North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told the country’s military to be combat-ready in a message broadcast last week that coincided with South Korea’s announcement that it blamed his regime for the sinking of a warship, a dissident group said.
The order was broadcast on May 20 by O Kuk Ryol, vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, according to the website of North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a Seoul-based group run by defectors from the communist country. Yonhap News agency reported on the posting earlier today, sending the won lower by the most in more than a year and causing stocks to drop.
The report added to perceptions of increased tension in the Korean peninsula following the March 26 sinking of the 1,200 ton Cheonan. South Korea yesterday announced plans for joint military exercises with the U.S. off the west coast where the ship sank, while North Korea today warned of military action in the area after accusing the South of violating its territory in the disputed zone.
“For Kim Jong Il to be giving such an order is pretty serious,” said Kim Yong Hyun, professor of North Korean studies at Seoul-based Dongguk University, adding that he doubted that such a direct order was given.
A U.S. soldier is under investigation for posting a ‘disgraceful’ video on his Facebook page, taunting Iraqi children by asking if they are gay, engage in sex acts and if they would grow up to be terrorists.
The two young boys did not appear to understand the questions, which were in English, but smiled at the camera and at times flashed the ‘thumbs up’ gesture during the 30-second clip.
Spc Robert Rodriguez, based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, was ordered to remove the video from his site, U.S. army spokesman Major Bill Coppernoll said.
‘The incident is currently under investigation and the army will take appropriate action based on the findings of the investigation,’ he said.
It was not immediately clear if Mr Rodriguez shot the video or just posted it, Maj Coppernoll added.
Anti-war protester Brian Haw was arrested today as police carried out security sweeps ahead of the Queen’s Speech.
Mr Haw was seen being handcuffed by police as they cleared the area outside the Houses of Parliament before the monarch’s visit this afternoon.
He and other peace campaigners have been camping there and maintaining a 24-hour peace vigil.
Police with sniffer dogs moved in this morning to search the ragtag collection of tents in what Scotland Yard said was a ’standard’ security operation.
Mr Haw, who was wearing a grubby T-shirt declaring ‘IRAQ 2,000,000 DEAD, 4,000,000 FLED, was allegedly trying to stop them when he was arrested.
Transonic Combustion, Inc., a fuel-injection systems startup, announced today that Bob Lutz has joined the company’s board of directors.
“Lutz brings to Transonic’s leadership team a legendary career in the global automotive industry, including senior leadership positions at four of the world’s leading automakers,” Transonic said in a statement.
“For the foreseeable future, the internal combustion engine will remain the dominant propulsion system for automobiles,” Lutz said, “and there is still a lot of room to improve its efficiency. Customers and manufacturers want better fuel economy, lower emissions and a great vehicle experience all at an attractive price. Transonic’s new supercritical fuel injection technology can greatly improve engine efficiency and potentially become the new industry standard.”
Lutz recently retired from his nine year position as vice chairman of General Motors. His resume also holds respectable titles including CEO of Exide Corp; a 12 year position with Chrysler where he was vice chairman, president, chief operation officer and executive vice president; 12 years with FoMoCo; and three years with BMW.
Guess Lutz has no interest in retiring and resting… ever.
Hillary Clinton was trotted out by the global elite today with task in-hand — war with the authoritarian state of North Korea.
“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean warship has created a ‘highly precarious’ security situation in the region and that the Obama administration is working to prevent an escalation of tension that could lead to conflict,” reports the Associated Press. “We are working hard to avoid an escalation of belligerence and provocation,” Clinton said. “This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region.”
Back in March, when the 1,200 ton corvette Cheonan sank in the Yellow Sea, there was scant evidence North Korea had anything to do with the disaster.
“Initial reports of the sinking had provoked fears that North Korea had attacked the ship, possibly with a torpedo, however South Korean military authorities have now said there is no evidence so far that North Korean forces were to blame,” the Daily Telegraph reported on March 27. “Speculation is now turning to the possibility that the Cheonan, which would have been carrying torpedos, suffered an accident or had perhaps struck a sea mine that had broken free from its mooring.”
In order to blame North Korea and set the stage for the possibility of a war that will conveniently displace the daily horror show of the engineered global economic implosion, a “joint civilian-military investigation group” of military and civilian experts was cobbled together.
“Investigators on Thursday presented fragments of a torpedo, which they said sank the vessel on the night of March 26 near the disputed West Sea maritime border between the two Koreas,” CNSNews reported on May 20. “The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine,” said Yoon Duk-yong, co-chairman of the joint investigation team. “There is no other plausible explanation,” he added.
