Despatches: The real threat we face is Blair
John Pilger
A senior Metropolitan Police officer, Paul Stephenson, claims the Heathrow plot "was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale". The most reliable independent surveys put civilian deaths in Iraq, as a result of the invasion by Bush and Blair, above 100,000. The difference between the Heathrow scare and Iraq is that mass murder on an unimaginable scale has actually happened in Iraq.

Quick Overview

• The University of Michigan's preliminary index of sentiment declined to 78.7 from 84.7 in July.
  
  

• The Chinese central bank today raised its 1-year benchmark rate by 27 bp to 6.12% from 5.85%.
  
  

• YoY Germany's July producer price index was up 6.0% versus. 5.9% exp. -- just slightly below June's 24-year high of +6.1%.
  

• Canada's wholesale sales totaled C$41.5 billion in June, down 0.6% MoM, but up 5.5% YoY.
  

• The U.K. posted a record high budget surplus of 6.3 billion pounds in July.
  
  

• A Canadian ethanol plant is going on stream and anticipates to use 350 mt of feed wheat yearly.
  
  

• The USDA said there were 10.822 million head of cattle on feed, up 7.2% YoY.
  
  

• The Florida Department of Citrus said there were 83.4 million gallons of frozen orange juice in inventory, down 33% YoY.

A Penny Saved is a Waste of Time
JOHN PUGSELY
Ha! Those novice debasers were pikers. It took them 300 years to steal 97% of the coin's value. The U.S. government has taken less than 100 years to strip out 99% of the value of the penny. Well, we might as well call it 100%, since these little tokens aren't worth bending over to pick up off the sidewalk.

Federal Judge Orders Halt to Warrantless Wiretapping
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless surveillance program is "unconstitutional" and ordered an immediate end to it.

Cost of water shortage: civil unrest, mass migration and economic collapse

Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy. That was the bleak assessment yesterday by forecasters from some of the world's leading corporate users of fresh water, 200 of the largest food, oil, water and chemical companies.

Worst drought hits China, 10m people thirsty A worst drought in 50 years is hitting western, central and northeastern Chinese regions, causing drink water shortages to at least 10 million people and an economic loss of 9.9 billion yuan (US$1.24 billion).

Quick Overview

• The Conference Board Index of Leading Economic Indicators fell 0.1 percent in July.
  
  

• The Labor Department reported that 312,000 workers applied for jobless benefits, down by 10,000 from the previous week.
  
  

• The Philadelphia Federal Reserve's regional index of business activity increased from 6.0 to 18.5 in August, more than expected.
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that underground supplies of natural gas were up 37 billion cubic feet last week at 2.800 trillion cubic feet.
  

• Retail sales in the U.K. were down 0.3% in July, weaker than expected.
  

• Taiwan's GDP was up 4.6% in the second quarter from a year ago, less than expected.
  

• Italy posted a current account deficit of 2.053 bln Euro in June against a deficit of 855 mln a year earlier.
  

Snow White's dwarfs more famous than US judges: poll
Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Labor Department said that YoY consumer prices were up 4.1% in July. Excluding food and energy, prices were up 2.7% YoY.
  

• Chinese fixed-asset investment, real estate, factories and utilities, eased to 30.5% YoY in the first seven months of 2006, down from 31.3% in the first half of 2006.

• U.S. Housing starts were at a yearly rate of 1.795 million units in July, down 2.5% from June's pace. For 2006, housing starts were down 5.1% YoY.
  

• U.S. Industrial production was up 0.4% in July, weaker than expected.
  

• YoY Argentina's economy grew 8.2% in June
  

• Mexico's economy grew at 4.7% in the second quarter, boosted by a booming construction industry and a surge in auto exports.
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that::
  Supplies of crude oil were down 1.6 million barrels to 331.0 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were down 2.3 million barrels
  Supplies of heating oil were down 300,000 barrels.
  

• The World Gold Council said that world demand for gold totaled 802 tons in the second quarter of 2006, down 16% YoY. World mine production totaled 625 tons in the second quarter, up 2.3% YoY.
  

Quick Overview

• Wholesale prices, with food and fuel prices removed, fell 0.3 percent in July, the best showing for core inflation in nine months. Wholesale prices rose 0.1% , well below the 0.5 percent jump in June.
  
  

• The U.S. Treasury Department said that foreign purchases U.S. securities totaled $84.7 billion while U.S. purchases of foreign securities totaled $9.6 billion.
  

• The New York Federal Reserve's regional index of economic activity fell from 16.6 to 10.3 in August.
  

