May 28, 2011 - A major breach of security has hit major U.S. weapons makers, including Lockheed Martin - and may still be occurring.
According to a Reuters report, hackers penetrated the computer systems of Lockheed Martin and other weapons manufacturers, and it is feared that they could have stolen information about future weapons programs. Also at risk is information about existing military technology already in use.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a "person familiar with the situation" said that many employees were required to change their "SecurID" passwords. This, says WSJ, was probably done because of the hacker attack, which may have been accomplished by a person or persons using "duplicate SecurID electronic keys made by EMC Corp.'s RSA security division." More about the defense industry cyber attack at WSJ.com...
The problems seem to stem from a hacker attack against RSA back in March.
Photo: Lockheed Martin
"Over 25,000 products can be manufactured from hemp, from cellophane to dynamite." ~ Popular Mechanics, 1938
The knee-jerk reaction by some to the suggestion that we legalize industrial hemp is both amusing and distressing. They are ignorant of the fact that hemp is NOT the same as marijuana. Their fear comes from being closed minded and from having bought into the 
anti-hemp lies and propaganda. Out of ignorance, they accuse those who favor industrial hemp of being soft on drug use. They are just plain wrong.
See videos below...
On May 11, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced legislation that would legalize industrial hemp farming in the U.S. for the first time since 1970.
Paul's bill, H.R.1831 is the "Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011" and it is intended to "amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marihuana." (See full text of HR 1831)
We need to legalize industrial hemp. It's useful as a source of fuel, fibers, medicines, even food. This should NOT be a politicized issue. This variety of hemp is NOT the same as its marijuana cousin and has little or none of the THC that drug users value. Industrial hemp contains less than 1% of THC, which is the psychoactive component in marijuana. "Trying to get high on industrial hemp," wrote Mike Wrona at "is akin to trying to get drunk on non-alcohol beer."
The North American Industrial Hemp Council, Inc. (NAIHC) agrees. "Due to the similar leaf shape," the NAIHC website says, "hemp is frequently confused with marijuana.
Although both plants are from the species cannabis, hemp contains virtually no THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the active ingredient in marijuana. Hemp cannot be used as a drug because it produces virtually no THC (less than 1%), where marijuana produces between 5 - 20 % THC."
Wrona was quoting directly from another piece on hemporganic.com, which sells tee shirts made of organic cotton and hemp. Nevertheless, they give interesting information about industrial hemp. Wrona prefaced his copy-paste of hemporganic's piece by noting that "South Dakota was first [to ask] the federal government for permission to grow industrial hemp. Just recently Vermont has asked for the same consideration."
It is shameful that any state should have to ask the federal government permission to grow a harmful and extremely useful crop. (I, and many others, would argue that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to deny a state that right.)
Many of my fellow conservatives are completely ignorant of the value of industrial hemp and automatically assume that it's marijuana. They freak out, because of ignorance, believing that the (re)legalization of non-marijuana hemp is equivalent to legalizing marijuana, and therefore they see this as being soft on drug use.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the War on Drugs except that it is wrongly associated with it by knee-jerk ignoramuses.
"When the U.S. was in its infancy in 1776," wrote The Red Phoenix, "one plant was considered so important to national independence that it was required that a set amount of acreage be given to it. That crop? Was it wheat? No. Cotton? No. Corn? No. Tobacco? Certainly not. That crop was hemp. Even back then, humans knew the value of the long, strong fibers that this plant produces. In fact, these fibers are the strongest natural fibers known to mankind."
Red Phoenix wrapped up by saying, "Given the uses in food, fiber and fuel alone, even if we ignored the medicinal properties of this plant, we have every reason to demand in this world where food is scarce, where fiber is needed for paper and clothes and where oil, our primary fuel is running out, to demand that American farmers be allowed to grow this useful product."
How do you argue with that from an informed, rational standpoint? You can't. To oppose that requires you to be ignorant of facts, unwilling to accept the facts because you are blinded by ideology, and to assume that industrial hemp is the same as smokable marijuana because of your ignorance.
May 25, 2011 - The violent spring continues: Reuters reports this afternoon that the death toll from "a monster tornado that savaged Joplin, Missouri, rose to 125 on Wednesday and tornadoes overnight in nearby states caused at least 14 more deaths." More about tornadoes at Reuters...
Video below
In Joplin, families, neighbors and emergency response personnel continue to search through the rubble of devastation today in the hope of finding nearly 1,500 people listed as missing since a tornado killed 125 residents there.
"Emergency teams were also doing a fourth painstaking sweep," reported The Province today, "through the devastated homes of Joplin, buoyed after two survivors were found alive Tuesday after almost 48 hours trapped in the wreckage."
