Eeyore's News and View

Russia to help Venezuela develop nuclear energy
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to help start a nuclear energy program in Venezuela and said Moscow is willing to participate in a socialist trade bloc in Latin America led by President Hugo Chavez.
Medvedev used his visit to Venezuela—the first by a Russian president—to extend Moscow's reach into Latin America and deepen trade and military ties. Chavez denied trying to provoke the United States, but he welcomed Russia's growing presence in Latin America as a reflection of declining U.S. influence.
Chavez and Medvedev planned to visit a Russian destroyer docked in a Venezuelan port on Thursday. The arrival of Russian warships this week for training exercises with Venezuela's navy was the first deployment of its kind in the Caribbean since the Cold War.
Accords signed Wednesday included one pledging cooperation in nuclear energy for peaceful uses. Russia also agreed to work with Venezuela in oil projects and building ships.
Moscow plans to develop a nuclear cooperation program with Venezuela by the end of next year, said Sergey Kirienko, head of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency.
"We are ready to teach students in nuclear physics and nuclear engineering," he said through an interpreter. He said the help would include "research and development" and "looking for uranium in the territory of Venezuela."
Chavez says Venezuela hopes to build a nuclear reactor for energy purposes.
The Venezuelan leader—one of the world's most strident U.S. critics—thanked Medvedev for helping to create a "multi-polar" world with declining U.S. influence.
Medvedev called Venezuela "one of our most important partners in Latin America" and pledged to keep supplying the South American nation with weapons. But he said arms sales to Venezuela "are not aimed against any other country."
Chavez's government has already bought more than $4 billion in Russian arms, including Sukhoi fighter jets, helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles.
Chavez had assembled a group of Latin American allies for talks hours before Medvedev's visit, and leaders including Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega joined them for a late-night meeting.
Medvedev said Russia is ready to "think about participating" in the Bolivarian Alernative for the Americas, likely as an associate member. Chavez launched the socialist trade bloc, named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar, as an alternative to U.S.-backed free-trade pacts.
The Russian naval squadron deployed to the Caribbean includes the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, the largest in the Russian fleet.
The military show of force is widely seen as a demonstration of Kremlin anger over the U.S. decision to send warships to deliver aid to Georgia after its conflict with Russia, and over U.S. plans for a European missile-defense system.
But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that "a few Russian ships is not going to change the balance of power" in the region.
Medvedev was to finish his four-nation Latin American tour in Cuba.
Medvedev said he also discussed the global financial crisis with Chavez, and "exchanged different ideas of what actions to take in this situation." Chavez blames the financial crisis on U.S. free-market capitalism.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94NBROO0&show_article=1


Kenneth City delays decision on neatness ordinance
By Anne Lindberg, Times Staff Writer
In print: Sunday, November 30, 2008
KENNETH CITY — Council members caved in to demands from an angry crowd and delayed approving a neatness ordinance until officials explain every word of the 26-page document to Kenneth City residents.
In what was estimated to be the largest crowd to ever attend a Kenneth City Council meeting, an outraged group of residents railed at the proposal that would regulate the upkeep of both the exterior and interior of all property in the town.
The proposal basically sets standards for upkeep and appearance and gives town officials the right to enter homes. If the owner refuses to allow the official to enter, the town can go to a judge for an "administrative search warrant" to allow access to the interior of buildings. Violations would cost up to $250 a day.
Angry residents likened the proposal to rules created by Communist or Nazi dictatorships. One person said the result would be to create a network of spies to snitch on neighbors to council members and other town officials. Someone suggested the town should change its name from Kenneth City to "Petty City."
Still others said town attorney Paul Marino was overstepping his bounds. Marino, who drafted the ordinance at the urging of the mayor and council, defended himself, saying he felt the audience was trying to shoot the scribe and that he was only doing his job. One person in the audience claimed that council member Al Carrier had driven by his house as a way of threatening him to drop his opposition to the ordinance. Carrier did not respond to the charge that he was abusing his office.
Others said the council needs to explain every part of the ordinance to residents and that after that, the residents should be consulted about redrafting the new rule, if necessary, to tailor it to Kenneth City's needs. As it is, the ordinance is a virtual copy of others in places like Fort Walton Beach and Belleair Beach.
Residents will get their chance to hear the ins and outs of the proposal at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Community Hall, 4600 58th St. N. The meeting is not only open to the public, but Kenneth City officials seemed to challenge residents to attend.
"Let's see if you all show up for a workshop," Marino commented, adding he would go through the document paragraph by paragraph if that's what the council wished.
And Carrier said, "If you are not here, you have nothing else to say."
Council members will not be able to make a final decision at Wednesday's workshop. But they can decide whether the proposal needs to be sent back to the drawing board, totally dismissed, or scheduled for a vote.
Election is coming
Until the November meeting, passage seemed to be a slam dunk. But with an election in the offing, it is unclear how officials who may want to be re-elected will react to a large crowd of dissatisfied residents. Up for possible re-election are Mayor Muriel Whitman and council member Phil Redisch, neither of whom has indicated future plans. Council member Harold Jividin's seat will also come open, but Jividin cannot run for re-election because of term limits.
Qualifying opens Dec. 12 and closes at noon Dec. 19. Candidates for the council must have been registered voters and residents of Kenneth City for at least two years before qualifying to run. Candidates for mayor must have been registered voters and residents of Kenneth City for at least three years before qualifying to run.
Council members earn $300 a month. The mayor is paid $500 a month. Council members serve a term of two years and the mayor serves for three years. The election is at-large and nonpartisan. For information or to pick up a packet, call Town Clerk Nancy Beelman at 544-6655 or go to Town Hall, 6000 54th Ave. N.
The election is March 10.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article919476.ece

