Ellen Brown

Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapman writes in The International Forecaster:

Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout. . . . This is a real crisis on the scale of Watergate. Corruption at its finest.

But unlike the perpetrators of the Watergate scandal, who wound up looking at jail time, Geithner evidently has a golden parachute waiting at Goldman Sachs, not coincidentally the largest recipient of the AIG bailout. At least that is the rumor sparked by an article by Caroline Baum on Bloomberg News, titled “Goldman Parachute Awaits Geithner to Ease Fall.” Hank Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor, was CEO of Goldman Sachs before coming to the Treasury. Geithner, who has come up through the ranks of government, could be walking through the revolving door in the other direction.

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Khephra Maley

Many Americans were shocked by Obama’s meteoric rise to power. Although plenty of other ‘relative unknowns’ have made the jump from Congress or a governorship to the Oval Office, none of them were visible minorities or able to galvanize public sentiment nearly as well as Obama. Following 8 years of despotic rule by George Bush & Co., huge segments of the American public embraced Obama’s candidacy with wanton enthusiasm. His campaign rallies took on an imperialistic tenor, and for many confused Americans he was psychologically conflated as a political messiah – ready, willing and able to act as civilization’s great panacea. Unfortunately, much of the public was simply projecting dreams for a better future onto Obama. They saw in him a clear improvement over Bush and more integrity than Hillary Clinton, and this branding helped him handily mop the floor with John McCain. Nevertheless, branding aside, with a little critical attention Obama’s rise to power begins to seem less accidental, and takes on all the hues of a prolonged, successful grooming process. Barack Obama did not become a global sensation by accident. He had help getting where he is. That help obviously included corporate and financial interests, but it may also have included the involvement of covert intelligence agencies – perhaps most especially the CIA.

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Julie Chao

Black Carbon a Significant Factor in Melting of Himalayan Glaciers

From Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and announcement that comes at a very inconvenient time for IPCC and Pachauri while their “Glaciergate” issue rages. Aerosols and black carbon are tagged as the major drivers. And no mention of disappearance by 2035.

The fact that glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are thinning is not disputed. However, few researchers have attempted to rigorously examine and quantify the causes. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Surabi Menon set out to isolate the impacts of the most commonly blamed culprit—greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide—from other particles in the air that may be causing the melting. Menon and her collaborators found that airborne black carbon aerosols, or soot, from India is a major contributor to the decline in snow and ice cover on the glaciers.

“Our simulations showed greenhouse gases alone are not nearly enough to be responsible for the snow melt,” says Menon, a physicist and staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. “Most of the change in snow and ice cover—about 90 percent—is from aerosols. Black carbon alone contributes at least 30 percent of this sum.”

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Report, The Electronic Intifada

Mona al-Samouni shows a photo of her parents who she wit-
nessed being killed in Israel's assault on Gaza in January 2009.

OCCUPIED GAZA STRIP (IRIN) - Mona al-Samouni, 12, is depressed and has nightmares about the day -- just more than a year ago -- when she witnessed her parents and a number of relatives being shot by Israeli soldiers in their home in Zeitoun, southeast of Gaza City.

Like a number of other children who witnessed horrific events during last year's 23-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Mona has become increasingly withdrawn and silent -- common ways of coping with tragedies, doctors say.

Statistics about Palestinians who lost their life during the military operation vary, but nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) place the overall number of persons killed between 1,387 and 1,417. The Gaza authorities report 1,444 fatal casualties, while Israel provides a figure of 1,166, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone report.

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