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Tuesday 05.01.2012

A Gold Standard?
BY JOHN MAULDIN - FinancialSense.com
There are times, my friends Michael Lewitt and Dr. Lacy Hunt agreed today at lunch, when the study of economics is best informed by a sound knowledge of history. Indeed, Michael's son wants to follow his father into the finance world, and Michael is starting him off in history. I have spent hours listening to Lacy stroll through economic history, detailing the path of economic thought from Fisher to Kindleberger to Minsky. The last few days have been one of those times when I realized how much I don't know and how much more there is to learn. Not only Lacy and Michael are here in Florida, but a long list of bright minds to learn from. James Rickards, who has recently written the tour de force book Currency Wars, Harry Dent, Doug Casey, Porter Stansberry, Greg Weldon, and John Williams of Shadow Stats, with whom I look forward to meeting (do I have questions for him!). And so many more.

Jim Sinclair has something to say
BY DANIEL P. COLLINS - FuturesMag.com
Jim Sinclair is not simply a gold bug; he successfully has called every major move in the precious metal — both up and down — over a generation. But he is not merely a market guru either. Sinclair has had a love affair with markets for 50 years. He has owned brokerages, clearing firms, mining companies and a precious metals dealer. His Sinclair Group of Companies, founded in 1977, offered brokerage services in stocks, bonds and commodities operating in New York, Kansas City, Toronto, Chicago, London and Geneva until he sold them in 1983. At one time he was considered the largest gold trader in the world, but today he is running his African-based Tanzanian Royalty Exploration Company and the MineSet web site that provides unique macroeconomic information to his loyal followers. Sinclair is a good person to listen to.

Bernanke's Pickle
By: CAPTAINHOOK - GoldSeek.com
Dr. Bernanke is in a pickle. And when Bernanke is in trouble, we're all in trouble.
Why is Bennie in trouble? He is in trouble because he has a debt, or should I say an obligation to Obama for reappointing him Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Fed. Here's where the problem lies. In order to fulfil this bond of duty, Bennie and his buddies down at the Fed will need to pull off slight of hand tricks that would put the best of magicians to shame. They will need to keep people's attention focused on the left hand while the rightcontinues to do their 'dirty work'. (i.e. print new currency and create inflation at ever-increasing rates.) They will need to print ever-increasing currency because the hollowed out US economy demands it, Presidential election year or not. But of course because this is an election year, and Bennie has this debt to Obama to make the economy appear as good as possible (so he can get re-elected), you can expect the Fed and all their friends in the larger bureaucracy (government, media, etc.) to work overtime creating obfuscation about what they are doing on one hand, while keeping other fingers on the button – the currency printing button. (i.e. think True Money Supply [TMS] growth, unstated Quantitative Easing [QE], and all the other sources of currency printing not accounted for in "conventional money supply measures".)

The $7 trillion fiscal cliff
By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Congress has invented a new extreme sport: Skating on the edge of a $7 trillion fiscal cliff.
That's the magnitude of tax increases and spending cuts that will start to hit the economy on Jan. 1, 2013, unless Congress acts.
And how Congress navigates thatfiscal cliff will affect economic growth, Americans' wallets and the country's fiscal outlook.
"There is about $7 trillion there that ... could be taken out of the economy in a really stupid way that would likely push us into arecession immediately," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Fiscal cliff: What should Congress do?
By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn't mince words in warning Congress last week that the Fed won't be able to undo the damage to the economy that would occur if lawmakers mismanage the so-called fiscal cliff.
That cliff amounts to $7 trillion worth of tax increases and spending cuts that will be triggered by year's end.
"[I]f no action were to be taken, the size of the fiscal cliff is such that there's I think absolutely no chance that the Federal Reserve ... could or would have any ability whatsoever to offset ... that effect on the economy," Bernanke said.
Translation: Don't blow it, Congress.

Europe's Anti-Austerity Calls Mount as Elections Near
By Patrick Donahue - Bloomberg.com
A recession in Spain and forecasts of rising unemployment in the 17-nation euro area are amplifying criticism of the German-led austerity agenda in election campaigns this week in France and Greece.
With Spain's largest unions leading marches involving thousands of protesters in 55 cities yesterday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government battled to prevent Spain from becoming the next country to seek a bailout. In France, where the presidential-election runoff is set for May 6, Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande pushed back against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's focus on deficit reduction.

