The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (hereinafter – the Committee) is closely associated with supranational organisations like the Bank for International Settlements in Basel (BIS), which is often called the «club», the «headquarters» of central banks or the «Central Bank of Last Resort». The Committee’s office is situated in the BIS building.
At the end of 1974, following the disequilibrium of international currencies and banking markets caused by the collapse of the Herstatt Bank in West Germany, the heads of central banks in the G10 countries established the Committee under the auspices of the BIS to develop common international rules with regard to banking supervision.
It’s not every day that a scientist creates such intense drama on Capitol Hill.
Kelly Vlahos
The American Conservative, 10 May 2013
Veterans of War Betrayed by Their Own Government
But Dr. Steven S. Coughlin’s charges that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) officials hid, manipulated, and even lied about research pertaining to Gulf War Illness (GWI) and health problems plaguing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are still causing fallout a month after his stunning testimony before a key House subcommittee.
“The implications of his testimony are profound,” declared Anthony Hardie, 45, a Gulf War veteran who serves on the congressionally appointed Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses (RAC).
Veterans and their advocates, as well as many in the scientific community, have long believed that the VA avoids responsibility for veterans’ care by downplaying or outright ignoring evidence linking wartime experiences—such as exposure to Agent Orange, chemical weapons, or toxic pollution—to veterans’ chronic medical issues back home.
Coughlin, a senior epidemiologist with the VA’s Office of Public Health (OPH), gave the VA’s critics what they say is a smoking gun: after conducting major surveys of 1991 Gulf War veterans and “New Generation” veterans from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan, Coughlin told the committee he quit his post in December. He claims the VA is hiding important survey results about the health of veterans and that his colleagues watered-down analysis that might have shed light on whether recent vets got sick from open-air trash-burning pits on overseas bases.
He told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on March 13 that millions of dollars are invested in veterans’ heath studies each year, yet “if the studies produce results that do not support [OPH’s] unwritten policy, they do not release them.” And “on the rare occasions when embarrassing study results are released, data are manipulated to make them unintelligible.”
Tax avoidance, secret mining deals and financial transfers are depriving Africa of the benefits of its resources boom, ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has said.
BBC 10 May 2013
Firms that shift profits to lower tax jurisdictions cost Africa $38bn (£25bn) a year, says a report produced by a panel he heads.
“Africa loses twice as much money through these loopholes as it gets from donors,” Mr Annan told the BBC.
It was like taking food off the tables of the poor, he said.
Under-pricing deprives Africa of much-needed money, the report says
The Africa Progress Report is released every May – produced by a panel of 10 prominent figures, including former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Graca Machel, the wife of South African ex-President Nelson Mandela.
African countries needed to improve governance and the world's richest nations should help introduce global rules on transparency and taxation, Mr Annan said.
The report gave the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example, where between 2010 and 2012 five under-priced mining concessions were sold in “highly opaque and secretive deals”.
This figure was equivalent to double DR Congo's health and education budgets combined, the report said.
China-North Korea: Update. China's Foreign Ministry declined Wednesday, 8 May, to confirm the Bank of China's closure of the account of the North Korean Foreign Trade Bank. In response to a question at Wednesday's news conference, Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, “For specifics, please refer it to competent Chinese authorities.”
Sources of the Daily NK reported that since 7 May, “other Chinese state banking entities including China Construction Bank have apparently ceased business dealings with North Korean financial entities as well. The banks did so in accordance with guidance handed down by the China Banking Regulatory Commission, and as such is actually a policy of the Chinese government.”
Comment: If the Chinese are exerting economic pressure against North Korea as punishment for refusing to listen to guidance, some reaction by North Korea should become evident soon. Such action would represent a strategic change in China's relationship with North Korea. More on this later.
One of the world’s leading terrorists, the mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has been summoned to China where he will be confronted with evidence of his involvement in the March 11, 2011 nuclear and tsunami terror attack against Japan, according to Chinese government sources.
The evidence is a tape recorded phone call to then Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in which Netanyahu threatened to destroy all of Japan’s nuclear reactors if Kan did not order the Japanese government to write off its holdings of US government debt, according to Japanese military intelligence. In exchange for sweeping this issue under the carpet, the 180 nation BRICS alliance will demand an end to all further war-mongering in the Middle East.
