The German government has been storing about half of its gold supply with the US FED, apparently in the NYC FED vaults. Germany decided to bring home all its gold, but the FED has said that isn’t possible to do, and it would need until 2020 to be able to accomplish the transfer. The German government then asked to visit the FED vaults to inventory the gold and determine its actual existence, but the FED refused to permit Germany to examine its own gold. The reasons given were “security” and “no room for visitors”. And nothing else. Germany did finally send some staff to the FED, and they were permitted only into the vault’s anteroom where they were shown 5 or 6 gold bars as representative of their holdings, and were permitted nothing else.

Christof Lehmann: Mystery about Germany´s Gold in the US Solved ■ Nobody wants to admit it openly. The German Gold Reserves in the United States are gone, used for financing the United States war chest and bet for “Global Full Spectrum Dominance”. So why is even the German Federal Bank trying to avoid further speculation by referring to a non-existent “full transparency” ? The answer is quite simple. Nobody wants the current backwardation of the gold market to turn into a permanent backwardation of the gold market. The consequence would be the inevitable collapse of global trade and civilization as we know it.

More than 13,000 families have fled Fallujah in the past few days amid clashes and shelling after the city fell to Al-Qaeda-linked militants, the Iraqi Red Crescent said on Wednesday. "Most of them are now living in schools, public buildings or with relatives," said Mohammed al-Khuzaie, a Red Crescent official.

Authorities reported at least 21 cold-related deaths across the country since Sunday, including seven in Illinois, and six in Indiana. ● At least five people died after collapsing while shoveling snow, while several victims were identified as homeless people who either refused shelter or didn't make it to a warm haven soon enough to save themselves from the bitter temperatures. The brutal polar air that has made the Midwest shiver over the past few days spread to the East and the Deep South on Tuesday, shattering records that in some cases had stood for more than a century. The mercury plunged into the single digits and teens from Boston and New York to Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville and Little Rock — places where many people don't know the first thing about extreme cold. In Missouri on Monday, a 1-year-old boy was killed when the car he was riding in struck a snow plow, and a 20-year-old woman was killed in a separate crash after her car slid on ice and into the path of a tractor-trailer. In a phenomenon that forecasters said is actually not all that unusual, all 50 states saw freezing temperatures at some point Tuesday. That included Hawaii, where it was 18 degrees atop Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano. The big chill started in the Midwest over the weekend, caused by a kink in the "polar vortex," the strong winds that circulate around the North Pole. By Tuesday, the icy air covered about half the country, and records were shattered like icicles up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

PressTV: US colder than South Pole
VoR: Hard winter in US: temperatures abnormally low
Russia Today: Deadly cold snap in US shatters temp. records, sends even polar bears to shelter

Maidhc Ó Cathail ■ Speaking to Israel’s Channel 10 — whose biggest shareholder, cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder, is President of the World Jewish Congress — Greenwald criticized “the continued imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard,” who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after passing more than a million highly classified documents to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy. (Incidentally, Channel 10 owner Lauder is also a supporter of clemency for Pollard.) As reported today by Haaretz, here’s what Greenwald told his Israeli audience about the spy, who, in the words of former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, “did more damage to the United States than any spy in history”: “When the U.S. government goes around the world criticizing other countries for spying on allies and prosecuting them,” he said, “are they going to maintain that with a straight face when they’re doing exactly that?” It’s proper to raise Pollard’s case in the context of U.S. spying on its Israeli ally, he continued, because that underscores the hypocrisy of what the U.S. itself is doing. The U.S. government, Greenwald charged, does exactly what it accuses its enemies of doing, and no country has the right to say other countries shouldn’t do something while it is secretly violating that very same taboo.

While some may be willing to concede that Greenwald’s charge of U.S. government hypocrisy is perfectly valid, the acclaimed “independent” journalist’s remarks that American national security does not require surveillance of its so-called “ally” in Tel Aviv is at best naïve, at worst disingenuous: Asked about the U.S. government’s claim that the purpose of the eavesdropping is to fight terrorism, he responded by citing the documents’ revelations that the NSA eavesdropped on both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli officials, asking, Does the U.S. government think Angela Merkel is a terrorist? Or that democratically elected Israeli officials are involved in terror?

If the quenelle is loosely defined as an anti establishment salute, one may wonder why Jews are offended by it and regard it as an ‘anti-Semitic’ gesture? Is it because many Jews actually identify with ‘the establishment’? And how do we explain the fact that the French government is happy to compromise the most elementary liberties just to appease the French Jewish Lobby (Crif)? The truth is devastating - Palestine is here and the French people are the Palestinians Du Jour...

Diana Johnstone: The Bête Noire of the French Establishment ■ The goal of national police boss Manuel Valls is clear, but the powers that be are groping for the method. The dismissive cliché heard repeatedly is that “nobody laughs at Dieudonné any more”. In reality, the opposite is true. And that is the problem. On his recent tour of French cities, videos show large, packed theaters roaring with laughter at their favorite humorist. He has popularized a simple gesture, which he calls the “quenelle”. It is being imitated by young people all over France. It simply and obviously means, we are fed up. To invent a pretext for destroying Dieudonné, the leading Jewish organizations CRIF and LICRA, (which enjoys special privileges under French law) have come up with a fantasy to brand Dieudonné and his followers as “Nazis”. The quenelle is all too obviously a vulgar gesture roughly meaning “up yours”, with one hand placed at the top of the other arm pointing down to signify “how far up” this is to be. But for the CRIF and LICRA, the quenelle is “a Nazi salute in reverse”. (You can never be too “vigilant” when looking for the hidden Hitler.)

Tony Blair has banked over £13 million to mark his most financially successful year since stepping down as prime minister. [HuffPost] Blair's wealth, including a London home, a country estate and numerous other properties, is estimated to come to £70m. The former PM has built up his fortune over the years as an official adviser to investment bank JP Morgan and Swiss-based global insurance giant Zurich International. Blair also advises governments such as the Kazakhstan regime and earns as much as £250,000 a time for private speeches and appearances. The bumper financial results for the 12 months to April 2013 have been revealed in the latest accounts for Blair's two firms, Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures, which were lodged with Companies House last week. Windrush Ventures, which employs 35 people, posted a £14.9m turnover and a post-tax profit of nearly £2m, marking a £650,000 rise over the previous year. It paid corporation tax on its profits of £653,000, the accounts show. Windrush also paid out £12.1 million in expenses, to cover the cost of office rents, travel and hotel bills for Blair and his entourage. Blair's staff are estimated to earn an average of £86,000, with the company's highest paid director getting £273,000. One City accountant told the Sunday Telegraph: “These numbers are a big improvement on last year. Mr Blair has had a very good year. This is a bumper year – his best year yet.” A statement on Tony Blair's website said: "The latest annual financial statements...[are]...the financial statements of the two companies through which the operating costs of the Tony Blair group’s global activities are paid. They do not represent his earnings or the earnings or the profit of his businesses and are not referable to them."