May 24, 2011 - Killer tornadoes took at least four lives in Oklahoma today, just outside of Oklahoma City. Hard hit were the communities of El Reno and Chickasha. According to newsOK.com, "Four people are confirmed dead and 60 injured after a string of tornadoes hit the state Tuesday. Cherokee Ballard, spokeswoman for the state medical examiner, said four people died in Canadian County. She said three to five more people might have died in Logan County, but those reports were unconfirmed." More about the Oklahoma tornadoes...
May 23, 2011 - As the Greek debt crisis continues to linger, one of Europe's other debt "PIGS" has shown the chutzpah to lecture Greece. Spain is one of the "PIGS" (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) that threaten to drag the euro and Europe into the slop of a worsening recession. Without drastic action, the PIGS of the eurozone seem doomed.
The New York Times has a good article about the Greek economic tragedy today that says, "When Greece’s financial decision makers were summoned to secret talks at a Luxembourg castle by their euro zone partners this month, they knew a tongue-lashing was coming over the country’s stumbling reform efforts."
Greece deserves that tongue-lashing, but the Times went on to note that, "What they did not expect was that it would be Spain and Italy, as opposed to Germany, that would take the lead in upbraiding Greece for not pushing faster on privatization and tax overhauls."
Reuters-Africa reports that Wall Street's bad day today was due largely to fears over the fate of the sickly euro. Greece's credit rating was lowered by Fitch Ratings last Friday, which gave Wall Street an entire weekend of angst before they acted out today.
None of this is helping investors' confidence. The Wall Street Journal reports today that stock market's volatility index "rose to its highest level in two months on Monday as investor concern over the worsening European debt crisis carried over to U.S. markets and drove stocks down."
May 22, 2011 - Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano erupted again this weekend, and the photos and videos out there are numerous and amazing. We looked at more than 100 of them today and this one is our favorite. No sound, but it's not needed. Recorded from an airplane flying nearby. More information - and some great still photos - can be found at the Washington Post website. These whackos, UFO Shock, have posted their favorite videos of the Grimsvotn volcano.
Must Read from Al Jazeera. They're not happy with Obama: "Emperor Obama vs the Arab people" - Excerpt: "The problem with US policy in the Arab world is not only its insistence on broadcasting credulous US propaganda - easily fed to Americans, yet with few takers elsewhere in the world - but also that it continues to show a complete lack of familiarity with Arab political culture and insists on insulting the intelligence of most Arabs, whom it claims to address directly with speeches such as Mr Obama's." Full Article here...Meanwhile, Kiss singer Gene Simmons slammed Obama on his anti-Israel policy. "He no f**king idea what the world is like," Simmons said. More about that, include a video interview, at iOwnTheWorld.com. Well, okay, he's Gene Simmons. But there are more important people who don't like Obama's recent speech, like this guy: Dr Abdullatif Al Mahmood.
New Photos of Tsunami Hitting Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant; TEPCO President Resigns
May 20, 2011 - Stunning new photos of the post-earthquake tsunami hitting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were released today. The photos and video were made public by the company that owns the power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) even as the company's president, Masataka Shimizu, resigned.
See "Photos For Press" at TEPCO's website: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/
Video from Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan:
A new book claims that the Roswell UFO that crashed in 1947 was actually a Soviet airplane full of kids. Annie Jacobsen is the author of "Area 51 An Uncensored History of America's 
Top Secret Military Base," and she says that the airplane was remotely controlled by another Soviet airplane as it flew over a U.S. military base in New Mexico. Sure, right...
Frankly, the theory that the UFO was full of aliens from another planet is more believable, and a new website called "UFO Shock" seems to agree with me. They rip at Jacobsen's book cleverly. They site an article from Pravda, for example. Pravda, for those of you who attended public school, was a Soviet propaganda organ during the Cold War. UFO Shock writes:
A fascinating article in Pravda, from November, discusses this. The article, “Stalin’s UFOs,” said this about the U.S. Government’s coverup of the Roswell incident: “The USSR believed that the story about a weather balloon crashing was just an attempt to hide the truth. The Pravda story contradicts Jacobsen’s theory that theleadership of the USSR (Stalin) had staged the event with a “spy plane …. 
filled with bizarre-looking, genetically engineered child-sized pilots.”
UFO Shock added this:
If that was really the case, then why would the Soviet leadership have considered the trumped up story about a weather balloon to be false? IF the Soviets had done what Jacobsen says, they would instead have been laughing at the U.S. Government lies rather than being curious about the coverup.
