VPROinternational | November 08, 2010

California is a strong brand, the state of new beginnings, dreams and movie stars, of surfers and a wonderful climate. But the Golden State is bankrupt and the city of Los Angeles is running out of cash. Public services are being cut and unemployment keeps rising. At the same time, optimism, entrepreneurship and the belief in the power of America are stronger than ever.

In Los Angeles, we meet five people who are going through a transformation in their lives during this crisis. Justin and Christine lost their jobs and are now living in a van with their two young sons. Charles has gotten out of prison after fourteen years. Mizuko prepares her children for the future by making them at ease in virtual reality. Laura has taken advantage of the crisis by buying land cheaply and starting an urban farm and artists collective Fallen Fruit maps the abundant free ‘public fruit’ available in the city. Who are the pioneers who are reinventing the new America and how do they see the future?

The Turbo Elite ‘drill’ fitted to a new laser called the Excimer blasts tissue into particles so small they can only be seen under a microscope.

Trials at University College Hospital in London have proved a major success with reduced operating times and hospital stays.

The first two patients were treated at the hospital in July and discharged the next day, instead of spending weeks in hospital. The procedure could help thousands with artery disease.

Around 85,000 people a year have treatment to widen their arteries which have been narrowed by cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. But this common procedure can trigger an exaggerated healing response where unwanted tissue builds up on the artery wall, leading to excess scarring and renarrowing of the artery.

The small tube, or stent, used to widen the artery can also becomes blocked.

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1.    EU: Amnesty International: Open Secret: Mounting Evidence of Europe’s complicity in rendition and secret detention
2.    EU: European Data Protection Supervisor: Data protection reform strategy
3.    EU: European Commission: Taking on the Data Retention Directive – a discussion paper
4.    EU: Article 29 Working Party on data protection: Data protection authorities critical on sharing passengers data
5.    UK: Joint Human Rights Committee report: Legislative Scrutiny: Terrorist Asset- Freezing
6.    EU: Statewatch Analysis: First thoughts on the EUs Internal Security Strategy
7.    UK: Surveillance Society Network: Information Commissioners report to Parliament on the state of surveillance
8.    EU: European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS): European Protection Order and the European Investigation Order
9.    EU-USA: European Parliament: Hearing Data Protection in a transatlantic perspective
10.  EU: European Commission: 6th report on visa requirements
12.  EURODAC: Ten EU governments want law enforcement agencies to have access to the EURODAC database
13.  POLAND: Data retention and population surveillance
14.  FRANCE: Statewatch Analysis: France Collective expulsions of Roma people undermines EUs founding principles
15.  EU: European Court of Justice: A person can be excluded from refugee status
16.  EU: European Commission: Report: 2010 progress review of the EU Drugs Action Plan (2009-2012)
17.  EU: Council of the European Union: Common European Asylum System – State of Play
18.  EU: Quaker Council for European Affairs: Briefing Paper: Security Co-operation between the EU and Israel
19.  Italy: Extension of soldiers’ deployment in cities
20.  European Commission: A comprehensive approach on personal data protection in the European Union
21.  UK-FRANCE: Coalition government signs Declaration on “illegal” immigration
22.  EU: European Parliament study: Readmission policy in the EU
23.  EU: Council of the European Union: Proposal for a Directive on the right to information in criminal proceedings
24.  EU: Marie Diop: Unaccompanied Minors Rights within the European Union

1. EU: Amnesty International: Open Secret: Mounting Evidence of Europe’s complicity in rendition and secret detention (57 pages):
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/nov/eu-ai-renditions-report.pdf

Letter: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/nov/eu-ai-renditions-report-letter.pdf
and Executive Summary: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/nov/eu-ai-renditions-report-exec-sum.pdf

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This may be disinfo planted in there to make us hate muslims.

WikiLeaks: Saudi King: Use Force to Surgically Implant Microchips in Guantanamo Detainees
— 28 Nov 2010 King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told a senior White House official to consider surgically implanting homing devices under Guantanamo Bay detainees’ skin. That’s one of the many potentially embarrassing comments from diplomatic back rooms now being made public by WikiLeaks. During a March 2009 meeting with John Brennan, President Obama’s closest counterterrorism adviser, Abdullah proposed shooting electronic chips into the residual Guantanamo population, “allowing their movements to be tracked with Bluetooth.” Abdullah appears to have come up with the idea on the fly during their meeting — “I’ve just thought of something,” the cable quotes him saying — and considered forced subcutaneous chip implantation uncontroversial, since it’s already “done with horses and falcons.” Brennan appears to have gingerly waved him off: “[H]orses don’t have good lawyers,” he replied…

http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

Its not a bailout of a country, it’s the next phase of the bailout of the banks!

Ireland is not imploding. It is not in trouble as a sovereign nation as such. Ireland is being crushed under the weight of a collapsing City of London/Rothschild banking cartel, namely the Inter-Alpha Group.

We are witnessing a process of general collapse which began in 2007 as a result of forty years of gambling in the great global casino. The events of this past week are a continuation of that process, not a separate event. The bailout of “Ireland” is another stop gap measure which might get us through the next phase of the collapse, but which will have no effect in the long term.

The system is coming down, and its collapse is accelerating. Nothing can stop it, unless we get a grip of the banks and put them in their place. And if we don’t put them in their place, the collapse of the financial system will result in the collapse of every nation state in Europe, including the UK. But that’s OK, according to von Rompuy, because the days of the Westphalian nation state are over.

Remember what the Treaty of Westphalia said? Continue reading →

WikiLeaks embassy cables: download the key data and see how it breaks down

The WikiLeaks embassy cables release has produced a lot of stories but does it produce any useful data? We explain what it includes and how it breaks down – plus you can download the key data for every cable
• Get the data

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Newton: “Fie on you, Hansen, Mann, Jones et al! You are not worthy of the name scientists! May the pox consume your shrivelled peterkins!”

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

Anthony Watts describes it thus: Continue reading →

There is no question that the world is at a boil. Germany is drawing anger; N. Korea has attacked S. Korea; flaying about the FED’s Mr. Bernanke blames China for America’s sad economic and financial dilemma; five suits, class action and RICO, have been filed against JPMorgan Chase and HSBC for having manipulated silver prices and class actions are rumored to be in process for naked shorting, which has been rampant in the market for years, a felony hedge fund investigation of insider trading, which the SEC has absolutely refused to pursue. The US is still occupying Iraq and has a war raging in Afghanistan to protect the opium and marijuana crops, the largest in the world, which generate $300 billion in profits a year. Socialists, having recently relinquished power in the US House of Representatives are calling Republicans an axis of depression. The socialist, what they cannot control, they attempt to destroy. It reminds us of Italy’s communists.

The New Fed policy of QE2 is considered by US detractors to be a step too far. The Fed has entered  Continue reading →

Wal-Mart now selling Farmville gift cards
“Saw this at a Wal-Mart in Wichita.”

“Another 15 hours of cotton picking ad clicking on Farmville and I get a slice of cheese from Wal-Mart”

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again

By: Matt Taibbi, Apr 05, 2010

This article originally appeared in RS 1082-1083 from July 9-23, 2009. This issue and the rest of the Rolling Stone archives are available via All Access, Rolling Stone’s premium subscription plan. If you are already a subscriber, you can click here to see the full story. Not a member? Click here to learn more about All Access.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush’s last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There’s John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multi-billion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain’s sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There’s Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman — not to mention … Continue reading →