Former Microsoft Tech Officer Suggests Crackpot Terraform Idea to Save the Planet

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 22, 2009

Nathan Myhrvold has an idea he says will save us from the theory of global warming. Myhrvold, a former technology officer for Microsoft, wants to run a hose tethered by balloons up into the stratosphere and pump out sulfur particles to block the sun. Mr. Myhrvold says his scheme will not kick off another ice age. It will only cost about two hundred and fifty million dollars and will not require a global tax or world government.

Sulfur occurs naturally in the environment, Mr. Myhrvold points out, so his balloon and hose scheme would not endanger the environment. The amount he estimates is needed to to do the job is relatively small — less than 1 percent of the sulfur already in the atmosphere.

Mr. Myhrvold’s had another terraforming idea a while back. He said we could prevent hurricanes through a system that would literally mix up the water in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas vulnerable to tropical storms.

“Look, I’d prefer not to do it,” Myhrvold told TechFlash in October. “I’d prefer we weren’t in this pickle, but we seem to be, and our political and diplomatic efforts to get out of the problem so far aren’t getting any traction.”

Earlier this year the Obama administration proposed “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays,” an idea proposed by the Council On Foreign Relations. Obama’s so-called science adviser (and unabashed eugenicist) John P. Holdren said he is in favor of an “artificial volcano” that would pump sulfur into the atmosphere and block the sun. Despite Holdren’s admission that such measures could have “grave side effects,” he added “we might get desperate enough to want to use it.”

The CFR admits such crackpot ideas are merely a pretext to establish a global carbon tax and ultimately world government. “A CFR geo-engineering meeting summary document from 1999 (PDF pages 12,13,14) also categorically states that the ultimate goal under ‘A technology strategy for global warming’ is the implementation of a global Carbon Tax,” writes Steve Watson. “The memo also pedantically explains how the perceived fear of global warming can be used to sell to Americans what is essentially a tax on air.”

From the CFR document:

While taxing tea pales in comparison to taxing air as a perceived government affront, the clear benefits of a taxation policy to combat global warming might convince even the descendents of our tax-resistant Founding Fathers.

In fact, many “descendents of our tax-resistant Founding Fathers” are up in arms over the CRU revelations and the threat to shut down economies, bankrupt nations, and exacerbate the problems of the third world by implementing draconian policies in the name of global warming. Leaders of third world nations were outraged and walked out of the Copenhagen summit earlier this month when a draft agreement was leaked revealing how “rich nations” (or the elite in control of these nations) planned to use the climate change ruse of consolidate power and sideline the United Nations. The so-called “Danish text” spelled out a scheme to further empower the World Bank and the IMF.

The crackpot theories of Nathan Myhrvold and others associated with Holdren are merely a circus sideshow attraction designed to sell the idea of a worldwide totalitarian government implementing radical social and scientific theories.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Eugenicist

Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, July 9, 2009

In a revealing interview with the New York Times, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says abortion should be used to control useless eaters and unwanted populations.

	Ginsberg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

She does not say it like that, but she might as well have.

Asked out “reproductive choice” — that is, the choice to kill a fetus — Ginsburg said the Supreme Court ruling on Medicaid surprised her. In 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.

“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there wasconcern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of,” said the Justice (emphasis added).

In other words, Ginsberg says abortion is a eugenics tool designed to weed out the undesirable and useless eaters, to specifically control the number of people the ruling elite “don’t want to have too many of,” i.e., the poor and specifically people of color.

“Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly,” declared Margaret Sanger, a member of both the American Eugenics Society and the English Eugenics Society and founder of Planned Parenthood. “Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born.”

Sanger was a follower of Francis Galton, the “humanist” who believed that inferior races and people should cease to breed or “be considered enemies of the State” and exterminated. The American and British Eugenics Societies were founded on Galton’s writings. Sanger became a member of the American Eugenics Society in 1930, and a member of the International Congress of Eugenics in 1932.

Elmer Carter, an editor of Sanger’s The Birth Control Review, wrote in 1932 about the “Negro Problem.” He said “that the race problem in America is infinitely aggravated by the presence of too many unhappy born, sub-normals, morons, and imbeciles of both races. Therefore, those fighting for birth control must take eugenics into consideration.”