I have to agree with UFO Shock. To be honest, the Roswell UFO case was resolved in my own mind after reading "The Day After Roswell" by the late Col. Philip Corso. UFO Shock notes that Coros "saw at least one of the dead alien bodies" from the Roswell crash.
May 18, 2011 - The U.S. military hopes to eventually get at least 2,400 of the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets. It's been controversial (as are most big military orders). The program is estimated at around $328 billion and is intended to replace several other fighters in use by the military. One of the main "selling points" of the F-35 is its ability to take off and land vertically, thereby making it independent of any runway. The F-35 program, a decade old, has suffered from budget woes and political delays.
The fighter seems to have overcome most objections and it now appears inevitable that the F-35 will become a staple in the arsenals of the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. According to Lockheed Martin, Canada decided to go with the F-35 last July. "The Government of Canada ... announced plans to acquire the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II as the country’s next-generation fighter aircraft," says a Lockheed Martin press release. "The F-35 will replace Canada’s fleet of CF-18 Hornets that entered service in the early 1980s."
PATUXENT RIVER, Md. - Test aircraft for the carrier variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have exceeded test and evaluation program 
goals this year. As of May 11, F-35C test aircraft CF-1 currently at Naval Air Station Patuxent River has completed 36 test flights, nearly half of the program’s goal for the year of 85. More at DefenceProfessionals.com...
The U.S. still has the best darned military in the world. Sure, China and Botswana are catching up to us, but we can kick ass and take numbers at the same time, because we have the best equipment and the best personnel. The videos below show why that's the case. American youth have had the benefit of superior toy firearms for decades.
With those faux guns in hand, our future soldiers let their imaginations run wild, forced to plan tactics and strategy. This prepared the kids mentally for the more disciplined training once they were in the military, ready to kick enemy butt with real guns! Sadly, however, the Obama Regime wants our military to be weak, and one way to do that is to deny our brave youth the opportunity to ready themselves for war (see the fourth video, below).
This video is hysterically funny. Whether you're a conservative or liberal, you'll chuckle. Granted, if you're a liberal, those chuckles will be the result of bitter self-recognition, but they'll be chuckles nonetheless.
In this video, called "Meet the Liberal Elite," a conservative man encounters an elitist liberal woman. In the resulting conversation, the man tries to use logic with the liberal woman. That, of course, is always funny. You can see more in this brilliant animated series at Battlefield315.
I'm a sucker for this kind of thing: Area 51, Dreamland, conspiracies, all of that X-Files kind of stuff. Well, with any luck, we m
ight see a new entry into the sci-fi television galaxy. Still in development, "Dreamland" sounds very intriguing. I'm basing myopinion on something I just read over at a new website called "UFO Shock" (I love that name).
UFO Shock seems to have a private pipeline into the production, and it's definitely worth a look. They've posted part of Dreamland's "Executive Summary," which gives a good taste of what Dreamland will be about.
"Deep inside of Area 51," say the creators of Dreamland, "Dr. Emily Dehner investigates signs of extraterrestrial life on Earth. But Emily also has her own agenda." Intrigue, suspense, drama, extraterrestials... I can't wait, especially knowing that Dr. Dehner will be, uhm, you know: Hot.
Let's hope UFO Shock keeps up its promise of continuing to present more info about "Dreamland." And keep your fingers crossed for "Dreamland."
May 17, 2011 - Reuters is reporting that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger impregnated one of his household employees more than a decade ago. He and his wife, Maria Shriver, separated recently.
According to the Reuters report, Schwarzenegger said today that he takes "full responsibility" for being a scumbag, two-timing horn dog who just couldn't keep in his pants. Shriver is asking for "compassion" and for her privacy to be respected, but she forgets that she's part of the Kennedy clan, thereby making every aspect of her life public domain.
Schwarzenegger is said to be planning to star in a new "Terminator" movie. Insiders have hinted that the project might be renamed "Sperminator."
Full tragic, privacy-invading story at The Chicago Tribune...
May 12, 2011 - Do American youth think of the United States as a "loser," and are they as stupid as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL 9th) seems to think they are? Her recent remarks have been interpreted that way, and it has set off a firestorm of indignation. Joel Pollak is one of those who is upset by Schakowsky's remarks on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday. Pollak ran for U.S. Congress in Illinois's 9th congressional district in 2010. He lost to incumbent Jan Schakowsky, a socialist Democrat.
Pollak wrote the public letter below on May 11, 2011 to Schakowsky in response to her recent comments calling America a "loser" and generally assuming that American youth are stupid and as equally disloyal as is she and her party.Dear Rep. Schakowsky:
I noted with interest and alarm your comments on Hardball with Chris Matthews, which aired on MSNBC on May 11, as referenced in the Daily Caller (http://tinyurl.com/43jxfdg).
