The EU bailout in Cyprus seems, on the surface to have taken on board some good ideas such as burning bondholders, capital flight controls, and much more limited small depositors state bank guarantee scheme, but does this stand up to closer inspection or have they just used these good ideas in a rather twisted way to further the same old financial terrorist agendas?

External Related Links: The European Union’s looting of Cyprus | Cyprus faces deep recession, high unemployment after bank bailout | Global Deposit Confiscation Called For By Bilderberg Member and CEO Of Italy’s Largest Bank | Canada Includes Depositor Haircut Bail-In Provision For Systemically Important Banks in 2013 Budget! | Laiki Bank: Some Depositors Are More Equal Than Others | The Lesson From Cyprus: Europe Is Politically Bankrupt | Cyprus Wealth Grab: The BIG TELL! | Jim Willie’s “Most Important Article Ever”- USDollar: Ring-Fenced & Checkmate -this is a newsletter from financial investor Jim Willie who is following events very closely for many years and suggests that Cyprus is the trigger for much larger events and thus is an important piece of a much larger jigsaw. It is intriguing to say the least.

Fig 1: Methane emissions from Arctic Sea Floor and Arctic Albedo

All the worry about Global Warming has tended to focus on carbon dioxide emissions but the real threat may be methane emissions.... In the past 5 years there have been major changes happening up in the Arctic. The annual summer melt of the sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean has greatly increased, exposing a much larger area to heating during the summer months which in turn has warmed the ocean enough that the frozen methane hydrates on and below the seabed are beginning to melt, causing methane gas to bubble to the surface. The trouble is methane is up to 100 times (over initial 20 year period of release) more effective than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the estimated quantity of methane hydrates suggests the amount of carbon contained in them exceeds all the coal, oil and gas burned so far. And should the tundra melt in Siberia then the huge area of peatland will resume decomposing thereby emitting a very large quantity of carbon dioxide. This scenario would take us past extinction danger point which is reckoned for a rise of 6^oCelsius or more would be close to certainty.

Related Indy Links: Study: Arctic sea ice decline may be driving snowy winters seen in recent years | Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking At 'Unprecedented' Levels | Special issue on the Arctic: After the ice | Arctic sea routes open as ice melts | Arctic Turning into a Sea of Foaming Methane. Positive Feedback has kicked in |
Arctic May be Ice-Free in Summer of 2070 -This is from 2004 and shows how quickly events have moved on.
See more links at end of story

Hugo Chávez. RIP.

The Commandante is dead but the Revolution continues. If there is an afterlife then Chavez is in Valhalla.

He wrote, he read, and mostly he spoke. Hugo Chávez, whose death has been announced, was devoted to the word. He spoke publicly an average of 40 hours per week. As president, he didn't hold regular cabinet meetings; he'd bring the many to a weekly meeting, broadcast live on radio and television. Aló, Presidente, the programme in which policies were outlined and discussed, had no time limits, no script and no teleprompter. One session included an open discussion of healthcare in the slums of Caracas, rap, a self-critical examination of Venezuelans being accustomed to the politics of oil money and expecting the president to be a magician, a friendly exchange with a delegation from Nicaragua and a less friendly one with a foreign journalist.

External Links: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (a.k.a. Chavez: Inside the Coup) is a 2002 documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. A television crew from Ireland’s Radio Telifís Éireann happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002.
Related Indy Links: US$100 million for the head of President Hugo Chavez Frias - and some other stories. | Fears Of Second Coup Against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez | Chavez and the Grassy Knoll + Catch 22 is dead long live . . . | Chavez had advance warning of coup [Greg Palast, The Guardian] | Hugo Chavez Declared President of America | Liberal press asleep ( on Coup to Oust Chavez ) | Director's Cut, Chavez - Inside the Coup, Galway | Amnesty forced to withdraw Chavez Documentary amid threats of violence | Chavez wins referendum | Chavez calls for democracy at work | US Man of God calls for assassination of Chavez | Chavez addresses the UN | US planning invasion, says Chavez | Rumsfeld says Chavez is like Adolf Hitler | A specter is haunting the North American Empire... the specter of Chavez! | Inside the revolution - former Chavez minister speakes GALWAY | Chavez gets go ahead to join Arab League at last. | Bush Admin Funneling Millions Into Chavez Opposition Groups | Hugo Chavez : "Yesterday, the devil came to the UN, and today, it still smells of sulfur and Bush" | Hugo Chavez has won his second term as President | Honduras: Anti-Chavez free speech warriors linked to coup | Chavez Appoints a Successor as his Cancer Returns

Where we are on the 40th anniversary of joining the EEC.

This is part one of a two part series and the second article can be found here

The Political Basis of the EU:

All States and aspiring States have their myths of origin. The myth of origin of the EU is that it is a peace project to prevent wars between Germany and France - as if a tendency to go to war is somehow genetically inherited.

The actual facts are however that the first step towards supranational economic integration, the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951, was to facilitate German rearmament at the start of the Cold War with Russia and to reconcile France to that fact. The US wanted a rearmed West Germany inside NATO. This greatly alarmed France which had been occupied by Germany just a few years before.

Automatic facial recognition in action

Things on the global Police State front get more frightening and ominous by the day. This latest announcement serves to underline that. The FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars. It is known as the Next Generation Identification (NGI) program. This report comes from Russia Today (rt.com) and quotes an article in New Scientist magazine. The project itself was announced back in 2005 and was part of a project to upgrade the existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America.

Related Feature on TrapWire: Stratfor Hacked Emails Reveal the TrapWire System run by Private Corporations run by ex-CIA/NSA people

Related Links: TrapWire tied to White House, Scotland Yard, MI5 and others, claims hacked Stratfor email | ‘Total Information Awareness’ surveillance program returns, bigger than ever Freedom Not Fear: CCTV Surveillance Cameras In Focus US National Security Agency (NSA) related: NSA Watch | See Scandal | Echelon FAQ | Echelon Docs -These are a bit dated (circa 2000) so the system would be vastly more powerful now. | Intercept Capabilities -written 1999. | Ireland Joins Echelon - the US/UK Global Spy Network | Thousands of military drones to be deployed over US mainland | EU / Ireland / Indymedia Related: EU agrees rules for remote computer access by police forces - but fails, as usual, to mention the security and intelligence agencies, by Tony Bunyan | Spooky Tales From Rossport and MI5 | Search Engines Should Become Government Spies Says EU Parliament | EU Agree Plan for Police Forces to place radicals & protestors under Surveillance New Pan-European Intelligence Gathering Scheme Highlighted – RNU Internet Freedom Fighters Build a Shadow Web | Pirate Party Speaks Out Against Government Filtering Plans | Are government representatives and gardai poring over your private emails and texts without you even knowing? | Some observations on state repression | How are we to handle police intelligence with care? Swedish government adopts invasive wire-tapping measures -law allows govt to monitor all e-mail and telephone communications that enter, leave or even pass through Sweden.