and fire departments.

Job blues for gray-haired workers
By Chris Isidore,
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Companies are starting to hire again, but many are turning their backs on older job seekers.
Statistics from the Labor Department show the employment outlook is improving for most workers. The unemployment rate for those in the 25 to 54-year-old age group has fallen from a record high of 9.2% in October to 8.7% in May.
But the nationwide unemployment rate for older workers -- while lower than that of younger workers -- has barely moved since hitting a record high of 7.2% in December. It's currently 7.1%.
"All the gains we've seen from the peak last fall to now, they've gone to people less than 55 years old," said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute.

Oil Swings May Widen as Spare Capacity Shrinks
By Alexander Kwiatkowski
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Swings in oil prices may widen over the next five years as OPEC's shrinking spare production capacity increases traders' concern about supply shortages.
Oil's 50-day historical volatility, a measure of how much crude fluctuates around its average price, was at 34 percent on June 25. The measure rose to a record 108 percent in January 2009 after OPEC's spare production capacity fell to its lowest in almost four years. The group's idled capacity may drop to 3.9 percent of world demand by 2015 from 6.8 percent this year, according to International Energy Agency estimates.

Illinois Borrowing $900 Million as Credit-Default Cost Doubles
By Allison Bennett and Brendan A. McGrail
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Illinois plans to add $900 million in Build America Bonds to the $755 million in securities it sold in June as the cost of insuring the state's debt against default reached a record high.
The cost of an Illinois credit-default swap has more than doubled since April 5 to a record of 370 basis points, or $370,000 to protect $10 million of debt, according to CMA DataVision. The state rescheduled the Build America sale for mid-July, after originally planning it for as early as this week, Dow Jones reported, citing John Sinsheimer, Illinois's capital markets director.

White House Preparing National Online ID Plan
By Mathew J. Schwartz - InformationWeek
The proposed system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the web at the transactional level will require an identity ecosystem.
The Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Web. The online authentication and identity management system would be targeted at the transactional level -- for example, when someone logs into their banking website or completes an online e-commerce purchase.

Authority overstepping bounds? . . . or all about CONTROL
EU to ban selling eggs by dozen
By Alastair Jamieson - Telegraph.co.uk
Shoppers will be banned from buying bread rolls or eggs priced by the dozen under new food labelling regulations proposed by the European parliament.
Under the draft legislation, to come into force as early as next year, the sale of groceries using the simple measurement of numbers will be replaced by an EU-wide system based on weight.
It would mean an end to packaging descriptions such as eggs by the dozen, four-packs of apples, six bread rolls or boxes of 12 fish fingers.

Supreme Court sides with gun advocates, extends gun rights nationwide
By: MARK SHERMAN, AP - WashingtonExaminer.com
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, expanding the conservative court's embrace of gun rights since John Roberts became Chief Justice.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" could survive legal challenges.

Joe Biden, the vice-president who keeps putting his foot in it
By Ed Pilkington - The Guardian
Joe Biden has done it again: made a gaffe in full view of the cable TV news cameras. But it's nothing new for the vice-president
You would have thought Joe Biden would have learned by now. When in a public space surrounded by cameras, thou shalt speak nothing but inanities.
The US vice-president probably wishes he had followed that script on Saturday while glad-handing in Milwaukee. Things took a turn for the worse when he walked into a shop and asked, "Where's the ice-cream?", only to be told it traded in frozen custard.
Then it got really bad. Biden engaged the owner in conversation. "What do we owe you?" he asked, licking a cone. "Lower our taxes and we'll call it even," the owner replied.
Leave it there, Joe! Don't do it!
But no, Biden just had to answer back, for the benefit of the cable news channels. "Why don't you say something nice instead of being a smartass all the time? Say something nice," he snorted.

EGYPT: Radar finds an ancient city in Nile Delta
LATimes.com
Beneath the flag-like fields of the Nile Delta, an ancient city lingers.
A team of Austrian archeologists using radar and satellite imaging has discovered what is believed to be an ancient city once controlled by the Hyksos, invaders from Asia who ruled Egypt from about 1664-1569 BC.

Turkey Closes Airspace to Some Israeli Flights
NYTimes.com
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey has closed its airspace to some Israeli military flights following a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship, the Turkish prime minister and officials said Monday. An official said civilian commercial flights were not affected.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Toronto that Turkey imposed a ban on Israeli flights after the May 31 raid on a Turkish ship that was part of a six-vessel international aid flotilla, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency. The prime minister, who is in Canada to attend a summit of the Group of 20 major industrial and developing nations, did not elaborate.

Kissinger warns on Afghan exit strategy
By Daniel Dombey in Washington - FT.com
Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, has warned that Washington's plan to begin handing over responsibility to national forces in Afghanistan in July next year "provides a mechanism for failure".
The people "must be prepared for a long struggle" in what is already the US's longest war, Mr Kissinger said in the wake of Barack Obama's decision to remove General Stanley McChrystal as commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Meet The KGB 2.0: Cold War Espionage Is Back, As Spies In The US Serve To Determine Russian Gold Policy, And Much More
by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
The KGB is back, and it's leaner and meaner than ever. In a dramatic bust, the FBI has arrested 10 Russian individuals for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments in the United States on behalf of Russia. The 37 page indictment from the Southern District of New York reads like a John LeCarre-cum-Ian Flemming espionage thriller and has everything including conspiracies, brush passes, handlers, money exchanges, code words, flash memory cards, covert meetings in Central Park, cracked secret codes, infiltration of strategic US organizations, and last but not least, Russia's apparent interest "about prospects for the global gold market", whereby espionage conducted by one of the group of rounded-up spies served to at least partially determine Russian policy vis-a-vis gold.

'Gasland' documentary fuels debate over natural gas extraction
ANDREW MAYKUTH The Philadelphia Inquirer
John Hanger might think twice the next time a documentary filmmaker knocks on his door in the state capital.
In a documentary about natural gas development that premiered this week on HBO, Pennsylvania's secretary of the environment receives a decidedly unflattering portrayal at the hands of Josh Fox, who made the movie, "Gasland."
Fox portrays Hanger -- a liberal who spent years in the mainstream environmental movement -- as an equivocating tool of the natural gas industry. In one of the film's signature moments, Fox pulls out a bottle of water he says was polluted by a Marcellus Shale gas well and challenges the state's top environmental regulator to drink it.

This documentary really hits home. Americans need to pay attention to the message (watch on HBO; DVD out in Dec):

GASLAND Trailer 2010

GASLAND Q & A (part 1) @ 2010 Sundance Film Festival

GASLAND Q & A (part 2) @ 2010 Sundance Film Festival

GASLAND Q & A (part 3) @ 2010 Sundance Film Festival

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