Euro Falls 3rd Day Versus Yen as Spain Back in Recession
By Catarina Saraiva and Lukanyo Mnyanda -
The euro weakened for a third day against the yen after a report showed Spain's economy entered its second recession since 2009, adding to concern Europe's debt crisis is worsening.
The 17-nation currency extended its first monthly decline this year versus the dollar as Spain's government struggled to convince investors it can narrow its budget deficit in an economy that's grappling with almost 25 percent unemployment. The pound touched an eight-month high versus the dollar as U.K. house values increased. Canada's dollar fell by the most in more than five weeks after the nation's economy unexpectedly shrank.

Bringing It All Back Home
By Howard Davies - Project-Syndicate.org
PARIS – Global policymakers regularly congratulate themselves on having avoided the policy errors of the 1930's during the financial crisis that began in 2008. Led by US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, an economic historian of the Great Depression, they remembered the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and loosened monetary and fiscal policy to avoid the worst. We are still coping with the budgetary consequences, especially in Europe, but it is true that the world did not end in 2008.

What a Socialist France Would Mean for America
By PATRICK SMITH, The Fiscal Times
Should the U.S. be (a) frightened, (b) neutral or (c) exuberant that a very moderate Socialist looks set to win the presidency in France when the second round of voting takes place May 6? If Francoise Hollande wins, Americans should applaud. Why? Hollande's arrival in Élysée Palace would mark the beginning of the end of the rigorous austerity policies that have pushed Europe to the brink of depression and made the Continent a drag on U.S. growth and a threat to its frail recovery.
Hollande's victory in the first round of voting last week seems to have arrived as some sort of lightning bolt. The conversation appears since to have changed—certainly in Europe, but also in the U.S., which has been pursuing a modified version of Europe's strategy. Austerity policies without offsetting measures to stimulate demand simply do not work. Only the heretics (and I confess to being one) were willing to make this perfectly obvious observation over the last couple of years. Now you hear it in European capitals as well as in our own.

Greece opens first migrant detention centre
BY NIKOLAJ NIELSEN - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - Greece on Sunday (29 April) set up its first detention centre for undocumented migrants, composed of box homes, surrounded by high wire, and meant to house some 1,200 people
Citizens' Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis said the centre - situated in Amygdaleza, northwest of Athens - will help the country to deal with immigration. Athens expects to build another 50 similar centres between now and mid-2013.

To the Victors Go the Foils
Richard N. Haass, President CFR - Project-Syndicate.org
NEW YORK – A surprising number of elections and political transitions is scheduled to occur over the coming months. An incomplete list includes Russia, China, France, the United States, Egypt, Mexico, and South Korea.
At first glance, these countries have little in common. Some are well-established democracies; some are authoritarian systems; and others are somewhere in between. Yet, for all of their differences, these governments – and the individuals who will lead them – face many of the same challenges. Three stand out.

Why Moody's is set to stick it to Wall Street
By Aaron Elstein -Crain's New York Business
One of the big things floating around Wall Street these days is whether Moody's, the credit-rating agency, will downgrade the major banks.
This matters greatly to the banks, because if places like Morgan Stanley or JPMorgan Chase & Co. are deemed less creditworthy, not only will they suffer a public-relations problem, but they will have to post additional collateral on trades and other such painful undertakings that will eat into earnings.

Large layoffs loom on Wall Street
Latest wave of financial industry cuts could eliminate 21,000 jobs, rivaling the financial crisis.
By Stephen Gandel - Fortune.CNN.com
FORTUNE --Perhaps the only thing more broken than Wall Street's business model is its staffing strategy.
After adding thousands bankers in the past two years, financial firms again appear to be on the verge of cutting that many positions and then some. Consultants and Wall Street recruiters say banks could eliminate nearly 21,000 jobs from their securities divisions in New York alone. Worldwide cuts could be even larger. Recruiters say big banks are in the process of finalizing their downsizing plans, and that layoffs could start soon.

Where poverty lives and works in America
The 10 States and 10 Jobs With the Most Low-Wage Workers
Why a white fast-food employee in Mississippi who never started college is the statistical epitome of American poverty
By Derek Thompson - TheAtlantic.com
One in four U.S. workers -- or nearly 40 million people -- earn a salary below the federal poverty line of $23,000 for a family of four.* Who are they, where are they, and how does their education differ from the rest of the country? A wonderful new paper from the Economic Policy Institute explains it all.

