Fintan Dunne:

The story so far: a corrupt Irish political system bailed out a corrupt bank, on orders from the ECB, to avoid the implosion of mainland European banks. Also a corrupt Irish political system, on orders from the ECB, bailed out the financial gambling losses of well-heeled investors. And so comes an opportunity for the ECB to recognise that the Irish helped save Europe. An opportunity to ease the terms and timescale of Irish repayments of the newly-printed ECB money which was used to benefit banks and investors. (By the way, the Irish people never actually got the money - it was "exported" as quickly as it was printed by the Irish Central Bank under EU auspices.) In recent weeks, Irish politicians have waxed lyrical about their ongoing negotiations with the ECB over the loan notes repayment schedule - especially one note for €3.1Billion, due for payment on 2 April 2012. Quiet confidence in the outcome of those informal talks was reinforced by finance minister, Mic...

" The initial reporting that we have at this time indicates  there was  one shooter , and we have one man in custody, " -- Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a NATO spokesman A group of US soldiers were involved in the attacks on civilians in Kandahar province, say eyewitnesses who undermine the official account that a single soldier was responsible. Neighbors and relatives of the dead said a group of US soldiers arrived at one of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province at about 2am, entered homes and opened fire.  Haji Samad told Reuters 11 of his relatives were killed in one house, including his children. "They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them," a weeping Samad said at the scene. Neighbors said they awoke to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, whom they described as laughing and drunk. "They were all drunk and shooting all over the place," said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where...

It appears that BP and Goldman Sachs have been literally ' printing oil '  for a decade using Enron-style commodity futures contracts, says Chris Cook , former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange. Their profit has come at the expense of other players in the oil trade: from market brokers to businesses and gas consumers. But the game is up , with only the hype over a potential war with Iran holding up a market primed to implode from falling demand. How has this manipulation been achieved? By means of prepay transactions: a form of financing, structured as a commodity trade, which can be made to look as if it is cash flow from operations. Investors prepay for physical oil. The producer lends oil to the investor, and the investor lends dollars to the producer. The temporary ownership rights created and sold to investors via intermediaries such as Goldman Sachs essentially enable a producer to act as a private oil bank ...