Stephen Harper "Canadian People Don't Care about CONtempt"

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Japan's Nuclear Meltdown Update Fukushima 4/1/11 "unedited"

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Full meltdown in full swing? Japan maximum nuclear alert

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In Japan, radiation levels in the seawater near the Fukushima plant continue to rise. They're now more than 3.5 thousand times higher than normal. Radioactive material has also been detected in soil at the facility. Japan's government described the situation as serious and unpredictable. Workers have been unsuccessfully trying to restore the plant's cooling system, in what is now the worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl. There's been some debate over whether there are any similarities between the two events. RT talks to Professor Christopher Busby, of the European Committee on Radiation Risks.
RT on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
RT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RT_com

We Are All Each Other - Max Igan

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Canadian officials ‘secretive’ on North American perimeter security agreement

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http://www.infowars.com/canadian-officials-secretive-on-north-american-perimeter-security-agreement/

Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
April 1, 2011

Image source: Pete Souza, WhiteHouse.gov. Image is in the public domain.

Unifying the once sovereign nations of North America under treaty law continues to move forward by stealth. And many Canadians are sitting uneasy about the secrecy.

Members of Canada’s CTV express concern in the following clip about a draft agreement for ‘integrated perimeter security’ between the U.S. & Canada that Canadian officials have refused to release. As one of CTV’s panel members points out, it seems the Canadian government has “put the cart before the horse,” intent on ‘first signing the deal, then discussing it.’ Another panelist quips he has a copy of the agreement that “doesn’t exist,” refusing to show it to viewers because officials were keeping it under wraps.

While some of the CTV panelists were not against the agreement, it was termed a ‘mini-NAFTA’ that could undermine sovereignty through its integration scheme. “Perimeter agreement could mean goodbye to the 49th parallel,” as one journalist put it, emphasizing that the plan utilized the word “integrate.”

Fukushima Fallout Reaches U.S.A.

from ChaoticFate.com by qew

http://www.infowars.com/fukushima-fallout-reaches-u-s-a/

Mike Whitney
Infowars.com
April 1, 2011

Three of the six nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have partially melted down and highly toxic plutonium is seeping into the soil outside. Plutonium is less volatile than other radioactive elements like iodine or cesium, but it’s also more deadly. According to Businessweek, “When plutonium decays, it emits what is known as an alpha particle, a relatively big particle that carries a lot of energy. When an alpha particle hits body tissue, it can damage the DNA of a cell and lead to a cancer-causing mutation.” If plutonium leaches into groundwater or pristine aquifers, the threat to public health and the environment will be extreme. This is an excerpt from an article in the Guardian:

“The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site. The warning follows an analysis by a leading US expert of radiation levels at the plant….

Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian workers at the site appeared to have “lost the race” to save the reactor…” (“Japan may have lost race to save nuclear reactor”, The Guardian)

A List Of 28 Things That Will Make You Realise That There Is Something Seriously Wrong With This Country

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Print Version

April 1, 2011

Source: The American Dream
What in the world is happening to America?  Perhaps you have asked yourself that question from time to time.  Today it seems like everything is falling apart.  Our economy is crumbling, our politicians are incompetent, we have just gotten involved in another war, corruption is everywhere and the Americans people are so addicted to entertainment that hardly anything can wake them from their stupor.  It is enough to make you think that there is just not much hope for America.  But the truth is that we should never give up.  It is when the times are darkest that the greatest heroes arise.  We truly do live in challenging times, but that just means that there are great victories to be won and great stories to be written.  There may be a whole lot of things that are very wrong with America right now, but that doesn’t mean that the game is over quite yet.
Unfortunately, right now most Americans are completely asleep.  Just like during the declining years of the Roman Empire, most people that live in the U.S. are spoiled, decadent and completely addicted to entertainment.
The following is how many Americans actually plan their weeks….
Monday: Watch Dancing With The Stars
Tuesday: Watch The Dancing With The Stars Results Show
Wednesday: Watch American Idol
Thursday: Watch The American Idol Results Show
At this point, most people in this country cannot even intelligently discuss the pressing issues of our day.
In fact, 63 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 cannot find Iraq on a map and 90 percent of Americans in that same age group cannot find Afghanistan on a map.
We’ve got a lot of work to do.
America is in sorry shape and it desperately needs some heroes.
The following is a list of 28 things that will make you really think that there is something seriously wrong with this country….
#1 According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 25 percent of U.S. households now have zero net worth or negative net worth.  Back in 2007, that number was just 18.6 percent.
#2 According to the Pentagon, the cost of the first week of attacks on Libya was 600 million dollars.
#3 The major food producers are shrinking the sizes of their packages so that they won’t have to raise prices.  The New York Times recently did a story about one woman who was absolutely shocked when she started keeping track of shrinking package sizes at her local supermarket….