On cue the script-reading corporate media chanted the mantra that the evil North Koreans had sunk the military ship and wantonly killed South Korean sailors, thus attempting to rationalize the mass murder that may or may not soon unfold.
Lew Rockwell hit the nail square on the head. “In the most recent Korean incident, did the North’s navy sink a ship of the South’s navy? Only one thing is for sure: it is none of the US’s business, which should immediately end its long occupation of the South,” he writes. “But since the empire seeks to rule the world and beyond, everything is its business, and it looks as if the chickenhawk Obama may be about to launch a second Korean war.”
Naturally almost the entire nation is under a government and corporate media induced voodoo trance on the stage-managed issue. According to the official version of history, North Korea crossed the border at the 38th Parallel and mercilessly attacked South Korea as reunification negotiations were underway. The Chinese and Soviets supported North Korea and the United States and the United Nations supported South Korea.
Establishment historians mark the Korean War as the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War. Nearly a million and a half people lost their lives, including more than 55,000 U.S. soldiers.
Establishment history books omit a few inconvenient facts about the Korean War. As early as 1949, South Korean troops were launching incursions into North Korea, actions that ultimately led to the support from communist China and the Soviet Union. President Harry Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, announced in 1950 that the United States had little interest in Korea because the country had no geopolitical significance and yet John Foster Dulles is said to have worked behind the scenes with the leaders of Taiwan, South Korea and the U.S. military-industrial complex to set the stage for war.
As the Col. L Fletcher Prouty documents, the Cold War was a wholly manufactured phenomenon. Prouty was an insider who spent nine of his 23 year military career in the Pentagon — including a stint as a liaison officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations — and wrote two books detailing how the elite systematically plan and execute wars and conflicts around the world. “The Grand Strategy decision to create a new bipolar world had already been made in 1944-45,” writes Prouty in JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (p. 12).
British researcher and author Atony Sutton has documented how the global elite financed and supported the Soviet Union from its inception and provided the communists with military assistance (see Sutton’s The Best Enemy Money Can Buy). “The United States financed the economic and military development of the Soviet Union. Without this aid, financed by U.S. taxpayers, there would be no significant Soviet military threat, for there would be no Soviet economy to support the Soviet military machine, let alone sophisticated military equipment,” Sutton wrote in 1986 before the planned implosion of the Soviet Union.
“It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the U.S.S.R. was made in the U.S.A.,” notes Gary Allen. “Remember that for over 150 years it has been standard operating procedure of the Rothschilds and their allies to control both sides of every conflict. You must have an ‘enemy’ if you are going to collect from the King.”
It helps, as well, to have “enemy” that you admire, as David Rockefeller admires communism, specifically the murderous version created by Mao. “Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history,” Rockefeller told the New York Times on August 10, 1973.
“In Korea we have direct killing of Americans with Soviet weapons,” Sutton writes in the concluding chapter of his book. “The 130,000-man North Korean Army, which crossed the South Korean border in June 1950, was trained, supported, and equipped by the Soviet Union.” Soviet tanks with U.S. parts, artillery tractors that were direct metric copies of Caterpillar tractors, trucks from a Henry Ford-Gorki plant in Russia, and airplanes built in plants with U.S. Lend-Lease equipment were used to kill U.S. soldiers in Korea.
Nearly two decades later, the U.S. would still be selling military technology to the Soviets. “Who were the government officials responsible for this transfer of known military technology? The concept originally came from National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger,” writes Sutton. Kissinger was (and is) “a paid family employee of the Rockefellers since 1958 and has served as International Advisory Committee Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, a Rockefeller concern.”
In regard to North Korea’s nuclear threat, this too was made in the U.S.A. Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and high-level globalist operative, made it possible for North Korea to possess nuclear technology.
In early 2000, Rumsfeld was involved with Swiss-based ABB when the company secured a $200 million contract with Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho on the North Korean east coast. The ABB contract followed a 1994 deal between the U.S. and North Korea allowing construction of two reactors in exchange for a freeze on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, a deal North Korea subsequently violated (or so we are told) as it continued to develop a nuclear weapons program.