Fed survey shows difficulty in getting mortgage
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A new survey released by the Federal Reserve on Monday shows how much more difficult it is to get a mortgage now than it was before the housing bubble burst.
In a special question as part of its first-quarter survey of banks' senior loan officers released Monday, the Fed asked banks to compare their willingness to make mortgages today with their stance in 2006 at the dawn of the financial crisis.

Florida: When The Owner Who Walks Away Is The Bank
by twist - HousingDoom.com
We've had a few debates here on how ethical it is for a homeowner to walk away from their home and mortgage. Homeowners, however, are not the only ones who sometimes find it to their advantage to walk away. In south Florida, there have been thousands of cases where a lender starts to foreclose– then backs out rather than get stuck with property maintenance:
A months-long Sun Sentinel investigation of property code violations involving abandoned homes uncovered case after case in which banks launched foreclosure lawsuits but then stalled or avoided taking ownership. In effect, the banks legally sidestepped responsibility for the empty homes, causing great harm to neighborhoods.

Home rentals increase, and so do prices
Home ownership declines to lowest level since 2006
By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — More Americans this year are choosing to rent instead of owning their own homes, and they're paying a higher price too.
The U.S. Census said Monday that rental vacancies fell to 8.8% in the first three months of 2012 from 9.4% in the fourth quarter, marking the lowest level in 10 years.
Rising demand for rental units, however, has pushed prices to the second-highest rate ever. The median asking price by landlords rose to $721 from $694 at the tail end of 2011.
The only other time prices were higher was in 1999.

Condo owners face rental hurdles
Rental caps mean some owners can't become landlords
By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch
CHICAGO (MarketWatch)—Instead of selling at a low price, Jim and Joan Watson would like to rent out their vacant Lake Shore Drive condo unit in Chicago.
The problem is, a new rental cap in the building will likely prevent them from being eligible to rent out their place for years, given the number of owners already renting out units. The rental restriction also is interfering with a possible sale, Jim Watson said.
"Just in the last two or three weeks, we've had two serious buyers who walked because of that," he said. And it's not just investors who are balking: "Young people come in, they want to buy it. But like many young people today, if they don't have job security, if they have to leave town to take a job in another city, they want to know they can rent the place."

High Tech Runs Through It: The New Fly-Fishing
By Matt Ridley - WSJ.com
Moore's Law is the leitmotif of the modern age: Incessant improvements in communication and computing are accompanied by incessant drops in price. Yet some quite low-tech devices are also experiencing Moore's Laws of their own, especially those that use new materials. Even something as mundane as fishing rods.
Innovation in fishing rods requires no government program nor even results: Productivity is not really a fly-fisherman's goal. Instead, neophilia is the driving force. The avid fly-fisher arrives at a riverbank and finds his friend has brought a slender wisp of carbon fiber that's newer, lighter and more sensitive than his, with a cooler color, so he experiences an unquenchable thirst to spend money. (It's usually a "he.")

Threat from mounting public job losses
tested Obama's economic strategy
By Zachary A. Goldfarb - WashingtonPost.com
As the economic recovery has struggled to pick up speed, one of the biggest stumbling blocks has been job losses in state and local governments, which have been on the rise for much of President Obama's term.
Early on, Obama fought for aid that saved hundreds of thousands of these jobs, economists say. Yet a year later, when his economic advisers said another large round of aid was critical for the health of the economy, Obama declined to make it a key part of his agenda. His political advisers said such an effort would be fruitless. Republican opponents on Capitol Hill, including some who were glad to see the public sector shrink, were arguing that these jobs were not vital for the economy.

Consumers Finally Get $$$ Back from Health Insurance
By JULIE APPLEBY, Kaiser Health News - TheFiscaltimes.com
Millions of consumers and small businesses will receive an estimated $1.3 billion in rebates from their health plans this summer under a provision of the health care law that effectively limits what insurers can charge for administration and profits, a new study projects.
Almost one third of people who bought their own insurance last year will get rebates averaging $127, according to an analysis of state data by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
"This alone is not going to make health insurance affordable for large numbers of people, but it is getting excess administrative cost out of the system," says Larry Levitt, a study author.