You stated that young people are “getting over this feeling that maybe America’s kind of a loser” since Osama bin Laden’s death.
You also described bin Laden’s death as a “murder.” No doubt that is a view shared by some on the radical left, but it is certainly erroneous--and irresponsible when expressed by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee.
Osama bin Laden’s death was not “murder.” It was justice, delivered by American heroes who benefited from intelligence that, had you had your way, likely never would have been available to them.
How dare you claim to speak for “young people” in America, after you made my age an issue in the 2010 campaign, highlighting my youth in your fundraising letters.
How dare you claim that young Americans had no pride in their country until now.
How dare you challenge anyone's patriotism when you retained a campaign manager and political director who referred to principled opponents of the Ground Zero mosque as "f***ing dumba**es." (http://tinyurl.com/5sqylto)
You evidently have little regard for the thousands of young people who proudly volunteer to serve their country.
You evidently have not taken the time to get to know young people like the Navy recruits I have befriended through my wife’s military service.
They proudly cheered the successful mission to kill bin Laden--not because it made them proud of America, but because they have always been proud of America.
I won’t question your patriotism. But I will question you, questioning theirs.
Proudly,
Joel B. Pollak
Affiliate marketers have come under assault recently. It's getting rough out there, as though the weak economy wasn't bad enough.
Recently, Google has killed the search engine rankings for tens of thousands of affiliate marketers with its ("Google Farmer" or "Google Panda" algorithms).
Many of you are also bitterly aware of the recent debacle in Illinois, where Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats decided that taxing Amazon.com affiliates would be a good idea. It destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of Illinois residents.
A report in March at Chicagoist.com summed up the anti-affiliate online tax legislation in Illinois:
Online retailer Amazon barely waited for the ink to dry on Gov. Quinn's signing of HB 3659 into law by dropping its Illinois-based affiliates. HB 3659 requires all online retailers with a business presence in Illinois, like Amazon's affiliate program, to collect state sales tax on online purchases. In a statement to its Illinois affiliate owners, Amazon said, “We had opposed this new tax law because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. We deeply regret that its enactment forces this action.” Full article...
As for the Google assault on affiliates, we turn to a posting at CyberSmartWeb:
The last Google update knocked thousands of sites out of search results. If you were selling tangible products, chances are your sales took a big hit with the Farmer update. It can be discouraging, but, you have to mover forward. This happened to me, and at first I was devastated. But, I soon realized that what at first looked like a disaster, was actually an opportunity. Full article...
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Amazon Associates Program to End In Illinois CyberSmartWeb
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Why Google’s Panda_Farmer update worries SEOs Smart Income Tips
Interesting Facts About Google Farmer Update Information Bible
Google Farmer (Google Panda) may lower your Blog Ranking MicroReaders
How To Recover From Google’s Farmer SEO Algorithm Article Directory Project
Interesting Facts About Google Farmer Update Information Bible
Amazon Takes Action in Illinois as War on Sales Taxes Continues WSJ.com
UPDATED: May 13, 2011 - Google's "Blogger" blog site is was down for an incredibly long time. It went out of service for bloggers late on Wednesday night and I am only now able to log in to post this. The outage was spotty, however: I was able to post three items yesterday but now I see that they are missing. Thanks a lot, Blogger. My layout was effed up, too, which I just scrambled to fix. Update, 7:00 pm CDT: Yesterday I posted three items, all of which disappeared. Two have now reappeared after Blogger did its under-the-hood fixes, but one is still lost in the ether.
Whoops! Please go here:
http://rogersparkbench.blogspot.com/2011/05/liberal-woman-meets-conservative-man_18.html (my bad)
May 11, 2011 - At least 10 people were killed and many more injured by two strong earthquakes in southern Spain today. According to the BBC, "At least 10 people were killed after a magnitude-5.2 earthquake toppled several buildings in southern Spain near the town of Lorca." The quake struck at a depth of just 1km (0.6 miles), some 120km south-west of Alicante, at 1847 (1647 GMT), the US Geological Survey reported." More coverage at breakingnews.com...
May 11, 2011 - We paid some attention to this yesterday in our post "S&P Lowers Greek Credit Rating; Slumping UK Growth Forecast?" Today, the feta is hitting the fan as the financial crisis, complete with riots, in Greece worsens.
The euro dropped against most major currencies on speculation European leaders are slowing the drive to grant Greece additional aid, fueling concern the nation may be forced to restructure its debt. The pound surged as the Bank of England said U.K. inflation may reach 5 percent this year. More at BusinessWeek...