North Korea initiated a missile program in the early 1960s with the assistance of China and the Soviet Union, that is to say with technology introduced by the United States, as Sutton has documented. Thousands of missiles are currently aimed at Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
North Korea, under the authoritarian cult of personality leadership of the psychotic Kim Jong-il, has vowed to unleash these missiles and his military machine against South Korea if it retaliates for the sinking of the Cheonan. “If (South Korea) tries to deal any retaliation or punishment, or if they try sanctions or a strike on us … we will answer to this with all-out war,” North Korean naval spokesman Col. Pak In Ho warned on Thursday.
“The U.S. and South Korean militaries will undergo two new training exercises in light of last week’s finding that North Korea sank a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors, a Pentagon spokesman announced today,” the American Forces Press Service has announced. “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a pre-arranged diplomatic trip to Asia, today said U.S. and South Korean military leaders are working closely to ensure readiness in the region,” in other words possibly preparing for armed conflict.
“President Obama has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Korean counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression,” Clinton said. “As part of our ongoing dialogue, we will explore further enhancements to our joint posture on the peninsula.”
In remains to be seen if these “further enhancements,” coupled with North Korea’s avowed declaration of “all-out war” in response, will result in hostilities.
If war ensues, not only will Lindsay Lohan be swept off the front page, but so will the economic crisis that is bearing down menacingly on the world with each passing day.
A Wilmington Island family is upset, after they say four Tybee Island Police officers beat their autistic son.
A broken tooth, scrapes and bruises and two puncture marks from Tasers are the only reminders Clifford Grevemberg has of his visit to Tybee Island Friday night.
“They literally just beat the heck out of me,” he said.
A beating 18-year-old Clifford and his brother, Dario Mariani, said happened after they left the annual Tybee Beach Bum Parade.
They say they stopped to get food at the Rockhouse. Clifford is 18, but couldn’t go inside. Instead he sat on the curb. That’s when he said the trouble started.
BitTorrent, as a technology, has a stigma about it, but it certainly transformed Internet traffic for the past years and plenty of companies and projects have been using it for more efficient distribution of large amounts of data. With the release of uTorrent 2.0, a lightweight BitTorrent client owned by BitTorrent Inc., the company, a new prot… (read more)
There are plans to expand the minivan and pickup truck segment of SAIC-GM-Wuling, boosting capacity by almost 50% by the end of 2012.
SAIC-GM-Wuling, a tie-up between General Motors and Chinese partners (SAIC Motor Corp. and Liuzhou Wuling Automobile), revealed in a statement that this plan will add capacity of 210,000 units to an existing facility in the southern city of Liuzhou, which can produce 590,000 units each year. According further to the statement, expansion of the venture’s facility in the eastern city of Qingdao will begin very soon, raising the designed capacity from the current 300,000 units to 510,000 units by 2012. For now, the Chevrolet Spark is the only car made by the SAIC-GM-Wuling, which mainly produces Wuling-brand minivans and pickups. Yang Jie, general manager of the venture’s sales arm, said that the venture will soon announce plans to expand its portfolio to include a bigger sedan.
Honda was expected to benefit from the troubles that Toyota had been getting into lately. But instead, Honda has lost market share while those that had gained include Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan and Hyundai.
Honda’s executives in Japan are understandably bothered by this but American Honda sales boss John Mendel says that he isn’t excessively worried. Mendel cited that American Honda, which includes Acura, has kept its retail share in 2010 and has actually been steadily climbing. Mendel asserted that Honda won’t revise its conservative strategy for the opportunity to widen its market share. Continued after the jump!
He explained that the share increases are correlated to “events where people count on Honda,” which he believes is considered by its consumers as a “safe harbor.” R.L. Polk’s figures indicate that American Honda retail share, including Acura, has been increasing marginally in February and March.
But Mendel clarified that these numbers only refer to segments where Honda competes while segments such as full-sized pickups and SUVs are excluded. Actually, TrueCar of Santa Monica, Calif., found that American Honda’s retail share held steady in March when all segments were taken into account. Nevertheless, the plunge in overall market share is alarming.
From 9.9%, the Honda brand fell in the first four months of 2009 to 9.4% this year. The 2010 figures show a sharp increase in many carmakers’ fleet sales, a segment that Honda doesn’t participate in. Cross-shopping information gathered by TrueCar and Compete Automotive indicate that Ford, Hyundai and Kia all performed better than Honda at attracting Toyota’s customers.
Have you been to AW’s newest Web site? It’s called AWCollector.com, and it’s the best source of classic-car news, auction information and vintage lifestyle events on the Web.