• YoY consumer prices in the U.K. rose 2.4% in July
  

• YoY Industrial production in China rose 16.7% in July – more than expected
  
  
  

Could Puno and Guantanamo Be The Next Hong Kongs? The U.S. should remember what a colossal effect West Berlin had on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate and what a damning example Hong Kong constituted for China before the British handover. Two million Cubans in the United States have accumulated twice as much wealth as the 11 million Cubans on the island by starting thousands of businesses over the years. (At the end of the 1990s, Hispanic Business magazine estimated that Cuban companies in the U.S. generated $25 billion; more recent figures are not available, it must be much higher today.) If Cubans had been allowed to turn Guantanamo into a prosperous capitalist zone, they would have been 10 times more successful than they have been at combating Castro from Miami and Madrid.

The Lebanon Curse Strikes Again
by Eric Margolis
The Bush Administration’s encouragement of Israel’s foolish invasion and laying waste of Lebanon marks its third military disaster after Afghanistan and Iraq. This from the man who styles himself “the war president.”

Quick Overview

• Eurozone Q2 GDP rose to +0.9% QoQ (+3.6% YoY), a 6-year high. That was the first time in 5 years the Eurozone GDP beat US GDP.
  

• China's July retail sales were strong at 13.7%, versus 13.9% in June.
  

• Indonesia's GDP was up 5.2% YoY.
  

• Heatwaves continued in southwestern and western China, affecting more than 17 million people as the shortage of drinking water worsens, sources said.
  

• Dow-Jones Newswires reports that Russia has harvested 33 million tons of grain so far, down 22% from a year ago, because of wet conditions. Russia's Ag Minister expects this year's harvest to be down 8% YoY.

• Czarnikow Sugar estimates 2006-2007 world sugar production surplus at 3.1 million tons.
  

• Shipping: China's ports post 22 % growth According to a Xinhua report, during first half of 2006, China's major sea and river ports together handled over 42 million TEUs posting a growth of more than 22 percent.
  
  

• Disruptions continued at London’s Heathrow Airport because of last week's terrorist scare and one third of flights were canceled today.

Worlds worst internet laws sneaking through the Senate
The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries' "cybercrime" laws - even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdiction's requests to log their users’ behavior without due process, or compensation.


Rich nations under fire on pledges to fight poverty
Rich countries have largely failed to back their voluble lip service to combating global poverty by doing more to help, according to an annual assessment by a leading think-tank.

What the Hell Has Happened to the Army?
by Uri Avnery

WATCHING LEBANON
Washington’s interests in Israel’s war.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, “The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

How London's Terror Scare Looks From Beirut
I was amused to see that Bush--just before my electricity was cut off again--still mendaciously tells us that the "terrorists" hate us because of "our freedoms". Not because we support the Israelis who have massacred refugee columns, fired into Red Cross ambulances and slaughtered more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians--here indeed are crimes for Paul Stephenson to investigate--but because they hate our "freedoms".

LOUD AND CLEAR
The ABA House of Delegates ended the association’s 2006 annual meeting with a bang on Tuesday, adopting two key policy recommendations on issues touching on the current debate over the federal separation of powers.
After a sharp debate that highlighted the two-day session of the policy-making House, delegates voted to oppose the "misuse" of presidential signing statements

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Commerce Department said retail sales rose 1.4% in July, more than expected and the best in six months. Excluding autos, sales were up 1.0%, also more than expected.
  
  

• Airlines warned the British government Saturday the country's air travel is grinding to a halt because of tough new antiterrorisms security wants.
  

• Japan's Q2 GDP fell to an annualized 0.8% and Q1 was revised lower to 2.7% from 3.1%

• The Bank of Japan kept its interest rate unchanged at 0.25%.

• French Q2 GDP rose sharply by 1.2% QoQ, which was a 5-year high and was much stronger than expected

• The USDA's U.S. 2006-2007 ending stocks estimate for:
  Corn was increased from 1.077 to 1.232 billion bushels.
  Soybeans were reduced from 560 to 450 million bushels.
  Wheat was reduced from 438 to 434 million bushels.
  Sugar was increased from 979,000 to 1,609,000 tons.
  Cotton was reduced from 4.90 to 4.70 million bales.
  

• The USDA's world 2006-2007 ending stocks estimate for:
  Corn was increased from 91 to 93 million tons.
  Soybeans were reduced from 53 to 50 million tons.
  Wheat was reduced from 133 to 128 million tons.
  Cotton was increased from 47 to 48 million bales.

Collapse of the Flanks
by William S. Lind
One pointer to a shift in the tactical balance is the comparative casualty counts. According to the Associated Press, as of this writing Lebanese dead total at least 642, of whom 558 are civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers (who, at least officially, are not in the fight) and only 55 Hezbollah fighters. So Israel, with its American-style hi-tech "precision weaponry," has killed ten times as many innocents as enemies. In contrast, of 97 Israeli dead, 61 are soldiers and only 36 civilians, despite the fact that Hezbollah’s rockets are anything but precise (think Congreves). Israel can hit anything it can target, but against a Fourth Generation enemy, it can target very little. The result not only points to a battlefield change of some significance, it also raises the question of who is the real "terrorist." Terror bombing by aircraft is still terror.