There has been talk of Greece pulling out of the Eurozone altogether, which would be foolish in the long run. To do that would be to pull the rug out from under the very people - their fellow Eurozone members - who have invested billions in their bailout. It would weaken the European economy so badly that it would drag Greece down with it. On the other hand, however, I could be wrong.
"For countries like Italy and Greece," writes Jacob Wolinsky at GuruFocus.com, "having the benefit of gaining from the healthy competition within the European Union was out of the question since the beginning, as their economies were not in sync with those of more powerful countries like France and Germany."
They're all screwed, most likely, and many Greeks have been stashing their own money outside of Greece for some time now, fearing a crash of the euro. For those who have kept their cash in Greece, or themselves for that matter, they have this to deal with today as listed by The Daily Mail:
- Petrol bombs, stun grenades and tear gas thrown during clashes in Athens
- Government aims to sell off casinos, marinas and former Olympics venues to service debt
- Greece could require second bail out of 60billion euros
- Demonstrations against harsh austerity measure boil over into riots
Good luck, Greece. Good luck, Europe. The fruits of your decades of crazy acid trip spending are now falling all around you. It's a bitter, rotten fruit.
On May 9, 2011 Geert Wilders spoke to The International Free Press Society (IFPS-Canada) in Toronto. He gave a serious warning to his audience about the Islamic threat to Western democracies. The video below contains much of his remarks. The event took place at Canadian Christian College.
This was a warning about the effects of multiculturalism gone wild, and many were angered by the IFPS giving him the opportunity to speak in Canada. On Wednesday, May 11, the IFPS ran a post on their website with the accurate headline, "Geert Wilders' presence angers freespeechphobes."
All Three Videos:
Geert Wilders Toronto Canada 5-9-2011 Part I.wmv
Geert Wilders Toronto Canada 5-9-2011 Part 2.wmv
Geert Wilders Toronto Canada May 9, 2011 Part 3.wmv
"I am here," he said somberly, "with an unpleasant message. I'm here with a warning. Wake up, Canada. Islam is at your gate. Do not allow it to gain a foothold here."
Wilders has been outspoken about the Islamization of his native Holland (Netherlands). He has come under vicious attack for his willingness to speak out about the invasion of muslim immigrants in Europe who wish to impose Islamic law locally.
"The Muslim population in Europe," Wilders said, "is largely concentrated in urban areas. Many European cities have huge Islamic concentrations." Wilders warned about the imposition of sharia law in those European cities. "In some neighborhoods, Islamic regulations are already being enforced, also on non-muslims. Women's rights are being trampled, Christians are being harassed."
"Among muslim university students in United Kingdom," he said, "40 percent support support sharia and one out of three of those 40 percent consider it legitimate to kill in the name of Islam."
"Wilders has certainly become a hugely controversial figure in Europe," wrote the Ottawa Citizen (May 10), "particularly in the Netherlands, where he is the leader of the third most popular political party in the country and is currently propping up a minority government, the Freedom Party, PVV. But he is also being prosecuted — some say persecuted – for alleged hate speech crimes against Muslims, including referring to the Koran as a 'fascist book' that promotes ideological views comparable to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and saying that if the Prophet Muhammad were alive today he would 'be hunted down as a terrorist'."
Read more:
Controversial Dutch politician warns of 'failure of multiculturalism - Vancouver Sun
Geert Wilders Goes to Toronto, Canada - iOwnTheWorld.com
Don't get carried away with buying a lot of gold or silver, says foreign exchange expert Adam Kritzer (photo) of Forex Blog. Despite the barage of ads we've all heard that urge us to buy gold or silver before the US Dollar and the sky both fall, gold and silver are overrated in Kritzer's opinion.
"Many gold investors insist they are buying gold as a proxy for shorting the dollar," Kritzer wrote on May 10. "Commentary on gold prices is full of apocalyptic warnings about the current financial system and criticism of fiat currencies, which are backed by nothing except for good faith. They argue that buying gold is the best (or even the only) hedge against the eventual collapse of the dollar." [Emphasis added]
Kritzer isn't buying into any of the metals hype. "Unfortunately, I don’t think this argument holds up to close scrutiny," he says, and present some fascinating graphs of gold and silver price histories.
Kritzer says gold and silver prices "have risen much faster over the last year (and decade, for that matter) than even the strongest currencies." See his graphs. More intriguingly, he shows that the price of gold has been going up "faster than the dollar is falling." That is, one must admit, disturbing. Kritzer is clearly unsettled by all of this seemingly out-of-whack activity by gold and silver investors.