Roe v. Wade was instituted primarily for eugenics, as James R. Weddington admitted in 1992. Weddington was one of the co-counsels for Roe v. Wade. “But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country,” Weddington wrote to then president Clinton. “Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies” and the need for abortion.

In May, the London Times reported on the gathering of a “secret billionaire club” in New York. Attendees included David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Bill Gates and others who are obsessed with “how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population,” in other words culling the useless eaters.

“The notion that these elitists merely want to slow population growth in order to improve health is a complete misnomer,” writes Paul Joseph Watson. “Slowing the growth of the world’s population while also improving its health are two irreconcilable concepts to the elite. Stabilizing world population is a natural byproduct of higher living standards, as has been proven by the stabilization of the white population in the west. Elitists like David Rockefeller have no interest in ’slowing the growth of world population’ by natural methods, their agenda is firmly rooted in the pseudo-science of eugenics, which is all about ‘culling’ the surplus population via draconian methods.”

In his film Endgame, Alex Jones documents how David Rockefeller’s father, John D. Rockefeller, exported eugenics to Germany from its origins in Britain by bankrolling the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute which later would form a central pillar in the Third Reich’s ideology of the Nazi super race. After the fall of the Nazis, top German eugenicists were protected by the allies as the victorious parties fought over who would enjoy their “expertise” in the post-war world (see The Ruling Elite’s Agenda for Global Population Reduction).

“In the 1950s, the Rockefellers reorganized the U.S. eugenics movement in their own family offices, with spinoff population-control and abortion groups,” explains Dr. Len Horowitz. “With support from the Rockefellers, the Eugenics Society (England) set up a sub-committee called the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which for 12 years had no other address than the Eugenics Society. This, then, is the private, international apparatus which has set the world up for a global holocaust, under the UN flag.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, so her opinion about culling the useless eaters is understandable.

The eugenicist David Rockefeller, after all, founded the CFR.

Top Nazis Planned EU-Style Fourth Reich

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 11, 2009

A writer who was collecting material for a fictional book based around the premise that top Nazis, seeking to preserve their power at the end of the second world war, conspired to create a Fourth Reich under the auspices of the European Union, actually discovered documents proving the plot to be true.

In a Daily Mail piece, Adam Lebor reveals how he uncovered US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128, also known as The Red House Report, which details how top Nazis secretly met at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944 and, knowing Germany was on the brink of military defeat, conspired to create a Fourth Reich - a pan-European economic empire based around a European common market.

Top Nazi industrialists were ordered by SS Obergruppenfuhrer Dr Scheid to set up front companies abroad and pose as democrats in order to achieve economic penetration and lay the foundations for the re-emergence of the Nazi party.

“The Third Reich was defeated militarily, but powerful Nazi-era bankers, industrialists and civil servants, reborn as democrats, soon prospered in the new West Germany. There they worked for a new cause: European economic and political integration,” writes Lebor.

Wealthy Nazi industrialists like Alfried Krupp of Krupp Industries and Friedrich Flick, as well as front companies like BMW, Siemens and Volkswagen, set about the task of building a new pan-European business empire. According to historian Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, an adviser to Jewish former slave labourers, “For many leading industrial figures close to the Nazi regime, Europe became a cover for pursuing German national interests after the defeat of Hitler….The continuity of the economy of Germany and the economies of post-war Europe is striking. Some of the leading figures in the Nazi economy became leading builders of the European Union.”

Banking titan Hermann Abs, who joined board of Deutsche Bank during the rise of Nazis, also sat on the supervisory board of I.G. Farben, the company that made the Zyklon B gas used to kill concentration camp victims. “Abs was put in charge of allocating Marshall Aid - reconstruction funds - to German industry. By 1948 he was effectively managing Germany’s economic recovery,” writes Lebor.

“Crucially, Abs was also a member of the European League for Economic Co-operation, an elite intellectual pressure group set up in 1946. The league was dedicated to the establishment of a common market, the precursor of the European Union.”

The European League for Economic Co-operation developed policies for European integration that almost mirrored those proposed by Nazis just years previously.

In his book “Europe’s Full Circle,” Rodney Atkinson provides a list of policies proposed by Nazis and their similarity to today’s European Union.