Ms. Stauber, 33, said she began inspecting her other purchases, aisle by aisle. Many canned vegetables dropped to 13 or 14 ounces from 16; boxes of baby wipes went to 72 from 80; and sugar was stacked in 4-pound, not 5-pound, bags, she said.

Canadian Govt Refuses To Test For Radiation In Milk Claiming It’s Not Necessary

from ChaoticFate.com by qew

Print Version

April 1, 2011

Source: CBC
Drink it down, ask questions later. The following report aired on CBC.

Millions of sites hit with mass-injection cyberattack

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http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215428/Millions_of_sites_hit_with_mass_injection_cyberattack

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

April 1, 2011 10:37 AM ET

Comments (1)

Recommended (13)

PC World - Hundreds of thousands -- and possibly millions -- of websites have been hit with a cyberattack that some are calling "one of the biggest mass-injection attacks we've ever seen."

The attack was discovered on March 29 by security firm WebSense, and the injected domain was called lizamoon.com -- thus, the name of the mass-injection is "LizaMoon." According to WebSense, LizaMoon uses SQL Injection to add malicious script to compromised sites. While the first injected domain was lizamoon.com, additional URLs have since been injected in the attack (WebSense has a full list here).

The method of using an injected script redirects users to a rogue AV site, which tries to get people to install a fake anti-virus program called Windows Stability Center.

When WebSecurity discovered the attack on March 29, 28,000 URLs had been compromised. The number quickly grew to 226,000, including many iTunes URLs (though the malicious code is neutralized by Apple).

"The good thing is that iTunes encodes the script tags, which means that the script doesn't execute on the user's computer," WebSense security blogger Patrik Runald wrote on Tuesday, "So good job, Apple."

The number of infected sites now appears to be over 1.5 million (at the time of this blog post, a quick Google Search shows 1.53 million infected URLs) -- but WebSense is quick to point out that a Google Search is an inaccurate metric. Google search spits back unique URLs, not unique hosts. Thus, there are likely less than 1.5 million infected sites, but WebSense says it's safe to say that the number is in the hundreds of thousands.

The attack continues to rampage across the Internet, and currently doesn't show any signs of slowing down. So don't install any web-based anti-virus software that claims your computer is full of bugs.

Follow Sarah on Twitter (@geeklil) or at sarahpurewal.wordpress.com andToday @ PCWorld on Twitter.

FOREIGN BANKS TOOK MOST FROM FED; BERNANKE KEPT SECRET

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Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-most-as-bernanke-kept-borrowers-secret.html

By Bradley Keoun and Craig Torres - Apr 1, 2011 10:53 AM PT

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Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

 

Play Video

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Thomas Brown, chief executive officer at Second Curve Capital LLC and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, discusses the Federal Reserve's discount window lending to banks at the height of the financial crisis. The central bank released about 29,000 pages of secret loan documents yesterday under court order, almost three years after Bloomberg LP first requested details. Brown speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

 

Play Video

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve bank examiner who is now an executive-in-residence at Boston University's School of Management, discusses the Fed's release of data on "discount window" lending during the financial crisis and prospects for transparency at the central bank. Williams speaks with Erik Schatzker and Lizzie O'Leary on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)

 

Play Video

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the financial crisis, talks about the outlook for monetary policy by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. He speaks from Cernobbio, Italy, with Maryam Nemazee on Bloomberg Television's "The Pulse." (Source: Bloomberg)

 

Play Video

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg reporter Bob Ivry discusses the release of the Federal Reserve's discount-window lending records and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s borrowing history. He speaks with Matt Miller on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)

Dexia SA borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.

Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion.

The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.

“The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not conducive to its long-run reputation,” said Vincent Reinhart, the Fed’s director of monetary affairs from 2001 to 2007.

Commercial Paper

Separate data disclosed in December on temporary emergency- lending programs set up by the Fed also showed big foreign banks as borrowers. Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most debt overall -- a combined $274.1 billion -- to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility.

Those programs also loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc. andMorgan Stanley. (MS)

The discount window, which began lending in 1914, is the Fed’s primary program for providing cash to banks to help them avert a liquidity squeeze. In an April 2009 speech, Bernanke said that revealing the names of discount-window borrowers “might lead market participants to infer weakness.”

The Fed released the documents after court orders upheld FOIA requests filed by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and News Corp.’s Fox News Network LLC. In all, the Fed released more than 29,000 pages of documents, covering the discount window and several Fed emergency-lending programs established during the crisis from August 2007 to March 2010.

Public Outrage

“The American people are going to be outraged when they understand what has been going on,” U.S. Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Fed, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

“What in the world are we doing thinking we can pass out tens of billions of dollars to banks that are overseas?” said Paul, who has advocated abolishing the Fed. “We have problems here at home with people not being able to pay their mortgages, and they’re losing their homes.”