In summary, Kritzer says that - in his opinion - the relationship of gold and silver to the state of the US Dollar is out of sync with other currencies. That's my paraphrasing, by the way. To quote him directly: "My only wish is that investors will stop pretending that it has anything to do with the dollar."
More About Adam Kritzer:
Interview With Forex Blogger Adam Kritzer - Counting Pips.com
DailyForex Blog Reviews: Forex Blog - DailyForex.com
It seems to have worked for a robber in Europe recently, as reported by the BBC. According to the video below, you to can hypnotize people secretly - just by talking to them. Some call this "conversational hypnosis." That's an amazing power to have. How useful would that be in a business meeting, or when you're talking with your boss? "Boss," you say, "you really want to give me a big raise and my own corner office." Imagine that actually working. You can find out how to hypnotize people this way, too! Let's watch that video:
The full BBC report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7309947.stm) says:
'Hypnotist' thief hunted in Italy
Police in Italy have issued footage of a man who is suspected of hypnotizing supermarket checkout staff to hand over money from their cash registers.
In every case, the last thing staff reportedly remember is the thief leaning over and saying: "Look into my eyes", before finding the till empty.
In the latest incident captured on CCTV, he targeted a bank at Ancona in northern Italy, then calmly walked out. A female bank clerk reportedly handed over nearly 800 euros ($1200).
The cashier who was shown the video footage has no memory of the incident, according to Italian media, and only realised what had happened when she saw the money missing.
CCTV from the bank showed her apparently being hypnotized by the man, according to the reports. Italian police believe the suspect could be of Indian or North African extraction.
Learn how you can achieve the power of conversational hypnosis. Discover how you can learn the secret of how to control people's minds without them even knowing it. Make them obey cover commands during normal conversation! Click here to learn the secrets now!
NOTICE: This is an advertisement. The poster of this blog post is an affiliate of the advertiser.
May 10, 2011 - Many experts are expecting the growth forecast for the United Kingdom to be lowered by the Bank of England tomorrow. From Bloomberg today:
The pound weakened versus the dollar and the euro on speculation the Bank of England will lower its economic growth forecasts when it releases its inflation report tomorrow, making higher interest rates less likely."
Meanwhile, the euro is still in need of urgent care and is still threatened by the crises in Greece and Portugal.
Reuters reports now that "Euro zone finance ministers are likely to back a bailout for Portugal on Monday and tell Greece it must deliver on agreed fiscal and privatisation targets if it wants new emergency financing next year." Tell me if I'm wrong: That doesn't sound good. More at Reuters...
The Independent Online (South Africa) reports this evening that the euro "tumbled 3.45 percent in the final two days of last week, the biggest back-to-back loss since 2008, as the European Central Bank (ECB) signalled it was in no rush to raise interest rates and Der Spiegel magazine said Greece might withdraw from the currency bloc. EU officials denied the report and said Greece would need more aid after investors drove yields on its two-year notes to more than 25 percent." More at Indpendent Online...
HOWEVER: The S&P credit agency has "reduced the credit rating of Greece to B level and noted that new reductions were possible, pressured the euro. Therefore, the EUR/USD dropped to $1.4250." That report acknowledged that rumors of a Greek withdrawal from the Euro-zone have not been confirmed. More atStockMarketsReview.com...
A related report at France 24 says that Greece admits to "talking with EU partners about ways to plug a 27 billion euro funding gap next year after it conceded it was unlikely to be able to return to bond markets as planned" and that Greece's borrowing has "hit record highs on concerns a 110 billion euro EU/IMF bailout is not enough to avert default."
As for the US Dollar, it rose against most other major currencies overnight "despite rising commodities and equities," reports IBTimes. "The move goes against recent trends as lately the dollar has gained largely as a benefactor of risk aversion, and not on its own legs. However..." There's always a "however," isn't there?
The investment game that is probably most mysterious to many people is the foreign exchange market. Also called "Forex," "FX," or simply "currency market," it's a fast and furious place where trillions of dollars are passed around every day. In short, it's a financial market for trading 
currencies over the counter. The video below walks us through the world of Forex markets and trading.
Much of the Forex trading these days is automated, using robots to buy and sell. Such automation software is increasingly popular with ordinary, non-institutional traders, too, because it's so inexpensive and easy to use. One example of Forex robot is "Eurobot."
Eurobot's maker says that it "does not use
artificial intelligence. It is simply an automated version of a once secret ultra profitable and simple EUR/USD method" and that it "runs automatically on your computer without any input required from you. You're free to go to work, spend time with the family or just relax while EUROBOT is entering and exiting trades for you at all hours of the day and night. All you need to get started is a computer, an Internet connection."