• Europaische Wirtshaftsgemeinschaft
• European Economic Community
• European Currency System
• European Exchange Rate Mechanism
• Europabank (Berlin)
• European Central Bank (Frankfurt)
• European Regional Principle
• Committee of the Regions
• Common Labour Policy
• Social Chapter
• Economic and Trading Agreements
• Single Market

“Is it possible that the Fourth Reich those Nazi industrialists foresaw has, in some part at least, come to pass?” asks Lebor.

“These three typewritten pages are a reminder that today’s drive towards a European federal state is inexorably tangled up with the plans of the SS and German industrialists for a Fourth Reich - an economic rather than military imperium.”

As we have highlighted in the past, Nazism and the EU have some very disturbing parallels. Indeed, the two are fundamentally intertwined and the origins of the EU can be traced directly back to the Nazis.

The foundations for the EU and ultimately the Euro single currency were laid by the secretive Bilderberg Group in the mid-1950’s. Bilderberg’s owned leaked documents prove that the agenda to create a European common market and a single currency were formulated by Bilderberg in 1955. One of the group’s principle founders was H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a former Nazi SS officer.

But the ideological framework for the European Union goes back even further, to the 1940’s when top Nazi economists and academics outlined the plan for a single European economic community, an agenda that was duly followed after the end of the second world war.

In his 1940 book The European Community, Nazi Economics Minister and war criminal Walther Funk wrote about the need to create a “Central European Union” and “European Economic Area” and for fixed exchange rates, stating “No nation in Europe can achieve on its own the highest level of economic freedom which is compatible with all social requirements…The formation of very large economic areas follows a natural law of development….interstate agreements in Europe will control [economic forces generally]…There must be a readiness to subordinate one’s own interests in certain cases to those of [the EC].”

Funk’s co-authors echoed his sentiments. Nazi academic Heinrich Hunke wrote, “Classic national economy..is dead…community of fate which is the European economy…fate and extent of European co-operation depends on a new unity economic plan”.

Fellow Nazi Gustav Koenig observed, “We have a real European Community task before us…I am convinced that this Community effort will last beyond the end of the war.”

In 1940, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels ordered the creation of the “large-scale economic unification of Europe,” believing that “in fifty years’ time [people would] no longer think in terms of countries.” Just 53 years later, the European Union in its current form was established.

Other top Nazis who called for the creation of a pan-European federal economic superstate include
Ribbentrop, Quisling and Seyss-Inquart, who spoke of “The new Europe of solidarity and co-operation among all its people… will find…rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic boundaries are removed.”

Such rhetoric would not look out of place at a present day Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission or CFR confab.

The Nazis killed people who spoke out against the Third Reich, whereas the EU has implemented an altogether more efficient solution - simply kill their free speech instead.

A Dutch MP was recently refused entry to Britain because his political opinions were deemed offensive under EU laws. Euro MP’s have consistently attempted to ban the “dangerous and unregulated blogosphere” in an attempt to shut down free speech on the Internet. Under the 1999 ruling of the European Court Of Justice (case 274/99), it is illegal to criticize the EU and the EU is on a mission to outlaw any national political parties that do not pander to the European federal superstate agenda.

Most of the individuals who hold the reigns of power in the European Union are not Nazis, indeed, they probably believe themselves to be fair-minded liberals working for the “greater good”. However, the European Union by its very nature is totalitarian, because it seeks to remove power from national governments accountable to their electorate and centralize it into the hands of supra-national entities that are accountable to nobody but themselves. It also seeks to remove the right of free speech for anyone in a position of influence who criticizes this agenda.

The fact that the EU was a brainchild of top Nazi economists and industrialists, formulated as a means of preserving dictatorial power and then implemented by a former Nazi working under the auspices of the Bilderberg Group in 1955, proves that the entire European Union system is poisoned with a legacy and a raison d’être of totalitarianism.

This is becoming increasingly obvious in the 21st century as popular social movements across Europe rise up to oppose the blatant power grab being undertaken by the EU via the Lisbon Treaty, which will again be put before Irish voters later this year despite them already rejecting it in a national referendum, which prevented the treaty from being enforced.

CFR Unveils Global Governance Agenda

Daniel Taylor
Old-Thinker News
March 31, 2009

The Council on Foreign Relations, often described as the "real state department", has launched an initiative to promote and implement a system of effective world governance.

