World-News

Published Date: 16 December 2008

Holbeach residents are up in arms over plans to put up a three-antenna phone mast near their homes.

People living in Mondemont Close were horrified to see Telefonica O2 UK's plan for the mast at Carter's Park, saying health risks have not been ruled out.

Read More...
http://www.spaldingtoday.co.uk/news/New-scheme-for-phone-mast.4794230.jp

cnn.com — Between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerating rate since 2003, according to NASA scientists, in the latest signs of what they say is global warming. Using new satellite technology that measures changes in mass in mountain glaciers and ice sheets, NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke concluded that the losses amounted to enough water to fill the Chesapeake Bay 21 times. "The ice tells us in a very real way how the climate is changing," said Luthcke, who will present his findings this week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, California.

http://ga3.org/ct/_d20pgF14E8O/



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Greenland
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Antarctica

Francois Vidal, writing for France's premier business paper, Les Echos: "Beyond the shock of an affair that promises to be worthy of a Hollywood screen play, the first elements of this new scandal prove that there is decidedly something broken on Wall Street."

http://www.truthout.org/121708D



Wall Street Still Flying Corporate Jets

Stevenson Jacobs, The Associated Press: "Crisscrossing the country in corporate jets may no longer fly in Detroit after car executives got a dressing down from Congress. But on Wall Street, the coveted executive perk has hardly been grounded. Six financial firms that received billions in bailout dollars still own and operate fleets of jets to carry executives to company events and sometimes personal trips, according to an Associated Press review."

http://www.truthout.org/122208O



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bailout
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bankruptcy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Francois+Vidal
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Stevenson+Jacobs

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "I met a chef from Texas who was like an oak tree with tattoos, and made a mean barbecue sauce. He'd been in the 101st Airborne and was about to be deployed to Iraq, but destroyed his knee in a training exercise and wound up getting discharged. He knew the war was nonsense and thought the Bush guys all deserved to rot in jail, but he still wanted to go to Iraq, and wept whenever a soldier he knew died over there because he should have been there and maybe could have saved that person if his knee hadn't buckled."

http://www.truthout.org/121708A



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=deployed+to+Iraq
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Rivers+Pitt

With 11 masts holding 28 antennae, the village of Essington, near Wolverhampton, must be one of the best places in Britain to find a mobile phone signal.

But it is not so great for villagers, who find their homes surrounded by metal towers and who continue to be concerned about the effect of the masts on their long-term health.

Telecoms companies are clamouring to site their transmitters in the South Staffordshire village because of its proximity to the M54 and M6. Drivers using hands-free kits can continue talking while travelling down the motorways without having to worry about their signals cutting out.

But villagers and parish councillors say enough is enough.

Read More...
http://www.expressandstar.com/2008/12/17/rage-over-phone-masts-forest/

Strauss-Kahn says advanced countries would see violent civil unrest if elite continue to exploit financial chaos for their own ends.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/imf-chief-warns-of-riots-in-response-to-economic-crisis.html

--------

Man Is a Cruel Animal

Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "It was Joseph Conrad I thought of when I read an article in The Nation magazine this month about white vigilante groups that rose up out of the chaos of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to terrorize and murder blacks. It was Conrad I thought of when I saw the ominous statements by authorities, such as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warning of potential civil unrest in the United States as we funnel staggering sums of public funds upward to our bankrupt elites and leave our poor and working class destitute, hungry, without health care and locked out of their foreclosed homes. We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes."

http://www.truthout.org/122208S



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=economic+crisis
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Strauss-Kahn
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=IMF
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreclosure
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Chris+Hedges

Dec 17 2008

By Daniel Bissett

Jon Cannon, of Cwrt Hwfa, says he’s "very upset" after receiving a letter from Mono Consultants Ltd asking for his views on the proposed siting of a 12m tall Vodafone 3G base station.

Mr Cannon is worried about potential adverse health effects that may result from radiation as the mast would be very close to his daughter’s bedroom, as well as having the view of the Menai Strait obstructed which could lower the price of his house in the future.

He has talked to residents and businesses in Upper Bangor and within a couple of hours, more than 100 people had signed the petition against the base station.

"My wife, Sara, and I were so upset at the prospect of this station beaming radiation through our daughter’s bedroom that out first reaction was to consider selling the house, but why should we?" said Mr Cannon.

"This house was meant to be our dream home and we do not want to look at a very tall mast from our back garden.

Read More...
http://tinyurl.com/5aafxn

A pressure group determined to block the construction of a 17.3 metre high mobile phone mast in Whitstable will meet planners at a site meeting tomorrow.

Due to government regulations which state that decisions on masts must be made within 56 days, a final decision must be made at the meeting which will determine whether the mast is built or not.

Campaigners are concerned that the Vodaphone mast, which is proposed to be installed on land off Molehill Road in Chestfield, could pose a health risk to those living nearby, and argue Vodaphone has not followed best practice by failing to consult residents in nearby streets.