You can see Eurobot's secure order page or visit their product information site.
That's pretty cool. You have to love technology! Even as an affiliate of Eurobot, I must say that Eurobot sounds like a great way to jump into the multi-trillion dollar pool of Forex profits.
Most of us have gotten used to science fiction-style concepts becoming reality. Or, at least, with the notion of them eventually becoming reality. Humanoids robots are one of those fiction-to-fact aspects of modern life, and it seems that their debut is imminent.
"Humanoid robots could make deep space exploration more feasible," reports Fox News. "As NASA prepares for Endeavour's last mission, and the final shuttle flight ever by Atlantis in June, space experts are starting to wonder if NASA should rethink its mission."
This assumes, of course, that Obama will not further cripple NASA. In any event, it makes a lot of sense to send robots to deep space. It would be cheaper in the long run. For one thing, robots don't need food or water, and that alone greatly reduces the weigh and size requirements of a mission craft.
"Should future crafts be flown by autonomous bots we control from Earth? The most advanced humanoid ever created is already in space aboard the International Space Station, after all -- just waiting for instructions and the green 'go' light from NASA." Full article at FoxNews SciTech...
RELATED:
Obama sees China as a partner in Mars mission 5/6/2011 MSNBC
Congress Bans NASA from Collaborating with China, Citing Espionage 5/8/2011 Geekosystem
Obama Budget Plan Grounds NASA Despite Increased Funding TIME
No Liftoff: Obama's Plan Grounds NASA TIME
NASA Pulls Out of Astrophysics Missions U.S. News & World Report
US Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Ben Bernanke seems determined to undermine the US Dollar. That's my opinion. Let's turn to this late report from The Economic Times of India (at 10:45 PM EST):
Last week, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Ben Bernanke stated the Fed is committed to supporting the economic recovery and new job creations by keeping the interest rates at historical low levels. He announced the Fed has no plans to exit from the soft monetary policy, and will finish the second quantitative easing (QE2) purchase worth 600 dollars by the end of this June.
He also commented that the Fed is not overly concerned by the high headline inflation rate which is mainly due to the high crude oil price in the international markets. The core inflation rate is still ruling quite low in the US markets due to high unemployment and sluggish growth in wages. Full Article here...
Relax. This won't piss of the terrorists any more than they already are.
This story is amusingly bizarre, plus it has the added bonus of attractive women with uncovered torsos. Their intention is not simply to prove that they are mammals. Rather, they are showing their chests because...
WARNING: Sensitive readers and uptight advertisers should stop reading this now.
I'm not completely sure what these women are protesting, really, and they've tangled with the Ukraine legal authorities for some time now. They are the women of Femen, a so-called women's rights group, that says it is fighting pr-stitution and uhm, "romantic" tourism.
What confuses me most about this is that the fact that Femen's best known tactic is to parade extremely beautiful women around in the buff. Do they really think that this will discourage men from around the world from going to Ukraine? "Hey, all you men out there, look at these scantily clad, virtually undressed beauties," they might as well say, "and don't even think about coming here for a closer look in the flesh." Weird.
The Guardian (UK) sums up Femen's origins: "Founded by Anna Hutsol, Femen began as a campaign against the explosion of pr-stitution and sex tourism in Ukraine (sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and intensified by the arrival of budget airlines and a depressed economy). As its popularity grew, Femen took on issues as diverse as vote-rigging and the stoning sentence meted out to Iranian Sakineh Ashtiani." (More at guardian.co.uk...)
Spiegel International has a good article about Femen. Spiegel reports that travel agencies worldwide offer "Romantic Tours" in eastern Ukraine. "In Kiev, meanwhile, p-mps will call the hotel rooms of foreign guests and offer to sell them 'a good time with a girl.' According to a survey, 70 percent of students in the capital have been approached at least one time by a foreigner offering them money for sex."
Okay, and is that so unusual? That kind of behavior happens in large cities in around the world, with or without "romantic tours" bringing desperate losers in by the plane load. Ever been to Las Vegas? Or, for that matter, Lincoln, Nebraska -- or any other city? This kind of thing is hardly unique to Kiev, and it's probably safe to say that the folks who make a living in that industry would sell their wares even without the international romantic tour circuit.
Spiegel's reporter, Benjamin Bidder, notes that traditional feminists are befuddled by the Femen ladies. "They dress like pr-stitutes," Bidder quoted gender researcher Maria Dmitrieva from something she wrote about Femen in a Russian magazine. Dmitrieva says that the way the Femen ladies present themselves in public "is certainly not conducive to social discourse."
This all depends on the type of social discourse we're talking about, of course.