	Henry Kissinger, a CFR member, anticipates that President Obama will, "…give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. I think his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis."

The program, titled " The International Institutions and Global Governance Program," utilizes the resources of the "…David Rockefeller Studies Program to assess existing regional and global governance mechanisms…" The initial funding for the program came with a $6 million grant from the  Robina Foundation, which claims that the grant is "…one of the largest operating grants ever received in Council history."

The IIGG program,   launched on May 1st, 2008, is the latest manifestation of an agenda that has existed since and before the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations. Former CFR member, Rear Admiral Chester Ward, stated regarding the group,

"The most powerful clique in these elitist groups have one objective in common - they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government."

The International Institutions and Global Governance Program identifies several "global issues" that require a system of world governance. Environmental issues, terrorism, the global economy and energy are all mentioned. The project then states that a system of "universal membership" could be pursued, or alternatively a regional organization, such as the European Union model.

"In each of these spheres, the program will consider whether the most promising framework for governance is a formal organization with universal membership (e.g., the United Nations); a regional or sub-regional organization; a narrower, informal coalition of like-minded countries; or some combination of all three."

The programcalls for the "Re-conceptualizing" of national sovereignty, citing the European Union’s "pooling" of sovereignty as a model. The CFR project recognizes that historically, the United States has been resistant to the ideals of global governance. The project states, "Among the most important factors determining the future of global governance will be the attitude of the United States…"

The IIGG program continues, "…few countries have been as sensitive as the United States to restrictions on their freedom of action or as jealous in guarding their sovereign prerogatives." The program then states that the separation of powers as stated in the Constitution, along with the U.S. Congress, stand in the way of the United States assuming "new international obligations."

As stated,

"…the country’s longstanding tradition of liberal “exceptionalism” inspires U.S. vigilance in protecting the domestic sovereignty and institutions from the perceived incursions of international bodies. Finally, the separation of powers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress a critical voice in the ratification of treaties and endorsement of global institutions, complicates U.S. assumptions of new international obligations."

The actions of the Military Industrial Complex under the Bush Administration have served globalist interests well. "Global structures" are now presented as the mechanism to prevent such atrocities. America’s demonization is central to building a system of world governance. Patrick M. Stewart, who is currently the director of the CFR IIGG program, is anticipating the Obama administration "…to seek to turn the page on what many perceived to be ‘cowboy unilateralism’ of the Bush years, by embracing multilateral cooperation, re-kindling U.S. alliances and partnerships, and engaging in sustained diplomacy within the UN framework," as reported by Xinhua. The IIGG project itself stated in May of 2008 that, "Regardless of whether the administration that takes office in January 2009 is Democratic or Republican, the thrust of U.S. foreign policy is likely to be multilateral to a significant degree."

Globalist forces are hard at work in the economic and political realms in an attempt to shape the future of the world, furthering the dominance of the global elite. Calls for a global currency in response to the economic crisis are regularly occurring, drawing the tacit support of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, speaking to the CFR.

Henry Kissinger, a CFR member, anticipates that President Obama will, "…give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. I think his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis."

The Council on Foreign Relations global governance program will undoubtedly be pursued under the Obama administration, which is filled with CFR members. President of the CFR, Richard Haass, isserving as a top adviser to the Obama administration. As the IIGG program admits, regardless of who sits in the White House, the globalist agenda moves forward full speed ahead.

Research related links

1. Britain’s Prime Minister Argues for Global Governance
2. UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship
3. World Government Agenda Binds Frontrunners
4. Global Television For Our Global Leader
5. Rothschild: banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance
6. Obama to Inherit “New Global Order” from Bush
7. Financial Times Editorial Admits Agenda For Dictatorial World Government
8. A Leadership Review of the Barack Obama Administration
9. Obama unveils war plan to ‘defeat’ Al-Qaeda
10. Global Financial Regulatory Body on the Way?
11. Banker Giveaway Goes Global
12. Obama administration proposes pro-abortion agenda at UN meeting

New World Order Crony Gary Hart Calls for “Civic Duty”

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
March 1, 2009

Citing none other than Pericles and John F. Kennedy, CFR member and New World Order minion Gary Hart declares on the liberal Huffington Post website that “the notion of dedication, participation, and service is as old as the Republic itself.” Hart says the globalist front man Barack Obama has awakened “a renewed spirit of national service” and the “American Republic must now respond.” For Hart and the Greek elitist Pericles, those who do not respond are “useless” and devoid of “civic virtue.”