http://www.cuddlycactus.com/flashpurge/
How Do You Use FlashPurge?
FlashPurge is very simple to use.
Place the two FlashPurge files in any directory/folder where you want to totally purge the content of the directory/folder and all sub-directories/folders.
Simply click on the "FlashPurge.bat" file and a simple confirmation message will appear. It will ask if you really want to purge the data and instruct you to type "yes" if you really want to.
Simply type "yes" and press the enter key and wait.
Once the program finishes performing the purge the window will either close or it will go to a dos-prompt, depending on your version of Windows. Most of the time it will simply close the window and you can be confident the data is gone! It is as simple as that.
FlashPurge, while not the fastest tool in the world, is a very secure tool - especially when it comes to flash memory. One has to remember that all flash memory has a cycle-life. What FlashPurge does is not exactly the friendliest bit of processing when it comes to the life-cycle of flash memory. One has to weigh the security provided by FlashPurge with the need to purge your data in a manner that is very likely for the foreseeable future, totally unrecoverable. FlashPurge is not meant to be used as a "daily cleaner", instead FlashPurge is meant to be used as a way to securely purge sensitive data from your storage device. Often times, one does not care about the long-term life-cycle of a flash drive when in a situation of needing to truly purge sensitive data, as such, FlashPurge is not concerned how much abuse it does to your flash drive - Security privacy is the focus, not another month or two of your flash drive live-cycle!
How To Download:
To download FlashPurge point your browser download to http://www.cuddlycactus.com/flashpurge/flashpurge.zip

Britain is in no position to laugh at Iceland’s problems
Patrick Hosking Business commentary
Is Britain simply a bigger version of Iceland? Certainly the City of London is starting to look a bit too much like Reykjavik, but with taller buildings and fewer cod. It is an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration, to liken the UK to the broken, bankrupt North Atlantic island.
Like Iceland, we boast a huge banking industry out of all proportion to the overall economy. Like Iceland, we have an unfunded depositor lifeboat scheme totally unequipped to grapple with failing banks. Like Iceland, our national output is dwarfed by the vast liabilities of our banks. Like Iceland, our banks for years scoffed at relying on domestic depositors to fund their activities and developed a dangerous addiction to wholesale money. Like Iceland, our Government is poised to go on a borrowing spree to try to soften the pain. Like Iceland, our currency is on the skids as foreign investors pull out.
Our problems are not nearly so extreme, of course, but we’d be foolish to feel terribly smug as the International Monetary Fund and Scandinavian neighbours go in to bathe Iceland’s wounds.
The scale of our problems has still not been understood. In essence the domestic banks are largely bust. The Government’s £500 billion bailout plan is primarily designed not to keep banks lending to small firms and to homebuyers but to prevent an unimaginable financial calamity.
Banks provide the very foundations and plumbing of the entire economy. A failure of confidence in them could still bring the entire capitalist edifice tumbling down.
It suits ministers, however, to maintain the bogus claim that the bailout is about sustaining bank lending. True, that would be a helpful side-effect, but is not the main purpose. Indeed, a gentle and gradual reduction in the indebtedness of individuals and companies is still needed.
At the risk of hyperbole, we should not be worrying about whether this is going to be a thin Christmas for retailers (it is), but whether Britain and the West are about to plunge into a years-long economic Dark Age – complete with mass unemployment and social unrest.
Taxpayers are already facing a loss of almost £10 billion on their investment in Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS even before the Government hands over a penny. That is what their languishing share prices are saying.
The recession has barely begun and the banks are on their knees. Scores of billions of pounds of bad debts are yet to come, as companies and individuals default on loans.
When in early October officials mapped out the bailout with banks, they insisted that those banks stress-tested their balance sheets for a serious downturn. In the six weeks since then, the outlook has darkened swiftly. The worst-case scenario imaginable then may well be looking like a central-case scenario now.
Richard Pym, executive chairman of Bradford & Bingley, the nationalised bank, told MPs this week that the bank had already stress-tested its mortgage book to see how it would cope with a 25 per cent drop in house prices (answer: £600-800 million of losses). But he no longer regarded this as sufficient and was busy putting much larger house price falls into his equations.
The fattened-up capital cushions of the banks will be enough for a while, but banks remain colossolly levered. It wouldn’t take much of a deterioration in their assets to wipe out all the fresh capital raised. The banks may well have to come back to taxpayers for more. They will be given it, too, albeit at the price of total nationalisation.
One third of Icelanders now want to emigrate, things have got so bad, a recent survey found. The proportion of Britons with similar wanderlust may not be so different before this economic agony passes.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article5209440.ece