David Skidmore, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment. Fed officials have said all the discount window loans made during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s have been repaid with interest.

The Monetary Control Act of 1980 says that a U.S. branch or agency of a foreign bank that maintains reserves at a Fed bank may receive discount-window credit.

“Our job is to provide liquidity to keep the American economy going,” Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve’s regional bank in Dallas, told reporters today. “The loans were all paid back and they were well-collateralized.”

Wachovia’s Loans

Wachovia Corp. was the only U.S. bank among the top five discount-window borrowers as the crisis peaked.

The company, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, borrowed $29 billion from the discount window on Oct. 6, in the week after it almost collapsed, the data show. Wachovia agreed in principle to sell itself to Citigroup Inc. on Sept. 29, before announcing a definitive agreement to sell itself to Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) on Oct. 3. The Wells Fargo deal closed at the end of 2008.

Wells Fargo spokeswoman Mary Eshet declined to comment on Wachovia’s discount-window borrowing.

Bank of Scotland Plc, which had $11 billion outstanding from the discount window on Oct. 29, 2008, was a unit of Edinburgh-based HBOS Plc, which announced its takeover by London-based Lloyds TSB Group Plc in September 2008.

The borrowings in 2008 didn’t involve Lloyds, which hadn’t completed its acquisition of HBOS at the time, said Sara Evans, a spokeswoman for the company, which is now called Lloyds Banking Group Plc. (LLOY)

‘Historic’ Use

“This is historic usage and on each occasion the borrowing was repaid at maturity,” Evans said. “The discount window has not been accessed by the group since.”

Other foreign discount-window borrowers on Oct. 29, 2008, included Societe Generale (GLE)SA, France’s second-biggest bank; and Norinchukin Bank, which finances and provides services to Japanese agricultural, fishing and forestry cooperatives. Paris- based Societe Generale borrowed $5 billion that day, and Tokyo- based Norinchukin borrowed $6 billion.

Jim Galvin, a spokesman for Societe Generale, declined to comment.

“We used it in concert with Japanese and U.S. authorities in the purpose of contributing to the stabilization of the market,” said Fumiaki Tanaka, a spokesman at Norinchukin.

Bank of China

Bank of China, the country’s oldest bank, was the second- largest borrower from the Fed’s discount window during a nine- day period in August 2007 as subprime-mortgage defaults first roiled broader markets. The Chinese bank’s New York branch borrowed $198 million on Aug. 17 of that month.

“It was just routine borrowing,” said Dale Zhu, head of the Bank of China New York branch’s treasury.

Two Deutsche Bank AG divisions borrowed $1 billion each, according to a document released yesterday.

Arab Banking Corp., then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan central bank, used its New York branch to get at least 73 loans from the Fed in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed. The largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to the Fed documents.

The foreign banks took advantage of Fed lending programs even as their host countries moved to prop them up or orchestrate takeovers.

Dexia received billions of euros in capital and funding guarantees from France, Belgium and Luxembourg during the credit crunch.

‘High-Quality’ Collateral

The Fed loans were “secured by high-quality U.S. dollar municipal securities,” and used only to fund U.S. loans, bonds and other financial assets, Ulrike Pommee, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an e-mail.

“The Fed played its role as central banker, providing liquidity to banks that needed it,” she said, adding that Dexia’s outstanding balance at the Fed has been reduced to zero. “This information is backward-looking.”

Depfa was taken over in October 2007 by Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, which in turn was seized by the German government in 2009.

“Since the end of May 2010, Depfa is not making use of the Federal Reserve Discount Window,” Oliver Gruss, a spokesman for the bank, said in an e-mailed statement. He declined to comment further.

Dollar Assets

Many foreign banks own large pools of dollar assets -- bonds, securities and loans -- funded by short-term borrowings in money markets. The system works when markets are calm, said Dino Kos, former executive vice president at the New York Fed in charge of open-market operations. In times of stress, banks can be subject to sudden liquidity squeezes, he said.

“They are playing with fire,” said Kos, a managing director at Hamiltonian Associates Ltd. in New York, an economic research firm. “When the market dries up, and they can’t roll over their funding -- bingo, you have a liquidity crisis.”

The potential for dollar shortages remains. As the Greek fiscal crisis roiled financial markets last year, the Fed had to open swap lines with the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England and two other central banks to make more dollars available around the world. That move was partially the result of U.S. money market funds shrinking their exposure to European bank commercial paper.

Bloomberg News is posting the Fed documents here for subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional Service as well as online at www.bloomberg.com.

To contact the reporters on this story: Bradley Keoun in New York at bkeoun@bloomberg.net; Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net