For Hart and the banker front man Obama, it is time for the plebs to give “something back” to the republic. Unfortunately, the United States is no longer a republic. It is a bankster dominated plutocracy.

For Obama, Gary Hart, and the global elite, it is not enough that many Americans volunteer to help those in need within their local communities — the “renewed spirit of national service” must be mandated by law. Last September, Congress passed the Serve America Act, legislation creating the Education Corps, the Healthy Futures Corps, the Clean Energy Service Corps, the Opportunity Corps, and the Reserve Corps, among other “initiatives.” During his Inaugural Address, Obama declared this expensive and burdensome expansion of government represents “a new era of responsibility.”

For Obama and the Democrats, however, national service transcends volunteerism. In a speech on national service at the University of Colorado last year, Obama promised that as president he would “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.”

Note that Obama did not say those who volunteered. He said the government will demand allstudents serve. Once upon a time this was called indentured servitude or slavery. Now it is called “a renewed spirit of national service.”

“Problem number one with grand schemes for universal voluntary public service is that they can’t be both universal and voluntary,” notes Michael Kinsley. “If everybody has to do it, then it’s not voluntary, is it? And if it’s truly up to the individual, then it won’t be universal. What advocates of this sort of thing generally have in mind is using the pressures of social conformity and the powers of the state indirectly to remove as much freedom of choice as possible.”

In 2006, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, called for compulsory universal service. “It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us,” Emanuel wrote in The Plan: Big Ideas for America, co-authored with Bruce Reed. “We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.”

Rahm was not alone in his demand the youth of America be press-ganged into “service.” On the “America Serves” page of Obama’s transition website, the following appeared:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

After a firestorm of criticism, Obama’s people revised the text and removed the word “require” (see Paul Joseph Watson, Obama Website Scrubs Mandatory Community Service Call, November 10, 2008).

“Our children, as well as ourselves, are independent individuals. We are not resources to be drawn upon by politicians. Nor do we owe our labor to the government,” complained J.D. Tuccille on the Examiner website.

Obama, Gary Hart, much of Congress and their global elite controllers, however, would beg to differ. Our rulers pine for the days when kings rallied serfs at the point of a sword into bloody wars waged against their royal cousins, if not directly for conquest at least to dampen the forever present spirit of rebellion on the part of the hungry and dispossessed.

As we enter a new era of hunger and dispossession engineered by the international bankers, the global elite and their minions are calling for national service, not so much to help the homeless and poor but to inculcate the dumbed-down masses into a belief that serving the government — serving the elite — is a highly regarded American attribute.

“Resistance to expanded public service programs can be expected from the ideologically sclerotic, those who occupy the negative ground between government as the problem and government as our enemy. These are clearly people unfamiliar with Pericles of even for that matter Thomas Jefferson,” Gary Hart concludes.

Never mind the Greek elitist Pericles, who considered those who refused to serve the Archon “useless,” it is rather nauseating a globalist tool such as Gary Hart would cite Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson knew that the bankers represent the downfall and enslavement of the republic. “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered,” Jefferson wrote in 1802.

Gary Hart is a trusted member of the Council on Foreign Relations, founded in 1921 by a very select group of international bankers, Wall Street lawyers and wealthy “old money” families, that is to say the New World Order. “These same international bankers that started the CFR were instrumental in getting President Woodrow Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act into existence in 1913 that basically gave these international bankers the power to print money and control our entire economy,” writes John W. Wallace. As well, they were instrumental in engineering the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression.

Gary Hart’s editorial published by the clueless at the Huffington Post represents a renewed push by the global elite to brainwash the plebs into accepting their enslavement, a prerequisite for the coming times of economic hardship and possible war on a global scale.

