NightBlogger

As times get harder in Britain’s cities, armed gangs are heading for the countryside – and stealing deer, salmon and rabbits to feed a burgeoning black market in food. Police in rural areas across Britain are reporting a dramatic increase in poaching, as the rise in food prices and the reality of recession increases the temptation to deal in stolen venison, salmon, or rarer meat and fish. There have even been reports of drive-by poachers, aiming guns through the open windows of moving vehicles to pick off deer or other game. More

You can bet the statistics are far worse than those reported by Eurostat and I don’t believe for a New York Minute France’s economy is still growing. No one in the real world believes governments, banks and politicians any more. Things are even worse in eastern Europe.

Times Online
The eurozone has fallen into recession for the first time since the single currency was introduced in 1999, official figures show this morning. Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency, said third quarter GDP across the 15-nation eurozone shrank 0.2 per cent, following a 0.2 per cent fall in the previous quarter. A recession is defined as two quarters of negative growth. Yesterday, Germany, Europe’s largest country, fell into recession for the first time in four years but it emerged today that GDP in France is still growing, up 0.14%. However, Spain admitted today that growth shrank by 0.2 per cent. More

ITN News
Controversial ID cards will be handed out to the public by the end of next year, the Home Secretary said. Jacqui Smith said “small volumes” of cards will be available months ahead of schedule. The cards, which will store copies of two fingerprints and a facial scan - will enable holders to travel around Europe without a passport. They will cost £30 each and will be available for everyone else from 2011. The overall cost of the ID card and biometric passport scheme is nearly £5 billion. Ms Smith said the cards would replace bank statements, driving licences and birth certificates for anyone looking to confirm their identity.

Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have vowed to scrap the identity card programme, which they say threatens civil liberties and will fail to improve national security as the government contends. Ms Smith said the biometric data stored on the cards and the ID card database could be collected on the high street at post office counters or in shops. She also announced stronger powers for the ID cards watchdog to enforce cooperation by government departments and companies involved in collecting the data. She said there was already a need for a “universal means of proving identity”.

She said: “The time is fast approaching when the use of bills and bank statements to prove our identity will no longer cut it, and when our personal dictionary of different passwords for different purposes will become too unwieldy to work effectively.”

(Reuters)
A diplomatic row broke out between Iceland and Britain Thursday over how to deal with hundreds of millions of pounds of British deposits trapped in collapsed Icelandic banks. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Iceland’s failure to guarantee the deposits was “completely unacceptable.” “This is fundamentally a problem of an Icelandic registered company (and) Icelandic registered financial services authority — they have failed not only the people of Iceland, they have failed the people of Britain,” he told the BBC. His Icelandic counterpart Geir Haarde had earlier expressed anger at Britain’s use of anti-terror laws to freeze Icelandic assets in Britain, and said he had made his views clear to Chancellor Alistair Darling in a telephone call. More

Bradford & Bingley, the UK’s biggest buy-to-let mortgage lender, has become the latest victim of the deepening financial crisis, with the Government nationalising its mortgage book and Spanish bank Santander buying its branches. In a statement today, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said: “The Government, on the advice of the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England, acted immediately to maintain financial stability and protect depositors, while minimising th exposure to taxpayers.” More

The UK is facing its worst economic crisis in 60 years, Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted. He told the Guardian newspaper that the economic downturn would be more “profound and long-lasting” than most people had feared. House prices are falling at their fastest rate in 18 years, leading to fears of a wave of repossessions. Mortgage lending has slowed dramatically due to the credit crunch while key indicators have suggested that the economy could be poised to go into recession. The economy showed no growth in the second quarter of the year while building firms and retailers have laid off thousands of staff amid fears that the economy will deteriorate further. More

Stephen Lendman
From July 21 - 31, Joint Task Force (mostly US, but also UK, Brazil and Italy) “Operation Brimstone” large scale war games were conducted off the US East coast in the North Atlantic. Its purpose may have been to prepare for a naval blockade of Iran. Initial reports after its completion were that participating ships were deployed to Persian Gulf and Arabian and Red Sea locations to join up with the present American strike force in the region. The major media cover none of this, and US Navy sources deny it. So precise information is unclear. From what’s known, however, redeployment may be planned, and a blockade may ensue. The situation remains tense and worrisome.

Under international and US law, blockades are acts of war and variously defined as:

– surrounding a nation or objective with hostile forces;

– measures to isolate an enemy;

– encirclement and besieging;

– preventing the passage in or out of supplies, military forces or aid in time of or as an act of war; and

– an act of naval warfare to block access to an enemy’s coastline and deny entry to all vessels and aircraft.

In 2009, it’s believed that the International Criminal Court in the Hague will include blockades against coasts and ports as acts of war.