The Israeli use of a nuclear bunker buster bomb against Syria just before Netanyahu’s departure was a futile gesture of defiance as the worldwide crackdown on the Sabbatean Satanic mafia unfolds.
In a related development, the UK Police and Crime Commission have opened an investigation into the Thames Valley police, Sara Thornton in particular, concerning, among other things, the murder of bio-weapons specialist Dr. David Kelly. This is part of a wider police investigation into the cabal that fooled the UK government into participating in the invasion of Iraq.
The heads of MI5, the London Metropolitan Police counter terror squad and of UK Special Forces have all left their posts, according to an MI5 source. Several journalists have also been arrested, he said. Many witnesses of substance (military) are coming forward in support having realized the UK police have been acting outside correct procedures in many instances, according to an MI5 source. “The emphasis will now be on internal investigations of corruption in the Police and Civil service,” the source said.
The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, Head of the Civil Service, will also find his position under close scrutiny. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair has already been investigated and has basically sung like a canary. Blair has already implicated many EU leaders as having accepted bribes in exchange for allowing the Soviet Union modeled EU to gradually usurp the sovereignty of European nation states.
This of course, is a preliminary to investigations that will finally bring justice to the perpetrators of the 911 terror and mind-control attack against the US. The wheels of justice will roll towards George Bush Jr., Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Frank Carlucci, Michael Chertoff and the entire fascist cabal that seized control of the US following the rigged year 2000 election, according to patriotic CIA and Pentagon sources.
How the 1860s Changed the Fields of Battle Forever
By Ralph Peters
The ten-year span that began with the American Civil War in 1861 and climaxed with a Prussian-led German army besieging Paris in 1870 changed warfare as profoundly as—and certainly more abruptly than—the introduction of steel blades or the development of gunpowder weapons.That decade dramatically altered strategic and operational mobility, military communications, killing power, the relative value of combat arms and the tactics for employing them, the composition of armies, logistics, and medical care for the wounded (while navies moved to steam-driven ironclads mounting long-range guns).A consideration of military leadership across the decade should teach us not to mock the inability of most generals to adjust to a disorienting environment, but to marvel at the few who managed to figure things out—despite the crushing weight of legacy thinking.
The complexity of warfare exploded as the strategic pace accelerated.And one rarely noted determinant of victory may, in fact, have been the decisive factor: literacy.In the end, the armies with the soldiers who could read were the armies that were able to adapt–those of the United States and Prussia.(Indeed, our contemporary experience in attempting to professionalize Afghan troops underscores the degree to which literacy is the fundamental building block of military modernity.)
As this epochal decade approached, Napoleon’s shadow clouded the thinking of even the most-able generals.Only outliers, such as Grant and von Moltke, escaped his thrall, while Napoleonic maxims, codified by Jomini and others, excused less-able leaders from thinking at all.The 1860s came as a series of thunderbolts, following the confused military actions of the previous decade.Even as steam power allowed for more rapid strategic concentration in the 1850s, European armies assembling in a theater of war had made no doctrinal advances since Waterloo.Indeed, the allied armies that landed in the Crimea marched more slowly than had the troops of either the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon.English rifles slaughtered Russian infantrymen, but English generals (and cholera) squandered English soldiers.And when the Piedmontese and French fought the Austrians in Italy in 1859, the battles of Magenta and Solferino were clumsy bloodbaths that convinced generals that very little had changed on the tactical battlefield.New rifles in the hands of poorly trained, unmotivated and ineptly led Austrian soldiers proved useless against superior leadership—resulting in a failure to appreciate the killing power of massed rifled weapons.
Soon enough the race would be on to find generals who could think as fast as modern weapons could kill.
Bad news continues to pour out of Fukushima-Daiichi. The first article below discusses the impact of F-D radiation on Canadian flora and fauna. The second details the involvement of the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza, in the containment/cleanup process. The third describes TEPCO's mounting financial losses, as they struggle to keep on top of the problems of contaminated groundwater, electrical outages, etc., move ahead with taking the rods out of the dangerous spent fuel pools, and deal with the many lawsuits arising from the disaster. TEPCO has admitted culpability, so has to pay the victims.
Clearly, the situation is out of control. The US needs to lead the way in rallying international support for the crippled plant,- it's more than Japan can handle. A Senate investigation would be a first step in making that happen. Please continue to circulate this petition. Anyone can sign it!