Research related links

1. Gary Hart Confronted on ‘New World Order’ Vision
2. Why Is Gary Hart So Fearful Of Discussing His “New World Order”?
3. Gary Hart Revisited by We Are Change Colorado
4. Kissinger Calls for a New World Order
5. PM Gordon Brown calls for new world order (again)
6. We Are Change Colorado Confronts Senator Gary Hart
7. Ahmadinejad calls for new world order
8. Gordon Brown calls for new world order
9. Obama camp scrubs website to remove references to “mandatory” community service
10. Georgian President Saakashvili calls for a New World Order
11. Kissinger Again Shills Obama and the New World Order
12. Kissinger Sent to Russia to Cut New World Order Deal

Obama Appointments: CFR, Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission

George Mitchell (Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group) for the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke (Bilderberg Group, Council on
Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission) for Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

---

BBC Report

Obama appoints key hotspot envoys

US President Barack Obama has named his two key envoys - to the Middle East, and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

George Mitchell, who negotiated an end to Northern Ireland's Troubles, has been charged with moving the Middle East peace process forward.

Richard Holbrooke has been named envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He brokered the 1995 deal that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Earlier, Mr Obama ordered Guantanamo Bay prison camp to close within a year.

The US Senate has approved President Obama's choice of Mary Schapiro to head the financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Confirmation of his Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, is expected on Monday, Democratic Senate leaders said.

A panel cleared the way for his full nomination despite concern he failed to pay his taxes on time some years ago.

'New management'

All overseas CIA detention centres for terror suspects are to close as well, Mr Obama ordered.

He also signed executive orders for a review of military trials for terror suspects and a ban on harsh interrogation methods that critics have said amount to torture.

With Thursday's announcements, Mr Obama has signalled that American diplomacy is under new management, says the BBC's Kevin Connolly in Washington.

Newly-appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan as the two most pressing foreign policy issues confronting the US.

"We have no time to lose," said Mr Obama after Mrs Clinton introduced the new envoys.

Mr Mitchell would head to the Middle East as soon as possible to shore up the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel must re-open the border crossing into the Gaza Strip "to allow the flow of aid and commerce," Mr Obama said.

"Hamas must end its rocket fire... The United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime so that Hamas cannot re-arm," he added.

But Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan told al-Jazeera television that Mr Obama would fail in the Middle East unless he changed his position.

Israel ended a three-week offensive on Sunday, pounding the Gaza Strip with bombs and shells and sending in tanks and infantry in an attempt to stop Palestinian militants firing rockets into southern Israel.

'Central front'

Richard Holbrooke, a former ambassador to the UN and the architect of the Dayton Accord that ended the war in the Balkans, is to co-ordinate US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr Obama said there was a "deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan" and that the region was now "the central front" in the battle against extremism.

The office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he spoke to Hillary Clinton on Thursday to discuss the "joint struggle against terrorism and relations between the two countries".

The Afghan president emphasised to Mrs Clinton "that Afghanistan is a friend of the United States", a statement said.

Earlier, as he signed orders to set in motion the closure of Guantanamo Bay, Mr Obama said the US would continue to fight terror, but would maintain American values while doing so.

"The United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism," he said.

"We are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals."

Mr Obama has repeatedly promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, where some 250 inmates accused of having links to terrorism remain. Many of the detainees have been there for years and have never been charged.

The move was welcomed by President Karzai, who has repeatedly called for detained Afghan citizens to be released so they can face trial in Afghanistan.

"This decision by the United States is a major step towards bringing more international support to the struggle against terrorism, and enlisting all nations in this war," he said.

However, correspondents say closing the prison will not be easy. Questions remain over where those charged will be tried and where those freed can be safely sent.

Secret CIA prisons around the world are also to be closed, although the time frame for this is unclear.

The secret rendition - or transfer - of terror suspects to these prisons was widely criticised after they came to light in the wake of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Mr Obama also banned the use of threats, coercion, physical abuse and waterboarding in the interrogation of suspects - all techniques that had been permitted under the Bush administration. 