U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution
“American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.

Economy Often Defies Soft Landing
To reduce inflation to the upper limits of what Mr. Bernanke and other Fed officials consider acceptable, more than three million jobs would be lost, a bigger drop than in the recession of 2001.

Proposed War Crimes Act protection for Bush administration would apply retroactively
“I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous,” said a third attorney, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Baghdad Morgue Tallies 1,815 Bodies in July


A Bush family tradition
The deficit may be down, but government is growing.

Quick Overview

• US Initial Jobless Claims out at 319K versus 315K expected.
  

• The U.S. department of Commerce, announced that total June exports of $120.7 billion and imports of $185.5 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $64.8 billion, $0.2 billion less than the $65.0 billion in May. This is the fifth largest deficit on record.
  
  

• China's producer price index rose 3.6% YoY in July
  
  

• MoM Australia's unemployment rate fell to 4.8% in July.
  
  

• Canada's trade surplus grew by 14.6% in June to 4.7 bln cd, compared with 4.1 bln in May.
  
  

• South Korea today unexpectedly raised its benchmark rate by 25 bp to a 5-year high of 4.5% in response to inflation fear.
  
  

• China's July trade surplus rose to another record high of $14.6 billion, exports up +22.6% YoY and imports up +19.7% YoY.
  
  

• Japan's July producer price index rose 3.4% YoY -- the strongest gain in 25 years.
  
  

• YoY Peru's trade surplus widened to $767 million in June from $479.
  
  

• The unemployment rate in New Zealand improved from 3.9% to a record low 3.6% in the second quarter.
  

• The DoE said that underground supplies of natural gas were down 12 billion cubic feet to 2.763 trillion cubic feet. YoY supplies are up 12%.

The Resistance Always Increases
Now one may rightfully argue that fighting germs and fighting humans is not the same thing. For starters, humans are generally considered to be
smarter than germs. Germs develop resistance by dumb luck. Humans
do this too, but at least occasionally, intelligence also plays a role.
Germs have a hard time communicating their knowledge to other living
germs. Humans have cell phones not to mention other, more antiquated
modes of communication. Humans employ chemical weapons against
germs, but generally avoid using such weapons of mass destruction
against other humans. So when it comes to developing resistance, it is
safe to say that humans are at least on par with germs.

Why Do They Hate Us?

After 9/11, the greatest fear that U.S. officials had was that the American people would figure out that U.S. foreign policy was at the root of the terrorist attacks and thus demand a total reevaluation of U.S. foreign policy. That might well have meant an end to all foreign aid to the Middle East and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region. That could have obviously meant a significant diminution of the U.S. government’s overseas empire and the military-industrial complex, along with the enormously high taxes needed to pay for it all. Thus, it’s not surprising that U.S. officials immediately went on the propaganda attack after 9/11 in order to divert people’s attention from U.S. foreign policy and toward the “freedom-and-values” motivation for the 9/11 attacks.

~ Summit of Indigenous Nations Sign Resolution to Rescind the Doctrine of Discovery (Papal Bulls of 1493) ~

The Indigenous Nations have resolved, here at the base of Mato Paha (Bear Butte), that the Pope of the Catholic Church and the Queen of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury rescind these doctrines of discovery as they have justified and paved the legal way for the dispossession of aboriginal land title and the subjugation of non-Christian people to the present. It has been resolved by 23 Nations and NGO’s and 100 individual signatories that the “doctrine of discovery is a legal and political fiction in violation of the rights of Indigenous People’s which has resulted in and continues to oppress indigenous people’s in the Western Hemisphere.

Foreclosure filings up 34% in Palm Beach County
Clients these days are from such well-to-do areas as The Acreage and Wellington, he said. "They're mostly (middle class) people who have financed it to the hilt, and there's really not much you can do for them."

Sixty percent of Americans oppose Iraq war: poll
It was the CNN poll's highest number opposing the war since fighting began in March 2003,

War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners..


As Lebanon’s Fuel Runs Out, Fears of a Doomsday Moment Almost one month into the siege of Lebanon, with a land, sea and air blockade by Israel choking off the country, fuel reserves have all but dried up.

Quick Overview

• Sweden AMS unemployment rate July, at 5.2% versus 5.3% expected.

• Norwegian Retail Sales MoM June, at -1.1% versus -1.2% expected.
  

• Norwegian Unemployment rate (AKU) May, at 4.6% versus 3.9% expected.
  

• UK Visible trade balance June, at -6463 versus -6200 expected.
  