AMAZING STORIES OF OBAMACARE
By Scott Johnson - PowerLineBlog.com
Tim Carney relates the story of the Obama administration's corrupt use of Medicare funds to conceal the effects of Obamacare. This is an amazing story that has been told previously byJeffrey Anderson in the Weekly Standard and, as Carney reminds me, Benjamin Sasse and Charles Hurt in the New York Post:
Obamacare got some of its alleged savings by cutting Medicare spending by $500 billion. Republicans — hypocritically, given their constant attacks on "government-run health care" — made political hay over the Medicare cuts. Republicans know that seniors vote, and they like their Medicare.

In Fight Over Obama Health Law, a Front in Minnesota
By ROBERT PEAR - NYTimes.com
ST. PAUL — With zeal, excitement and a meticulous attention to detail, the administration of Gov. Mark Dayton is trying to expand health insurance coverage and remake Minnesota's insurance market along the lines envisioned by President Obama.
In setting up a marketplace where people can shop for insurance, the state has sought advice from consumer groups, labor unions, doctors and hospitals, employers, insurance companies, agents and brokers, and American Indian tribes.

Joel Osteen worships himself
At a D.C. rally, it's clear that the megachurch pastor's childlike faith is really about the power of narcissism
BY CHRIS LEHMANN - Salon.com
If history is told by the winners, then Joel Osteen — the relentlessly upbeat spiritual caretaker of the national attitude — is history's designated chaplain. In a marathon Sunday faith rally in the heart of the nation's capital, Osteen, who presides over America's largest megachurch congregation, the nondenominational Lakewood Church in Houston, exhorted the tens of thousands of believers amassed in Nationals Stadium to "live in victory," to seize their "destiny moments," and to fulfill God's plan for their personal, financial and emotional success.

Mobile Spam Texts Hit 4.5 Billion Raising Consumer Ire
By Olga Kharif - Bloomberg.com
Gillian Brockell got so fed up with unsolicited text messages from a single spammer on her mobile phone that in a fit of frustration she called the sender back -- 20 times.
Turning the tables on the spammer in early April felt "satisfying," she said. Still, it hasn't stanched the flood.
"I don't even get that much junk mail in my Gmail account," said Brockell, a 31-year-old journalist who lives in Washington, D.C. "This is my phone. It seems more personal."

Money won't decide the next president.
But it may decide the next Congress.
Posted by Ezra Klein - WashingtonPost.com
President Obama's reelection campaign is likely to have more money than any presidential campaign in history. Republican Mitt Romney's campaign, when you factor in the super PACs supporting him, could have even more money than that.
Both candidates will, in other words, have more than enough money to get out their message, attack their opponent and support their ground game. Even as they're spending all this money on paid media, the campaigns will receive an almost infinite amount of free media from newspapers, television, magazines and blogs that will spend the next seven months doing nothing but covering the presidential campaign.

RFK assassination witness tells CNN:
There was a second shooter
By Michael Martinez and Brad Johnson, CNN.com
Los Angeles (CNN) -- As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan's conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel.

'Be prepared for tsunami', UNESCO expert urges Caribbean
By CMC - AntiguaObserver.com Newspaper
PARIS, April 29, CMC – A leading expert at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is urging the Caribbean's 40 million people to be prepared for a tsunami, two years ahead of a planned early warning system for the region.
Wendy Watson-Wright, assistant director-general and executive secretary of the UNESCO-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, said the Indian Ocean Tsunami Early Warning System, co-ordinated through UNESCO-IOC, saved lives in that region following an 8.6 magnitude earthquake off northern Indonesia.

ACORN Whistleblower Says Obama DOJ 'Has Gone Wild'
By KEVIN MOONEY - The American Spectator.org
Unless voter integrity efforts take root this year, the notion of free and fair elections could become a relic of American history, Catherine Engelbrecht warned listeners during the "True the Vote National Summit in Houston, Texas yesterday. Engelbrecht, who is the president and founder of the organization, cited specific instances throughout the country where the number of voters listed on registration rolls exceeded the actual number of eligible voters. She also said it was far too easy for non-citizens to obtain voter registration forms.
"The next few months are critical to the telling of our story," she said. "Our goal is the make the 2012 elections the freest and fairest the country has ever seen." Engelbrecht acknowledged this is a tall order. The various pressure groups opposed to photo identification requirements are very well funded and well organized. But they are not on the side of public opinion.