International law expert Professor Francis Boyle is very outspoken on this topic as well as on others of equal importance. He defines blockades under international and US law as: More

The number of properties repossessed by mortgage lenders in the UK has risen by 48% in the past year. The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said there were 18,900 repossessions in the six months to June, up from 12,800 in the same period last year. The sharp rise was due to the economic slowdown making it harder for some homeowners to repay mortgages. Repossessions have been rising since the second half of 2004 but have now begun to accelerate. The number of mortgage holders behind with their payments has also gone up. They rose by 29%, up from 120,800 in the first half of 2007 to 155,600 in the first half of this year. More

TFEX 08-4 “Operation Brimstone” Flexes Allied Force Training

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS080715-21
Release Date: 7/15/2008 5:17:00 PM

From Commander, U.S. 2nd Fleet Public Affairs

NORFOLK (NNS) — More than 15,000 service members from four countries will participate in Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 08-4 “Operation Brimstone”, July 21-31 in North Carolina and off the eastern U.S. coast from Virginia to Florida.

JTFEX 08-4 serves as a ready-for-deployment certification event for the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group (TR CSG) and the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group (IWO ESG). The exercise will also serve as a Joint Task Force Capable Headquarters sustainment event. In addition, JTFEX 08-4 will offer preliminary accreditation for 2nd Fleet’s Maritime Headquarters with Maritime Operations Center (MHQ with MOC)). MHQ with MOC is a new approach to command and control for fleet commanders.

“This exercise is a tremendous opportunity to train; not only as the Navy and Marine Corps team, but with our joint and coalition partners as well,” said Commander, 2nd Fleet Vice Adm. Marty Chanik.

“JTFEX 08-4 will flex our warfighting capabilities from the operational level through expeditionary strike force and strike group operations with several of our coalition partners – France, Brazil and the United Kingdom.”

The exercise also marks the first time that forces from Navy Expeditionary Combat Command are participating in an East-Coast JTFEX. NECC forces operating in the littorals and riverine environment are supporting integrated operations.

“Navy Expeditionary Combat Command provides a self-contained adaptive force package with a command element tailored to support the full spectrum of operations from major combat operations to unconventional and irregular warfare,” said NECC commander Rear Adm. Mike Tillotson.

U.S. and coalition naval assets underway for the exercise include the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) with associated units including the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal (RO 7), the Brazilian Navy frigate Greenhalgh (F-46) and the French submarine FS Amethyste (S 605). BNS Greenhalgh is the first Brazilian Navy ship to operate integrated in a U.S. strike group.

French Rafale fighter aircraft assigned to the 12th Squadron, and Hawkeye early warning aircraft assigned to the 4th Squadron will conduct carrier qualifications and cyclic flight operations with U.S. Carrier Air Wing 8 during Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group’s Joint Task Force Exercise. This marks the first integrated U.S. and French carrier qualifications and cyclic flight operations aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier. More

As Bernanke points out, when a country has a government-controlled paper money system, then it can use the printing press to increase the relative supply of domestic currency. As the printing presses crank up, the price of money relative to goods and services falls. In other words, the domestic currency loses value as inflation takes hold. Bernanke’s last sentence is positively chilling; “under a paper money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.” His words are extremely precise, and worth close examination. The qualification “paper money system” is crucial. There are plenty of monetary regimes where the government could not devalue the currency; for example; a gold standard, a silver standard; a fixed change rate; or a currency board. Unfortunately, a paper money system is exactly what we have here in the UK and in the US. More

Michael Shedlock
It will be hard for the US and UK to avoid a depression. What started as a tropical storm called “Subprime” has intensified in magnitude to engulf Alt-A, HELOCs, credit cards, commercial real estate, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, and the stock market, just as baby boomers are headed for retirement. If you prefer, you can think of this as Many Hurricanes, Many Eyes. Most do not even understand the nature of the storm that is about to hit. Barclays is right at the top of the list.

The saturation point has been reached. It took decades but we have finally arrived. None of the financial engineering jobs that fueled this credit boom will ever be needed again. SIVs, Conduits, Toggle Bonds, Covenant Lite loans are all dead for years, more likely decades to come. Add to that liar loans, Pay Option Arms, insane leverage, and numerous other ridiculous lending arrangements. And if those things are not coming back, we do not need Wall Street shills to securitize that garbage and pitch it to unsuspecting suckers. More

(CNN) — Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart hopes to return to the United Kingdom as soon as a reported travel ban stemming from her criminal history is “resolved,” the chairman of the company she founded said Friday. The statement was released after British newspapers, led by the Telegraph, reported that she had been refused a visa to enter Great Britain because of her criminal convictions four years ago.

Stewart was scheduled to meet at the Royal Academy with several figures in the fashion and leisure industry, the Telegraph reported. A representative of the British Borders Agency would not comment on Stewart, saying only that “we continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offenses abroad.” More

Financial Times
Britain became the world’s largest arms exporter last year, according to government figures released on Tuesday, overtaking the US, which normally occupies the top slot. The UK won £10bn of new defence orders in 2007 from overseas, giving it a 33 per cent share of the world export market, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Defence and Security Organisation, set up to promote Britain’s defence exports. Export orders totalled £5.5bn in 2006. Saudi Arabia was the largest importer…followed by India…Three countries – Australia ($11bn), Canada ($10bn) and Pakistan ($6bn) – moved up the import rankings….More

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced his support for the harvesting of organs from dead patients without prior consent, and said that he hopes for such a policy change to take place within the year. “A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the United Kingdom and the limits imposed by our current system of consent,” Brown wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. More