Read More...
http://www.yourcanterbury.co.uk/kent-news/Whitstable-residents_-group-fights-phone-mast-plan-newsinkent18986.aspx

Salon
by Mike Madden

12/17/08

Oh, for those flush days of October. This won’t be news to anyone with a 401K or without a winning lottery ticket, but even though Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has burned through almost all of the first $350 billion Congress authorized, it didn’t quite turn things around. The infusion of money may have kept credit from tightening up further, but it certainly didn’t jump-start the economy — banks didn’t resume lending to businesses and consumers. Stock prices never really recovered from their early autumn plunges, and more than half a million jobs vanished just last month. With the benefit of hindsight, lawmakers now express regret about the way the bailout was handled — with few provisions for oversight of the banks or the Bush administration — and the public hates it more than ever. The feeling that money and political capital were squandered even helped endanger the far cheaper and more popular bailout of the auto industry. So what went wrong — and where did all that money go?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/17/700_billion/



Paulson’s bailout was a scam

OpenMarket.org
by Hans Bader

12/16/08

National Review editor Rich Lowry, who mistakenly supported the financial system bailout because he trusted the Bush Administration, now realizes that he was deceived by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and that the bailout was sold to the public under false pretenses. Having promised to use bailout money to buy up troubled assets, the Bush Administration instead used the money for completely different purposes, and now wants to use some of it to bail out an entirely different industry — the automakers...

http://tinyurl.com/56ozrf



Disgusting political humbug

Independent Institute
by Robert Higgs

12/15/08

Turned away by the Senate, the Big Three auto makers have resorted to begging the Bush administration to rescue them from the plight in which they now find themselves as a result of decades of poor management. Wailing and gnashing of teeth are all the rage in Washington as these wannabe plunderers warn us of dire consequences unless the government acts as the middleman in their attempts to raid the taxpayers’ bank accounts. Well, ho-hum, auto makers are scarcely unique in their lack of scruple and their desire to loot the Treasury. What strikes me in the latest reports on this sordid business is not so much the auto executives’ undignified prostration and supplication before the Almighty Government, but the statements being spewed out by our ever-faithful public servants...

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2391


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=$700
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Paulson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bailout
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=financial+system
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=automaker
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mike+Madden
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Hans+Bader
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Higgs

"There's no place like home"
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/29/29366/1.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo

Spanien ist besonders betroffen, deutsche Banken wollen keine großen Investitionen gemacht haben.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/29/29367/1.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Madoff

Art Levine, The Huffington Post: "Even as the auto industry teeters on collapse, union-bashing continues as the mainstay of a GOP propaganda war against organized labor."

http://www.truthout.org/121608LA



Down on Upward Mobility

Dan Carpenter, The Indianapolis Star: The labor movement, which made teachers into empowered professionals and factory workers into middle-class taxpayers, has been under attack for a generation from the forces of phony simplicity. The idea that collective bargaining has achieved a standard of living that is unfair and unsustainable, rather than one that society as a whole should pursue, is one of our most powerful national myths. Like the glory of war and the frivolousness of environmental protection, union bashing is a bill of goods sold by the most myopic of special interests and bought by ordinary folks against their own interests."

http://www.truthout.org/121708LA



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GOP
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=automaker
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=trade+unions
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=labor+movement
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Art+Levine
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Dan+Carpenter

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "Not long ago I was talking to someone who once had been a deficit hawk but the current recession had turned into a full-blooded Keynesian. He wanted a stimulus package in the range of $500 to $700 billion. 'Consumers are dead in the water,' he said, fervently, 'so government has to step in.' I agreed. But I didn't tell him his traditional Keynesianism is based on two highly-questionable assumptions in today's world, and the underlying logic of Keynes leads us toward something bigger and more permanent than he has in mind."

http://www.truthout.org/121608T



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recession
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Keynesianism
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Reich's+Blog

Maya Schenwar: Truthout: "Last week, with President-elect Obama's blessing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the beginning of a troop 'surge' in Afghanistan. As the US embarks on a slow redeployment of troops away from the widely condemned occupation of Iraq - though that occupation is not by any means ending - it is easy to frame Afghanistan as a milder war, a war that can even, perhaps, be 'won.' However, sending more American forces to Afghanistan is a peculiar first project for a supposedly peacemaking president-elect, according to Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents, and has written extensively on US interventionism around the world."

http://www.truthout.org/121608R



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Gates
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=interventionism
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Stephen+Kinzer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Maya+Schenwar

http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy146.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Federal+Reserve
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=housing
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/murphy

The fall was the second straight month of record declines in the consumer price index (CPI) and the biggest since 1947, when the Labour Department began recording the figures, it said on Tuesday.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/12/20081216154853641784.html



Unemployment: Worse Than it Looks

The most publicized measure of U.S. unemployment tells only part of the story.
http://tinyurl.com/5w8765



More people on S.F. streets newly homeless

Across the country, the nose-diving economy isn't just causing home foreclosures and stock market dips, it is squeezing people, particularly families, out of their homes. The number of hungry people has also jumped.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/16/BA5N14OGCD.DTL


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=consumer+price+index
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=unemployment
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=homeless
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreclosure
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stock+market

Even if Barack Obama draws down troops in Iraq like he's promised, a new report finds the US is on pace to have spent nearly $2 trillion on military operations including Iraq and Afghanistan over the next decade.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Report_Cost_of_wars_could_top_1216.html


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=cost+of+wars

By Sarah Baxter, Washington
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21479.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Rahm+Emanuel
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sarah+Baxter

By Paul Craig Roberts

We have to ask ourselves why American service men and women and CIA operatives delight in torturing people about whom they know nothing? It has been well known since the Stalin era that torture never produces accurate information.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21482.htm



Welcome to Our World

By David Glenn Cox

You thought your white collar and your wealth would protect you as you nodded in agreement that outsourcing was vital to a growing economy. You thought these things could never reach you?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21483.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Paul+Craig+Roberts
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=David+Glenn+Cox