Google engineer told officials Street View cars
were collecting personal data, FCC report says
By Cecilia Kang - WashingtonPost.com
A Google engineer knowingly created software that would collect sensitive personal information about people without their knowledge, according to an un-redacted version of a federal investigative report.
In a full version of a Federal Communications Commission report, an engineer shared e-mails with other Google officials indicating the company could collect "payload data," including e-mail addresses and text messages through a program to collect location-based software from residential and business Wi-Fi networks. The company released the full contents of the report, which was heavily redacted by the FCC, except for the names of its employees.

* * * * *

Between Conficker and Fukushima, and unrest among the 'natives' that occupy, WWIII is knocking at the door on many fronts.

Down but not out:
Conficker camouflages new Windows infections
Crippled botnet still dangerous, makes PCs vulnerable to follow-up malware attacks
By Gregg Keizer - Computerworld.com
Computerworld - Windows PCs infected with Conficker are more likely to be compromised by other malware because the worm masks those secondary infections and makes those machines easier to exploit, a security expert said.
That's the biggest reason why Conficker, although crippled and seemingly abandoned by its makers, remains a threat and should be eradicated, said Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at Neustar and a cybersecurity adviser to the White House.

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War:
The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - Globalresearch.ca
The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.
The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:
"This time no one dropped a bomb on us ... We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives."
Nuclear radiation --which threatens life on planet earth-- is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Disruption of Status Quo
By Henry Goldman and Esmé E. Deprez - Bloomberg.com
Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe tomorrow calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.
Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur andSydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests
in May Day Resurgence
By Henry Goldman and Esmé E. Deprez - Bloomberg.com
Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe today calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.
Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur andSydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

What to expect on May Day
No one knows quite what Occupy's general strike will look like, but police are reportedly preparing for action
BY NATASHA LENNARD - Salon.com
With just one day to go until May Day, the Occupy-planned general strike remains a largely unknown quantity. How many people will skip work to take to the streets? The Occupy call, which has gained support from numerous labor and immigrant justice groups, reads "No Work, No School, No Housework, No Shopping. Take the Streets!" It's just a matter of hours before we see whether and how it will be answered.
I have written here at some length against judging this May Day by standards of traditional general strikes — not seen in the U.S. since the 1940s — or contemporary mass strikes in Europe, where unions have not been politically pummeled into weakness, as they have in this country. And although pundits are looking at May Day as a referendum on Occupy's relevance, it's unclear what success in this case means or would look like. Marches (both permitted and un-permitted), free meals, teach-ins, college student and high-school walkouts and roving dance parties have been scheduled in 115 cities around the country. Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and other well-known musicians will be joining a "guitarmy" — 1,000 guitarists marching (and strumming) from New York City's midtown to Union Square. Clearly, the general strike organizers in New York are less interested in affirming the strength or relevance of a movement than they are in experimenting with new tactics. Still, there's a feeling that somehow, and in some bold way, it's got to be big.

NYC council members sue city,
police to criticize response to Occupy protests
AP - WashingtonPost.com
NEW YORK — Four lawmakers sued the city Monday over its handling of the Occupy Wall Street protests, saying police conduct is so problematic that the force needs an outside monitor.
The city and police violated demonstrators' free speech rights, used excessive force, arrested protesters on dubious charges and interfered with journalists' and council members' efforts to observe what was going on, the four City Council members and others say in the federal civil rights suit.

Urban revolution is coming
Occupy may mark the beginning of a new era of city-based uprisings. An expert explains why -- and how
BY MAX RIVLIN-NADLER - Salon.com
From Paris in 1871 to Prague in 1968 to Cairo in 2011 and eventually the streets of New York City, cities have long been a hotbed of radical movements. Over the decades, urban protests have been spurred by everything from unemployment and food shortages to privatization and corruption. But were they also caused by the geography of the cities themselves? The question has particular resonance this week, as Occupy prepares for a series of large May 1 protests in cities around the country.
Geographer and social theorist David Harvey, the distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and one of the 20 most cited humanities scholars of all time, has spent his career exploring how cities organize themselves, and when they do, what their achievements are. His new book,"Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution," dissects the effects of free-market financial policy on urban life, the crippling debt of middle- and low-income Americans and how runaway development has destroyed a common space for all city dwellers.

