Israel mulls ways to penalize PA in wake of UN human rights probe
Israel is considering sanctions against the Palestinian Authority after the United Nations’ Human Rights Council decided to establish an international investigative committee on the West Bank settlements.
Today, a forum of eight senior Israeli cabinet ministers is scheduled to meet in Jerusalem to discuss sanctions against the PA and representatives of the UN Human Rights Council in Israel. It is unclear whether any decisions will be made during today’s meeting.
Three members of the octet reportedly support freezing the transfer of tax revenues to the PA. According to one source, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz would back such a move. 
(Read more)
HA! — The numbers behind the Copyright Math
MPAA: $58 billion / year losses to copyright theft???
373,000 jobs lost???
Each pirated song costs the economy: $150,000???
Bernanke’s Deep Understanding
“Gold standards are far from perfect,” Bernanke said. “ They waste of resources,.” citing Milton Friedman’s quip about taking gold from one hole in the ground just to transfer it to other hole.
Gold standards are far from perfect because government bureaucrats have always been in charge of managing them. The mere fact that heavy costs and resources are involved to mine the yellow metal is one of the factors making gold a perfect money.
A gold-shackled currency takes away central bank flexibility, which bothers Bernanke. But the question is, how much Bernanke flexibility can the dollar stand before it falls apart completely?
The Fed Chair admitted that the gold standard provides price stability–but only in the long run. He stressed that there have been short-term periods of price inflation and deflation under gold. Well sure, prices increase and then correct, that’s what a gold standard does. Under central bank management prices just increase; either slowly, quickly, or catastrophically. (Read more)
Growing Antitax Movement Shows Irish Stoicism Wearing Thin
Throughout the European financial crisis, Ireland has won plaudits for the way it has handled austerity. But growth has stalled here once again, and an incipient tax revolt is being taken as a sign that even this most stoic of nations is becoming fed up.
Urged on by promoters of a tax boycott, fully 85 percent of Irish homeowners have yet to pay a $130 property tax that is due March 31. The latest official figures show that just 225,000 property owners out of 1.6 million have paid a total of $29 million — well short of the more than $200 million the government was planning to raise to help support public services.
The government has so far dismissed talk that the boycott is gathering strength, saying the Irish are notorious procrastinators on money matters.
“The Irish people are law-abiding citizens and will pay the charge before March 31,” a government spokesman said. “We are ready to cope with a late surge — Irish people always tend to leave it to the last minute to pay their bills.”
The boycott’s organizers see it differently. (Read more)
Israel cuts contact with UN rights council, to protest settlements probe
Israel’s Foreign Ministry orders envoy to Geneva to ignore all phone calls from rights council commissioner; ‘The council sparked this process’, says a senior Israeli official.
Israel decided Monday to sever all contact with the United Nations human rights council and with its chief commissioner Navi Pillay, after the international body decided to establish an international investigative committee on the West Bank settlements.
The Foreign Ministry ordered Israel’s ambassador to Geneva to cut off contact immediately, instructing him to ignore phone calls from the commissioner, a senior Israeli official said. (Read more)
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion 1945 – 1988 by Isao Hashimoto
Britain bans ad promoting tourism to Israel for blurring 1967 borders
Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority blocked an advertisement promoting tourism in Israel earlier this week, following complaints that it was “misleading” in implying the occupied territories were part of Israel.
The ad, promoting a new book on northern Israel, first appeared in British newspapers in November 2011. It evoked no less than 350 complaints to the ASA, which oversees and regulates the advertising industry in the United Kingdom.
The complaints came mainly from pro-Palestinian organizations such as Friends of Al-Aqsa and Jews for Justice in Palestine. (Read more)
Michael Scheuer on Afghanistan, War, Middle East Politics, Terrorism
It’s Official – The Fed Is Now Buying European Government Bonds
As if the ‘risk-less’ dollar-swaps the Fed has extended to any and every major central bank were not enough, William Dudley just unashamedly admitted that the Fed now holds ‘a very small amount of European Sovereign Debt’. Explaining this position, as Bloomberg notes:
*DUDLEY: FED HOLDS OVERSEAS SOVEREIGN DEBT TO MANAGE RESERVES
*DUDLEY: HIGH BAR FOR ADDITIONAL PURCHASES OF EUROPE DEBT
Dudley, testifying to a House panel, noted that he doesn’t see more efforts by the Fed to buffer the US from Europe’s tempests and believes European banks are deleveraging in an orderly manner. So not only is the US taxpayer bailing out Europe via the IMF (as we noted here a week ago using Greece as an intermediary) and the Fed is providing limitless USD swap lines but now we join the ECB in monetizing European government bonds – something we warned might happen back in December 2010. (Read more)
ex-FBI informant on faking & entrapping “terrorists”
Monteilh was involved in one of the most controversial tactics: the use of “confidential informants” in so-called entrapment cases. This is when suspects carry out or plot fake terrorist “attacks” at the request or under the close supervision of an FBI undercover operation using secret informants. Often those informants have serious criminal records or are supplied with a financial motivation to net suspects.