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Yahoo hasn’t been very active on the acquisition front lately, with a few notable exceptions. In fact, it’s been much more likely to shut down or outsource a service than buy a new one. Yet, one opportunity seemed of particular interest to Yahoo, location-based services. It reportedly tried to buy the hottest location service… (read more)
Just a little more perspective on the big selloff we’re seeing this morning.
We’re now decisively below where we bottomed on the day of the flash crash, as S&P futures are currently at 1043, down 23 points.
Based on this morning’s futures, the Dow just has another 200 points to fall to hit its low of 9625, a pretty remarkable thing considering how much of its fall was due to the wild trading in Proctor & Gamble.
The XT2 provides an outstanding tablet experience. A high-performance system designed with intuitive input capabilities including a capacitive multi-touch screen and pen, once you experience multi-touch on the XT2, your keyboard and touchpad may get lonely.
The new Dell Latitude XT2 is shipped with an Intel Core2Duo ULV proccessor with Microsoft Windows 7 or Vista and with Intel’s Montevina chipset, it has a 12.1″ premium WXGA LED display and can be purchesed with a SATA 120GB hard drive or with a 128GB mobility SSD, has an onboard 4500MHD video accelerator and built in WLAN (broadband capable).
A 19-year old male worker reportedly fell from a building at Foxconn Technology Group, Shenzhen, China. It is the tenth death in the list this year.
Three days before the incident, a 21-year old employee in the logistics department jumped four storeys above ground. Two more workers attempted to jump from the buildings but survived, and another committed suicide in a smaller plant in the province of Hebei last January.
And labor activists are pointing fingers at the company linking the incidents with employees that work under strenuous conditions, with extended work hours, and stern management of the company. Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou has denied the allegations. “We are certainly not running a sweatshop. We are confident we’ll be able to stabilize the situation soon,” quotes the Associated Press.
According to Business Insider, two reporters of Southern Weekly were able to get inside the Shenzhen factory. “One thing they must take note is that please don’t treat the workers like dogs. If Foxconn does not solve the problem, there will be more suicides to happen. The workers definitely need beer, romance and slightly higher pays. To say it simple, just make them happy. Let’s hope we don’t see a 10th jump…,” concludes the report.
The propaganda messages – entitled “The Sound of Freedom” – will be played from dozens of loudspeakers to be set up near the military demarcation line, and work to install the speakers will begin this month.
South Korean military officials say the messages can be heard up to 24 kilometers (15 miles) into North Korea in the quiet of the night.
A North Korean military officer threatened to fire on any equipment used to deliver an anti-North Korean message, according to JoongAng Daily. To which South Korea Defense Minister Kim Tay-young said there would be “no other choice than to strike back immediately.”
Google’s ‘green’ arm has been particularly active lately and the company has been making several big moves in the energy sector. Now, through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, the company is announcing that it has partnered with the largest supplier of real-time energy use monitoring displays, Current Cost, to … (read more)
The pressure is clearly growing on Jean-Claude Trichet to go beyond the bond purchases he’s announced already.
He’s being forced by a horde of currency/bond/sovereign vigilantes to go into full-blown quantitative easing/debt monetization. His next job: Buy the debt of failing Spanish banks.
But he’s not the only one being pushed.
Check out what’s going on in Australia.
Remember, back last October it was the first country to raise rates, an aggressive (though impressive) case of getting ahead of the curve.
Earlier this month the futures market had factored in another interest rate rise, maybe even two, before the end of the year. But a cut is now seen as more likely.
The market shows the expected average level for the cash rate, set by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), heading down from its current 4.5 per cent to a low point of 4.35 per cent though October.
That implies a better-than-even chance of an interest rate cut to 4.25 per cent by that time.
In one of the most important bellwether economies, the market seems to be forecasting a double dip, or at least alluding to one.
A lot of investors and pundits have been and remained bearish throughout the course of the last few years. Within this bear camp there have been two distinct groups – the deflationists and the inflationists. The market action in the last few weeks has shown one of these two groups to be only marginally better than a full blown permabull. Since the recent downturn began on April 26th an inflationist portfolio has actually performed worse than a standard 60/40 stock/bond portfolio.