• US MBA Mortgage Applications Aug, out at 4.95 showed the housing industry still has a pulse and the housing sector may be able to stabilize now that mortgage rates have stopped rising.
  

• Canadian Housing starts July, at 236.5k versus 225.0K expected.
  

• Machinery orders in Japan +8.5% in June, more than expected.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that:
  Supplies of crude oil were down 1.1 million barrels to 332.6 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were down 3.2 million barrels
  Supplies of heating oil supplies were up 1.1 million barrels.
  
  

• DJ Newswires said China's textile industry expects cotton imports to increase from 2.6 million tons last year to 7 million by 2010.
  

Bush Pilot
This explains EVERYTHING!

Public Pension Plans Face Billions in Shortages And that may well understate the gap: Barclays Global Investments has calculated that if America’s state pension plans were required to use the same methods as corporations, the total value of the benefits they have promised would grow 22 percent, to $2.5 trillion. Only $1.7 trillion has been set aside to pay those benefits.

Quick Overview

• The Fed on Tuesday halted a more than two-year string of interest-rate rises, holding its benchmark rate steady at 5.25% while it gauges whether a slowing economy will keep inflation in check.
  
  

• The confidence of American consumers fell slightly in the latest week, with gasoline prices still high amid signs of a slowing economy, ABC News and The Washington Post said on Tuesday.
  
  

• The Labor Department said that business productivity increased 1.1% YoY in the second quarter, down from YoY rate of 4.3% in the first quarter.
  

• Japan's July bank lending rose 2.2% YoY which was the fastest pace in a decade.
  
  

• Germany's June industrial production fell -0.4%, which was weaker than the consensus expectation of +0.3%.

Bush, Rice, Twerps, and Children in Power
by Fred Reed

I’m wondering. Help me wonder. Either Georgie Bush is the minor, depressing, witless ferret I think he is, or I am. It has to be one or the other. If things don’t start looking up pretty soon internationally, I’m going to be pretty sure which.

As best as I can tell, what the Maximum Cipher lacks, among an inexhaustible list of other things, is a hop-toad’s understanding of how people work. Here we have the explanation of just about everything he does. He’s dealing with a world full of people, but has no idea what people are. He probably couldn’t recognize one. So he doesn’t take their predictable behavior into account.

Governors Balk at Bid To Place Guard Under Presidential Control The nation's governors are closing ranks in opposition to a proposal in Congress that would let the president take control of the National Guard in emergencies without consent of governors.

No good military options in Iraq: leading US senators There are no good military options for the United States in Iraq, two top US senators said, describing the country as in the midst of a civil war and suggested that Washington convene a high-level diplomatic conference involving regional powers.

Prominent Hamas politician is seized The Israelis may try to trade Abdel Aziz Dweik, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, for Cpl Gilad Shalit, who was seized in a cross-border raid by Islamic fighters on 25 June.


The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance
The position that we're taking in the UN is just nuts," a former White House official close to the US decision-making process said during the negotiations. "The US wants to put international forces on the ground in the middle of the conflict, before there's a ceasefire. The reasoning at the White House is that the international force could weigh on the side of the Israelis - could enforce Hezbollah's disarmament."

Quick Overview

• The Fed reported that YoY consumer borrowing rose 5.7% in June, up sharply from a 3.3 percent increase in May.
  
  

• Japan's July foreign exchange reserves rose $7.06 billion on month to $871.94 billion, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
  
  

• China's National Foreign Exchange Center set the Yuan rate at a record 7.9699 to the dollar.
  
  

• Sweden’s GDP rose 5.5% YoY versus 4.2% expected.
  

• MoM UK’s Industrial Production fell -0.1% in June vs. 0.2% expected, YoY -0.7 vs. -0.3% exp.
  

• UK’s Manufacturing Production was up 0.1% in June vs. 0.2% expected, YoY 0.9% vs. 0.9% exp.
  

• BP said Sunday it would shut down the Prudhoe Bay oil field, which represents 8 percent of daily U.S. crude production, because of possible pipeline corrosion.
  
  
  

Good as gold?
Commentary: Questions about market manipulation, missing M3 figures
When last calculable, the chart of this was ominous: Turk not unreasonably comments: "Why does the Fed no longer want to report the total quantity of dollars in circulation? They know what's coming - massive amounts of dollar creation to fund the worsening trade and federal government budget deficits."

Fed admits US recession on cards
As Fed chairman Ben Bernanke prepares to decide whether to raise American interest rates for the 18th time on Tuesday, bond prices and the high level of borrowing costs are now showing a 38 per cent chance of recession, according to a model published by Fed economist Jonathan Wright earlier this year.

International crime rings, not hackers, true Internet villains More than two billion dollars will be stolen this year by online "phishing," using fake website and bogus e-mails to trick people into revealing personal information then used for identity theft, according to Evron.

Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.