In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.
In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant’s criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot. (Read more)
parallels between IAEA approach to Iran and mistakes over Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog at the heart of the growing Iranian crisis, has been accused by several former senior officials of pro-western bias, over-reliance on unverified intelligence and of sidelining sceptics.
Yukiya Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, took command of the IAEA in July 2009. Since then, the west’s confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme has deepened and threats of military action by Israel and the US have become more frequent.
At the same time, the IAEA’s reports on Iranian behaviour have become steadily more critical. (Read more)
US acted to conceal evidence of intelligence failure before 9/11
The US government shut down a series of court cases arising from a multimillion pound business dispute in order to conceal evidence of a damning intelligence failure shortly before the 9/11 attacks, MPs were told.
Moreover, the UK government is now seeking similar powers that could be used to prevent evidence of illegal acts and embarrassing failures from emerging in court, David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, told the Commons. (Read more)
Governments hate cash
US currency used to be issued in denominations running up to $10,000 (including also $500; $1,000; $5,000 notes). There was even a $100,000 note issued for transactions among Federal Reserve banks. The United States stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945 and officially discontinued their issuance in 1969, when the Fed began removing them from circulation. Since then the largest currency note available to the general public has a face value of $100. But since 1969, the inflationary monetary policy of the Fed has caused the US dollar to depreciate by over 80 percent, so that a $100 note in 2010 possessed a purchasing power of only $16.83 in 1969 dollars. That is less purchasing power than a $20 bill in 1969!
Despite this enormous depreciation, the Federal Reserve has steadfastly refused to issue notes of larger denomination. This has made large cash transactions extremely inconvenient and has forced the American public to make much greater use than is optimal of electronic-payment methods. Of course, this is precisely the intent of the US government. The purpose of its ongoing breach of long-established laws regarding financial privacy is to make it easier to monitor the economic affairs and abrogate the financial privacy of its citizens, ostensibly to secure their safety from Colombian drug lords, Al Qaeda operatives, and tax cheats and other nefarious white-collar criminals
Now the war on cash has begun to spread to other countries. As reported a few months ago, Italy lowered the legal maximum on cash transactions from €2,500 to €1,000. . . .
US currency used to be issued in denominations running up to $10,000 (including also $500; $1,000; $5,000 notes). There was even a $100,000 note issued for transactions among Federal Reserve banks. The United States stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945 and officially discontinued their issuance in 1969, when the Fed began removing them from circulation. Since then the largest currency note available to the general public has a face value of $100. But since 1969, the inflationary monetary policy of the Fed has caused the US dollar to depreciate by over 80 percent, so that a $100 note in 2010 possessed a purchasing power of only $16.83 in 1969 dollars. That is less purchasing power than a $20 bill in 1969!
Despite this enormous depreciation, the Federal Reserve has steadfastly refused to issue notes of larger denomination. This has made large cash transactions extremely inconvenient and has forced the American public to make much greater use than is optimal of electronic-payment methods. Of course, this is precisely the intent of the US government. The purpose of its ongoing breach of long-established laws regarding financial privacy is to make it easier to monitor the economic affairs and abrogate the financial privacy of its citizens, ostensibly to secure their safety from Colombian drug lords, Al Qaeda operatives, and tax cheats and other nefarious white-collar criminals
Now the war on cash has begun to spread to other countries. As reported a few months ago, Italy lowered the legal maximum on cash transactions from €2,500 to €1,000. . . .
As one “expert” on underground economies instructs us, “If people use more cards, they are less involved in shadowy economy activities,” in other words, secreting their hard-earned income in places where it cannot be plundered by the state. . . . (Read more)
Iran: Hyundai Motor Ends Operations
¶ The Hyundai Motor Company, the automaking subsidiary of Hyundai, the South Korean conglomerate, has quietly ended its business dealings with Iran, where it had extensive operations, including a joint venture to make cars. United Against Nuclear Iran, an American group that has advocated economic sanctions to pressure Iran over its disputed nuclear program, has reclassified Hyundai Motor, putting it in the “withdrawn” category on a list the group has compiled of foreign businesses that deal with Iran. Hyundai Motor officials did not respond to requests for comment. A strict new American law is putting pressure on foreign companies to reduce or eliminate their operations in Iran or risk penalties in the United States market. Hyundai is the second big foreign automaker in a week to pull back from Iran. Last week, General Motors said its French partner, PSA Peugeot Citroën, had suspended shipments of components to the Iran Khodro Industrial Group, an Iranian vehicle maker, to comply with American restraints on Iran trade. (Read more)