Obviously, there is no standard inflation or deflation portfolio, but the general claims from the inflationists have been that the next big downturn would be the result of a crushing debt burden from a U.S. government that has spent too much and printed more money than the economy can bear. This would all result in the demise of the dollar, spiking interest rates, soaring gold prices, soaring hard assets and soaring commodities. Since the recent downturn began on April 26th a simple inflation portfolio that was evenly short trade weighted US Dollars, short US Treasuries, long gold, long commodities (GS Commodity Index), and long oil has returned -9.29%. An aggressive gold bug portfolio (50% gold) has done better though still performed poorly over the last few weeks with a -3.75% total return. A lazy stock/bond portfolio has actually outperformed BOTH portfolios with a -3.6% return. Meanwhile, a portfolio positioned for deflation has returned +6.75% over the last month. Even the ultimate deflationary portfolio (100% cash) has outperformed.
Now, clearly I’m cherry picking the assets to some extent to prove a point, but it’s a very important one in my opinion – if you’ve missed the analysis you’ve missed the move in your portfolio. There are a lot of impostors out there who have been right in theory and wrong in practice. The overwhelming majority of bears have been expecting an inflationary period on the back of the out of control “printing” by the Fed. But just as in 2008, this inflationary strategy has been fantastically wrong. If you’re not familiar with monetary operations and the resulting impact on the economy then your analysis and portfolio performance has been entirely off the mark. The inability to connect the dots and understand the true underlying fundamentals in the economy has been a very destructive lesson in being bearish. In fact, you would practically have been better off just being a full blown bull….
Still’s disease is a disorder which leads to a type of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRS) or systemic onset JRA. Systemic means joint inflammation is coupled with symptoms affecting other parts of the body. The symptoms include having on and off rashes and high fever reaching 39 degrees C during the day and reoccurs in about the same, then often joint pain and swelling follows. It may lead to inflammation of the heart, fluid accumulation in the lungs, loss of appetite, and nausea.
It is diagnosed based solely on the aforementioned symptoms that usually last for months, except for arthritis that persists even after the symptoms, until it becomes chronic in adulthood. It is common among 25,000-50,000 children in the U.S., but adults can acquire it, termed as Adult-Onset Still’s Disease, according to Medicinenet. Its name originated from Dr. George Still.
Medications include anti-inflammatory drugs, like aspirin; cortisone and prednisone for severe cases. Intravenous immunoglobulin therapy is being studied as an alternative measure.
Jimmy Kimmel started his episode “Aloha to Lost”by treating his audience with what may be “alternative endings” for lost. There were also Lost cast members present on his show, which included: Matthew Fox, TerryO’Quinn, Emilie de Ravin, Naveen Andrews, Daniel Dae Kim, Michael Emerson, Alan Dale and Jeremy Davies. The cast shared some of their favorite scenes and also answered some queries of the audience.
After the 121 episodes in the six seasons, “Lost” had finally come to an end. Creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse took to Jimmy Kimmel’s post “Lost “ bonanza to offer up some quirky alternate endings. So if you missed the show and would want to see these “alternate endings”, the video is available below. Which do alternate ending do you prefer best?
BitTorrent, as a technology, has a stigma about it, but it certainly transformed Internet traffic for the past years and plenty of companies and projects have been using it for more efficient distribution of large amounts of data. With the release of uTorrent 2.0, a lightweight BitTorrent client owned by BitTorrent Inc., the company, a new prot… (
There are plans to expand the minivan and pickup truck segment of SAIC-GM-Wuling, boosting capacity by almost 50% by the end of 2012.
Honda was expected to benefit from the troubles that Toyota had been getting into lately. But instead, Honda has lost market share while those that had gained include Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan and Hyundai.
Yahoo hasn’t been very active on the acquisition front lately, with a few notable exceptions. In fact, it’s been much more likely to shut down or outsource a service than buy a new one. Yet, one opportunity seemed of particular interest to Yahoo, location-based services. It reportedly tried to buy the hottest location service… (
A 19-year old male worker reportedly fell from a building at Foxconn Technology Group, Shenzhen, China. It is the tenth death in the list this year.
Google’s ‘green’ arm has been particularly active lately and the company has been making several big moves in the energy sector. Now, through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, the company is announcing that it has partnered with the largest supplier of real-time energy use monitoring displays, Current Cost, to … (
The causes are vague but the disease exists. 
Jimmy Kimmel started his episode “Aloha to Lost”by treating his audience with what may be “alternative endings” for lost. There were also Lost cast members present on his show, which included: Matthew Fox, Terry O’Quinn, Emilie de Ravin, Naveen Andrews, Daniel Dae Kim, Michael Emerson, Alan Dale and Jeremy Davies. The cast shared some of their favorite scenes and also answered some queries of the audience.