Bankrupt Britain Trending Towards Hyper-Inflation?
The mainstream media is increasingly full of stories of either Britain going bankrupt or the coming deflation associated with the recession. Whilst both are now obvious given the economic data and government actions however what is missing from the headlines is that under the weight of the exploding public sector debt mountain, deflation will fast turn towards hyper-inflation as the government literally prints money in ever more panic measures aimed at turning the economy around. Many of the readers of my articles over the last year at Market Oracle will have seen this trend unfold as sustainable amounts of borrowing exploded into unsustainable liabilities due to the collapse of the bankrupt banks. Therefore this article seeks to analyse how Britain has come to towards an increased risk of bankruptcy and what action can be taken to avoid a currency collapse that is the consequences of state bankruptcy
Britain's Debt Problem Explained
Unfunded Pension Liabilities
Whilst private sectors pensions are determined by what the market will pay at retirement on the basis of the pension fund values and annuity rates, the tax payer picks up the tab for public sector worker pensions that receive up to 2/3rds of final salaries. The public sector has no growing pension fund which means public sector pensions are paid out of the current contributions with the shortfall made up by the tax payer, which has resulted in a huge pensions time bomb that is estimated at a liability of £996 billion and growing, as more public sector workers retire into longer retirements, so will the gap between contributions and pension payments widen which will result in a pensions time bomb exploding that will hit tax payers hard and act as an annual public sector pensions tax on tax payers.
Public Sector Net Debt
The official debt levels as recorded by the Office of National Statistics estimates how much the country owes. This currently stands at £624 for 2008 up from £534 at the end of 2007 and projected to rise to £944 billion by the end of 2010 as the gap widens between government spending and revenues as the countries GDP contracts, and the revenues from the booming financial sector evaporate into thin air. The situation has now been made worse by the £20 billion tax cut.
Northern Rock Nationalisation
The estimated exposure at the end of 2007 was £40 billion, however by the end of 2008 this will have risen to £90 billion following the banks nationalisation and ongoing housing market crash.
Bradford and Bingley Nationalisation
In September the government stepped in to nationalise Bradford and Bingley with an estimated liability of £30 billion that is set to rise as the housing market deteriorates towards £40 billion.
Bank Capital Injections
Nationalisation is a last resort as it can prove extremely costly, capital injections are more affordable alternative with to date some £37 billion of injections from an authorised pool of £50 billion, however given the extent of losses amongst the UK's big banks the amount of capital injected into the banks to keep them afloat could easily rise to above £250 billion by the end of 2010, failing that a wholesale nationalisation programme of the banking system would run into many trillions of extra liabilities.
Loans to Banks
As the money markets remain frozen the bank of England has taken over the role as counter party to the UK banks in the money markets, which makes loans to the banks as interbank market loans mature and the banks are increasingly seeking money directly from the Bank of England to fill this shortfall in short-term funding. This could literally continue rising to above £1 trillion, depending on how long the credit markets remain frozen. By the end of 2008, an estimated £300 billion will have been loaned to the banks and by the end of 2010 this will looks set to mushroom to £750 billion.
Tax Cuts to Fight an Election
The government has started the ball rolling with a £20 billion tax cut which is 1.5% of GDP, the expectation is that further cuts of probably £30 billion to follow early next year in advance of a mid 2009 general election which will bring the total tax cuts to £50 billion and widen the gap further between spending and revenues. However the government will more than reverse these tax cuts during 2010 and 2011. The next tax cuts will probably be a cut in the basic rate or a significant increase in the tax free allowance, rather than a cut in VAT which is increasingly seen as ineffective.
Total Real Debt
The total debt as illustrated by the below graph shows UK real Public Sector debt and liabilities rising from £1.5 trillion in 2007 to 2.1 trillion by the end of this year, 2.8 trillion 2009 end and 3.2 trillion by the end of 2010. ...
(you ought to go to the link, to see charts and the rest of the article)
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article7526.html