Three Reasons for the Coming Global Disruption
By RICHARD N. HAASS (CFR Pres.) - TheFiscalTimes.com
A surprising number of elections and political transitions is scheduled to occur over the coming months. An incomplete list includes Russia, China, France, the United States, Egypt, Mexico, and South Korea.
At first glance, these countries have little in common. Some are well-established democracies; some are authoritarian systems; and others are somewhere in between. Yet, for all of their differences, these governments – and the individuals who will lead them – face many of the same challenges. Three stand out.

FAQ: What you need to know about CISPA
The House version
of the information-sharing bill passed last week
By Jaikumar Vijayan - Computerworld.com
Computerworld - The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act despite opposition from privacy advocates, lawmakers and even the White House, which threatened to veto the bill if it lands on the president's desk in its current form.
Here's what you need to know about CISPA.
What is CISPA? CISPA is short for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (H.R. 3523). U.S Reps. Mike J. Rogers (R-Mich.) and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) introduced the bill in the House in November. The bill is designed to bolster cybersecurity by enabling better information sharing between Internet companies and the government. An amended version of the bill passed the House by a 248-168 vote Thursday.

Keyboard Cops
By Naomi Wolf - Project-Syndicate.org
NEW YORK – Almost no one had read the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act(CISPA) before it was rushed through the United States House of Representatives in late April and sent to the Senate. CISPA is the successor to SOPA, the "anti-piracy" bill that was recently defeated after an outcry from citizens and Internet companies. SOPA, framed by its proponents in terms of protecting America's entertainment industry from theft, would have shackled content providers and users, and spawned copycat legislation around the world, from Canada and the United Kingdom to Israel and Australia.

Beijing and Washington embarrassed
over the Chen Guangcheng case
The dissident who allegedly found refuge in the US Embassy in Beijing is causing problems for the two countries on the eve of their annual bilateral summit. No one wants to undermine trade and investments over human rights.
Beijing (AsiaNews) - The escape of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who has allegedly found refuge in the US Embassy in Beijing, has caused diplomatic embarrassment for both the United States and China on the eve of their annual high-level meeting.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell to Beijing yesterday, two days ahead of schedule, to prepare the summit still set for 3-4 May. US Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has been in China several times in the past few months to drum up financial support for the US, will also attend the meeting.

Brewing a Conflict with China
By Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org
Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington's excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China's territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States' national interests.
Washington has not made it clear what Washington's stake is in the disputes. The reason Washington cannot identify why China's disputes with the Philippines and Indonesia are threats to the United States is that there is no reason. Nevertheless, the undefined "threat" has become the reason Washington needs more naval bases in the Philippines and South Korea.

U.S. eyes testy China talks,
Chen backer expects Chinese decision
By Aruna Viswanatha and Paul Eckert
(Reuters) - The United States faces a tense week inChina as high-level talks on trade and global hot spots like Iran and North Korea open in the shadow of a blind Chinese activist's bold escape from house arrest to seek U.S. protection in Beijing.
The trip to Beijing would have been challenging for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner even without a human rights dispute over Chen Guangcheng, who a U.S.-based group says is hiding in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

EU urges China to show restraint over dissident Chen
(Reuters) - The European Union on Monday urgedChina to exercise "utmost restraint" over blind dissident Chen Guangcheng, who escaped house arrest last week and is believed to be under U.S. protection in Beijing.
The United States has not confirmed whether Chen is in its diplomatic quarters in Beijing, but supporters have said he is under U.S. protection.
"We call on the Chinese authorities to exercise utmost restraint in dealing with the matter, including avoiding harassment of his family members or any person associated with him," the Delegation of the European Union to China said in a statement.

Israeli Defense Minister Keeps All Options Open on Iran
By JODI RUDOREN - NYTimes.com
JERUSALEM — The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Monday night that the international talks on the Iranian nuclear program do "not fill me with confidence," reiterating his hard-line position about all options — including an independent Israeli attack — remaining on the table, despite mounting criticism from the security establishment here and a growing sense abroad that a diplomatic solution may be possible.
"They say in the Middle East a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience," Mr. Barak said in a speech to about 100 members of the Foreign Press Association at the King David Hotel. Acknowledging that a military strike was "not simple" and would be "complicated by certain risks," he said that a "radical Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons would be far more dangerous both for the region and, indeed, the whole world."

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