Spiegel's Bidder quotes one member of Femen's response to the confusion of the old-style feminists. "We're different from classic feminists," she said. "In order to gain a voice, they had to become like men. But we want a real women's revolution. Our ... protests are part of the fight for women's liberation. We have the right to use our bodies as weapons."
Onward, into battle, brave ladies. Now, if only the Tea Party would adopt these tactics.
May 4, 2011 - This afternoon, Reuters posted some very graphic photos of corpses, killed in Sunday's raid in the bin Laden compound in Pakistan. You can see them here, in the Reuters story titled "Photos from the Bin Laden Compound." Some hasty bloggers have snagged the Reuters photos and have are claiming - in error - that Reuters took the photos down. In fact, they are still up (as of 7:30 p.m. EDT).
Bungalow Bill's blogspot ran some of the amazing Reuters photos in a post titled "The Reuters Images of the Attack Against Osama Bin Laden That Were Removed From Reuters 
Web Site." Ah, sorry, your headline is misleading.
American Power blogspot has some pointless commentary and over there, where they at least acknowledge that Reuters re-posted the photos in "an update." (Actually, American Power hat tipped blogger Iconic Surrealism for the update info.)
Even one of my all-time fave websites, iOwnTheWorld, fell for the Reuters-pulled-the-photos hysteria. In a wonderfully titled post, "Warning: These photos might be too graphic if you’re a progressive pussy," my good friend Big Fur Hat wrote, "These photos were pulled by Reuters about one hour after they were published. But the genie cannot be re-corked on the internet."
Well, no, the photos are still up at Reuters.com. I still love iOwnTheWorld, though.
See, my fellow bloggers, now and then news sites post updates and move stuff around - kinda like we do - and so all of the hysteria about Reuters "pulling" the photos is nonsense. It was housekeeping, dudes. Reuters simply moved the furniture around, so to speak. They didn't hide it.
May 4, 2011 - Was Osama bin Laden shot in the left eye? Was part of his front skull blown away by a bullet?
We've gotten conflicting stories from the Obama Administration, which only serves to fuel rumors and encourage photo fakery. The White House will decide today whether it will release photos of bin Laden's dead body.
UPDATED: OBAMA WILL NOT RELEASE BIN LADEN DEATH PHOTOS
There are fake photos out there, as expected. Here are two of those fakes making the rounds on the Internet this week. There are more, and will be more still. Let's stick with these two for now.
There has been no official release of any Osama bin Laden death photos as of today at 11:30 a.m. CDT. U.S. officials say the still-secret photographic evidence "shows a precision kill shot above his left eye, which blew away part of bin Laden’s skull. He was also shot in the chest," reports The Independent.ie.
But the White House said the photograph of a dead Osama bin Laden is "gruesome" and that "it could be inflammatory" if released. (Obama, as noted above, has said the death photos will not be released.)
The first bin Laden death photo here is a fake. The Hollywood Gossip posted it yesterday (May 3). They noted that "someone who really needs to get out more took a photo of some other mangled corpse and superimposed bin Laden's face onto it. Sick."
The second photo is another fake, but it's more realistic for a couple of reasons. First, the green overtone makes it look like those night vision photos that we've all become so used to seeing.
That night vision effect lends an air of authority to the image. Second, the man who seems to be handling the body looks very military, from his clothing to the tough look of his profile.
The green image was posted at LiveLeak.com late on the evening of May 3. The only commentary there was, "Liveleak cannot confirm the authenticity of this Osama bin Laden dead picture." However, LiveLeak later "determined" that the photo is a fraud, and offered the third photo here as, well, proof.
The fakery is addressed well by John Le Fevre in a post on his blog today. He writes, "As some web commentators stated, one would expect better quality photos coming from the killing of Osama bin Laden."
Le Fevre does a nice analysis of the green photo, too, and gives his readers a warning. "Early on the morning of Tuesday, May 4, 2011 the US CIA issued a warning to people not to open eMails purporting to contain attached photos of Osama bin Laden dead as such eMails contain a computer virus."
Master Hypnotist Reveals Forbidden Secret Of How To Control People's Minds (Without Their Knowledge) And Make Them Obey Covert Commands During Normal Conversation!
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Here's a safe and reliable way to help the victims of the recent devastating storms and tornadoes in Alabama. It's as official as you can get: The following is from a website by the State of Alabama. You can use their links, below, or go directly to their donation page. (Photo: ABC News)
Response to Alabama's Recent Tornadoes
Donate to the Governor's Emergency Relief Fund To Help Tornado Victims in Alabama
Donate by Credit Card - Donate by Check - Donate Goods