copyright BBC 2009

Global Depression. This Doesn't Look Good: Taiwan, Korea and China Exports Tank

by Brad Setser

Global Research, January 19, 2009

The Asia-Pacific Journal - 2009-01-18 Words don’t really do justice to the brutality of recent downturn in Korean and Taiwanese exports. These look a lot like charts of financial variables after a bubble bursts, not charts of the level of exports. That isn’t good. Looking just as the monthly data risks being misleading. There is a lot of seasonality in Taiwan’s exports. They usually dip in February. It is a short month, it often corresponds with the Chinese new year and the data isn’t seasonally adjusted. A small dip in December after the end of the Western holiday season also isn’t unusual. But such a big dip in December is most unusual. Plotting the rolling 3m sum eliminates the big February dip. The current downturn is real. The data do not look much better if plotted as a percent change. The y/y change in the 3m rolling sum isn’t quite as bad as it was at the depth of the tech bust. But give it time. The 40% fall in Taiwan’s December exports is worse than anything observed then. Almost all of Taiwan’s exports seem to go to China for final assembly. Korea though exports to both China(electronic components, steel, no doubt other products) and the US (cars). And there has been a very sharp fall in both Korean shipments to both the US and China. Then again, it seems that exports are down across the board. Europe doesn’t look much different.* Korean and Taiwanese imports are down too. Korea’s trade balance is actually improving even as its exports fall off a cliff. Imports from the Gulf are following the trajectory one would expect. What of China? Well, the official data isn’t out — but if the data leaked to Dow Jones is accurate, China is following a similar trajectory but with one difference: its imports are down more than its exports. In December, year over year exports were down close to 3% and year over year imports were down 21%. Why is the fall in China’s exports lagging the fall in Korean and Taiwanese exports? Is China taking market share in the downturn? Or does the regional supply chain mean that the fall in China’s export will take longer to materialize, fewer imported components from Taiwan in December could just mean lower Chinese exports in January and February. It also sure seems like China’s own internal downturn is adding to the global contraction in trade. Incidentally, China’s 2008 trade surplus (custom’s basis) should come in at close to $300 billion in 2008 — up from about $260 billion in 2007, even with the big run up in average commodity prices. Korea and Taiwan aren’t the global economy. But they both report their trade data quickly – and they both export a ton. I wish I could say that I thought they were sending a deceptive signal …. Three other points: a) The trajectory of this downturn looks much worse than the trajectory of the 2000 recession. That isn’t news. But it is still worth noting. Korea and Taiwan export a lot of electronics, so they were among the hardest hit by the tech bust. b) It is striking that neither Taiwan nor Korean exports seem to have been impacted by the (modest) slowdown in US imports that started in 2006. They made up for slower export growth to the US – counting both their direct exports to the US and their indirect exports through China – with strong growth in their exports to Europe, China and the Gulf. Y/y export growth rates for Taiwan and Korea were actually up a bit earlier this year, during the peak of “decoupling.” No more … c) Policy choices matter. From 2002 to 2004, the won depreciated significantly v the euro. After 2004 the won rose the RMB - -and China slammed the brake on domestic demand growth. That too had an impact on Korea’s exports to China. These trends show up more easily on a graph that shows the percentage change in the rolling 12m sum of Korean exports (a variable that moves slowly but capture big trends) than in the monthly data. But right now the sheer severity of the global downturn dominates all other variables. Everything is shrinking. Thanks to Paul Swartz of the Council on Foreign Relations for help with the data downloads and the graphs. * To flesh out the November and December data for Europe, I used the the fall in Korean shipments to Franceto extrapolate the fall for smaller European economies. Using the fall in exports to Germany would have produced an even sharper fall. But this data should be taken with a grain of salt.   Brad Setser is a Fellow for Geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the blog, Follow the Money.  His most recent book is Sovereign Wealth and Sovereign Power. Recommended Citation: Brad Setser, "This Doesn't Look Good: Taiwan, Korea, and China Exports Tank"  The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 3-4-09, January 15, 2009.  Global Research Articles by Brad Setser

Carroll Quigley - Our Tragedy and Their Hope

I want to bring you some quotes from Carroll Quigley, who for many years got access to the archives at The Council on Foreign Relations which resulted in his massive book on history seen from the CFR/International Bankers perspective.
This is without any doubt the most important book you can ever read in order to understand how the elite controls the world from behind the curtain.

- The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers.

- When the business interests... pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally.

- The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.

- There were people who said the Society of Cincinnati in the American revolution, of which George Washington was one of the shining lights, was a branch of the Illuminati.

- The use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.

- The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

If you want to read more outtakes from "Tragedy and Hope" you can check out this site.
You can buy the book at Amazon.com
Also check out "The Anglo-American Establishment"

Here's a video-clip about Quigley with some annoying music: